The enchanting Mrs Whipple

Write what you know!

Is anyone else watching Masters of the Air on AppleTV? Just me? in which case I might try to pass this line off as my own:

‘The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel’

This would have been particularly apt if you were a WW2 bomber pilot, especially the extraordinarily brave American bombers who flew high-risk daylight missions for the sake of better bomb-dropping accuracy. But it resonated with me today as I have just finished reading another glorious novel by Dorothy Whipple, The Priory. As the book was published in 1939, Whipple must have been writing in the build up to the Munich Crisis, and finished it immediately afterwards: the plot plunges through the horror of anticipating war, to the uplifting relief of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘Peace in our time’, and ends on a high note. And Whipple, ace storyteller that she is, weaves this into a tale where her characters similarly peer over the precipice of disaster and, finding themselves back on safe ground, determine to live ‘more alive’ than ever before.

Dorothy Whipple, courtesy of the Persephone website

For Whipple, as for so many of her generation, the fear of another war was overwhelming. They had already suffered so much pain, loss and heartbreak. Dorothy Stirrup was born in 1893 in Blackburn in Lancashire, the daughter of an architect. She grew up in a large and affluent family, was educated at Blackburn High School and then sent to France to be ‘finished’. On her return home she took a job as secretary to the local Director of Education. In the first weeks of the War in 1914 her boyfriend George was killed, and Dorothy never forgot him, staying close to his sister Gwen all her life. In 1917 she married her boss, the widower Henry Whipple, a man with a First from Cambridge and some twenty-four years her senior. She had always written short stories for children and had some success as a young girl getting them published in the local press. But in 1927 she had a semi-autobiographical novel, Young Anne, accepted for publication, and continued writing and publishing novels, short stories and memoirs into the 1950s. During the 1930s and 40s her work was very successful, winning praise from critics such as Hugh Walpole and JB Priestley. Two of her novels were made into films. But by the 1950s good old-fashioned story-telling had gone out of fashion. Her husband died in 1958, she lived until 1966. They never had children. The fact that I can put this much on paper, metaphorically at least, and can go on to encourage you to try the two novels I have read so far, is thanks to Nicola Beauman of Persephone Books, who has researched her life and published ten of her novels, two collections of short stories and her diaries. May all overlooked novelists find such a champion!

The Priory is set not in Blackburn, but near Nottingham, where the Whipples moved for Henry’s work in 1925. The couple spent weekends at a cottage on the estate of Newstead Abbey, and this ancient house, attached to the ruined west front of the Abbey, is the building that inspired the book.

Newstead Priory

Whipple writes about families, particularly sisters, she writes about the pleasures and terrors of motherhood, she writes about the decline of the landed gentry and the rise of new money, she writes about love, lust and heartbreak, and most of all she tells stories. All of her characters are carefully defined, sometimes in just a line. There are no ‘back stories’, and yet you seem to know everything that has mattered in a past life. And she writes page-turners: you just want to know what will happen next, in no time at all you realise you care deeply about the characters. I’m not going to give away the plot or the ending of The Priory, except to say that I had a lump in my throat for the last few pages. Read it yourself!

Of course there is much in Whipple’s writings that chimes with my fascination for women’s lives between the wars. The sheer terror of Bessy, the pretty but naive housemaid, when she discovers her pregnancy. The hopeless situation of middle class girls, or girls from families with upper class pretensions, who are only educated enough to find a husband, and are left helpless and penniless when this route fails them. The misery of the poorly-paid dead-end work which is all they can find or are fit for, the desperate hunt for lodgings and the struggle to make ends meet.

Mrs Gaws stood in the room looking round with proprietary satisfaction. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable’ she said, ‘The gas-ring in the hearth is a bit broke, but it lights all the same. The meter’s under the dressing table. The bathroom’s down one flight and the double-yew’s next to it…We only do breakfasts here, as I told you, but you being a stranger I can let you have a pan and drop of milk to hot up if you like? No? All right’… ‘Good night,’ said Christine, closing her door. She was alone. She stood in the middle of the room, unwilling to let it receive her. It looked worse by night than by day. Under the single electric light, the purple artificial silk of the curtains and bedcover gave off sudden bloody gleams. The thin hard carpet was so stained that Christine determined never to let her feet touch it. Under the window stood a gaunt wicker-chair, wrenched sideways, like the skeleton of something that had had a stroke. The dressing table and wash-stand were of stained deal with long white splinters off the edges. There was no wardrobe; only a curtain of bloodshot purple stuff. The room smelt of gas and long occupation.

The other novel that I can heartily recommend is They Were Sisters, written during the War, and dealing with many of the same themes: particularly the helplessness of women whose lives were circumscribed by the marriages they made, and in an age when divorce was practically impossible, how well those marriages turned out. Again there seems to be a touch of autobiography in the most sympathetic character of Lucy, the oldest of three sisters, who had to give up hopes of University to look after the family, and whose very happy but childless marriage to an older man is the necessary backdrop to all she finds she has to do to support the next generation. Dorothy Whipple wrote what she knew, and that’s what makes her books so glorious and real.

In other news, the publishing date of my biography of the Macmillan Brothers, Literature for the People, seems to be getting close now.

This week has been a whirl of chosing illustrations, next week I get to see the nearly-final proof, and in early March I’m booked into a recording studio to read it aloud for its incarnation as an audiobook. As someone who really loves a good audiobook, I find this particularly thrilling. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to be able to share some dates when I will be appearing to promote the book, and it would be really lovely to meet some of you there. Do consider pre-ordering a copy, or asking your local bookshop to stock it.