The Third Miss Symons was the first novel published by Flora MacDonald Mayor, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and professor of classics. It had been preceded by a collection of short stories in 1901, and two more novels and some ghost stories came later. I read F M Mayor’s 1924 novel The Rector’s Daughter in 2015 – it’s a beautiful, poignant novel, though a sad one. It was through the introduction of that novel, that I got the sense that Flora Mayor was more than the quiet, Victorian, clergyman’s daughter we might envisage from her novels – which all do seem to run along rather similar lines. Having read history at Cambridge Flora later became an actress, before eventually turning to writing.
The Third Miss Symons – for me at least, was rather depressing. The Rector’s Daughter was merely sad, it was also compelling and quite brilliant. I was relieved that this was such a short novel, I started it late one evening and finished it the following morning. It offers us a rather bleak and probably not unrealistic portrait of the life of a woman whose destiny it is to never fully connect with anyone, and to remain without a recognisable role or purpose. There is a pall of deep unhappiness that exudes through the novel, I felt the mood and the atmosphere of the novel briefly affected my own mood. No doubt it is testament to the skill of Flora Mayor as a writer that she manages to produce this atmosphere of wasted years so effectively.
Henrietta Symons (generally called Etta) is the third daughter in a large Victorian family, she is a misfit in the middle of the family. An argumentative, cross little girl she grows up to be a querulous woman, without any natural charm or attractions. Etta irritates her mother and sisters, there is little in the way of comfort or softness about her life, while her elder sisters are the pretty, conventionally good Victorian daughters Etta continues a round peg in a square hole. For several years Etta dedicates herself to her younger sister – the fourth daughter born when Etta was eight, Evelyn becomes the focus of all the love Etta is desperate for. While Evelyn is a baby, Etta is allowed to help, and in time the little girl does develop a strong affection for her older sister her ‘little mummie.’ This great capacity for love that Etta, has really should be her saving grace, only it isn’t. Misunderstood by the adults around her, they immediately assume her valiant attempt to replace Evelyn’s dead canary to be nothing more than simple naughtiness.
Unexpectedly, perhaps Etta nearly gets married. Mr Dockerell is not exactly a Prince Charming but he seems to like Etta, and Etta enjoys his good opinion, for a short time.
“And perhaps she loved him all the more because he was not soaring high above her, like all her previous divinities, but walking side by side with her. Yes, she loved him; by the time he had asked her for the third dance she loved him.”
One of Etta’s sister’s returns home and in a bit of spectacularly malevolent spite deliberately turns Mr Dockerell’s head – because she can. Etta’s chance of marriage and a family of her own, is over, and her sister Louie marries somebody else soon after. Etta never really manages to get over her bitterness toward Louie – and in a sense this disappointment blights her life. While Mayor allows us to feel some sympathy for Etta, just like the members of Etta’s own family, we are unable to really like her – or fully engage with her. Etta is one of those difficult people, who without trying, put our backs up, who never seem to fit.
As Etta’s brothers and sisters marry, leave home and start their own families, Etta’s life is further narrowed. As an unmarried daughter at home in a house of servants, her life lacks purpose, and to add insult to injury she is viewed by others as being of little worth too.
As she ages Etta learns little – she never learns how to acquire friends, she has money at her disposal which in middle age she uses to study and travel – yet nothing seems to bring her any kind of fulfilment. In his preface to this edition John Masefield says…
“In a land like England, where there is great wealth, little education and little general thought, people like Miss Mayor’s heroine are common; we have all met not one or two but dozens of her; we know her emptiness, her tenacity, her futility, savagery and want of light; all circles contain some examples of her, all people some of her shortcomings; and judgement of her, even the isolation of her in portraiture, is dangerous, since the world does not consist of her and life needs her. In life as in art those who condemn are those who do not understand; and it is always a sign of a writer’s power, that he or she keeps from direct praise or blame of imagined character.”
Mayor understands Etta completely, the sad, uselessness of Etta’s life – so much of it brought about by her own personality.
This is a novel (novella really, I suppose) that I spent a very short amount of time with, but it felt longer. I think The Rector’s Daughter is almost certainly Flora Mayor’s masterpiece – and I very much want to read The Squire’s Daughter (1929) should I ever come across a copy.
heavenali 