Testament of Friendship

Testament Trilogy #2

by Vera Brittain

Book by Brittain, Vera

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Autobiography, British Literature, Biography Memoir

453 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Vera Mary Brittain was an English writer and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.

Her daughter is Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, who is a British politician and academic who represents the Liberal Democrats.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars
“From the days of Homer the friendships of men have enjoyed glory and acclamation, but the friendships of women, in spite of Ruth and Naomi, have usually been not merely unsung, but mocked, belittled and falsely interpreted.”

This is Vera Brittain’s follow up to Testament of Youth. It is an account of her friendship with the novelist Winifred Holtby. They shared a residence for many years (even after Brittain’s marriage) until Holtby’ premature death in 1935. It is a sort of biography in that it also covers the period of her life before she met Brittain. There are also descriptions of Holtby’s trip to South Africa, one where Brittain was not present. This was written in 1939 and published in 1940, so the shadow of war is again present. Each chapter starts with one of Holtby’s poems. She was a poet and a prolific journalist as well as a novelist. In addition she was a regular public speaker for causes she supported: women’s issues, poverty, race, justice and especially pacifism and the League of Nations.
I am a fan of Holtby: I loved South Riding and I’ve also read Anderby Wold. I have some of her others in virago paperback. Holtby is therefore someone I was interested in and I was aware of her feminism and her work for socialist causes. She also became involved in the race question in South Africa, which didn’t make her popular in some circles in that country. She also had the ability to see the link between causes:

"At camp one night in the Transvaal, she had heard two black servants teaching each other to read from a child’s exercise book. But wherever she went, the white people whom she met talked to her pessimistically about the native question. They told her that higher education was bad for natives and gave them ideas and undermined their loyalty; that political power was unsuited to natives, since they were not ready for it; that segregation and the Colour Bar and the disenfranchisement of the black men in the Cape were necessary for the preservation of white civilization and the safety of white women and the happiness of the home.
“Sometimes, as Winifred meditated on these statements, they seemed to have a familiar ring. Suddenly, one day in Pretoria, she realised why. In her mind she began to substitute the noun “women” for the noun “natives,” and found that these fiercely held, passionately declared sentiments of white South Africa coincided almost word for word with the old arguments in England against women’s enfranchisement, women’s higher education, and women’s entry into skilled employment. She even perceived–as Olive Schreiner had perceived before her–a close relationship between the two forms of subjection . . . .”

The first volume in this trilogy is much more well known and for good reason. This isn’t as powerful as Testament of Youth and there is a narrower focus, but Holtby is an interesting character and this is a moving portrait of a friendship. Holtby’s struggles with her health and her political struggles and how she managed to do what she did despite her failing health in the last few years are inspirational.

[Graceann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Winifred Holtby is not well remembered today, even in her home country. The woman who wrote this book, Vera Brittain, has scarcely fared better, despite outliving Holtby by more than thirty years. This is a shame, because they are both worth remembering for numerous reasons. I was deeply moved by Brittain's "Testament of Youth," but if possible, I loved "Testament of Friendship" even more.

Winifred Holtby was a novelist, journalist and human rights activist who was active in the years between the wars. Her life was taken by Bright's Disease in 1935, when she was only 37 years old. In the short time she was here, however, she made her mark, authoring several well-received books, including the classic "South Riding," having a distinctive effect on the publication "Time and Tide" and, most importantly to those who loved her, being an amazing friend to countless people from all walks of life. The disparity of lives in South Africa was a problem especially troublesome to her, and she spent most of her money and energy trying to make her complacent, prejudiced countrymen see reason at a time when it was more convenient to turn a blind eye.

If Holtby had been more comfortable saying "No" to all the requests she received in the course of her professional and private life, she might have lived longer and had an easier life. As it happened, however, she found it very difficult to refuse a plea for assistance from the friends and strangers who constantly found their way to her door. Vera Brittain was her closest friend, and became her biographer. In these pages, Brittain tells us what a singular, fascinating woman Winifred Holtby grew to be, and how much poorer the world is for her loss.

Vera Brittain is a brilliant writer. Her ability to bring people to life through the use of language is admirable, and her pain, still so fresh (Holtby had only been gone four years at the time of the book's release) is palpable. She was also gifted in her choice of Holtby's poetry, letters and fiction in order to express just what we had lost in her passing.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to put Testament of Friendship down about ten pages from the end because I just couldn't bear it anymore. I was wracked with sobs--not just for Winifred Holtby, but for her mother (who outlived her whole family), for Vera Brittain (who saw everybody she loved die in the war, then her father and Winifred), for her long-time love Bill who never could get his act together until it was too late, and for everybody who knew her.

Because it's a biography of Winifred written by her best friend, and contributed to by many other people who knew her well, references to her death appeared at every turn, even during the Oxford years, even during her childhood. I found it excruciating, especially since before reading this book, I had also read Testament of Youth (Brittain's memoir of the Great War and the years just before and just after), The Dark Tide (Brittain's first novel), Anderby Wold (Winifred's first novel) and South Riding (Winifred's posthumously-published masterpiece). Never in my whole reading life have I been better acquainted with an author--or really, two authors, Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby. I feel like I've just lost a friend, and she died nearly eighty years ago.

To be clear, I gave this four stars because as a reading experience, I didn't like it as much as I liked Testament of Youth. It's possible that the reason I found this easier to put down was because I didn't actually want to get to the inevitable ending. Either way, Vera Brittain's writing is exquisite, as always, and I'm going to go put Winifred Holtby's whole output on my reading list. And re-read South Riding so I can cry over it again.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A touching biography of one of my favourite writers, Winifred Holtby, by her great friend Vera Brittain. Brittain and Holtby met while studying at Somerville College, Oxford, and lived together for most of Winifred's short life, including after Vera married and had her two children.

Born and raised in Yorkshire, Winifred Holtby is now best known for her last novel, South Riding, but, apart from her other novels and short stories, was an accomplished journalist and poet. She was involved in the women's rights movement, especially after the rise in fascism in the late 1920s and '30s threatened to take away the hard-won advances that had been made earlier in the century, and, after a seven month trip to South Africa, she became an ardent supporter of native African rights, raising money and giving many speeches in Britain to increase awareness of the situation in South Africa.

The subject of Holtby's death is never shied away from, and indeed is mentioned so often that it hints that Brittain had some difficulty coming to terms with it. It is almost as though only by reminding herself that Winifred is gone will she believe it, and I expect the book must have had some sense of catharsis for its writer. Having said that, anyone who has read Brittain's autobiography, Testament of Youth, will know that the death of many of her loved ones was something she was only too familiar with.

[John Scothern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a while but I got there eventually! I found it useful as an illustration of the social background of the writer and Winifred Holtby, as well as of their travels, experiences and deep, enduring friendship during the post-war period.

So sad that Winifred Holtby died young, but what a lot she packed into it, nevertheless. Making every day count is a lesson that I take away from the book.
She was an amazing, truly exceptional and gifted lady who - it seems to me - seldom took a step backwards. Showing courage and an ability to adapt to and work through difficult and tragic situations, she was nevertheless ever ready to celebrate the beauty and delights encountered in her brief life.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

How wonderful to have such a marvelous biography written about you by your best friend - and how wonderful to be such a deserving subject!

I read Vera Brittain's biography of Winifred Holtby after finding WH's "South Riding" on a list of supposedly 'Forgotten Classics' - and loving it. I wanted to know more about her, and doubt I could have found a better biographer.

Vera Brittain's writing is so beautiful that I am now committed to reading as much of her work as possible - starting with Testament of Youth.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should be lucky enough to have her best friend write her biography. This was a marvelous book.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

really liked it, but so sad and so moving

[Winter Sophia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully Poetic!

[Catie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buddy read September 2016 w/ @bookmusings and @teresasimmons on IG

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an interesting read. Brittain writes beautiful prose, so it was never boring, and her love and esteem for Holtby shone through the pages and illuminated the woman. Nonetheless, I came out of this thinking Brittain sounds like a far more fascinating and, to me, relatable character—good thing I have Testament of Youth at hand. Winifred did sound like a lovely, selfless, kind, and generous woman, though, and how much she overworked and overextended herself for the benefit of the people surrounding her was very evident. Also, there are more than a few quotations where Brittain refers to the “reputation” she and Winifred had and objects to the two of them being homosexual, or Winifred having homosexual relationships. The lady doth protest too much, methinks! Besides, having read Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men, in which there is a meaningful reference to Holtby and Brittain, I think I’ll defer to Faderman’s judgment. Here’s Faderman’s quotation on the two, in case you’re interested:

“Undoubtedly Vera Brittain, an English expatriate who made her home in America, was more typical. In Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby (1940), Brittain discussed her romance with Holtby ‘which continued unbroken and unspoilt for sixteen incomparable years.’ She quotes Winifred saying to her, in Marguerite’s words to Faust, ‘I need thee every hour!’ Brittain admits that when she decided to marry, Winifred became ‘pale, tired and restless’ and left England herself ‘so as not to be “left.”’ But Brittain is aware that such statements have a sexual implication in her day, and she decides to meet it head on. At one point she complains, ‘Sceptics are aroused by any record of affection between women to suspicions habitual among the over-sophisticated,’ and she refers to legends that were current about them in their neighbourhood. Later she is even more direct in a reference to the ‘scandal-mongers who invented for [Winifred] a lurid series of homosexual relationships,’ and throughout she feels obliged to remind the reader of the harmless and socially beneficial effects of same-sex love: ‘Loyalty and affection between women is a noble relationship which, far from impoverishing, actually enhances the love of a girl for her lover, of a wife for her husband, of a mother for her children.’
What disturbs Brittain, of course, is the possibility that her readers would see in her love a congenital taint, or arrested development and the evil little countenance of sex. Anna Cogswell Wood, telling a very similar story only a few decades earlier (The Story of a Friendship: A Memoir, 1901), had no notion that there was anything in her book which could be negatively construed. But Brittain was right to be chary if suspicions disturbed her: What contemporary reader could piece together Brittain and Holtby’s friendship with the composer Ethel Smythe (who was notoriously lesbian), the evidence of Holtby’s passionate letters to another woman, and the fact of Brittain’s long-standing fascination with The Well of Loneliness, and not conclude that the two women had a lesbian relationship?” (309-10)

Quotations:

“From the days of Homer the friendships of men have enjoyed glory and acclamation, but the friendships of women, in spite of Ruth and Naomi, have usually been not merely unsung, but mocked, belittled and falsely interpreted. I hope that Winifred’s story may do something to destroy these tarnished interpretations, and show its reader that loyalty and affection between women is a noble relationship which, far from impoverishing, actually enhances the love of a girl for her lover, of a wife for her husband, of a mother for her children.” (2)

“Those years with Winifred taught me that the type of friendship which reaches its apotheosis in the story of David and Jonathon is not a monopoly of the masculine sex. Hitherto, perhaps owing to a lack of women recorders, this fact has been found difficult to accept by men, and even by other women. Some feminine individualists believe that they flatter men by fostering the fiction of women’s jealous inability to love and respect one another. Other sceptics are roused by any record of affection between women to suspicions habitual among the over-sophisticated.
‘Too, too Chelsea!’ Winifred would comment amiably in after years when some zealous friend related the newest legend current about us in the neighbourhood.” (111)

“Compared with the burning sense of pity which summoned Winifred to seek justice for the victims of war and racial oppression, her belief in the equality of the sexes was a cool intellectual conviction. To the end she maintained that the realisation of sex inequality first dawned upon her at Oxford, and that I was its source. Her little volume Women and a Changing Civilisation, in John Lane’s Twentieth Century Library, is dedicated to two veteran advocates of women’s rights, but in my person copy she wrote on the flyleaf: ‘For Vera, who taught me to be a feminist.’
During my schooldays, which coincided with the dramatic climax of the suffrage movement, I had read Olive Schreiner and followed the militant campaigns with the excitement of a sympathetic spectator, but my growing consciousness that women suffered from remediable injustices was due less to the movement for the vote than to my early environment with its complacent acceptance of female subordination. Winifred never went through any such reaction against her surroundings.” (126-7)

“That night, when all the festivities were over and she returned home to the realisation that I was actually married and gone, she told me later that she became violently conscious of the ticking of the clocks in the empty flat. . . . Too tired to go to bed immediately, she sat down at the large sitting-room table which we had shared for our work, and wrote a short poem called the The Foolish Clocks. . . .
Now she is gone, but all her clocks are ticking
With gentle voices, punctual and polite,
Their thrifty hands the scattered moments picking
Tossed from the careless bounty of the night

Oh, foolish clocks, who had no wit for hoarding
The precious moments when my love was here,
Be silent now, and cease this vain recording
Of worthless hours, since she is not near.” (156)
And yet you say they weren’t in love…

“‘I am happy. In a way I suppose I miss you but that does not make me less happy. . . . I find you in all small and lovely things; in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden. . . . When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavour, a salt sharpness in experience. It is when the beloved is unhappy or maimede or troubled that one misses with pain.” (159) Winifred to Vera after Vera left with her new husband.

“Wherever she [Winifred] went in Geneva, she added, she was haunted by my ghost. I wrote in reply from the little American town where too few human presences peopled the forest-clad hills and the gorges whose only voices were waterfalls: ‘Am I a ghost who ever calls your name aloud behind you, as once the ghost of me did in Berkeley Street? I surely should be, for your name is often enough on my lips . . . but perhaps the Atlantic is to big to be a sounding-board.’” (164-5)

“A charming seaside place, she told her family, where she ate yams and mangoes and grapes picked sun-warm off the heavy vines; and found the girls in gay cotton frocks, with their bare brown arms and laughing boyish faces, so pretty that they looked like flowers themselves.
But she had little time for eating mangoes or admiring girls [italics mine], for between February 22nd and February 25th Durban presented her with a programme of fourteen lectures and a broadcast, and kept her alive by cups of tea which appeared on eight occasions each day.” (191) 🤨

“Sometimes, as Winifred meditated on these statements, they seemed to have a familiar ring. Suddenly, one day in Pretoria, she realised why. In her mind she began to substitute the noun ‘women’ for the noun ‘natives,’ and found that these fiercely held, passionately declared sentiments of white South Africa coincided almost word for word with the old arguments in England against women’s enfranchisement, women’s higher education, and women’s entry into skilled employment. She even perceived—as Olive Schreiner had perceived before her—a close relationship between the two forms of subjection, for she knew that every year since 1907 the Union Parliament of South Africa had considered and rejected a bill for the enfranchisement of women, though it was lost by one vote only in 1923.” (200)

“To her final reassurance, no word could have been added. ‘It is true that I love other people . . . that I find interest in almost every chance acquaintance—the people whom I met in Africa, or on the boat. But you are you. And because you are you, there is part of me with which, in Marguerite’s words to Faust, “I need thee every hour.” . . . Nothing could change me except your changing. Not your attitude towards me, I mean, but towards life. . . . I have gained more from your companionship than I shall ever tell or know. What you mean to me I can never make you see, for you are too humble beneath your thousand vanities.’
Whether this was really true, I do not know; I only record it because she said it. No one, least of all myself, is worth such pure rarity of devoted love. No treasure in heaven or earth can replace it, or atone for its loss. (243-4)

“That year which marked the end of the decade following the War gave no hint of the European setback to women’s liberties that was to come five years afterwards. Few surviving records read so forlornly as the Bills and resolutions of a past epoch, but the agendas of committees on which Winifred served, and the printed copies of measures for which she pressed, at least provoke the reflection that all this effort is now embodied in legislation which, in spite of recent reaction, has altered the whole complexion of life for millions of men and women. Some understanding of this achievement by our period of history came to Winifred and myself when we attended the All Night Watch Service for Mrs. Pankhurst in June 1928, and together kept part of the vigil beside her coffin in St. John’s Church, Smith Square. To us, grown to maturity after the suffrage campaign, she had existed mainly as a legend, but a sense of obligation for our heritage of comparative freedom and equality brought us through the midnight streets of Westminster to the shadowed church where her body was lying in state.” (254)

“As first lieutenant on Time and Tide, Winifred found her social contacts changing in both quality and quantity. Tied as I was to a child, and depressed by the sense of frustration and fatigue which is an after-effect of childbirth, I probably exaggerated the extent to which she was being ‘taken up’ by the famous. Just as I now have recurrent dreams that she is not dead but has decided, for a reason that differs with each nightmare, to live permanently out of my reach, so I began to dream that we were both back at college, but when I suggested sharing a flat she was hesitant and haughty. Anxiously she ridiculed these illusions of ill-health, for though she was excited—as any young woman making her way in the world would be—by the enlargement of experience involved in meeting the owners of international reputations, she was incapable of realising that in a few years’ time her books would have enabled her to know these personalities in her own right and on an equal footing.” (260)

“With its babies, its books, its toys, its friends, and the companionship of both G. [her husband, who for some reason is never referred to by name but simply by his initials] and Winifred, the household in Glebe Place was the nearest thing to complete happiness that I have ever known or ever hope to know. I believe that Winifred felt the same. Even her last illness, which never destroyed her capacity for enjoyment, did not quench the gaiety of our shared home. The golden illumination of love, of friendship, of complete mutual compatibility, continued to shine over it until she was gone, when the place became intolerable with its constant reminders of ‘happier things.’” (272)

“When [Thomas Moult] invited her to contribute a volume and choose her own author [for a series of ‘Modern Writers on Modern Writers], she selected Virginia Woolf, whose novels she had always admired, as a deliberate exercise in intellectual discipline.
‘I took my courage and curiosity in both hands,’ she wrote to Sarah Millin in 1932, ‘and chose the writer whose art seemed most of all removed from anything I could ever attempt, and whose experience was most alien to my own . . . I found it the most enthralling adventure—to enter, even at second-hand, that world of purely aesthetic and intellectual interests, was to me as strange an exploration as it would have been for Virginia Woolf to sit beside my mother’s pie and hear my uncles talk fat-stock prices and cub-hunting. I felt that I was learning and learning with every fibre of such brain as I have. To submit oneself to another person’s mental attitudes, to sink oneself into their experience—it’s almost like bathing in a strange sea.” (287-8)

“After my marriage Winifred had joined in my struggle for time to write in spite of the claims of husband, household and children—not out of pure altruism, but because she knew that the integrity of the artist depends, if the artist happens to be a woman, upon fighting successfully against the tradition that domesticity must be the first preoccupation of a wife and mother.” (304-5)

“There seems little doubt that it was Winifred’s loving, reliable loyalty which tempted Bill perversely to demonstrate the opposite qualities and deliberately turn himself into her beloved vagabond, a recurring decimal of emotion which appeared and reappeared with a persistent incalculability that kept her constantly on tenterhooks. Whether he was practising a sedulous technique or merely following the will-o’-the-wisp impulses of a wayward disposition, he created throughout Winifred’s life a situation utterly different from the one imagined by the scandalmongers who invented for her a lurid series of homosexual relationships, usually associated with Lady Rhondda or myself.”” (305-6)

“She enclosed a copy of her precis, and when I read it I felt like crying too. I could only write her a letter of gratitude which could have been repeated a hundred times during the sixteen years of our friendship, and was, in effect, an acknowledgment of all that her life had meant to me.
‘What a joy, what a love, what a genius of insight and intelligence you are! With what complete and comfortable confidence one can leave everything, however delicate and difficult it is, in your hands! What supreme piece of good fortune gave me, I wonder, the miracle of your friendship—a miracle that I’ve done nothing to deserve? Darling, do life for ever. Whenever I think of you I am reminded of the little phrase (who was it?) “There is none like her, none.”’” (333)

“Winifred dedicated her book [Women and a Changing Civilisation] to two of those veteran campaigners, Dame Ethel Smyth and Cicely Hamilton, ‘who did more than write The March of the Women.’ The idea of inscribing a book to them had come to her in 1930, when we went to Westminster with Cicely Hamilton to see Stanley Baldwin unveil the statue of Mrs. Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens. That morning’s piece de resistance had undoubtedly been, not Mr. Baldwin, but Dame Ethel Smyth in the grey and scarlet robes of a Doctor of Music, conducting the band of the Metropolitan Police Force in her own rendering of ‘The March of the Women,’ written to Cicely Hamilton’s words. At least half the audience in the crowded enclosure remembered that Dame Ethel, on one of the many occasions that the police arrested her, had first conducted the March with a toothbrush from a window of Holloway Jail.” (356-7)

“When the doctor had given his final verdict, G. and Bill went home together. Now, at last, Bill realised that the moment towards which his plans had vaguely converged was about to escape him. Could he grasp it before it was gone for ever? He’d always really thought, he said, that he and Winifred would marry in the end, but their positions were so unequal, and there seemed to be plenty of time before them both. . . . Now that she was dying, the success which had set her apart from him was a barrier no longer. . . .” (406)
Really, dude? Bill is such an annoying and insufferable character. He sort of strung Winifred along all their lives, since the end of the war, and he never seemed to forgive her for innocently making fun of a love poem he made for her in their youth. Winifred had a lingering attachment to him, apparently for teaching her “what love is”, or some codswallop, and so even when she didn’t really want to, she gave him her time, energies, affection, and attention, when he showed up out of the blue after travelling to some foreign country without telling anyone and making them wonder if he was dead. Vera puts a lot of significance into this relationship, but I think a large part of that is because she wanted to fend against the rumors of Winifred’s lesbianism. The relationship that was revealed in these pages of Bill and Winifred’s relationship did not read of love to me—maybe a lingering memory of love and a damaged and nostalgic attachment, but at one point in the book, Winifred even said that she didn’t enjoy seeing him, but felt like he should (though at other times she did talk of loving him). I do think there is great merit in saying he was very damaged by the war, and was irreparably changed by it (as Vera hypothesizes a couple of times in the book). Still, I would disagree with the charge that theirs was a “great, sweeping, moving love story”, or anything like that. I feel like Bill is brought up, as I said, as a defense against the lesbianism charge, and his relationship with Winifred is overemphasized. For the sake of full disclosure, as she lay dying, she did ask continually to see him, and he sat beside her in the night so she wouldn’t be alone, and before she died they made a promise to marry if she got better. This does seem to hint in the other direction, but I’m not convinced. I’m not saying theirs wasn’t a complicated relationship, but I wouldn’t go much farther than that.

[Jill Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

After loving Testament of Youth so much, and wanting to read Holtby’s South Riding I thought I’d really enjoy this book. It was pretty good, but nothing like I’d thought it would be. I skim read it, and it was fine…

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review written in 2012.

Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby was written in 1939 and first published in 1940. In this recently Virago reprint, Vera Brittain ‘tells the story of the woman who helped her survive the aftermath of that war’. Brittain is perhaps best known for her first volume of autobiography, Testament of Youth, which detailed her experiences as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the First World War.

Winifred Holtby, a prolific journalist in her day, is the author of several novels including South Riding, which was serialised by the BBC in 2011. It is made clear from Brittain’s account of her that Holtby was a marvellous woman who was incredibly benevolent and compassionate. She had such a passion for writing, apparent from an early age: ‘long before she could read easily Winifred had begun to write, and before she could write she told stories’.

Testament of Friendship spans the period from 1919, when Brittain and Holtby first met in Oxford as history undergraduates, up until Holtby’s untimely death in 1935. It is told systematically in chronological order, from her childhood in the Wolds and the year of nursing she undertook, to her time at Oxford where she spent her time ‘tearing about the streets on a very rusty cycle’. Her interest of and involvement in politics has been detailed, along with the championing of several causes close to her heart.

Mark Bostridge’s introduction cites Vera Brittain’s belief that: ‘Although we didn’t exactly grow up together… we grew mature together, and that is the next best thing’. He goes on to describe how ‘as writers they were the most decisive influences on each other’s work’. Bostridge believes that ‘Brittain’s perception of Holtby is at times too clouded by her own grief, and by guilt at having exploited her best friend’s generosity, even unwittingly, during her final illness’. This seems rather a clouded view, as in no sense does Brittain’s account read in this way. Contrary to Bostridge’s opinion, she seems the perfect writer for a biography of this sort. She knew Holtby intimately for many years, living together in London and publishing their debut novels almost simultaneously, and consequently saw Holtby as her ‘second self’. Such first-hand knowledge of her subject allows Testament of Friendship to read like the very best of biographies. Facts about Holtby’s life have been reinforced with wonderful descriptions and her importance in the lives of everyone she met is made paramount throughout.

Parallels of Holtby’s own experiences have been drawn to the characters which people her novels, along with the incidents which drove her to write. Testament of Friendship is rather sad at times. Whilst Holtby was encouraged to learn and study at renowned institutions, her family and those living in her village in the East Riding of Yorkshire did not understand her fame. As a collective they were ‘equally unimpressed by her literary renown’ and Brittain believes that a ‘proficiency at bridge or folk-dancing would have seemed to them of similar significance’.

Poems of Holtby’s have been included throughout, adding a lovely touch to the biography. Brittain has also made use of adorable childhood anecdotes, including childhood friendships, favourite pastimes and the relationship which Holtby had with her elder sister Grace. A wealth of memories has been dipped into to provide a rich history of Holtby’s life, from its beginning to its sad end.
Brittain’s prose is poetic and informative in equal measure. The rich writing allows the account to be read almost like a novel at times. Whilst Brittain signposts events important to her, she always uses them in the context of Holtby’s life too. Never does she lose sight of her friend. Testament of Friendship is a must-read, providing a rich and fascinating portrait of an admirable woman.

[Zoe Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but it wasn't as good as Testament of Youth. It was more a testament to a friend - Winifred Holtby - than a testament to the friendship she had with Vera Brittain. It was thus much more of a biography than i thought it was going to be, than a memoir of a relationship between two women. However, Vera Brittain writes beautifully, and I loved getting an insight into the politics and economics of inter-war and post-war Britain, and how it was experienced by women.

[MadgeUK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second of Vera Brittain's autobiographical trilogy and gives a loving account of her deep friendship with the Yorkshire born author, journalist and political activist, Winifred Holtby, whom she met at Oxford. Both of these women were pioneers in their day but sadly, are now largely forgotten.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a marvellous book of its time, written in 1939 it is a biography of Yorkshire writer Winifred Holtby. I read Vera Brittain's other 'Testament' books whenI was a student in the 80s and had forgotten that I hadn't read this until it popped up as an Amazon suggested read.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books about female friendship are ubiquitous these days, but in Vera Brittain's day (1893-1970) it was all about noble male friendship (a.k.a. mateship here in Australia) while close female friendships were sometimes the subject of speculation and gossip.  Just as Brittain's Testament of Youth (1933) was the first to step outside the male experience of WW1, so too was her story of her intimate but platonic friendship with a woman who meant the world to her.  Testament of Friendship is poignant reading because Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) died aged only 37 from Bright's Disease, (now known as nephritis, i.e. kidney disease.)

Despite its tragic conclusion, the book is a lively account of two clever young women determined to do something useful in the world.  They met at Oxford, where in the absence of men mostly at the front, they enjoyed comparative respect for women.  Both had served in the war, Vera as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse and Winifred in the  Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), an experience which she used in her writing, as seen in the Sensational Snippet I published last week.  Although Brittain's pacifism cost her some respect during WW2 which was looming even as she wrote this tribute to her friend, Testament of Friendship documents how young women could be politically active as feminists, socialists and pacifists, and could take on significant roles in the issues of the day.

At the same time, the women shared a grief for all that had been lost in the devastation of that pointless war.  Vera had lost her fiancé, her two close friends and her brother, while Winifred's 'love of her life' returned psychologically damaged and not capable of settling to anything.  Oxford, they found on their return, was a changed place too.  Chapter VI explains how it was inhabited by three incompatible groups engaged in a spiritual tug-of-war:

The dons in their academic twilight, barely illumined by occasional visits from younger or more enterprising colleagues who had joined the Army or taken posts in Government offices.  These senior members of the academic staff had waited out the war in discomfort, not because they were pacificists, but because the chaos of war threatened their decorous intellectual routine;
The returning servicemen, back to finish their interrupted studies, impatient with the university's  restrictions on their liberty after years of peril, independence and extreme responsibility. Ex-colonels and majors in their late twenties did not respect curfews to protect morality!
The youthful contingent of schoolboys and schoolgirls who had spent the war in classrooms and on playing fields resented the transformation of Oxford by their disillusioned seniors. Even as the Treaty of Versailles was setting up the conditions for WW2, their aspirations were to build a new world. So battles raged in common rooms, debating societies and university magazines.

Of all that I have read about the aftermath of WW2, I had never come across this dissection of the ferment in universities!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/04/10/t...

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been meaning to read this since I finished Testament of Youth (which I think was about ten years ago). It's out of print, but I got a beautiful first edition as a gift last year...and it was worth the wait. Two things made this truly excellent: first, the love between Vera and Winifred. They had such a deep friendship, and the love and esteem Vera felt for Winifred made this biography especially poignant and intimate. It made me reflect on my own relationship with my best friend. Second, it was just so refreshing to read a biography of an unmarried woman, especially one living in the early 20th century. There are men and love and family responsibilities in this book, but mostly it's just Winifred, herself, loving and caring for the people who were important to her, and doing the work she was passionate about. And in Brittain's hands, that life is beautiful and remarkable.

Just read it. I mean, read Testament of Youth first, but then read Testament of Friendship. I will definitely be re-reading both.

Made me want to read: Holtby's "critical memoir" of Virginia Woolf (!!); the collection of correspondence between Holtby and Jean McWilliam; South Riding. And Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Vera Brittain’s ‘Testament of youth’, led me to read this beautiful tribute to her friend, Winifred. “Chalk and cheese” in many ways, the two young women met after World War I when they returned to university to try to pick up the pieces. After a rather shaky first encounter, the values and aspirations which they held in common, and Winifred’s generous, gracious spirit fostered the growth of a deep, lifelong friendship.
Vera not only opens a window on a generation of women whose young lives were turned upside down by war, who took part in a movement which helped change what women of our generation are able to do, she shows us the value and importance of true friendship - the kind of friendship that enables honesty, gives courage, shares the ‘highs and lows’, and loves unconditionally.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems screaming obvious from this biography that Winnifred Holtby was a lesbian and none of Brittain's misdirection, nor the imaginary failure boyfriend Brittain invents for her, can conceal that fact. For goodness sake, in her WWI work in France, Winnifred figured herself as Celia to another women's Rosalind in the Forest of Arden. Etc. My only question is, was Brittain concealing this fact from us, or from herself too? There's a lot of writing refuting the notion that Brittain and Holtby were lovers and this seems fair because Brittain herself was clearly predominantly heterosexual. I also note that recent work has suggested Britain's deceased brother was gay and that she had discovered this. Was her Testament of Youth written to cover that up? And what of her brother's dear friend Roland who became Brittain's fiance, before he perished in WWI. Questions, I have them.

[Janet Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

An autobiography filled with love. Vera Britain, despite being pressed to write something quickly after Winifred Holtby's death, took her time and wrote something that was a true testament of their friendship. It tells of a woman who cared for family, friends and those in distant lands. Someone who spoke out for women, the poor and against racism and the disenfranchised. It tells of the difference she made in the world, how she gave every last ounce of her energy to others and of her writing - right up to her last book South Riding,.

[Helen Meads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another one I’d had on the shelves for years - this one recommended by my mother (who died in 1981). Unique insight into he world of pacifist campaigning.

[Sharon Zink · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biography of the author's best friend. Beautiful writing.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winifred Holtby was a name I recognised but in the past knew little about save that I recently enjoyed the BBC's adaptation of South Riding. So I was fascinated to read about what turned out to be an astonishing woman who appeared to be ahead of her time and died at a point in her writing life when she would probably have gone on to produce astonishing literature. Vera Brittain writes a very touching biography of her friend who she met at Oxford in 1919 as she was one of the first generation of women to study for a degree. As we see both women are deeply affected by their experiences of the First World War and they live together in London as Holtby develops a career in Journalism and writing. Holtby is a woman who appears to have no limit to her emotional generosity and empathy as she manages crises for friends and family at the same time as energetically running a career as journalist and then editor of Time and Tide a literary magazine. As Vera Brittain marries Holtby tours South africa and lectures including outspokenly championing the rights of native South Africans and continuing that cause on her return, as I said a woman ahead of her time. The book also poignantly touches on her personal losses including perhaps most movingly her lost love Bill a friend affected by the war and leading subsequently an almost lost life. Winifred Holtby is a woman loyal to her friends and family who gives herself without any demands and her death at a prematurely early age is moving, perhaps most of all as it is only after her death that her loss seems most acute. It is a life that deserves to be celebrated more and this is a brilliant book to start as a very personal tribute. It makes me now want to reread Testament of Youth.

[┊ ♡ Cordelia ♡┊ · Rating 5 out of 5]

COMPLETED SEPTEMBER 2018. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

˳✧༚˚ “From the days of Homer the friendships of men have enjoyed glory and acclamation, but the friendships of women, in spite of Ruth and Naomi, have usually been not merely unsung, but mocked, belittled and falsely interpreted.” – Vera Brittain, Testament of Friendship

“And you are not there, not there, not there,
Your laughing face and your wind-blown hair
Leave not even a ghost in the garden.”
― Winifred Holtby, Testament of Friendship

♡ Strengths in this book: beautiful prose, focus on female friendship, exquisite portrait of a woman of the 1920s and 1930s who never married and died at thirty-seven years old, having famously penned the line, "I was born to be a spinster, and by God, I’m going to spin."

⨯ . ⁺ ✦ ⊹ ꙳ ⁺ ‧ ⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . * ꙳ ✦ ⊹

[Rayna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully told story of the life of Winifred Holtby and her friendship and collaboration with Vera Brittain. Highly recommend.

[Honestmitten · Rating 5 out of 5]

a must read after Testament of Youth.... and although this was read in 1980, at 14 years, I look back and recall how it made changed my opinion of the female "friends" at school at the time and how I became more selective in the friends I sought and valued in the intervening years...... I am indebted to being introduced so early to the writings of Vera Brittain & Winifred Holtby and feminist writers that followed as a result.