I Met a Lady

by Howard Spring

In 1916 the impressionable fifteen-year-old George Ledra is sent from Manchester to Cornwall because of his ill-health. Here he meets Hector Chown, a professor of Greek. Hector is living in a derelict house with his actress niece, Sylvia Bascombe and her young daughter, Janet. The story of how their lives become entwined spans the years of uncertainty between the two World Wars and, ever present in the tale, the house becomes a symbol of the fragility of their world.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

HOWARD SPRING was an immensely popular and successful writer, who enjoyed a large following of readers from the 1940s to the 1960s; and though, since his death in 1965, he has become rather neglected, his books are still worth seeking out for their terrific storytelling and the quality of the writing. He was certainly painstaking and professional in his approach. Every morning he would shut himself in his study and write one thousand words, steadily building up to novels of around one hundred and fifty thousand words. He rarely made major alterations to his writings (all completed with a dip-in pen!).
Howard Spring started out as a journalist, but from 1934 produced a series of best-selling novels, the most successful of which were My Son My Son and Fame is the Spur.
He was born in Cardiff in 1889 in humble circumstances, one of nine children and the son of a jobbing gardener who died while Howard was still at school. He left school at the age of 12 to begin work as an errand boy, later becoming an office boy at a firm of accountants in Cardiff Docks, and then a messenger at the South Wales Daily News. Spring was keen to train as a reporter, and was largely self-taught --he spent his leisure time learning shorthand and taking evening classes, where he studied English, French, Latin, mathematics and history. He mastered English grammar by studying a book on the subject by William Cobbett.
He worked his way up to become a reporter on the South Wales Daily News, and then in 1911 he joined the Yorkshire Observer in Bradford. By 1915 he was on the Manchester Guardian –proof that he was a young man with much talent. Soon afterwards he was called up for the Army Service Corps, where he served as a shorthand typist. After the war, he returned to the paper in Manchester and worked as a reporter on a paper that allowed journalists to write and express themselves. In 1931, after reporting on a political meeting at which Lord Beaverbrook was the speaker, Beaverbrook was so impressed by Spring's piece (he described the man as ‘a pedlar of dreams’) that he arranged for Spring to be offered a post with the Evening Standard in London, where he eventually became a book reviewer –a successor to Arnold Bennett and J.B. Priestley.
At the same time, Spring was developing his ambition to become a full-time writer. He thought he could do a lot better than many of the so-called authors whose books he was asked to review! His first book, Darkie and Co, came out in 1932 (in this period he wrote a number of children’s books for his sons), followed by his first novel, Shabby Tiger (September 1934) and a sequel, Rachel Rosing (1935).
His first major success came in February 1938 with My Son, My Son (originally titled O Absalom, but, happily, changed when William Faulkner used a similar title in the United States), and in 1939 he was able to move to Cornwall to become a full-time writer (he and his wife, Marion, eventually settled at The White Cottage in Fenwick Road, where they remained for the rest of their married life). In 1940, his best-known work, Fame is the Spur, the story of a Labour leader's rise to power, was published. This is without doubt a superb novel, and probably the one book by Spring that is still being read more than 40 years after his death.
During the war years Spring wrote two other novels, Hard Facts (1944) and Dunkerley's (1946), and, subsequently he published There is No Armour (1948), The Houses in Between (1951), A Sunset Touch (1953), These Lovers Fled Away (1955), Time and the Hour (1957), All The Day Long (1959) and I Met a Lady (1961). Spring also produced three volumes of autobiography--Heaven Lies About Us (1939), In the Meantime (1942); and And Another Thing (1946)—which were later published in one volume as The Autobiography (1972). His last book was Winds of the Day (1964).
It is relevant to note that many of his books had Manchester settings, which led to him being referred to as ‘The Manchester Man’, and

Reviews

[Charles Rouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to put this. Maybe like this: I want to be the protagonist. Not like the protagonist. I want to be that man. I'll take risk, the heartache, World War II, whatever, that's the life I want. I'll do it. I'll take it. Except of course you can't. But Howard Spring wrote the life that I would live, and likely the life that he would like to have lived, because he didn't live this life either, Spring wasn't an heir, he was working class and lucked out with a successful writing career, but nothing was provided for him that he didn't earn and provide for himself.
The protagonist is named George Ledra and his young life was to intersect with a, I think retired, Professor of Greek, and the Professor's actress niece, Sylvia Bascombe and her young daughter Janet. As the years went on, George and the other three figures interact and come together and part and come together again.
It's a wonderful novel, perfect in it's way, a fantasy in the end of course, but packed and redolent with the reality of a certain time- between the Wars- and a certain place- London and the rest of Britain. I don't know anyone but myself who has read this book. I never cared. It was always my book and my place and the life I would have led if given a chance.
Let us know what you think of it.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

When he was a schoolboy George Ledra watched the recruits of World War I marching through the Manchester streets. His account of his own life; which makes this novel, concludes with the ending of the second war.

Another great and unforgettable novel by Howard Spring.

3* Fame is the Spur (1940)
4* The Houses in Between (1957)
4* I met a Lady (1961)
TR All the Day Long (1959)
TR #1. Heaven Lies About Us (1939, 1940)
TR #2. In the Meantime (1942)
TR #3. And Another Thing... (1946)
TR Time and the Hour (1957)

[Dorcas · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
Howard Spring is a favorite author of mine and I spread his books out since there's a limited number of them and I want to savor them the longer.
That being said, this was not my favorite. It's still good, but it didn't grip me like his others have, but being fair I had to read it over the course of three weeks or so and that spoils the flow.
Always worth a read, just not a "desert Isle" companion.

[joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Strong sense the author is on autopilot. There’s probably a lot of authentic period details in here but picking them out of period whimsy could be hard.