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A Table of Contents should be one of the few things in life that need no explanation, yet, even so, I cannot resist the urge to explain it. Thus: Margery's biography is all too brief. There are the usual short sketches in 'Who's Who', etc., but even there it seems Margery kept her cards close to her chest, and finds rather adroit ways of dodging the simplest of questions. This section could expand later, as more detail is gathered. Naturally, if anyone has information they would like to add to the narrative, I would appreciate the input. In the 'Margery on' headings, you'll find excerpts on common themes that I couldn't resist pointing out. Even in the mundane, if we can find insight into the mind and heart of a favorite author, we snatch them up--much as the jackdaw seizes on little glittering trifles to weave into his nest. These common themes--in a writer as diverse and unpredictable as Margery Sharp--tell us something about the writer of those themes, and thus provide us with a brief glimpse, here and there, of the true Margery. |
| A Brief Biography |
| General Comments on Her Work |
| Margery on Men |
| Margery on Words |
| Margery on Romance |
| Margery on Bathrooms |
| Margery on Beautiful Women |
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"Between Tea
and Dinner Is A Good Time to Write" All this while making a very good living at doing what she loves. While she never doubted she would become a writer, she does confess--tongue in cheek--to a secret desire to have been a parlormaid, because of her "passion for housework, gossip and cups of tea." It's her light and tender--almost gossipy--approach to the intricacies of human nature that has given us the delights of character who dance across her pages to a quick and nimble music. From Miss Phoebe Pomfret, Miss Pickering and Professor Pounce, to the Misters Partridge, Porrit and Pennon, to, finally, the ineffable Miss P--Margery Sharp makes us love these whimsical snippets of humanity, and, sometimes, in an illuminating twist, makes us see ourselves. But who really was Margery Sharp? There are a few facts we can gather--facts that only tantalize us for want of more detail. She was born Clara Margery Melita Sharp, on
January 25, 1905 , the third daughter of J.H. Sharp, in the district
of Salisbury, southern county of Wiltshire, England. She attended Chiswick House High School, Malta in
the years 1912 and 1913, and Streatham Hill High School 1914-1923.
Her years in Malta offer arguable proof that some events and
certainly many feelings in her novel 'The Sun in Scorpio' were
drawn from experience. One can conjecture, also, from the painfully
realistic picture depicted in the same novel, that this transition
from the hot and sunny island back to the cold, gray shores of
Britain was not a happy one."[she was] a little beast
desolate and disconsolate; a little beast curling in upon itself
like an armadillo." While her birthplace was in southern England,
her family originated from northernYorkshire, known for producing
inhabitants of thrift, brevity, and a capable, no-nonsense approach.
This suggests first-hand experience with the type of man--George--described
in 'Rosa': "the same blooms grew outside George's house.
It was a variety of hibiscus; its peculiarity that each scarlet
trumpet-shaped flower lived but a day. To begin with this rather
irritated George, it struck him as feckless even in a vegetable,
and punctually every evening he tidied up by nipping the limp
corollas before they fell." It is also in relation to
George that she quips "A Yorkshireman's vocabulary of
endearments is small." She began her writing career at the age of twenty-one as a contributor to Punch. A series of letters to Ms. Sharp from Sir Owen Seaman, editor at Punch during these years, reveal that, while her work was not immediately accepted by Punch, its editor took a kindly and encouraging interest in her. The first of these letters, beginning in 1926, begin 'Dear Madam', and this more formal address eventually becomes 'Dear Miss Sharp'. One such early letter--surely the very gentlest of rejection slips--reads: 'Dear Madam, I am sorry that owing to a plethora of accepted verses I am unable to find room for your pleasant 'Triolets." But I do not wish you to regard this occasion as a discouragement against submitting further contributions. Yours faithfully' The helpful Sir Owen, in June of 1927, also suggests an alternate title to a submitted short story. He likes the story idea, he writes, but not the title. Perhaps, he offers hesitantly, ' The Ambiguous Symptoms'--? We might wonder if 'The Ambiguous Symptoms' ever made it to press--and only archived copies of Punch would tell--but it certainly sounds like a story Sharp enthusiasts would enjoy! Margery was to eventually publish many times with Punch, as well as to such diverse publications as the Encyclopedia Britannica, Strand magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies' Home Journal, Harper's, Woman's Home Companion, Harper's Bazaar, Fiction Parade, among others. She contributed mysteries to a 'Mystery and Adventure Stories for Girls', edited by Eric Duthie, as well as to an Ellery Queen collection of mysteries. She also serialized novels to ladies' magazines--the 'The Foolish Gentlewoman', 'Something Light', among others. One story, 'The Notorious Tenant', was published in Colliers magazine, February, 1956. It quickly went from magazine to screenplay to the movie, 'The Notorious Landlady', starring Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak. Other book-to-movie successes were 'Cluny Brown' (starring Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer) 'Britannia Mews' (starring Maureen O'Hara and Dana Andrews) and 'The Nutmeg Tree' (called 'Julia Misbehaves' and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon) besides the ever popular 'Rescuer' series, as animated by Disney. The fact of two continents fighting for her film rights she seemed to take in her stride with her usual common-sense approach. Far from being a fussy, possessive novelist when it came to screen adaptations, she was no doubt every director's dream of the perfect author to work with: "I know nothing about film-making. It is a different craft from mine, and it should be left to those who understand it. Why should I interfere?--It would only worry me." Her writing habits were disciplined, her focus clear, her mental poise seemingly unhindered by outside circumstances. She had early on planned to be a writer, since the age of seven, when she put down on paper what her first fireworks looked like. It was always her intention to support herself with her writing, "writing by design" as she terms it. As a young typist sharing a flat with two other working girls in Craven Road, Paddington, Margery set her goal at making 3 (pounds) a week, 12 (pounds) a month. This, apparently, came readily with the sale of one short story a month. With typical Yorkshire thrift employed, there came the time when she was a bit ahead in her finances, and could afford the luxury of settling down to write a novel. Her first effort, 'Rhododendron Pie', was written in one month. She allowed herself a month to work on it, because "that seemed a suitable time to spend over a book." Far from having 'a room of her own' to work in, the modestly successful first novel was written with the other girls around her in the flat doing their jobs, dressmaking, talking to friends. "That never worried me," she says. In fact, of that period in the Paddington flat, she says, "we lived wonderfully. It was a most agreeable time." "Fortunate The Country (Also the Wife) Which Has No History" During the war she served as an Army Education Lecturer, and was described as a 'demon for work'. She traveled far and wide as a lecturer, and the hours were sometimes grueling. Ten talks a week, two a day for five days--this accomplished while maintaining a schedule of touring gun sites and searchlight posts. Many of her lectures were on America and the Americans, and she is described as saying about the Americans that 'she likes them very much'. This particular routine she kept up for over three years during the war, but she never stopped writing. 'Cluny Brown' and much of 'Britannia Mews' were written in hotels, much of the time surrounded--again--by the noisy hubbub of daily life. In all of this she used a typewriter for her final drafts only--she hated typewriters--never used a secretary, and every word of her novel was written in longhand at least three times. Living through the bombing of London--with sardonic and stiff upper lip bravery--had its effect on her writing, as can be imagined. Through her character Dodo--in 'Britannia Mews', she re-lives the fear and the bravado once again as shattered glass and bits of broken wood rain down upon their heads '"Never mind, Uncle Treff," shouted Dodo. "We'll die with each other!" In the silence that followed they stared at each other with instinctive repudiation, aversion almost: they didn't want to die together; they resented, each of them, having no one better with whom to share this supreme intimacy....'" Much more could be written about
the effect of the wars--specifically World War II--on Margery
and her writing. She herself wrote of it with matter-of-fact
clarity; her descriptions of bravado or sacrifice were drawn
without sentiment. But it was obvious she was a patriot, and
proud of the tenacity of her people. From the genteel world of
butlerdom in the country (the irrepressible Mr. Weaver--Lady
Jean's butler who manages to serve tea with aplomb despite a
severed artery' "Wonderful old chap," said Dr. James,
looking after him. "But then the country's chock-a-block
with wonderful old chaps.." ') to the seamy side of
London and the two prostitutes Olive and Sylvia, who contributed
to the war effort by 'gallantly working overtime'--Margery
speaks of them all with pride. In 1938 she married Major Geoffrey Castle, an aeronautical engineer. Perhaps Margery was anticipating her handsome Major when she wrote (1937, The Nutmeg Tree) 'An aquiline nose was one of her weaknesses, and Sir William's was a real beak.' Or perhaps he provided at least some of the model for the incomparable Captain Hugh Brocard in 'Harlequin House.' (published post-marriage1939) "The mantelpiece clock struck three. Captain Brocard swung round, alert and soldierly." Although poor Hugh, for all his handsomeness, didn't get the girl in the end, whereas Margery describes she and the Major as 'living happily ever after.' On warm, fine Sundays, the couple could be seen strolling through St. James' Park, not far from their residence at the Albany, just off Piccadilly. The same exclusive residence--called 'a stronghold of post-Edwardian bachelordom'--had housed such literary figures as Byron, Lytton, Gladstone, and Priestley. Margery was one of the few women residents, (Georgette Heyer was another one) and this fact could, perhaps, explain her tendency to write her stories from the male perspective. "Does One Ever
Get Where One Wants to Get?" Thus one must wonder how troubling it would have been to her to have her work described by some critics as frilly, frothy, spun sugar escapism; her characters as brittle or shallow. Almost all writers long to do serious work, they want to 'grow up' into their craft. Did Margery's recognition that her true gifts were in the arena of light comedy come willingly, or was it tinged with regret? Did she secretly long to write a Tolstoyan epic, or a soul-cleansing tragedy that would rival Shakespeare? Perhaps 'Britannia Mews' or 'The Innocents' was her attempt to answer some of the dismissals of her work as froth and frill. Perhaps 'Summer Visits' and 'The Sun in Scorpio' were faint echoes of the great novels by Huxley, Wells and Lawrence--novels that chronicled the death of the English country house and all its world-weary emblems. It is all too often the case that the full weight of a writer's contribution and significance is never accurately measured in their own time, and even were this not true, it is the nature of the artist to be plagued with self doubt. Subjectivism is nowhere more evident than in the world of literature, and perhaps Margery--with her brisk, unsentimental view--was fully acceptant of that fact. It's quite possible she took in the quicksilver change of critical opinion with a Mr. Partridge-like philosphy: "It's like this: there's times when civilization--all over machines and by-laws--annoys me. I like to diddle it. And in my quiet way, I do." Margery died in March of 1991, having lived, as she describes it, "happily ever after." |
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Margery Sharp was a keen observer of the human comedy; her humor astringent but always humane, with a neatly spare and deft style for recording her observations. Her wit is nimble, sometimes breathtakingly funny or tender, her situations range from the madcap and zany to the painfully realistic. Her plots are rarely predictable, but her surprises are never bitter ones. It is obvious that she loves people; equally
obvious that she understands them very well and forgives them
a great deal. What she wrote of her character Janet in the short
story 'At the Fort Flag', could be said of her as well: She was impatient with pretension--"jettisoned meaningless social impositions" as one commentator put it--but she was still generous in her portrayals. Just as Louisa Datchett (in 'Something Light') could feel sorry for her rival, the pretty and helpless Enid Anstruther--we feel sorry for Enid, as well, and forgive her her petty social pretensions. Next to her perfect profile, it's all she has. Sharp's insights into human nature are, at times, dazzling. Many of her stories are examples of 'the ripple effect', i.e., take one circumstance, innocuous in itself, throw it into the quiet 'pond' of a country house, a circle of friends, a family--and watch the effects. 'The Stone of Chastity' and 'The Gypsy in the Parlor' are fascinating and humorous examples of this psychological study. Her style flows from the seemingly inexhaustible font (and how glad we are of it!) of basic British comedy--zany and offbeat characters operating in a conventional setting. That perfect eye for eccentricity seems natural to any strata of British life. Other authors of the time, such as Thirkell and Delafield, wrote from a more privileged perspective--that of breeding, birth, or intellectual heritage. Miss Read (Dora Saint) wrote from the gentle rhythms of country life. Yet they all share the same basic elements in their writing--of humor and oddity, satire and gentle lampoon--with the pen sometimes sharpened to an acerbic point. Margery Sharp is more street-savvy--her inventiveness and inspiration and observation were fueled by the startling dynamics of city life. She writes as one slightly distanced from country life, and any authenticity of her experience--as in 'Gipsy in the Parlor'--seems to have been provided when she was a child. As an adult she was free to visit her sister's country home in Rutlandshire, but describes it as "much noisier than Piccadilly." The bright young woman with fair hair who grew up in not-quite-middle class London, was a working girl, rich in Bohemian experience. She explored the streets of Soho and ate garlic smeared on bread--she went to crazy gin parties like those thrown by Les Girls--the fun-loving typists in 'Lise Lillywhite'. She knew of the underbelly of London life--and at times rubbed shoulders with the gritty and improvident. "Apparently in London you had to live in a little close group, otherwise you would simply get lost and die of loneliness.." (Rhododendron Pie) She writes from no platform of judgement of any of the characters who cross her pages. From Hugo, the sickly, indigent writer of off-beat plays who is affectionately called a 'brave little twirp', to Count Stanislas, the irrepressible and ebullient king of the London underworld--they are written about with kindness, as though she is reminiscing of old friends. Margery Sharp was certainly appreciated in her time, and there is much critical praise of her work. Many of her books had several reprints--even down to the dubious distinction of a paperback edition with eye-catching torrid cover art that bears no resemblance to the story within. It is to be noted, however, that her last decade or so of writing (excluding the 'Rescuers' series) did not produce works that achieved any great popularity. It is almost as though she poured her amiable sense of fun into her works for children, with less sparkle and wit left over to infuse into her works for adults. While there are certainly moments of the familiar Sharp magic in novels such as 'The Sun in Scorpio' (1965), or 'Summer Visits' (1977), there is also a more caustic and, at times, ribald tone laced through them. Perhaps, as Margery aged, she found less and less humor (and escape) in marching unsuspecting people through the vagaries of war and social change. Thus she turned to writing harmless fantasies, in which wonderful and heroic rescues are performed. The Rescuer series, ironically, became the very books to secure her fame. Avid collectors of Margery Sharp's novels do not just enjoy her books, they sense a deep affinity with the author and feel that her abilities as a writer of humorous fiction places her as one of the best in the field. They find her perspective remarkably interesting, and delight in the undeniable magic of her perfect sense of comic timing. To classify her work as 'light fiction' represents the truth of it, but not by any means the significance. The work of the humorist is an art--one that, as Clifton Fadiman expressed it, "[makes] quietly despairing men suddenly catch a vision of the surprisingness of life, the breakability of rules, the spirit-cleansing power of the irrelevant." We relate to the work of the humorist because he/she deals with reality. They distill their own experience through a fresh vision that enables us to recognize--with a thrill--that it is our experience, too. If it is true, as Marcel Proust said, that 'in reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self', then the task of the humorist makes our touch with that awareness more palatable. We know these people they write of--however removed we are from the era or geography of the story, we welcome the feeling of identification that we can have with the characters. Humor establishes continuity--if we can share a laugh with someone who lived fifty years or two hundred years ago--if we can identify with the scenes or people chronicled there--we have formed a bridge with the past. The resulting sense of interrelatedness can be reassuring. In an ever-changing, sometimes frightening world, this is by no means a 'light' accomplishment. So even while we laugh with the humorist, we take their work and their vision very seriously. |
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She is an unusual novelist in that she frequently writes from the male perspective. There are several types and stereoptypes of men throughout her pages--but there is a recurring theme of male disposition that she chooses to tell her stories through, or have featured as a principal character. Sane, sober, and sensible are her men--frequently irritable with just cause--intelligent, not wealthy but comfortable--and they often have some annoying or perplexing or elusive female that has been thrust into their care. Mr. Porritt is vastly troubled by his unpredictable niece, Cluny--and finally gets her off his hands by sending her out into 'good service' in the country. Simon Brocken has The Foolish Gentlewoman, Isabel Brocken--his widowed sister-in-law--who worries him with her quixotic schemes. Mr. Partridge, a kindly middle-aged man of rather odd habits, takes young Lisbeth under his wing in 'Harlequin House'. Mr. Joyce in 'Martha in Paris', 'The Eye of Love', and 'Martha, Eric, and George' could write a book on the care and feeding of Martha. Martin Lillywhite assumes the role of protective guardian and chief worrier over the future of a young and tender debutante in 'Lise Lillywhite'. Margery Sharp could be perhaps likened to her character Louise Datchett--'she was very fond of men.' She almost always portrayed them sympathetically--even the irresponsible and illegal among them. Take Ronny, for instance, in 'Harlequin House'. Couldn't keep a job, landed himself in jail--seemed to give no thought to the fact that his hard-working sister went to great pains and trouble to help him have a decent life. 'It was rather his misfortune than his fault,' says Margery, 'that he could not live on grass or worms or dew, but needed corned beef and bread, to say nothing of overcoats and bedding..' Soon enough he comes under Mr. Partridge's rancorous eye. "You ought to have been a bulb," said Mr. Partridge thoughtfully. "Or some kind of vegetable." Dear Mr. Partridge--his only interest is to look out for Lisbeth.. Now Professor Pounce ('Stone of Chastity') is lovable in a different sort of way. He's a true eccentric, and not interested in anything but his pet project--writing a monograph on the legend of The Stone. But for all his scholarly peculiarities and loopy behavior, we like him immediately--as per Margery's description of him here: "The sensations of the Professor on reading [about the Stone of Chastity] are impossible to describe. He felt (he afterward told his friend Professor Greer) a distinct prickling at the roots of his moustache, as though the individual hairs were erecting themselves one by one; but he carried no mirror, and this ancillary phenomenon had to go uninvestigated while he eagerly turned the journal's subsequent pages." In Andrew (from 'Cluny Brown') we have the
stereotype of the heir to the country house, who--in spite of
his best efforts and interest in The European Situation--is gradually
growing into his role as country squire much as he would finally
grow into a suit that is now out of date. Sharp--in a familiar
theme that is woven through her books--faces off traditional
England with the non-traditional new element--in this case a
Polish refugee. Or, old-fashioned English chivalry meets Continental
quick thinking: '"Right," said Andrew. "At
the moment I've an overwhelming impulse to hit you." And, finally--in Tobias Sylvester, ('The Gipsy in the Parlor') from a household of like-minded men, we have the most prosaic outlook of all: "Dear father, dear brothers -- I'm to be wed Tuesday two weeks. Wednesday two weeks expect me home. The young woman sends her respects, and I have got a ram." |
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'Everything shone' 'Everything dripped' 'Everything sparkled' Her feeling for the sound and texture of words is conveyed tenderly through the medium of the simple child, Antoinette, (in 'The Innocents') whose vocabulary consists of three precious words. '[Antoinette] appeared to like the word [tureen] for itself, for its soothing, crooning sound. ("Tureen, tureen!" I once heard her cajole a hedgehog.) Obviously she made no connection between sound and content; another word she liked was "vermin," overheard during an argument with my gardener on the subject of moletraps. And indeed, for sound, what word is prettier--the soft opening v that begins also violets, and velvet, and voluptuousness, then the tender dying fall that concludes?' |
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'It may be said at once' (to borrow an expression from our author) that Margery Sharp disappoints the romantically inclined reader quite cheerfully. It's not as though people never fall in love in her stories--she just doesn't make it romantic. Sharp's neat, no-nonsense technique--even when relaying the madcap--never unbends for romantic considerations. Her romantic style could be summed up in the quirky catch phrase used in 'Something Light'--che va piano va sicuro--'softly-softly catchee monkey'. In the Sharp world there was a bit of disdain for the usual hearts and flowers approach. As a humorist, she liked to gently skewer preconceived notions of how and why people fall in love. Daydreams of heart-stopping romance had no place in her work. Just as a goose-down pillow has its pricking and uncomfortable moments, romance to Margery was more about the quill than the feather. She had no patience with dewy-eyed beauties as a fit vehicle for story, and her heroines are shaded in 'real life' tones as being slightly loose, bossy, zany, or just bad-tempered. To some readers, her most romantic and fulfilling
scene took place in the final pages of 'Something Light'. But
even there we find a slightly batty, but charming denouement: In 'The Sun in Scorpio', Cathy Pennon, as governess, (aka 'attendant sprite') is left alone for weeks with the man of the house. And in Margery's brisk manner--just in case hope was flaring in the breast of the romantic--she informs us: "It may be said at once that Mr. Lutterel did not fall in love with Cathy nor she with him. The one was no more a Rochester than the other a Jane Eyre." Ah, well. There's still Humphrey and Miss Brown, in 'The Foolish Gentlewoman': "When Simon later saw them sun-bathing side by side, half-naked in the dell, he certainly never thought of Jane Austen; but it was--comparatively speaking--at Miss Austen's tempo that their courtship proceeded." In probably the most well-known scene--from 'Cluny Brown'--Cluny, after a moment of potent staring between she and Professor Belinski, merely responds to his curt directive "oh, get in". She climbs into the cab, and they go off to America together. Neat, simple, direct. "Were they in love with each other," Cluny asks herself afterwards. "[She] could only have answered, she supposed so. All she knew consciously of love were its preliminaries as taught by the movies, and these she and Belinski had skipped: they had met at the centre of the maze, not on its outer rim: they accepted each other simply and finally as the basic fact of their joint lives." Was that how it was for Margery and her Major? Perhaps--as gleaned from these comments: 'In the evening, with her husband, they will sit over a table of chess, backgammon or piquet. "We don't say much," Margery says. "But it puts the pie-crust on the pie, lays up the day..." |
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I couldn't resist...Margery had an appreciative eye for an efficient bathroom, and obviously loved a good soak in the tub. With that assumption, it's no surprise that Cluny Brown had a passion for plumbing, and Martha fell in love--not with Eric, but with his bathtub: 'Not only the full-length bath gleamed vitreous and pale green, but the walls as well; and the entire floor was covered with cork. A pair of beautiful big English towels hung rough and rich from a heated towelrail (Martha put her hand on it). The soap, two beautiful big tablets, one for the bath, one for the wash-basin, was Wright's Coal Tar. "It's the best bathroom I've ever seen," stated Martha formally'. Martha had reason for being susceptible to the seductive charm of Eric's bathroom--she hadn't had a good soak in weeks. As Sharp puts it (obviously from disgruntled experience) "the bathroom was the least satisfactory: flakes of enamel from its antique tub adhered to Martha's behind, also the water was never quite hot--" Again--we find passion and bathrooms linked in 'Cluny Brown'. Cluny is almost seduced by the rotund Mr. Ames when she is captivated by his newly remodeled bathroom. Mr. Ames recognizes an opportunity: "All his aplomb returned as he led her to the bathroom. It was the very place to arouse, as he now urgently desired to do, her wonder and admiration; he had confidence in his bathroom, and he was not disappointed. Before the enormous amber-coloured bath, the amber-tinted mirrors--the oiled silk curtains and innumerable shiny gadgets--Cluny in turn was bereft of speech. She gazed and gazed, till her eyes were like pools of ink. "Nice?" prompted the owner. "Heaven!" breathed Cluny.' |
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Margery, as the artist, was fascinated by beautiful women. As a woman, she was troubled by them. She featured them often in her stories with increasing resentment until finally (in 'The Innocents') she just drowned one. Served up as the most efficient and logical solution to a plot dilemma. Brainless and self-serving was a common theme linked with astonishing beauty. Her remarks in 'The Nutmeg Tree'--regarding a showstoppingly beautiful, wealthy and disgusted woman--are revealing: "She felt, roughly speaking, that while the Disgusted Lady was probably a very disagreeable and useless person, she also made the world a more interesting place. She was a fascinating specimen of humanity, just as the mosquito was a fascinating specimen of dipterae. She repaid to the spectator the trouble she gave to her intimates. In short, she was worth having." Beauty, when not matched with malevolence,
was more often than not linked with gentle stupidity. Isabel
Brocken ('The Foolish Gentlewoman") and Enid Anstruther
('Something Light') were two aging beauties who had no power
to harm and that Margery could feel charitable toward: And of Isabel Brocken: "At fifty-five Isabel Brocken was still a nice-looking woman. The most striking thing about her was her expression, for she nearly always looked pleased; and though this, in 1946, was really but a final proof of her thorough foolishness, some people found her appearance refreshing." Although, poor Isabel--when she was younger and even prettier Simon Brocken merely described her as a 'fluffy-headed nincompoop'. In the delightful short story 'At the Fort
Flag', two exceptional beauties are staying at the same hotel.
One is a predator, the other a dreadful little bore endowed with
a lisp and the name of Smike: "Don't you think it's
a vewwy odd name?" lisped the beauty queen, standing meekly
by Janet's chair. "I mean, Tanya Duval--that's what she
says it is--well, it doesn't seem to match, does it? I mean,
one's Wussian, and the other's Fwench.." And of the delicious Betty Cream ('Cluny Brown') she is given no credit for brains, either, but is richly endowed with an accurate instinct for survival. She is simply a product of her breeding, a particularly lovely cultivar in the genus, 'Country House Gentlewoman'. She troubles her future husband Andrew, however, who so much wants to be thinking about noble things and not be distracted by purely shallow considerations: "Andrew in London was distressed to find himself thinking at least as much about Betty Cream as about the European situation. She was incomparably the less important subject, but she had somehow got into his mind and wandered about there like a child in a laboratory." This is not to say that all of Margery's 'serious' heroines were unattractive. In her early work 'Rhododendron Pie' Ann Laventie was pretty in a dreamy, poetic way, but still paled in comparison to the likes of the ruthless Miriam Oleson. "Miriam Oleson entered. That was what she had been trained to do at her finishing school on the Boulevard St. Germain, and she never forgot." Lesley Frewen, the seamless socialite in 'The
Flowering Thorn', (another early work) is described as very attractive,
but, being the main character, needs to be subjected to a bit
of 'character refurbishment' before we're allowed to truly like
her. Even so, there is the issue of a consummately beautiful
and obnoxious Russian woman to deal with. "But who
is she, my dear?" asked Lesley, a trifle coldly. As well, Lisbeth in 'Harlequin House', and Julia of 'The Nutmeg Tree', as well as Louise in 'Something Light' were portrayed as decently attractive (the recipients of the occasional wolf whistle and predatory male) even more so were they privileged to experience the mystical transforming power of 'the right clothes'. And I would be remiss if I didn't include the one heroine creation in Margery's work who embodied all of the feminine virtues--beauty, grace, breeding, compassion, courage and intelligence, to name a few. But of course Miss Bianca was a mouse. |
