A Glance at Compton-Burnett
I mentioned the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett a little while ago. Having jogged my memory, I went and borrowed one from the public library: A Family and a Fortune.
Just a flavour: Matty, the younger sister of the family, has been forced by poverty to move with her father into a lodge or cottage on the property owned by older sister Blanche, her husband, brother-in-law and children.
Moving day for Matty and her father. Blanche: "How do you like the little [wall] paper? Don't you think it is just the thing? It is the one the boys have in their study."
"Yes, dear, is it? Yes, it would be nice for that," said Matty, following her sister's eyes. "Just the thing, as you say. For this room in my house, for a little, odd room in yours. It is the suitable choice."
Blanche's daughter, Matty's niece Justine shows up. '"When I am a middle-aged woman and Mark [her brother] is supreme in the home, I shall like nothing better than to have perhaps this very little place, and reign in it, and do all I can for people outside. Now does not that strike you all as an alluring prospect?"
'"Yes, it sounds very nice," said Miss Griffin [a servant], who thought that it did, and who was perhaps the natural person to reply, as the arrangement involved the death of most of the other people present.'
Compton-Burnett came highly recommended by Evelyn Waugh. There is a "modern" or "classic" desire to strip the text down to essentials--maybe not quite no adverbs, but certainly no Dostoyevsky. Sometimes there is no "he said" or "she said" and it is hard to keep track. Most of the action is conversation. As I recall (I haven't finished this one yet) the usual idea is that an extended family keeps re-discovering that they hate each other, yet they stay under the same roof (or in this case, within a few feet of each other) for reasons of finance and convenience.
I read a biography once that suggested that Compton-Burnett's own life inspired her novels, and makes a pretty interesting story itself. Her father made a very good living as a homeopathic doctor. The ancestors before him had pretty much been tenant farmers, or even migrant farm workers (although somebody had been middle-class enough to concoct the hyphenated name). He got to Vienna medical school on a scholarship, then to Edinburgh. He started out doing very well as a "conventional" doctor, but as he dabbled more and more in homeopathy, he was warned by his colleagues, more or less, to give up the three sisters at midnight.
Once he advertised himself as 100% homeopathic, he attracted a ton of patients, and really seems to have helped quite a few of them. The book I read said his treatments are no help to anyone who comes later--there was really no method to them as far as diagnosing a whole class of patients, following up methodically, etc. He just had a feel for what would help.
Anyway, his sudden good fortune left his children in a new big house--in a suburb, not gentrified or even pseudo-gentrified. No horses, as I recall. They really didn't know anyone in this social world, and they probably had little contact with their poor farming relations. So there they were. Upper middle class, or something, but not independently rich. Stuck with each other. Two of the youngest got piano lessons, and practised incessantly. Eventually Ivy, who was older, got to be head of the household, and immediately banned all piano playing--she just couldn't stand it.
It's sad, but it's also funny.
UPDATE: quick bio and appreciation here.
There is a line in Fawlty Towers something like: why go to the local or play golf, when you can drop by Bas's place. A similar thought arises here (as, in a different way, in Jane Austen): why explore Africa or the Amazon if you can become really well acquainted with a somewhat crazy family.
UPDATE: More from A Family and a Fortune. Matty, who is unmarried and childless and now, aging and a semi-invalid, likely to remain so: "Dear, dear, it is a funny thing, a family. I can't help feeling glad sometimes that I have had no part in making one."
The siblings: Justine: "Our mild disagreement now does not alter our feeling for each other."
"It may rather indicate it," said Clement.
"We should find the differences interesting and stimulating."
"They often seem to be stimulating," said Mark. "But I doubt if people take much interest in them. They always seem to want to exterminate them."
Dudley--Blanche's brother in law--learns that he has inherited "a fortune," and the word spreads. The tutor, Mr. Penrose, says he could not stay silent on the news of "the accession of a quarter of a million to the family."
"It is about a twentieth of a million," said Dudley.
"Well, well, Mr. Dudley, putting it in round numbers."
"But surely numbers are not as round as that. What is the good of numbers? I thought they were an exact science."
Matty hurries over to the big house at the news, and wants to hear about "this happy quarter of a million."
"My dear, it is not as much as that. It is not a quarter as much; it is about a fifth as much," said Blanche. "It is barely a fifth. It is about a twentieth of a million."
"Is it, dear? I am afraid they do not convey much to me, these differences between these very large sums. They have no bearing upon life as I know it."
Clarifying what happened: "What did the godfather die of?" said Clement....
"Of old age and in his sleep," said Dudley.
"He has shown us every consideration," said Mark, "except by living to be ninety-six."
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