Random Commentary – Dorothy Whipple (1966)

How difficult it is sometimes to talk about a book that I loved as much as I loved this one. A fabulous treat of a read for #ReadIndies month.

I have loved everything that I have read by Dorothy Whipple – everything that has so far been published by Persephone. Her novels and short stories remain endlessly popular among Persephone readers. Random Commentary however is not a novel.

This book is a compilation of pieces from Dorothy Whipple’s journals and notebooks. There is a note from the publisher in the front explaining their approach, and now I have finished the book, I am glad they chose this approach, it was the right one I think. The journals were kept intermittently by Dorothy, then years later she simply copied out extracts that she thought might interest her readers. Nothing was ever organised or dated – though of course it all runs fairly chronologically, therefore the title fits absolutely. Persephone decided to stick to Dorothy’s original intention and produce the book as a facsimile. Naturally some events give us an idea as to date, and as there a lot of mention of her writing, the publication dates of her stories and novels help us orientate ourselves as to where we are within the period of approximately 1925 – to the end of the Second World War. However, the majority of the time it really doesn’t matter to the reader (well certainly not to this reader) what year it was – I just revelled in Dorothy’s world – and loved every word.

In these extracts Dorothy Whipple doesn’t just reveal the writer she was, the struggles and the constant self-doubt, the highs, and lows, she shows us the world around her, and her appreciation of it.  

“I went to walk on the front. The day was ending, and over the vast expanse of Morcombe Bay, I saw hundreds – thousands of birds flying together. They rose up like a tree. They streamed like a long undulating snake. They wheeled, they became a whale, they threw themselves like a net over the sky, they settled like a dark mud bank. Such unison. Like a wonderfully trained choir, or corps de ballet. But who or what conducts them? By answering “instinct,” you don’t dismiss the mystery.”

This book is a delight for any Whipple fan – and perhaps best enjoyed by those who have already enjoyed her fiction. For those of us already familiar with her fictional world, it shows us something of the woman behind those loved stories. A woman full of self-doubt, as delighted as a child by glowing reviews of her books, a normal married woman, who happens to write very popular books and is on friendly terms with J B Priestly. She is indignant on her husband’s behalf when he must retire earlier than he’d like. They have a little terrier called Roddy who they adore, and when he inevitably dies, get another also called Roddy. She is an author often annoyed by the constant interruptions when she wants to write – interruptions she is certain no male writer would suffer, I think she was probably right there. An aunt, who is absolutely smitten by her pretty young niece, a child she loves having to stay and who she puts in one of her books.

As a reader she appreciated Rose Macaulay, and Katherine Mansfield is saddened by the death of Winifred Holtby. As a writer she is invited to events she find herself nervous of attending, finds herself chatting to H G Wells, finding him an easy, kind man to talk with, she liked him enormously.

“When on this lovely September morning, I went up for the paper and opened it, standing under the golden trees in the sunshine, I saw that Winifred Holtby was dead. I am sad, sad. So generous, brilliant, warm hearted, so young to die. I feel so sad as if I had missed saying something to her and now never shall.”

During the course of these extracts Dorothy and her husband Henry are living in Nottingham and decide to rent a holiday cottage in the countryside at Newstead, to spend weekends. Dorothy comes to love the peace of the cottage – often yearning to be back there, however, after Henry’s retirement they have to give up the cottage and the house in Nottingham and move to a house in Kettering. Generally never happier than when at home quietly, Dorothy is often obliged to travel a bit – London of course a frequent destination and she and Henry holiday in British resorts. So, we also find her in such places as West Runton, Cardigan Bay and Southampton and on trips back to her native Blackburn to see her mother, completley swamped by that feeling of home on hearing the accent of the railway porter.

“Thousands of incendiary bombs on London tonight. Terrible damage. Hundreds of homes, eight Wren churches, the Guildhall gone, and Dr Johnson’s house in Gough Square, which I always promised myself to see, and now never shall. I am sad, sad about London. One feels for it as if it were human, and very dear.”

As we hit the 1940s the war becomes a necessary backdrop to her journal entries. She reports on raids, and the news and the despair she and so many others must have felt. In the midst of which ordinary life goes on, her books and stories written, published, and reviewed. For this is very much a glimpse into the life of writer, although it’s wonderful to see so much of the woman she was too.

I am so glad that Persephone decided to republish this volume – in just the way Dorothy Whipple originally intended. Now all I long for is that they reissue her childhood memoirs too. That’s not too much to ask is it?