Greenery Street: A Road with a Life of Its Own

The street consists of thirty-six narrow little houses – all, at a first glance, exactly the same: and a mental picture of it generally includes a large pantechnicon van, backed against the pavement and collecting or discharging household goods. For though every young married couple that comes to Greenery Street does so with the intention of staying there for life, there are few streets where in actual fact the population is more constantly changing. And the first sign of this change is in almost every case the same. It is seen in the arrival of a brand-new perambulator. 

This is Greenery Street, off Paradise Square, in the heart of London. And Greenery Street has a starring role in Denis Mackail’s novel of the same name. For Greenery Street has a life of its own. It lures young couples into its confines, wooing them with its sheer perfection, charming and beguiling them with a vision of domestic bliss. But the dream is shattered by the arrival of children: at this point houses seem to shrink, corridors are narrower, rooms smaller, and there is never enough space… so the happy couple reluctantly move on to a larger, better house, and another set of newly-weds take their place in Greenery Street. 

Walpole Street: The road which inspired Greenery Street
(courtesy of rightmoves.com.uk).

Apparently, the road was based on Walpole Street, where Mackail lived with his wife Diana when they were first married, and where he was blissfully happy – it was a time he never forgot, and he incorporated elements from it into this novel, which was written in 1925, and is very much of its period. He was the younger brother of Angela Thirkell and, like her, wrote about what he knew. I haven’t read his other novels, but this one seems to be written from the heart, following the first year in the marriage of Ian and Felicity Foster.

The couple are like children let loose in a sweet shop, and their joy at being together in their own home is infectious, as is their delight with each new thing (decorations, possessions, a pet dog). But it’s not quite as sweet and light as the early chapters led me to think. Ian and Felicity struggle to keep their heads above water financially: they start married life owing a huge sum to the builder/decorator for work carried out on the house, and the situation is not improved by Felicity’s inability to understand her accounts book. Given how impecunious they are, it seems extraordinary that they should live in some style, in a five-storey house (including the basement) with two servants (a cook and a housemaid, who seem to live and work in the basement).

They are scared of the servants, who are rude and inefficient, and their neighbours take advantage of them, borrowing things which are never returned. In some ways they remind me of David Copperfield and Dora, and are just as ill-equipped to cope with the demands of adult life. 

But gradually they grow up and take control, and they are able to seize the initiative and avert scandal when Felicity’s sister plans to leave her husband for another man. Hard on the heels of that comes another crisis, as they return to their beloved home, to discover the servants have run away, and there has been a break-in, though one of the policemen at the scene is more than a little dismissive about the incident. “You wouldn’t hardly call it a burglary, not in a house like this,” he tells Ian. The couple are surprisingly resilient about the disaster, a sign perhaps of their growing maturity, and we leave them preparing for the birth of their first child.

I enjoyed Greenery Street. It’s warm and humorous without ever being cruel, a kind of jubilant, joyful  hymn of praise to married life, which nevertheless manages to poke gentle fun at the institution of marriage, home improvements, parenthood, servants, tradesmen, families, and middle class society in general. And I rather like Ian and Felicity, who are a bit dim really, and sometimes irritating, but are quite prepared to admit their faults and beg forgiveness. Once married they find they have to get to know each other – which is often what happens in real life. And, just like real life again, they quarrel about small things of little consequence, then kiss and make-up, so I found myself hoping that their love endures, and that their relationship will grow and develop in the years ahead.

In fact, when it comes to relationships I thought it was fascinating to see how the Fosters’ marriage differs to that of other couples in the novel, such as their neighbours the Lamberts, Felicity’s parents, and her sister Daphne who is married to kindly, generous Bruce, a shy but fabulously wealthy businessman. I would like to have seen more of Daphne, with her odd looks and odder behaviour. She may only have played a small part in the novel, but I thought she was most complex and interesting character, who deserved a book to herself – I ended up writing stories about her inside my head! On the face of it she has everything she could want, but she and her husband don’t seem to be a couple at all, and she can be unexpectedly cynical, as well as revealing moments of deep sadness and unhappiness.

The endpapers and bookmark are from a 1925 block printed
 cretonne by George H Willis for the Silver Studio.

A Tedious and Irritating Read!

I must say I found Stella Gibbons’ The Matchmaker somewhat tedious: I struggled to finish it, and I wouldn’t read it again although, like the curate’s egg, it was good in parts. I knew her other writing didn’t follow the satirical style of ‘Cold Comfort Farm’, but this lacks the sparkle and wit of that first novel, as well as its charm and humour. ‘The Matchmaker’ was published in 1950, almost 20 years later than the earlier work, and in that period Gibbons seems to have lost her youthful disregard for literary and societal conventions.

Stella Gibbons, pictured in the late 1980s.

For me, one of the downsides is that you see life through the viewpoint of too many different people, and each time the narrative focuses on one person, the others step back into the shadow, so somehow there seems to be no central character to hold things together, and you are never with one person long enough to get to know them and find out what makes them tick, and no-one is really fleshed out, so it’s difficult to believe in them, and many of the characters are little more than stagey stereotypes.

To start with we meet Major Ronald Lucie-Browne (who is still on active service in Germany), his wife Alda and their three young daughters who have just moved to a cramped, isolated cottage in Sussex, having led a nomadic existence since their own home was bombed. Among the host of other characters are their grumpy chicken-farming neighbour Phil Waite; lazy Italian prisoners of war, and brash Landgirl Sylvia, who wants to be an actress.

Actually, I thought the most interesting person was Alda’s old school friend Jean, who comes to stay following the death of her parents. Wealthy, elegant and lonely, Jean is desperate to find a husband but, despite Alda’s efforts to help, she has been unsuccessful. However, her reactions to Alda’s interference (for that, after all, is what it is, however well intentioned) are not quite what you expect. And just as you start to think Jean has hidden depths and should have been developed to take a more central role, she is whisked away, and you’re almost at the end. But you do find out what happens to her, in a letter which is almost an afterthought, as if Gibbons suddenly realised she needed to tie up loose ends.

I guess the book is very much of its time, but the attitudes about women, foreigners and the working class felt much more redolent of an earlier period – the 1930s perhaps. But I suppose in 1950 the new, post-war world which embraced modernism and new ideas hadn’t really got under way. A lot of the most offensive comments are made by Gibbons as author, not by the characters, and I found her constant asides were an intrusion which, especially when combined with the shifts of emphasis, and the lack of a strong plot line, means there’s a lack of focus, with no clear sense of direction or overall theme.

There’s an obsession with marriage and catching a suitable man which rivals anything you find in Jane Austen, but is nowhere near as humorous, or as well written, and women are mainly portrayed as empty-headed with few, if any, interests outside the home and family. Alda, for example, is very dismissive of Sylvia the Landgirl, claiming she is vulgar and ignorant. But Alda herself is not that bright, and her reading (not that she ever seems to look at a book) has been shaped by 12 years of marriage to a ‘clever’ man. For some reason that throw-away line about Alda annoyed me more than anything else. Why doesn’t she make her own choices about books, and form her own opinions? I can’t equate her attitude to that of my mother and her friends, who would have been young married women in the period this novel portrays, and they were much more independent and intelligent. And, let me tell you, had my father ever tried to influence her reading matter then my mother, usually the most peaceable of women, would probably have thrown the entire bookcase at him!

I could go on at great length about the things in this novel that irritated me beyond measure (especially Alda). But I’ve gone on quite long enough, and before wrapping this up I should mention some of the good things – and there were quite a lot of them. For example, Gibbons is good at describing the small, everyday things of life that are so important to people, and she’s brilliant at providing telling details giving clues about status and social distinctions. But it wasn’t enough to make me want to keep the book.

A Little Less Conversation Please!

Edward Hopper's Room in New York... And there is a link to
this week's Short Story Sunday, I promise... Just read on...

It’s Sunday again (it does seem to come round very quickly), and that means it’s time for another short story, so out of my wonderful Persephone anthology comes Here We Are, by Dorothy Parker,  which I didn’t really like.  I’d never read any of her fiction before, and I’d expected something sharper, wittier, more satiric.

Written in 1931, set in America, it features a young couple travelling by train to their honeymoon hotel. They’ve been married exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes, though to her it already seems longer, and here they are, alone together, not knowing what to say to each other.  They are obviously nervous, and slightly embarrassed, but their conversation is so strained I really do wonder if they have anything in common at all. It would seem not, for at one point Parker writes:

“I don’t know,” she said. “We used to squabble a lot when we going to together and then engaged and everything but I thought everything would be so different when you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.”

Despite their protestations that they ‘won’t fight or be nasty or anything’ they are very quarrelsome couple– especially her. They bicker about her new hat, her old admirer, bridesmaid Louise and how they should spend their wedding night... she has letters she ‘simply must’ write, while he suggests going to see a show. And even if he apologises and tries to placate her, she turns things around so he’s still in the wrong, and she seems to take everything he says the wrong way, and to twist it, reading more into it, and making it mean something he never intended.

Somehow I feel their future as husband and wife is going to be terribly bleak and empty, and that she will become even more petty-minded, spiteful and downright vindictive, punishing him because nothing will ever turn out as she hoped. And he, easy-going, will be just as dissatisfied but will do anything to please her, for the sake of a quiet life, and will never understand what it is that he has done wrong.

I would have to say I loved the opening of this tale as the nervous young man in his new blue suit spends too long arranging their ‘glistening luggage’ in the Pullman carriage – obviously putting off the moment when he and his bride must communicate in some way. In fact, not only do they never seem to connect mentally or emotionally, but there is no contact between them, for they sit opposite each other and the girl, who looks ‘as new as a peeled egg’ finds it hard to meet his eyes, and prefers to gaze out of the window. These two never touch. They are strangers, and it’s like one of those Edward Hopper paintings, where people always seem so lonely, even if they are together. I think Room in New York, painted in New York in 1932  kind of captures the feeling of separateness of this couple, who are headed for a hotel in the city.

Parker manages to create the image and atmosphere in very few words, and to place these two in their social class through the description of their cheap shiny luggage, and their cheap shiny clothes. And they’ve got a new life to match their new possessions but, sadly, it will be no better than the old. I thought this first page was so well written, and I had high hopes of what was to come, but as far as I was concerned it was all downhill after that, because it was all dialogues. Eleven-and-a-half pages of dialogue. 

You can tell I’m not keen on lots of dialogue, except in plays, of course. Personally, I blame Walter Scott, because I’ve had an aversion to conversation-dominated fiction since studying Guy Mannering at school, with all that incomprehensible, archaic Scottish dialect. It put me off Scott for life as well. Am I the only one who feels that too much dialogue in a novel or short story is a bad thing? And has anyone else been that influenced by something they read and hated when they were young? 

Dorothy Parker

Let's Hear it for Older Women (The Winds of Heaven)

I’m still with Persephone, but today’s thoughts are about a novel rather than a short story. I’ve been reading The Winds of Heaven, by Monica Dickens, which meets my current craving for happy endings. But don’t get the idea this is fluffy, because it’s not. Dickens highlights the difficulties faced by an older woman, her role within the family, the way she is perceived by others – and the way she sees them.

Recently widowed Louise Bickford has been left homeless and almost penniless following the death of her domineering husband. With no skills, and no means of earning a living, she must now divide her summers between her three daughters, staying with each in turn, while in winter she has a cut-price room in a hotel run by an old schoolfriend. Then the friend suffers a heart attack, Louise is forced to leave, and it seems no-one wants her...

I think they all see her as a bit of an encumbrance – they certainly make her feel that way – and they have a tendency to ignore her, which is easily done because she is so self-effacing. She has absolutely no confidence, and no self-esteem. She has few friends, hates social occasions and meeting people, and rarely expresses an opinion on anything. She’s been squashed by life or, more likely, by her husband and is so anxious not to do or say the wrong the thing and not to cause any bother to anyone that she seems almost to have erased herself. She is one of the most unnoticeable people you are ever likely to meet in literature or in real life.

Monica Dickens

Louise sounds an unlikely heroine, but it’s her very ordinariness that makes her so appealing, and she doesn’t deserve to be overlooked, and should never be under-estimated.  As the story progressed and I got to know her thoughts and feelings, her likes and dislikes, her fears, the things that make happy, I warmed to her because she’s kind and caring, and has her own views, but few people take the trouble to listen to her. Those who do value her tend to be other outsiders, like her eldest grandchild Ellen, or Gordon Disher, the fat, quietly spoken, unassuming bed salesman who leads a double life as author Lester Drage, penning thrillers which are full of shocking crime, sex and violence – which are, surprisingly, exactly the kind of novels that Louise enjoys reading.

I liked the way a tentative friendship grows between Gordon and Louise, and I liked the portrayal of her relationship with her daughters, who are not really cruel or heartless, just thoughtless, and unable to see their mother as a person in her own right, or to understand how she has reached this point in her life, or how she feels about it.

Endpaper from a 1950s furnishing fabric in
a private collection.

For they are young, and have their own problems. On the face of it they seem very different from each other, but beneath the surface all three are dissatisfied with their lives. There is Miriam, tall and slim, well dressed and well organised, with her three children, and her nice house, but she’s as brittle as her marriage. Then there’s Anne, who doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, and especially not her house and her kindly, market gardener husband. And finally there’s Eva, a bright, bubbly actress who is in love with a married man. I found their contrasting relationships with their menfolk interesting, especially in the light of Louise’s unhappy marriage, and deepening friendship with Gordon. ‘The Winds of Heaven’ could be seen not just as a novel about the way women age and how they cope with changing roles and circumstances, but also as a novel about marriage, and the dynamics between the various couples. In that sense Dickens reminded me a bit of Jane Austen, and there’s the same attention to the small, everyday details of life, and ironic comments about social pretensions and aspirations. I’ve read reviews which compare Dickens’ work to that of her great-grandfather, but personally I think she’s closer to Austen. And, like Anne Elliott, Louise is offered a second chance at life and happiness – but only after she’s dealt with a near tragedy. 

PS: I'm adding a postcript, with Links of the Day, because older women seem to be on my mind at the moment, what with my mother's move and my recent birthday. I really enjoyed a Saturday Sally from Nan, over at Letters from a Hill Farm, which is a brief but lovely celebration of three amazing women who have tremendous zest and enthusiasm for life - writer and activist Maya Angelou, novelist Edna O'Brien, and an amazing lady who was still driving her car at the age of 101.

And today  Dove Grey Reader (aka Lynne Hatwell) has written a thought provoking piece where she takes a more serious look at the issues surrounding aging and the way we care for our elderly and deal with dementia. She touches on grief and loss, and the nature of memory,  as she explores Melvyn Bragg's 'Grace and Mary', considers the BBC TV series 'The Village', and thinks about her own experiences working with  elderly patients during her nursing career.