If
you missed my first post about the marvelous Doris Langley Moore, you may want to go back to it, as in
that post I gave a bit of background about her many other accomplishments aside
from being the author of six novels (and aside from being my favorite new
author in quite some time).
In
that post, I wrote about Moore's final two novels, All Done by Kindness (1951) and My
Caravaggio Style (1959). Those were the two of her books that were most
readily available to me, so I started at the end of her career. Shortly after
finishing those, I was finally able, thanks to Andy, to obtain a copy of her
fourth novel, Not at Home (1948), all
the way from the University of Alberta (apparently the only library in North
America with a copy in circulation, and the same heroic library, if I recall correctly, that provided me with the only copy of E. Nesbit's The Lark then in circulation, so it might just be my favorite library!). Not long after that, a reasonably-priced
copy of her third novel, A Game of Snakes
and Ladders (1938, reprinted and revised 1955), came up on Abe Books and I grabbed
it like a snakebite victim grabbing antivenom.
Every time I read another of Moore's novels, I seem to have found my favorite. That happened again with Not at Home, set immediately after World War II (August of 1945), which follows the swirling low-level dramas that result when Elinor MacFarren, a middle-aged spinster, respected writer about botanicals, and collector of botanical prints and other objets d'art, decides to rent part of her house to Antonia Bankes, an American recommended by her friend Harriet (who, unfortunately, knows Mrs Bankes only as a customer at her antique shop).
Miss
MacFarren is accustomed to being alone ("I don't mind being alone at all.
I was often here alone in the blitz, and I was so frightened of the bombs that
I quite stopped being frightened of burglars."), but needs must and Mrs Bankes
seems too good to be true. She avers a passionate admiration for Miss
MacFarren's beautiful and fragile possessions ("Oh, but it's the prettiest
room I've ever seen in my life!"), promises quiet and care ("'You'll
find me madly careful."), and seems an ideal homemaker ("I like
housework. I've got quite a 'thing' about it.").
But
of course, when something seems too good to be true… In fact, she turns out to be exasperating and
helpless, skilled only in charm, manipulation, and blithely promising anything
in order to get her way. That part is, of course, predictable enough—there
would be no novel if she were the perfect tenant—but what is not predictable at
all are all the intricate twists and turns of the plot as Miss MacFarren tries
to cope, tries to cajole, and finally tries to rid herself of her meddlesome
tenant, all with unpredictable and delightful results. And all while taking up
drinking whiskey…
Also
figuring in the plot are Mr Bankes, a war correspondent traveling with the
Occupation Forces in Germany, who charms Miss MacFarren with his flattery and
his knowledge of her books; Dr Wilmot, her arch-rival in collecting botanical
prints; Mrs Manders, the daily help, who is charmed (at first) into unprecedented
dedication to her job by Mrs Bankes; Miss MacFarren's nephew Mory, a rising
film director entangled with a married woman; and Mory's friend Maxine Albert,
a rising starlet whose down-to-earth, practical approach to life initially
alienates Miss MacFarren and later becomes essential to her plans
to defeat Mrs Bankes.
Doris Langley Moore |
Not at Home is little less than
a saga composed of the most trivial social interactions and conflicts, but it's
absolutely riveting for all that. And who is to say that it's not these trivial
conflicts that form the basis of the larger conflicts on the evening news? As
in All Done by Kindness, Moore is
meticulous in her plotting. The most minor actions lead to unforeseen
complications, and attempts to resolve trivial problems result in webs of
deceit and intrigue. It's such good fun I'd like to pick it up again now and
start reading again.
But by
the time I finished Not at Home, my
lovely copy of A Game of Snakes and
Ladders, complete with a delightful dustjacket, had arrived.
This novel seems to have had a slightly odd history.
In
1938, Moore published They Knew Her When:
A Game of Snakes and Ladders, the third of her six novels and possibly the first in
what might be termed her "mature style" (her ODNB entry asserts that she "wrote six romantic novels between
1932 and 1959," but in fact the term "romantic" doesn't apply in
any significant way to any of the four novels I've read so far). A search for
"doris langley moore they knew her when" brings up this blog as its
top result, which, though flattering, is not terribly helpful to me and
suggests that not a lot of information about the original version of the novel
is available.
With
her non-fiction book The Vulgar Heart
in 1945, Moore switched publishers, and her new publisher, Cassell, seems to
have more actively promoted her fiction than previous publishers had. After
Cassell had published Not at Home and
All Done by Kindness, which presumably found some success, they published A
Game of Snakes and Ladders in 1955, which seems to be a reprint of They Knew Her When. However, at least a
few revisions must have been made in the new edition, as the opening paragraph
makes reference to World War I and World
War II, which could hardly have been the case in the 1938 edition. I'd love to
have a look at the earlier book to see what other changes may have been made,
but alas, copies of They Knew Her When
have virtually ceased to exist. (If anyone has a copy, I'd love to compare
notes between the two editions.)
Publishing
history aside, the story begins with two young women, Lucy and Daisy,
performing with a theatre company in Egypt shortly after the end of World War
II. They are young and attractive; Lucy is sturdy and unflappable, Daisy is
charming but primarily self-interested. They are friends, but of the most
casual kind:
Daisy always found it easy to feel affectionate towards people
who were being actively useful to her, and Lucy could not help liking one for
whom she had done so much: and the fact of their having been chorus girls in
London together was glorified in recollection until it assumed the importance
of a bond.
Having
fallen in love with a well-to-do businessman (or as close to love as such a
practical, in-it-for-herself kind of girl can get), Daisy decides to stay on in
Alexandria after the show closes. Lucy, on the other hand, is eager to return
to England as soon as possible. But her plans are shot when, shortly before the
end of the show's run, she suddenly falls seriously ill. Daisy shortsightedly
has her placed in a private nursing home rather than a (free) public hospital,
with the result that by the end of many weeks of care, Lucy is heavily in debt.
Daisy's businessman pays her bills, and is generously prepared to write off the
money, but Daisy, forever worried about her position with him, makes a muddle of
things by assuring him Lucy will repay it, and promises that she'll stay in
Egypt working for him until it's paid off. This plan is presented to Lucy as a fait accompli, so that despite her
homesickness she is effectively trapped in Egypt.
And
there, over the course of nearly 20 years, she and Daisy both remain, while
Moore's intricate, lovely plot unfolds, building tension and frustration as
frivolous Daisy, the cause of Lucy's problems, ascends the ladder of wealth
first as her businessman's mistress and finally as his wife (though she has a
more difficult time on the social ladder), while Lucy, depressed and
downtrodden but diligent and philosophical about her fate, slaves and toils.
Misunderstandings, deceptions, and self-deceptions abound. Lucy befriends a
silly teenage girl whose father neglects her, and rescues her from her own
naïvete in a fling with a young Italian, a course of action (like many in this
novel) that will have repercussions in Lucy's future.
If
this description sounds a bit like it could apply to Moll Flanders or Clarissa,
this turns out not to be coincidental. On the front flap of the Cassell edition
of the novel is a letter from Moore herself to the publisher, in which she
explains the themes of the novel and sums up her inspiration:
Fanny Burney would not approve of some of my chapters, but it
was my affection for the novels of her school, in which the heroine goes
through all kinds of distresses but emerges in a sweeping triumph at the end,
that made me long to try my hand at the same theme—treating it, however, in our
down-to-earth twentieth-century way.
It's
been a long time since I've read Evelina
or indeed Moll Flanders, though I
enjoyed both at the time (Clarissa
I'm sorry to say intimidated me too much to even attempt), but as soon as I read
this explanation I felt I better understand not only this novel, but Moore's
later work. It helped to bring into focus something that I now see is a central
focus of all of her fiction—the complications and vicissitudes inspired by social
niceties, repressed impulses, the avoidance of unpleasantness, things that are
simply "not done," and—by no means least of all—trivial events and
decisions that lead to completely unexpected results.
Moore
actually highlights her classic influences here and there throughout Snake. How often in fiction of this
period do you find ominous foreshadowings like this one?:
The whole affair had occupied so short a time that one could
not imagine anything serious had been happening. Nor would she have guessed, even
if Daisy had confided in her, that the foolish little drama was destined to
affect the lives of everyone involved in it, herself not less than the others.
And
here's my favorite bit of philosophizing, pertaining to Daisy's attempts at
social climbing, which might have been lifted right out of Jane Austen or
Elizabeth Gaskell:
If we compare the fashionable world to a skating rink where
only advanced performers are encouraged to disport themselves, we may say that
money will purchase a spectator's seat but will not give you the ability to
skate. Supposing you have thoroughly mastered the accomplishment in some other
arena, you are welcome to step out of your seat and take the floor, and the
skaters already there will accept you as one of themselves and even clear a
space for you to cut figures; but unless you are proficient—or can at any rate
flounder very amusingly—you had better keep your place, or you will suffer peculiar
humiliations. Mosenthal never tried to skate. He preferred to sit in a good
ringside position making fun of the people on the ice. Daisy, on the other
hand, was constantly impelled to try her skill, but she was so afraid of
falling that she had a stilted, mincing style which soon gave her uncertainty
away.
With
all four of Moore's novels so far, I have started off not entirely certain, a
little doubtful of whether the magic would happen this time. But I see this now
as one of her great strengths. She seems never to have done the same thing
twice, and when you start one of her books you can never imagine quite where
she's going to take you.
But
Lucy's "sweeping triumph" in A
Game of Snakes and Ladders, and the ecstatic high I received from the
novel's final 40 pages (not to mention the occasional maniacal laughter Andy
heard from the next room), were absolutely on a par with anything I've
encountered in the classics mentioned above. Fanny Burney might have been
shocked, but she would surely also have been proud.
Happily, I've now managed to track down the two most obscure of Moore's novels, her first two, A Winter's Passion (1932) and The Unknown Eros (1935), though I haven't yet got round to reading them. Are they really only "romantic novels"? Or do they have that inimitable Doris Langley Moore touch?
AND, having fallen so much in love with the later novels, I decided a slight splurge was in order (it's my birthday next week, after all), and I gave in to the temptation of an inscribed copy of Not at Home, complete with dustjacket. (It's not the most lovely of dustjacket images, I confess, though it is appropriate, as ceramic cats play a surprisingly large role in the novel.) The images of the front and back of the book that I shared above are thus from my very own copy of the book, and here's an image of the book's inscription.
The name Margaret Canning sounds tantalizingly familiar, but she's not one of my authors and Google is playing dumb about her as well. But I'm delighted to have Moore's signature and to have a physical copy of the book to go next to Snakes and Ladders on the very top shelf of my bookcase!
What a lovely treat for yourself, that copy of Not at Home. This does seem to be quite a find of an author.
ReplyDeleteJerri
Thanks, Jerri. Not exactly the cover I would have chosen, but the book itself is lovely, and it's wonderful to know Moore herself inscribed it.
DeleteThese novels sound perfect for the next set of Furrowed Middlebrow publications!
ReplyDeleteDon't think that hasn't occurred to me, Mary Anne! Hoping that there will be some movement soon on the long-awaited next batch of books...
DeleteYou got "The lark" from the University of Saskatchewan"! I know because I also got it from there and I work at the University of Alberta!
ReplyDeleteI love that you can keep me honest about my borrowing, Donna! And now that you mention it, I definitely recall the Univ of Saskatchewan (I always have fun spelling that--even better than Mississippi). I'm sure I recall borrowing something else wonderful from Alberta though. Hmmmmm, now what was it?
DeleteSo nice to know someone at UA is reading my blog. I hope you don't work in ILL--I'd hate to think I was making extra work for you!
Just had a look back at this blog post because I am re-reading A Game of Snakes and Ladders.
ReplyDeleteHave you read 'A Winter's Passion' or The Unknown Eros? Were they any good?
You're the second person to ask about this lately! I did sample both but didn't finish, though I'm always intending to go back. They are a bit more romance-ish and a bit philosophical, but interesting.
Delete