China Court

I think China Court is the last of Rumer Godden's major works that I still had left unread, and I've been hoarding a copy for about three years until I finally crumbled (what if I went under a bus and I still hadn't got around to reading it?)

There is so much to love about this 1960 novel. It further expands and develops on her earlier book, A Fugue in Time, which also examined the history of a house and its family through several generations simultaneously, but China Court is a country house and the prosperous Quin family balances a precarious position between classes. The stories of a handful of outstanding characters and marriages are stranded together in Godden's infinitely skilful way (though the family tree at the front of the book is very helpful). The present day narrative centres on young Tracy, who has returned to the family home just too late for the death of her beloved grandmother, who holds much of the novel together both as the matriarch Mrs Quin, and the village orphan and interloper Ripsie.

The love triangle between bastard orphan Ripsie and the two Quin brothers is devastating; the history of thwarted spinster Eliza in the previous generation is tragic. And I thought I was going to love the present-day fairy tale pairing between Tracy and Mrs Quin's protege, Peter (running the farm but nobly born, natch), until the last few pages, when Peter hits Tracy -- okay, he 'slaps' her and he warns her first, so arguably, she 'provokes' him, but this sudden assertion of old-fashioned masculine domination left a sour taste in my mouth. It's such a shame, because China Court is a really magical Godden novel in so many ways, if not for this shocking ending I think it would have become almost my favourite of her novels (though nothing will ever beat This House of Brede for me).
 

Thus Far and No Further

This was a treat for myself and to plug a gap in my Rumer Godden collection. It was first published in 1946v as Rungli-Rungliot, then reissued in this edition under the title Thus Far and No Further in 1961. This is another book adapted from a diary. Godden and her two young daughters (plus various staff and servants, some who travelled with them and some who were acquired on the spot) spent only a few months in this isolated house on a tea plantation in Kashmir, but though their stay was brief, it made an indelible impression.

The events of their time in Kashmir also formed the basis for Godden's later novel, Kingfishers Catch Fire, but there is no whisper of that drama in these pages (one of their servants apparently tried to poison the family with ground glass). Instead, the focus is on the utter physical beauty of the mountains, the quiet serenity of their lives there, Godden's gradual calming after a turbulent period in her life. It's a very meditative book, short passages, sometimes no more than a sentence or two, or a brief snatch of dialogue. Godden reflected that this time was valuable in truly getting to know her children, and 'Rafael' and 'Sabrina' emerge as vibrant characters.

Godden returned again and again to this precious, brief time in her writing; it was obviously both a golden period of joy and beauty, and a harrowing crisis. Though she doesn't talk about the bad side, that emotional intensity colours Thus Far and No Further.
 

The Lady and the Unicorn

The very observant reader of this blog might have noticed that I started Rumer Godden's second novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, months ago, and then set it aside for a long time. The reason is quite a daft one: I peeked at the last page and thought I saw something that indicated the death of a little dog. Immediately I shut the book and couldn't bring myself to pick it up again until just before Christmas. This was even before we found out that our own little dog won't be with us for much longer -- maybe it was a presentiment of doom, which would be quite fitting for this novel, which is haunted by ghosts and visions, premonitions and misguided guesses.

It's was Godden's third novel, Black Narcissus, that brought her real success, but The Lady and the Unicorn is a beautiful, sad little tale that contains much of the trademark Godden atmosphere and subject matter. An Anglo-Indian family, caught awkwardly between two communities, live in part of a decrepit mansion, occupied by other families and their landlord. They struggle for money and the white father gambles away anything he finds. Newly arrived from England, Stephen Bright is captivated by the shy younger daughter, Rosa, and by the romance of her dilapidated home, until pressure from his friends and family, and misunderstandings inexorably drive them apart.

The Lady and the Unicorn such a sad novel, but not in the way I first imagined. It's a perfectly constructed ghost story, a mystery, a love story, a keen observation of family and class, a little gem of a novel.
 

Listen to the Nightingale

In addition to being an extraordinary writer, Rumer Godden made her living for years as a ballet teacher and ran her own dancing school in India. So it's not surprising that several of her children's books are set in dancing schools and theatres. Published in 1992, Listen to the Nightingale is a late-written novel, and it has an old-fashioned feel. It's rather like reading a literary Noel Streatfeild story. 

Lottie is an orphan who lives with her aunt, who is wardrobe mistress for a small but superior ballet company, Holbein's. Her mother was a ballerina (natch) and she's been taught by Madame Holbein herself (natch), and (natch) she makes her way into the elite ballet school, Queen's Chase. There is drama involving a rescued (or stolen?) dog, a duplicitous best friend, and a naughty boy who bullies her but doesn't really mean it. It's a charming fairy tale that finishes with a neat happy ending, very comforting to read.

There are poignant moments, too, and it's not all roses in the garden. There are sympathetic but also mean characters, there is anguish and loss as well as triumph and love. It doesn't really feel like a story set in the 1990s, but it belongs in a kind of timeless 'ballet world' where it's perpetually the 1950s, ballet dancers are celebrities, teachers are strict but kind and children wear cloaks to school.
 

A Fugue in Time

Isn't it every reader's dream? You discover that your favourite author has written half a dozen books that you've never come across. You immediately order them, a mix of new and secondhand (despite your vow to buy no more books this year.) And now they're piled in a lovely heap, waiting to be read.

Reading Rumer Godden's autobiography, A House with Four Rooms, alerted me to the existence of these early novels, including 1945's A Fugue in Time (published in the US as Take Three Tenses). A Fugue in Time is in some ways an almost experimental novel, taking place in multiple timelines, often simultaneously. I was glad that Godden had shared the trick that makes it all work so smoothly -- paradoxically, she uses the present tense when describing events in the past, and the past tense when describing events in the present. It sounds so confusing but it works seamlessly on the page.

There are three principle timelines and they weave together, centred on the figure of Sir Roland Dane, who becomes Roly as a young boy, Rollo as a young man, and Rolls as an old man in the present. His glamorous, thwarted mother Griselda, jealous, tightly-wound sister Selina, adopted interloper Lark, and American ambulance driver and great-niece Grizel, dance around him in memories, echoes and ghostly conversations. It all sounds complicated and confusing, but Godden's writing, with its beautiful freshness and clarity, carries it off. 

Apparently China Court, written later, adopts a similar template, but this time with five generations instead of three. I can't wait to read it.
 

A House With Four Rooms

Another treasure from the Melbourne Athenaeum Library -- I didn't even know that this book existed. And isn't this first edition pretty! The title is explained at the very end of the book:

Like everyone else I am a house with four rooms. As a child the physical room was barred to me, I had to fight my way to get into it. The room of the mind has always been mine. In the emotional, I have been marvellously lucky; with the spiritual, it was a long time before I would do more than peer in; now it is where I like best to be alone.

All of us tend to inhabit one room more than another but I have tried to go most days into them all -- each has its riches.

My house is, of course, slightly worn now but I still hope to go on quietly living in all of it, finding treasures, old and new until the time comes when I shall have, finally, to shut its door.

Isn't that absolutely beautiful? What a wonderful way to imagine the balance of life. Rumer Godden lived a full and rich and long life (she died in 1998), somehow managing to write dozens of books in between growing up in India, a failed marriage that led to a spartan life in a hut in the Himalayas, raising two daughters, numerous house moves, illness and tragedy (one house burned down and they lost almost everything), speaking tours of the US, several of her novels being turned into films, and other adventures...

Some of the personages she mentions in A House With Four Rooms are not known to me, others I have heard of. I looked up Stanbrook Abbey, the inspiration for perhaps my favourite Godden novel, In This House of Brede, and saw that it's become a hotel -- due to declining numbers, the abbey's sisters relocated to Yorkshire. It sounds (according to Wikipedia) as if the move was painful; three sisters left the abbey and set up their own establishment. It would have made a perfect, agonising plot for another novel.

Coromandel Sea Change

I couldn't find a sharp image of my edition of Rumer Godden's 1991 novel, but perhaps that's appropriate because Coromandel Sea Change is quite soft-focus in itself.

This is an old-fashioned novel. Once again we are introduced to a young, naive but headstrong woman who is encountering India for the first time and finds her world expanding in unexpected ways. It took me a little while to realise that I have visited the beautiful seaside hotel, Patna Hall, before, in the clumsily-titled novella Cromartie v The God Shiva Acting Through the Government of India, published in 1997 and also featuring wise Auntie Sannie and her loyal lieutenants, Hannah and Samuel. Coromandel Sea Change is more dramatic, featuring a mismatched honeymoon couple, a charismatic young aspiring politician, a slimy journalist and a benevolent diplomatic couple. But it's the tranquil hotel on the beach, surrounded by flowers, that is the real star of this novel.

I don't believe that there is any such thing as a bad Rumer Godden novel, but this is a lesser offering. Still worth a weekend away, but maybe not a lingering stay.

A Candle For St Jude

Rumer Godden wrote many, many books in her long life (thank heavens!) and it's almost reassuring to find one which is not quite a masterpiece. Which is not to say that A Candle For St Jude isn't a good book, or beautifully written -- it is both -- but just not quite at the level of Godden's very best work.

My edition of A Candle for St Jude says it came out in 1973, but apparently it was first published in 1948! Truthfully, it doesn't really matter, because the novel takes place in an enclosed world, over a mere 24 hours, in a London ballet school during the night and day before Madame Holbein's important anniversary concert, a celebration of her life's work. The first half of the book is rather melancholy and despairing, as it seems the concert is going to fail -- there is jealousy and regret, fear and anger. But in the second half, Madame has a last minute inspiration, and her crackling energy and determination come to life, infecting everyone around her. Now we get to see the love and passion and whirlwind fire that have made her so successful, and the book ends on a note of triumph after all. As always with Rumer Godden, her characters are drawn with delicate precision and depth.

READING NOTE: I have so many books hiding in my wardrobe that I've devised a random system to get through them all -- first I pulled out half a dozen with blue-ish covers, then a handful with reddish ones (scroll down and check if you don't believe me!) Now I've embarked on my yellow phase... I know colour-coding books is so last year, but I'm finding it surprisingly satisfying.

Pippa Passes

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will know how much I adore and admire Rumer Godden's writing. So you can imagine my delight when I discover a novel of hers that I haven't read yet.

Alas, Pippa Passes (after a poem by Browning) is not one of Godden's masterpieces. Shy, naive Pippa has come to magical Venice as a member of the company's corps de ballet. They are only staying for a fortnight, but what a crowded two weeks for Pippa, who is disgraced, promoted, wooed, falls in love, almost raped, adopted by the aristocracy and finds she can choose between two vocations, dancing or singing!

The descriptions of Venice are gorgeous, though they felt dated to me, even though the novel was published in 1994, four years after my last visit (that is so sad). Pippa's marvelling at Italian panini and tiramisu, her timid reserve, her shocked response to a lesbian advance, all felt more like a fifties novel than one set in the 1990s. And yes, sadly, there is a wicked lesbian character who can't be trusted to be around young girls ever again -- I groaned, which is not something I often do when reading Rumer Godden!

I'll keep it in my collection as a hymn to Venice, but this one is not going to be a favourite.

An Episode of Sparrows

Discovered at Savers, a classic Rumer Godden novel and one of the few I didn't already possess. First published in 1955, An Episode of Sparrows has been labelled as a children's book, but it isn't that; it's that rare beast, an adult novel about children (mostly).

If Rumer Godden were a pen, she would be a very fine, precise nib which makes clear, delicate portraits. Her writing is fine in every sense. In a way, An Episode of Sparrows is an updated version of The Secret Garden (another eternal favourite of my childhood): in grimy, scarred, post-war London, two children conspire to make a hidden garden behind a church; are discovered and thwarted; but ultimately saved.

When Alice was younger, there was one episode of Friends that she couldn't bear to view -- the one where Joey buys Chandler a hideous friendship watch that Chandler loathes. Alice couldn't stand to witness poor Joey's hurt.

In a similar way, I think as a child I would have found this book unbearably painful. The characters are too poignant. Poor little Lovejoy, patiently waiting for her flighty mother's return. Brave Vincent, struggling to provide nothing but the very best in his little restaurant, even if no diners come. Quiet Olivia, who watches everything and does nothing -- until the end. Kind Father Lambert, wise and lonely. Even mean, bitter Cassie has her own troubles.

This is a beautiful, tender book, but be prepared for a few lump-in-throat moments along the way.

The Fairy Doll and Other Tales From The Dolls' House

This ghastly cover masks a treasure: a collection of all Rumer Godden's doll stories. There are seven of them, some little more than short stories, some more substantial. This volume seems to be an attempt to bring Godden's beautiful, but old-fashioned, tales to a modern audience by wrapping them up in this non-threatening, girly package, no doubt designed to appeal to the Rainbow Fairies market (blech!) and with an admittedly sweet introduction from Jacqueline Wilson. Thrilled as I am to have seven Rumer Godden titles in one handy compendium, I'm not sure the gambit works. 

The stories are all pretty gorgeous and I'd only read a couple of them before. The Story of Holly and Ivy was satisfyingly Christmassy, and Impunity Jane, in which a tiny doll becomes a member of a gang of adventurous boys, was unexpected (if gender-normative). But my two favourite books are the longer ones: Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, in which displaced Nona settles herself into a new home by making a house for two Japanese dolls; and its sequel, Little Plum, in which Nona's naughty cousin Belinda begins a war with the spoilt little girl next door who refuses to care for her own Japanese doll properly. The ingenuity with which the children make appropriate props and possessions for their dolls is truly inspiring -- pine needles for chopsticks, tiny painted scrolls, chopped thread for rice and so on. My daughter's favourite activity for a long time was making miniature homes for her collection of Sylvanian animals, or just tiny uninhabited rooms out of balsa wood, exquisitely furnished and decorated, and I think there is a particular class of child who relishes this kind of creation and would adore these stories. I know I did.

Love like Nun Other

I bought myself Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede for Christmas. I had thought Rumer Godden was a recent discovery, but now I realise I had read this book at school, and I think probably Black Narcissus as well, without remembering that they were written by Godden.

In This House of Brede is the kind of book you wish you could live inside forever. It's so rich, so wise and so fascinating - and it's about nuns! On one level, it's the story of Philippa Talbot, a successful 40-something civil servant, who turns her back on her old life to enter the abbey; and it's the story of several years in the life of the community, the incidents and accidents, the disasters and blessings that visit them.

But In This House of Brede is also an unflinching examination of community life. The ninety-six women of the abbey are all very different personalities, with different backgrounds, and they are far from perfect. They remain people - striving for holiness, working hard to help each other, but flawed, rubbing each other up the wrong way, irritating, sometimes clashing outright. Rumer Godden captures the pinpricks and rewards of life in a community where there is no escape from your companions. Dame Beatrice is sentimental, Dame Agnes sharp-tongued. Abbess Catherine is strong, but weighed down with the burdens of her office as leader. Sister Hilary is slapdash, Sister Cecily perhaps too joyous, too sure of her vocation? Dame Veronica is weak, Dame Maura rather frightening. The characters are vividly drawn, their struggles very real.

And perhaps most importantly, the book draws us into the spiritual life of the abbey - the whole purpose of the nuns' lives. They are an enclosed order, separated from the world for their work of prayer, study and song. To a non-religious person, there is something slightly surreal about the notion of all these women dedicating themselves to an endless cycle of prayer and praise, hidden away from the rest of the world. It could be argued that it's a criminal waste of their talents and energy to spend all those years sending up one-way messages to their imaginary friend... And I'm very sure that an abbey like Brede would struggle, these days, to attract several new postulants a year, as they do in the book.

And yet reading this lovely, passionate account of religious life, it's impossible not to be moved by the nuns' dedication, the rigour and the beauty of the life they've chosen. I can't help feeling that the wisdom and the peace that they earn, their work of prayer and music, does have value, even if it's difficult for a modern agnostic to understand.

Even, perhaps, if there is no God.