Exciting news: Frances Faviell on BBC1!

I know I seem to be in the midst of another (or a continuing) blog break at the moment. Life remains a bit crazy, but I do hope to be back more regularly in March.

In the meantime, however, Rupert at Dean Street Press has just considerably brightened my holiday weekend (President's Day in the U.S., and a much-needed extra day off) with the news that one of the authors I am proudest of our having published as a Furrowed Middlebrow book will be featured in prime time on BBC1 next week.

Lucy Worsley's latest documentary, Blitz Spirit, will air on Tuesday, February 23 at 20:30 (see here for the BBC page about it). I'm pleased as punch about this, as Faviell's brilliant memoir A Chelsea Concerto has never got a tenth of the attention it deserves, though the ironic kicker is that I don't think I'll be able to watch it myself, at least not immediately! Grrrrr. (If any of you have any secrets as to watching BBC1 from the U.S., do let me know!)

Still, I couldn't be happier that Faviell is getting some just deserts! (I always have to stop and think how to spell that word, since there's a bakery in SF called Just Desserts...). Faviell will be one of six people profiled, all of whom lived and worked in London during the Blitz.

Do watch the documentary, which is bound to be fascinating, and do tell your friends and neighbours about it. And, of course, about the book!

FRANCES FAVIELL, The Dancing Bear (1954)

[Note: We're still travelling in England and Scotland at the moment, but I prepared a few posts to go up in my absence. Please don't be surprised, concerned, irritated, etc. if comments take a bit longer to appear or if I am not replying to comments as I usually do. It will be because I'm busy gazing at Alnwick Castle or Kings Chapel and haven't got round to moderating comments. But please do comment freely—they will appear eventually and I will appreciate them as always.]

The complete and utter devastation of Berlin had shaken me profoundly. Nothing, not even the nightmare journey from Cuxhaven across the areas of blackened and desolated towns and villages, shattered railway stations, and the twisted tortured relics of battle, had prepared one for the dead horror of this city.

Following her harrowing World War II experiences—described in her brilliant memoir A Chelsea Concerto—Frances Faviell moved with her family to the rubble and ruins of war-torn Berlin. The bombs are no longer falling, but the suffering caused by war goes on, and Faviell powerfully details her own experiences and those of the Altmanns, a family she befriends.

The new Furrowed Middlebrow edition of the book

She describes the hungry, increasingly desperate German people and the bureaucracy of the four occupying armies, witnesses the ruins of a once-great city, and learns the horrifying origin of a game played routinely by children in the streets. And she tries to help the kind Frau Altmann as she copes with a son who sympathizes with the Communists, a daughter strategically dating American soldiers for the benefits they confer, and the entire family’s daily struggle for survival.

The Dancing Bear offers fascinating and important personal insight into life in the German capital in its most difficult days. At times, these insights are harrowing to say the least, as when her husband’s aide, Stampie, gives her a tour of the city shortly after arrival:

It had begun with the memorial to his beloved Desert Rats and ended up with the Reichskanzlei, Hitler's headquarters, and each devastated stark ruin seemed worse than the last.

"Sorry I can't take you over Adolf and Eva's bunker," he had apologized, "We used to be able to go in—but now the Russians have taken a fancy to it we can only see it on Sundays in company with the Comrades on their conducted tours!"

It was the last straw when he said ghoulishly, "There are thousands of bodies still in these ruins! But it's over a year ago now, they can't be much more than bones. When we first came the stench was awful—sweet and sickly like cancer—but it's much better now. You'll notice it sometimes after the rain, though! We'll just see the Schloss now and the Dom; they both make grand ruins…"

Sometimes the reader catches glimpses of things they may never have heard about in history class, such as the process of “denazification” that German citizens were required to undergo in order to work for the Allies (“I agreed with Stampie that it was a lot of nonsense, and that anyone could just pay the fine imposed by the Court and still remain a Nazi at heart”). And there are numerous fly-on-the-wall glimpses of what Berliners felt about their city, such as this one:

I closed my sketchbook—it was too poor a light to draw. Lilli asked to see the sketches and exclaimed in delight as she recognized the lovely ruined Gedlächtniskirche and the Brandenburger Tor through which she passed so often on her way to the Opera House.

"I love the Gedlächtniskirche as a ruin," said Ursula, leaning over Lilli's shoulder and looking too. "It was really very ugly as a building."

(Apparently others shared her sentiments about the loveliness of the church’s ruins, since they were famously incorporated into the ultra-modern church built around them, which remains a tourist attraction to this day (better known to us as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church—see below.)

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at night

Faviell must have been at least as alarmed as she was flattered by the presentation of a gift from a woman who obviously hadn’t quite been denazified:

"This," she said, "is my greatest treasure, but if it were found n this house now that my husband is trying to get his denazification through, it might cause trouble for him. We are forbidden to possess these books, you know."

I took the box without opening it.

"I can't like you," she went on. "Life is too bitter for that—but I respect you—and I want you to have this and no one else."

I did not know what "this" was until we got home. It was a beautifully bound book with the gold title, "Adolf Hitler," and depicted in photographs the entire life of the former Fiihrer, from childhood to his rise to fame.

It was a most interesting document, and as my husband said, probably one of very few now in existence, as the Allies had ordered them all to be burned.

One wonders what became of this document? I recall being taken on a tour of the National Archives in Washington when I was still too young to fully appreciate it, and being shown some snapshots of Hitler and Eva—perhaps that collection had similar origins to the one Faviell was given.

An early American edition

Although The Dancing Bear is a bit quieter in tone than A Chelsea Concerto—the Blitz lends a sense of urgency that day-to-day life, even among the ruins of war, can’t quite provide—Faviell’s compassionate and observant eye makes this tale very nearly as compelling. Frau Altmann is a poignant and touching figure, and the books provides some sharp insights into, for example, the scars of war that children carry with them, and the rise of a youth culture in rebellion against the authorities who allowed war to happen (in the latter sense, although the city is different, it’s an interesting companion to Rose Macaulay’s brilliant The World My Wilderness, for example).

But Faviell is also, here as in Concerto, well able to shift gears and note the humor of situations as well as their horror. One of my favorite such passages, and the last I’ll share here, is a variation on the many examples of humorous notices posted on ruins in London:

The Berliners could laugh easily like Londoners, and some of the ironical notices they had put on their ruined homes reminded me very much of the days of our London Blitz.

"All my own work—Adolf Hitler" was one I saw, and "Give me ten years and you won't recognize Berlin. Oh yeah?" was another on a completely demolished home. In spite of the acute shortage of food and fuel and the hopelessness of the future, their spirits rose as the cold gave way to milder days with the promise of spring.

Both The Dancing Bear and A Chelsea Concerto, along with all three of Faviell’s novels—A House on the Rhine (1955), also in part based on Faviell’s experiences in postwar Germany, Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958), are now available as Furrowed Middlebrow books from Dean Street Press. Click below to view all of Faviell’s books on:

          Amazon US or Amazon UK

FRANCES FAVIELL, A House on the Rhine (1956), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958)

[A preliminary plea: In the unlikely event that any of you happen to have a copy of The Fledgeling, discussed below, and your copy has an intact dustjacket, we would be delighted to have a scan of the front cover. We were hoping to incorporate Faviell's original artwork for each book into our Furrowed Middlebrow covers, and will be able to do so with A House on the Rhine and Thalia (as well as the two memoirs), but copies of The Fledgeling are just too scarce and we've had no luck. If you are able to provide a scan, please email me and earn our undying gratitude!]

My favorite of Faviell's original cover art

I announced not long ago that the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint (under the benevolent auspices of Dean Street Press) will be reprinting, this October, all five books by the inexplicably neglected Frances Faviell. As most of you know from my previous ravings, this includes her brilliant Blitz memoir, A Chelsea Concerto (1959), another fascinating memoir, The Dancing Bear (1954), about Berlin just after World War II, and three novels, A House on the Rhine (1956), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958). I've certainly written plenty here about Concerto, but I've never got round to discussing her other books. Dancing Bear deserves a post to itself, so for now I'll just mention the three novels.

When I first picked up a Faviell novel, having read only the two memoirs, I was ambivalent. I knew the author's tremendous powers of observation and ability to capture the irresistible details of situations both dramatic and mundane—from her dog's Hitler-mocking tricks to diving into the ruins of a bombed house—but I wasn't sure what to expect from her as a novelist. In the end, however, although I won't say that any of her fiction matches what she accomplished with Concerto (which was, admittedly, her final book before her tragic early death from cancer, so we can only regretfully wonder what further heights she might have scaled in her work had she survived), these same strengths come through in her novels as well.

I should note right from the beginning that, like Concerto and parts of Dancing Bear, Faviell's novels are a bit darker and grittier than most of the books we'll be doing in the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. She doesn't shy away from the violent or the unsavory, something that is particularly clear from her first novel.

Set several years after the events described in The Dancing Bear, and this time in a town outside of Cologne rather than in Berlin itself, A House on the Rhine (1956) tells the harrowing tale of one large, troubled family nearly a decade after the war's end. Rebuilding is proceeding at a frantic pace, factory work is plentiful and well-paid, and the dark days of near-starvation have ended. But Joseph, who spent most of the war as an Allied prisoner in France, and his enormous brood—his wife having received a medal under the Nazis for having more than 10 children (!!)—are facing new problems.

The family—large and rowdy and sordid—are largely held in contempt by their provincial neighbors, and are known as "the bunker family" because, unable to find housing after their home (along with much of the rest of Cologne) was destroyed, they spent more than four years living in an air raid shelter under Cologne Cathedral. (One of the tidbits stemming no doubt from Faviell's own time in Germany is that bomb shelters were kept open for years after the end of the war, due to the enormous numbers of residents left homeless by bombs. Not a piece of knowledge you'd necessarily come across elsewhere.)

Another original Faviell artwork

As the story begins, Moe, Joseph's wife, an affectionate but slovenly and violent-tempered woman, has been having an affair with their much younger lodger, Rudi; 17-year-old Katie has a 2-year-old son as a result of a fling with a Belgian and is cynical beyond her years; Hank, the oldest son, is a sociopath who endangers several of his siblings by his involvement with a ruthless youth gang; young Carola is recovering from polio in a nearby hospital and may never walk again; and Anna, the oldest daughter, who had a fling of her own and an illegitimate child who died, is now playing it safe with a stodgy older man. And this leaves out the twins, Hans and Heinz, sensitive, intelligent Robert, and younger brothers Karl and Franz Joseph! And it's not to mention Krista, an orphan with no memories of her past, discovered unconscious and badly burned, adopted by the family, and particularly adored by Joseph (possibly not only in a paternal way), who is in love with an American soldier.

It's a dramatic—and sometimes traumatic—story, but one that vividly portrays the love and conflict of a large family bearing its scars from years of war and deprivation. And Joseph's difficulties in coping with the changing political climate and the reality that his teenage children can earn more in the factories than he does, and his attempts to hold his family together against impossible odds, are powerful and heartbreaking.

Also heartbreaking, but on a completely different level, is Faviell's second novel, Thalia (1957), my personal favorite of the three. It’s the story of Rachel, an 18-year-old art student at the Slade who, following a serious illness, is advised to spend a year in a warm climate. Her plans to spend the time with her aunt, who is traveling in Egypt, falls through as the result of Rachel's failure to feel regret for an overly realistic portrait she has painted of the local vicar:

And then I began telling him about the disastrous portrait of our vicar, the Reverend Cookson-Cander. I told him how I hadn't wanted to do it but that my aunt had insisted—of how I disliked the pompous little man—and of how the painting in spite of my efforts grew with each sitting more and more like a disagreeable egg. I could still feel the smart of the furious criticism which had been hurled at me by the admiring ladies of the 'Friends of the Past' circle who had commissioned the portrait from me.

Instead of Egypt, then, she agrees to go to a British community in Brittany as companion to Cynthia, a delicate, temperamental women whose husband is in India (and who seems to be having an affair with a former colleague of said husband), and her two children, troubled 15-year-old Thalia and spoiled young Claude. Thalia, painfully self-conscious and insecure and always having to play second fiddle to her brother, quickly becomes devoted to Rachel. But Rachel's romance with the son of a well-to-do Breton family puts a strain on their relationship and arouses Thalia's tormented jealousy.

Though it's the awkward, emotional Thalia who lends the novel its title, it's really Rachel on whom the novel centers, poignantly telling the tale of her sad first love, her dawning awareness of the vagaries and dishonesties of social life, and the final tragedy she is powerless to prevent.

Faviell's particular strength in Thalia is her characterization. Although not many of the characters are particularly likeable, they are all completely palpable, as if they're standing right next to us. And although Faviell's work is darker, grittier, and a bit more explicit than Mabel Esther Allan's tales of young girls just on the edge of womanhood (my personal favorite being The Return to the West, a Greyladies original from a few years ago), her particular strength, like Allan's, is portraying that volatile, uncertain time and the joy and pain that accompanies first love.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the novel, published in 1957, is set in the mid-1930s. Other readers may not be so oblivious, but it wasn't until a reference to Edward and Mrs Simpson that I finally put two and two together. Near the end of the novel, Rachel reads a news story about "the forthcoming Coronation, with photographs of the little princesses."

My favorite part of the novel (without giving anything vital away) is an excursion Rachel has in Paris among the cafés and artist's studios of Montparnasse. Faviell is excellent at evoking the feel of Paris, and I couldn't help but wonder how much of Rachel's experiences might have been based on Faviell's own. We know that she too studied at the Slade and spent time in France, so the possibilities are intriguing. One rather wishes Faviell had kept a Pepys-ian diary of her experiences.

The conflict between the idealistic Rachel and the cynical older people she encounters in Brittany perhaps led Faviell thematically into her third and final novel, The Fledgeling (1958), which is very much concerned with generational conflict and changing concepts of duty in the social ferment of the late 1950s. As the story begins, Neil Collins is going AWOL from his National Service for the third time. The first two times were because his naturally mild-mannered personality couldn't cope with the roughness and violence of military life, but this escape is largely at the instigation of a bullying colleague who wants his assistance to escape as well.

The only image I have of Faviell's artwork
for The Fledgeling; you can see why we
would need a better image in order to use
it for our cover!

Neil makes his way to London, to the small apartment building where his dying grandmother and his twin sister Nonie live. The atmosphere of the tiny apartment is powerfully conveyed—claustrophobic and hushed, because the nosy/helpful neighbors can hear everything that goes on, and because there is no privacy from the outside world as the window faces onto the street and passersby shout hellos or peer through at Mrs. Collins in her bed. And although Neil's escape forms the surface plot of the novel, it is really the compelling character of his grandmother—raised in children's homes following the abandonment of her parents, widowed, on a pension and public assistance, and at the mercy of social workers who visit regularly—who really dominates. She leads a bleak life, but her spirit nevertheless comes through.

Gruelling as it is, I found Faviell's description of Mrs. Collins's battle with the unnamed disease that's killing her particularly amazing:

In the dreary room in which she was now virtually a prisoner because of her illness, the days ran into night and one sleep into another without any noticeable frontiers. The last time he had come home she had not been confined almost continuously to bed; in between the bouts of pain she had been up and sometimes even out for half an hour. Now like the nights and days, the good bouts ran into the bad ones, and in between the pain there were only the dull bearable intervals when the Monster slept—and she gathered her forces together for the next bout. Before these forces could be fully mustered, the Monster, as she had come to think of the pain which gripped her in his crab-like vice, was upon her again. The very nature of the disease which was killing her made it seem a live evil, a veritable creature there to prey and feast upon her as a vulture will follow the last lagging steps of a wounded man, knowing that soon the final meal will be his.

She fought the pain, not as a disease, but as a personal enemy. When the worst was upon her, her limbs twisted in agony, her face contorted with anguish, she would welcome the Monster grimly. . . . 'Well, old friend, here we are again! All set for the next round ... come on ... come on! ... do your worst ... I can take it. A tough old woman—stronger than any man ... stronger than my drivelling non-stop-talking son ... or my faint-hearted grandson ... come, try me and see ... : Instead of resisting the onslaught she would welcome the struggle, taxing her powers of endurance as long as she could, knowing that when she reached the breaking point and her reserves were weakening, then, and then only would she resort to science, and so escape the final fury of the thwarted Monster in oblivion. The little tablets lay there, regularly replenished. She had only to stretch out her hand to escape the Monster's worst.

Neil's sister Nonie leads a similarly troubled life, caring for her grandmother, working at a dead-end job at a lecherous local grocer's, and in a troubled marriage. Also making appearances are Miss Rhodes—the rather too prim, well-to-do social worker, whom Mrs. Collins accuses of slumming out of curiosity (and nosiness) about other people's lives—and a cheerful little neighbor girl, Linda, who regularly comes crawling through Mrs. Collins's window to chat while waiting for her mother to return home from work.

There is an element of suspense here, as Mike, Neil's sociopathic harasser, appears on the scene and threatens the safety (at different times) of most of the characters. Some of the later scenes, and particularly Mrs. Collins's reactions to plot developments, are entertaining and compelling, but I think the novel's best strength—not surprisingly for Faviell—is its atmosphere, its attention to detail, and its characterization. There are also some interesting descriptions of bomb damage remaining more than a decade after the end of World War II, as in this passage that reminded me of Rumer Godden's An Episode of Sparrows with its children playing in the ruins:

Through the two pots of geraniums, when the light was good, Mrs. Collins could see the piece of waste ground left from the bombing in the war. Tall willow weed and grass grew in profusion amongst the fallen masonry and stones. Most of the rubble had been cleared away—but now, more than ten years after the end of the war, there were still the ruins of some houses, an archway, odd walls, and the deep foundations of what had once been a block of flats. The barbed wire erected round the site did not prevent the children from playing there. They had taken it over as a playground, finding it far more exciting than the streets in which they lived, and watching them at play there had become more than a pastime for the old woman—it had become almost an obsession.

Of course, the year after publication of The Fledgeling, Faviell would hit new heights with A Chelsea Concerto, and would then, tragically and not long after the book appeared, lose her battle with cancer. But her surprisingly dark and powerful novels certainly show us previews of what she would achieve in that book. And they make me regret all the more that Faviell didn't have time to write many, many more books.

No longer a fantasy: the first real-life Furrowed Middlebrow titles (part 3 of 3)

I admit that I'm still reeling a bit from last Thursday's referendum in the U.K., and I considered delaying this post because I wasn't feeling like putting up a cheerful blog entry after such a momentous event. But as some fellow bloggers have pointed out, perhaps cheerful posts and (particularly) good books are what we'll all need going forward after what the Persephone Post rather shockingly called "the most devastating day for Britain since September 3rd 1939." And indeed that statement, poignantly, perhaps makes today's announcement just a bit more appropriate. I've often taken inspiration, in rough times, from reading about the WWII Home Front and how people bravely soldiered on in the midst of terrible tragedy, so I'm rather glad, for what it's worth, that my last announcement is about one of the very best such books I know.

And so we come to the last of the announcements of the new titles being released as Furrowed Middlebrow Books this October. And I've been excited about all of them, but as I hinted a few days ago, this one in particular is a doozy!

The other two authors I've announced—Rachel Ferguson and Winifred Peck—were both included on my initial "wish list" sent to Dean Street Press. But the third author was not. Why, you ask? Certainly not because I wouldn't have been thrilled at the prospect of publishing her. Rather, it was because I had already been in email contact with the author's son, and knew he was planning to release his her work himself. As far as I was concerned, therefore, she was "off the market," and I was resigned to merely looking forward, as a fan, to the release of her books.

But a few weeks after submitting my wish list to Dean Street, I suddenly thought that it really couldn't hurt to check in with the author's son to see how things were progressing. Purely innocently, of course, and with no ulterior motives… Ahem. I sent him an email, asked how the books were proceeding, and just happened to mention our new publishing venture. And to my amazement and delight, within a few days we had his provisional agreement to let us publish his mother's work!

Now, as I said, I love all the authors we're reprinting (or we wouldn't have pursued them to begin with), but this one is particularly exciting. Because if I had asked you all, a few months ago, "Of all the books I've discussed on this blog, which one do you most wish you could get your hands on?", I'll bet a fair number of you would have replied that you wanted the chance to read this author's breathtaking, gut-wrenching, endlessly entertaining memoir of the Blitz in London.

That's right.

I can hardly believe it.

My first batch of new titles contains my all-time favorite WWII memoir—Frances Faviell's A Chelsea Concerto (1959), a book that absolutely deserves to be appreciated as a classic among WWII writings and among memoirs more generally. I reviewed it (and raved about it at length) here, so I won't reiterate all of my passionate adoration, but suffice it to say the book needs to become a movie ASAP. (I'm torn between Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet in the lead role...) 

I was never able to find the original cover online,
but thanks to John Parker, the author's son, we're
able to share it now; it's also an original
artwork by Faviell herself!

To some extent, in fact, the book is already a recognized classic among researchers and historians, many of whom have relied on it for books and anthologies about the Blitz. Most prominently, Virginia Nicholson featured Faviell prominently in her book Millions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph in 2010, Nicholson referred to the book as one of the finest examples of "Blitz lit" and bemoaned the fact that Faviell's books remained out of print. Happily, our edition of A Chelsea Concerto will contain a new introduction by Nicholson herself!

I know a couple of you have managed to track this book down and read it, despite its very limited availability, but I can't wait for the rest of you to have a chance to read it. Inexplicably, there was never even an American edition of the book.

But Faviell's work doesn't end with this one title. We'll also be reprinting her acclaimed earlier memoir, The Dancing Bear (1954), about her life in Berlin (where her husband had a diplomatic job) immediately after the end of the war. Although the bombs are no longer falling during these years, the human drama is intense and fascinating. As in Concerto, Faviell's intelligence, attention to detail, and sensitivity bring the ruins of Berlin, the struggles of the German people, and the sometimes idiotic bureaucracy of the city's various sectors vividly to life. I learned about numerous aspects of postwar life in Germany that I've never encountered elsewhere, and much of it is centered around one German family the author befriended soon after her arrival. Had she not written one of the most brilliant of all WWII memoirs, Faviell would deserve to be remembered for The Dancing Bear.

And I'm delighted to note that Furrowed Middlebrow Books will also be reprinting Faviell's three critically acclaimed novels—A House on the Rhine (1956), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958)—which have likewise been out of print for decades. I haven't yet written here about her fiction, but stay tuned.

Sadly, since Faviell (real name Olivia Parker) died of cancer at the tragically young age of 46, these five titles constitute her entire literary output. I'm delighted, however, to know that we're able to make this underrated author's complete body of work available for the first time in decades.

And that's that! A first rollout of nine titles (plus two related Dean Street Press titles). If your memory needs jogging (and also just as an excuse to see the whole list together, which gives me enormous pleasure), here's the full list of October releases:

Rachel Ferguson, A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936)

Rachel Ferguson, A Footman for the Peacock (1940)

Rachel Ferguson, Evenfield (1942)

Winifred Peck, Bewildering Cares (1940)

Frances Faviell, The Dancing Bear (1954)

Frances Faviell, A House on the Rhine (1956)

Frances Faviell, Thalia (1957)

Frances Faviell, The Fledgeling (1958)

Frances Faviell, A Chelsea Concerto (1959)

Plus, also from Dean Street Press, but not Furrowed Middlebrow titles:

Winifred Peck, The Warrielaw Jewel (1933)

Winifred Peck, Arrest the Bishop? (1947)

After that, our second batch of titles is set for release in early 2017. We have a few titles already confirmed that are among my very favorites (and have been written about here already, though I can't tell you which ones they are just yet) and a couple more authors (also written about) that we're pursuing (wish us luck with rights and heirs!). So, more announcements will follow in due course.

I hope you're even a tenth as excited about these titles as I am.

FRANCES FAVIELL, A Chelsea Concerto (1959)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I often get a bit worked up about how some of the obscure books I write about should be reprinted and made available to a larger audience.  But I don't think I've ever found it so completely astonishing that a book hasn't already been reprinted (and, for that matter, become a classic) as I am in the present case.

This title was actually on my Hopeless Wish List, because it's almost nonexistent in the U.S., and I was amazed and thrilled when the San Francisco Public Library came through for me (again) and found a copy (all the way from Cornell University Library—along with a second book that was also on my HWL, which I plan to write about soon!).  And in my Hopeless Wish List post, I had linked to Virginia Nicholson's letter to the Telegraph recommending this book, and I can definitely add my passionate recommendation to hers.

Faviell lived in Chelsea before and during the Blitz, and became a Red Cross volunteer when the war began.  This status, as well as the fact that Chelsea was one of the most heavily bombed areas of London due to its proximity to the Royal Hospital and major bridges over the Thames, meant that Faviell was often in the heart of the action, witnessing and/or involved in fascinating and horrific events throughout the Blitz.  She was also, due to her knowledge of Dutch and Flemish, extensively involved with refugees billeted in Chelsea, and provides vivid and sensitive detail about the refugees she came to know well.  She even informally adopted the daughter of a German refugee who, early in the book, has a nervous breakdown, attempts suicide, and is thereafter confined to a hospital with little hope of recovery, leaving her young daughter stranded.

A couple of years ago, I was deeply submerged in reading about the World War II home front, and I still love returning to the topic occasionally.  There are an incredible number of very worthwhile novels, memoirs, and diaries by women which deal with day-to-day life in wartime.  (I keep meaning to do a post listing some of those, but it hasn't happened yet.  Someday.)  My favorite has always been Vere Hodgson's wonderful diaries, published as Few Eggs and No Oranges (and available from Persephone).  Like Faviell, Hodgson lived in London throughout the war, and her position as a single, working woman (employed by a charity helping the disadvantaged, which switched its focus when the Blitz began to helping those who had been bombed out) creates a fascinating view of day-to-day life.  On the details of wartime domestic life—food shortages, practical functioning, worries about family and friends, how ordinary people felt about events and leaders—Hodgson's diary is still the best I know.  But when it comes to harrowing details of the human toll of the Blitz, there is no match for Faviell's memoir, and for me it will stand right beside Hodgson's diary.

The book begins with a bit of humor, which becomes increasingly rare as the narrative continues.  During an air-raid drill just before the beginning of the war, the wardens try to maintain discipline, there is much joking, and Faviell's dachshund, Vicky is agitated because her owner is lying in the road, a “casualty.” (By the way, Vicky is hilariously nicknamed Miss Hitler because “I had taught her to stand upright on her hind legs and raise one paw in the Nazi salute when ordered to Heil Hitler and then to fall backwards motionless when ordered to 'Die for England'. She was quite famous for this performance which she much enjoyed giving and for which she received a piece of chocolate.”) Discipline finally breaks down due to a sort of emergency:

Old Granny from Paradise Row left her allotted place and started away determinedly in the direction of her home. 'Raid's still on, come back!' shouted a warden at her. 'Call of nature, can't do nothing about that, raid or no raid,' she retorted, and marched resolutely away.

It’s also interesting to look at the different perspectives from which different writers discuss some of the same major events and phenomena.  Faviell, like other writers, mentions Lord Haw Haw's broadcasts ("far from terrifying his listeners, [he] became a source of vast and unfailing amusement") and the pamphlets with which the government attempted to prepare residents for bombing or invasion ("we went about chivvying one another with the words of the clauses about seeing anything suspicious and Be calm, be quick, be exact became a joke in every place of work or exercise which we had to carry out with the Civil Defence").  She describes Londoners' view of the Battle of Britain ("It gave one a strange, shaking, sick feeling of excitement to watch their every movement as though we were following with rapt attention a mock battle at Hendon, but never before had we seen such a thrilling exhibition of aeronautics!") and her encounter with evacuees while visiting family in Plymouth ("I asked the woman how it was working out for we had been hearing of the troubles of those evacuated and those who had to receive them, often against their will. The farmer's wife, a plump, pink-cheeked woman, said bluntly that 'they be terrible ignorant—don't know a pig from a sheep', but that they were settling down and learning and the boys were helping her husband. She loved them in spite of the extra work they caused her.")

But once the Blitz begins, there is understandably little else for Faviell to focus on.  While Vere Hodgson, too, discusses raids and narrow escapes from bombs, she was never, as I recall, dangled headfirst down a hole in the debris of a collapsed building (in her underwear, no less!) to provide solace and chloroform to an injured man:

As I hurried by she turned, said something to the others, then called to me, 'Nurse!' I went over. The man bending over the hole straightened up, but I could not look at him because of the appalling sound coming from the hole. Someone was in mortal anguish down there. The woman in nurse's uniform, who was tall and very largely built, said sharply to me, 'What are your hip measurements?' I said, above the horrible moaning from the hole, 'Thirty-four inches.' One of the men took a piece of stick and measured it across my shoulders, then across my hips, and then put it across the hole. 'Easy—an inch to spare each side,' he said.

…

'Take off your coat,' said the doctor. I took it off. 'And your dress,' he said. 'It's too dangerous-the folds may catch in the debris and bring the whole thing down-better without it.' I took off the dress. 'Fine,' he said shortly when I stood in the 'black-outs', as we called the closed black panties which most of us wore with uniform. 'It'll have to be head first. We'll hold your thighs. Go down first with this torch and see if it's possible to give a morphia injection or not-I doubt it. Ready?' 'Yes,' I said faintly for I was terrified. 'Better hold the torch in your mouth, and keep your arms tight to your sides,' he said. 'Can you grip the torch with your teeth?' I nodded-it was as if I was having a nightmare from which I would soon waken. 'Ready?' Two wardens gripped me by the thighs, swung me up and lowered me down over the hole. 'Keep your body absolutely rigid,' said the doctor. 'Don't be afraid-we'll hold you safe,' said the large woman. 'I ought to be doing this but I'm too big.'

…

The blood had rushed to my head from being upside down. Fortunately I had done some acrobatic dancing and had been held in this manner previous to being whirled round in the dance, so that keeping my body stiff' was not too much of a strain, but the stench of blood and mess down there caught the pit of my stomach and I was afraid of vomiting and dropping the precious torch. There was plenty of room for my arms at the bottom of the hole so I took the torch cautiously from my teeth and began trying to soothe the remains of what had once been a man.

Difficult to imagine diving (almost literally) into such a situation when one was merely walking along the street toward one's home!  Afterward, she muses:

I lay in bed and I thought of all those times we V.A.D.s had been dropped into holes for the rescue men to practise on us—and I thought of the times my sister and I had had a craze for acrobatic dancing and learned to be held upside down by the thighs or ankles. Who would have thought that such things would ever have been so useful?

There is even worse to come, and what makes Faviell's account so powerful—indeed, so gutwrenching at times—is that she is so matter-of-fact in her descriptions.  Her prose is simple and understated, but wonderfully detailed and unflinching.  Although she does describe her emotions—mainly anger, she says—about the bombing raids and the tragic inhumanity of the Blitz, these observations are in between specific incidents.  The descriptions themselves are hypnotic in their Hemingway-esque approach to even the most horrific scenarios, providing—simply but with amazing power—"just the facts."  There were several passages of the book where I think I became completely unaware of what was happening around me, so lost was I in Faviell's account.  That doesn't happen for me very often.  I remember once when I (someone who hates flying—particularly takeoffs and landings) didn't notice that the plane I was on had actually landed at our destination, so intense was the book I was reading.  That experience has never been repeated, but A Chelsea Concerto came close, since I nearly missed my train stop because of it.

Another element that makes the book so interesting is that it is so grounded in the specifics of place.  Very often, when describing dramatic events, Faviell provides details of streets and sites and proximity to famous locations.  This makes the book particularly come to life for fans of London (particularly Chelsea).  I feel like I'll need to re-read the book before my next trip to London, and make extensive notes for a walking tour of Chelsea! (Oddly, though, Faviell, who lived at 33 Cheyne Place, never mentions that no less a figure than George Eliot had lived for a time at 4 Cheyne Walk, practically around the corner.  I suppose she had more pressing issues on her mind.)

I should say though (if it isn't obvious already) that this book is not for the faint of heart.  A short time after the occasion described above, Faviell's past studies of anatomy cause her to be stuck with the task of attempting to match sundry human extremities left over from a bombing into more or less cohesive wholes so that they could be released to the victims' families.  It's another fascinating, gritty, but absolutely harrowing scene.  This is not one of those humorous, stiff-upper-lip war stories, which may mean that it's not to every reader's taste—but I think it also means that it's a particularly important and valuable document for Blitz historians and those interested in the realities of war.

But lest you think the entire book is equally bleak, there are a few lighter moments, even if the humor is a bit dark.  For example:

During a heavy raid on the Fulham area the big cemetery in the Old Brompton Road received an H.E. bomb, and we were telephoned by friends to come and see the Resurrection there! I did not find it resembled Stanley Spencer's idea of this event at all.

Or, there is this account of an incendiary attack—which seems perhaps a bit more festive than one might expect:

A letter from my mother in Plymouth described one of the terrible fire raids there. From her windows she had a very good view of the distant town and docks. 'It was the most beautiful sight I have seen for a very long time; the sky was alight with dancing lights and they had a blueish green shimmer like a firefly—then a wonderful bright crimson. They came down in thousands—truly like "fire from Heaven"—and everywhere I could hear laughter and shouting as people put them out. While I was watching one came right through the roof of the kitchen and started to blaze on the floor. I picked it up with the tongs and hurled it into the garden where it burned harmlessly on the grass. Another landed on the tiles of the front porch and I reached it with a broom handle and managed to push it over the porch on to the gravel path where it could harm nothing. It was so exciting I and the rain of fireworks was kept up for hours. I stayed up all night in case any more came but they seemed to be dropping them in the direction of the town.'

I was also fascinated with Faviell's accounts of how residents got used to the bombings to such an extent that at times they seem to be rather reckless, as in this account of Faviell and Mrs. Freeth, a neighbor who also provided domestic help:

One lovely sunny morning Mrs. Freeth was hanging out of the studio window cleaning the glass and shaking her duster. The sirens had sounded some time before but nothing much had happened except some gun-fire. Suddenly the noise of planes burst on us and a plane came so low that its shadow could be seen on the sunny studio wall. 'It's a German! It's a German!' she shouted excitedly. 'Look at the black crosses on it—' But now the sound of machine-gun fire and the clatter of bullets was shattering the stillness. 'Come in! Come in!' I screamed. But she was as delighted as if she had seen a rainbow and leaned far out gazing up at the sky. I could not resist joining her. A car came swerving and skidding down the Royal Hospital Road and, pulling up with screeching brakes, came into the archway under the house.

'There's bullet marks all over his roof!' cried Mrs. Freeth.

And here is Faviell with a new sleep-inducing strategy—counting not sheep but bombs:

I was so tired that I fell asleep after counting twenty-three bombs. It was extraordinary how soundly I slept now that the Blitz was on. Before it had started I often found difficulty in getting to sleep—but now I was no sooner in bed than sleep came. I sometimes thought that should a bomb hit the house while I slept thus, I would know nothing and never wake up—and this was how many people died. I had seen them dug from the ruins, their faces peaceful as they lay in their night clothes. It was only horrible when they were laid on the pavement or in the street uncovered, with their faces turned up for all the world to gaze at while blankets were awaited to shield them from the curious.

The book culminates (and I'm not giving anything away, as Faviell mentions it in her introduction) with an incredible, brilliant description of being bombed out herself.  Pregnant with her first child, she must wiggle through a space in the rubble of their house, careful not to bump or move anything for fear that it would further collapse.  This entire scene is the best description I know of the personal horrors of a bombing and its aftermath.  Faviell and her husband walk around dazed, encountering friends who have been told or have assumed that they were dead.  I can't spoil any of this passage by quoting it here, because it is several pages of sustained, hypnotic, unputdownable brilliance and I can’t bear to cut in into bits and pieces.

If you're interested in wartime London, or in the Blitz specifically, I really can't recommend this book highly enough.  I would demand that someone reprint it immediately, but I'm not sure that that would, realistically, produce any results.  Would that I had an actual publishing house of my own instead of the one that exists only in my dreams…  But certainly the book should be widely available and widely read.  Perhaps it would make a perfect companion piece to Persephone's reprint of Mathilde Wolff-Monckeburg's letters, which deal in part with the terrible bombings in Germany?  Hmmm…

*     *     *     *     *

After finishing this book, I did a little more poking around to try to find out more about Frances Faviell.  I knew she had written a book called The Dancing Bear: Berlin de Profundis (1954), described vaguely as an autobiography at the front of A Chelsea Concerto.  But it turns out The Dancing Bear is actually nonfiction, a memoir that closely follows a family Faviell knew in Germany in the years immediately following World War II.  So now that book is on my short list of books to read.

Faviell also published three novels, A House on the Rhine (1955), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgeling (1958).  The first, according to Time, is “a fictional study of a German family falling apart after a half-decade or more of peace and growing prosperity.”  When it was reprinted by Popular Library, the book got a cover which, I suspect, is not entirely appropriate...

The second is about a neglected teenage girl and her interactions with a French family one summer.  I haven’t been able to locate information about The Fledgeling.

And finally, I discovered that Virginia Nicholson had done additional research on Faviell for her book Millions Like Us, about women in World War II, so I have now done what I’ve long intended to do and bought a copy of Nicholson’s book. I can't wait to dive in more fully, but I do know that among the additional information that Nicholson uncovered, sadly, is that Faviell succumbed to a virulent, inoperable cancer the same year that A Chelsea Concerto was published.  One can't help but wonder what other really fascinating and brilliant work she might have done—and whether her literary fame might not have been substantially greater today—if she had not died at the tragically young age of 46.