Rose MacaulayRezensionen

Reading Spanish names of Catalan places and people did not sit well with me. I find it hard to believe that all those names were turned into Spanish, even kings such as Jaume I, etc. Perhaps they were, but my response to them remained negative. It was involuntary -- emotional. I tried. I did not succeed.

Besides the Spanish names, most of what Macaulay was talking about didn’t appeal to me. This book is an inventory of present places that once were Greek and Roman. It is a long list of Greek and Roman place names, ending up with the dreaded Spanish names. The rest of the commentary was of buildings – architectural and decorative styles. These also read like lists. There was a little bit about the people, but very little. When she was in Catalunya, I found the reading vaguely (but not very) interesting. But once she passed down into Valencia and Murcia, I was no longer interested. These are places I have never been and even if I intended to go, what she had to say had nothing to say to me. I don’t care what the Greeks and Romans called these places.

I might have carried on anyway, because I did so like the other book of hers that I’ve read (Towers of Trebizond), but my basic antipathy for Spain came through. I like Catalunya (it is a mixed emotional thing for me, part love, part betrayal) but I dislike Spain. So a little after half way through, I quit. If I had kept at it, it could have taken me a year to get to the end (whenever I picked the book up I wanted to put it back down), and life is too short for that.

It isn't a bad book, Macaulay is very well educated and intelligent and writes well, just that I didn't like it.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/what-not-a-prophetic-comedy-by-rose-macaulay/

It was written during the First World Ward and set very shortly after it, in a Britain where eugenics has been legislated into public policy, and the Ministry of Brains controls who people can marry so that war will become impossible once stupidity has been bred out of the population. There’s a good deal of satire here, and some good observation of what happens when popular support for a political initiative collapses after a strong start; but it’s also a sympathetic observation of human nature and human behaviour, trying to put society together again after the catastrophe of war. Macaulay’s take on global politics is a bit naïve, but she’s good on the human heart; and this slim book was clearly a source of inspiration for both 1984 and Brave New World.

A very enjoyable read.
I loved the long ponderous sentences and long never-ending lists, often ending with something/someone obscure.
Written in a very tongue in cheek style but with the underlying serious problem of the many waring religions and committing one’s life to Christ.
Aunt Dot, who was looking for a home for what she called "all those poor young unmarried fathers, ruined by maintenance," p11
Of course from one point of view she was right about the church, which grew so far, almost it once, from anything which can have been intended, and became so blood-stained and persecuting and cruel and war-like and made a small and trivial things so important, and tried to exclude everything not done in a certain way and by a certain people and stamped out heresies was such cruelty and rage. … p196

Interesting and amusing essays commenting on all parts/walks of life:
Choosing a religion, General Elections, Traveling by Train…
“How shall we elect to spend the brief span of our days on the upper surface of this planet?”
Bernard Shaw, "it is a mistake to get married, but a much bigger mistake not to"
“Truly the human race finds it's pleasures in odd ways, and one of the oddest is the absorption of ideas from black marks imprinted on white paper.”

I don't want to put anyone off, but I think that readers will miss some of the humour in The Towers of Trebizond if they don't have enough background knowledge. Let me try to explain, with the help of Wikipedia (lightly edited as usual to remove unnecessary links).

Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, DBE (1 August 1881 – 30 October 1958) was an English writer, most noted for her award-winning novel The Towers of Trebizond, about a small Anglo-Catholic group crossing Turkey by camel. The story is seen as a spiritual autobiography, reflecting her own changing and conflicting beliefs.

Well, yes it is, but that description (apart from the camel) makes it sound earnest and boring. The truth is that most of the time Macaulay is poking fun at religion in general and at hers in particular. It is often laugh-out-loud funny, but as I can see from reviews at Goodreads not everyone gets the joke.

Some will be put off by the beginning. It starts with her faux-naïve narrator's drollery about how her family navigated centuries of the fraught history of the church in England — and that relies on having some knowledge of British kings and queens and their hangers on and how they bumped each other off to suit the religious beliefs prevailing in their era; and on knowing something about church politics. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy would help with some but not all of this.

I knew about enough about English church politics because I have read Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire (1855-1867)...

... and I have also read Susan Howatch's Starbridge series (1987-1994) which is a family saga that traces the history of the Church of England... but it's also (more interestingly) about the same kind of ambitious shenanigans and scandals and human greed and theological argy-bargy that you find in Trollope. Both of these series are excellent reading, but... well, not a lot of people read the classics these days and my guess is that the appeal of the once best-selling Howatch series has faded.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/06/26/the-towers-of-trebizond-1956-by-rose-macaule...

Las torres de Trebisonda cuenta las peripecias de un estrambótico grupo, formado por Laurie, la narradora, su inimitable tía Dot, el intolerante padre Chantry-Pigg y un camello loco, que parte de Inglaterra rumbo a Oriente Medio movido por distintos intereses que van desde un heterodoxo proselitismo anglicano al puro placer del viaje. Ingeniosa y a la vez melancólica, desenfadada y sutil, esta novela descubre una ciudad de fábula, una Trebisonda reflejo de inquietudes espirituales, metáfora del carácter esquivo de la verdad. Un relato satírico y en ocasiones absurdo, de un humor chispeante, tras el que se esconden las sombras del desengaño, los dilemas religiosos y el recuerdo de un amor perdido.

What a strange, strange book with a seemingly naïve main character, Barbary Deniston, who after a London upbringing goes with her mother to the South of France in 1939 and spends the next seven years there, learning to speak Midi French and running wild with the young Maquis.
The book starts in 1946 and Barbary returns to a London devastated by the Blitz, still full of the ruins of bombed buildings, which are populated by deserters, on the run from military police.
Macaulay’s descriptions of bomb scarred London seem surreal, more like something out of a J G Ballard novel, although presumably realistic of that post-war period:
The children stood still, gazing down on a wilderness of little streets, caves and cellars, the foundations of a wrecked merchant city, grown over by green and golden fennel and ragwort, coltsfoot, purple loosestrife, rosebay willow herb, bracken, brambles and tall nettles, among which rabbits burrowed and wild cats crept and hens laid eggs. (page 49)
Summer slipped on; a few blazing days, when London and its deserts burned beneath a golden sun, and the flowering weeds and green bracken hummed with insects, and the deep underground cells were cool like churches, and the long grass wilted, drooped and turned to hay; then a number of cool wet days, when the wilderness was sodden and wet and smelled of decay, and the paths ran like streams, and the ravines were deep in dripping greenery that grew high and rank, running over the ruins as the jungle runs over Mayan temples, hiding them from prying eyes. (page 74)
It is also a wonderfully literate book, opening and closing with quotes from The Waste Land, and referencing amongst others Shakespeare, Marlowe and Pepys.

For me this book has only a meandering narrative about the uneasy compromises of war, instead seeking to capture the mood of a well-off, but partly Bohemian, English family after World War II, and, most memorably (although there are descriptions of the French Pyrénées and the Scottish Highlands), the ruins of a London peopled by the ghosts of merchants and artisans from centuries past.

Richie at the end of the book looks across the ruins of the City of London in the autumn and quotes:
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

"Will it seem, in its 1923 stage of knowledge, as.. backward.. as it did to those who broke into it after its first seventy years of segregated history?"

That was ok. The plot, a group of orphans and a couple of adults are stranded on a desert island in the mid-1800's.
In the 1920's a rescue party of sorts finally arrives and finds this society based on victorian values. Its a bit like one of those Star-Trek episodes where they end up on Roman planet or Gangster planet or something.

It really makes fun of the class distinctions and history of britian but its a fairly narrow book. It just has that one idea to carry the entire work.

And as to the quote above, YES is the answer. While it tries to take apart class disparity it is still pretty racist and with no appealing female characters despite its female author.

I found the writing a bit odd, its descriptive parts are quite florid compared to the rest of the text. So its normal, normal, florid flourish, normal normal normal florid etc. Its not good odd or bad odd, i just found it odd.

The story moves pretty quick and has some humour to it, mostly dark humour from my point of view.

I was a little surprised their was so little mention of WWI. I kind of expected that to be a major demarcation point between the victorian society and the people of 1920 but it barely got an acknowledgment.

Some of this was entertaining, some was exhausting (all the discourse about the church), and the story with Vere and the ending felt tacked on, like she couldn't quite figure out how to shape the travelogue into a novel. Also, is Laurie a man or a woman? Parts of the story didn't really work if Laurie was male, while other parts didn't really work if Laurie was female.

Potterism stands for greed, sentimentality, illogical thinking and materialism, shortcomings embodied by the popular press. Macaulay's satirical novel, first published in 1920, centres on a group of young people opposed to Potterism, who seek truth and integrity. WWI has just ended, Britain is gripped by strikes, and Europe is being divided up.

While not in the same class as The Towers of Trebizond, Potterism is well worth a read. It's available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg.

Set in Devon and Cambridge in 1640-1641, on the eve of the English Civil War, packed with poets, politics, and theological disputes, intensely language-based, with a subversive feminist agenda and scarcely a description of a costume or a piece of furniture anywhere in the book, this ought to be my sort of historical novel. And it very nearly was. I loved Macaulay's very precise ear for the patterns of 17th century English — both standard and in various shades of Devon dialect — and her ruthless elimination of 20th century language. Few historical novelists can keep that up so consistently for the length of a whole book. The central characters were promising too: two teenage girls, one a tomboy and the other a scholar; an eccentric sceptical physician; and the poet and clergyman Robert Herrick.

The trouble is, these people look as though they are being set up for an adventure story, but in fact they are only there to allow the author to comment on the ideas of 17th century England. They don't develop in the course of the story, despite listening — ad nauseam — to all sorts of clever people telling each other things they already know about current events. Not much happens, except on the news, and the characters continue much as they were, until the author gets tired of them and eliminates them arbitrarily.

With hindsight, some of what Macaulay is saying about 17th century England, with moderate Anglicans caught between the hardcore puritans on one side and papists on the other on the verge of a destructive conflict, must read onto the fascism and communism of thirties Europe. But a lot of it probably reflects her own somewhat complicated religious feelings as well.

A very interesting book, as history, and a very clever one technically, but I found it a disappointment as a novel. Obviously written as a by-product of Macaulay's Milton biography.½

108/2020. The story revolves around four generations of upper middle class English women in one family and the main theme is ageing, especially into middle and old age. Think of it as a coming-of-middle-age tale. Rose Macaulay, who was about 39 when she wrote this, clearly understood her subject and communicates that understanding with skill and insight. She raises pertinent questions and even manages to provide answers for one or two of them of them, albeit answers that not everyone would find comforting.

On population: 'Neville was apt to say "It doesn't want increasing. I waited twenty minutes before I could board my bus at Trafalgar Square the other day. It wants more depleting, I should say — a Great Plague or something," a view which Kay and Gerda thought truly egotistical.'
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[insert guillotine emoji here]: 'When people talked about the Wicked Old Men, who, being still unfortunately unrestrained and unmurdered by the Young, make this wicked world what it is, Kay and Gerda always contended that there were a few exceptions.'
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Generation gaps: 'And there they were; they talked at cross purposes, these two, across the gulf of twenty years, and with the best will in the world could not hope to understand, either of them, what the other was really at. And now here was Gerda, in Mrs. Hilary's bedroom, looking across a gulf of forty years and saying nothing at all, for she knew it would be of no manner of use, since words don't carry as far as that.
So all she said was "Tea's ready, Grandmother." '
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On Freudians: 'Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as, like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere and in everything; they could be always happy.'
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Last words: ' "I certainly don't see quite what all the fuss is about," said Pamela.'

105/2020. Well-written, as one would expect from this author, with an interesting use of embedded narrative as a plot device later in the story. The plot is basically a bildungsroman except the protagonist is in her twenties. She doesn't want to settle down to upper middle class English life, or have the responsibility of children, but instead of rebelling she falls in love and marries so her fate is sealed.

Quote

Christmas is too commercialised these days (1926 version): "Every year, in the deep mid-winter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight. A fortnight, or ten days, or a week, when citizens can not get about the streets of their cities for the surging pressure of persons who walk therein; when every shop is a choked mass of humanity, and purchases, at the very time when purchases are most numerously ordained to be made, are only possible at the cost of bitter hours of travail; a time when nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purpose, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favour of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human creatures."

I wanted to love this book. The first 100 pages or so were uproarious and charming, and the Anglo-Catholic humor was amusing, but once I was left alone with Laurie, much of the appeal was sucked out of the narrative for me, even the actual travel bits. His stream-of-consciousness religious musings grew tiresome quickly. (Obviously I'm reading Laurie as a man. I thought he was Dot's niece for the first half of the book, then was disconcerted to realize I'd probably been getting that wrong for chapters.)

An erudite meditation on ruins and their romantic and philosophical evocations. After some general observations in the initial pages, the book settles into a travelogue of famous sites with descriptions of their decaying state by the author, along with liberal quotations from earlier belletrists. Macaulay's love of ruins in their natural state, without restoration or sanitizing, captures the allure of these moldering structures.

The text rambles as one ruin blends with another and it lacks structure. This is a book for browsing and savoring rather than for reading from cover to cover.

Set in 1946, both France and England are dealing with the aftermath of the Second World War. At 17, Barbary Deniston has lived in the shadow of war most of her life. She lives in France with her mother, a self-centered woman more focused on her romantic entanglements than on raising her daughter. Barbary had the freedom to mix with the local Resistance, and has seen more than most her age. When her mother decides to ship her off to her father in England, Barbary struggles to adjust to a radically different culture, resists those who can help her, and falls in with a rough crowd. Consequences ensue.

This novel had some interesting characters and there were some moments of humor and depth, but I also found the plot somewhat contrived. Nevertheless, the examination of both France and England post-war made it a good fit for a theme read.

So many people have professed their love for The Towers of Trebizond that I couldn’t help but choose it over several other 1956 books, despite having already read three other Rose Macaulay novels this year. Known by many people simply for its fabulous opening line:

“Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, climbing down from that animal on her return from high Mass.”

Well, if that isn’t enough to make you smile and to wish to carry on reading, I don’t what is. Macaulay is frequently wry as she sets about observing people in their various, sometimes ludicrous pursuits.

“Everyone had had the idea of starting for home early, so as to miss the crawl, but, since everyone had had the idea, no one missed the crawl.”

The novel follows the progress of a group of characters as they embark upon a journey from Istanbul to Trebizond. They are, Laurie – our narrator, her Aunt Dot (Dorothea Ffoulkes Corbett) and Dorothea’s friend, high Anglican priest Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg. Oh, and then there’s the camel. They are befriended by a Turkish woman doctor; Dr Halide, an ardent feminist with an interest in Anglicanism. Aunt Dot is set on converting and liberating the Turkish women she meets with Christianity and introduce them to the bathing hat.

This novel is a mix of things, part novel, part autobiographical travelogue and an exploration of religion. While Father Chantry-Pigg carries sacred relics around with him, Laurie muses on the complications of her love life. Along the way the trio meet British travel writers and witness the progress of Billy Graham on tour with the BBC. Macaulay does employ some typical British colonial stereotypes – though these things are put into the mouths of her characters and are fairly mild. Her characters are upper class English idiots – harmless enough and of a type – and I think she was poking gentle fun at them. Macaulay is a good observer of the Englishman/woman abroad – and here she is superb at portraying the noise and clamour of a Turkish harbour.

“The boats were filled mostly with steerage passengers who lived in Trebizond or were visiting relations there, and the women carried great bundles and sacks full of things, but the men carried suit-cases with sharp, square corners, which helped them very much in the struggle to get on and stay on the boats, for this was very violent and intense. More than one woman got shoved overboard into the sea during the struggle, and had to be dragged out by husbands and acquaintances, but one sank too deep and had to be left, for the boat-hooks could not reach her; all we saw were the apples out of her basket bobbing on the waves. I thought that women would not stand much chance in a shipwreck, and in the struggle for the boats many might fall in the sea and be forgotten, but the children would be saved all right, for Turks love their children, even the girls.”

Suddenly, Aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg disappear over the border into Russia – a task so impossible during these cold war days, that it is assumed they must have had help of a fairly sinister nature, and are declared spies, by almost everyone. A little anxious, though not unduly concerned Laurie is left alone in charge of the camel – on which she continues to travel.

She meets up briefly with her lover, enters into a wrangle over a manuscript with one of the British travel writers; David who has a habit of popping up every now and then, but at least can be relied on to buy dinner. She experiences a hallucinatory draught that she is given in exchange for food, sells camel rides along the road, encounters difficulty getting into Israel and then later meets her estranged mother in Jerusalem. It’s all wonderfully bonkers.

After all that travelling, eventually Laurie heads back to England, with an ape that she has picked up (as you do). Here, as settles back into normal English life, she is forever wrestling her Christian faith with her adulterous relationship with a married man. The camel and the ape suitably ensconced at the zoo but Laurie wonders whether or not she will ever see Aunt Dot and her priest ever again.

Overall, a really good read – my favourite Macaulay is still The World my Wilderness, but I loved the sense of place in this, the bizarre quirkiness of Macaulay’s story and her characters – make for a memorable novel. There is also a fabulously unexpected bit of drama at the end of the novel – which I won’t spoil for you – I do enjoy being taken by surprise.

The best bits are fantastic, the rest tends to drag. Can't say I found any of the religious parts anything but tedious.

First published in 1918, then swiftly withdrawn, Macaulay's book deals with eugenics, newspaper censorship and government control of people's private lives. The book predates Brave New World and 1984 and may have been an unacknowledged influence on both.

Kitty Grammont works for the Ministry of Brains, whose goal is to make the British people more intelligent. The rationale is that, had people been more intelligent the Great War could not have happened, and in future an intelligent population will avoid wars. The Ministry plan to achieve its goals with a mixture of training and eugenics. The population is classified according to intelligence, from A to C3. People in the lower groups must marry someone more intelligent, and A's must marry down, and as a result the average intelligence of the population will increase. People must be certificated in order to marry. Those below C3 cannot marry and reproduce; nor can people with genetic abnormalities in their families, no matter how how their intelligence classification. To enforce the rules, people who have unsanctioned children must pay huge fines, and those who follow the rules get bonuses. Newspapers are banned from criticising the actions and policies of the government.

Unlike Huxley's and Orwell's books, Macaulay's is set in the near future, and is obviously an extension of the current reality. It is far more human and domestic that the other two books.

Worth a read.½

As the novel opens, Mama and Papa Garden live in their comfortable London home with their six children, the eldest Vicky is already twenty-three – the youngest Una a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.

“One evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our forefathers, being young, possessed the earth, – in brief, in the year 1879, – Mrs Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr Garden’s study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor Papa has lost his faith again.””

Mr Garden changes religion like people of today change their mobile phones, from Anglicanism to Ethicism, to Catholicism to Christian Science – and everything in between. The family are well used to it – and his long suffering, ever supportive wife embraces whatever the latest thing is – no matter what her own private thoughts.

It is their children however who are at the centre of this novel, and in 1879 and the 1880s they are what is seen as the modern generation. Conventional Vicky’s younger sisters Stanley and Rome (here again Macaulay’s unusual androgynous names for women) and their brother Maurice at Cambridge are the epitome of late Victorian modernity. Stanley is passionate for a social cause, Rome is charming, urbane and cynical, she tries not to engage too fully with anything, taking life as it comes, and finding so much of life highly amusing.

“Life was to her at this time more than ever a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. She went on her way as usual, reading, seeing pictures, hearing music, meeting people, talking, smoking, bicycling, leading the life led by intelligent dilettanti in the small, cultivated nucleus of a great city.”

Maurice, with his first from Cambridge is an angry young man, who writes for a newspaper. Una grows up and marries a farmer, delighting too much in country life to do anything else, and Irving becomes a business man with some conscience and the ability to make money.

Vicky becomes a typical late Victorian matron, marries Charles, they argue a little from time to time, but Vicky loves him, and children inevitably arrive. Stanley marries and has children too, but her marriage is less successful, as is Maurice’s who marries a shallow, silly woman without really knowing her. Rome finds her one true love, though he is married to someone else.

Throughout the years, as various politicians come and go, as new technologies and new fads come along, and wars are fought, the older generation continue to be confounded and outraged by the younger generation. Though sometimes, the modern generation is even too outrageous for one another. Stanley’s husband is horrified and repulsed when she takes to wearing ‘bloomers’ to ride around London on a Bicycle.

“’It’s better to be elegant, dirty and dangerous than frumpish, clean and safe. That’s an epigram. The fact is women ought never to indulge in activities, either of the body or the mind; it’s not their rôle. They can’t do it gracefully.”

No wonder, perhaps that in middle age Stanley becomes a suffragist.

The third generation of Gardens grow up in a world where the Boer war is talked about by everyone – including children. Young Imogen is mortified when a child at school says her Uncle Maurice is pro Boer – and Imogen tries to explain that she isn’t pro -Boer herself but she can see their point. Imogen is a wonderful character, if Rome reflects one part of Macaulay’s own character, then her niece Imogen reflects the other part. Imogen; Vicky’s daughter, wants nothing more than to be a bright blue-eyed boy and join the navy. Her head is filled with stories in which she casts herself as Denis, a brown-skinned, blue-eyed young naval man. Imogen longs for adventure, to break away from the role cast for her by society. There is a wonderful scene where Imogen and her brother spend a Sunday morning riding around the underground for a penny. Those readers who love Imogen as much as I did will cheer for her as the novel draws to a conclusion.

Macaulay writes movingly about the realities of the First World War; those modern Victorians are in their sixties as the novel comes to an end – and England in some ways has changed and yet we see that in all the ways that matter people don’t change all that much. The older generation will always shake their heads at the younger generation, no matter what generation that is.

English novelist Catherine Grey has been spending some time in America, when she receives an invitation from her Aunt Belle to come and stay with her and her family. Catherine is interested in character, and character types – she tries to categorise everyone she meets. A visit to her relations should prove entertaining.

“How did the human eye so arrange for itself the lines and colours of the human creature (surely a comparatively ugly animal?) that they wavered and re-formed into this shape we have conceived to be beauty? Strange illusion!”

Aunt Belle is living on an old Spanish plantation in the rain forest of Guatemala. Now married to her second husband an English judge, Sir Richmond (known as Dickie), Belle has a houseful staying already and she thinks Catherine will enjoy the company that she will meet in Guatemala. Catherine has a long, exhausting journey to reach her aunt’s eccentric old home which she finds is an odd mixture of architectural styles. Here, staying with Catherine’s aunt and step uncle are her aunt’s four step-children; Claudia, Benet and Julia all fairly grown up and Meg – the child, and Belle’s own daughter Isie Rickaby and her husband Adrian who has been designing the recent additions made to the house. Isie is spoilt, very beautiful – and she knows it – rather silly and given to stomping off. The final member of the household is taciturn Devonshire man Mr Piper – some kind of estate manager.

The old Spanish house, the Hacienda del Capitan, or the Craddock house as it is variously called, is surrounded by dense jungle, beautifully described by Macaulay. Their nearest neighbours are Mr Phipps who has made his money from straw hats, and a Spanish clergyman with three wives. Catherine settles comfortably in to her pink and silver room – unaware of the drama she is about to be swept up in.

Following a row with Adrian, Isie stalks off into the jungle in a mood – and after paying a visit to Mr Phipps first, is apparently abducted by Lacandon men and taken deep into the Guatemalan jungle. The family are frantic and begin talking about ransoms, Belle recklessly promising the men can have everything they want – much to her husband’s alarm. Meanwhile, Isie actually escaped her captors quite quickly, but is now horribly lost and terrified in the dense jungle. Back at the ranch – with no one knowing where Isie is, there is a lot of fuss. Meg is sent to bed as she has been ill, and Belle doesn’t want her upset when she hears about Isie. Meg demands she be allowed her baby armadillo to sleep with.

“‘Darling, I don’t think one has armadillos in bed. They’d be so uncomfortable.’
‘Tray’s not uncomfortable in my bed. He likes it.’
‘Uncomfortable for you, I mean,’
‘Oh, no. He’s not. He’s a very cuddly armadillo. Please may I have Tray?’”

Questions about who exactly Mr Phipps is, are soon raised, with the funny little man beginning to look decidedly dodgy. Whispers abound of a hidden treasure somewhere around the house – and while everyone tells everyone else that had it ever existed it must surely have been found long ago, they all set about looking for it. Poor Isie must be rescued, and if her captors want treasure it must be found. Catherine wonders what it was that had Isie running off like that – and asks Julia. She discovers that all is not quite as it should be in the Rickaby marriage – and Claudia could well be the reason. Catherine is starting to get to know this peculiar family, their character types, and bit by bit the scales fall from her eyes.

“They were set on their prey. They had mean, small, hard minds, thought Catherine; obstinate, selfish, materialistic and vengeful. She did not know why she had found them charming. They were even stupid, to be so oblivious of the amenities of travel, so set on their small private ends; so fatuously unaware, too…”

Staying with Relations is entertaining and readable, there are many beautifully written descriptive passages and some good characterisation, however it is a weaker novel than the three Macaulay novels I have previously read. It is a bit baggy – a little formless, I liked it – but wondered where it was going really. Overall, worth reading for Macaulay fans, but just not her best.½

My introduction to Rose Macaulay was with her 1950 novel The World my Wilderness – which I absolutely loved. I was therefore delighted that Virago has seen fit to re-issue some of her novels – and while I’d always prefer a shabby old green these new editions are lovely to be going on with.

Crewe Train is a much earlier novel and yet there are several similarities to Macaulay’s later novel especially in the character of Denham Dobie. Like Macaulay’s later character Barbary Deniston, Denham has been allowed to run wild, growing up abroad in a less than conventional household. There’s an untutored, childishness about Denham as a young woman – who prefers to be alone out of doors, to not have to talk or socialise or play host in any way to relatives from England.

Denham’s father – a former Church of England vicar, had taken his daughter away, seeking a quieter life abroad, having become sick of having to ‘bury dissenters or to baptise illegitimate infants’ and wanting to be less busy and less sociable. Having found Mallorca to be too sociable they moved to Andorra – where Denham’s father re-marries in a moment of weakness providing Denham with a step-mother and half siblings who he immediately has cause to regret and she doesn’t care for at all. To the horror of Mr Dobie and Denham – visitors from England begin to arrive in Andorra – and with them come relatives of Denham’s mother. When Denham’s father dies – her beautifully groomed, still young Aunt Evelyn and her smart cousins Audrey, Guy, Noel and Humphrey contrive to spirit Denham away – to London, where they can civilise her.

Before I go any further – a word or two about the title – which really puzzled me. A Twitter conversation about it put me out of my misery. The title refers to the lyrics of a once popular music hall song – which describes a mis-directed traveller. This is also explained in the introduction to this edition – but of course I don’t read introductions until I have finished the book.

Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do?
I want to go to Birmingham
And they’re taking me on to Crewe,
Take me back to London, as quickly as you can,
Oh! Mr Porter, what a silly girl I am.

In London, Denham is introduced to a world she really doesn’t understand. The world of society writers and publishers, where people are always coming together to socialise – to talk! Her Gresham relatives are very well meaning and kind – but they struggle to understand Denham – who immediately dislikes London – and she struggles to understand them. Denham has no idea what to talk about at dinner – each social situation more agonising than the last.

“At dinner that night, when her neighbour said to her, ‘Did you see the Guitrys last week?’ she replied in the manner of Ollendorf, ‘No, but the hair of my dog is coming out. Do you know the best treatment for it?’

The Greshams are conventional, gossipy, self-absorbed and shallow. Denham is something of a rebel – tongue-tied and awkward in company – she soon recognises her relatives and their friends for what they are.

Denham loves the outdoors, prefers the country to London, she likes to be alone, likes fishing and playing games. She dresses just how she likes – she doesn’t understand her aunt’s horror of her apparel – and when Evelyn says she really can’t go out like that – Denham can’t understand it – as she just did. Denham meets Arnold – her uncle’s junior partner in the publishing firm. They fall head over heels – Denham reminds Arthur how much he loves some of those things too. Together they go fishing, play games in front of the fire. However, Arnold also loves society, he likes London and has to be there for work. To the Greshams disapproval Denham and Arnold get married. Denham is horrified by all the domestic conventions she must adhere to.

“But Evelyn gave Denham the true reason why they must not put all the food on the table at once.
‘You mustn’t try to be original yet, Denham dear. You don’t know well enough yet how to keep rules to break them safely. You must wait a bit, and meanwhile do things like other people. You see, when you break social rules, you should always seem to be ahead of fashion and convention not lagging behind them, do you see what I mean?’

On a holiday to Cornwall Denham discovers a cave with a secret passage leading up to a small, disused cottage. This is just the thing to delight the newly-weds – and they set about arranging to rent it for a year. They are like a couple of kids playing house – taking bits and pieces over to the cottage – Denham insisting that Arnold keep the secret passage a dead secret. The novelty of the cave and passageway to the sea soon wears off for Arnold– who finds he doesn’t like sleeping there. So, it isn’t long before cracks are beginning to show – with Denham wanting to stay by the sea in Cornwall with their little dog, and Arnold needing to return to London. Denham stays at the cottage for an extra few weeks – and Arnold returns to London. Here, the Greshams gossip and interfere causing all sorts of mischief at the couple’s expense. Will Denham ever be able to settle down to life with Arnold? – host afternoon tea, manage the servants, know the right conversation?

In this novel Macaulay highlights the absurdity in conventional society – the so called civilised way of life that Evelyn Gresham and her family are so much a part of. Macaulay is frequently very funny in her recreation of this world. In this entertaining comedy of manners Macaulay provides sharply observed social commentary. However, Crewe Train is also the poignant story of a young woman going relentlessly in the wrong direction.

"I don't care what I am. Rough."
By sally tarbox on February 19, 2018
Format: Paperback
An utterly original work, featuring memorable heroine, Denham Dobie. Brought up in a remote spot by a father who sought to avoid the world, his daughter has totally inherited his mindset. She enjoys freedom, flouting societal 'norms' - not through perversity but an honest failure to understand WHY (and sometimes the reader can see her point.)

"One room thoroughly turned out each day, too- that's most important."
"Turned out..." Denham repeated it vaguely.
"Yes, turned out, The things all taken out of the room and put back again, you know."
What for, Denham silently wondered,. The same result would surely be achieved, with less effort, by leaving things where they were.

Finding herself an orphan, aged nineteen, she is brought back to England by her well to do relatives. This is a massive culture shock; they enjoy clothes, culture, socialising, none of which Denham has any time for. She eschews novels in favour of maps and in totally uninterested in gossip. Fleeing a country weekend, she is discovered by bachelor Arnold Chappel "seated on a pile of faggots and making a whistle." A magical afternoon whittling and sailing model boats together leads to more... but how will this ill-matched couple fare...?

Entertaining read with some solid truths along the way. I entirely concur with Denham's question on parties: "Why do people like them?½

Most of this book takes the form of a travelogue in which a trio of upper-class British twits (for various degrees of twittishness) travels around mid-20thC Turkey to gauge the feasibility of converting the local women to High Church Anglicanism. There’s the no-nonsense, no-consideration Aunt, the self-congratulatory Priest, and the narrator, who thinks of herself as a characterless hanger-on, but who over the course of the book develops her snarkiness into some degree of coherence and thoughtfulness. Towards the end a little bit of sudden seriousness encroaches, but it isn’t too jarring.

Large parts of this book felt like they had almost been written to cater specifically to my tastes: they’re whimsical, colourful, indulge in the joys of largely obstacle-free travelling, and the characters are archaeology-obsessed know-it-alls who are over-educated in Classical European History and who enjoy their little discussions about random points of Christian theology. It’s all very cute and amiable, and the novelistic parts, lightweight as they are, do not interrupt the travelogue too much.

While the troupe of Brits are presented as too smug even to think of themselves as foreigners when travelling through another country, their twittishness is presented with a dollop of self-irony, and paired with a largely sympathetic portrayal of the people behind the class, a mixture that makes the whole thing much more palatable than it would otherwise have been.

All in all, an easily digestible, whimsical period piece: a pleasant and smooth read through a book that has no real pretensions to profundity. If my review has whetted your appetite, the book is probably for you; if not, it likely won’t be.

Made it 25% of the way through and just couldn't get into it. Maybe it's a hidden classic but it just seemed like a bit of a snooze fest to mr.- abbey the grouch