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Barnham Rectory
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 23, 2018
Un-put-down-able. A splendid novel about the village and its doings and problems, and the idiocy of the tithe system, along with a very human story of the rector and his family in their poverty, with their determination to do some good.
December 1, 2025
It was the front cover that attracted me to my first Doreen Wallace which I read a few months ago - a delightful vintage drawing of the Suffolk farmhouse that was the setting for her novel “The Younger Son”.
I enjoyed that novel hugely and I’ve been looking forward ever since to reading “Barnham Rectory” which I saw advertised on the back of “The Younger Son”. My copy of “Barnham Rectory” doesn’t have a pretty drawing on the front cover but that’s because it’s a re-print in the early Penguin format - which shows just how popular this novel once was (including as the Book Society Choice for September 1934).
It’s a perfect story for the run-up to Christmas - an account of the ups and downs of village life in rural Suffolk in the early 1930s. The action’s mostly centred around the rectory and the rector’s household. This includes:
- Rev Austin Mapperly, the rector of Barnham - loyal, kind hearted and progressive (his children call him by his first name) but also hopelessly disorganised and naive. He genuinely tries to live according to his religious principles of poverty and universal equality (“I believe in the people, and that includes all sorts” p44).
- Audrey, the rector’s daughter, who returns home from university to sort out her father’s disorder. With striking good looks and breezy self-assurance, bossy and opinionated Audrey is “the stuff of which Girl Guide captains are made” (p45).
- Thomas Mapperly, Austin’s 19-year old son - world-weary, remote and self defined by his disability (a gammy leg) which makes him “a young Byron, but without genius” (p8). His single interest in life is playing the piano - oh, and people watching.
- The rector’s wife, Catherine, who died giving birth to Thomas.
- Margaret, the slovenly, lazy housekeeper who’s “almost incapacitated by stoutness” (p11).
- Grace, the rebellious young housemaid, who’s sacked by Audrey for not calling her father the rector “sir” (p60) - something Audrey has no problem at all squaring with her Socialist conscience.
- Jerry Boast, the rector’s young gardener, quiet, capable and conscientious - entirely and hopelessly devoted to Audrey Mapperly.
- Emmie Ribbons, the innocent new housemaid fresh from the orphanage at four shillings a week, who learns tragically what it means to be only ever second-best in Jerry Boast’s affections.
Other characters in the village include:
- The rector’s brother-in-law, shy, conscientious and squint-eyed Squire Gifford Towneley-ffollett who lives at Barnham Hall and disapproves of Austin’s politics and way of life.
- Annie Boast, Jerry’s blowsy young stepmother with her boisterous brood including four babies all below school-age.
- Old Boast, Jerry’s father - bawdy, tipsy and lazy (“from sloth of mind and disinclination to work he had developed more markedly than most farm-workers the characteristic shuffling splay-footed walk” p33).
- The plump and prosperous widow, Mrs Wilmslow, vague but kindly (“She was always slow at seizing people’s points, and especially so if anything but sweet benevolence was intended” p265).
- Mrs Wilmslow’s “devastatingly beautiful” son, Alan - fair and athletic “and with just that touch of harmless idiocy in his manner that gives the public-school-and-university product its characteristic charm” (p55). His sense of proportion and good humour irk Audrey who is deficient in both.
- Mrs Munchback, the blacksmith’s wife, who has psychotic incidents and “has to be put away every time she has a baby” (p48).
- Mrs Palliser with her fussy embroidery, retired years ago from suburban Chislehurst to Suffolk but still an outsider (“She had almost given up wondering how long one must live in East Anglia before either the gentry or the cottagers would take notice of one” p219).
The main theme of the novel is the friction between people which crops up everywhere throughout the story. For example:
- There’s constant passive-aggressive tension between Thomas Mapperly and his father, Austin. Feeling he’s a grave disappointment to his father, the son uses his disability to deliberately under-achieve. Yet he still craves his father’s approval (“Obscurely he was trying to justify himself against an accusation that had never been made” p27).
- Austin and his daughter are just too alike in their idealistic temperaments for friction not to exist. From the moment Audrey returns home, “the trend of her reforming zeal” (p42) awakens a “faint troubling of hostility in him; a new feeling and a dreadful one, but undeniable” (p41). The main difference is that Austin trusts in life experience and compromise whilst his daughter relies on her forcefulness and cleverness.
- Brother and sister are similarly irreconcilable. “Thomas and Audrey would not agree. The fault, of course, was Thomas’s; yet perhaps Audrey did not make enough allowances” (p46).
- The ruling classes - defined ironically by their “wit and detachment, learning and poetry” - are instinctively patronising and supercilious towards the “lower classes” who “answer bells and mind machines” (p135).
- In turn, the wives of the village tradesmen despise the class beneath them (“Them labouring women is too big for their boots nowadays, I grant you” p84).
- Housekeeper Margaret, useless and chaotic herself, takes it out on poor, passive Emmie, “using to the full all her limited power over a fellow-servant at once younger and less efficient than herself” (p105).
- And of course, there’s the unbridgeable class rift between posh Audrey and labouring adonis, Jerry - she “in her enchanted grove, and he tending the flowers before her shrine” (p154).
Other themes in the novel which are clearly close to Doreen Wallace’s own heart include:
- The impact of the world-wide Great Depression on East Anglia, where the local market town is “peopled principally by the unemployed” (p40) and where “for several years now the corn crops had been valueless” (p118).
- The injustice of the Tithe System - a tax that ordinary people have to pay to support their local vicar and his family (“I don’t like to feel I’ve been having my College fees paid by such a stricken community,” (p43) admits Audrey, although her conscience doesn’t actually stop her from accepting the payments.)
- The plight of older unwanted women (“No one else would employ her; preference would be given to the young and slim” p41).
Other things I learned from the novel included:
- The word “rachitic” (p9) to describe Thomas’s disabled condition (apparently it means rackety - or quite literally, rickety, in the sense of having weak, deformed bones caused by rickets).
- The rectory has a bathroom but no laid-on running water (not at all unusual as apparently in the 1930s “it was something, in East Anglia, to have a bathroom at all” p11).
- The impact of the “Talkies” on cinema pianists (“Mechanical music everywhere now. Hundreds of musicians (so-called) out of work” p45).
- The old-fashioned pub game that I thought was called pin-ball went under the brand of “Corinthian Bagatelle” in the 1930s and was even supplied to the Royal Household. Amiable Alan Wilmslow brings his board along to the village summer-show hosted at the rectory (p87).
- The golden rule in charity circles that “You may not speak sharply to voluntary “helpers”, however misdirected their help” (p100) - a rule that bossy know-it-all Audrey ignored at her peril - remains as relevant today as ever.
- That “purposeful people” engaged on “great projects” (aka “reformers and zealots” and do-gooders like Audrey!) generally lack “a sense of humour and a sense of proportion” (p197).
I enjoyed this novel enormously. I love Doreen Wallace’s gentle humour and irony as she affectionately probes the inner thoughts of her characters, sympathetically exposing their uncertainties and weaknesses.
Who hasn’t had to bite their lips when some “I know best” type swans in and takes over? (Audrey Mapperly) Or felt frustration with people who ponder endlessly without ever making a decision? (her father, Austin) Doreen Wallace’s delightful exposure of these universal types made me think of Trollope and his Barsetshire characters.
And the tragic melodrama of the doomed lovers in the final chapters very much reminded me of Thomas Hardy with nature hostile and heedless to human troubles.
Reading this novel at the end of the year, I also especially enjoyed the lyricism of the turn of the seasons as the backdrop to the story. The calendar of spring planting, summer garden parties (rained off!), harvest homes and frozen winters continues endlessly and reassuringly, regardless of all the human drama which we think so important and really isn’t …
I enjoyed that novel hugely and I’ve been looking forward ever since to reading “Barnham Rectory” which I saw advertised on the back of “The Younger Son”. My copy of “Barnham Rectory” doesn’t have a pretty drawing on the front cover but that’s because it’s a re-print in the early Penguin format - which shows just how popular this novel once was (including as the Book Society Choice for September 1934).
It’s a perfect story for the run-up to Christmas - an account of the ups and downs of village life in rural Suffolk in the early 1930s. The action’s mostly centred around the rectory and the rector’s household. This includes:
- Rev Austin Mapperly, the rector of Barnham - loyal, kind hearted and progressive (his children call him by his first name) but also hopelessly disorganised and naive. He genuinely tries to live according to his religious principles of poverty and universal equality (“I believe in the people, and that includes all sorts” p44).
- Audrey, the rector’s daughter, who returns home from university to sort out her father’s disorder. With striking good looks and breezy self-assurance, bossy and opinionated Audrey is “the stuff of which Girl Guide captains are made” (p45).
- Thomas Mapperly, Austin’s 19-year old son - world-weary, remote and self defined by his disability (a gammy leg) which makes him “a young Byron, but without genius” (p8). His single interest in life is playing the piano - oh, and people watching.
- The rector’s wife, Catherine, who died giving birth to Thomas.
- Margaret, the slovenly, lazy housekeeper who’s “almost incapacitated by stoutness” (p11).
- Grace, the rebellious young housemaid, who’s sacked by Audrey for not calling her father the rector “sir” (p60) - something Audrey has no problem at all squaring with her Socialist conscience.
- Jerry Boast, the rector’s young gardener, quiet, capable and conscientious - entirely and hopelessly devoted to Audrey Mapperly.
- Emmie Ribbons, the innocent new housemaid fresh from the orphanage at four shillings a week, who learns tragically what it means to be only ever second-best in Jerry Boast’s affections.
Other characters in the village include:
- The rector’s brother-in-law, shy, conscientious and squint-eyed Squire Gifford Towneley-ffollett who lives at Barnham Hall and disapproves of Austin’s politics and way of life.
- Annie Boast, Jerry’s blowsy young stepmother with her boisterous brood including four babies all below school-age.
- Old Boast, Jerry’s father - bawdy, tipsy and lazy (“from sloth of mind and disinclination to work he had developed more markedly than most farm-workers the characteristic shuffling splay-footed walk” p33).
- The plump and prosperous widow, Mrs Wilmslow, vague but kindly (“She was always slow at seizing people’s points, and especially so if anything but sweet benevolence was intended” p265).
- Mrs Wilmslow’s “devastatingly beautiful” son, Alan - fair and athletic “and with just that touch of harmless idiocy in his manner that gives the public-school-and-university product its characteristic charm” (p55). His sense of proportion and good humour irk Audrey who is deficient in both.
- Mrs Munchback, the blacksmith’s wife, who has psychotic incidents and “has to be put away every time she has a baby” (p48).
- Mrs Palliser with her fussy embroidery, retired years ago from suburban Chislehurst to Suffolk but still an outsider (“She had almost given up wondering how long one must live in East Anglia before either the gentry or the cottagers would take notice of one” p219).
The main theme of the novel is the friction between people which crops up everywhere throughout the story. For example:
- There’s constant passive-aggressive tension between Thomas Mapperly and his father, Austin. Feeling he’s a grave disappointment to his father, the son uses his disability to deliberately under-achieve. Yet he still craves his father’s approval (“Obscurely he was trying to justify himself against an accusation that had never been made” p27).
- Austin and his daughter are just too alike in their idealistic temperaments for friction not to exist. From the moment Audrey returns home, “the trend of her reforming zeal” (p42) awakens a “faint troubling of hostility in him; a new feeling and a dreadful one, but undeniable” (p41). The main difference is that Austin trusts in life experience and compromise whilst his daughter relies on her forcefulness and cleverness.
- Brother and sister are similarly irreconcilable. “Thomas and Audrey would not agree. The fault, of course, was Thomas’s; yet perhaps Audrey did not make enough allowances” (p46).
- The ruling classes - defined ironically by their “wit and detachment, learning and poetry” - are instinctively patronising and supercilious towards the “lower classes” who “answer bells and mind machines” (p135).
- In turn, the wives of the village tradesmen despise the class beneath them (“Them labouring women is too big for their boots nowadays, I grant you” p84).
- Housekeeper Margaret, useless and chaotic herself, takes it out on poor, passive Emmie, “using to the full all her limited power over a fellow-servant at once younger and less efficient than herself” (p105).
- And of course, there’s the unbridgeable class rift between posh Audrey and labouring adonis, Jerry - she “in her enchanted grove, and he tending the flowers before her shrine” (p154).
Other themes in the novel which are clearly close to Doreen Wallace’s own heart include:
- The impact of the world-wide Great Depression on East Anglia, where the local market town is “peopled principally by the unemployed” (p40) and where “for several years now the corn crops had been valueless” (p118).
- The injustice of the Tithe System - a tax that ordinary people have to pay to support their local vicar and his family (“I don’t like to feel I’ve been having my College fees paid by such a stricken community,” (p43) admits Audrey, although her conscience doesn’t actually stop her from accepting the payments.)
- The plight of older unwanted women (“No one else would employ her; preference would be given to the young and slim” p41).
Other things I learned from the novel included:
- The word “rachitic” (p9) to describe Thomas’s disabled condition (apparently it means rackety - or quite literally, rickety, in the sense of having weak, deformed bones caused by rickets).
- The rectory has a bathroom but no laid-on running water (not at all unusual as apparently in the 1930s “it was something, in East Anglia, to have a bathroom at all” p11).
- The impact of the “Talkies” on cinema pianists (“Mechanical music everywhere now. Hundreds of musicians (so-called) out of work” p45).
- The old-fashioned pub game that I thought was called pin-ball went under the brand of “Corinthian Bagatelle” in the 1930s and was even supplied to the Royal Household. Amiable Alan Wilmslow brings his board along to the village summer-show hosted at the rectory (p87).
- The golden rule in charity circles that “You may not speak sharply to voluntary “helpers”, however misdirected their help” (p100) - a rule that bossy know-it-all Audrey ignored at her peril - remains as relevant today as ever.
- That “purposeful people” engaged on “great projects” (aka “reformers and zealots” and do-gooders like Audrey!) generally lack “a sense of humour and a sense of proportion” (p197).
I enjoyed this novel enormously. I love Doreen Wallace’s gentle humour and irony as she affectionately probes the inner thoughts of her characters, sympathetically exposing their uncertainties and weaknesses.
Who hasn’t had to bite their lips when some “I know best” type swans in and takes over? (Audrey Mapperly) Or felt frustration with people who ponder endlessly without ever making a decision? (her father, Austin) Doreen Wallace’s delightful exposure of these universal types made me think of Trollope and his Barsetshire characters.
And the tragic melodrama of the doomed lovers in the final chapters very much reminded me of Thomas Hardy with nature hostile and heedless to human troubles.
Reading this novel at the end of the year, I also especially enjoyed the lyricism of the turn of the seasons as the backdrop to the story. The calendar of spring planting, summer garden parties (rained off!), harvest homes and frozen winters continues endlessly and reassuringly, regardless of all the human drama which we think so important and really isn’t …
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews