BARBARA PYM AND HER EXCELLENT WOMEN

Credit: Andrew Whittuck

Lovely essay by Hannah Rosefield on attending a meeting of the Barbara Pym Society in Boston and a peek into Pym's novels.  I have them all, and I've read them more than once, always with delight in her fine prose style and smiles at her wit, which sometimes bites and at other times is tinged with rue.

As Rosefield says, 'Mildred is one of the “excellent women” of her novel’s title: efficient, virtuous and uncomplaining, expecting little and receiving little. Her clergyman father has died, and she lives in reduced circumstances in London, where she works part time for the Society for the Care of Distressed Gentlewomen (“a cause very near to my own heart, as I felt that I was just the kind of person who might one day become one”).'

Pym is quite often not generous to her male characters, as Rosefield says, "The very names of Pym’s male characters (Rockingham Napier, Alaric Lydgate) make it clear that they are better as romantic fantasies than as husbands." My favorite name is Everard Bone, the anthropologist, a character in "Excellent Women".

Rosefield describes the few of Pym's excellent women who marry, as opposed to the many who remain spinsters, as "married spinsters".

BINGEING WITH BARBARA PYM

Recently, I began rereading Barbara Pym's novels.  I have them all, but I was only going to read the one, The Sweet Dove Died, but Pym's fiction is addictive, and I'm now a good way through Excellent Women.  Before the Pym binge is over, I will have gone through all the novels again for probably the third reading.  I Googled around to see what I'd find online before writing this post .  On my second click I struck gold, pure gold at the Guardian - an article on Excellent Women, the very book I'm reading now, that links Pym to Jane Austen.  I'd already made the connection a long time ago, when I first began to read Pym.

Like Jane Austen, Pym painted her pictures on a small square of ivory, and covered much the same territory as did her better-known predecessor: the details of smallish lives led to places that could only be in England. Neither used a megaphone; neither said much about the great issues of their time.

On Excellent Women:

That world of vague longing is described in this novel in a way which not only shows us the poignancy of such hopes, but allows us to smile at them. One does not laugh out loud while reading Pym; that would be too much. One smiles. One smiles and puts down the book to enjoy the smile. Then one picks it up again and a few minutes later an unexpected observation on human foibles makes one smile again.

It is these asides, I think, that make Excellent Women so beguiling.

Oh, but one does laugh out loud, repeatedly, even in a semi-public place.  As I sat in a waiting room passing the time reading EW, I laughed out loud.  Fortunately, I was alone in the room, but I wondered whether the receptionist behind the glass heard me.

Even the names of the characters...

'And Mr Mallett and Mr Conybeare, just look at them,' she went on in a voice loud enough for the two churchwardens to hear.  'It wouldn't do them any harm to soil their hands with a little honest toil.  Teddy Lemon and the boys put up all the trestles and the urns.'

'Yes, Sister, we found everything had been done when we put in an appearance,' said Mr Mallett, a round jolly little man.  'It was quite a blow, I can tell you.' 

Mildred Lathbury, the first-person narrator, is having lunch with Everard Bone, an anthropologist, who had just returned from an archaeological tour holiday visiting caves in the Dordogne. 

'There are stone circles in Brittany, aren't there?' I began, trying to show intelligent interest.  'And then of course there's always Stonehenge.'  I remembered that my father had been interested in Stonehenge, and I seemed to see us all sitting round the dinner-table, my mother, father, a curate - I could not remember which curate - and a canon and his wife.  We were having a conversation about Stonehenge and suddenly all the lights had gone out.  The curate let out a cry of alarm but the canon's voice went on without a tremor - I could hear it now - just as if nothing had happened.  My mother got up and fussed with candles and the canon went on explaining his theory of how the great stones had been carried to Salisbury Plain.  It was an impressive performance and had been rewarded, or so it seemed to me, by a bishopric not long afterwards.  Thinking about it after all these years, I smiled.

'Yes, there's always Stonehenge,' said Everard rather stiffly.

I remember a conversation when I was in England last year about what a group of us would do on the day we met together.  One person in our group said, 'Can we not go to Stonehenge?'  All of us had seen Stonehenge, and we agreed that none of us were particularly eager for another visit.  Not that there's anything wrong with Stonehenge...

Mildred reminds me of myself in the way her mind drifts from the present moment to a time past and then responds to the memory with some sign, such as a smile, before drifting back to the present.

On marrying:

'Perhaps one shouldn't try to find people deliberately like that,' I suggested.  'I mean not set out to look for somebody to marry as if you were going to buy a saucepan or a casserole.'

'You think it should just be left to chance?  But then the person might be most unsuitable.'

The idea of choosing a husband or wife as one would a casserole had reminded me of Rocky's letter and his allegation that Everard had broken one of his casseroles.  I suppose a smile must have come on my face, for he said, 'You seem to find it amusing, the idea of marrying somebody suitable.'

Oh no.  I was somewhere else. 

I look forward to my binge.  I'd forgotten what a delight it is to read Barbara Pym.  Most of her novels are available at Amazon, and Excellent Women is on Kindle.