Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

It's not quite true to say that I didn't join in Margery Sharp Day (so ably organised by Fleur Fisher; see her round-up post for more details), because I started Cluny Brown on the day in question. What I did not do was either finish the book or write a review, but I have now done so - encouraged by the dictum that it is better late than never.

Actually, according to the cover of my edition (by the Reprint Society in 1945, a year after the novel was original published) I was joining in Marjorie Sharp Day. Despite getting her name right inside the book and printed on the book itself, the dustjacket spells it incorrectly. What a thing to overlook!

I read my first Sharp, The Foolish Gentlewoman, back in 2002, encouraged by seeing it recommended in the letters of P.G. Wodehouse. In the intervening dozen years I've bought quite a few of her novels (this one in 2005), but I needed this encouragement from Fleur Fisher to make the obvious next step and read one of them. And thank goodness I did. Cluny Brown is an absolute delight, and establishes Sharp in my mind not simply as a first rate middlebrow novelist but also (which I had forgotten) a wry and witty one.

Cluny Brown is a young woman whose abiding fault (according, at least, to her guardian Uncle Arn) is not knowing her place. Although he is content and humble to be a plumber, she doesn't see any reason why she should not take tea at the Ritz, if she can muster together the money. She is not beautiful; she is inordinately plain (which was refreshing), but she has Presence. And that presence disconcerts her uncle; he decides that it would be much for the best if she were taken away from London and put into service. And so she goes to Devon to be a maid.

If this were simply a knockabout comedy about the ineptitude of an inexperienced maid in a large house, that would frankly be enough for me - but there is plenty else going on. Down in that house are Lady Carmel and her hunting-shooting-fishing husband, and (occasionally) their adult son Andrew. He has seen fit to invite a Polish intellectual to live with them during the war, under the impression that is in grave danger throughout Europe. Completing the party (upstairs at least) is Betty, a young lady with whom every young man is in love, and who is divinely unmoved by these attentions.

We must pause for a moment to appreciate the wonder of Lady Carmel. She manages the household beautifully. Everybody thinks her sweet and ineffectual, whereas she is sweet and effectual; never a busybody or ogre, she simply knows how to treat everybody and persuade everybody to behave properly. And she could not be considered the most politically devoted:

Lady Carmel looked troubled. It was the thing to do, just then, at any mention of Europe, and indeed there had been moments, with Andrew still abroad, when she felt very troubled indeed. But now the expression was purely automatic, like looking reverent in church. Picking up a bough of rhododendron she tried its effect in a white crackle jar, and at once her brow cleared.

And she appears again in a quotation I wanted to give to show the humour in Sharp's writing:

For a moment mother and son stared at each other in mutual surprise. Lady Carmel in particular presented an odd appearance: the lilac in her hand gave her a vaguely allegorical look, like a figure strayed out of a pageant.

You will be getting the impression that the novel is nothing by Lady Carmel wandering about holding plants; in truth, she is quite a minor character, I just happened to love her. The title of the novel is Cluny Brown and it is indisputably she who is the main focus. Cluny is brazenly honest, with an honesty born of ingenuousness rather than anything else. Her answers to questions are often curiously at odds with expectations, and perhaps the reason she does not 'know her place' is that she doesn't really have one. Equally happy in the Ritz and up to her elbows in water fixing somebody's sink, she is also fluid between the upstairs and downstairs of the Carmels' house. She is happiest of all with the neighbour's golden retriever - and begins an engaging relationship with the local chemist - a serious, level-headed, but poetic gentleman.

Sharp takes the maid-with-prospects narrative (which has been around since Pamela and before) and completely changes it. Her charming ingenue is not a beauty or an upper-class girl; she does not hide a cynical soul or a caustic wit. Those elements are as enjoyably present as could be wished, but in the mouths of other characters (and occasionally the narrator); Cluny Brown is not fey or soppy.

I've spent quite a lot of time saying what Cluny Brown is not, because that's the best way of saying that Sharp isn't quite like any other writer I've read. But, basically, any lover of domestic fiction and witty, wry fiction will find them combined beautifully in this novel. Thanks, Fleur Fisher, for encouraging me to pick up my copy.

A review round-up

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As with 2012's Century of Books, there are some books which - for one reason or another - don't get their own blog post, but I still need somewhere to link to in my run-through of 100 books.  So... here is that place!  Or at least the first part of it.  Let's call them mini-reviews; that sounds better.

The Perfect Stranger (1966) by P.J. Kavanagh
A friend lent me this; it is a memoir of a young man's life - at Oxford, at war, and in love.  I certainly liked it, and it was rather moving, but that's about all I remember now.

The Sittaford Mystery (1931) by Agatha Christie
I think my Reader's Block is FINALLY over, and that means my Agatha Christie binge has probably come to an end too.  Whenever I read too many in a row, the plots have to be really good to impress me, and - well - I just read too many, I guess.  So I liked The Sittaford Mystery and I think it was probably quite artful, but I didn't appreciate it as much as I could have done.  I did very much like the feisty, no-nonsense, secretly-sensitive heroine who took on the role of quasi-detective.  I think her name was Emily?

Inclinations (1916) by Ronald Firbank
Mike Walmer kindly sent me a copy of this, but I'm afraid I didn't have a clue what was going on while I read it.  I love some books which are mostly in dialogue (I call Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett to the stand) but this one just baffled me.  Luckily Karen/Kaggsy enjoyed it more - read her review for more elucidation.

Riding Lights (1955) by Norman MacCaig
Green Song and other poems (1944) by Edith Sitwell
Every now and then I think I should try poetry. I don't remember anything at all about these.

Elders and Betters - Ivy Compton-Burnett

"Dear, dear, what clever talk it all is!"
"It sounds so," said Jenney, on a puzzled note.  "And yet it is all about nothing, isn't it?"

It's canny of Ivy Compton-Burnett to incorporate into Elders and Betters (1944) the main criticism aimed at her novels - it shows a self-awareness, but somehow also deflates the common argument (from those who have read her unadmiringly) that her work is all surface and no depth.  I'm going to do my best to defend her, but... I do have to concede that a lot of what I love about Ivy Compton-Burnett's exceptional writing is the surface wit.  A lot, but not all.  

Elders and Betters starts off on moving day for the Donne family.  Anna has chosen a house for them, and the various members of the family are moving in, in dribs and drabs.  Since we started off with only three, I thought that Ivy Compton-Burnett had been uncharacteristically frugal with her cast - but more and more arrived, and then we were introduced to a second family.  I'll save you some time, and rattle through them.  Skip the next paragraph if you want to - it's deathly dull, but needs must.  Here goes.

Father: Benjamin, children: Bernard, Esmond, Anna, Reuben (ages about 30 to 13, in that order). Benjamin's cousin Clara Bell 'known as Claribel to the family, and to as many people outside it as she could contrive'; housekeeper Maria Jennings (Jenney to all), Cook (nobody seems to know her name) and Ethel, the maid.  Benjamin's sister Jessica lives nearby, along with her husband Thomas, adult children Terence and Tullia, and young children Dora and Julius. Benjamin's other sister, Sukey, also lives there - and is dying of a vague heart condition, without any apparent time-limit on its fatal nature.  Finishing things off are Miss Lacy (the young children's teacher) and her niece Florence.

Phew!  At one point I did sketch out a family tree, but they actually all have quite distinct personalities and affinities, and it wasn't too tricky to keep them all sorted in my mind.  Back to the plot.  As I say, we start with visiting a new house - the sort of scene I always warm too, especially when one character is trying to convince others that it's a great choice, and they remain firmly unconvinced.

"The drawing-room and dining-room are what we should expect," said Anna, throwing open the doors.  "The kitchens are below them.  The staircase leads to those above."

"A natural use for a staircase," murmured Claribel to Jenney, as she set foot upon it.  "I am glad we are to be allowed to put it to its purpose."

Oh, how I adore the witty pedantry which informs so much of Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing.  And the backtracks and change of tempo brought about by her authorial asides.  How can you not adore a writer who constructs so perfect a sentence as this? :

Ethel tried not to smile and entirely succeeded.

Round and round the conversations go, seemingly to lead nowhere, but actually forming brilliant portraits of family dynamics, and exposing the barbs and bitternesses behind people's facades - as well their occasional generosity or kindness.  For her characters so rarely have facades - they say what they think, or (more often) contradict what others think.  There is one utterly wonderful scene where nothing more complex happens than someone notices there are thirteen sitting down to dinner - and they deliberate who shall sit down first (or last; they cannot recall the superstition correctly.)  It is a scene which should be anthologised time and again.

But Elders and Betters is not a novel where nothing happens.  Ivy Compton-Burnett was always keen to stress that novels must have plots, and hated those which seemed not to.  In Elders and Betters, the pivotal point could be borrowed from any detective novelist, even if the treatment could not.  Aunt Sukey has written two wills - one inheriting her sister Jessica, one her niece Anna. She asks Anna to destroy the will which would benefit her; Anna destroys the other.  Sukey, of course, dies shortly afterwards of her heart condition.  And this propels the happenings, and (more importantly) the conversations, for the rest of the novel.

Recently, on my very positive review of Elizabeth Bowen's The House in Paris, Rachel commented "I'm sure you'll entice some more people to read Bowen - she's streets ahead of ICB!!!"  Those exclamation marks show me that she was teasing, but I do have to say - I still think Ivy Compton-Burnett is a better and more important writer than Elizabeth Bowen.  These author-vs.-author battles are probably rather silly, and will end up going in circles, but the reason I think ICB is more important is that Elizabeth Bowen does, very well, what a lot of other authors try to do; Ivy Compton-Burnett does brilliantly what nobody has really tried to imitate.

"It is a modest but pleasant house," said Reuben's voice, "and a home is where a family is gathered together."

"That is what makes family problems," said Bernard.

"We have none of those," said Benjamin, in a tone that defied contradiction.

"None," muttered Esmond. "Problems imply a solution."

"Jenney is proud of me for being able to talk like other people, though I cannot walk like them," said Reuben, rightly interpreting the expression on Jenney's face.

It is not true that Ivy Compton-Burnett's narrative voice is absent - although her novels are mostly dialogue, she very often gives speech this sting in the tail, offering a flash of insight into a character's mind, and darting away again just as quickly.  Hopefully I have given some examples of what makes her so special, so different, so important a novelist.

But, while musing about Ivy Compton-Burnett on the bus (for such is my glamorous life), I wondered why I believed her to be such a significant author, considering she seemed to inspire no one and take inspiration from no one.  There appears to be no distinct literary tradition that she adapted or futhered, besides the vague quantities of the domestic novel.  And then it struck me, the author she most reminded me of - which is, curiously perhaps, Shakespeare.

Characters who speak as no person would ever speak (for who ever spoke in blank verse?) but who perfectly represent how people feel and think.  Characters engaged in large-scale comedy and tragedy, but bound by the familial ties, and rarely missing the opportunity to philosophise in the midst of anguish or (more rarely) joy.  And of course, with all that dialogue, Ivy Compton-Burnett's books are as much plays as they are novels.  The deal was sealed when, in the final act (if you will) a flurry of unexpected engagements occurred.  Perhaps with these criteria I could compare Ivy Compton-Burnett to any playwright in a Shakespearean tradition, but it seemed to me that it was William S's particular mantle that Dame Ivy was seeking to inherit.  This only struck me towards the end - with my next venture in Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels, I shall keep it in mind from the outset, and see what it brings out of the text and reading experience.  Elders and Betters, to conclude, is not my favourite of the Ivy Compton-Burnett novels I've read (More Women Than Men retains that crown), nor is it in the top half, but she seems incapable of writing a novel that I will not thrive upon and relish - Elders and Betters is no exception.