Zella Sees Herself by EM Delafield (1917)

The comparison I inevitably make in looking at this first novel of a daughter is with the incredibly capable works of her mother. It is almost like the two orchestrated their careers, one terminating with Michael Ferrys in May 1913, the other commencing in March 1917 with this book. Elizabeth de la Pasture remarried and went off to Africa to live a second life of colonial officialhood, and lived on until 1945. Her daughter Edmee streamed from strength to strength, culminating in the Provinical Lady series, but predeceased her mother in 1943. Ostensibly, this book inhabits the world of her mother's books - the comfortable Edwardian scene of country houses, smart London, the necessity of marriage, and a good quotient of social humour. There seems on this evidence no doubt that she has inherited her mother's storyteller-gene - the whole thing flows effortlessly and with great colour. It does not, in those respects, exercise the mind particularly, but it definitely entertains. But there are differences, and they speak to the coming of the modern. We begin with Zella (short for Gisele) de Kervoyou losing her mother at the age of fourteen, and showing at the same time many signs of typical youthful self-concern. She is borne down upon by her mother's sister Marianne, a woman whose unthinking, small-minded respectability and blathering conventionality must be a portrait from the life of so many withering aunts of the period. She is superbly realised. Marianne's horror can well be imagined when, some time later, Zella, in another fit of self-storytelling, decides she would like to go to a Roman Catholic convent for schooling, and ends up converting in a small maelstrom of fervency. Marianne's ultra-Englishness and protestantism is supremely affronted by all this French nonsense (Zella's father is French and, in Marianne's condescending eyes, terribly dear and dreadfully lax at one and the same time) - she sees her role as surrogate mother being undermined at all eventualities. But in amongst all this fine humour there are hints of what might be to come in this author's career. Zella is lightly psychoanalysed in a way which would never have occured to Elizabeth de la Pasture, and has uncertainties in her character, and tendencies toward the lightest of philosophical thought, which betray her as being the product of a later generation. The story culminates in the typical scene of a country house stay, where Zella, whose latest self-embroidering scheme is one of Romance with a very handsome, slightly empty, wealthy young man, gets a dose of truth and reality from her cousin James, Marianne's son, with whom she's always got on. He begs her to disentangle herself from her web of self-mystification and not marry someone who'll ultimately make her unhappy. This is perhaps the only point in the novel where I would say inexperience has caused a slight tremor - her inamorato's inappropriateness is not quite cleanly forced upon us, though it is possible to see what she was getting at. In its ending, with Zella having acceded to James' urging and rejected him, causing not only heartbreak but anger, and in floods of tears and some (undeserved) social disgrace as a flirt, mulling to herself the fact that she never seems quite able to connect with the real, in place of the fancied and over-elaborated fiction of self to which she's a votary, Delafield delves more deeply than her mother would have done, and soundly satisfies.

Vittoria by George Meredith (1867)

Meredith is here unexpectedly taking another holiday from comedy. Where last time we had a domestic tragedy, here is a revolutionary novel, set in the tumultuous Italy of 1848, placing it alongside A Tale of Two Cities and many another exploit in the turbulence which seemed to cross Europe over that long period. Like Rhoda Fleming, there is comedy in the sidelines of this one, mainly housed with operatic entrepreneur Antonio-Pericles and his very mildly talented amanuensis, Irma. The novel forms a complementary part, perhaps not a sequel overly, to his former novel Sandra Belloni, from 1864. The heroine of that comedy is transported back to her beloved homeland, and the beginnings of a career as a chanteuse. She has also undergone another transformation, becoming a fervent supporter of the troublings toward revolution and a unified Italy. To this end she takes a stage name, Vittoria, for obvious reasons. Her debut is planned for a particular day in Milan, where her talent is expected to be so arousing that she will single-handedly fire the starting gun for an insurrection in that city, simply by singing a particular song, which contains veiled patriotic references. From that point, we have a traditional Meredithian expansion into a multitude of threads, each supporting a character or group of characters, each of which have a complex viewpoint, either for or against a united Italy, or for or against continuing Austrian control, as well as innumerable personal biases, secret reasons, fallings in and out of love, changing receptions to others' actions, intrigues in the cause of personal and political goals, including misapprehension and rumour as well as fact. The action takes place on the quiet roads of northern Italy, in its mountain passes and in various staterooms and courtly houses at gatherings of the great and good. Austrian officers abound, as do Italian minor aristocracy. Vittoria's main idea is that Carlo Alberto will become king; her great love, Count Carlo Ammiani, is a plotter for a republican future. The tension caused by this difference of perspective is a major point of rub as the novel progresses, and the suspicions it creates among those around them cause a lot of confusion and misdirection. One of the most interesting things about this book is the primacy it gives to the opinions and agency of women in a period of both literature and history where it might not be expected. Vittoria's great friend Laura Piaveni is a strong urger of revolution and an indomitable arguer in favour of action. The countesses Lenkenstein are wilier equivalents on the Austrian side. Countess Viola d'Isorella is a mysterious intriguer who will stop at nothing to get her way, though no-one quite knows which side she's on. This interest in big female roles inhabiting usually male territory is an indication, I'm thinking, of why Virago were prepared to allow, as an exception, his later Diana of the Crossways into their modern classics years ago. To combine this tendency, along with extraordinarily intricate plotting, revelation of which occurs tangentially through veiled conversation and mysterious action in a circuitous gossamer of carefully teased psychology, is to reach splendid heights of reading pleasure yet again.

Commonplace Book

'"Long-worded, long-winded, obscure, affirmatizing by negatives, confessing by implication! - where's the beginning and the end of you, and what's your meaning?"'

from Vittoria by George Meredith (Chapter XLII)

Dreamthorp by Alexander Smith (1863)

Smith is remembered (if it can really be called that) now as a 'Sporadic' poet, which, as far as I can tell, is a largely pejorative term used for a group of mid-nineteenth century poets who don't quite make the grade, in the wise noddles of the current literati. I've not read his poetry and can't comment upon it. But as an essayist there's a great deal more than the occasional about him. There are the things which one might expect: a species of largesse, and confidence, generated from the uber-believed-in superengine of Victorian supremity. This gives rise to a quality of love for his own train of thought which can exclude careful exceptions to his rules, or to what would be seen these days as echo-chamberedness. But these elements are, from my point of view, forgivable, if I have a writer of rich prose and investigative mind in my hands. Meaning that there are outweighing examples here where Smith follows an original train of thought fruitfully, or perhaps sets up an echo which rings with enough significance to satisfy. The place where he reaches his highest pitch is in personal and social philosophy, which often also sits as a looming background to the pieces here which aren't primarily concerned with it. I don't find him as perspicacious on literature - there are essays here - Dunbar, Men of Letters, A Shelf in My Bookcase and Geoffrey Chaucer - which are the weakest of a strong lot. But those which touch on the springs of his own writing more directly like On the Writing of Essays are really fine examples of their kind, and show up his love and fascination for Hazlitt, Macaulay and the other 'greats', particularly Charles Lamb. This is one of those books where the anticipation of re-opening is as enjoyable as the reading itself.