Thursday, December 27, 2018

"As everyone knows Northbridge High Street, there is no need to describe it..."

Karen of Books and Chocolate included Northbridge Rectory in a list of books that she received for Christmas. It's one of my favorite of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire series, due in large part to the central character, Verena Villars, the Rector's wife. Since I'm in-between books, I pulled my old Carroll & Graf edition off the shelf. It has been a while since I re-read it, and I don't think I ever noticed before how strongly Thirkell evoked Anthony Trollope in the book's first pages. The opening line is pure Trollope: "As everyone knows Northbridge High Street there is no need to describe it," though he usually says "all the world" rather than "everyone." Having asserted there is no need for description, Thirkell continues, "so we will proceed to do so."
Northbridge, a famous centre for the wool trade of the South in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had gently declined ever since. It had indeed risen for a short period to eminence as a rotten borough, but now for more than a hundred years its calm had been unbroken. . . the High Street with its lovely curve is the whole town. At the upper end are the gentry houses, still in many cases inhabited by descendants of the woolstaplers or prosperous graziers who had built them three or four hundred years ago of honey-coloured stone that has weathered to soft greys and browns lightly stained with lichen here and there, the roofs made of thin stone slabs. Just where the street swings round the curve that is known to every tourist, stands the little Town Hall on its twelve stone legs . . . Beyond the Town Hall the houses are newer; late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, flat-fronted, with great sash windows on the ground and first floors . . . Here live the professional classes, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and so forth, most of whom have rooms in Barchester where they carry on the larger part of their business . . . And beyond them the street tails off into the picturesque and insanitary cottages of wood and clay, or lath and plaster, white-washed, with thatched roofs, descendants of the original mud huts of Barsetshire under the Kings of Wessex and not much changed in all those years. Bunces and Scatcherds had lived on the same spot and almost in the same house when Barsetshire was half forest . . . The church stands on a little eminence and behind it is the rectory, an ugly but commodious house whose long garden slopes to the river, while in the town itself are various chapels or conventicles patronised by the lesser tradespeople.
Then however Thirkell moves into her own style, and a very familiar setting in the Second World War. "In every war, however unpleasant, there are a certain number of people who with a shriek of joy take possession of a world made for them."
Mrs. Villars, the Rector's wife, who had come to Northbridge just before the war began, anxious to do her best with the parish work for which her husband's previous career as a schoolmaster had not prepared her, suddenly found herself, rather to her relief, quite o'ercrowded by a number of women who had during what is mistakenly called the Last War driven ambulances, run canteens, been heads of offices, of teams of land girls, of munition welfare, and had been pining in retirement on small incomes ever since. Under their ferocious, yet benignant reign, evacuee children were billeted, clothed and communally fed; visiting parents were provided with canteens; a cottage hospital was staffed and stocked; National Savings were collected; householders were bullied into Digging for Victory in unsuitable soil; other householders were forced to keep chickens which laid with reluctance and died with fervour of unknown diseases; stirrup-pumps were tested; blackmail in the shape of entertainments to provide comforts for every branch of the services at home and abroad was levied. In fact, as Miss Pemberton said, If the Government had shown the same Team Spirit as Northbridge the war would have been over long ago.
I think this is the only book where Mrs. Villars plays a major part, though she has a cameo in another of my favorites, Jutland Cottage. I think it's also this book that introduces us to the wonderful High Church priest "Tubby" Fewling, as well as Mrs. Turner and her nieces, who run the communal kitchen. And then there is probably the most obnoxious character Thirkell ever created, Mrs. Spender, whose husband the Major is billeted at the Rectory. (Of course the Bishop of Barchester and his wife might give Mrs. Spender a run for that title, if we ever met them in person.)

The problem for me is that I can never stop with just one of Thirkell's books, particularly those set in the war years.


15 comments:

  1. I am really going to have to read some Thirkell. So many people whose views I respect have so much time for her. Where do I start?

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    1. That's a tough question! I started with The Brandons, from 1939. It's a sunny pre-war novel, and still my favorite. The war-time novels are strong "home front" stories, starting with Happiness Breaks In. I find the novels from the early 1930s less interesting, and the books from the 1950s a bit repetitive, though plenty of other people love them (especially the early books).

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  2. Oh dear. There go my reading plans. I am going to have to pull this off the shelf and reread it.

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    1. I can feel the pull of The Brandons, though that means going back a few years.

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  3. Oh, dear. I'm trying to re-read in order but I want to meet Mrs. Spender!!

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    1. I have never managed to read the series in order, even though I have most of them now. I tend to stick with the war years, and some of the immediate post-war years. It's been too long since I read High Rising through.

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  4. I have one Angela Thirkell book sitting on my shelf just waiting for me to read it. And 2019 is the year I'm going to do it! :)

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    1. Which one do you have? And will this be your first Thirkell?

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    2. I have a copy of Growing Up which I found used. It sounds good to me, so I hope it's one of her good ones. (And yes, this will be my first Thirkell.)

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    3. It is! It's one of the war-time novels, and it has the delightful Lydia. I think Mrs. Spender even has a brief appearance.

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    4. Yay. Now I'm even more excited to read it. :)

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  5. You've really put me in the mood for a re-read now. I've read them all and started to read them again, in the correct order this time but I had somehow come to a standstill on that project.

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    1. If I tried reading them in order, I might get stuck in the pre-war novels. Though I love High Rising and Summer Half, the ones in between I can take or leave.

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  6. This was my first (& only) Thirkell to date. I adored it. I was particularly fascinated by the views & opinions about the war as Thirkel was living it & writing it st the same time - no benefit of hindsight. An amazing snapshot of a period of time in rural England. I haven’t read any Trollope yet either, which I really must rectify!

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    1. Yes, they are such a portrait of war-time England - from a very particular point of view, of course. I became a bit obsessed when I first discovered her (via The Brandons), and read everything I could get my hands on. Her books were a little easier to find back then, at least in the US. I'm happy that Virago is reprinting them again now.

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Thank you for taking the time to read, and to comment. I always enjoy hearing different points of view about the books I am reading, even if we disagree!