The Happy Tree

by Rosalind Murray

'A 1926 novel which begins with the death of a young man during the war, flashes back to his happy childhood shared with the young woman who is the narrator, and then describes how the war – inevitably – took them unawares, destroyed their happiness and has left her, the young woman, emotionally maimed. '

Genres: Classics, British Literature, Fiction, World War I, Coming Of Age, Historical Fiction, Relationships

242 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Rosalind Murray (1890-1967) was the daughter of the well-known classical scholar Gilbert Murray and Lady Mary Howard. Brought up in Glasgow and Oxford, she was educated by governesses and at the progressive Priors Field School. She published her first novel, The Leading Note, in 1910 when she was 20, her second, Moonseed, in 1911 and her third, Unstable Ways, in 1914; this was the year after her marriage to the historian Arnold Toynbee, with whom she had three sons between 1914 and 1922. The Happy Tree came out in 1926; it was followed by another novel, Hard Liberty, and by a children’s history book. During the 1930s Rosalind Murray’s interests turned to theology; although brought up agnostic, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1933, and published several books about faith and religion. She parted from her husband in 1942 and spent the rest of her life farming in Cumberland.

Reviews

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose everyone has a special place in their childhood when time seemed to stand still, it was always summer, you loved the people there, and felt safe and cared for. In my case it was not a sprawling English estate but my grandmother's house in a tobacco farming community, playing with my cousins, climbing trees, and running barefoot and free. The feeling was the same and I often remember those days fondly. But we all grow up and move on.

In Helen's case though, she did grow up but was never able to move on. WWI came along and changed everything. There was before the war and after the war, and a whole generation was lost, a whole way of life was lost, and those who couldn't change and accept a new world were never happy again. Helen had always loved her cousin Hugo, sensitive and artistic, but married another man who she learned to care for and had 3 children by him. My sense of Helen throughout this book was that she was dead inside. Her only happiness was her memories of the big house at Yearsly, her cousins Hugh and Guy and her Aunt Delia. It never seemed possible to her that people grow old and die, or go to war and are killed, or go to war and come home changed. I felt sorry for her, but also wanted to slap her and tell her to wake up to what was left.

Still, this is a beautifully written account of those years and those people, and like all Persephone books, left me knowing more that I did before I read it.

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a deeply moving book of a woman, Helen, who is turning 40, and her looking back on her life.
“Tomorrow I shall be forty; my youth is gone; irretrievably, irrevocably, gone; and even that I do not mind. It used to seem to me so difficult not to feel too much, and now I cannot feel at all. Is this simply growing old? Is this what always happens when one grows old? But if Hugo were alive still, would it be like this? I do not think that it would.” ( This is not a spoiler- at the beginning of the book and in blurb)

From an idyllic childhood at Yearsley, to the formative years with the building of friendships and love, to World War I and its losses to the period after the war and the recovery- this is where her reflections take us.

What I loved about this book: Helen’s bond with her cousins Hugo and Guy. Their summers at Yearsley, a manor house in the country, was a dream setting that seemed to set up the deprivations and horrors of WWI even more. This bond would change over the subsequent years, but would always underpin everything in Helen’s future. Helen would make bad decisions of course, don’t we all, but this led to her growth and subsequent yearnings.

Sorry if this seems vague, but I really don’t want to give too much away. Helen is one of those characters that you one moment like and the next you just want to shake her and say “ Wake up to what is going on around you.”

Helen’s story left me with a deep ache- to feel such an emptiness and to keep going on. The ache of loss post WWI that so many people found themselves living with. The last paragraph in the book totally slayed me.

“I thought of Guy and Hugo as boys, as they had been in those early summers when first I was there, boys in the branches of the beech trees in the High Wood, calling to each other among the calling of the rooks; and regret came over me, poignant, impersonal regret, at the inevitable pathos of existence; the relentlessness of time, and change, and the haunting dearness of the past.”

Published: 1926

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only the very hardest of hearts could fail to be moved by this beautifully wrought and utterly poignant account of a life damaged by war and by circumstance.

It is the story of Helen, who looks back at her earlier life when she is in her forties.

Her childhood was, in many ways, idyllic; with her time divided between the London home of her grandmother and Yearsley, the beautiful Georgian manor house in the country that was home to her cousin Delia, Delia’s husband, John, and their two sons, Guy and Hugo.

The children’s life in the country was happy and secure; they had the freedom to roam through gardens, meadows and woods; and there was one particular tree that they always returned to, naming it ‘The Happy Tree.’

The two boys had much in common, but their natures were quite different – Guy was bright and confident, while Hugh was quiet and sensitive. Helen and Hugh were particularly close; and as they grew up, it became clear that their feelings were much deeper than those of siblings. Neither of then knew quite what they should do, or how to speak of what they knew, and so they just went on with life and found themselves pulled in different directions.

The boys went away to school and then they went up to Oxford, while Helen was educated at home, with the unspoken assumption that she would remain there until she married and had a home of her own.

She enjoyed visiting Guy and Hugh, in Oxford at first and then in London. She was drawn onto their sophisticated and intellectual circle of friends; but there was still a distance between her and Hugh. That troubled her, and as neither of them had either the wish or the confidence to speak or act, she drifted into a relationship with a man on the fringes of their circle.

Walter Sebright was an earnest and serious-minded academic, it was clear that he adored Helen, and she accepted his proposal because she knew that and she didn’t quite know how to say no, and could only hope that his love for her would allow her fondness for him to grow into something much deeper.

The match left her family and friends both surprised and disappointed, but because Helen didn’t share her true feeling with anyone, all any of them could do was assume that it was what she wanted and that she saw things in her fiance that they did not.

Helen was to find that Walter’s outlook on life was quite unlike that of her family and friends, and that his less wealthy, middle-class upbringing made him disapproving of the easy path through life her cousins and the lack of thought they gave to their good fortune.

When war broke out, Helen had to watch her cousins and friends go off to fight, while her husband stayed home, because he was medically unfit and carrying out work that was important to the war effort. She struggled with childcare and with housework, with no help, because even finances allowed there were no domestic servants to be had. Helen was totally unequipped for the life she had to live, she struggled with the consequences of the wrong decisions she had made, and as news of casualties and deaths arrived she grieved for the people she had loved and for the world that she had loved and that she knew could never be the same again.

The writing in this book is so honest and so insightful that Helen’s feelings and experiences were palpable, and though there were times when I felt so sad for her that it was difficult to read I couldn’t look away.

And this is all that has happened. It does not seem very much…I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and someone I loved dearly was killed in the war…that is all. And all those things must be true of thousands of people.

Her story speaks profoundly for the generation of women who lived through the Great War, and it does more besides.

It made me think how our family situation can affect us for the whole of our lives. Helen’s father dies when she was very young and her mother left her in her grandmother’s care while she moved to America to pursue her career. Had Helen’s mother been close at hand maybe she would have questioned her engagement in a way that Cousin Delia didn’t feel she could. And had she been raised to think that she might have higher education, that she might have a career or a purpose of her own, that being a wife and a mother need not be everything, what a difference that made have made.

It made me realise that no matter what our circumstance our, lives can be thrown off course by things that we can’t control, leaving hopes and dreams shattered, and leaving lives adrift.

It made me realise that it is so important to speak and communicate honestly.

All this is the story of one life, told in a voice that always rings true.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book about Helen and her cousins growing up before the out break of WW1.
They spend idyllic summers at Yearsly.
War commences and Guy and Hugo enlist.
Life will never be the same again.
Helen ends up marrying Walter but realises too late that Hugo loves her.
Sadly Hugo doesn't return.
Helen reflects on her life and the strains of war and fondly remembers the happy innocent days of childhood spent outside underneath the Happy Tree.

'I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and someone I loved dearly was killed in the war......that is all.
And all those things must be true of thousands of people.

Beautifully written.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are particularly difficult to talk about coherently because in many ways nothing very much happens. That is in no way ever a criticism from me – because quite simply I prefer books like that. The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray – Persephone book number 108 – is a glorious example of such books. This is a novel about an idyllic childhood and the slow, sad disappointing years that come after it. The Happy Tree is not however a depressing book, it is somehow more than just the story of a series of griefs and disappointments. Rosalind Murray’s writing lifts it beyond that age old tale of the mistakes that are made when the choices for women are so limited. It is difficult to covey the absolute perfection of this novel, but it is certainly a contender for one of my books of the year.

“And my life up to now comes before me very clearly; the people and the places, and the choices and mistakes, and I seem to see it all in better proportion than before; less clouded and blurred across by the violent emotion of youth.”

The Happy Tree opens with the death of a young man, and told in retrospect by a woman who is slightly astonished to find she is now forty. Our narrator, Helen Woodruffe remembers her childhood with her adored cousins Guy and Hugo in the years before the First World War. We then witness the emotional toll the war takes on Helen, as it necessarily takes or changes the people she loves. Helen grew up spending part of her life in London in the home of her grandmother and part in Yearsly, the country estate of the Laurier family. Here at Yearsly Helen spends her happiest times, basking in the comforting, calm presence of Cousin Delia her husband John and their sons Guy and Hugo. At Yearsly life is easy and relaxed; the three children have the blissful freedom of gardens, tennis courts, meadows and woods in which to play, and their most special place – the Happy Tree.

Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book happy and sad at the same time. Loved reading about their happy memories of childhood but felt frustrated that Helen seemed to willingly plod on with a situation she was unhappy with, although if she had made the decision differently it would have probably been even unhappier for her eventually. I liked the description of furniture as friends and felt sad at the end that Yearsly was not cared for in the way it used to be, a sad reminder that nothing stays the same.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was oddly taken with this book in spite of (or maybe because of) its exceptionally spare writing style. The narrator tells us about her happy childhood growing up with her cousins, and then about her not-so-happy marriage and experiences in WWI Britain. It seems unemotional, but the emotion is all there, just under the surface. I'm interested to read Murray's other novels now, to see if she uses the same style, or if this was specific to this book, as it's very appropriate for the narrator.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosalind Murray’s The Happy Tree, the 108th book on the Persephone list, was first published in 1926. This beautiful novel has so many themes delicately threaded through its plot – family, politics, wartime, love, friendship, jealousy and, perhaps most importantly for its protagonist, the notion and hardships of growing up.

The storyline of The Happy Tree alone sounds like a perfect pick for the lovely Persephone list. Our protagonist is Helen Woodruffe, a grown woman who is looking back on her life and the choices which she has made: ‘And this is all that has happened. It does not seem very much. It does not seem worth writing about. I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and some one I loved dearly was killed in the war… that was all. And all those things must be true of thousands of people’. In her childhood, she tells us in the novel’s opening chapter, she divided her time between her grandmother’s London house and her cousins’ home, a country estate named Yearsly: ‘There, sometimes under a special “Happy Tree”, she passes an idyllic childhood with Guy and Hugo Laurier’, hopelessly falling for the latter. Of her cousins, Helen tells us, ‘they were and are to me all I could wish for anyone to be, and I cannot wish anything at all different about them’.

The opening of The Happy Tree draws one in immediately, and sets the tone for the rest of the novel: ‘Once I would have minded it so much, to live here, looking out at that laburnum tree, and that house opposite, that bow window, and the yellowish stone facings of the windows, and the lilac bush that has grown all crooked, and the pink hawthorn, and the laurels with patterned leaves; but now I do not mind. Now I do not see these things or think about them at all; only tonight I am seeing them, because somehow I have come awake tonight, for a bit’. The sense of place within the novel comes together marvellously through Murray’s carefully tuned descriptions.

Helen is the most wonderful narrator, and Murray is very aware of her as a distinct being, and of her persona, thoughts and feelings: ‘And my life up to now comes before me very clearly; the people and the places, and the choices and mistakes, and I seem to see it all in better proportion than before; less clouded and blurred across by the violent emotion of youth’. She is very candid throughout, and lets us in to her secrets, as it were. Of her mother’s seeming lack of care – one may even go as far as to say neglect – which allowed her to go and live with Cousin Delia, the mother of Guy and Hugo, after her father’s death, she says: ‘If she had kept me with her I don’t know what would have happened. I don’t know how I could have grown up at all’.

The well-considered introduction to The Happy Tree has been penned by Charlotte Mitchell. She writes of the way in which the novel resembles ‘many of her [Murray’s] other writings, fiction and non-fiction, in examining the world she was brought up in and the choices it had offered a woman like herself’. She goes on to say that: ‘with all the usual caveats about treating fiction as autobiography, it is evident that the novel depicts Rosalind’s own situation pretty closely’. The Happy Tree is a marvellous novel, filled with fluid characters, beautiful writing, and such consideration for every scene.

[Karen Mace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a simple story detailing the life of Helen as she looks back at her childhood and the freedom that gave her, against her life now as a wife, to a man she never really loved, and as a wife to 3 children, one of which she loves more than the others! Set against the backdrop of World War I, it often felt a little grating with the writing style - he said, she said, and i said - but the story was lifted by her attention to detail and how life had often disappointed her. You often got the impression that she never really knew what she wanted and spent too much time regretting the choices she made until it was too late.

It also gave a fascinating glimpse into the effect the war had on the young men fighting and the families left behind not knowing how they were doing, something we struggle to really understand in the modern world of knowing things instantly. An interesting and oddly captivating story

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen grows up with her two male cousins, one of whom is the love of her life. She marries someone else for all the wrong reasons, and then the First World War comes along to make her life even more unhappy.

Possibly reflecting some aspects of Rosalind Murray's marriage to Arnold Toynbee, which ended in divorce (although not until 20 years after this book was published), the prose is clipped and almost cruelly sparse. Most paragraphs are no more than one sentence, and all the emotion lies behind and under the words.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a bit disappointed.
At first I thought that this was a memoir but then saw it was classified as a novel .
As a memoir it might have worked ; I could see it being written by an elderly lady looking back over her life . A lady who wasn’t educated in the best school or perhaps hadn’t progressed past the 7 th grade . That because to me the style is juvenile and not in the best way (as many kids can write and write far better ).
I skipped quite a bit and wasn’t sorry to put it down .
I guess that I’m a literary snob .

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say about this book?.. Well, it touched me deeply. Its beautiful journey was one that I found myself swept up in. Nostalgia, anyone’s nostalgia, can do that to you. The feeling, the emotion, the complete acknowledgement that ‘this is life’ yet the hindsight of ‘it could’ve been so much more’ is raw, real and somewhat relatable. A beautiful piece of literature, recommended.

[Josefine Lønborg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and somehow quiet book that does not try to appear more than it is and therefore is the more moving. It is a story about the Great War, but not a typical one. It is the story of a young woman on the Home Front, but even more a story about her life before the war and the people, who gave her life meaning and filled her days with joy. As she grows up things change, she changes and makes choices with consequences, and then the war brings even greater consequences. Yet it is not as much a story about the war as it is a beautifully written story about relations between a group of friends - ordinary people who just try to live their lives.
The essence of story is elegantly summed up in the last few lines "And this is all that happened. It does not seem very much. It does not seem worth writing about. I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and someone I loved dearly was killed in the war... that is all. And all those things must be true of thousands of people."

[Ayreon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Judith Bowen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mawkish, writing rather contrived but I did actually finish so not rejected or abandoned which is something I do more and more as I get older

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book for the most part. But it took me about 1/3 of the way into the book to figure out how Helen (central protagonist) was related to Guy and Hugo (they were cousins to her) and to Cousin Delia and Cousin John (they were not cousins to Helen, they were aunt and uncle fer chrissake).... The story took place in England some years before World War One, and then into World War One. During that time Helen does get married (to Walter) and has three children. Helen seemed to be depressed (clinically depressed) for some periods in her life...she experienced post-partum depression (the author did not label it as such and i have a suspicion it went by another name back in those days) after her second child was born. And this was her thought when she was on a train with her newly-wed husband Walter on the way to their honeymoon: “...I only remember looking out of the (train) window, at the rails, running along beside us, and thinking ‘I might throw myself on to those. That would be a way out of it still.” Yeesh! Although I wasn’t surprised...she felt no love for him during the brief time they were seeing each other, and when he proposed marriage to her she turned him down flatly and he said “OK’ but I am glad I asked you’ and he looked forlorn and downcast and so she said “OK. I accept your proposal”. Like yeesh! Feel sorry for a man you don’t love, and say you’ll marry him so you’ll feel better for a nanosecond and now you’ve made a life-long commitment! (It wasn’t easy to get a divorce in that country in that time period).

I read from a first edition (1926) and not the Persephone re-issue. I am glad Persephone re-issued it...it’s a cold day in May when I don’t like Persephone re-issues. In fact, I hope to read all or most of the re-issues... there are currently over 150 re-issues. You should check them out...lots of good reads!

Reviews:
• https://thebookbindersdaughter.com/20...
• Great review but a lot of the story is revealed....so if you think you might want to read the book, you might want to wait until after you read the book to read this review...https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2015/...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2015/...

Notes:
• I agree with the third reviewer (3rd bullet point above) when she or he said this: I wish Rosalind Murray’s other novels were easier to come by, as her writing is definitely something I’d love to explore further.
• Biography of the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalin...
• If you scroll down to the bottom of this linked page, you will see a charcoal drawing of Rosalind when she was 20...

[Rhoda · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This story begins with the narrator Helen on the eve of her 40th birthday looking back on her life, that has not gone the way she expected it to.

Helen had an idyllic childhood growing up between her grandmother’s London home and her cousin Delia’s beautiful country manor house, where she had a very strong bond with Delia’s sons Guy and Hugo. The children’s life was happy and carefree and they had one favourite tree in the meadow - The Hapoy Tree. But war was on the horizon and the onset of the Great War meant that all of their lives would never be the same again.

This was a deeply moving story that left me with a profound sense of the character’s emptiness and melancholy, yet with the compulsion to continue moving forward. This was a book that made me stop and reflect many many times as Helen’s reflections felt so relatable. It makes you think about certain times in your childhood and youth that you look back on knowing they can never be recreated or relived and which you just took for granted.

This book was a surprise gem - the prose is not especially beautiful and is straightforward and sometimes even juvenile, it moves at a very slow pace and Helen is a character you can both love and hate. Yet it captures the joys and disappointments of life so very artfully and seems almost like a memoir at times, which when you read the foreword, is not surprising as it seems there were strong parallels between the author’s life and this story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the second half of the novel better than the first half. I found the pace at the beginning rather too slow. The writing is understated and there is a certain poignancy to this work. I found the narrator, Helen, a little irritating. She makes rash decisions, such as marrying Walter, despite her obvious love for Hugo and despite her misgivings shortly before the wedding. She has three children and favours the youngest of the three, John. Helen describes a carefree life before World War 1, and how drastically her circumstances change with the advent of war. Few of her male friends return. Walter, her husband, is declared unfit to serve. He is a bland kind of fellow, an academic, but proves to be a good husband to Helen and is obviously in love with her. By the end of the novel, we realise that she probably did marry the right man after all.

[Lucienne Boyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Happy Tree (first published 1926) tells what purports to be the story of Helen Woodruffe reflecting on her life as she turns forty, and its “ordinariness”. The story of her happy childhood, the unhappy marriage, the death of someone she loves, the feeling that youth has gone – are “true of thousands of people”. But the book is far from ordinary: it’s deeply moving.

[Madelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And there are the leaves coming down. There are always leaves and trees... and always coming down... naturally every year... why do I notice that?
And this is all that has happened. It does not seem very much. It does not seem worth writing about. I was happy when I was a child, and I married the wrong person, and some one I loved dearly was killed in the war... that is all."

[Mark Bowden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an engaging story of a group of minor-aristocratic friends growing up to adulthood in the years before the First World War. The style is rather unconventional but it arrests the attention and sustains interest.

It is fortuitous that I read this soon after reading 'William - an Englishman' by Cicely Hamilton, which deals with the same period, especially the outbreak of the First World War, but in a very different manner. Hamilton lines up her characters as straw men and straw women to be knocked down without sympathy - it serves them right, apparently. Murray has much more empathy; even her less sympathetic characters (of which there are only one or two) are treated with respect and allowed some good qualities. On the other hand Murray could apparently be quite acerbic and as this novel clearly has a strong autobiographical aspect one wonders how her friends and relations, and particularly her husband, Arnold Toynbee, reacted to it.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guess I'm one of the few who didn't enjoy this one. I gave up reading at the 20% mark as I still had no idea what the book was supposed to be about, and didn't find any of the characters compelling enough to keep going. Strange, because I usually enjoy memoirs (yes, I know this is fiction, but it reads like a memoir).

[Malaferla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this story and the author's particular style. I felt at one with the main character, Helen.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Rachel of Winterley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Beautiful writing, wonderful insights into different lives and times.

[Michael Bully · Rating 3 out of 5]

The lead character Helen is looking back on her life on the eve of her 40th birthday. Married to a man she doesn't love , with three children. The man she loved most of all dying in the Great War.
The whole childhood idyll , followed by the accelerating changes of the Edwardian era then the calamity of the War are all evoked well. One gets the feeling of the optimism of youth giving way to melancholia and fatalism. Characters are beautifully drawn and the domestic arrangements of running a household, the observations of social decorum and the details of everyday life were great.
But I was never quite sure what the character actually wanted from life. This is not quite Vera Brittain battling to get to Oxford, or Storm Jameson on her own with a child, trying to start a career, to reference two real comparators of the time. It was a shame that Sonia her school friend who seemed a lot more interesting , didn't remain in the narrative. Helen seemed oddly incomplete for a lead character.
Ultimately a novel to be read as a potential insight into the history of the time.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing here was so admirably elegantly restrained and I loved the simple story. The last paragraph may have been the most beautiful last paragraph I've ever read.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Depressing as hell.