Farewell Victoria

My vintage Penguin was
published in 1945, and has
a dancing Penguin logo,
used for a short period.

Farewell Victoria, by TH White is a paean to bygone era and must, I think, have been something of a curiosity, even when it was first published in 1933. It's interesting for its record of rural customs in Victorian times, and the feudal existence of people living in a great house, but I felt it was less successful as a novel. Mundy - groom, soldier, coachman, hackney carriage driver – is dying at the age of 83, and looks back on his long life, the momentous events he has seen, and the people he has known.

Somehow there is a lack of empathy for the characters, and they never really come to life, but perhaps that is White's intention, since people and events are viewed from a distance, by a dying man, and what emerges is a series of moments in time: dusty, faded snapshots of the past retrieved from his memory. Here he is at the start of the story, the eight-year-old son of a groom, already good with horses, running errands in the stables, watching the children of the house, trying out horses for them, and caring for their animals.

Time passes and we see him fall in love, only to lose his wife and surviving child to his gamekeeper friend. By the 1870s he is a soldier in the Zulu Wars, and by 1901 when Queen Victoria dies, he marries his second wife, Alice, a cook. As the rest of the world moves into the age of the motor car, Mundy works as a coachman for an eccentric Russian countess, and following her death some 20 years later he sets himself up in business as a hackney carriage driver, with a horse-drawn vehicle.

Mundy himself is known throughout by his surname (although at one stage his brother refers to him as Johnnie), which seemed to distance him even further, annoyed me, though I suppose it shouldn't, since servants were never called by their Christian names, and there are plenty of books with characters who are known by their surname. And I hated the way White compares Mundy and the other lower-class characters to animals. Mundy is like a monkey, his first wife Ellen has kittenish qualities, and Foxwell, the charismatic gamekeeper, is an otter. From what little I could find out about White I think he regarded animals and working men as noble creatures and may have viewed as complimentary, but personally I found it patronising and demeaning – it dehumanises people.

Towards the end of his life, while he is still working, Mundy is described as:

An old man came slowly from behind one of the horses in a stall, wiping his hands upon the sack he wore for an apron. The hair was of that singular whiteness which is seldom achieved except in wigs; the face, wrinkled and fallen in till it was practically a skull, was the skull of an old monkey. It was a gentle face, of happiness and sympathy, that of a domestic animal, such as is called a friend to man.

I think that's horrible when he's talking about a fellow human-being. Overall, White seems to have had an idealised image of the Victorian period (and the past in general) as well as the 'Working Man' who was proud, independent, loyal to his betters, and determined not to accept state hand-outs. He acknowledges the social problems that existed in the 1930s, and says: “The end of the Victorian era had banished man from the world.” But he's no social reformer, and you get the impression he'd welcome a return to the old paternalistic system.

His account of the carnage of the Zulu Wars is very much of its time, with no effort to explain the issues involved, and to see the Zulus as anything other than a savage people in a primitive land, and all I can say is that hopefully we have moved on.

Novelist TH White

Where White comes into his own is when he writes about nature and rural life. A rabbit in the early morning mist; the gamekeeper doing up his gaiters as prepares for the day ahead, and the grooms soaping saddles and leathers and washing the horses, are all lovingly described. He does, however, have a tendency to indulge in some over-blown, fanciful writing – a 'toilsome angler' sticks in my mind, as does a dragonfly flying 'with the action of those aeroplanes which were still within the womb of time'.

I didn't hate 'Farewell Victoria', and I'm not sorry I read it, but it is very different to 'The Once and Future King, or 'Mistress Masham's Repose' (although his keen interest in nature is apparent in both). It lacks the quirky charm and humour of both those books, and somehow seems to hark back to an earlier age, not just in the subject matter, but in the way its written, and the opinions expressed. From reading this I had the feeling that if I had met Terence Hanbury White I would not have liked him, and that feeling was compounded by an interview with Robert Robinson, which is available at the BBC archive http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12242.shtml 

The Summer Reading Pile

Well, Midsummer’s Day has been and gone, though the weather has been so dreadful if feels as if summer has never even arrived. June is over, and July is here. And even if the weather doesn’t improve, I can curl up on the sofa and tackle the TBR pile, which should last me well into the Autumn, and I am determined that there shall be No More Books until the pile has been whittled down. Yes, I know I’ve said that before, but there is nothing wrong with saying it again...

Actually, it’s not an untidy stack of books any longer, or won’t be when I’ve finished reorganising.  Nor will TBRs be wedged into gaps on the book shelves, or stuffed on the top of other books. No, in future they will have a home of their own. Elder Daughter having moved in with her boyfriend, The Man Of The House and I are turning her room into a kind of study for my needlework/embroidery, his music (there are 11 stringed instruments and a melodeon in our dining room) – and books! And there are three small shelves where she once stored cosmetic lotions and potions, which are just perfect to for all those books waiting to be read.

So here’s what I plan to read over the next few weeks. First up is Tove Jansson, best known for her books about the Moomins, which I seem to have missed. But she also wrote for adults, and I came across The Winter Book while I was pricing books in the Oxfam Shop, so I bought it, read it, thoroughly enjoyed it, and started writing a review – then came across The Summer Book, which I haven’t read yet, but I will post a joint review when I have!

I am finally going to read EM Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady, and I also have The War-Worker on Kindle, and a copy of Provincial Daughter, by her daughter RM Dashwood, which I have been saving until I’ve read Delafield.

Ada Leverson’s Love’s Shadow was in the library, and I couldn’t resist it, as it’s one of those ‘forgotten’ classics published by The Bloomsbury Group, with a lovely cover, and an Ex Libris page. A friend of Oscar Wilde, who called her Sphinx, she was the first person to greet him when he was released from jail, when he told her: “How marvelous of you to know exactly the right hat to wear at seven o’clock in the morning to meet a friend who has been away.” After reading that in ‘A Note On The Author’, I feel I must read this and fin out more about Leverson.

I also borrowed Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf, and I’ve got To The Lighthouse, which has been languishing on shelf for many years, since I read Woolf as a teenager, but didn’t like her, and failed to get understand her writing. Recently I’ve read some of her essays, and excerpts from her letters and diaries, and thought they were wonderful – but was still wary of the novels. Then Rachel at http://bookssnob.wordpress.com/ published a post on ‘Between the Acts’, which she found very rewarding. Since her experience of Woolf mirrored mine, and since she recommended jumping straight in, I thought maybe this is the right time to try again.

Then I’ve got a couple of old Penguins I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time. There’s Farewell Victoria, by TH White, who is famous for ‘The Once and Future King’, his take on the Arthurian legends, which I adore. I have no idea what this will be like, but it was published in 1945 and has a wonderful picture of a dancing Penguin on the front, which I feel was an excellent reason to buy it. I wish the company had kept that logo – it’s such fun, and makes me smile every time I see it. Kate  O’Brien’s Without My Cloak, is a family saga, published in 1949, and it has a dust jacket – another good reason for buying a book!

It’s always good to read something new, and I notice Claire from http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com/ and Nan, from http://lettersfromahillfarm.blogspot.co.uk/ are both taking part in a Canadian Reading Challenge, which made realise that the only Canadian authors I have ever read are Margaret Atwood, LM Montgomery, and Guy Gavriel Kay (and I only know he’s Canadian because Claire mentions him in her post). I’m not taking part in the challenge, but if anyone can recommend a good read by a Canadian writer, please let me know!

Paris in July is another interesting challenge, hosted by Karen from BookBath and Tamara from Thyme For Tea. With this one you can read a book, watch a film, listen music, eat and drink – anything you want as long as there’s a French connection. So, since it’s July, and since I love Paris, I might just join in.

Finally Florence at http://missdarcyslibrary.wordpress.com/ is hosting a Rosamond Lehmann Reading Week from July 23 to 29 and, as I am very fond of this author, I have a couple of her books ready and waiting.

Of course, I may not stick to this list at all, because I still have some books I have read but not written about, and may get sidetracked by other TBRs (there seem to be a lot of them), or by old favourites that I absolutely have to read again. Then there’s the library to be browsed, and whilst I am determined not to buy new books, I haven’t actually said I won’t.