O, The Brave Music – Dorothy Evelyn Smith (1943)

The British Library women writers series is turning out some simply wonderful titles and looks like it will continue to be one of my new favourites. O, The Brave Music is the last one of their current titles I had to read – one of them I had read previously in a vmc edition.

Some of you may remember my review of Miss Plum and Miss Penny, reissued by Dean Street Press by this author, this novel, was Dorothy Evelyn Smith’s first novel, and I think an even better one. First published in 1943 Dorothy Evelyn Smith wrote O, The Brave Music during the war, apparently writing ‘on the end of the kitchen table with bombs falling around the house.’ Despite it being her first novel, Dorothy was fifty years old when it was published and went on to write ten more novels. Written during the Second World War, the novel is set in the years before the first, the narrator Ruan looking back to the time of her childhood and adolescence with a fond and nostalgic eye.

As the novel opens, seven year-old Ruan is sat in church dreaming up a fabulous outfit for her imaginary little friend; her Little Man. She is the daughter of a non-conformist minister in a northern town, with a slightly older sister Sylvia and a small brother Clem, who we discover has some unspecified illness or disability. Sylvia, like their mother is very beautiful, she has inherited her mother’s looks and easy poise, Ruan has not, she is a bright, imaginative child who loves books. Their mother comes from a wealthy landed family, and in marrying the Reverend Everard Ashley she had married rather beneath her – certainly, she had had to quickly get used to living on far less. We get the impression early on, that any shine there might have been has gone off this marriage. Her husband caring more for his religion, rather ashamed of his early passion for his beautiful wife marshals the behaviour of his family along strict non-conformist principles. The family have one servant, Tanner, the maid who Ruan’s mother brought to the manse with her. She is a strange woman, who regards Mrs Ashley with an obsessive, jealous devotion.

“Poor Tanner, with her warped mind and twisted loyalties; none of us ever loved her, and all she did for us we took for granted. A small, dark woman, like a witch she was, without a grey hair to the day of her death, and a long, pointed nose that she had a habit of pulling as she sat rocking before the fire, until it had attained a high polish. There was a hymn she liked – Shall we Gather at the River? – and she sometimes sang it by the hour, marking time with the clacking of the rockers.”

Life in the manse holds little joy, though Ruan is not unhappy, she is fond of her siblings, just eighteen months apart in age she and Sylvia generally get along well. Young as she is Ruan senses that things are not right at home, she can’t put her finger on it – doesn’t understand the nuances and the silences.

“That dark Something that was hidden in the Manse was still there. Darker, more definite than ever before. So dark that I cried myself to sleep many and many a night, feeling its hateful presence crouched outside my door. So definite, that Sylvia and I began to speak of it furtively, only half comprehending; and Tanner, too, could no longer keep silence.

“‘Your mother’s late,’ she would mumble, anxiously watching the clock. I hope nothing’s happened’”.

Relief is found in Ruan’s great friendship with Rosie and Joshua Day, and David who they adopted when his parents died. Joshua is a self-made man – now wealthy, his speech still carries the rough accents of his birth, as does his daughter Rosie who despite all the advantages her father’s money could pay for – is very much her father’s daughter, with little interest in fine things. They live in a large house up on the moors, where Ruan visits regularly – spending whole summers up there. David is five years her senior but the two are devoted friends. Some of Ruan’s happiest times are spent with David, with Rosie and her kindly father – roaming over the moors, absolutely captivated by the ever changing landscape, drawn to its wildness and colour.

Tragedy and change come to Ruan’s home and again Ruan is grateful for her friendship with Rosie and David. Her mother’s brother turns up – he and his sister had been estranged for years. Uncle Alaric offers his home to Ruan and her sister, and they swap life at the manse for Cobbetts, their mother’s ancestral home. Alaric arranges his nieces education, they had previously been attending a hated board school – but while delighted to be free of that, Ruan has no desire to go to boarding school.

As the years pass, Ruan never loses her love of the moor, and no matter what happens to her, or where she is living, there is always David. Even when he is away at school. Ruan knows that in time David will come back to her.

“I looked at David, lying beside me on the heather, half asleep. Rough brown hair; kind, deep-set eyes that crinkled at the corners when they laughed; undistinguished, freckled nose; sweet line of lips above stubborn chin; strong, flexible hands; immense length of legs in shabby grey trousers. …This was David. My David, unchanged and unchanging, and I loved him.”

O, The Brave Music, is a delightful coming of age novel, Dorothy Evelyn Smith’s depiction of a non-conformist household in a northern town is particularly good I feel. She also shows the miracle of good friendship, and how transforming those relationships can be.