Excellent Women

The clothes worn by the women in this photo look exactly as I
imagine those worn by Mildred and her friends.

T

oday's offering for the 1952 Club, is Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, which is, as you might expect, an excellent book! The heroine (I will call her that, although I am certain it is not how she would see herself) is Mildred Lathbury, a 30-ish spinster who is a stalwart member of the local church, helping with teas, flowers, jumble sales, fetes and so on. She works part-time for an organisation which aids impoverished gentlewomen, which is, she tells us 'a cause very near to my own heart, as I felt I was just the kind of person who might one day become one'.

But Mildred's colourless life takes a turn for the better when Helena and Rockingham Napier move into the flat beneath her. When the two women first meet (by the dustbins in the basement), it is obvious that they are unlikely to become friends. Helena is 'fair-haired, and pretty, gaily dressed in corduroy trousers and a bright jersey'. Mildred is clad in a shapeless overall and an old fawn skirt, which draw attention to the fact that she is mousy and plain. And their outlook on life is also at a variance: Helena has no use for church, and no time for cooking and housework. An anthropologist, she is writing up her notes on kinship groups, following a research trip to Africa with a male colleague. Meanwhile, her naval officer husband has spent the last 18 months in a luxurious Italian villa looking after 'dreary' WRNS in 'ill-fitting white uniforms'.

When I was a child, women wore crossover overalls 
to to protect their clothes around the house. They were
 often made from old dresses, sometimes with sleeves, and 
were usually shapeless and faded,  with a tie round the waist.
(Pic of vintage overall pattern from Etsy site My Vintage Wish)

Rocky is charming, an educated, sophisticated man of taste, who puts people at their ease without even trying. I imagine him looking a bit like Montgomery Cliff in The Heiress (which is a travesty of Henry James' Washington Square, but nonetheless very enjoyable). Sensible Mildred feels the attraction, though she is aware he is frivolous, flirtatious and unreliable, totally unlike her friend the Vicar, Father Julian Malory. It might be supposed that Mildred and Julian are destined to marry - what could be be more suitable you ask yourself. But he falls for the charms of beautiful, sad-eyed widow Allegra Gray.

I think this advert, from 1951, has something of the feel 
of Rocky charming an adoring woman. (Pic from 
 https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1216651471/vintage-ad-1951-pacific-mills-mens-suit)

Much to her surprise, Mildred finds herself drawn into the Napiers' chaotic lifestyle, and meeting new people, including Helena's fellow anthropologist Everard Bone. Mildred decides she does not like him - she doesn't like fair-haired men, his nose is too pointed, and he seems to view the rest of the world (especially Mildred) with disdain. But, as we all know, couples who affect to dislike each other are generally hiding their true feeling...

Barbara Pym is often compared to Jane Austen, who once described her method of writing as being done with a fine brush on a 'little bit (not two inches wide) of ivory'. Like Austen, she portrays the everyday domestic details of life, showing us the concerns of ordinary people, and ignoring the bigger picture. You would hardly know Excellent Woman is set in the aftermath of WW2, but it's the small things in life that seem to affect people most. Pym is a very humorous writer - she's not laugh out loud funny, but she makes you smile, with the kind of quiet irony you might find in Austen novel. 

Take this sentence when Mildred admits: "I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people's business, and if she is also a clergyman's daughter then one really might say that there is no hope for her."

 I love that - pure Austen I think, as is Mildred's wry observation that it's the unsuitable women that men fall in love with.

Stylish trousers and brightly coloured jumper,
like those worn by Helena.
(https://wearinghistoryblog.com)

Pym's books are comedies of manners, and this is no exception. She draws her characters with precision, placing them in a particular time, place and social strata. But while she pokes gentle fun at them, she is never cruel, inviting us to smile with these people rather than at them. There are far too many characters to mention them all, but I like the Vicar's sister Winifred, who looks after him, dresses in clothes from the church jumble sales, and keeps a battered copy of Christina Rossetti's poems by her bed. A hopeless (or perhaps that should be hopeful) romantic, she has never been in love, and no-one has ever loved her, but she is happy with her life. Then there is Mildred's old schoolfriend Dora Caldicote, a jolly hockey sticks sort of woman, who harbours the forlorn hope that her brother William will marry Mildred, even though he is obviously not the marrying kind.

There are some wonderful descriptions of social events, like the complexities of lunch at a self-service cafeteria, where the trays rattle along on a moving belt at terrifying speed and bewildered Mildred ends up with things she doesn't want and no saucer for her coffee. Talking of which, my local Co-op cafe provides a not-bad pot of tea, with a cup, but no saucer, so I know exactly how she felt!

I could go on and on saying how much I love this book, and what a marvellous writer Barbara Pym is, but to be honest it's difficult to know what to put in and what to leave out, because so many other people have expressed their thoughts so much better than I can. Just read the book - and if you've already read it, please read it again!

The 1952 Club runs all week, hosted by Simon at https://www.stuckinabook.com/, and Karen at https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.

My Virago edition has a lovely foreword by
Alexander McCall Smith, who is kind, warm and
generous in his appraisal of Barbara Pym. 

Hearts Undefeated

Having pondered the wartime futures of the characters in Susan Scarlett's Babbacombe's, I picked up my old Virago copy of Hearts Undefeated, an anthology of Women's Writing of the Second World War - and, lo and behold, it fell open at a page mentioning Noel Streatfeild who, of course, was the real person behind Susan Scarlett. And if that's not serendipity, I don't know what it is!

Writing on September 11, 1939, at the very beginning of the conflict, novelist F Tennyson Jesse said:

It is a very queer war. Our little social life such as it was - quiet but pleasant -has come to a complete end. Noel Streatfeild, complete with gas mask and tin helmet, dashed in for lunch, full of stories about the firemen and ambulancemen at the station where she is an ARP warden. She was going down in the pitch black the other night, dressed in her slacks and dark blue sweater, when a voice with a French accent murmured to her: "Would you like to come home with me, pretty boy? It was one of the French Bond Street tarts. "Shut up, you fool,"said Noel.

"Mon dieu!" said the tart.

Noel Streatfeild. (Pic from Wikipedia).

Streatfeild was tall and thin, so I guess that dressed in trousers and jumper, and in the dark, she might easily have been mistaken for a boy,  and at that time it was still rare for women to wear trousers. She produced 12 light-hearted romances between 1939 and 1951, whilst continuing to write around a dozen novels under her own name, for adults and children. During WW2 she volunteered as an Air Raid Warden in the Mayfair area, and also helped provide support for people in impoverished parts of London. 

Throughout the war Fryniwyd Jesse Tennyson, novelist, playwright, journalist and criminologist, wrote to friends in America describing life in England. Afterwards, she asked for the letters to be returned for publication, Several of her pieces are included in the Virago collection including this little gem, penned on November 4, 1939.

The ARP authorities informed us that it is very important during an aerial bombardment to sit with a cork in your mouth, as the blast from a shell (even a long way off) may snap your jaws to and then, not only may your tongue be cut off, but your ear-drums are blown in. So we ordered our old man to produce us three corks for us to take upstairs, and when he served the coffee after dinner he solemnly presented Tottie with three corks on a little tray in the most correct manner imaginable, remarking: "Your corks, sir!".

The book, edited by Jenny Hartley, features writing by more than 100 women, from the Queen and Princess Elizabeth to titled ladies and MPs, through novelists and journalists, to ordinary housewives, and from service women and nurses to volunteers, as well as internees and refugees. There are excerpts from novels, newspaper reports, magazines, diaries, letters and radio broadcasts on a variety of subjects, from reflections on the humdrum and everyday to accounts of the momentous historic events taking place around the world. 

The Queue at the Fish Shop, by war artist Evelyn Dunbar, who recorded life on the Home Front 
during WW2. It is in the Imperial War Museum, Part of it is on the cover of Persephone's Good Evening, Mrs Craven, by Mollie Panter-Downes, whose work is featured in Hearts Undefeated.

You will recognise many of the names from the old green-spined Viragos and the Persephone lists. There's Mollie-Panter-Downes on rationing, Edith Olivier on a shopping bag and food queue, and Sylvia Townsend Warner on the new austerity, to name but a few. In addition you'll find Joyce Grenfell entertaining the troops, and Barbara Cart;and, who persuaded woman to donate used wedding dresses to be borrowed by service brides! Her maid, who helped press and clean the gowns, never wanted to see another white wedding dress, but Cartland was proud of what she saw as a job well done. She says:

The brides, however, were pathetically grateful. For one day at least a girl who was never meant by nature to be 'a fighting unit' could forget the war, her uniform, her duties, and be a woman. A woman lovely, glamorous, and enticing, a woman to be lost and won.

Others were equally proud of their efforts - which, it has to be said, were probably a lot more practical, even if they lacked the feel-good factor of a posh frock. Zelma Katin a quiet, well-spoken, well-educated, married, suburban woman, became a tram conductress, and in the process transformed into what she called another 'I':

... an aggressive woman in uniform who sharply orders people about, has swear words and lewd jokes thrown at her, works amid rush and noise, fumbles and stumbles about in the blackout, and has dirty hands and grimy neck.

Women bus and trolley bus conductors at the Hammersmith
depot in 1942, (Pic London Transport Museum).

And in another entry, towards the end of the war, she tells us more about her feelings, summing up the way many women must have felt:

I am glad I have done this kind of war work, proud that I still have the moral and physical energy to follow it and I hope that out of this experience I shall have gained a new understanding of life, people and marriage. Like millions of men and women in uniform I cannot pretend I am liking it. Perhaps the sacrifice and hardship are giving us a strength which will enrich us in the future and toughen us for the struggle which lies ahead. 

I will confess that I am thinking not only of a future for humanity, but a future for myself. I want to lie in bed until eight o'clock, to eat a meal slowly, to sweep the floors when they are dirty, to sit in front of the fire, to walk on the hills, to go shopping of an afternoon, to gossip at odd moments.

The war turned women's lives upside down, and the pieces in this book show how they coped, setting to and doing what had to be done without complaint, taking from the experience any small joy they could to keep positive and keep going. You'll find laughter, sadness and anger here - and tremendous resilience and courage. 

When I was a child, the war still was still a recent memory. Now it has become history. But it's worth remembering that these women were writing in the moment, as the war was happening. We know the outcome, but they didn't, so there is an immediacy to the writing - especially the pieces in the final section about the end of the war. I've seen newsreel footage, watched TV programmes, read accounts by historians, but nothing prepared me for the horrors of the written word, put down on paper by those who were there. War artist Mary Kessell's description of the sights and smells of derelict, defeated Berlin will haunt me for a long time. And Martha Gellhorn's report on the living skeletons released from Dachau, and the atrocities committed there, is the stuff of nightmares. How did she, and the soldiers, and the various other people who went in, live with what they had seen and heard? And how did the survivors ever manage to lead a normal life? 

*I've referenced this to the LibraryThing Virago Group's December the - which is a book not fitting any of the previous themes this year!