Bramton Wick – Elizabeth Fair (1952)

Popping up with a quick review, as I try to catch up a little. It’s about two weeks since I finished reading Bramton Wick, a period during which I have been reading quite slowly. My usual blogging timetable has gone out of the window, so bear with me.

Bramton Wick was perfect for an overtired weekend just as I began to feel quite unwell. I have previously read three other Elizabeth Fair novels all re-issued by Dean Street Press – and I really enjoy her world – small villages, eccentric characters, and a touch of romance. However, this one was her first published novel. Her observations are often highly amusing – her quirky characters all too believable. I was particularly struck by this quote from Stevie Smith on the back cover – taken from the time the book was originally published. Many of you will remember how – despite reading quite a number – I have struggled a bit with Angela Thirkell – and although publishing a little later than most of Thirkell’s – Elizabeth Fair was a writer of a similar type who didn’t fall into that trap of uncomfortable snobbishness that I find so unpalatable in many Thirkell books.

“Miss Fair’s understanding is deeper than Mrs. Thirkell’s and her humour is untouched by snobbishness; she is much nearer to Trollope, grand master in these matters.” – Stevie Smith

Bramton Wick is a tiny village – the setting of this delightful feel good debut. Here we encounter all the tensions, resentments and potential romances that exist in such a small community. Elizabeth Fair peoples her village with a variety of recognisable types – the romantic, the cynical, those who really need a shake up, the selfish and those who are too put upon. We have a lot of post war, genteel poverty, living cheek by jowl with those who are far better off.

There is Mrs Cole, with her two adult daughters, Gillian and Laura, Gillian was widowed in the war. Mrs Cole herself has long been a widow and she is still smarting somewhat from having to give up the big house – Endbury after her husband’s death. The house she has had to see Lady Masters lauding it over them all from ever since.

“She wondered how Lady Masters got her parlour maid to carry the coffee right across the lawn. But of course, Lady Masters got things simply by always having had them and by taking it for granted that she always would have them.”

Lady Master’s son Toby, a good friend of both Laura and Gillian’s is one of two local young men who really need to settle down and decide what they want to do with themselves. The other one is Jocelyn, who is living with his aunt and uncle – the uncle just about as irascible as it possible to be, his poor wife something of a door mat. Laura wonders whether she would like to marry Toby or not because if she did she would be able to return her mother to Endbury in time. Mrs Cole’s landlord proves not to be quite as awful as she thought – though nothing like his father – and the practical thinking Gillian meets a wealthy man with a terrible sense of dress.

Nearby at a cottage loomed over by the railway embankment live Miss Selbourne and her friend ‘Tiger’ – Miss Garrett – they once drove ambulances together in the First World War. They now have a dog kennels and a house that is a complete shambles – Miss Selbourne seems to do everything, Tiger being quite good at staying in bed or not feeling up to things she doesn’t like doing. Tiger is also the most appallingly bad driver – as we see a couple of times. These are the two best characters in the novel for me, and the novel opens with them preparing to go off to the local dog show. In another cottage close by live the three Misses Cleeve, from where much of the local gossip emanates, rather delightfully described by Elizabeth Fair as being ‘all remarkably like toads.”

This relatively short domestic comedy was a perfect little slice of escapism. A novel where of course everything gets tidied up quite nicely at the end – and how we all need that now and again. Although firmly in the category I call comfort reads – not everything in Bramton Wick is cosy – and yet it is the kind of book to curl up with under a blanket and hide from the realities of the twenty-first century.