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A Silent Joy
Set in the 1950s, this book explores the nature of love. The developing affection between elderly widower Sir Geoffrey Galbraith and the child Irina is at the centre of the book, contrasted with the obsessive lust of her mother for Ivor and the gentle romance of Irina's sister and her lover.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 1992
15 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Jenkins
48 books60 followersFrom Elizabeth Jenkins' obituary in The New York Times:
As a novelist, Ms. Jenkins was best known for “The Tortoise and the Hare” (1954), the story of a disintegrating marriage between a barrister and his desperate wife that Hilary Mantel, writing in The Sunday Times of London in 1993, called “as smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream.” Its author, Ms. Mantel wrote, “seems to know a good deal about how women think and how their lives are arranged; what women collude in, what they fear.”
To a wider public Ms. Jenkins was known as the author of psychologically acute, stylishly written, accessible biographies. Most dealt with important literary or historical figures, but in “Joseph Lister” (1960) she told the life of the English surgeon who pioneered the concept of sterilization in medicine, and in “Dr. Gully’s Story” (1972) she reconstructed a Victorian murder and love triangle.
Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins was born on Oct. 31, 1905, in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where a year earlier her father had founded Caldicott, a prep school.
She studied English and history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where at the time women could take exams but not receive degrees. The principal of the college was Pernel Strachey, sister of the biographer and Bloomsbury figure Lytton Strachey, and through her Ms. Jenkins met Edith Sitwell and Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
She found the company intellectually distinguished but rude and unpleasant. Woolf’s description of Ms. Jenkins’s first novel, “Virginia Water” (1929), as “a sweet white grape of a book” did not erase the impression.
Despite good reviews for her first novel and a three-book deal with the publisher Victor Gollancz, Ms. Jenkins began teaching English at King Alfred’s School in Hampstead, where she remained until the outbreak of World War II.
In this period she wrote two of her most admired biographies, “Lady Caroline Lamb” (1932) and “Jane Austen” (1938), as well as the chilling “Harriet” (1934), a novel about the sufferings of a mentally disabled woman whose husband, a scheming clerk, marries for her money.
During the war Ms. Jenkins worked for the Assistance Board, helping Jewish refugees and victims of the German air raids on London. She later worked for the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Information.
“Elizabeth the Great” (1958) showed her biographical talents at their most effective. Although she relied on the standard historical sources, Ms. Jenkins added a psychological dimension to her portrait that other historians had scanted.
The historian Garrett Mattingly, in a review, wrote that Ms. Jenkins “is really not much interested in war and diplomacy, politics and finance.” Her specialty, he argued, was the human heart. “We believe Elizabeth Jenkins,” he added, “because, by imaginative insight and instinctive sympathy, she can make the figures of a remote historical pageant as real, as living, as three-dimensional as characters in a novel.”
Ms. Jenkins returned to the Elizabethan period in “Elizabeth and Leicester” (1961) and roamed further afield in “The Mystery of King Arthur” (1975) and “The Princes in the Tower” (1978). In “Six Criminal Women” (1949), she presented short studies of two murderers, a pickpocket, a blackmailer and a con artist living between the 14th and 19th centuries. A more wholesome gallery of characters was put on view in “Ten Fascinating Women” (1955).
In 1940 she helped found the Jane Austen Society and took part in its campaign to buy Austen’s house at Chawton, where Austen spent the last eight years of her life. It is now a museum.
Her novels included “Doubtful Joy” (1935), “The Phoenix’ Nest” (1936), “Robert and Helen” (1944), “Brightness” (1963) and “Honey” (1968).
In 2004 Ms. Jenkins published a memoir, “The View From Downshire Hill.” Its title refers to the Hampstead neighborhood whe
As a novelist, Ms. Jenkins was best known for “The Tortoise and the Hare” (1954), the story of a disintegrating marriage between a barrister and his desperate wife that Hilary Mantel, writing in The Sunday Times of London in 1993, called “as smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream.” Its author, Ms. Mantel wrote, “seems to know a good deal about how women think and how their lives are arranged; what women collude in, what they fear.”
To a wider public Ms. Jenkins was known as the author of psychologically acute, stylishly written, accessible biographies. Most dealt with important literary or historical figures, but in “Joseph Lister” (1960) she told the life of the English surgeon who pioneered the concept of sterilization in medicine, and in “Dr. Gully’s Story” (1972) she reconstructed a Victorian murder and love triangle.
Margaret Elizabeth Jenkins was born on Oct. 31, 1905, in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where a year earlier her father had founded Caldicott, a prep school.
She studied English and history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where at the time women could take exams but not receive degrees. The principal of the college was Pernel Strachey, sister of the biographer and Bloomsbury figure Lytton Strachey, and through her Ms. Jenkins met Edith Sitwell and Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
She found the company intellectually distinguished but rude and unpleasant. Woolf’s description of Ms. Jenkins’s first novel, “Virginia Water” (1929), as “a sweet white grape of a book” did not erase the impression.
Despite good reviews for her first novel and a three-book deal with the publisher Victor Gollancz, Ms. Jenkins began teaching English at King Alfred’s School in Hampstead, where she remained until the outbreak of World War II.
In this period she wrote two of her most admired biographies, “Lady Caroline Lamb” (1932) and “Jane Austen” (1938), as well as the chilling “Harriet” (1934), a novel about the sufferings of a mentally disabled woman whose husband, a scheming clerk, marries for her money.
During the war Ms. Jenkins worked for the Assistance Board, helping Jewish refugees and victims of the German air raids on London. She later worked for the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Information.
“Elizabeth the Great” (1958) showed her biographical talents at their most effective. Although she relied on the standard historical sources, Ms. Jenkins added a psychological dimension to her portrait that other historians had scanted.
The historian Garrett Mattingly, in a review, wrote that Ms. Jenkins “is really not much interested in war and diplomacy, politics and finance.” Her specialty, he argued, was the human heart. “We believe Elizabeth Jenkins,” he added, “because, by imaginative insight and instinctive sympathy, she can make the figures of a remote historical pageant as real, as living, as three-dimensional as characters in a novel.”
Ms. Jenkins returned to the Elizabethan period in “Elizabeth and Leicester” (1961) and roamed further afield in “The Mystery of King Arthur” (1975) and “The Princes in the Tower” (1978). In “Six Criminal Women” (1949), she presented short studies of two murderers, a pickpocket, a blackmailer and a con artist living between the 14th and 19th centuries. A more wholesome gallery of characters was put on view in “Ten Fascinating Women” (1955).
In 1940 she helped found the Jane Austen Society and took part in its campaign to buy Austen’s house at Chawton, where Austen spent the last eight years of her life. It is now a museum.
Her novels included “Doubtful Joy” (1935), “The Phoenix’ Nest” (1936), “Robert and Helen” (1944), “Brightness” (1963) and “Honey” (1968).
In 2004 Ms. Jenkins published a memoir, “The View From Downshire Hill.” Its title refers to the Hampstead neighborhood whe
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 27, 2012
A Silent Joy was Elizabeth Jenkins’ final novel, published in 1992, more than sixty years after her first. And it is an accomplished study of love and relationships in many forms, set in 1950s London.
First there was Sir Geoffrey Galbraith, a successful barrister and a recent widower. His marriage had been happy, and he and his wife had been content with their home, their garden, good friends. A quiet life. But he knew that he had to accept that his wife was gone, and that he had to carry on alone.
He was a practical man, he knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t, and so he took on a housekeeper. Mrs Treadgold was a widow who, like Sir Geoffrey, had been happily married but had no wish to marry again. She wanted a role, to be needed. And so they suited each other, and understood each other, very well
Fred Talbot, Sir Geoffrey’s driver, was in a rather less comfortable position. His socially ambitious wife, after years of belittling her easy-going husband, had run away with another man. He wasn’t sorry to see her go, but he felt humiliated and he struggled to cope at home.
Sir Geoffrey saw the situation and, tactfully so as not to hurt his driver’s pride, he offered help. A building in his grounds could easily be converted into living accommodation. It seemed eminently sensible to Fred: a new start and a simpler life.
Some time later Sir Geoffrey would take someone else into his home. He was concerned when he found young Irina Stenning walking the streets alone after dark, and even more concerned that her family hadn’t noticed she was gone. He knew them, as friends of friends, and so he took Irina home and Mrs Treadgold agreed that she should stay for a while.
Marcia, Irina’s mother, was not a happy woman. Her sensible, successful husband bored her. Motherhood didn’t fulfill her. And so she drifted into an affair with disreputable businessman Ivor Mossop. Irina didn’t like him; she wanted to stay with her father.
Jasper Spedding was a good man, a successful man, who did his best for his wife and children. He couldn’t understand what his wife wanted, and she couldn’t explain what he was doing wrong. She said that the very fact that he asked was wrong.
Meanwhile his elder daughter, had fallen in love, accepted a proposal of marriage, and was happily planning her wedding and her future. She was fond of her little sister, but she didn’t have much time for her.
Jasper was killed in an accident. Marcia was infuriated that he had changed his will, leaving her provided for but not wealthy, leaving money for his daughters in trusts to be managed by his solicitor until they came of age. but at least it meant that she could marry Ivor.
And so it was quite easy for Irina to wander off, and for nobody to notice.
What would become of her?
That’s far from the end. I don’t want to say to much, but it’s hard not to, because the joy of this book is the way the characters, their relationships are set out. They are so carefully and clearly observed, and they become clearer as events unfolded.
Elizabeth Jenkins created a very real world and she filled it with real, fallible, utterly believable human beings.
She stood back, maintaining a respectful distance but she saw and understood everything, and that pulled me in.
There were moments when I wondered if she was being rather harder on the women in her story than the men, but as the story moved forward I found I could accept that she presented all of her characters fairly and honestly.
The were all what their natures, their lives, their circumstances, had made them.
It was lovely to spend time in Sir Geoffrey’s house. Such intelligent thoughtful and compassionate men are rare. When Fred’s wife decided to come back, when he didn’t want her back but she carried on regardless, he sorted things out for both of them with gentle charm and diplomacy.
He managed Mrs Karomotis beautifully too. She had been a widow, eccentric, adrift and desperately in need of a role and she had found that role in Martha’s household. She was a loyal friend, and she supported Monica without question, never doubting the rightness of her decisions. But Sir Geoffrey did ask questions, and he made her think.
I was less happy in the Spedding household. Marcia was horrible selfish, quite oblivious to the feelings of others. She may have been troubled she may have been in love with Ivor, but I could not forgive her for her lack of interest her elder daughter’s plans or her complete disregard for her younger daughter.
And so there was light and shade in a story, that was quite beautifully wrought.
I was just a little sorry that all of the romantic relationships were beginning or ending or in the past. Maybe that said something about the life the author had. I suspect it did, and I saw signs that she was disappointed in some of the ways the world had changed in her lifetime.
But she understood romantic love, family love, friendship, comradeship … and their importance.
And that is why I can say, even though this is not her finest work, it is still a very fine novel
First there was Sir Geoffrey Galbraith, a successful barrister and a recent widower. His marriage had been happy, and he and his wife had been content with their home, their garden, good friends. A quiet life. But he knew that he had to accept that his wife was gone, and that he had to carry on alone.
He was a practical man, he knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t, and so he took on a housekeeper. Mrs Treadgold was a widow who, like Sir Geoffrey, had been happily married but had no wish to marry again. She wanted a role, to be needed. And so they suited each other, and understood each other, very well
Fred Talbot, Sir Geoffrey’s driver, was in a rather less comfortable position. His socially ambitious wife, after years of belittling her easy-going husband, had run away with another man. He wasn’t sorry to see her go, but he felt humiliated and he struggled to cope at home.
Sir Geoffrey saw the situation and, tactfully so as not to hurt his driver’s pride, he offered help. A building in his grounds could easily be converted into living accommodation. It seemed eminently sensible to Fred: a new start and a simpler life.
Some time later Sir Geoffrey would take someone else into his home. He was concerned when he found young Irina Stenning walking the streets alone after dark, and even more concerned that her family hadn’t noticed she was gone. He knew them, as friends of friends, and so he took Irina home and Mrs Treadgold agreed that she should stay for a while.
Marcia, Irina’s mother, was not a happy woman. Her sensible, successful husband bored her. Motherhood didn’t fulfill her. And so she drifted into an affair with disreputable businessman Ivor Mossop. Irina didn’t like him; she wanted to stay with her father.
Jasper Spedding was a good man, a successful man, who did his best for his wife and children. He couldn’t understand what his wife wanted, and she couldn’t explain what he was doing wrong. She said that the very fact that he asked was wrong.
Meanwhile his elder daughter, had fallen in love, accepted a proposal of marriage, and was happily planning her wedding and her future. She was fond of her little sister, but she didn’t have much time for her.
Jasper was killed in an accident. Marcia was infuriated that he had changed his will, leaving her provided for but not wealthy, leaving money for his daughters in trusts to be managed by his solicitor until they came of age. but at least it meant that she could marry Ivor.
And so it was quite easy for Irina to wander off, and for nobody to notice.
What would become of her?
That’s far from the end. I don’t want to say to much, but it’s hard not to, because the joy of this book is the way the characters, their relationships are set out. They are so carefully and clearly observed, and they become clearer as events unfolded.
Elizabeth Jenkins created a very real world and she filled it with real, fallible, utterly believable human beings.
She stood back, maintaining a respectful distance but she saw and understood everything, and that pulled me in.
There were moments when I wondered if she was being rather harder on the women in her story than the men, but as the story moved forward I found I could accept that she presented all of her characters fairly and honestly.
The were all what their natures, their lives, their circumstances, had made them.
It was lovely to spend time in Sir Geoffrey’s house. Such intelligent thoughtful and compassionate men are rare. When Fred’s wife decided to come back, when he didn’t want her back but she carried on regardless, he sorted things out for both of them with gentle charm and diplomacy.
He managed Mrs Karomotis beautifully too. She had been a widow, eccentric, adrift and desperately in need of a role and she had found that role in Martha’s household. She was a loyal friend, and she supported Monica without question, never doubting the rightness of her decisions. But Sir Geoffrey did ask questions, and he made her think.
I was less happy in the Spedding household. Marcia was horrible selfish, quite oblivious to the feelings of others. She may have been troubled she may have been in love with Ivor, but I could not forgive her for her lack of interest her elder daughter’s plans or her complete disregard for her younger daughter.
And so there was light and shade in a story, that was quite beautifully wrought.
I was just a little sorry that all of the romantic relationships were beginning or ending or in the past. Maybe that said something about the life the author had. I suspect it did, and I saw signs that she was disappointed in some of the ways the world had changed in her lifetime.
But she understood romantic love, family love, friendship, comradeship … and their importance.
And that is why I can say, even though this is not her finest work, it is still a very fine novel
December 29, 2012
Not Elizabeth Jenkins best novel, The Tortoise and the Hare is still my favorite, but an exquisite work. I can't understand why Elizabeth Jenkins is not more well known. Her books are beautiful, melancholy windows into life in mid-20th century England. Her books are thoughtful with beautiful prose and settings, but somehow full of suspense as well. This one is not as much a page-turner as the aforementioned Jenkin's novel, but still definitely worth a read. Elizabeth Jenkins characters stick to your soul; you feel like they were dear friends of yours long after you have finished reading.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews