The Beautiful Visit

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

On the eve of an unusual voyage during the years surrounding the First World War, a young woman reviews her life. Her story begins with a 'beautiful visit' to friends in the country which serves as an awakening experience. What follows is an account of her struggle to retain the mood of her visit.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, British Literature, Classics, Historical, Novels

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE, was an English novelist. She was an actress and a model before becoming a novelist. In 1951, she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit. Six further novels followed, before she embarked on her best known work, a four novel family saga (i.e., The Cazalet Chronicles) set in wartime Britain. The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off were serialised by Cinema Verity for BBC television as The Cazalets (The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off). She has also written a book of short stories, Mr Wrong, and edited two anthologies.

Her last novel in The Cazalet Chronicles series, "ALL CHANGE", was published in November 2013.

Reviews

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Artemis Cooper's recently published (2016) biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard, she says The Beautiful Visit "grew out of the unhappiness of Jane's first marriage, and it asks the questions that were preoccupying her then. How do women find a place in the world if they are brought up unprepared and uneducated for anything but marriage? Does coupledom really bring fulfilment? Is it possible to find an identity outside it?"

The book is very much a coming-of-age story about a young girl - never named - who is the youngest of four children in a 'shabby genteel' family. Her mother comes from a rich family; her father from a lesser social class, and these are the things that have always mattered so much in England. There is a strain, and a shame, in the family which suffuses the atmosphere completely. Her father is a composer (not quite first-rate) and the family lives in a house in Kensington that they cannot afford to maintain properly. EJH is very attuned to the nuances and gradations of social class, and one of the themes of the book is that women from 'good' families are not allowed to do very much at all other than make good marriages. The book is set just before, during and after World War I - a time that instigated great social change in England, and also (not unrelatedly) wiped out a large part of a generation of men. For those girls bred for well-connected marriage, the opportunities became more limited than ever.

The details and atmosphere of this novel are so spot-on, so precise - and it really does allow the reader to imaginatively enter that world. The oppressive rules applied to women are so hard to imagine now, but it's worth remembering that women still did not have the vote in England. (Partial voting rights for women were granted in 1918, and more comprehensive rights were not passed by law until 1928).

Bored to the point of despondency, the young protagonist of the book is invited to visit some distant relatives of her mother's for the Christmas holidays: two weeks in the holiday at a 'jolly' country house with a large family and interesting, attractive guests. The repercussions of this visit then play out through the rest of the novel. There are several important encounters with young men, her mother and her sister, but this is a largely internalised novel. She is a quiet observer, more than a primary mover in life - because of sex, age and temperament. It is quite hypnotic to read; at least I found it so.

Like EJH, her protagonist longs for something more than just marriage. The example of her parents' marriage has not been a positive one, and the sensitive, observant young girl sees how men and women all around her are constantly misunderstanding and disappointing each other. This is the opposite of a 'marriage plot' novel, really, because it is really about exploring about what else is available other than the marriage plot. My only disappointment was with the ending - which felt both strained and improbable. Otherwise, I thought this novel was full of emotional power.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Elizabeth Jane Howard's debut novel and I loved it. It's a meandering story of an unnamed narrator who, aged 17 in 1914, goes to stay with a rich family friends over Christmas. She realises she is dissatisfied with her life and what is expected of her and tries out various different options: sometimes frightening or funny, often tragic. It ends very bizarrely, which did make it feel as though EJH had no idea how to finish it, but I still thought it was all wonderful.

[Esdaile · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I started this novel I was thinking of awarding it just two stars, which changed to three and finally here are four. The strength is the overwhelming acuteness and vividness of observation. There is no hesitation or distraction here. Everything strikes the reader as being "entirely as it must have been". All writing is biographical to a greater or lesser extent, this very much to a greater extent, but the force of the narrative does not let up as so many biographical accounts may be expected to do as people lose a perspective of what is more or less important to the structure of the whole. Perhaps only the ending is a little vague and up-in-the-air to be entirely sastisfying but as the depiction of a world before the Great Insanity of 1914-1918 and then damaged England after, this book is a little gem. I am however, bewildered by the comment on the back cover of the Penguin edition from Antonia White writing in The New Statesman writing that EJ Howard has "true imagination." Apart from the obvious question (what is "untrue imagination"?) I cannot think of a more inappropriate comment. The one quality which this writer surely does not possess or if you will, does not need to possess, is imagination. This is a closely observed record of the author's life. In fact, a character comments at one point to the narrator that women writers do not have imagination -their strength liying in the power of accurate observation. That does not apply to all women writers (Wuthering Heights!) but it is true in this case, that not imagination of which there is none that I can see, gives this novel its quality but an awesome ability to observe, an ability characterised in "The Beautiful Visit" by acuteness, precision, honesty, accuracy, insight and intelligence.

[Sara Booklover · Rating 5 out of 5]

Romanzo d’esordio dell’autrice. Che dire… l’ho amato!
Secondo me i personaggi dell’autrice più riusciti sono quelli molto giovani (infatti avevo amato i ragazzi della saga dei Cazalet) e in questo libro la giovane protagonista sedicenne - alla ricerca di sé stessa e di un posto nel mondo che finalmente la soddisfi - è uno dei suoi personaggi più riusciti.
La storia è narrata dal suo punto di vista in prima persona ma non sapremo mai il suo nome. È piena di difetti, di insicurezze, di contraddizioni tipici della sua età. L’ho trovata un personaggio vivido e reale, nata in un contesto storico in fase di miglioramento ma ancora squilibrato nei confronti delle donne, in una famiglia conservatrice che la rende infelice e confonde i suoi desideri sul futuro.
Sono rimasta davvero molto coinvolta da questo romanzo di formazione, in certi passaggi è un po’ lento, ma il ritmo narrativo poco dinamico è perfetto per riuscire a mettere il lettore nei panni di questa ragazza confusa ed afflitta da mille insicurezze, che vorrebbe una svolta totale nella sua vita ma non sa da che parte cominciare, e intanto il tempo passa e la sua sensazione è di rimanere immobile mentre il mondo va avanti.

Ho riempito il libro di segnapagina, è una lettura che mi ha totalmente assorbita e coinvolta. Non mi aspettavo così tanta intensità nel primo romanzo della Howard.
Il titolo è a mio avviso molto fuorviante perché il romanzo non narra solo di una vacanza, ma si sviluppa in un arco temporale di 4/5 anni, tra problemi adolescenziali/esistenziali e i problemi storici connessi alla seconda guerra mondiale.

[notgettingenough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I assumed this was to be a romance  - what else when it opens with the protagonist lying in fur on the floor of a ship's cabin. The novel tells how she got there....In fact, however, it's the antithesis of a romance, teasing now and again, but disavowing the reader of expectations soon enough. She is a teenage girl, unlike her brothers not allowed to go to school, trying for an independent life without the resources to do so. At one point she takes a job in a large isolated country house with a mad spinster. There is no facility for locking her door. Demoniacal noises wake her at night. She escapes. But in fact, although she was no doubt right to leave, she didn't really have to escape. The noises were those of the pet bird which lived in the conservatory. She is in various situations like this, where drama transforms to the banal. Real life, in other words. She has the good judgement to turn down the person she is expected to accept when he proposes. And, instead of the life of ease she could have entered through marriage, she leaves her mother's house to live in a lower class boarding house more or less in penury, trying to pay her way via private music students.

The ending is entirely unexpected, unromantic (in the girl meets boy way) and rather feminist. Though potloads of money come in handy.

It's a first novel. I assume that Howard's work gets better, it was a little heavy handed, but worth reading all the same.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last year, I devoured Howard's incredible five-book series, The Cazalet Chronicles, which she finished just before she died. It became one of my all-time favourites so I have now started back at the beginning of her career.

The Beautiful Visit, her first novel, was written in 1950 when she was 27 and it feels very much like a first draft of what became the Cazalets. It centers around an unnamed girl visiting a large country house family before and after the First World War. She must have been taking from her own life as she did with her last books, but it is much less ambitious in that it's from a single-person perspective and the cast of characters is much smaller.

This book is more about the utter ennui of being a young girl from an upper-middle-class family, with no money, questioning the purpose of her life. Howard herself was divorced soon after this was written, and marriage does not appear as the answer in this book.

It's sometimes clumsy and odd, especially in a weird Great Expectations interlude and the abrupt ending, but Howard's utterly beautiful writing style is already pretty well developed so ultimately it was a lovely read, if a bit aimless at times.

[Bart · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ⭐️

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Elizabeth Jane Howard's first novel, published in 1950. The unnamed first-person narrator takes the reader through various scenes of her life, commencing with "the beautiful visit" which has a great influence on her hitherto rather boring life. Writing and characterisation are excellent and she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (1951) for this novel. Without giving anything away, the ending was rather a damp squib, but the book is still well worth reading and pointed to greater things to come from her pen in the future.

[Jane Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing that this is the first novel of a young woman who had received really very little education. It goes deeply into the making of the human mind, and examines its small, quiet, desperate corners.

The Beautiful (Re)Visit was a lovely trip back to early EJH - without the arch observations of her later works and a strange historical setting, but still a real accomplishment.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book. I just got a bit fed up with the main character I think. And I've completely forgotten her name, so clearly she made a huge impression on me!

I loved Howard's books about the Cazelets - she writes so beautifully and with such fluidity - but I just didn't care much about this person. Or any of the other's for that matter. The main character reminded me a little of Bella in Twilight actually. Which I realise is a scandalous comparison! It was just the way she obsessed over things so much. I did like her to begin with - she reminded me of myself at the age of 16, with her worries and desire for an exciting life - but she really got a bit tiresome after a while.

I suppose also, that there wasn't much of a story here, like there is with the Cazelets. Or perhaps it is that with them, you get everyone's different perspective, whereas with this book, it is all written by the main character. I don't know. I just got a bit fed up with it all towards the end.

[kp · Rating 3 out of 5]

At her best, she's an excellent writer. I did not love the ending, though. It seemed rushed.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a slow plodding novel, I found the characters to lack lustre and be one dimensional

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had put off beginning with this book since the end of May thinking it'd take weeks to complete it. I am surprised to find out that it only took me two days to read or live in the world of E.J. Howard. I can't believe that this was her debut work published in 1950. It read like a work of an erudite, an expert in the craft of storytelling, of knowing how to best writer her characters, chalk the most beautiful setting of a house in decay or bloom. This is the story of a young English girl, an adolescent who has unluckily found herself in the early 20th century of London, in an utterly detestable house. She is lost. She is so unhappy that she cries at whatever opportunity that arises. She is sick of being poor and being asked what she wants to be, or will do with her life. Her friendships wilt, the men around her despair and she doesn't know if it was her making these things happen, or it's the other person. She is, after all, a young, ignorant girl who is in search for something to tether her. I was in love as you can already imagine. The thing that truly drew me in was the sensitivity, the vulnerability with which she wrote about this young girl. So so so vulnerable, so heartbreakingly gorgeous. Every sentence felt like the words were pulling the papery tissues of my heart only to let it go with a smack. I swooned over her writing. Such finesse, such calmness. I can go on praising this book. It is remarkable. I can't believe it took me this long to discover her. It goes without saying that I am going to consume all her books in the years to come. As you should, trust me, this is a beautiful book.

[Samantha Scherps (Samantha's Boekenhoekje) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik vond het een heerlijk boek!
De vertelster neemt je mee naar een heel andere tijd, een tijd waarin meisjes nog niet veel zelf mochten beslissen in een wereld die door mannen wordt gedomineerd. Het hoofdpersonage ontwikkelt echter een sterke wil doorheen het boek en wil duidelijk méér in het leven dan trouwen, kinderen krijgen en het huishouden doen. Er zit een mooie opbouw in het verhaal. Aanvankelijk is het hoofdpersonage nog erg naïef en bedeesd, maar ze maakt een grote groei door. Het is erg fijn om dat samen met haar te beleven.
De tijd waarin het zich afspeelt is erg interessant. Net voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog en ook nog een stukje daarna... Fascinerend om daarover te lezen door de ogen van ons hoofdpersonage.

[A J HOOPER · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early rather incoherent work by Elizabeth Jane Howard that manages to bring out some thoughtful remarks about love. It feels auto biographical and centres on the repercussions of a Christmas spent with some sociable and exciting friends.
After living an exceedingly quiet life our heroine feels her subsequent years are irrevocably changed. And the action is neatly capped by a second visit at the end of the account. Along the way she falls in love with Ian who is killed early in the Great War.
Here's what Howard says about love.
"I think at the beginning and the end of love there is always a kind of dishonesty; it is inevitable, and should not be resented, even when painful. But in the middle, the centre, there is a brilliant pure streak, when honesty is merely another joy. Then people meet."

[Sara Coppedge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am giving this book four stars instead of five because parts of it are just a little bit boring. Personally, I didn't mind that and read happily through the whole book. I did think the end was strange. I will read another of her books because I feel a bit lost without her. She seems to have gotten in my head so that I identify with her.

[Alessandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarebbero 4.5 stelle più che 5, ma fa lo stesso. I personaggi femminili della Howard sono tra i più realistici che abbia mai letto - o forse quelli in cui mi rispecchio meglio. In qualche modo, anche se non ho ovviamente potuto conoscerla, le voglio bene 🔏

[Sesi Mutlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’m sixteen. I want everything, every single thing” and this is what lies ahead of me, myself and my beloved unstable certainties.

[Antonio Mazzuero · Rating 4 out of 5]

lettura piacevole.
non al livello di libri successivi, ma un ottimo esordio!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je volgt het verhaal van een jonge meid door de jaren heen. Het begin is wat kinderlijk geschreven, dit trekt bij verder in het boek wanneer het verhaal een stuk fijner wordt om te lezen. Door het verhaal leer je verschillende personages lezen en speelt de oorlog een grote rol.
Een aanrader als je van historische romans houd!

[Evelien Walravens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Verslavende heerlijke tijd

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) is in Nederland vooral bekend geworden om haar vijfdelige serie rond De Cazalets. Nu is haar debuutroman uit 1950, Een heerlijke tijd, die bekroond werd met de John Llewllyn Rhys Memorial Prize, ook in het Nederlands te lezen in de vertaling van Inge Kok.

Een naamloos 16-jarig meisje uit een verarmd upperclass-gezin in het Londen van vlak voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog brengt de kerstdagen door op het landgoed van verre kennissen. Onervaren als ze is kijkt ze er haar ogen uit. Ze heeft er een heerlijke tijd, ontmoet veel nieuwe, interessante mensen en krijgt er haar eerste kus. Terug in Londen blijft ze maar terugdenken aan deze twee weken. Ondertussen breekt de oorlog uit en gaat haar leven moeizaam verder. Na een paar mislukte pogingen om het ouderlijk huis te verlaten ziet het er naar uit dat ze er nooit weg zal komen. Na een korte romance met een soldaat die even terug is op verlof realiseert ze zich dat ze voor zichzelf moet kiezen.

In de Cazalet-kronieken werd duidelijk dat Howard een ware kunstenaar is met beeldende en beschouwende taal. Met beschrijvingen van kamers, huizen en personages die tot in de puntjes kloppen en onnavolgbare metaforen weet ze haar lezers met open mond aan haar schrijfsels te binden. Deze schrijfwijze is ook al te vinden in Een heerlijke tijd, zij het nog wat onbeholpener dan in haar latere werk.

‘Ik zal nooit vergeten waar dat huis naar rook. Naar houtblokken, lavendel en vocht, de oude geur van een huis dat zoveel jaar vol bloemen heeft gestaan dat het stuifmeel en de bloempotten onstoffelijk betoverend achterblijven -…’

Howard experimenteert in haar debuutroman ook met verschillende stijlen. Zo is er een gedeelte waarin we kennis nemen van de eerste poging van het meisje om zich van haar thuis los te maken. Ze gaat als gezelschapsdame werken bij een oudere dame in Zuid-Engeland. De dame is erg vreemd en in de stilte van de nachtelijke uren zijn er rare geluiden te horen. De vergelijking met Jane Eyre van Charlotte Brontë is vlug gemaakt. Maar er komt ook een zweempje Agatha Christie omhoog wat het geheel weer wat luchtiger maakt.
Het gedeelte waarin ze drie dagen met de soldaat op verlof doorbrengt zijn romantisch en bijna hartverscheurend te noemen. Het is een verhaal binnen het verhaal, met een begin en een eind, zij het wel Howard-stijl.

De debuutroman van Howard is het bewijs dat zij een van de grootste Engelse auteurs van haar tijd was en nog altijd is. Door haar eigen levenservaringen in haar boeken te verweven weet zij haar lezers voor altijd aan zich te binden, verslaafd te maken aan haar geweldige stijl. Het boek leest vlot en is zelfs tijdloos te noemen, ondanks dat het al in 1950 voor het eerst verscheen en zich afspeelt voor en tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Liefhebbers van Downton Abbey kunnen hier hun hart aan ophalen.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

So after enjoying the Cazalets so much I decided to read a few other EJH novels. This is her first, and has some first novel traits. She's already developed that talent for detailed description and atmosphere, taking you right into the room with her characters. And she already loves writing affectionately about children. It's an odd kind of mixture though. The first section reminded me very much of Rosalind Lehmann's Invitation to the Waltz as our naive unnamed heroine makes her first visit to a house party and dance. Then there's a section where she's channeling Daphne du Maurier in Rebecca; our still-unnamed narrator is a lady's companion in a creepy house in the country. This part ends for no particular reason, without really going anywhere. Then there's a rather twee and implausible love affair against the background of WW1. Thereafter the story drifts along; at one point I thought it would be neatly bookended with another visit to the Lancings; but it carries on afterwards, and the ending is, well, a bit silly. The whole thing could have been trimmed quite radically.

I'm not put off her by this; her mature work is much better. And it does have its moments, mostly in the first half, and especially the first visit. I'm left wondering why she decided not to name the narrator or her sister, going out of her way to achieve it -- perhaps an indication that they are nonentities? Why did the brothers, who scarcely appear, merit names though?

Edit: this review is a good summary of the social issues EJH illuminates in this book, that I haven't addressed here.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

She died recently; I read her Cazalet Chronicles a few years ago and loved them, and didn't realize till I read the obits that there's a new book in the series. I'd had this one, unread, so it appealed. It's her first book, a memoir by a young girl in the years before and after World War I. I liked it a lot; she's good at describing thought processes and feelings. Framing the story is a visit she makes to some happy and glamorous cousins, which makes her question her own life and seek more, and another visit years later. There are some odd and memorable characters that she meets along the way, and she succeeds in conveying some of the horrors of WWI with deftness.

It has a few first-book problems with a rather unbelievable love affair but what the hell, it's sweet and moving even if it strained credulity. There were a couple of superb moments that made me put it down to think for a bit, which I love.

[Eliza · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 maybe? This reads like an early version of the Cazalet novels but also creates an eerie suspense which belies the plot of the novel (I kept waiting for her to be kidnapped and imprisoned, which may say more about the dichotomy between the societal experience of the 1940s (set in WWI but must be written later) and 2019 than it does about the novel). Despite some jarring irritations and quaint period details (uncut book pages, how common it is to eat sweets on a train in the morning, the dressing bell) Howard still has the ability to transcend the mundane and root out the nub of human (and, depressingly, still, essentially the woman’s) experience.

“ ‘Some work’, I said. ‘I thought I might be able to do a job of some kind.’

‘You might. You might even earn your living. For what? There is little purpose in earning your living simply in order to go to sleep for the next day’s work. And there’s very little purpose in marrying someone in order not to earn your living.’ “

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intricately observed story about a young girl coming of age during the First World War. I liked the heroine; she is serious, intelligent and hungry for more than her sheltered upbringing has thus far offered her. Having received no formal education and been raised with no greater aim in life than to marry suitably, she struggles to find an outlet for her ambitions. Howard's writing is suffused with a gentle humour and full of wry observations that Austen would have been proud of. " It is simply that life stops when one is married, and one ought to take care that it stops in a very good place." I'm looking forward to reading more.

[Vickie · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading and thoroughly enjoying the Cazalet Chronicles I decided to read more of Howard - possibly to work my way through all of her books. But this was one boring and difficult to concentrate on, with its detailed accounts of children's conversations. It seemed unlikely that the book would improve, so I gave up. But I will still try more of Howard's books.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say about Elizabeth Jane Howard. She's a great writer.

[Nora]

Brilliant. Hard to believe it's a first novel. So happy to have found EJH.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very much a first book - though a first book by a truly great author.

[Digby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious