E. Arnot Robertson (1903–1961)

I already have a novel by a British postwar novelist titled Devices and Desires. That’s by Susan Ertz and it was published in 1972 (see here). Robertson’s book predates it by almost two decades… but it’s also the sort of story that would have been told two decades earlier. Hebe is a thirteen-year-old girl who, with her father, helps refugees cross Europe post-WWII. The book opens in Bulgaria, where they are helping a group of four refugees cross through Macedonia into Greece – during the Greek civil war – and so onto France and Spain. But Hebe’s father is accidentally shot by andartes – Greek resistance fighters – and so she is forced to lead the group on by herself. After entering Macedonia, they stop for food at a remote farm, and end up staying for several days. In fact, it gets easier to stay than to continue on. But when a “helobowie” – a Greek expat returning to his home village to show off his new-found affluence – turns up, it attracts the attentions of the andartes, and only Hebe and one of her refugees escape. Hebe is reluctant to accept help, because any well-meaning aid agency will immediately send her to a “displaced persons” camp, and she has her own plans. I had no real idea what to expect when I bought Devices and Desires. Robertson was a name on a list of postwar British women writers I planned to work my way through – I’m already a fan of a few, such as Olivia Manning and Elzabeth Taylor – and I admit I picked Devices and Desires because it shared its title with that Ertz novel. But. I liked it. It paints a vivid portrait of the Balkans, it’s careful to set out all the various factions as objectively possible, and it shows a pragmatic, but compassionate, attitude to the problem of refugees. Though it’s set in the decade following WWII, in lands still suffering from the war’s effects, both politically and economically, there’s little in it that dioes not apply today. Refugees deserve our compassion – and ours more than anyone else’s, since we’re the ones causing the refugee crisis in the first place. It’s quite simple: if you don’t want brown people flowing across your borders, don’t bomb the shit out of their homes or keep the various factions in their wars supplied with weaponry and ammunition. It’s a problem with a very simple solution. Unfortunately, that solution means multinational companies foregoing profits. Which will never happen. Devices and Desires is at least set post WWII, and during a civil war precipitated byt the invasion of Greece, and the withdrawal of the invading forces. Robertson’s prose is very much of her time, but I like that style of prose. Hebe is a likeable and sympathetic protagonist. Devices and Desires is not the most gripping novel ever written – it can be slow in places, and the interiority occasionally overwhelms the plot – but the characterisation is assured and the setting is described well. I’m tempted to try more by Robertson. Which was the whole point of reading postwar British women writers in the first place.… (mehr)

It can be unnerving starting to read a book knowing a number of other people really didn’t like it at all. I plucked Four Frightened People off the shelf – not even sure where I had got it – intrigued by the title and the blurb, I think it was one my sister found me in a charity shop, alerted to it by the dark green Virago spine. A few pages in and I discovered it was referred to as ‘that book’ by members of the Librarything Virago group – whose opinion I trust. My heart sank. I had started a dud; the trouble was I couldn’t put it down. Well I suppose by now we are all very well aware of how opinions on books can differ greatly, and Four Frightened People is a case in point. Although I do understand why some people dislike it and there were elements which made me uncomfortable, I enjoyed it a lot.

Four Frightened People propelled its author E. Arnot Robertson to literary fame in the early 1930’s- she had already enjoyed some success with her previous novels, but it was this novel that was highly acclaimed and re-printed numerous times. I can see why it was such a bestseller.

Judy Corder a no-nonsense, twenty-six year doctor, recovering from a broken love affair, is travelling with her cousin Stewart on a slow ship to Singapore. The heat is almost unbearable, 107◦ in the shade, and there is no shade, and here these two now cynical, old childhood playmates are incarcerated with their fellow passengers who include the slightly pompous Arnold Ainger – a married civil servant, and linguist and Mrs Mardick a hearty, managing woman, whose persistent good cheer and garrulousness soon sets all their teeth on edge. Furtive activity under cover of darkness among the Chinese crewmen alert Judy and Arnold to the danger on board – plague has broken out, and the terrified crew are already disposing of the bodies out of sight of their western passengers. Judy has selfishly hidden her profession from her fellow passengers – doesn’t want to have to hand out free medical advice – nice girl!
Judy, Arnold and Stewart hit upon the idea of leaving the ship at the next port and then travel over land on foot through the Malay jungle to Kintaling from where they can secure safer passage back to England. Stupidly Judy dresses for the jungle in silk stocking and some kind of flimsy sounding shoes – which she soon has cause to regret. At the moment of departure they find they must take Mrs Mardick with them, whose cool acceptance of the situation is almost unnerving.

“…after we had watched the ship sail, a thing of such beauty in the night, jewelled with tiers of light, that it was hard to believe that she carried the pollution and wretchedness we knew to be aboard. She was not far from us, but before we heard the rattle of the cabl;e coming home we saw the phosphorescence, a thin ghost of fire, a milky radiance just discernible against the black water at that distance, light faintly under her stern and drip from the stem as the anchor came up. I have never seen this living gleam in the water in the water, before or since, as brilliant as it was that night.”

Once on land things never ever get any easier. Their proposed journey of a few days – turns into weeks, weeks of adventure and peril in an inhospitable environment. They hire – ‘a guide’ Deotlan who is later joined by his former lover Wan Nau, Deotlan is part Malay, part European, his English is passable, his knowledge of the Malay jungle only slightly better than that of his clients, he is staunchly proud of his European heritage, although this has left him somewhat isolated from both communities.

Here, deep in the Malay jungle, civilisation has been abandoned to an extent, and the true natures of each of the group are brought to the fore. In the midst of their trek, they encounter wild animals, sickness, hunger, and come to make some shocking decisions which impact on others in the group. Judy recognises and ruminates on her own sexual desires, especially as they may relate to the two men who are her companions. Judy can appear arrogant, at first I found her cool, and not very likeable – but I warmed to her as the novel progressed. She is in many ways a modern woman, she knows what she wants, she’s intelligent and she is certainly unlike many female characters of this period, she chooses her own lover, and accepts the likely transitory nature of their relationship.

Which all brings me to the many reasons that a lot of people won’t like this book – and I acknowledge they are very real reasons – I’m not even sure why I didn’t react differently to the book than I did. Firstly – and one of the most unlikeable things about the book is what I can only call its racism. I have read many books of this period – and whenever there are western people in a non-European setting I know to take a deep breath and expect the inherent racism that was an everyday accepted thing at this time. That such language is so prevalent in 1930’s literature tells us a lot about the society in which it was written, however it remains uncomfortable for us today, and it was the one thing in this book that I disliked strongly. There is a definite, and unpalatable feeling in this novel that westerners are superior in all things to the poor stupid Malay people – which is deeply offensive – and would usually be enough to make me dislike a book intensely. However there was so much of the adventure and the interplay between these characters that fascinated me that I really did have a job putting it down. Another criticism seems to have been that characters are unlikeable – I found Judy improved as things went along – and although I quite liked Stewart I was constantly irritated by him, I rather liked Arnold, and Mrs Mardick is well drawn and not as unlikeable as she is probably supposed to be. I wanted to know Deotlan and Wan Nau more than I was allowed to – they were infinitely more interesting to me.

There is a slight sense at times that Robertson was out to shock a little, certainly she never romanticises trekking through the jungle – things do get realistically dirty and unpleasant, although even Robertson shies away from any details of how Judy manages the period she blithely informs the reader Judy feels coming on. So there is a little bit of ickiness, and pages and pages of trudging through jungle, really why did I like this book? And yet I did. The one section of the novel that jarred perhaps was the end – which just seemed a little off kilter with the erotic, malevolence and survival of the fittest nature of what had come before.

This is certainly not a faultless book, I am rather surprised I enjoyed it at all, but I did so while recognising its faults and considering it as a social document for the times in which it was written it is interesting. It also happens to be very well written, but this is not a novel for everyone, that much is clear.… (mehr)

‘Cullum’ was Eileen Arbuthnot Robertson’s first novel, published in 1928 when she was just twenty-four years old. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing. Flawed, but still extraordinary. It was a great success, but it had a mixed reception. It was expected that women would write about love, in this case first love, but it was not expected that women – that anyone – would write about love quite like this.

Esther Sieveking was nineteen and she lived with her father, a military man who had retired to the country to train horses, and her two much younger sisters. Her French mother had abandoned them to live in Paris, occasionally, imperiously, summoning them for visits. And so Esther grew up in genteel poverty and, with her mother absent and her father seeming emotionally detached from his children, little guidance.

She grew into a countrywoman, who lived for her horse and for the hunt, and when she wasn’t riding she was in the library, reading, or dreaming of becoming a writer.

It was no wonder she was smitten when she met Cullum Hayes, a twenty-four year old writer who had already met with success at a dinner party. And it was no wonder that he was intrigued by the confident, outspoken young woman, who said things not usually said – by young or old – at the dinner table.

Esther told her own story, looking back at time when she had gained wisdom but lost none of her passion. And she acknowledged at the very beginning that this story would not have a happy ending.

“Once the glamour has faded it is hard to give a clear impression of a man whom one has loved, as he appeared while the magic endured. Feeling loses so much of its life in the translation into words that one has to be still a little bound by the spell, still partly convinced at least, of the reality of the broken enchantment, in order to be convincing, and in retrospect it is difficult to see the figure in it’s old perspective, unaltered by the light of after-knowledge, and to realise where the charm lay. Yet, in a way I am still conscious of Cullum’s charm.”

The signs were there, that Cullum – who had a fiancé – was playing Esther. That he was taken by her, that he would take everything that she was willing to give, but that he would give her only as much as he had to, to keep her by his side.

The story of their relationship is written with such insight, such intelligence, and such extraordinary maturity. The dialogue is wonderful, and Esther’s voice rings utterly true.

“I knew that I loved Cullum, knew in my heart that he loved me, but I was not sure what I wanted to happen, or if, indeed, I wanted anything to happen that might alter existing conditions. To both of us just then, I think, love unexpressed but gloriously apparent seemed sufficient on itself. Certainly I did not want to marry Cullum. Marriage did not enter my head; the child of an unhappy union …”

He independence, her candour, were wonderful but I feared for her and I worried about what would happen to her, what future would be left for her when Cullum tired of her, when those qualities began to pall.

Esther was devastated when she realised that Cullum did not love her as she loved him. The way that she found out, and the extent of his disloyalty that she would discover in time, would have shocked even a more experienced woman. Her reaction was shocking, but it was entirely in character.

And then came the letter.

“His letter left me dazed for several days. I could not believe that Cullum had gone out of my life for ever, not that he was the contemptible romancer and cheat that life had suddenly proved him, I only knew that I wanted him. My mind recognised that he was worthless, my whole body was crying out for him; reason has no more power to recall love that to bestow it.”

After that the story fell away, with Esther’s voice muted as she just carried on. Until a rather melodramatic ending brought Cullum’s story to a firm conclusion.

It was a wonderful story, told with passion but with not an ounce of sentimentality.

The only real weakness I saw was the author’s inclination to shock. There are just one or two moments that jar in this book, but I know that others have found that shock tactics completely undermines some of her later work. Such a pity because she writes so well, and showed such great promise in this first novel.

Cullum himself I am happy to forget, but the book that bears his name and its distinctive, modern heroine have left their mark.… (mehr)

Ordinary Families is the story of an English family living in the small village of Pin Mill. Lallie is one of four children to a former adventurer, and they spend their days boating and hunting in Suffolk.

This is one of those classic coming of age stories in which one girl struggles to figure out her place in a large family, overshadowed as she is by her beautiful older sister. I liked Robertson’s descriptions of the family, especially Lallie and her father, but I also thought her descriptions of the family’s boating excursions were a bit, er, overboard at times. Robertson is good at character development and exploring the relationships between the various family members. It’s also very frank, for the 1930s, about various aspects of growing up. Because the plot moves along at a very slow pace, it’s very hard to follow at times.… (mehr)