a gallimaufry

Shiny New Books: Pipers and a Dancer, by Stella Benson

I have a review up on Shiny New Books: it’s Michael Walmer's reissue of Pipers and a Dancer by Stella Benson. A strange and original novel of 1924, in which Ipsie Wilson voyages out to China to marry the boorish fiancé she hardly knows. Peopled by comic characters, haunted by the losses of the First World War, this novel is well worth your time and I loved it.

The Long View, by Elizabeth Jane Howard

This is only the second novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard I have ever read: this is a slightly embarrassing admission because everyone loves her work and has read all the Cazalet Chronicles. Not I.

Here is an even worse admission: I disliked the novel I had read, and that novel was Falling, which I have seen described as a ‘late masterpiece’.

 The reason: what I call Jo Bettany Syndrome. For those of you who did not devote a substantial part of their youth to endlessly reading and rereading Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series, Jo Bettany was the heroine of the first dozen or so novels. Jo was clever and kind, a talented writer, immensely popular with girls and teachers alike; she played pranks but good-hearted ones, she sang with a beautiful bell-like voice which regularly reduced listeners to tears and she saved someone from death in every other book or so. When she grew up, she settled near her beloved school where she offered wise guidance to foolish schoolgirls, she wrote bestselling yet critically acclaimed novels, married a doctor and had about 35 children all of whom went to the Chalet School. In other words, she was so perfect that even child-Helen suspected that there was some sort of wish-fulfilment going on here on the part of EMBD. And when I sense it in a novel, I find I really dislike it. And in Falling, I felt the character of Daisy was just too good, even her weaknesses weren’t really weaknesses, and this irritated me. (Subsequently, I discovered that Falling was based on something which had really happened to EJH, perhaps this is why?) And because I am superficial, this meant that although I appreciated EJH’s great skill as a writer, I didn’t like the book.

Still, everyone loves EJH’s work, so when I saw The Long View in my local charity shop among the elderly paperbacks by Dick Francis and Hammond Innes, I decided to give her another go.

‘Let us do whatever you would most enjoy.’
This made them both actually laugh; it was his age-old preface to doing exactly what he would most enjoy.

Written in 1956, The Long View is the portrait of a marriage, from even before Antonia and Conrad first meet to their imminent divorce. The novel is divided into five sections, gradually moving back in time, so that we begin with 1950 and then move back to 1942, 1937, 1927 and 1926. It is a really clever way to structure the book, because of course your curiosity is aroused: why did their marriage fail? In fact, why did they marry in the first place? (I can’t help but wonder whether Martin Amis, EJH’s stepson, was inspired by The Long View to write his own time-backwards novel, Time’s Arrow, albeit he handles it very differently.) Apparently, EJH chose this structure to discover ‘whether one could not better understand people and their situations by slowly stripping them of their experiences’: the result is an astonishing success.

(Elizabeth Jane Howard; found here)

At the outset, the Flemings appear to have an idyllic existence: class, taste, plenty of money, good looks, busy social lives. However, this is a façade; behind it lurks pain, infidelity and bullying. The first, 1950 section, is the only section which is written from multiple points of view; it presents our main characters as other people as well as themselves see them, and it also gives a more rounded perspective on their two children, Julian and Deirdre, who are poised to make many of the same mistakes their parents made. Neglected and despised by their father, protected as far as possible from him by their mother, they are more than usually distant from their parents than most children of that time and class.

For the rest, most of the novel is shown from Antonia’s point of view (‘Mrs Fleming’ as she is reduced to being called in the later part of her marriage) and she is presented usually in terms of her relationship to a man. Her beauty, her clothes, her jewellery, her gestures, are all very closely observed, as if she were an object. She is the sort of person who looks lovely even when she is tired or crying. Someone asks her what she does and she tries to explain that she doesn’t look after the children, she doesn’t cook:

‘I do the arranging of it. There is a lot of arranging, you know. I read, and look at pictures, and garden, and listen to music – and Conrad minds awfully about clothes so I spend a certain amount of time on them – [...] I suppose I’m a sort of scene-shifter for Conrad,’ she finished. ‘He likes an elaborate setting, and he likes it to vary. I try to do that for him.’

She has schooled herself to please men, particularly her husband, and attached her self-worth to succeeding in this, but it is at a cost to herself. Certainly the crushing of her spirit began long before Conrad entered her life, and the final section of the book, 1926, is powerful. Despite this, by the time I finished the novel I hoped that her divorce might finally free Antonia.

We also dip into Conrad’s perspective. This works well because not only does it prevent him from being a monster, we also see how reasonable, charming, restless and clever he is, how attractive that can be, and how that masks his total selfishness and contempt for women. We experience him as Antonia might have done, the surprise when he turns.

(Elizabeth Jane Howard and her first husband, Peter Scott; found here)

What I loved about this novel was EJH’s skill in describing the world as her characters see it, every word perfectly chosen. Plunged into the middle of this complex relationship as the reader is, the minute level of detail in which it’s chronicled makes it feel claustrophobic. EJH expertly delineates mood and emotion, and the constant shifts in them, in a way that seemed truthful and pinpoint accurate, and is always coolly observed. She shows someone absorbing pain and damage over years, feeling exquisitely differentiated degrees of shame, guilt, humiliation, someone who lives emotionally on the brink at all times, trying to provide that ‘elaborate setting’ and fearing the smallest slip.

So, yes, I shall be reading more of her work in the future... And yes, I did experience a soupçon of Jo Bettany Syndrome, but not much and this time it didn’t bother me, perhaps I am becoming a better person.