Letters to a Friend

by Winifred Holtby

Winifred Holtby met Jean McWilliam in a WAAC camp at Huchenneville in France very near the end of the First World War. McWilliam was the camp commander, and Holtby her new hostel forewoman. They took to each other instantly, became firm friends, and lifelong correspondents. Through a world overshadowed by war in both directions, they kept up a lively discussion of events, politics, literature and life, even when McWilliam relocated to South Africa in pursuit of her teaching career. Seeing each other very rarely in the flesh, their relationship was played out in the written word poignantly and entertainingly. "I shall be really disappointed if I go through life without once being properly in love. As a writer, I feel it my duty to my work - but they are all so helpless and such children. How can one feel thrilled?" These vibrant letters are Holtby's side of the correspondence, and outline the extraordinarily varied elements of her personality: her dynamism, her political savvy and commitment, as well as her bright wit, and her tenderness. They also bring to life some of the most important of her literary friendships, especially those with Vera Brittain and Stella Benson. Her pithy and self-deprecating comment on her progress in writing, and on the literature of her time, amounts to a hugely valuable document in itself, let alone the wisdom of what she has to say about life and living it. "Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection. Once characters have been born they assume a complete life about which everything exists, waiting to be recorded. The whole of art lies in the omissions." One of the finest letter-compilations of the between-the-wars period, this searching and candid book was first published in 1937, two years after Holtby's untimely death.

470 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Winifred Holtby was a committed socialist and feminist who wrote the classic South Riding as a warm yet sharp social critique of the well-to-do farming community she was born into.

She was a good friend of Vera Brittain, possibly portraying her as Delia in The Crowded Street.

She died at the age of 37.

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of correspondence was edited by Alice Holtby (Winifred's mother) and Jean McWilliam. The letters are those that Winifred wrote to her friend, Jean McWilliam, headmistress of a school in Pretoria. Winifred Holtby met Jean in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1918. In their letters they referred to each other as Rosalind (Jean) & Celia (Winifred) after the cousins in Shakespeare's ‘As You Like It’. The correspondence begins in 1920 when Winifred is at Somerville College, Oxford and Jean is teaching in South Africa and the last is dated June 1935, 3 months before Winifred's death.

This book was 461 pages in length, so it took me a good bit of time to get through it (3-4 weeks I reckon). I read other books while reading this tome. Some of it was interesting, and some of it was, to me, boring. I have a suspicion you would have to at least admire one of Winifred Holtby’s novels to be motivated to pick up this book and read it from beginning to end.

I was exasperated when reading this book of letters that time and again Holtby castigated the writing of her novels and their prospects. I suppose in part her pessimism was somewhat justified in that her initial drafts of some of her novels were rejected (and she would have to issue another draft or go to a different publishing house). Still, the fact that I had read ‘South Riding’, and knew that it was a masterpiece, fueled my frustration when she was cutting down her own writing and works time and time again in her letters to Rosalind. (I liked most of the works Holtby was self-critiquing about...)

While I was reading this collection of letters, I periodically had a sense of doom and gloom settle over me because I knew something she didn’t know for most of the time that she was writing her letters — that she was going to die an early death of Bright’s disease (sclerosis of the kidneys), a product of her having contracted scarlet fever when she was a child. 🙁 🙁 And I knew that she would never know the acclaim that her last novel, ‘South Riding’, received from the general public as well as her literary peers (won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1936). I wish she had experienced that!

I took 8 pages of notes! Here are some of them:
• She walked 17 miles in one day! Good God, that’s not so much different from a marathon. 😮
• “I saw a woman today, going down to the park, on a charming bay mare, dressed in a khaki habit. (The lady, not the mare.) 😂
• For a good part of the book from 1920 through 1926 she talks about her advocacy work with the League of Nations, including giving lectures on London’s street corners.
• She speaks longingly of visiting her friend, Jean (Rosalind) in South Africa and finally visits her and tours the country in 1926.
• She talks about her friend, Vera Brittain, engaged to be married and then married. Vera and her were roommates before the marriage and Winifred moved in with Vera and husband shortly after their marriage. When Vera’s first memoir ‘Testament of Youth’ was published and was very well received, Vera left for America on a book tour, and Winifred took care of Vera and George’s children, John and Shirley, while she was away.
• Several authors that I recognize and have read are mentioned in her letters, either from her personally meeting with them or her reading their books including Rose Macaulay, Sylvia Townsend Warner, E.M. Delafield, May Sinclair, and Rebecca West.
• She knew that her friend Rosalind (Jean McWilliam) did not throw away her letters — ‘You keep my letters. I doubt whether I shall ever want to write my own diary...’ Thank goodness she kept them — if Rosalind had thrown away her letters, we would never have had this book.
• She made a number of mentions in her correspondence that she was writing a historical novel, a 14th century romance with John Wycliffe as the leading character (English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford.), and she initially titled it ‘The Princess’ but ultimately settled on ‘The Runners’. She submitted it to Jonathan Cape and it was rejected in May 1926. The man (Herbert) Jonathan Cape wrote her and said ‘It would get some good notices, and some people would speak highly of it and recommend it, but the sales would not be satisfactory to either Miss Holtby or ourselves.’ I know the book has never been published, but I wonder if the manuscript exists somewhere. 🤨

Reviews:
• http://preferreading.blogspot.com/201.... (This is said in the review, and I don’t know what to make of it. I guess I will have to read the biography by Marion Shaw...The letters were mostly written from 1920-1926. They continue sporadically for the last years of Winifred's life but the friendship seemed to peter out as Winifred grew busier & the sympathy between them lessened. In Marion Shaw's biography of Winifred, The Clear Stream, it's suggested that this volume, edited by Jean & Alice Holtby, was an attempt to regain some control of Winifred's memory from Vera Brittain. Vera had seen South Riding through the press after Winifred's death, against Mrs Holtby's wishes as she was unhappy with her portrayal as Mrs Beddows &, of course, Vera was writing her own account of Winifred's life.)

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Winifred Holtby's fiction and really enjoyed reading these letters that she wrote to her friend Jean McWilliam. They met during WWI in a WAAC camp at Huchenneville in France, and became lifelong intimate friends, although they rarely saw each other as Jean moved to South Africa to become a headteacher there.

I've read this book slowly over several months, as it is perfect for dipping into. The letters are very wide-ranging, full of Holtby's thoughts about issues of the day and literature, with mentions of her friends, especially Vera Brittain and Stella Benson but also including other writers. I would have given 5 stars for the wonderful quality of Holtby's writing, but knocked one star off because it is a slightly frustrating read at times, as it is just one half of the conversation. So often, Holtby is answering something that her friend has said, sometimes arguing with her, and at one point there appears to be a quarrel or misunderstanding which threatens to end the friendship. Thankfully, this is soon overcome, but it's hard to understand the ins and outs of it without having the other letters.

Another frustration is that Holtby discusses the writing of 'The Runners', an historical novel about Wycliffe, but this was never published, after being turned down by her publisher. From googling it, it appears that the manuscript still exists and is in the Winifred Holtby Collection at Hull History Centre. Perhaps in this digital age someone could publish it and let all her completist fans finally read it? I also don't think 'The Forest Unit', stories about her wartime experience discussed in the letters, have ever been published, and it would be great to see them finally published too.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but I didn’t love it—hence the ambivalent rating. After the half-way point had passed, I started to get kind of bored and was looking forward to the end of the book. I think having the other side of the correspondence would’ve made this a lot more interesting, but, then, it might have been twice as long, and this is already a long book. I found the tone of the letters a little over-sentimental—not in declarations of love (for I would have enjoyed that), but, in general, on every-day topics. Holtby’s personality was definitely conveyed through these letters, and it is a bright, sympathetic, optimistic, and thoughtful personality. In terms of historical value, I found the letters quite interesting, for they conveyed the thoughts and feelings of the every-day person on the historical events of the day. I also noticed two references which are relevant to me—she mentioned that she was reading The Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde by Frank Harris, and then later on she mentioned Walter Pater; I recently read the first book, and right now I’m reading The Renaissance by the latter. So, that’s kind of cool. In general, I thought this was an okay book. I did expect it to be slightly more impassioned, considering Lillian Faderman considers the relationship of these two to be a love affair (which I don’t quarrel with—they do call one another Celia and Rosalind, as from As You Like It, Winifred always ends her letters with ‘I love you’ or ‘I am yours’, and she once writes about how much she likes Jean’s legs), but I suppose the editor was aware of the rising idea of the “lesbian” as pathology and as explained by sexologists, and it’s possible some letters were left out or truncated. One fascinating thing I noticed is the way Winifred describes women; she definitely writes of them with more admiration for their physical appearances than with men, in a detail that I think shows a lesbianism. I provided below a couple of the quotations which made me think this.

Quotations:

“To take the taste away I bought Shaw’s Man of Destiny. The worst of Shaw is that though I like reading him, he depresses me first by his utter contempt for the intelligence of mankind; secondly, because I never really understand what’s he’s driving at, and hate to confess my ignorance. Other people seem to know exactly how to take him. I wonder if I’m stupid, or if Shaw is not as easy as they make out. He’s certainly got a bee in his bonnet about insularity.” (40-1) I remember thinking something along these lines when I read my one Shaw book—The Lady’s Guide to Socialism, Nationalism, etc, or something.

“I try to read the politics too, because, what with Ireland and the Washington Conference, life is rather exciting just now. But I wish papers would publish a plain list of facts, and leave the arguments to people who have an inclination for them. One grows so weary of polemics. [I so agree. The other day I was telling someone I know that I wish I could find a published list of facts about political candidates and the things they’ve done in office, not polemics.] I think Garvin is as impartial as any one; but that may be because I like his daughter. It is terribly difficult not to be personal, and Viola Garvin has dark, wistful eyes with purple shadows below, and a white, wedge-shaped face, with a very scarlet mouth splashed on to it, and black, bobbed hair that waves round her like a dark angel’s halo. And she walks with a limp, and has a sweet, ironical voice, and overworks herself passionately over everything she does; so that when I read Garvin’s articles, I see Viola’s heavy eyes and soft, curling smile across the pages, and think that a man with such a daughter must be rather nice. Probably he’s very ordinary really.” (75) Very impassioned description of this woman.

“The day of imperialism is passed. I heard its curfew sound when the guns startled the pigeons in Hutchenneville orchard on Armistice day. Imperialism is really nothing more than dynamic and aggressive nationality. Nationality, patriotism—these were good things and noble things. I’m not sure that at one time they weren’t two of the finest things in the world. But, like many other good things, they were only a stage in the development of man’s social consciousness. Man may be, as Aristotle says, a political animal, but he is also endowed with sufficient self-love to make his duty to his neighbour the subject of a divine commandment, not a natural instinct. In order to acquire a trained social instinct—which you can call altruism or public spirit or whatever you like—he had to be educated in co-operation. And this education began, like all other branches, in a narrow way, by attachments first to an intimately connected body of people in the family, then from the family to the tribe, from them to the punitive tribal king, and so through the state, in all its varying forms from city to empire, till at last it embraced all people of the same race, living under the same rule: in other words, nationality. But directly the evolution of nationality was accomplished, the nations suffered from swelled heads—imperialism—and imperialism went to Germany’s head worst of all, and the result was war. What we want now is the transition to a still wider sphere of international co-operation, where empires don’t matter, and patriotism becomes parochial, and the service of mankind at large is the only consideration.
Well, after this long dissertation (it’s all right, I’m not going to begin again) I’ll tell you some news, if I have any.” (87-8) Very interesting view-point on this. And that second paragraph I added because it made me chuckle.

“I like your story. Why is it that women who do things for which they may be ostracised by society are nearly always so much finer than the perfectly decorous matrons? I don’t believe that marriage in the ordinary, middle-class comfortable way is really good for women. It seems to make them so complacent and dependant. Bernard Shaw says that marriage is all very well, but that it absolutely puts an end to the adventurous outlook on life. If one has a household and children, it’s not easy to be anything but a housekeeper. I think it’s better not to marry.” (90) Feminist interest!

“I’ve just been reading the Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde by Frank Harris—a most arresting and memorable book. If I wanted to teach clean living and thinking to some one old enough to think and intelligent enough to realise, I think I would give them not the Bible, but Frank Harris on Oscar Wilde. It is a sane book, just, reasoned, pitying. Frank Harris has a bee in his bonnet about the British Press. He is ungenerous to British Society and British Law; but to his hero he is neither sentimental nor bitter. He deals with that sordid tragedy of wasted genius and fatal amiability with a reverence and sincerity that is far more effective because so much of the book is necessarily unsavoury.” (102) I really did enjoy Frank Harris’ book—it’s fabulously interesting—but it’s also very dishonest. And I suspect Hotlby’s reference to the “unsavoury” has to do with homosexuality, which is a tinge of prejudice that is unfortunate, but she is writing in her time.

“I love lecturing. Always before people have told me, ‘Little girls should be seen and not heard,’ when I wanted to air my views. Now I can be both seen and heard, and people sit and listen.” (109) Feminist interest!

“I ought to be writing a story. Did I tell you I had begun a new novel? It’s called The World Is So Full, and is about a girl who sets off in life at a small country town thinking that the world is full of interesting things, and then the small country town tells her that because she is a girl, there’s only one thing in the world—love—sex—what you will—and when she has played for that and lost it, she thinks the world is empty, until the end of the book, when another woman, who has tried many kinds of life, takes her away from the town and gives her people to look after and things to do, and she has no time to consider whether the world is empty or not, and so she finds it full. It sounds silly, put in that bald way, but it will be more sensible, I think, when it’s done.” (113) This book was published as The Crowded Street. Sounds very fascinating! Maybe I will read it someday.

“I have at last got a job. It is to go twice a week to a rich young woman in Mount Street. Her mother is American, and she has been for three years in America at school. She is tall and slim, with golden hair and dark eyebrows, charmingly arched. Her nails are manicured and she wears a double string of pearls, and her manner is that of a sophisticated woman of the world. But she is very intelligent. She has read an immense amount of scattered, desultory stuff, and she thinks she would like to go to college. So I am to read with her, and criticise her essays and try and put some political economy and history into her pretty head. She is nineteen, and makes me feel fifteen! However, it is interesting work, and I hope she pays me well.” (130) Another lesbian-tinged description of a woman, I feel.

“I am sending you a few little trifles with my love—a fan to keep you cool when the lizards sing and the air quivers with heat, and a little soft travelling cigarette-case for your pocket, and a pair of silk stockings for your nice straight legs. I always liked your legs. They look so nice in gaiters. What an indecorous and unfeminine statement! But why shouldn't one like legs? They are so much more than things to walk on—fat legs, thin legs, bandy legs, squat legs, straight, slender, elegant legs—unusual indications of the personality supported by them!” (140-1) The second part of this paragraph feels like she’s trying to play off the comment on Jean’s legs she made.

“I remained to buy shoes in the rain. There are dozens of little shoe-shops there kept by greasy women who are Jews, or if not Jews, so like them that you wouldn’t know the difference. But the shoes are lovely—and they actually keep seven and a half without blinking!” (163-4) …Winifred…No…Jesus.

“I wonder if you’ll get home in November. And if you’ll stay if you do come. And if you’ll be happy if you stay. I’d love to see you again. Sometimes I wonder whether you are really you—if you have the same long, white, slim hands, and the same wild, lovely hair.” (179) Awwww.

“Your letter this morning saying that you have got Vera’s book. I hope, I hope that you like it; in spite of some crudenesses it is fine and sincere, like herself. She is a person whom life has battered, and who has been given by circumstance and heredity such a temperament that every blow and every snub, even every casual coldness makes a wound and a scar, where many people would hardly know that they had been touched. The War has left her with a real sickness of apprehension that makes a life of publicity and action extraordinarily tiring; but never for a moment does she give way, nor lose her sweetness, nor her tenderness for suffering, nor an imagination which is constantly trying to devise ways for protecting other people from the sorrow that she has known. Many, many things about her remind me of you, especially her faculty of imagination about other people’s feelings. I want you to like her, for when you come home we will go together to theatres and big shops and good concerts, and we’ll buy materials and make clothes if you like.” (213) Interesting to get her perspective on Vera! I still really want to get to reading Testament of Youth soon, as I have a nice copy. Alas, I have library books, and I have library books I want to get, and they take priority over books I own—since I can read those whenever and however long I want.

“Vera and I last Saturday went to the Essex Hall to hear all four candidates deliver themselves of their opinions about the League of Nations. Churchill I found quite detestable as anything but a humorous evening entertainer. I loved him for that. He is so unbelievably like his cartoons. He really and truly wore the overcoat with the astrakhan collar and cuffs in which Punch draws him laboriously supporting the weight of his former liberal self. He really and truly points an accusatory finger at the crowd, and cries in sepulchral tones, ‘I say, that if another war is fought, civilization will perish.’ (Laughter. A sweeping gesture.) ‘A man laughs!’ (Out goes the finger.) ‘That man dares to laugh. He dares to think the destruction of civilization a matter for humour!’ (Rocking cheers and hoots of laughter from the gallery—in which I joined.) Indeed, he is such a preposterous little fellow, with his folded arms and tufted forelock and his Lyceum Theatre voice, that if one did not detest him one might love him from sheer perversity.” (245-6) Wow, I never knew Churchill was perceived with such…condescension and disdain! It’s hilarious, though.

“But here, in this grey city, there is all the sorrow and dignity of a conquered people. Never believe any one when they tell you that it is more dignified to win than to be defeated. It isn’t true. Here in the streets, lit no more brightly than London during war-time, English Tommies march up and down, looking very gay, friendly and irresponsible. Their canteens are in the best hotels, and a lovely building down by the Rhine. Outside are great notices ‘No Germans allowed.’ The money for their food is all paid from German taxes, and the German children crowd round their bright lit windows, watching them gobble up beefsteaks. It is one of the most vulgar things that I have seen. There is no truculence, of course. Tommies are always the same, friendly, cheerful, tolerant, they ‘rub along’ well enough with the Germans—whose food they eat. The hospitals are full of children suffering from rickets and tuberculosis. In the streets on Sunday night the people walk up and down in two unceasing processions, talking a little, not laughing much. It is the cheapest form of recreation.Their hotels are half empty, and then filled mostly with Jews and foreigners.” (280) This is sad, and I didn’t know about it. It gives you some perspective.

“Isn’t it interesting how all the nicest men that one honours are feminists? All the manliest that I know are reasonable about women. It’s the stupid, or callow, or diseased—like D.H. Lawrence—who resent women having other sides beside the sex side to their natures.” (437) Hahahaha.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was published in 1938, before Vera [Brittain] wrote her own biography of Winifred and while Winifred was still capable of being remembered in ways other than as Vera's bosom friend. ANd Vera treads very lightly within these letters, barely present. I think this shows the extent to which W. committed herself to those she loved--Vera was a major figure in W.'s life, but Jean and W. had a complete relationship of their own. I enjoyed these letters.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely person Winifred Holtby was and what a loss to the world her tragically early death.