My year with Stella...

[Waawo]

...has begun!

I plan to spend my fifty somethingth year - and that surely is some kind of mistake - reading all of Stella Gibbons' novels. There are 26, of which I've previously read less than half, and own less than a quarter.

Since I want to read other things too, I'll try to squeeze each novel into a week, leaving a week in between for some variety. Some are not quite novels that can be read "while you eat an apple" though, so this may not work out.

Yesterday I wandered down to Waterstones to treat myself to a nice new reading copy of Cold Comfort Farm - the first novel, published in 1932. I've read this before, a few times in fact. It's a tale of our heroine Flora's attempts to tame her somewhat wild Sussex-based distant relations, as an alternative course to just getting a job.

I'm a few chapters in now, and the familiarity makes it a bit like slipping on comfortable pyjamas or slippers. I'm amazed how amongst the, honestly, slightly obvious seeming rural parody, Stella shows herself as sharp as a tack. For instance, she clearly knew what more recently we might call a 'crazymaker', since this is one the best descriptions of such a person I have read, by any author:

"If she intended to tidy up life at Cold Comfort, she would find herself opposed at every turn by the influence of Aunt Ada. Flora was sure that this would be so. Persons of Aunt Ada's temperament were not fond of a tidy life. Storms were what they liked; plenty of rows, and doors being slammed, and jaws sticking out, and faces white with fury, and faces brooding in corners, and faces making unnecessary fuss at breakfast, and plenty of opportunities for gorgeous emotional wallowings, and partings for ever, and misunderstandings, and interferings, and spyings, and, above all, managing and intriguing. Oh, they did enjoy themselves! They were the sort that went trampling all over your pet stamp collection, or whatever it was, and then spent the rest of their lives atoning for it. But you would rather have had your stamp collection."

Really looking forward to discovering the rest of her oeuvre. Enbury Heath is one of my favourite books ever - if there's anything else as good as that, this will have been time well spent!

I know there are a few here who like to see covers, so I've added a picture :)

Just realised I've started my next Stella - Westwood, or The Gentle Powers - before posting the cover picture. So, here it is!

So, the second volume of poetry read at the British Library last Saturday was The Priestess and other Poems, published in 1934.

This one is still in its original binding, although this volume wasn't deposited to the library on publication either; there are library paraphernalia on the inside cover showing it came via West Riding of Yorkshire libraries!

The poems are much more modern, dare is say more accessible, than Stella's first book. Although I have only read them all once, my initial impression was of fewer classical allusions throughout.

This one struck me as startlingly modern (except for the hyperbolic last couplet perhaps), and describes some easily recognisable emotions:

THE BEGGARS

The poor sit silent in our public places
As once in Rome.
Bench, tree and fountain that the pigeon graces
Are now their home.

For even their hidden dens would no more hold them.
They broke; and sent
The desperate poor up on to our smooth pavements.
Driven, they went

Into our parks, our doorways, for their shelter.
Slowly they go
Drifting like shadows, or lean against a wall
Where busy crowds flow.

Terror and shame turn our eyes from gazing
When gabble or curse
Comes strangely out of their lost, sunken faces.
But their quiet is worse

Than any rage, or living cry of misery.
Because they are,
There is no comfort in the sound of music,
No beauty in a star.

How shall we silence shame, that feeds with looking
On these quiet, sunken men?
We shall make wistful beauty from our pity,
And nail up Christ again.

Meanwhile, on first read at least, this is my favourite, a charmingly irreverent voice. I have no idea who the GC of the title is. Laughing at myself, having mentioned lack of classical allusion in this volume, when this poem itself is an echo of Robert Herrick's To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time - both gently in the subject matter, and more directly in the scansion of the first line:

TO G.C.

Come, let's make music while we may,
Schools and philosophies pass away.
Remains green grass and the light of day.

When a thousand years have sped
Who'll care what two dead poets said,
Save that we knew the rose was red?

And if the rose no longer blooms
In steel towers and concrete rooms,
What charm will shine up from our tombs!

A thousand years, and men will say,
"What was this rose that grew in May
And ravished dead girls' hearts away?"

So come, your hand. To make a song
Whose beauty flows like waves along
A thousand years are not too long!

The third (and final) book of Stella's poems read during my British Library visit last Saturday: The Lowland Venus and other poems, published in 1938.

This is another volume that has been rebound, into a very uninspiring brown cover, almost notebook like. What I believe is the original cover (blue, with title printed) is bound inside the book, although unusually, towards the back. Very strange.

From first reading, this is the poem that stood out most for me:

CONTINUITY

Bankers at war
That gold may rule
Dim lives that should be free,
Space circular
And Faith gone cool
And Time a mystery . . .
But from some old and plain delights
No puzzles shall me sever;
Love's act could speak
When Greek met Greek;
Some joys are good for ever.

Rose in her bower
Of thorn and leaf
Growing through history
Smells for an hour
As sweet as brief
And for eternity.
Fishing in history's murmuring tarn
Whence echo ceases never,
With Thought for cast
I'll catch the past
And stay by it for ever.

Roses were old
And wit was salt
With Ulysses at sea
Long before gold
Made thought a fault
Heavy in mine and me.
Serene by rose and murmuring tarn
No banking laws can sever,
My senses share
The warm Greek air
Sweet once, and so for ever.

The last book from my British Library session a week ago now, and Stella's only children's book: The Untidy Gnome, published in 1935.

This is pleasant enough I guess - after one read, I wouldn't suggest it's any kind of children's classic. The story is as old as time: two neighbouring magical communities essentially go to war over some perceived slight or other (it's been a week and I've already forgotten some key details lol), and our hero has to (eventually) put everything right. Everyone lives happily after by the end of course.

It's of its time: how convenient that the magical power of the fairy realm (?) makes our hero forget her previous life and basically take over as a kind of young housekeeper, making everything clean and tidy! Grr!

This book has been long out of print and that's not too surprising: I haven't found any contemporary reviews but I can't believe they would have been great. Stella's talents lay elsewhere I think!

Novel #10 - Westwood, or The Gentle Powers - finished :)

What's been most fascinating reading these novels in order, so far at least, is the development of the author's voice. All of the novels seem at least somewhat autobiographical. This one, with its setting in Highgate, is no exception. Published just after the second World War ended, I think it does show a growing world-weariness.

Margaret, our hero, basically develops throughout the novel into a character one would absolutely expect to find in a Stella Gibbons novel. Disappointment, anger, slow discovery - mostly about men! - and compromise are all shaping Margaret here.

As always it's a perfectly formed little world comprising the two Westwood houses, and a brilliant cast of characters. Margaret, Hilda and Zita are all wonderfully drawn and contrast so much with each other, and yet the triangular friendship with all its tensions is totally believable.

Also, as well as the general Highgate area, there is an opportunity for another Stella location field-trip thanks to the long description of Kew Gardens :)

Lastly, since Stella writes men who are rotters (like Gerry in this one), I thought I'd share this poem from her first collection, which is very different from most of her early work and must surely have been aimed at someone, the anger fizzes:

TO A DESERTED GIRL

Know, when your thought returns to me at night
And, being hungry, would be fully fed,
That I am lying with my arms wrapped round
Some stranger-woman, in an unknown bed.

That carelessly I give her what I gave
To you, and use the same words that I said,
And that her fairer breast is soft to kiss,
Whiter, and sweeter to a young man's head.

Think of this always. There shall come a day
When your starved love, defeated, turns away.

=====

Next up: The Matchmaker.

[No picture of the completed shelf this time, as we're from home. Instrad, a picture of the three long out print volumes of poetry together.]

I love Westwood, @Waawo. It really divided opinions when we read it for the Rather Dated book club so I felt I was ploughing a somewhat lonely furrow!

Thanks for your review of Westwood @Waawo, it sounds like a book I would love!

@Terpsichorecan anyone join the Rather Dated Bookclub on MN?

Yes, please join in! We're between books just now and about to decide on another so if you have any ideas, come along to the thread and let us have your ideas 😊

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5029141-the-mumsnet-rather-dated-book-group-all-welcome-to-join?page=6&reply=151945689

@HumbleCaptain look what turned up in a charity shop spree today? The title was ringing bells for me when I saw it lol, so it came home with me :)

Hooray, the next Stella novel arrived while I was away! I'm about two thirds of the way through my current "in between" book (Precious Bane by Mary Webb) so should be starting The Matchmaker by the weekend.

The covers of these Vintage re-issues are so nice, I can't fathom why some have an alternative edition with plain red fronts - I may (slowly) replace those red ones that I already have...

Novel #11 - The Matchmaker - completed.

Another "not London" novel, in which our "hero" Alda decamps from city life to rural Sussex, is thoroughly bored, and fills some of her time by helping with/meddling in the love affairs of her friends and neighbours.

Although Alda comes across as a typical Stella hero, I didn't like her so much by the end. Her meddling does lead to a lot of upset, and although it all comes out in the end, she is not near the top of my list of favourite characters!

There are some brilliantly self-referential moments, such as when Alda moves furniture into a woodshed to make space for a dinner party, to which inevitably someone quips "Something nasty in the woodshed..." :)

It's also another perfectly self contained world, I can just fall into these novels - this isn't unique I know, but I guess everyone has their own preferred fiction universe (to use a modern phrase), and for me the Stellaverse is it!

Also, I love Stella's funny and irreverent moments:

...and if everybody on this planet liked peace, the conclusion would be foregone, but hardly anyone does like peace, most people preferring excitement, cigarettes, sex, drink, noise, danger, the pride of the body and fashionable hats.

There's no picture of the completed shelf this time either, as some of the books are packed away in readiness for a house move.

Next up: Conference at Cold Comfort Farm.

And speaking of Conference at Cold Comfort Farm - here it is!

I'll probably start this at the weekend. Just finishing up with Mansfield Park, the latest "in between" book 😀

My copy of Westwood arrived today. I’m reading The Camomile Lawn & will finish that before starting Westwood. Here might be a good place to ask: did Mary Wesley and Elizabeth Jane Howard know of each other’s novels?

Alas, I don't know either of these writers' stories or histories well, so I can't say. Will add The Camomile Lawn to my list of "in between" books for this year, it sounds just my kind of thing!

Finished novel #12, Conference at Cold Comfort Farm.

In one way, it is clearly a shameless cash-in, sure. But it's a riot actually, and very, very funny.

Our hero Flora Poste (we all know this is Stella really 😉) is now married and has five children. That's not enough to stop her returning to Cold Comfort Farm for a crazy conference of International Thinkers. She very quickly senses that all is not well at the farm, and (of course) resolves to put that right.

The International Thinkers are a nightmarish bunch of efficiency experts, modern artists, ministry men - all very modern and new, and exquisitely drawn. There are echoes of this in later works, including Hitchhikers' Guide to the Universe and Yes, Minister. The overall effect is like being in a strange dream, where everything feels kind of right, but just slightly off-kilter.

Stella still has her genius for naming things, whether people, committees, books - there are so many laugh out loud moments for me in this book, which made for an interesting time on the Lizzie Line earlier today.

The parody of modern art - novels, performance art, poetry - is brutal at times, and it doesn't take much thought to have a good stab at which "big beasts" from those worlds are being lampooned.

Finally, inevitably, all is put right with the world: the bull Big Business is restored to his rightful place on the farm; there are once more Starkadders at Cold Comfort; Flora gets to jump in a friend's sportscar to be whizzed back to London when all is sorted; and Adam Lambsbreath finally gets his beloved Liddle Mop back!

@Waawoyou’re in for quite a romp. I watched the 2 part tv series when it aired in the 90s, but don’t remember all the bed hopping!

I'm sure Mary Wesley and Elizabeth Jane Howard would have been aware of each other. They were similar ages and both had massive best sellers around the same time, that had similar themes and subsequently had TV adaptations.

Novel #13 has arrived: The Swiss Summer.

This is the first of a few novels that are still in print having been re-issued by The Dean Street Press, an imprint I know nothing about - this I’m pretty sure is the first volume from that publisher that I’ve ever seen, let alone owned. Its production and style is pretty different from the Vintage copies of most of the other novels…

@Waawo Dean Street Press (and its kindle arm, Furrowed Middlebrow) has parted me from a lot of my money over the last few years! They publish quite a range, but for me it's all about the substantial amount of interesting fiction of the 30s to the 50s, largely by women. Quite a lot is….erm….let's say, at the lighter end (they’re very keen on D E Stevenson), but there are some real gems in their catalogue. I'd recommend having a look, but you might not thank me for it if you go on a buying spree….