Here Be Dragons - Stella Gibbons

An apt title for a sometimes provoking book. Tanya Izzard wrote an interesting post about 'Christmas At Cold Comfort Farm' and a story in it she found particularly problematic 'Cake' - I somehow missed it out on my first read but can now see why she had an issue with it. I don't find it as troubling as Tanya did though it's undoubtedly the weak link in the collection. However I do agree that when reading Gibbons there is often something that jars in her work. 

'Here Be Dragons' spends most of it's time being absolutely brilliant but there are moments when it totally falls down. At it's best this is the story of Nell, daughter of an ex vicar - he's undergone a crisis of faith and illness which has left him unable to provide for his family, because of this Nell and her parents have moved to London where a successful aunt has lent them a house in Hampstead. The top floor of the house is occupied by an ex husband, his new wife, and Nell's cousin John. 

John is destined for National Service but meanwhile is wondering round bohemian London's clubs, espresso bars, and darker corners in search of material for his novel. Nell falls for the charms of her cousin and allows him to lead her into this world - sometimes she enjoys it but mostly she sees through the artifice of rich kids playing at poverty. Nell has different ideas of how her life should be, she's experiencing real poverty and has no taste for it. A first job in an office bores her whilst offering no real prospects and then she discovers waitressing. It offers her better money and allows her to plan for a future where she'll have her own cafe.

I like this - it was refreshing to read about a girl who wasn't going to be a writer or similar, Nell will clearly succeed (I like to think far beyond the imagination of 1956 when this was written). Her mix of inexperience, determination, and character are all convincing - the attraction to her comparatively exotic cousin makes sense as doe her flirtation with his friends and lifestyle, but so does her own inherent conservatism.

Cousin John is less convincing, Gibbons doesn't resist throwing out dark hints about his probable future, she also gifts him with genius and a sort of omnipotent ability to meddle in others affairs - neither of which always hit the right note. On the other hand she hits off exactly how smugly irritating 19 year old boys can be (a few days with my brother were testimony to her skills of observation*). 

Nell's parents are another strong point. Her father's loss of faith is described in moving, and again convincing terms. How that story resolves itself feels just as truthful. It occurs to me that this is a difficult thing to get right, but Gibbons definitely pulls it off. Her love of London and of Hampstead also come through, the portrait she draws of them is nostalgic now, and surprisingly beautiful from a woman I associate with a love of the countryside.

The real  bit of grit in the oyster for me though is when she talks about the increasing number of coloured faces in her cityscape. Descriptions come across as slightly uncomfortable and poorly integrated both onto the plot and the portrait she draws of the city. It's something that shouldn't have been noticeable and because it is, it irritates me. 

All of those niggles aside I loved this book whilst I was reading it and still do. Gibbons is a good writer with a lot to offer - she certainly deserves to be back in print and I really hope that this particular title graduates from print on demand to easily available. It's quite possible that Nell will become one of my all time favourite fictional heroines - never would I have thought 300 pages about a girl who wanted a tea shop could have been so compelling. 

*I love my brother and understand there's no point in trying to argue with him even when he comes out with real crap. I look forward to spending time with him in the future when life has destroyed many of his adolescent hopes and dreams. Alternatively he can buy me drinks so I can drown my sorrows whilst sincerely congratulating him on his luck.  

Christmas At Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Bought from the newly improved Waterstone's who are (joy of joys) experimenting with single book price cuts rather than multi-buys. I read 'Cold Comfort Farm' ago but don't think I really got it. I keep meaning to try again because it's so generally loved and I don't like feeling that I'm missing out but I also want to read some of the books it parodies in the hope that it'll give me more insight - but I'm not sure I can face the doom and gloom yet.

Because of all the above the Cold Comfort sequels have never appealed to me as much as other Stella Gibbons have, but it's that time of year and Christmas in the title swung it. Imagine my joy to discover that this is a collection of short stories and only the title one is set on the farm. They all started life in magazines like 'The Lady' and 'Good Housekeeping' which is a sure sign of quality. Perhaps in homage to the general ambience of Cold Comfort Farm a lot of them deal with unhappy marriages and unfulfilled women but I find that cheering at a time of year when so much of the imagery around me seems designed to point out that I don't have a perfect life (and after all how many people do) .

It turns out that Gibbons writes a cracking good short story - small but perfectly formed. Gibbons is very much of her time and quite happy to take easy shots (at bohemians versus sensible married people and the like) but she has the humour to carry it off. My favourite is 'Golden Vanity' where a slim legged grey eyed English beauty spends her time daydreaming over romantic novels, passing up the chance for real romance whilst she does so. The pay off it that her dark handsome hero author turns out to be a woman... I like to think that she had Georgette Heyer in mind.

I'm inclined to think that this is Stella Gibbons at her best (you can keep 'Cold Comfort Farm' - even if it's sacrilege to say it) or at least it's a concentrated dose of all that she does best and a nice showcase of her talents. There's a lot more I could try and say about this book but Nicholas Lezard (who is after all a professional) has already done it better in the weekend Guardian so instead of me paraphrasing him do have a look.

This is what bookshops are for.

I have in the past complained about my local Waterstone’s – the staff are pretty good (excellent even) but the overall selection has been up and down. It doesn’t help that it used to be an admirable branch of Dillon’s with three floors of books and elegant sweeping staircases. The staircases and floors remain but are now befouled with paperchase, a costa coffee, and until recently a travel agent. The later has gone and the books are creeping back but even so the selling space is only half what it once was and it’s been hard in the last year to find anything tempting in there.

It got so bad at one time that I thought the branch was probably slated for closure and blew all my loyalty points on a book I didn’t especially want (‘The Morville Hours’ which is probably as good as everyone says it is but has somehow so far resisted being read by me) because I was afraid it was a case of use them or lose them. However things are looking up – something that I sincerely hope is a result of new ownership and here to stay. I really truly believe there is a place for big high street bookshops but I also believe that they need to play to their strengths and not get hung up with trying to compete with internet suppliers and supermarkets.

Deep discounting has its place; heaven knows price is more of a consideration than ever for most of us at the moment and who doesn’t like a market but there are other considerations too. I’ve bought a few books recently, some online and some in person, both transactions have reminded me why I love real life shops. Amazon were responsible for delivering my sisters birthday present, happily I ordered in plenty of time because it arrived a week later than there estimated delivery time – which is just about as long as I was prepared to wait before trying to get hold of them to complain.

Books I’ve ordered for myself are on the way but because one of them is bulky (but cheap) they’re coming via courier. I hate this, I will be at work when they try and deliver. I, like everyone else, always am. It will be a good ten days to two weeks before I can be at home on a week day to get my parcel (which makes me lucky because at least I sometimes get week days off), I will be given the option to pay extra to get my goods on a Saturday (which defeats the point of buying cheap in the first place) or I can dig out my passport and try and find a driving friend with a sat nav to take me to whatever labyrinthine industrial estate buried deep in the midlands they choose to incarcerate my books in.

How much nicer was it to walk into a shop and find the very Vintage print on demand Stella Gibbons that have been sitting on my wish list unavailable for the last two months there on the shelf. It hasn’t cost me more to buy like this which is nice (at £9.99 each this was always going to be a mild extravagance) but having held the books I couldn’t let them go (presentation is particularly good for p.o.d). But it got better, the girl behind the till was clearly a Gibbons fan – she may have been responsible for these being on the shelf in the first place – she told me about ‘Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm’ coming soon (which I knew already but shows excellent sales technique as well as being generally helpful).

I’ve debated for weeks about buying these books and probably would have for months more, I’m pleased to have done my bit to persuade Vintage to bring out regular (cheaper and prettier please) editions of their full Gibbons range, and to have spent my money locally. It was altogether everything a shopping experience should be - a timely reminder that service, knowledge, and instant gratification are worth paying a bit extra for especially if all that comes with a well chosen, suitably eclectic choice of stock. 

Westwood – Stella Gibbons

‘Westwood’ turned out to be a bit of a reading journey for me - it looks quite innocent but at 448 pages there’s a lot in there to think about. First published in 1946 but set during the latter years of the war this is, apparently, the book that Stella Gibbons was proudest of. Lynne Truss has championed it for some years first as a classic serial for radio 4 and now through the introduction of this Vintage reprint and in at least one recent newspaper feature – in short it came with some expectations attached.

The first page was promising, Gibbons trademark descriptions of nature, in this case reclaiming bombed out London streets, are deeply evocative and for me at least irresistible but after that I stalled a bit. There were a couple of references to ‘the second world war’ which with some other bits and pieces of phrasing felt clumsy, almost stilted, and stopped me really falling into the plot as much as I wanted to. However when all the scene setting and introducing of characters was done with the distracting feeling of too much explanation disappeared and by the end of the book I could see why Gibbons was so proud of it – which is rather what happens with the heroines character so perhaps it was all deliberate...

I suspect that the other problem I had with the first half of the book was Hilda, again I had high expectations of Hilda the down to earth beauty who sees through all the pretentious nonsense that her friend Margaret falls for but she doesn’t seem quite real. Bought up on a diet of Mary Wesley with suspicions confirmed by Marghanita Laski’s ‘To Bed With Grand Music’ Gibbons often repeated descriptions of Hilda as a chaste forces sweetheart are oddly unconvincing, I can appreciate that in 1946 this was the kind of girl we would have wanted to imagine but the frequent affirmation that she never goes too far with her string of service boys makes me feel that the lady doth protest too much. That she only spends time with the rather horrible Gerard Challis because she feels sorry for this decidedly middle aged playwright is however entirely believable.

Margaret Steggles – the heroine of the piece- is an entirely different thing though. She is a masterpiece and definitely earns Gibbons the right to be compared with Austen. When the book opens Margaret is 23, a teacher, unhappy with her life and in London with her old friend Hilda looking for a house for her parents to live in. The Steggles home is not a happy one due to Mr Steggles wandering eye and Mrs Steggles bad temper. Margaret herself is a passionate, impressionable, and very awkward young woman. She longs for Art and Beauty and possibly a little romance but unfortunately is a little to plain and a bit too high brow to be attractive to men.

The chance finding of a ration book brings her into contact with the Niland’s and Challis’s – intellectuals in the form of painters, playwrights and glamorous women. Margaret is smitten despite these people being pretty awful – Hilda wouldn’t be fooled for a moment – and taking every opportunity to dump their children on her and generally impose on her infatuation. As a way to get closer to the Challis’s Margaret strikes up a friendship with Zita, a Jewish refugee who lives with them at Westwood. Zita is rather a figure of fun throughout the book, but in the end it’s she who really transforms Margaret.

For example it’s Zita who takes Margaret to concerts properly introducing her to music, Zita who goes to the theatre with her, who helps her become more chic, and who shows that a physically plain woman can yet be attractive to men. I don’t think I’ll spoil much by saying that as the book ends Margaret is happier, more confident and far surer of herself and her personality, all of which makes her more attractive and a much nicer person for the reader to be with.

What really sets this book apart though is the very end where Gibbons describes her gentle powers – Beauty and Time and the Past and Pity and Laughter. These are the things that will help Margaret come what may; if she can’t find earthly love she will at least find comfort in work, duty, friendship and the arts. I find it remarkable because it’s rare to be told that a woman can be happy and fulfilled without some form of physical love. (I think Margaret will have her romance, she’s been kissed by the last chapter and not just once or by one man – I feel sure there will be more). There’s no pretence that an unmarried life would be an easy or desirable one for her, but a reminder that there will always be consolations for disappointment if you’re prepared to make the best of what you have. It’s good to have a happy ending where the girl doesn’t need to get the boy.

Starlight – Stella Gibbons

One of the very early posts on this blog (almost exactly two years ago) was about Stella Gibbons 'Nightingale Wood' which had just been reissued by Virago. I loved it and was desperate to read more of her work (it’s what puts the ‘Desperate’ in desperate reader) at the time it was no easy matter, a re-read of ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ wasn’t really what I was after and the other alternatives I found – an old copy of ‘The Woods In Winter’ lurking in the stacks of the library and an affordable second hand copy of ‘White Sand and Grey Sand’ didn’t really hit the spot. At the time I felt they were dated and couldn’t find the magic.

In the last few weeks the first Vintage reprints have appeared with a whole lot more titles in the background (I’m not sure if some of them are print on demand or something else – I will be finding out) and my impressions of Gibbons are changing again. When I read ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ donkey’s years ago I quite liked it but nothing deeper than that, it’s probably long past time to read it again, meanwhile ‘Nightingale Wood’ was just such a charming fairy tale and was so exactly what I wanted to read at the time that anything else would always have been second best.

I have three new Gibbons to play with ‘Starlight’, ‘Westwood’, and ‘Conference at Cold Comfort Farm’. I started with ‘Starlight’ – medium length, intriguing premise, and an irresistible cover. Two elderly and impoverished sisters are living in a rented room in deepest Highgate. It’s the sixties but there are still scars from the war all around. The worst thing about poverty is that there is no security – the house is sold to a rackman – a dreadful, sinister, figure who sets about making the place comfortable for his wife to move in.

Mrs Pearson is her husband’s one weak spot – his love has an obsessive quality, and she is clearly not well – something to do with nerves. The sisters are safe as long as they don’t upset Mrs Pearson but Mrs Pearson is increasingly erratic and the houses inhabitants begin to think she’s possessed by an evil spirit. That’s pretty much how the blurb on the back runs, but somehow I didn’t expect it to be so literal – there is an evil spirit.

I’m almost sorry that I didn’t save this book for a couple more weeks until autumn really starts, this felt like the perfect not quite ghost story for lengthening evenings, very atmospheric and suitably chilling. There’s been quite a lot more fuss about ‘Westwood’ but I think that ‘Starlight’ is a cracking little book. The characters feel true; Gibbons ear for dialogue is remarkable, she can pull the humour out of a situation without losing an overall sense of menace and through it all there’s her trademark love of nature and natural beauty. She’s never too busy to describe a sunset or the sensation of walking through a crisp and lovely winters evening and I love that because it’s an obsession that I share.

There’s much more going on than I’m prepared to share here – you have to read it for yourself. This isn’t the very best book I’ll ever read but it’s made me want more Gibbons and soon, when I’m finished with the three I have now I’ll be waiting patiently for the rest to become available. 

Nightingale Wood - Stella Gibbons

Cold Comfort Farm is one of those books everybody knows (everybody who likes a nice inter war classic with a good dollop of humour that is) I first read it maybe 15years ago, and back then wasn’t the sort to read introductions – I liked, still like, to come to a book without someone else’s opinion, and introductions struck my youthful self as inauthentic, I wanted the ‘Classic’ experience unadulterated. Anyway enough of that, for years I was under the impression that Gibbons had only written the one book. My first inkling that this may not be so came with a collection of Virago Ghost stories which included a Gibbons short. Honestly I found it disappointing. The discovery that Virago where reprinting Nightingale Wood lead to some very elementary research and I now Know there are over 20 novels as well as collections of poetry and short stories.

Nightingale Wood is a charming Cinderella story where even the ugly sisters get a happy ending. Filled with observation of both human nature, and the Essex countryside it makes the perfect easy reading. I can’t imagine a more appealing description of the glories of an English spring, and whilst the commentary on the foibles of her characters may be wickedly accurate, even laugh out loud funny, they are never cruel. There is the hint of something nasty in the woodshed, not everybody’s happy ending is conventionally happy, but all in all it’s a happy romp that bounces along and I was sorry to finish.

With all the glories of Nightingale Wood fresh in my mind and happy recollections of Cold Comfort Farm somewhere in the golden past I set out on a hunt for more Stella novels confident of success on every level. Not to be. Prices on Amazon where prohibitive, the combination of high prices and glowing revues was encouraging however so I felt sure I was well on my way to finding literary truffles. Next step the local library, where they could only offer me Cold Comfort. Persistence paid off and I acquired a copy of ‘White Sand And Grey Sand’ second hand, and ‘The Woods In Winter’ on loan. I totally failed with both. I haven’t been able to read enough Gibbons to say the quality of her work is uneven, it’s just not available, and this is a shame. Her output was prolific enough to guarantee a few duds, and I suspect that whilst her earlier output is old enough to have a period charm if nothing else, some of the later works are perhaps stuck in the limbo we describe as ‘dated’. That was certainly my feeling about ‘The Woods In Winter’.

It still seems such a shame that the majority of Gibbons output is so hard to come by, either as a humorist, or as an observer of the natural world I am convinced she still has a lot to offer. I hope that the good people at Virago find more of a suitable quality, and reprint as they are for Barbara Pym.