Is there to be no end to it all? As soon as you think you must have read all the great women writers of the last century, another one pops up and takes your breath away. You might remember that a couple of weeks ago I drew your attention to an article called Ten Best Neglected Literary Classics, of which I'd only read a handful. Well, Adele Geras was kind enough to comment on that post and she said this one was wonderful, so, as I trust her implicitly, I got it out of the library.
And yes, it is wonderful. On the cover of my VMC edition is a quotation from Elizabeth Buchan describing it as "exquisitely written, delicate, passionately felt and haunting", and I have to say that it is all those things.
So -- let's start with what we know about Flora Macdonald Mayor. In my case, until a very few days ago, the answer would have been - nothing. Now, thanks mainly to Wikipedia, I know a tiny bit -- I know she was born in 1872 and died in 1932, that she was a vicar's daughter, that her fiance died of typhoid in India and she never married, that she had to cut short a career on the stage because of her ill health. I also know that she wrote only three novels, of which this is said to be the best. It was first published in 1924 by the Hogarth Press, and you know who that was -- Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
So -- what's so great about this novel? It's the story of a woman, Mary Jocelyn, who has lived her whole life with her father in a quiet, shabby, old-fashioned country rectory. As the book starts, she is thirty-five, and just emerging from a long period of nursing her disabled sister, who has recently died. Her life has been exceptionally quiet, and she is extremely shy, feeling more at home with the poor villagers than with people from her own circle of society, and her best friend is the Cook, with whom she has long conversations about "poetry and the English classics" and "mystical discussions". Her shyness and lack of self-esteem owe a good deal to her father -- at eighty-two, Canon Jocelyn still has a sharp, satirical mind, loves classical literature, never reads books published later than 1892, and, as a Cambridge man, believes "the Oxford mind is shallow". He has educated Mary well, taught her Latin and Greek, but has no idea how to show her any affection, or any sense that he should do so, and she believes (wrongly) that he feels nothing for her. His complete inability to understand Mary has been very damaging -- he has poured scorn on her short-lived attempt to educate the village girls and her experience of showing him an article on education she has written proves to be disastrous -- he dismisses it as crude, and when she tears it up and puts it in the waste-basket, "Yes", said Canon Jocelyn, "I think that is the best place for it".
Lacking beauty and social graces, Mary is mostly ignored by people in her own social circle, or at best dismissed as "nice and good" but uninteresting. Occasionally she meets someone who sees her as she really is, like the woman she encounters in a seaside boarding house who tells her fellow guests:
"Those eyes show Miss Jocelyn has something rather particular inside her. She may chance to meet a man who'll realize it, and then being plain and badly dressed will simply make no difference at all".
This remark really goes to the heart of the matter. For Mary is not only highly intelligent, imaginative, and thoughtful, she is a passionate woman, though her passions have generally confined themselves to the heroes of the novels she has devoured in the dark night hours. This is not something she has ever been able to admit to anyone, and a single attempt to talk about her need to love and be loved -- "I have longed for it" -- is loaded with so much intensity that her shallower friend Dora is made uncomfortable. But Mary's life is about to change, and it does so with the advent of Robert Herbert, the new vicar of the neighbouring village. For an extraordinary moment, it seems as if Mary may have a chance of happiness, but many twists and turns are still to intervene. I'm not going to tell you what happens, but I have to admit that not all of it is joyful.
So -- in some ways this could be described as a tragic novel, but for some reason it is not. It is often desperately sad, but it also has moments of delicious, understated comedy and wonderfully acute social observation, as when Mary and Dora are being patronised by the daughter of the local gentry:
Dora came from that section of the middle class which is so good and kind it cannot be rude (Mary came from the section above it which can)...
So this is a novel about how hard it is to understand other people, and how many misunderstandings and even tragedies arise from it. Above all, though, it is a book about love, and extraordinarily perceptive it is. There's the love of parents and children, so difficult sometimes to express -- though Canon Jocelyn is unable to show it, there is never any doubt (for the reader, though not for Mary) that he loves Mary deeply and depends on her entirely. And when it comes to the love between men and women, the novel is really exceptional in its subtlety and perceptiveness. There's a wonderful moment early on in Mary's growing friendship with Robert Herbert when they are on one of their customary walks round the garden:
The equinoctal wind rushed through the branches of the old elms and roared like the sea. He gave a colour to Mary's cheeks; her eyes dilated and brightened; the spirit which sometimes showed itself in her writings looked forth. Mr Herbert saw her eyes. If Mary had only been meek and sweet, he would have liked and respected her, nothing more. Now in a moment he knew she was the dearest object of his heart.
He suddenly broke the thread of the conversation and did not answer her question. She thought he must be getting tired of her. People sometimes think this at the moment they are being fallen in love with.
I really can't speak highly enough of this novel, and I don't feel I've really done it justice here. I can only say -- read it, for goodness sake. You will never regret it, or indeed forget it.
