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Barsetshire #13
The Headmistress
In the midst of World War Two, the Beltons of Harefield Park find themselves "living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming." It seems they may have to sell the family estate- for which, during wartime, there is little demand.Their prayers are answered, however, in the unlikely form of Miss Sparling, the dauntless headmistress of the recently evacuated Hoisers' Girls' Foundation School, who just happens to be looking for a country mansion to let. THE HEADMISTRESS, first published in 1945 and long unavailable, is typical charming, witty, and refreshingly urbane.
346 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
42 people are currently reading
444 people want to read
About the author
Angela Thirkell
63 books262 followers Angela Margaret Mackail was born on January 30, 1890 at 27 Young Street, Kensington Square, London. Her grandfather was Sir Edward Burne-Jones the pre-Raphaelite painter and partner in the design firm of Morris and Company for whom he designed many stained glass windows - seven of which are in St Margaret's Church in Rottingdean, West Sussex. Her grandmother was Georgiana Macdonald, one of a precocious family which included among others, Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and Rudyard Kipling. Angela's brother, Denis Mackail, was also a prolific and successful novelist. Angela's mother, Margaret Burne-Jones, married John Mackail - an administrator at the Ministry of Education and Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.
Angela married James Campbell McInnes in 1911. James was a professional Baritone and performed at concert halls throughout the UK. In 1912 their first son Graham was born and in 1914 a second son, Colin. A daughter was born in 1917 at the same time her marriage was breaking up. In November 1917 a divorce was granted and Angela and the children went to live with her parents in Pembroke Gardens in London. The child, Mary, died the next year.
Angela then met and married George Lancelot Thirkell in 1918 and in 1920 they traveled on a troop ship to George's hometown in Australia. Their adventures on the "Friedricksruh" are recounted in her Trooper to the Southern Cross published in 1934. In 1921, in Melbourne Australia, her youngest son Lancelot George was born. Angela left Australia in 1929 with 8 year old Lance and never returned. Although living with her parents in London she badly needed to earn a living so she set forth on the difficult road of the professional writer. Her first book, Three Houses, a memoir of her happy childhood was published in 1931 and was an immediate success. The first of her novels set in Trollope's mythical county of Barsetshire was Demon in the House, followed by 28 others, one each year.
Angela also wrote a book of children's stories entitled The Grateful Sparrow using Ludwig Richter's illustrations; a biography of Harriette Wilson, The Fortunes of Harriette; an historical novel, Coronation Summer, an account of the events in London during Queen Victoria's Coronation in 1838; and three semi-autobiographical novels, Ankle Deep and Oh, These Men, These Men and Trooper to the Southern Cross. When Angela died on the 29th of January 1961 she left unfinished the last of her books, Three Score and Ten which was completed by her friend, Caroline LeJeune. Angela is buried in Rottingdean alongside her daughter Mary and her Burne-Jones grandparents.
Angela married James Campbell McInnes in 1911. James was a professional Baritone and performed at concert halls throughout the UK. In 1912 their first son Graham was born and in 1914 a second son, Colin. A daughter was born in 1917 at the same time her marriage was breaking up. In November 1917 a divorce was granted and Angela and the children went to live with her parents in Pembroke Gardens in London. The child, Mary, died the next year.
Angela then met and married George Lancelot Thirkell in 1918 and in 1920 they traveled on a troop ship to George's hometown in Australia. Their adventures on the "Friedricksruh" are recounted in her Trooper to the Southern Cross published in 1934. In 1921, in Melbourne Australia, her youngest son Lancelot George was born. Angela left Australia in 1929 with 8 year old Lance and never returned. Although living with her parents in London she badly needed to earn a living so she set forth on the difficult road of the professional writer. Her first book, Three Houses, a memoir of her happy childhood was published in 1931 and was an immediate success. The first of her novels set in Trollope's mythical county of Barsetshire was Demon in the House, followed by 28 others, one each year.
Angela also wrote a book of children's stories entitled The Grateful Sparrow using Ludwig Richter's illustrations; a biography of Harriette Wilson, The Fortunes of Harriette; an historical novel, Coronation Summer, an account of the events in London during Queen Victoria's Coronation in 1838; and three semi-autobiographical novels, Ankle Deep and Oh, These Men, These Men and Trooper to the Southern Cross. When Angela died on the 29th of January 1961 she left unfinished the last of her books, Three Score and Ten which was completed by her friend, Caroline LeJeune. Angela is buried in Rottingdean alongside her daughter Mary and her Burne-Jones grandparents.
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November 9, 2023
Rating: A solid, happiness-inducing 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In the midst of World War Two, the Beltons of Harefield Park find themselves "living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming." It seems they may have to sell the family estate- for which, during wartime, there is little demand.Their prayers are answered, however, in the unlikely form of Miss Sparling, the dauntless headmistress of the recently evacuated Hoisers' Girls' Foundation School, who just happens to be looking for a country mansion to let. THE HEADMISTRESS, first published in 1945 and long unavailable, is typical Thirkell: charming, witty, and refreshingly urbane.
My Review: Anthony Trollope originated Barsetshire, the fictional uber-English county, in a series of novels that include The Warden and Barchester Towers (two of my favorites in that series). He created a constellation of memorable characters, whose essential reality came from the *shudder* Dickensian ink-pot of broad strokes and deft shadows. The series is still read today by significant numbers of fans. It's only 160 years later...pretty good going for a hack writer!
Angela Thirkell began writing books set in this Barsetshire alternate reality when she was but a lass of nineteen. She continued to mine the mother lode until her death at seventy-one-ish. Her characters, from families either alluded to in the original or simply made up, are as true and real as Trollope's own. Her observations are clear and pointed, her language is limpidly simple and direct, and all in all her books are a great pleasure to read...if you like this sort of thing.
I do.
This entry into her series presents a wartime Barsetshire that, like all of England, is undergoing a massive reorientation of its social compass. It's like the pole shift that the Earth throws itself every so often...north isn't north anymore, it's east then west then south-by-southwest, and nowhere is there a fixed point to steer by. Thirkell's eponymous headmistress, Miss Sparling, sees the confusion around her, and steers by her own strong internal compass. It makes her a delightful character to follow, and within the novel itself, makes her a welcome addition to the closed world of county society in Harefield.
Why should modern readers, sixty-five years on, read a book like this, by a nearly forgotten second-rank commercial writer of a bygone style? Because, dear readers, this era like that one is a time of great social change and we can all take comfort in the efforts our forebears made to resist, accommodate, and understand (often all three at once) the titanic reorientations going on around us. I suspect that the reason change makes humans so miserable is that we refuse to acknowledge the storehouse of help our ancestors piled up for us in the form of myths, stories, and legends. All storytelling involves change, resistance to it, and consequences.
So I recommend to those disoriented by the gradual/sudden shifting of the culture that they read this, and the other, Barsetshire novels, and view them as self-help books in aid of managing their own responses to a changing world.
Besides, they're delightful to read!
The Publisher Says: In the midst of World War Two, the Beltons of Harefield Park find themselves "living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming." It seems they may have to sell the family estate- for which, during wartime, there is little demand.Their prayers are answered, however, in the unlikely form of Miss Sparling, the dauntless headmistress of the recently evacuated Hoisers' Girls' Foundation School, who just happens to be looking for a country mansion to let. THE HEADMISTRESS, first published in 1945 and long unavailable, is typical Thirkell: charming, witty, and refreshingly urbane.
My Review: Anthony Trollope originated Barsetshire, the fictional uber-English county, in a series of novels that include The Warden and Barchester Towers (two of my favorites in that series). He created a constellation of memorable characters, whose essential reality came from the *shudder* Dickensian ink-pot of broad strokes and deft shadows. The series is still read today by significant numbers of fans. It's only 160 years later...pretty good going for a hack writer!
Angela Thirkell began writing books set in this Barsetshire alternate reality when she was but a lass of nineteen. She continued to mine the mother lode until her death at seventy-one-ish. Her characters, from families either alluded to in the original or simply made up, are as true and real as Trollope's own. Her observations are clear and pointed, her language is limpidly simple and direct, and all in all her books are a great pleasure to read...if you like this sort of thing.
I do.
This entry into her series presents a wartime Barsetshire that, like all of England, is undergoing a massive reorientation of its social compass. It's like the pole shift that the Earth throws itself every so often...north isn't north anymore, it's east then west then south-by-southwest, and nowhere is there a fixed point to steer by. Thirkell's eponymous headmistress, Miss Sparling, sees the confusion around her, and steers by her own strong internal compass. It makes her a delightful character to follow, and within the novel itself, makes her a welcome addition to the closed world of county society in Harefield.
Why should modern readers, sixty-five years on, read a book like this, by a nearly forgotten second-rank commercial writer of a bygone style? Because, dear readers, this era like that one is a time of great social change and we can all take comfort in the efforts our forebears made to resist, accommodate, and understand (often all three at once) the titanic reorientations going on around us. I suspect that the reason change makes humans so miserable is that we refuse to acknowledge the storehouse of help our ancestors piled up for us in the form of myths, stories, and legends. All storytelling involves change, resistance to it, and consequences.
So I recommend to those disoriented by the gradual/sudden shifting of the culture that they read this, and the other, Barsetshire novels, and view them as self-help books in aid of managing their own responses to a changing world.
Besides, they're delightful to read!
March 20, 2014
I love Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels and am reading them in order as much as possible; each book is a delight, like visiting old friends. This book opens several years into the rationing, blackouts and hardships of World War II; the residents of Barsetshire are coping with stiff upper lips and dry humor, still enjoying the small pleasures of gossip at the occasional dinner or tea party with neighbors and anticipating visits home from children on leave.
The Beltons of Harefield Park fear they'll have to sell the family estate, but are saved from that desperate measure by the evacuated Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, which leases their mansion for the school. Some of my favorite new characters to add to the ever-increasing cast of Barsetshire residents include Miss Sparling, the headmistress of the school (and title), her assistant Miss Holly, Mr. Oriel the vicar, and Oxford don Mr. Carton. As with all of the books in the series, members of the same county families, servants, tradespeople and clergy walk on and off and devoted fans get to revisit with these old friends, make new ones, and eavesdrop on the gossip and news - I love it! Even though these books were written in the 1930s and '40s I find them timeless because of Thirkell's affectionate and devastatingly honest insights into human nature, as in this passage describing Mr. and Mrs. Belton's reaction when their son comes home on leave:
"This pleasant warm content was suddenly broken by a shattering noise outside the house and a violent ringing of the telephone...They now heard...the well-known voice of their younger son Charles. His parents, though they would rather have died than admit it to any outsider, to each other, or even to their secret selves, experienced a peculiar sinking of the heart, or rather the spirits at this sound. Not but that either of them would cheerfully have gone to the scaffold for Charles, or given him the best bed, all the butter ration and the most comfortable chair; but they knew from fatal experience that whatever they did would be just wrong...And it was much the same with Freddy and Elsa, though Freddy at twenty-nine was approximating to something human in his parents' house. Mrs. Belton wondered if all the other parents felt the same."
Brilliant, and so true - who amongst us hasn't felt that sinking feeling as a beloved but irritatingly angsty, sulking teenager slouched into the room?! I find such insightful, humorous but true gems buried throughout Thirkell's deceptively mundane descriptions and observations of daily lives and routines among Barsetshire's residents. Delightful, and a treat I savor every time I read (and no doubt eventually reread) one of her sweet, charming and funny books.
The Beltons of Harefield Park fear they'll have to sell the family estate, but are saved from that desperate measure by the evacuated Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, which leases their mansion for the school. Some of my favorite new characters to add to the ever-increasing cast of Barsetshire residents include Miss Sparling, the headmistress of the school (and title), her assistant Miss Holly, Mr. Oriel the vicar, and Oxford don Mr. Carton. As with all of the books in the series, members of the same county families, servants, tradespeople and clergy walk on and off and devoted fans get to revisit with these old friends, make new ones, and eavesdrop on the gossip and news - I love it! Even though these books were written in the 1930s and '40s I find them timeless because of Thirkell's affectionate and devastatingly honest insights into human nature, as in this passage describing Mr. and Mrs. Belton's reaction when their son comes home on leave:
"This pleasant warm content was suddenly broken by a shattering noise outside the house and a violent ringing of the telephone...They now heard...the well-known voice of their younger son Charles. His parents, though they would rather have died than admit it to any outsider, to each other, or even to their secret selves, experienced a peculiar sinking of the heart, or rather the spirits at this sound. Not but that either of them would cheerfully have gone to the scaffold for Charles, or given him the best bed, all the butter ration and the most comfortable chair; but they knew from fatal experience that whatever they did would be just wrong...And it was much the same with Freddy and Elsa, though Freddy at twenty-nine was approximating to something human in his parents' house. Mrs. Belton wondered if all the other parents felt the same."
Brilliant, and so true - who amongst us hasn't felt that sinking feeling as a beloved but irritatingly angsty, sulking teenager slouched into the room?! I find such insightful, humorous but true gems buried throughout Thirkell's deceptively mundane descriptions and observations of daily lives and routines among Barsetshire's residents. Delightful, and a treat I savor every time I read (and no doubt eventually reread) one of her sweet, charming and funny books.
September 16, 2021
As Melbourne continues to endure yet another lockdown, I find I have little appetite for reading serious books. The lighthearted books of Angela Thirkell, even as her characters live through the Second World War, is right for my mood at the moment. Nothing very dramatic happens, though there is of course the underlying fear of husbands and sons, and daughters too, being killed or injured in the war.
They managed to survive it, and we shall survive this pandemic. When one is in the midst of it, it is sometimes hard to remember that.
They managed to survive it, and we shall survive this pandemic. When one is in the midst of it, it is sometimes hard to remember that.
November 9, 2022
It was like nostalgic continuation of Growing Up. It wasn't so good in the mood as was "Growing up", but I felt this remarkable atmosphere on many pages. Here I was watching as Heather and the young Beltons were growig up. Each one in his/her own (precious) way. Moreover, I have watched also as the world around were changing. The world was not only moving on but also changing because of the war and rapid social and economical changes. The novels by Thirkell through witty fiction show us many important and worth remembering things about humans.
I loved Mrs. Belton as a mother, to tell you the truth, I like most of Thirkell's mothers. They are so... probably not politically correct today. I mean they love their children but often also they don't like them or they like when they are safe but somewhere else ;-)
The story of miss Sparling and her school was interesting but not so much to grip my full attention and hearth.
I really adored how relationship between Elsa and Captain Hornby developed.
I demand more of Mrs. Updike and her family. I hope there is a book about them.
And of course Heather Adams. I just have to read what happened to her a few years later. [So I am a little depressed because there are only few more Thirkell's novel on Open Library now. I really really hope they will be more of them in the future.]
Here is an example of Mrs. Thirkell's wit from this book:
Moreover, again we had here satire of prejudice and hostility between Slavo-Lydian and Mixo-Lydian - really priceless.
I loved Mrs. Belton as a mother, to tell you the truth, I like most of Thirkell's mothers. They are so... probably not politically correct today. I mean they love their children but often also they don't like them or they like when they are safe but somewhere else ;-)
The story of miss Sparling and her school was interesting but not so much to grip my full attention and hearth.
I really adored how relationship between Elsa and Captain Hornby developed.
I demand more of Mrs. Updike and her family. I hope there is a book about them.
And of course Heather Adams. I just have to read what happened to her a few years later. [So I am a little depressed because there are only few more Thirkell's novel on Open Library now. I really really hope they will be more of them in the future.]
Here is an example of Mrs. Thirkell's wit from this book:
"Do you really never remember a mother?" said Elsa, leaning against the pantry table while Captain Hornby washed his hands.
"Really not," said Captain Hornby. "She died when I was about a year old. But I dare say it was just as well. She mightn't have liked me; or I mightn't have liked her. Heaps of fellows don't seem to get on with their people. And it was nearly forty years ago."
Moreover, again we had here satire of prejudice and hostility between Slavo-Lydian and Mixo-Lydian - really priceless.
April 2, 2017
Mrs. Belton is worried. And she has a lot to worry about. With three children serving in England’s wartime forces, plus a move from their country estate to the village (due to financial strictures), Mrs. Belton has a lot of adjusting to do.
“But gentleman-farming is no inheritance and by the time the war settled down upon the world the Beltons were living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming, and two years later were unhappily making up their minds to sell a house and estate for which there would probably be no demand, when Providence kindly intervened, in the shape of the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School.”
“The Headmistress” centers upon life in the small village of Harefield. At times lighthearted, don’t let the author’s well-earned reputation for blithe, carefree prose deceive you. Taking us through the wartime years and giving us snippets of life in a small countryside village, we experience along with the Beltons, the changes brought about not only through food and clothing coupons and rationing, but within social mores and status.
Mrs. Belton, to all intents and purposes seemingly unflustered and stable, inwardly quakes at the fears and anxieties the war brings, not only for her children serving in the military but for her husband who must weather the straits his finances have brought him to and adjust to village life, leaving his estate to be rented out by a girls school.
“All three children ought to have married years ago, but they never seemed to want to. Nor did they want a jolly elder sister. All they wanted was a purveyor of beds, fires, food, such drink as there was, cigarettes; someone who could take all telephone messages accurately, never ask where they were going or had been tireless, self-effacing. All of which she had tried to be and she knew that her husband had too, but at the end of each leave, whether it was Freddy from his ship, Elsa from her hush-hush job, or Charles from the army, she felt she had not given satisfaction....
What she would really like, she thought, would be to throw every single thing in her wardrobe out of the window and have everything new and to stop feeling tired and looking her age and go somewhere warm, if there was any warm place left in this horrible world now...”
There are the ever-present cast of quirky characters. Mrs. Updike, who though lovable is constantly accident-prone, stabbing or burning herself while doing the most simple of household tasks. Mr. Carton who despises his christened name (Sydney after the Dickens’ character. Like Anne of Green Gables he distinguishes the spelling of his name), and who manages to keep it private from most of his acquaintances but unexpectedly finds himself revealing it to Miss Sparling. The headmistress, Miss Sparling herself, who always seems to know the right things to say or do. And Elsa, the spoiled daughter of the Beltons who cannot seem to see that her attempts to interfere in her father’s finances are unwelcome.
Then there is poor Heather Adams, the regrettably plain and undistinguished student who develops a schoolgirl crush, daydreaming constantly when rescued from her wallflower status at a dance. Heather surprises everyone when she demonstrates her skating prowess and brings notoriety and attention upon herself when she experiences a mishap. And as always, there is romance and the reader must discover whether Miss Sparling will find happiness with the vicar, Mr. Oriel, or with Mr. Carton.
I have read and enjoyed several of Thirkells’ novels now and enjoyed this one (although it was not one of my favorites). I look forward to reading many more.
“But gentleman-farming is no inheritance and by the time the war settled down upon the world the Beltons were living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming, and two years later were unhappily making up their minds to sell a house and estate for which there would probably be no demand, when Providence kindly intervened, in the shape of the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School.”
“The Headmistress” centers upon life in the small village of Harefield. At times lighthearted, don’t let the author’s well-earned reputation for blithe, carefree prose deceive you. Taking us through the wartime years and giving us snippets of life in a small countryside village, we experience along with the Beltons, the changes brought about not only through food and clothing coupons and rationing, but within social mores and status.
Mrs. Belton, to all intents and purposes seemingly unflustered and stable, inwardly quakes at the fears and anxieties the war brings, not only for her children serving in the military but for her husband who must weather the straits his finances have brought him to and adjust to village life, leaving his estate to be rented out by a girls school.
“All three children ought to have married years ago, but they never seemed to want to. Nor did they want a jolly elder sister. All they wanted was a purveyor of beds, fires, food, such drink as there was, cigarettes; someone who could take all telephone messages accurately, never ask where they were going or had been tireless, self-effacing. All of which she had tried to be and she knew that her husband had too, but at the end of each leave, whether it was Freddy from his ship, Elsa from her hush-hush job, or Charles from the army, she felt she had not given satisfaction....
What she would really like, she thought, would be to throw every single thing in her wardrobe out of the window and have everything new and to stop feeling tired and looking her age and go somewhere warm, if there was any warm place left in this horrible world now...”
There are the ever-present cast of quirky characters. Mrs. Updike, who though lovable is constantly accident-prone, stabbing or burning herself while doing the most simple of household tasks. Mr. Carton who despises his christened name (Sydney after the Dickens’ character. Like Anne of Green Gables he distinguishes the spelling of his name), and who manages to keep it private from most of his acquaintances but unexpectedly finds himself revealing it to Miss Sparling. The headmistress, Miss Sparling herself, who always seems to know the right things to say or do. And Elsa, the spoiled daughter of the Beltons who cannot seem to see that her attempts to interfere in her father’s finances are unwelcome.
Then there is poor Heather Adams, the regrettably plain and undistinguished student who develops a schoolgirl crush, daydreaming constantly when rescued from her wallflower status at a dance. Heather surprises everyone when she demonstrates her skating prowess and brings notoriety and attention upon herself when she experiences a mishap. And as always, there is romance and the reader must discover whether Miss Sparling will find happiness with the vicar, Mr. Oriel, or with Mr. Carton.
I have read and enjoyed several of Thirkells’ novels now and enjoyed this one (although it was not one of my favorites). I look forward to reading many more.
August 15, 2017
Not exactly a keeper, but nice and amusing.
I wonder what it was like to write in wartime, without knowing when it would end? Or how.
I wonder what it was like to write in wartime, without knowing when it would end? Or how.
December 18, 2017
In the midst of World War II the Beltons have fallen on hard times. With the three children grown and doing important war work and money tight, the Beltons have let their estate to the Hosiers Girls School. Unlike the Boys' School, this school caters to daughters of the upper middle-class - industrialists and the like. Miss Sparling, the headmistress, presides over her school with good grace, humor and kindness but also with a firm hand. The Beltons are renting a cottage on their estate belonging to the heir of the late Mrs. Admiral Ellangowan-Hornby, Captain Hornby.
I liked this story the least of the series so far. It starts off with way too much talk about "the right sort." A little bit is fine but the Beltons come across as very very snobby. Mrs. Belton is related to half the families in the county. The family is not very pleasant. Mrs. Belton is a little bit vague but mostly kind so I didn't mind her too much. I liked Mr. Belton well enough-he sticks to farming and accepts what is. Two of the three children are horrid. I hated the youngest, Charles. He was cruel and rude at times. Elsa is the worst snob of all. She is spoiled and selfish. I found it hard to relate to her. The eldest son was a bit too kind and charming to awkward school girls but not as horrid as his brother and sister.
Miss Sparling is a nice enough character. I liked how she dealt with the school girls and the running of the school, but the rest of her plot was SO boring! Her romance is basically a non-romance. It's a meeting of the minds over a common subject. Her two potential suitors are old men-a clergyman and a misogynistic academic. I found them both so dreadfully dull I skimmed a lot of their scenes.
As usual, the secondary characters are a delight. We catch up on the gossip of Barsetshire and learn what is happening with all our old friends, mostly Lord and Lady Pomfret and their children. There are a ton of new characters here and it's hard to keep track of them all. I loved Mrs. Updike, the solicitor's accident-prone wife. She's so cheerful and charming in spite of her clumsiness. I also loved Dorothy, the "all but slow-witted" maid in the vicar's house. She was too funny with her "nice" book. At the school we have Heather Adams, daughter of a wealthy industrialist. While she isn't easy to like, I felt a kinship with her. There's also Isabella Ferdinand, the Queen Bee of the school who isn't really mean, just less intelligent than Heather and less focused on academics. Finally, we have Captain Hornby. He's a very nice man and good to the Beltons. I liked him a lot but didn't like where his plot went. Most of the romance happened off page and when it was on page, it wasn't pleasant.
There are more outdated attitudes that REALLY bothered me about this book-namely the attitudes towards women. Women are ridiculed for being smart professionals or they're made to feel guilty for having a career instead of being married. The female doctor is a constant source of dislike in the village because of the way she dresses and her "modern" methods (psychoanalysis). Assuming she can't earn a Ph.D and become a psychologist at this time, her bedside manner needs work but other than that, I didn't see anything wrong with her. Miss Sparling is constantly asked when she is going to retire (read: get married) and women who are competent professionals are dismissed by everyone. There's lots of talk about women's nerves and the strain of work on their nerves. There's also mention of beating a woman because she was very rude.
This book just wasn't my cup of tea but I really want to know what happens to everyone when the war is over so I will read on!
I liked this story the least of the series so far. It starts off with way too much talk about "the right sort." A little bit is fine but the Beltons come across as very very snobby. Mrs. Belton is related to half the families in the county. The family is not very pleasant. Mrs. Belton is a little bit vague but mostly kind so I didn't mind her too much. I liked Mr. Belton well enough-he sticks to farming and accepts what is. Two of the three children are horrid. I hated the youngest, Charles. He was cruel and rude at times. Elsa is the worst snob of all. She is spoiled and selfish. I found it hard to relate to her. The eldest son was a bit too kind and charming to awkward school girls but not as horrid as his brother and sister.
Miss Sparling is a nice enough character. I liked how she dealt with the school girls and the running of the school, but the rest of her plot was SO boring! Her romance is basically a non-romance. It's a meeting of the minds over a common subject. Her two potential suitors are old men-a clergyman and a misogynistic academic. I found them both so dreadfully dull I skimmed a lot of their scenes.
As usual, the secondary characters are a delight. We catch up on the gossip of Barsetshire and learn what is happening with all our old friends, mostly Lord and Lady Pomfret and their children. There are a ton of new characters here and it's hard to keep track of them all. I loved Mrs. Updike, the solicitor's accident-prone wife. She's so cheerful and charming in spite of her clumsiness. I also loved Dorothy, the "all but slow-witted" maid in the vicar's house. She was too funny with her "nice" book. At the school we have Heather Adams, daughter of a wealthy industrialist. While she isn't easy to like, I felt a kinship with her. There's also Isabella Ferdinand, the Queen Bee of the school who isn't really mean, just less intelligent than Heather and less focused on academics. Finally, we have Captain Hornby. He's a very nice man and good to the Beltons. I liked him a lot but didn't like where his plot went. Most of the romance happened off page and when it was on page, it wasn't pleasant.
There are more outdated attitudes that REALLY bothered me about this book-namely the attitudes towards women. Women are ridiculed for being smart professionals or they're made to feel guilty for having a career instead of being married. The female doctor is a constant source of dislike in the village because of the way she dresses and her "modern" methods (psychoanalysis). Assuming she can't earn a Ph.D and become a psychologist at this time, her bedside manner needs work but other than that, I didn't see anything wrong with her. Miss Sparling is constantly asked when she is going to retire (read: get married) and women who are competent professionals are dismissed by everyone. There's lots of talk about women's nerves and the strain of work on their nerves. There's also mention of beating a woman because she was very rude.
This book just wasn't my cup of tea but I really want to know what happens to everyone when the war is over so I will read on!
June 24, 2019
This is my sixth Thirkell and it is one of the best.
While it is interesting watching a TV drama set in the war, it is not as good as reading a book written during the war. We all know that people just ''got on with it'' but reading how they did is amazing. And I learned things as well - something called ''utility suit'' which according to Thirkill was not fit for purpose. Nor did I know about vitamins being added to flour, which made it taste bad. And I thought saccharin was a modern thing - who knew! The way Commander Belton and Captain Hornby just said so-matter-of-factly that they were expecting promotion ''if they did not get killed'' - amazing.
But leaving all that aside, the story was excellent. A wonderful collection of characters - accident prone Mrs. Updike - the episode with the chicken was priceless, spoiled Elsa, plain Heather Adams, romantic Dorothy - I could go on. It is funny and heart-warming.
I recommend this book.
While it is interesting watching a TV drama set in the war, it is not as good as reading a book written during the war. We all know that people just ''got on with it'' but reading how they did is amazing. And I learned things as well - something called ''utility suit'' which according to Thirkill was not fit for purpose. Nor did I know about vitamins being added to flour, which made it taste bad. And I thought saccharin was a modern thing - who knew! The way Commander Belton and Captain Hornby just said so-matter-of-factly that they were expecting promotion ''if they did not get killed'' - amazing.
But leaving all that aside, the story was excellent. A wonderful collection of characters - accident prone Mrs. Updike - the episode with the chicken was priceless, spoiled Elsa, plain Heather Adams, romantic Dorothy - I could go on. It is funny and heart-warming.
I recommend this book.
June 15, 2014
The best of hers so far that I've read.
This book is charming, witty with her world of cultivated gentry with terrific comedy of manners.
I loved it!
My second hand copy came from America as it's out of print which is such a shame.
It has the most stunning cover.
Mariana by Sir John Everett Millais.
This book is charming, witty with her world of cultivated gentry with terrific comedy of manners.
I loved it!
My second hand copy came from America as it's out of print which is such a shame.
It has the most stunning cover.
Mariana by Sir John Everett Millais.
August 4, 2016
"It has long been obvious to the meanest of our readers -- we allude to the one who asked the young lady at the library for a nice book and now wished she had got something diffrent, something really nice if you know what I mean -- that an author does not invent a lake with a spring under it and bring a band of hooligans out from Barchester at great waste of the country's petrol to try to crack the ice without intending to make someone fall in. This moment, as has been all too patent for some time, nor have we attempted to mislead the reader, or to conceal it any way, has now arrived....
It will long be a subject for angry recriminations between the W.V.S canteen and the A.R.P. and N.F.S. why nothing was done in time; the W.V.S. maintaining that if the A.R.P. and N.F.S. had put their ladders and life-saving tackle nearer the pond and not spent their whole afternoon having cups of coffee and cigarettes, they coul dhave had all the glory of saving a real life; the A.R.P. and N.F.S. countercharging that if the W.V.S. hadn't got the canteen facing away from the lake, whether to avoid the wind or not they did not wish to discuss, and hadn't served the coffee so hot that no one could drink it and had been so long over change for those cigarettes, they would have been on the spot at once."
It will long be a subject for angry recriminations between the W.V.S canteen and the A.R.P. and N.F.S. why nothing was done in time; the W.V.S. maintaining that if the A.R.P. and N.F.S. had put their ladders and life-saving tackle nearer the pond and not spent their whole afternoon having cups of coffee and cigarettes, they coul dhave had all the glory of saving a real life; the A.R.P. and N.F.S. countercharging that if the W.V.S. hadn't got the canteen facing away from the lake, whether to avoid the wind or not they did not wish to discuss, and hadn't served the coffee so hot that no one could drink it and had been so long over change for those cigarettes, they would have been on the spot at once."
August 16, 2013
The Beltons, a family with two grown sons and one grown daughter, find themselves obliged to rent their house out to a girls' school while they live in a smaller house in town while hoping to recover their fortunes. The point of view shifts back and forth mainly between Mrs. Belton, a sensible, gracious woman trying desperately hard not to be too sentimental about her children as they face dangers inherent to their war work, and Miss Sparling, the headmistress of said girls' school. Style as pleasant as ever and sometimes funny too, though I don't think I met any new favorite characters here. Except for maybe Commander Belton, the oldest son of the family, who deals with his own personal tragedy in a very stiff-upper-lip way, and treats Heather, the schoolgirl with a crush on him, as humanely and compassionately as can be imagined.
March 26, 2023
A pleasant, undemanding story, rather in the style of Barbara Pym.
This is one of Thirkell's 'Barsetshire' novels - she uses Anthony Trollope's imaginary county as the setting for these novels, and also uses many of his surnames and place names. I did find this a bit irritating - for one thing, it feels like 'cheating' to lift all your names from another author's work, and for another, I find it a bit unrealistic that there would be no changes in the 80 years between both sets of novels - the great grandchildren of vicars are vicars, the great grandchildren of doctors are doctors etc. I also found the writing quite repetitive - so we are told multiple times how much Mrs Belton worries about her children, or about how untidy her son Charles is or how spoilt and childish her daughter Elsa is. Thirkell also places a great emphasis on good looks which would have been normal at the time but is quite jarring now - one of the local schoolgirls, Heather Adams, is extremely intelligent (we work this out obliquely, through the conversations of those around her), yet every time she is described, the focus is on her 'revoltingly unattractive' appearance, her 'lumpen' figure, 'pasty' face and 'thick ankles'.
On the plus side, there is a nice sense of humour, very little doom and gloom considering it is a wartime novel, and I did like some of the characters, particularly Miss Sparling (the headmistress)
An ok read to pass the time although I doubt Thirkell will become a popular author with me. I have borrowed another of her titles from the library at the same time, so I'll see if I like that one any better.
This is one of Thirkell's 'Barsetshire' novels - she uses Anthony Trollope's imaginary county as the setting for these novels, and also uses many of his surnames and place names. I did find this a bit irritating - for one thing, it feels like 'cheating' to lift all your names from another author's work, and for another, I find it a bit unrealistic that there would be no changes in the 80 years between both sets of novels - the great grandchildren of vicars are vicars, the great grandchildren of doctors are doctors etc. I also found the writing quite repetitive - so we are told multiple times how much Mrs Belton worries about her children, or about how untidy her son Charles is or how spoilt and childish her daughter Elsa is. Thirkell also places a great emphasis on good looks which would have been normal at the time but is quite jarring now - one of the local schoolgirls, Heather Adams, is extremely intelligent (we work this out obliquely, through the conversations of those around her), yet every time she is described, the focus is on her 'revoltingly unattractive' appearance, her 'lumpen' figure, 'pasty' face and 'thick ankles'.
On the plus side, there is a nice sense of humour, very little doom and gloom considering it is a wartime novel, and I did like some of the characters, particularly Miss Sparling (the headmistress)
An ok read to pass the time although I doubt Thirkell will become a popular author with me. I have borrowed another of her titles from the library at the same time, so I'll see if I like that one any better.
September 3, 2020
This is a very cosy sort of book, despite being set in war time. Most of the action took place in tea parties. One of the main topics of conversation was a very fat schoolgirl with a father who was a tradesman and had got above himself and earned money which he spent on inappropriately brightly coloured suits. I found all of this a bit tiresome. Also it was suggested that one young lady who had called off her marriage needed a good beating, which was rather shocking. Apparently Thirkell did not want her intellectual friends to read her novels which she wrote mostly for financial reasons.
August 3, 2025
Easy, comfortable, charming, somewhat uneventful, but none the worse for that. I liked most of the characters; but I would say the title is slightly misleading as the character I , certainly, became most invested in, was Mrs Belton . It’s deep into WW2 and all the privations and anxieties that engenders. Mrs Belton worries about her three grown up children, her wilful spoilt daughter who is involved in secret war work and her two sons, both in the forces. The family lived in the big house but money worries have forced them to move out and rent their home to a girl’s ex private school that has had to relocate from London. We are introduced to Miss Sparling, the eminently likeable headmistress and various other members of staff and pupils. Angela Thirkell is very strong on her cast of characters and their foibles and there are wonderful touches of gentle humour. Not world shattering but very readable and I’m quite willing to visit more of her tales from fictional Barsetshire again.
January 14, 2021
England caught in the clutches of total war. Nearly every aspect of life is influenced by the war and this is equally true in Barsetshire. Sons – and daughters – are away in the military or in civilian jobs. Rationing draws down on the amount of entertaining one can do. Servants are difficult to come by and a girl's school is moved from London and after a sojourn in Barchester is relocated to "Harefield Park", ancestral home (only 3 generations but that still counts) of the Bentons. Their finances are so poor they are forced to let the ancestral home and move into a much more pleasant and convenient villa in the village. "Mustn't grumble" is true here also of most, if not all, of the Beltons.
This novel has as, at the least, a sub theme of snobbery. Ms Thirkell has pointed out in previous volumes that some of the worst snobs are servants. Here though it is the privileged class that is forced to confront it's sense of worth.
Mr Carton is a peripheral figure in the grand scheme of the novel but important; an Oxford don:
"Mr Carton exploded with withering scorn. ‘Educated women are no treat to me. Cicero indeed! She probably says Kikero. Thank God the creatures that come to Oxford now are all doing economics; they and their subject are just about fit for each other. Pah!’ Everyone secretly admired a man who could say Pah, one of those locutions more often written than spoken..."
The Beltons have three children, Freddy, Charles and Elsa. Elsa has a hush-hush job in London:
"...Being a kind of lady makes one a bit particular even if one tries not to be. Some of the girls at my job are real ladies. I mean, like me if I am a lady, but the rest aren’t. I mean they are awfully clever and good-looking and say the right things, but somehow they aren’t just right. And all their people seem quite rich, but I don’t think they’d fit in at Harefield. I suppose I’m a perfectly beastly snob, but I can’t help it.’..." Self-aware but still a snob.
Mrs Belton:
"...All this mixing might be a good thing, but she felt too old for it and frankly hated it..."
Mr Belton sits on "the Bench" together with Mr Adams:
"...[He) dresses like something on the stage. He may be all right, I don’t say he isn’t, but he throws his weight about and gets petrol when nobody else does, and frankly the less of him I see the better pleased I am.’"
The oldest son, Freddy:
"...we do get a few queer fish at the Admiralty, but taking it by and large the Navy isn’t too bad. When you’re all doing things together everything shakes down; and when we’re at sea we don’t worry much about whom we’ll meet on land’..."
Charles the middle child and youngest son is in the army:
"...‘if you get awfully mucky and sweaty with a lot of fellows over your tanks, you find they’re all right. At least our lot are’..." He's not snobbish at all – at least not with his army mates.
Mrs Belton again:
"Well, I do hope my son-in-law and daughters-in-law will be our sort,’ said Mrs Belton wistfully. ‘Of course I’d love anyone any of you married, but it would be much more fun if it was someone like ourselves.’..." The old refrain of Not our Sort Dear.
"‘There won’t be a single gentleman in the Cabinet in five years,’ said Mr Belton gloomily..."
"‘You look very nice as you are,’ said Mrs Belton. ‘Or were you thinking of your blue suit, the other one I mean?’ ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything,’ said Mr Belton almost snappishly. ‘If people go out to dinner they ought to be able to dress like gentlemen, not go in the clothes they’ve been wearing all day..." Curious notion.
Mr Adams, the wealthy and efficient works manager at Hogglestock gives his opinion of Mr Belton – as related by the solicitor Mr Updike:
"...Adams described him as a fine aristocratic old gentleman.’ He did not add that Mr Adams had qualified his praise by adding, ‘And a conceited old stick-in-the-mud.’"
"‘I didn’t know you could do shorthand,’ [Captain Hornby] said admiringly. ‘It’s not really my job,’ said Elsa. ‘Of course I don’t do it at the office or I’d lose caste. I have to dictate to my secretary."
Curious notion.
Mr Carton again, on how an intellectual grandfather can produce an intellectual granddaughter – i.e. Miss Sparling:
"...That sort of thing always tells’..."
Mrs Belton also on Miss Sparling:
"...It may be snobbishness to think the better of a person because your Vicar has known her grandfather who was a Canon; but it lies deep at the roots of social life, and there is good reason for it..."
Mrs Belton to her son Commander Freddy Belton, the heir to the Belton estate, such as it is:
"Couldn’t you possibly find a very nice heiress, darling? I would love her, even if it was Miss Swartz..." Here Ms Thirkell again avails herself of her finger-tip knowledge of literature. I guessed that "Miss Swarz" was probably an anti-Semitic slur, but not so according to the excellent "relusions" provided by the Angela Thirkell Society - www.angelathirkellsociety.co.uk/. In particular I appreciate the "guides to the novels". The Headmistress has been decrypted by Penny Aldred and Hilary Temple: "Miss Swarz is 'the rich, wooly-headed mulatto from St Kitts' who old Mr Osborne wants George to marry, in Thackeray's Vanity Fair".
A Slavo-Lydian revolutionary in Barsetshire:
"She was on a mission to England to tell the workers how lazy and ignorant they were, and to encourage brotherly love between the nations. Most of those present, who had all felt the same about their servants, gardeners, workmen, day labourers, nearly burst with rage on hearing these aspersions on the British working class..."
Not snobbery but common sense – by Mr Carton:
"‘Why children, a loathsome breed who should be kept under hatches or in monasteries till they have acquired some rudiments of manners and consideration for others, should be encouraged to think themselves of importance now, I do not know. The English as a race have always been sentimental about dogs, and draught horses in Italy where most of them have never been, but this wave of sentiment about children is a new and revolting outburst’...
'How right you are,' said Miss Holly..." teacher and Miss Sparling's right hand.
‘It’s a pity,’ said Mr Carton reflectively, ‘that we can’t have a second Children’s Crusade. Innocent the Third got rid of a lot of them by encouraging it. We can still learn much from the Church of Rome'..."
The English educational system interpreted as applied to the displaced Hosier's Girl School:
"...Their parents, who were mostly doing pretty well, were so glad to find their daughters healthy and happy that when they had also realized the great joy of only seeing them in the holidays, instead of five days in the week from half-past four in the afternoon to nine o’clock in the morning, not to speak of all Saturday and Sunday, most of them gladly agreed to their remaining as boarders..."
And Mrs Belton:
"...she looked facts in the face with her accustomed aloofness and confessed that to have one’s children in the room with one was delightful, but to have them not in the room, yet know that they were happy somewhere about the house was even better..."
Here are a few more of Ms Thirkell's delightful anecdotes.
Speaking of lazy and ignorant workers:
"...Her father chiefly lived on his wife, supplemented with odd jobs, but as Harefield, like many villages, was at bottom matriarchal, no one thought much the worse of him..."
"...the Vicar whom, quite apart from his collar and black vest, anyone would have known for a clergyman at once on account of his large and flexible Adam’s apple, which fascinated the rash beholder’s eye and had once caused Charles Belton, aged four, to ask him why he couldn’t swallow it..."
Female doctors, here as elsewhere in Ms. Thirkell's novels, are not popular. Dr Parry pronounces:
"...Dr Buck has been called up, so I’m single-handed except for Dr Morgan and I can’t abide the woman. She does well enough for half-baked highbrows, but she will talk about psychology to the cottagers and they don’t like it..."
"...Mrs Belton was very tired and blamed herself for the feeling. A woman in her middle fifties, she said angrily to herself, had no business to be tired. At that age one ought to be full of horrible energy, dashing about in old but well-cut tweeds organizing everything..."
Possibly self-criticism? Ms. Thirkell was in her middle fifties at this time.
Mrs Belton reflects on the defects in her children:
"Hermione Rivers for instance, Lord Pomfret’s cousin who wrote all those successful novels, was always boasting about her boy Julian and his painting; Mrs Tebben at Worsted was more than boring about the devotion of her Richard; that dreadful Mrs Grant who was some connection of Mrs Brandon’s used to speak far too frequently of her son Hilary’s complete oneness with his madre amata. Mrs Belton had sometimes wished she could have sons like that. But..."
Followers of the series enjoy a good laugh at this. Julian is a conceited wastrel. Richard and Hillary are pretty much alright but their mothers perceptions are very much awry as both sons detest their mothers – at least superficially.
Mrs Belton reflects on men:
"...she had long ago decided within herself, though perhaps barely conscious of the decision, that it was better not to take any notice of what men said, because they didn’t seem to have much sense..."
The author reflects on men:
"It was no part of Mr Oriel’s plan to neglect his ladies, and as a rule he gave his men a very short interval in which to discuss whatever it is that men discuss when left together; high politics and dashing days in the hunting field, or the Odes of Horace, we would like to think, though finding ourselves unable to do so with conviction..."
Fashion as inducement into the Women's Royal Naval Service:
"...‘But the girls who are giving me the most anxiety,’ said Miss Sparling, ‘are the ones who want to go into the Wrens because they like the hat.’ ‘It’s an enchanting hat,’ said Mrs Belton. ‘If I were a young officer I’d take every Wren I met by her chin and lift up her face and kiss her. Charming little birds they are’..."
World politics:
"The word Russia is also a very powerful chemical agent to throw into conversation, stirring up as it does an amount of entirely uninformed and doctrinaire prejudice one way or another, which does no credit to anyone..."
To Ms. Thirkell's fanciful nation of Mixo-Lydians has here been added their ancestral enemy the Slavo-Lydians, each group have their champions in Barchester. Mr Carton pronounces:
"I hold no brief for either side, for two more degraded and backward races do not exist in Europe..."
"Miss Sparling asked if he was in occupied or unoccupied France, which led to so uninformed a discussion as to whether any of France was unoccupied now, each speaker having a different point of view, with only this in common, that not one of them had any ground for any statement made..."
The dangers of libraries – and of reading!:
"...‘It’s like Lord Victor and Lady Isabel,’ said the fiction-besotted Dorothy...
Mrs Powlett, [the Beltons' housekeeper] was not anxious for her. But she determined to accompany Dorothy {the Beltons' maid] to the twopenny library herself in future, or at any rate speak to Miss Faithful Humble who kept it as a branch line of a small tobacconist’s, and warn her to supervise Dorothy’s choice of books..."
"I don’t know what’s come over Dorothy. It’s all these libery books. Thank goodness I’ve enough to do without reading. It only puts ideas into people’s heads’..."
The delightful, accident-prone, Mrs Updike:
"...‘Well, if one was on a desert island one would feel so silly not knowing how to kill a fowl,’ said Mrs Updike. ‘I suppose if one could catch it, one could cut its head off if one had an axe. But I’m sure I wouldn’t have an axe. The only thing I can think of would be to work myself up into a great fit of rage and stamp on its head.’ In saying which ferocious words her pretty fine-drawn face beamed with gay enthusiasm..."
Lacking cook, maid, and gardener, Mrs Updike would sorely need all three as she manages to harm herself in every employment she attempts. Always with unfailing good humour.
A difficult sentence, but an admirable quality:
"Mrs Belton, who had a pleasing, though sometimes disconcerting habit of saying nice things about people she liked to their faces, which, she said, would appreciate it much more than their backs would..."
"...Of the blight of Christmas we have spoken from the heart elsewhere and not once but several times. To our former descriptions of that odious and society-disrupting season we have nothing to add..." Curious notion.
"...Mr Carton, unmoved, said then they would have tea, which was in the dining-room, for he did not hold with food getting into the same room with his books, though he did not mind his books, children of his predilection, getting into the room with his food and habitually read at meals..."
Admirable notion.
"‘It’s letters you must be careful of,’ said Mrs Powlett. ‘They say if once you sign your name to a letter you’re as good as engaged.’ ‘“Do right and fear no man; don’t write and fear no woman,”’ said Mr Wickens, not very gallantly..."
Mr Carton:
"It was his secret pride that his figure had not changed for the last forty years, which he attributed to reading too much, writing too much, skating and walking too much and doing nothing at all too much, just as it suited him, and eating and drinking whatever he liked..."
This is not my favourite of the Barchester novels. I particularly disapproved of the fact that every mention of Heather Adams carries a judgement on how unattractive she is. Everyone is judged, always.
Still there is much here to enjoy. I particularly approve of how Ms Thirkell in Mr Trollope's spirit turns at times directly to her reader:
"...It has long been obvious to the meanest of our readers – we allude to the one who asked the young lady at the libery for a nice book and now wishes she had got something different, something really nice if you know what I mean – that an author does not invent a lake with a spring under it and bring a band of hooligans out from Barchester at great waste of the country’s petrol to try to crack the ice without intending to make someone fall in..."
"...Coincidences do occur in real life, so why not in fiction?"
And even here people can change:
"‘You know Adams, my dear,’ said Mr Belton, anxious to tell his own story, ‘the father of that girl that knows all about rats. The one that’s on the bench with me. A bit of an outsider, but I always said he was a decent fellow.’ ‘Indeed you didn’t, Fred,’ said his wife mildly. ‘You said he was a bounder.’"
This novel has as, at the least, a sub theme of snobbery. Ms Thirkell has pointed out in previous volumes that some of the worst snobs are servants. Here though it is the privileged class that is forced to confront it's sense of worth.
Mr Carton is a peripheral figure in the grand scheme of the novel but important; an Oxford don:
"Mr Carton exploded with withering scorn. ‘Educated women are no treat to me. Cicero indeed! She probably says Kikero. Thank God the creatures that come to Oxford now are all doing economics; they and their subject are just about fit for each other. Pah!’ Everyone secretly admired a man who could say Pah, one of those locutions more often written than spoken..."
The Beltons have three children, Freddy, Charles and Elsa. Elsa has a hush-hush job in London:
"...Being a kind of lady makes one a bit particular even if one tries not to be. Some of the girls at my job are real ladies. I mean, like me if I am a lady, but the rest aren’t. I mean they are awfully clever and good-looking and say the right things, but somehow they aren’t just right. And all their people seem quite rich, but I don’t think they’d fit in at Harefield. I suppose I’m a perfectly beastly snob, but I can’t help it.’..." Self-aware but still a snob.
Mrs Belton:
"...All this mixing might be a good thing, but she felt too old for it and frankly hated it..."
Mr Belton sits on "the Bench" together with Mr Adams:
"...[He) dresses like something on the stage. He may be all right, I don’t say he isn’t, but he throws his weight about and gets petrol when nobody else does, and frankly the less of him I see the better pleased I am.’"
The oldest son, Freddy:
"...we do get a few queer fish at the Admiralty, but taking it by and large the Navy isn’t too bad. When you’re all doing things together everything shakes down; and when we’re at sea we don’t worry much about whom we’ll meet on land’..."
Charles the middle child and youngest son is in the army:
"...‘if you get awfully mucky and sweaty with a lot of fellows over your tanks, you find they’re all right. At least our lot are’..." He's not snobbish at all – at least not with his army mates.
Mrs Belton again:
"Well, I do hope my son-in-law and daughters-in-law will be our sort,’ said Mrs Belton wistfully. ‘Of course I’d love anyone any of you married, but it would be much more fun if it was someone like ourselves.’..." The old refrain of Not our Sort Dear.
"‘There won’t be a single gentleman in the Cabinet in five years,’ said Mr Belton gloomily..."
"‘You look very nice as you are,’ said Mrs Belton. ‘Or were you thinking of your blue suit, the other one I mean?’ ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything,’ said Mr Belton almost snappishly. ‘If people go out to dinner they ought to be able to dress like gentlemen, not go in the clothes they’ve been wearing all day..." Curious notion.
Mr Adams, the wealthy and efficient works manager at Hogglestock gives his opinion of Mr Belton – as related by the solicitor Mr Updike:
"...Adams described him as a fine aristocratic old gentleman.’ He did not add that Mr Adams had qualified his praise by adding, ‘And a conceited old stick-in-the-mud.’"
"‘I didn’t know you could do shorthand,’ [Captain Hornby] said admiringly. ‘It’s not really my job,’ said Elsa. ‘Of course I don’t do it at the office or I’d lose caste. I have to dictate to my secretary."
Curious notion.
Mr Carton again, on how an intellectual grandfather can produce an intellectual granddaughter – i.e. Miss Sparling:
"...That sort of thing always tells’..."
Mrs Belton also on Miss Sparling:
"...It may be snobbishness to think the better of a person because your Vicar has known her grandfather who was a Canon; but it lies deep at the roots of social life, and there is good reason for it..."
Mrs Belton to her son Commander Freddy Belton, the heir to the Belton estate, such as it is:
"Couldn’t you possibly find a very nice heiress, darling? I would love her, even if it was Miss Swartz..." Here Ms Thirkell again avails herself of her finger-tip knowledge of literature. I guessed that "Miss Swarz" was probably an anti-Semitic slur, but not so according to the excellent "relusions" provided by the Angela Thirkell Society - www.angelathirkellsociety.co.uk/. In particular I appreciate the "guides to the novels". The Headmistress has been decrypted by Penny Aldred and Hilary Temple: "Miss Swarz is 'the rich, wooly-headed mulatto from St Kitts' who old Mr Osborne wants George to marry, in Thackeray's Vanity Fair".
A Slavo-Lydian revolutionary in Barsetshire:
"She was on a mission to England to tell the workers how lazy and ignorant they were, and to encourage brotherly love between the nations. Most of those present, who had all felt the same about their servants, gardeners, workmen, day labourers, nearly burst with rage on hearing these aspersions on the British working class..."
Not snobbery but common sense – by Mr Carton:
"‘Why children, a loathsome breed who should be kept under hatches or in monasteries till they have acquired some rudiments of manners and consideration for others, should be encouraged to think themselves of importance now, I do not know. The English as a race have always been sentimental about dogs, and draught horses in Italy where most of them have never been, but this wave of sentiment about children is a new and revolting outburst’...
'How right you are,' said Miss Holly..." teacher and Miss Sparling's right hand.
‘It’s a pity,’ said Mr Carton reflectively, ‘that we can’t have a second Children’s Crusade. Innocent the Third got rid of a lot of them by encouraging it. We can still learn much from the Church of Rome'..."
The English educational system interpreted as applied to the displaced Hosier's Girl School:
"...Their parents, who were mostly doing pretty well, were so glad to find their daughters healthy and happy that when they had also realized the great joy of only seeing them in the holidays, instead of five days in the week from half-past four in the afternoon to nine o’clock in the morning, not to speak of all Saturday and Sunday, most of them gladly agreed to their remaining as boarders..."
And Mrs Belton:
"...she looked facts in the face with her accustomed aloofness and confessed that to have one’s children in the room with one was delightful, but to have them not in the room, yet know that they were happy somewhere about the house was even better..."
Here are a few more of Ms Thirkell's delightful anecdotes.
Speaking of lazy and ignorant workers:
"...Her father chiefly lived on his wife, supplemented with odd jobs, but as Harefield, like many villages, was at bottom matriarchal, no one thought much the worse of him..."
"...the Vicar whom, quite apart from his collar and black vest, anyone would have known for a clergyman at once on account of his large and flexible Adam’s apple, which fascinated the rash beholder’s eye and had once caused Charles Belton, aged four, to ask him why he couldn’t swallow it..."
Female doctors, here as elsewhere in Ms. Thirkell's novels, are not popular. Dr Parry pronounces:
"...Dr Buck has been called up, so I’m single-handed except for Dr Morgan and I can’t abide the woman. She does well enough for half-baked highbrows, but she will talk about psychology to the cottagers and they don’t like it..."
"...Mrs Belton was very tired and blamed herself for the feeling. A woman in her middle fifties, she said angrily to herself, had no business to be tired. At that age one ought to be full of horrible energy, dashing about in old but well-cut tweeds organizing everything..."
Possibly self-criticism? Ms. Thirkell was in her middle fifties at this time.
Mrs Belton reflects on the defects in her children:
"Hermione Rivers for instance, Lord Pomfret’s cousin who wrote all those successful novels, was always boasting about her boy Julian and his painting; Mrs Tebben at Worsted was more than boring about the devotion of her Richard; that dreadful Mrs Grant who was some connection of Mrs Brandon’s used to speak far too frequently of her son Hilary’s complete oneness with his madre amata. Mrs Belton had sometimes wished she could have sons like that. But..."
Followers of the series enjoy a good laugh at this. Julian is a conceited wastrel. Richard and Hillary are pretty much alright but their mothers perceptions are very much awry as both sons detest their mothers – at least superficially.
Mrs Belton reflects on men:
"...she had long ago decided within herself, though perhaps barely conscious of the decision, that it was better not to take any notice of what men said, because they didn’t seem to have much sense..."
The author reflects on men:
"It was no part of Mr Oriel’s plan to neglect his ladies, and as a rule he gave his men a very short interval in which to discuss whatever it is that men discuss when left together; high politics and dashing days in the hunting field, or the Odes of Horace, we would like to think, though finding ourselves unable to do so with conviction..."
Fashion as inducement into the Women's Royal Naval Service:
"...‘But the girls who are giving me the most anxiety,’ said Miss Sparling, ‘are the ones who want to go into the Wrens because they like the hat.’ ‘It’s an enchanting hat,’ said Mrs Belton. ‘If I were a young officer I’d take every Wren I met by her chin and lift up her face and kiss her. Charming little birds they are’..."
World politics:
"The word Russia is also a very powerful chemical agent to throw into conversation, stirring up as it does an amount of entirely uninformed and doctrinaire prejudice one way or another, which does no credit to anyone..."
To Ms. Thirkell's fanciful nation of Mixo-Lydians has here been added their ancestral enemy the Slavo-Lydians, each group have their champions in Barchester. Mr Carton pronounces:
"I hold no brief for either side, for two more degraded and backward races do not exist in Europe..."
"Miss Sparling asked if he was in occupied or unoccupied France, which led to so uninformed a discussion as to whether any of France was unoccupied now, each speaker having a different point of view, with only this in common, that not one of them had any ground for any statement made..."
The dangers of libraries – and of reading!:
"...‘It’s like Lord Victor and Lady Isabel,’ said the fiction-besotted Dorothy...
Mrs Powlett, [the Beltons' housekeeper] was not anxious for her. But she determined to accompany Dorothy {the Beltons' maid] to the twopenny library herself in future, or at any rate speak to Miss Faithful Humble who kept it as a branch line of a small tobacconist’s, and warn her to supervise Dorothy’s choice of books..."
"I don’t know what’s come over Dorothy. It’s all these libery books. Thank goodness I’ve enough to do without reading. It only puts ideas into people’s heads’..."
The delightful, accident-prone, Mrs Updike:
"...‘Well, if one was on a desert island one would feel so silly not knowing how to kill a fowl,’ said Mrs Updike. ‘I suppose if one could catch it, one could cut its head off if one had an axe. But I’m sure I wouldn’t have an axe. The only thing I can think of would be to work myself up into a great fit of rage and stamp on its head.’ In saying which ferocious words her pretty fine-drawn face beamed with gay enthusiasm..."
Lacking cook, maid, and gardener, Mrs Updike would sorely need all three as she manages to harm herself in every employment she attempts. Always with unfailing good humour.
A difficult sentence, but an admirable quality:
"Mrs Belton, who had a pleasing, though sometimes disconcerting habit of saying nice things about people she liked to their faces, which, she said, would appreciate it much more than their backs would..."
"...Of the blight of Christmas we have spoken from the heart elsewhere and not once but several times. To our former descriptions of that odious and society-disrupting season we have nothing to add..." Curious notion.
"...Mr Carton, unmoved, said then they would have tea, which was in the dining-room, for he did not hold with food getting into the same room with his books, though he did not mind his books, children of his predilection, getting into the room with his food and habitually read at meals..."
Admirable notion.
"‘It’s letters you must be careful of,’ said Mrs Powlett. ‘They say if once you sign your name to a letter you’re as good as engaged.’ ‘“Do right and fear no man; don’t write and fear no woman,”’ said Mr Wickens, not very gallantly..."
Mr Carton:
"It was his secret pride that his figure had not changed for the last forty years, which he attributed to reading too much, writing too much, skating and walking too much and doing nothing at all too much, just as it suited him, and eating and drinking whatever he liked..."
This is not my favourite of the Barchester novels. I particularly disapproved of the fact that every mention of Heather Adams carries a judgement on how unattractive she is. Everyone is judged, always.
Still there is much here to enjoy. I particularly approve of how Ms Thirkell in Mr Trollope's spirit turns at times directly to her reader:
"...It has long been obvious to the meanest of our readers – we allude to the one who asked the young lady at the libery for a nice book and now wishes she had got something different, something really nice if you know what I mean – that an author does not invent a lake with a spring under it and bring a band of hooligans out from Barchester at great waste of the country’s petrol to try to crack the ice without intending to make someone fall in..."
"...Coincidences do occur in real life, so why not in fiction?"
And even here people can change:
"‘You know Adams, my dear,’ said Mr Belton, anxious to tell his own story, ‘the father of that girl that knows all about rats. The one that’s on the bench with me. A bit of an outsider, but I always said he was a decent fellow.’ ‘Indeed you didn’t, Fred,’ said his wife mildly. ‘You said he was a bounder.’"
June 13, 2022
One of Thirkell's best. She manages to convey a sense of how the war affects the citizens of an ordinary English village. A headmistress shepherds her students through several campus relocations; a landowner frets about the lack of resources to maintain his estate; a mother worries about her three grown children -- two enlisted sons and one daughter working a very important hush-hush job. Thirkell does it all with a splash of humor. The self-made factory-owner's clucking over his motherless daughter. Dr. Morgan, who attempts to psychoanalyze all her patients. Mrs. Updike, who is always recovering from some minor domestic accident. The Hosiers. Allusions to Trollope, of course (Mr. Oriel; the bishop; the Dean; the Thornes), and Tristram Shandy (Slawkenbergius and Fluvius Minucius). The most memorable scene (for me, anyway) is when the Updikes are forced to dig up a small non-perishable food store, buried in the garden in case of invasion, because Mr. Updike has driven a wooden tree-stake into the container. Mrs. Updike finds enough tinned fruit to make three fruit cakes and throws a party. The neighbors eat every last crumb while conversing about food. What a great way to write about rationing.
Question: Is a middle-aged schoolmistress, never married and thinking of retirement, the type to be satisfied with "a very deep affection," "an understanding," and a little hand-holding?
Question: Is a middle-aged schoolmistress, never married and thinking of retirement, the type to be satisfied with "a very deep affection," "an understanding," and a little hand-holding?
January 2, 2015
The first book I've read by this Angela Thirkell, I found at first it difficult to grasp with all the characters introduced in the first chapter. After sticking with it I found her storytelling to be charming. The cast of characters is truly what makes this book a gem.
Taking place in the fictional village of Barsetshire, England they are in midst of World War II. The central family are the Beltons and their three children who lease out their estate due to financial difficulties to Miss Sparling, the Headmistress of the Hosiers Girl's School. the Beltons then taking up residence elsewhere in town. They, the headmistress, along with the other townsfolk commiserate over war rations and other simple trivialities that result in a pleasant read.
Taking place in the fictional village of Barsetshire, England they are in midst of World War II. The central family are the Beltons and their three children who lease out their estate due to financial difficulties to Miss Sparling, the Headmistress of the Hosiers Girl's School. the Beltons then taking up residence elsewhere in town. They, the headmistress, along with the other townsfolk commiserate over war rations and other simple trivialities that result in a pleasant read.
May 15, 2015
Unlike other other Thirkell novels, the characters in The Headmistress talk a lot about what class they are and what class other people are. And who has a bit of some better class in their distant background. And there's not only dislike for for female academics but disdain for female doctors as a group and for a particularly unbelievably written female doctor character. It's like Angela Thirkell forgot her usual deft way of drawing characters. Each one of the characterizations is belabored. A heavy-handed, dull novel that was hard to get through. Not one of Thirkell's best.
December 16, 2017
I'm torn. I really enjoyed learning about the life during the war. And we're talking about real life here. Black market, black out, walking outside at night without light, bringing your own milk when you're invited to tea. It read as a non-fiction in some parts.
I liked the story for the most part but there were characters that I wasn't interested in (Elsa) and there were characters I couldn't remember who they were. So it made some scenes flew over my head.
And I noticed a lot of typos, between 10-15.
I liked the story for the most part but there were characters that I wasn't interested in (Elsa) and there were characters I couldn't remember who they were. So it made some scenes flew over my head.
And I noticed a lot of typos, between 10-15.
September 24, 2014
We meet Heather Adams here, and Mr. Adams whose word is as good as his bond also erupts upon the stage. The hapless Mrs. Updike, and the good solid Beltons. The headmistress does get her future tied up, fortunately, and we can be happy.
June 13, 2012
I should re-read this and the rest of Thirkell's books. I don't remember much about this one.
January 6, 2021
I am terribly behind on reviewing and then accidentally did Miss Bunting before this one, which matters to nobody except for me as I am trying to capture the actual experience of rereading them in order. So --
This book revolves around the village of Harefield, where the Beltons, owners of the local big country house, have had to rent it out to a girl's school in order to make ends meet & are trying to come to terms with moving to a rented house in the village. It is absolutely Rich People Problems, but I nonetheless felt a lot of sympathy for the general idea of having to let strangers live in one's home for an indefinite period of time, and the further pain of having to watch the strangers do so. The variety of reactions that the Belton family had to the change increased my sympathy -- daughter Elsa's over-the-top melodrama, unkindness, and attempts to fix the problem in ways that trample on her parents' feelings are so clearly there as a Wrong Path that I found it easy to sympathise with her parents restrained sadness and willingness to make the best of things.
This is the book that introduces Heather Adams and her father, both of whom (especially the father) become recurring characters, and I do wonder what Thirkell thought she was doing with them. In this book Heather is a clumsy, oafish schoolgirl who improves slightly by the end through her contact with the Right People, and Mr Adams is very kind and well-meaning but difficult to be around socially as he is always launching into long stories about himself and his Feelings, which to our upper-class cast are anathema -- and while I know that they are meant to be funny to me as a reader, I mostly cringed, having been much inclined to the same thing in my 20s and now often finding myself on the other side of it, trying to gently put new acquaintances off who want to tell me their entire life stories with extra attention to the gory bits. (This is a reference to pre-covid habits of going out into shared public spaces and meeting new people, a habit which has been lost to personal experience since March of 2020.) I think in this book both the Adams are there mostly for humour and occasionally to move the plot along, but I like them more later on when Thirkell has humanised them more, even if I don't agree with her assumptions and preconceptions.
I don't remember Thirkell being outright horrible about the working classes here, although she's pretty nasty about (most) scholarly women -- it's very much of her mindset that Miss Sparling is acceptable because her scholarship consisted of helping a man she's related to in finishing his life's work, rather than in doing work of her own. But the book is funny in places, in the satirical vein that was more common in her earlier work:
All of that being said, this is just not one of my favourites, and I'm not sure why. Some of it is that while Miss Sparling and Mrs Belton are both enjoyable characters, I don't love them the way I do Lucy Marling or Lydia Keith. Some of it is that while the romance is unexpected and refreshing, it is not one I am enormously engaged in. Some of it, though, is just that in a lot of Thirkell novels I do identify with some of the characters in a strange way (strange because there are multiple angles of approach from which I would never be accepted into this society, even if I were English and born in the right time frame) -- her characters who are tired out by volunteering for dozens of things and trying to keep themselves on an even keel while dealing with difficult family members touch my heart in a way that none of these characters do.
This book revolves around the village of Harefield, where the Beltons, owners of the local big country house, have had to rent it out to a girl's school in order to make ends meet & are trying to come to terms with moving to a rented house in the village. It is absolutely Rich People Problems, but I nonetheless felt a lot of sympathy for the general idea of having to let strangers live in one's home for an indefinite period of time, and the further pain of having to watch the strangers do so. The variety of reactions that the Belton family had to the change increased my sympathy -- daughter Elsa's over-the-top melodrama, unkindness, and attempts to fix the problem in ways that trample on her parents' feelings are so clearly there as a Wrong Path that I found it easy to sympathise with her parents restrained sadness and willingness to make the best of things.
This is the book that introduces Heather Adams and her father, both of whom (especially the father) become recurring characters, and I do wonder what Thirkell thought she was doing with them. In this book Heather is a clumsy, oafish schoolgirl who improves slightly by the end through her contact with the Right People, and Mr Adams is very kind and well-meaning but difficult to be around socially as he is always launching into long stories about himself and his Feelings, which to our upper-class cast are anathema -- and while I know that they are meant to be funny to me as a reader, I mostly cringed, having been much inclined to the same thing in my 20s and now often finding myself on the other side of it, trying to gently put new acquaintances off who want to tell me their entire life stories with extra attention to the gory bits. (This is a reference to pre-covid habits of going out into shared public spaces and meeting new people, a habit which has been lost to personal experience since March of 2020.) I think in this book both the Adams are there mostly for humour and occasionally to move the plot along, but I like them more later on when Thirkell has humanised them more, even if I don't agree with her assumptions and preconceptions.
I don't remember Thirkell being outright horrible about the working classes here, although she's pretty nasty about (most) scholarly women -- it's very much of her mindset that Miss Sparling is acceptable because her scholarship consisted of helping a man she's related to in finishing his life's work, rather than in doing work of her own. But the book is funny in places, in the satirical vein that was more common in her earlier work:
It was no part of Mr Oriel’s plan to neglect his ladies, and as a rule he gave his men a very short interval in which to discuss whatever it is that men discuss when left together; high politics and dashing days in the hunting field, or the Odes of Horace, we would like to think, though finding ourselves unable to do so with conviction.
All of that being said, this is just not one of my favourites, and I'm not sure why. Some of it is that while Miss Sparling and Mrs Belton are both enjoyable characters, I don't love them the way I do Lucy Marling or Lydia Keith. Some of it is that while the romance is unexpected and refreshing, it is not one I am enormously engaged in. Some of it, though, is just that in a lot of Thirkell novels I do identify with some of the characters in a strange way (strange because there are multiple angles of approach from which I would never be accepted into this society, even if I were English and born in the right time frame) -- her characters who are tired out by volunteering for dozens of things and trying to keep themselves on an even keel while dealing with difficult family members touch my heart in a way that none of these characters do.
June 24, 2023
Thirkell used Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire and his characters as a springboard for her delightful novels, so for Trollope fans, it is a luxury to meet the grandchildren of the Grantleys and the Crawleys and the Thornes and the Oriels and the Greshams, as we do particularly in this novel. The references to Trollope's characters are overt and something of the original character comes out in the descendant. But Thirkell's own original creations are far from beings to be despised: the accident-prone, joyous Mrs Updike is one of her most unforgettable creations, as are the Mixo- and Slavo- Lydians, sworn enemies to the death. The Miss Pettinger is here met with for the first time, although hatred of her has communicated itself to us through at least five generations of passing-out schoolgirls. The geography is slightly different, and in the village of Harefield, "have lived for a hundred and fifty years or so the Belton family, pleasant undistinguished people who burst into comparative affluence with a nabob under the Honourable East India Company and have been gently declining ever since." The Nabob transported familiar names into the English countryside, and we come across the improbable names of Arcot and Plassey and Madras Cottages and Dowlah, the Old Begum pub and Rajah's Café in Barsetshire.
In the fourth year of the war, however, the hardships of the once-governing classes, with large, draughty houses, high taxation, inadequate domestic help for households filled with at least six servants indoors, and two outdoors, food, clothes and fuel rationing is far more detailed here than in the earlier novels. A most welcome wedding present is the gift of some left-over roll of ivory satin, while young men not yet twenty-one are making out their wills in the very likely event of their death. On the other hand, factories and offices and even physical work like portering in a railway station, offer much better opportunities for the few men who have not been called up, and young women, who until now had only domestic service as an option.
A love story like the others in the series, the most remarkable features of 'The Headmistress' are the characters themselves, whoever they might be, and the wit and compassion that overlays the whole as a benediction.
In the fourth year of the war, however, the hardships of the once-governing classes, with large, draughty houses, high taxation, inadequate domestic help for households filled with at least six servants indoors, and two outdoors, food, clothes and fuel rationing is far more detailed here than in the earlier novels. A most welcome wedding present is the gift of some left-over roll of ivory satin, while young men not yet twenty-one are making out their wills in the very likely event of their death. On the other hand, factories and offices and even physical work like portering in a railway station, offer much better opportunities for the few men who have not been called up, and young women, who until now had only domestic service as an option.
A love story like the others in the series, the most remarkable features of 'The Headmistress' are the characters themselves, whoever they might be, and the wit and compassion that overlays the whole as a benediction.
July 28, 2022
3.5* rounded up. With only two of Thirkell’s WWII books left to go, one really sees the way the war is wearing upon her and her characters. In Cheerfulness Breaks In, there was energy and mild life shifts as the war begins. By Northbridge Rectory, life was beginning to change more substantively; and in Marling Hall, the reality had sunk in that an entire way of life for the gentry and aristocracy was ending and likely never to return. If Marling Hall is the nadir of despair, in Growing Up we saw just that: characters coming of age and facing facts.
The Headmistress is notable for the exhaustion left by almost half a decade of rationing. The reality of war death is also much more in the forefront, with both male and female characters in uniform frequently appending, “If I’m not killed” to the end of sentences.
The nearness of death pervades the book, as here:
“He knew, and Elsa knew, that the unspoken thought underlying her suggestion [to send his lawyers an inventory of his inherited belongings] was, ‘If you are killed your lawyers will know what is here’; a thought which, spoken and unspoken, must underlie most people’s arrangements now.”
The tone was appropriate for 1944 and worked for me. What didn’t work as well (IMO) was Thirkell’s usually mild misogyny shifting into overdrive. She typically shows antipathy toward educated women, but here a caricature of “the lady doctor” (always identified thus) was really over the top. The idea that a female physician could only be ridiculous struck me as especially sad coming from the pen of such a clever woman.
One of the main characters, Elsa, is initially presented as a very competent and successful woman in uniform at her hush-hush job. But Thirkell turns on her as well, with a fiancé who schools her like a child and even inserts a reference to Petruchio.
The eponymous headmistress fares better, and it’s hard not to like an AT book. Worth a read, but not my favorite.
The Headmistress is notable for the exhaustion left by almost half a decade of rationing. The reality of war death is also much more in the forefront, with both male and female characters in uniform frequently appending, “If I’m not killed” to the end of sentences.
The nearness of death pervades the book, as here:
“He knew, and Elsa knew, that the unspoken thought underlying her suggestion [to send his lawyers an inventory of his inherited belongings] was, ‘If you are killed your lawyers will know what is here’; a thought which, spoken and unspoken, must underlie most people’s arrangements now.”
The tone was appropriate for 1944 and worked for me. What didn’t work as well (IMO) was Thirkell’s usually mild misogyny shifting into overdrive. She typically shows antipathy toward educated women, but here a caricature of “the lady doctor” (always identified thus) was really over the top. The idea that a female physician could only be ridiculous struck me as especially sad coming from the pen of such a clever woman.
One of the main characters, Elsa, is initially presented as a very competent and successful woman in uniform at her hush-hush job. But Thirkell turns on her as well, with a fiancé who schools her like a child and even inserts a reference to Petruchio.
The eponymous headmistress fares better, and it’s hard not to like an AT book. Worth a read, but not my favorite.
September 17, 2019
I love Angela Thirkell, but it's true that she wrote varying levels of books. Although I like them all, I love the funniest ones, like The Brandons.
The Headmistress takes a hundred or more pages to get to the real stories of the characters. In this case, the stories were two wartime romances involving a younger and an older couple. I do love to read about the minutiae of daily life in her period (this book takes place during the first half of the Second World War), but it took a bit long to get to the "stories."
All that being said, I still recommend the book, and I'm sure that I'll read it again one day, as I do nearly all her Barchester/Barsetshire books. She is funny (often hilarious), observant, gentle, wry, charming, and intelligent.
By the way, this was the 1995 Moyer Bell edition, and I found it distractingly riddled with typos.
The Headmistress takes a hundred or more pages to get to the real stories of the characters. In this case, the stories were two wartime romances involving a younger and an older couple. I do love to read about the minutiae of daily life in her period (this book takes place during the first half of the Second World War), but it took a bit long to get to the "stories."
All that being said, I still recommend the book, and I'm sure that I'll read it again one day, as I do nearly all her Barchester/Barsetshire books. She is funny (often hilarious), observant, gentle, wry, charming, and intelligent.
By the way, this was the 1995 Moyer Bell edition, and I found it distractingly riddled with typos.
January 11, 2024
Another charming visit to Barsetshire, this time to Harefield where Mr and Mrs Belton have let their house in Harefield Park to an evacuated girls’ boarding school and moved into a house in the village. Here we are introduced to their family and their social circle, from the gentle Vicar to the accident prone Mrs Updike, as well as to Miss Sparling, the headmistress of the title, and some of her pupils. Published in 1944 and set in the later years of the war, blackout and rationing are part of everyday life - and the possibility of losing family members in the fighting is acknowledged stoically. Written in the author’s witty style, a delightful read for the start of 2024.
March 22, 2025
I know to keep the time period it was written in mind and not to expect enlightened views of women's roles but this really seemed to hit the 'every woman needs a mature man to settle her' thing a bit too much for my taste. Dr. Morgan was treated as a joke but she was a qualified, fully trained doctor. It was hard to take Elsa seriously as a trained, respected professional with a high level, serious job when she was so often described by her own family as a spoiled brat with a bad temper.
I love this series warts and snobbery and all but there are some individual books I love more than others.
I love this series warts and snobbery and all but there are some individual books I love more than others.
May 7, 2018
This is the first Angela Thirkell book I've read, but I'll be trying to find more. Her style is a calm, stream-of-consciousness burbling monologue, with a sly wit that will catch the reader off guard. Written in 1945 and set during WWII England, the war influences the actions of the characters, but doesn't take precedence over the storyline (the word "plot" seems too small for this book). The titular Headmistress is only a part of the whole, and the ending is a gentle slide into resolution.
Highly recommended for those who do not need non-stop action!
Highly recommended for those who do not need non-stop action!
June 30, 2017
This isn't my favourite of the series, but it's still pretty darn good. This has a displaced school, who have displaced a family and a whole array of complications to go with it. There's a lot less Mixo-Lydians than the last Thirkell that I read, which is a definite improvement and the humour made me giggle. The only reason it took me a little while to read because I didn't want to put it in my handbag and it end up getting all battered!
May 13, 2025
I am sad to say that this was my least favourite of Thirkell’s Barsetshire series so far. It was still a good read but was peppered with more social class snobbery than I was previously aware of. I have not been reading the novels in order either so got rather confused with who was grown up now, who had married who/died etc. I have a couple more in paperback and an audible version to listen to so I will crack on!
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