Chosen by my book group at my suggestion, Dusty Answer was a re-read for me – more than ten years after I read it the first time. Rosamond Lehmann’s first novel – it is a novel of self-delusion, sexual awakening and the search for an understanding of one’s self. The rather odd title is explained by the novel’s epigraph.
“Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life!”
(George Meredith)
That there are no certainties in life is something that we all learn sooner or later – and something that the novel’s central character Judith Earle is shown as she moves from late adolescence to young womanhood. This debut novel was published to great acclaim and some sensation in 1927, capturing the voice of an inter-war generation, albeit that of a particular class. One of the things my book group buddies and I discussed the other evening via Zoom – was how this privileged group of young people were essentially idle, they had no constraints upon their time or their movements and enjoyed the kind of freedom we don’t usually associate with the 1920s. I couldn’t help but think how different their lives and freedoms would have been had they been born into a working class environment.
Judith Earle is the only child of an elderly academic father and a socialite mother. Brought up in a large house in the Thames Valley overlooking the river, she has always been captivated and a little in love with the Fyfe cousins who appear from time to time in the house next door. They are all a little older than her – glorious enchanting creatures to her from early childhood – and they pass in and out of her life throughout her childhood and adolescence. As the novel opens Judith is eighteen, she will be going to Cambridge in the coming months, and now suddenly with the First World War at an end, the Fyfe cousins have arrived again in the house next door.
Inevitably things have changed – the war would alter that generation forever – and the Fyfe cousins are not unaffected. One of them – the most golden of all the golden boys killed in the war – but not before he married imprudently his cousin Mariella and left her with a child. Now, Julian, Martin, Roddy and Mariella are back, and Judith picks up the threads of her long held enchantment with them once more. The Fyfes are a difficult bunch for the reader – especially perhaps the modern reader – to like, but I like unlikeable characters. We wonder what they do – and what the point of any of them are. In fact, Judith herself is not wholly sympathetic, though we may recognise in her, that painful idealism that comes with youth. Judith fills her time waiting for a summons from next door – and as her relationship with the Fyfes is re-established she falls madly in love with Roddy, the most dissolute, unreliable, and feckless of them all.
“There was sadness in everything—in the room, in the ringing bird-calls from the garden, in the lit, golden lawn beyond the window, with its single miraculous cherry-tree breaking in immaculate blossom and tossing long foamy sprays against the sky. She was sad to the verge of tears, and yet the sorrow was rich—a suffocating joy.”
With her father newly dead, and her mother hotel hopping around Europe, Judith goes to Cambridge. It is a wholly new experience for her – having never gone to school but been educated at home. The depiction of a women’s college in Cambridge feeling much more like that of a boarding school – and Lehmann presents us with this new and fascinating world through the eyes of the inexperienced Judith. Here she meets Mable Fuller – a rather pathetic character – studious and unpopular she tries to persuade Judith into friendship, but Judith has already been captivated by another golden being. Despite still being firmly attached to her friends the Fyfes – longing for her infrequent meetings with them, Judith becomes fascinated by another student – Jennifer – with whom she falls in love. Probably more of an intense infatuation than a real love – but these things can feel pretty similar when you’re young – and Judith often seems a little younger than her years. Jennifer is beautiful and charismatic, hugely popular – her room is generally a mass of young eager bodies stretched out on the floor around her, talking earnestly and worshipfully.
One of the things Lehmann uses beautifully in this narrative is memory, throughout the novel Judith is held by her memories of the past. Often, the memory of things said and done with the Fyfes when she was much younger. Here though is Judith suddenly recalling Jennifer – after a period of time apart. Memory is such a powerful thing.
“And, in a flash, with the uttering of the last words, Jennifer came back, slipping the clothes down off white shoulders and breast, talking and laughing. A tide of memories; Jennifer’s head burning in the sunlight, her body stooping towards the water – the whole of those May terms of hawthorn blossom and cowslips, of days like a warm drowsy wine, days bewildered with growing up and loving Jennifer, with reading Donne and Webster and Marlowe, with dreaming of Roddy… Where had it all gone?”
With Cambridge behind her Judith returns to the family home – and the Fyfes who inevitably have re-appeared next door. She is longing for some quality time with Roddy – she is so certain of him it is almost painful to watch.
“Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger.”
The reader has little hope that either of these intense relationships will bring happiness or fulfilment to Judith – and indeed she has a lot to learn and a lot to suffer by the time the book ends. A beautiful, evocative novel of a generation that Lehmann thoroughly understood – here is a world of class privilege that can feel uncomfortable today, yet Lehmann presents it to us faithfully and as a social document of that world it is fascinating.
Rosamond Lehmann’s prose is gorgeous, many beautiful descriptions that can stop the reader in their tracks – assuming they like description. Very much enjoyed having the excuse to read this one again.
Painfully exquisite, or exquisitely painful? I can’t decide, but perhaps both, by the tone of your review? What an excellent read this sounds like.
Yes probably a bit of both. I highly recommend this and everything else by Lehmann.
I read this ten years ago as well but seem to have forgotten most of it. With the exception of the gorgeous descriptions. I did t remember them to be this unlikable. Lovely review.
I think it’s probably Roddy and perhaps Mariella who were the worst, I didn’t find Julian too bad and Martin is nice. I think as a type they jar on the modern reader but I still enjoyed reading about them.
This was the first Virago I read way back in my 20s. I loved that gorgeous prose you describe but your reading group’s discussion about the characters’ privilege rang loud and clear given my own background. Both my grandfathers would have been working in a mine during the 1920s!
Yes, my paternal grandfather was a miner, though he may have started in the 30s, my other grandfather a regular in the army before the war then a painter and decorator after. What different lives to these beautiful young people.
I read this pretty uncritically in my teens – probably because I was from a similarly privileged background and rather idle. I remember it fitting in very well with my own intense feelings at the time.
I think I read this more critically this time, enjoying it as much though with a different perspective. I like reading about people and lives different to my own so these kinds of novels are an escape from this world, which is something I never mind.
I re-read all her books about a year ago and this was the one which has stayed with me, perhaps because I had a childhood friend whose home by the river I imagined as the setting to this story. It is a haunting tale. I had not really reflected on the essential idleness of the characters but it is of course true that in that era well to do young women and to a lesser extent men led what seem today to be quite empty lives. So the story could not be rewritten for contemporary times. Perhaps the fact I did not really warm to any of the characters but still felt for them, especially Judith, is the reason for it lingering in the mind.
I think it is quite haunting, and testament to Rosamond Lehmann’s writing perhaps that whether we like these characters or not, they do stay with us.
What a lovely review, Ali. I’ve read this twice but can’t remember much of the details except that there is betrayal – and also that Lehmann’s writing was so beautiful and evocative. It probably is very much a young woman’s book and captures a time that we now look back on quite critically – cetainly from the point of view of privilege. But that doesn’t stop us enjoying the book!
Thank you. So beautiful and evocative and despite our feelings for the characters it’s definitely still a book with lots to enjoy in it.
Lovely review. Sounds like one I need to add to my TBR.
Thank you, yes I hope you do add it to your tbr and enjoy reading it too in the fullness of time.
Gorgeous review, Ali. The intensity of feeling really comes through. And I love those passages about sadness and memories; they’re so evocative and beautifully written. Definitely a book I’d like to read at some point.
(PS Was it ever published as a green Virago?)
Thank you, yes so many beautiful and evocative passages throughout this book. I know you have been reading The Weather in the Streets recently so I am sure you would enjoy this one too.
I suspect that I’m the only guy in the United States who has read all of Rosamond Lehmann’s fiction. ‘Dusty Answer’ is one of the best, but ‘Invitation to the Waltz’, ‘A Note in Music’, ‘The Weather in the Streets’, ‘The Ballad and the Source’, etc. are mighty fine too.
Ha, yes maybe not too many guys reading Lehmann in the US right now. I’m glad you think so highly of her work, so do I.
I read this soooo long ago it’s not on my blog. I remember getting quite cross with all the characters but like you don’t mind an unappealing character!
Yes, the unlikeability of the characters doesn’t in any way detract from the enjoyability of the novel.
Of “days like a warm and drowsy wine”. What a wonderful bit. And I have also loved the excuse to reread favourite books via a bookclub. Rereading is always rewarding but particularly when you have already enjoyed a book but are returning to it with a book club and discussion in mind, one tends to pay a special kind of attention to the story and it ends up being an amazing experience. Lehmann is one of my MRE authors and I would love to sink in her right this minute thanks to your lovely write-up!
Re-reading can be such a luxury, and I really enjoyed discussing this with my book group. Lehmann is also a MRE author for me too. In fact I have read everything, two of her novels twice.
What a great review. I have just finished reading this and I’m preparing my own thoughts for Bookword Blog. I found it hard to get into – all those Fyfes – and read Invitation to the Waltz before Judith went up to Cambridge. I found it easier after reading that novel to see where this one waas going. And I enjoyed it, although there were times when she seemed so naive, and the Fyfe boys so self-absorbed.
Yes there are similarities with Invitation to the Waltz, Olivia is not unlike Judith, and I suppose Rollo is not unlike Roddy. I’m glad you enjoyed this one too.
[…] Heavenali wrote an excellent review of Dusty Answer last month on her blog. You can read it here. […]
I know I’m over a year late to this, but I’ve just read this book and… well, I can see the attraction, and there are elements that will stay with me, but I did find it all a bit overwrought, both the prose and the emotion. Perhaps this was exacerbated because I came to it straight from reading Barbara Pym, who is so understated and restrained.
This was my first Lehmann: I have a couple more on the shelves, but if they’re as emotive and ornate as this one, I may struggle with them.
I think this one is especially emotional perhaps because it was Lehmann’s first novel. I’m a big Lehmann fan, An Invitation to the Waltz is excellent I think.