Stet by Diana Athill (2000)

This memoir of editorship and small publishing is interesting to me for a particular reason. Athill was in on the beginning of both Andre Deutsch and Allan Wingate (Deutsch's earlier pseudonymous company), so her experience dates back to the late 40s and the postwar boom in small publishers dedicated to literary work. This was a very particular world of "arty" houses, often based in side streets in old shopfronts or homes, with only relatively few staff, and a LOT of personality going on! By that I mean there were larger than life types, scurrilous types, brazen types well in evidence, displaying their education and erudition, forming a balance to those among the staff who were less obvious in their 'diverting' capacities. I came into publishing on the very last tail-ends of this period, but employed by one of the most noticeable of these big personalities, Marion Boyars, so had a taste of this world as it lay dying. The way Athill speaks of the contrapuntal sway of how a big personality would cause a ruction, and how the lesser ones might have to pussyfoot around to save a situation, or, in the attempt, sometimes make things worse (!) is very familiar. Also her record of dealing with authors, with sudden affronts at a misplaced analytical word, or continuing to publish works even though the author wasn't making any money, or the awkwardness of having to reject one because it didn't cut the mustard, or huge editing jobs to turn works toward the sun, strikes many chords. I don't remember Marion mentioning Diana Athill, but they must have known each other. Marion had a typical response to Andre Deutsch, Athill's 'employer' (she was actually a fellow director) - WHAT a DIFFICULT man! Of course, completely ignoring the fact (unaware?) that she was a good way to also being so herself! My guess is that Deutsch's reaction to her may have been similar. One thing that Athill mentions also rang a huge bell: she speaks of the women of the industry keeping things going while the men peacocked themselves about. In Marion's version of what occurred at Calder and Boyars, she was the one holding things together, once she'd served her apprenticeship to John Calder in the very early 60s. He'd go off swanning around, deeply involved in his theatre festivals and 'scouting' for more works (read 'entertaining himself'), whilst she kept the company moving and got things done. I'm sure, despite Marion's tendency to exaggeration, that this analysis was not far from the truth. I wonder if she and Diana commiserated with each other, and geed each other up? It would have depended on personality; Athill speaks of a particular author here (I can't now remember which one) who was either on the Calder and Boyars list, or very similar to many who were, as being dangerous - by implication, personally as well as in the artistic sense. Perhaps Diana was too 'careful' and (confessedly) upper middle class for the relationship to truly bloom. She certainly is an exemplar of that tight spot where the brave new world of educated liberation met the narrowness of the old way: her editors at Granta should not have allowed her to 'explain' Trinidad and Tobago as 'two islands, one country' in a note, as though the reader were likely to be unaware. But her talk of shepherding authors and their works through the locks without getting sunk, and her candid discussion of the blooming, and dying, of relationships that had long since moved beyond the strict terms of publication, and, of course, the gossip of it all, are really enjoyable reading.

The Marquis de Villemer by George Sand (1860)

This is very much in the standard run of nineteenth century French novels; it is Sand not particularly distinguishing herself, in contrast to how strongly she has done so in other entries in her bibliography. That is not to say that it is in any way a poor read, or a dull one; simply, it does not extend its head above the parapet sufficiently to gain the distinction that is sometimes the quarter of this author. This is the story of a poor but aristocratically-connected young woman, who has no interest in attempting the trappings of wealth. She works as reader-aloud to a marchioness who herself is poorer than she might be through the extravagance of her eldest son, a profligate duke. The marchioness' younger son, the marquis, a quieter, less robust, more academic type, has put in place a financial scheme which will pay his brother's debts, disallow him to indulge any more, and give their mother just enough to be comfortable in the manner to which she is accustomed. He has done himself down in the process, and is a much poorer man now than he might have been, but happier because the precarious situation has been repaired. Caroline, our heroine, goes through a typical-for-the-times arc of an attempt on her virtue by the duke, a growing understanding that she and the marquis are soulmates, a misunderstanding which causes the marchioness to reject her, a running away to peasant connections in the Cevennes and an interlude in a dramatic, perilous and mountainous landscape, and a last, desperate reconciliation with the marquis with his health and life at stake. Interposed are young society schemers, marriage plan shenanigans, joyful rustics, Caroline's sister struggling as a widow with four young children, and other accoutrements of the quintessential plot of the times. Whilst this was not truly an inspiring novel, it was still enjoyable as the recognisable product of a brilliant pen at its more moderate pitch.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1952)

After reading her first novel quite some while ago, it is great to be back visiting Pym. From memory, the previous one was set in a village in the country, whereas this is set in London, so quite a change of milieu. Clearly, she is famed for her investigation of what could be described as the smallness or seeming incompleteness of women's lives mid-twentieth century, and this one is an example of that. Equally obviously, one of her great claims is in how she makes humour from that purportedly limited material, and there's no questioning that here! This one's space is placed amongst the attendees and surrounds of an urban London church in 1945. The main character, Mildred Lathbury, knows herself to be one of the 'excellent women' who formed the backbone of a church's community back then when the church was a great deal more alive. That world presided over by the vicar and including bazaars and fetes as fundraisers is very much her locale, but she is also aware of herself in it as seen from the outside, at least to some extent. She knows that she might appear disappointing to a more romantic, or deep-living individual, and her connection to that wider world comes from imagination, poetry and occasional spurs of contact with more travelled types. She accedes in seeing herself with some disenchantment, definitely, but is keenly realistic about what someone of her nature can stand, or manage. Pym allows us to see this in quite a lot of detail; my suspicion being that the depiction is one of herself, give or take a bit. This combination of faithfulness to the details of the somewhat strictured life, where she appears to celebrate its limitations and delight in the minority of its concerns, with quietly sly undercutting of their constraining smallness through tossed-off satiric swipes, is the adroit stuff of the Pym mixture. This one centres around a couple who move in on the floor below Mildred. Rockingham (Rocky) is a handsome and effusively charming officer, just back from the war in Italy, whom Mildred imagines as having charmed a swathe of lonely Wrens at his villa, and Helena is a semi-glamorous looking anthropologist who hasn't seen Rocky consistently for the duration, and has got on with her academic life as best she can, including very possibly some amorous adventures. Mildred is careful around them, as they seem so urbane and worldly. Through visits to Helena's learned society, meetings with various unmarried and possibly eligible males, frugal meals, both out and in, in the rationed restriction of these spare new days of freedom, a drama with the vicar and an entrapping widow, and gossip with her associates among the bevy of excellent women who keep the whole edifice moving, Mildred's preparedness to help, occasional social uncertainty and wry self-criticism are well-exercised. Also given a workout is dry reproval of not only the smallness of mind necessary for such a life, but also of the more expansive romantic silliness to which she is largely immune. Attitudes to the should and shouldn't of things are compassed with forgiving fascination and zest by Mildred as she is given more of an education in how others live. Though I couldn't possibly survive on a diet of this shade alone, I cannot but acknowledge its penetrating intelligence, and saving comedy.

Commonplace Book

'"...you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that - you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you at all - you're too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views - that's your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all - not even yourself."'

from The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (Chapter 20)

Commonplace Book

'...She often wondered indeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with anyone. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case - it had not seemed to her in other cases - that the actual completely expressed. But she often reminded herself that there were essential reasons why one's ideal could never become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see - a matter of faith, not of experience. Experience, however, might supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the part of wisdom was to make the best of these...'

from The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (Chapter 19)