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Letters from Constance: Complete & Unabridged
At the age of eighteen two women leave school, Constance, a flibbertigibbet and Sheila to a dazzling future. Constance, married to a gregarious Irishman is stifled by domesticity and envies Sheila who spends her time writing poetry. Constance writes to Sheila on a number of topics from pot smoking to President Kennedy until outside events get too close and her world is turned upside down.
- GenresFiction
Audio Cassette
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Mary Hocking
32 books8 followersBorn in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Even so, when she came to her beloved Lewes in 1961, she still took a part-time appointment, as a secretary, with the East Sussex Educational Psychology department.
Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the ‘Fairley Family’ trilogy, Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers, books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the ‘Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work. Equally, she was an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, where she found her role as ‘prompter’ the most satisfying, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
* Source
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 2, 2023
First time reading Mary Hocking: thanks again to Virago. This is an epistolary novel. Hocking was in the WRNS during the war, eventually becoming a full time writer. The letters in this novel are one sided, between Constance and her friend Sheila. The reader only sees the letters from Constance to Sheila, the letters stretch from 1939 until the mid-1980s. Constance and Sheila meet in the 1930s at school and so the novel covers most of their lives.
They are very different women and their lives take different courses: we see loves, children, grandchildren, jobs, marriages, happiness and sorrow. There is periodic comment on the times from the 1945 general election through, Suez, the 1960s and into the 1980s. As Constance is married to an Irishman the Troubles play a significant part as well. The changing role of women can be observed over the years:
“This was your day. My mother had come to see old Addiscombe. I never can persuade her to give up hoping for academic success for me. She feels she owes it to Daddy’s memory to squeeze every opportunity dry. According to her, she said – I squirm as I write this – ‘If Sheila Douglas can get into Cambridge, I can’t understand why Constance shouldn’t be accepted. After all her father was a doctor.’
The reply, which I hope pleases you, was ‘Sheila Douglas is a quite exceptionally gifted girl for whom we have great hopes. One of her poems has been commended by Walter de la Mare, who is a friend of the chairman of the Governors.’ Later in the conversation she said, and one can imagine the glacial smile which accompanied the words, ‘Constance is amusing, but she has no mind. She will get married.’
That snippet was from the 1930s!
The lives contrast. Constance has seven children whilst Sheila becomes an acclaimed poet. There are the usual ups and downs of life: a certain level of humour and also some poignancy.
On the whole I did enjoy this. The one-sidedness was a bit of an issue and the frequent gaps were noticeable. I was a little reminded of the novelist Elizabeth Taylor. There is a certain amount of charm to this, a portrait of a friendship. The pace is slow and there is lots about the children. I may read more, but not too soon.
They are very different women and their lives take different courses: we see loves, children, grandchildren, jobs, marriages, happiness and sorrow. There is periodic comment on the times from the 1945 general election through, Suez, the 1960s and into the 1980s. As Constance is married to an Irishman the Troubles play a significant part as well. The changing role of women can be observed over the years:
“This was your day. My mother had come to see old Addiscombe. I never can persuade her to give up hoping for academic success for me. She feels she owes it to Daddy’s memory to squeeze every opportunity dry. According to her, she said – I squirm as I write this – ‘If Sheila Douglas can get into Cambridge, I can’t understand why Constance shouldn’t be accepted. After all her father was a doctor.’
The reply, which I hope pleases you, was ‘Sheila Douglas is a quite exceptionally gifted girl for whom we have great hopes. One of her poems has been commended by Walter de la Mare, who is a friend of the chairman of the Governors.’ Later in the conversation she said, and one can imagine the glacial smile which accompanied the words, ‘Constance is amusing, but she has no mind. She will get married.’
That snippet was from the 1930s!
The lives contrast. Constance has seven children whilst Sheila becomes an acclaimed poet. There are the usual ups and downs of life: a certain level of humour and also some poignancy.
On the whole I did enjoy this. The one-sidedness was a bit of an issue and the frequent gaps were noticeable. I was a little reminded of the novelist Elizabeth Taylor. There is a certain amount of charm to this, a portrait of a friendship. The pace is slow and there is lots about the children. I may read more, but not too soon.
June 5, 2014
lettersfromconstance
This Mary Hocking novel is the one I chose to kick off my own #rememberMary month. It is the sixth novel by her that I have read – and has become an instant favourite.
The novel is written entirely in letters, letters sent from Constance to her girlhood friend Sheila. In 1939 as Constance and Sheila leave school they promise each other to keep in touch, Sheila is bound for University, Constance to begin work at the education office. The letters, warm, affectionate, always thoughtful and intelligent, occasionally angry – are sent at irregular intervals over the next forty seven years, until the two are inevitably separated. Sheila had always been the brilliant one, the prize winner, the one bound for Cambridge, and Constance is happy to bask a little in her reflected glory.
“This was your day. My mother had come to see old Addiscombe. I never can persuade her to give up hoping for academic success for me. She feels she owes it to Daddy’s memory to squeeze every opportunity dry. According to her, she said – I squirm as I write this – ‘If Sheila Douglas can get into Cambridge, I can’t understand why Constance shouldn’t be accepted. After all her father was a doctor.’
The reply, which I hope pleases you, was ‘Sheila Douglas is a quite exceptionally gifted girl for whom we have great hopes. One of her poems has been commended by Walter de la Mare, who is a friend of the chairman of the Governors.’ Later in the conversation she said, and one can imagine the glacial smile which accompanied the words, ‘Constance is amusing, but she has no mind. She will get married.’
The lives the two women live differ somewhat, although the connection between them remains strong, they can say almost anything to one another by letter, although they find talking on the telephone harder. Posted to Ireland with the WRNS, Constance marries Irish Catholic Fergus; with whom she is soon mired down in motherhood and domesticity. Settled in a miserable little Ealing flat, Fergus must contend with a job he doesn’t really like much, while Constance juggles with tiny children. Meanwhile Sheila marries a brilliant musician, the ambitiously creative Miles; theirs is a less conventional household, in a large enviable home in Richmond. Constance comes to envy rather, Sheila’s poetry writing and bohemian dinners. Later Constance, Fergus and their children manage to move out to Sussex where they settle much more contentedly. The two families visit one another from time to time and as the years pass, the children of each household become almost as at home in the house of the other, the families drawing together automatically at times of crisis. For nothing goes entirely to plan in life, as Constance and Sheila find, not everything quite living up to their girlhood dreams, and so often the realities of everyday life get in the way of friendship. The two women promise each other a holiday together as young newly married women, a holiday they never quite manage to take.
“Fergus explained to Mr Buggins (this is not his real name, but I have taken to referring to him in this way in case I should say something slanderous) that we had one or two things which we wished to talk over with him. While these things were under discussion, I stood beside Fergus, holding my new-born baby in my arms, my other children tugging at my skirts, and contrived to look both defiant and ill used, the way the gypsy women did when they were turned off the campsite near Western Avenue. Dominic, who felt it all very undignified, sulked, Kathleen glowered and Cuillane cried. It would have contributed much had Stephen cried too, but he is a cheerful baby and groped with pudgy fingers in Mr Buggin’s direction, his eyes full of delight as if another wonder of the world had revealed itself to him”
Both Sheila and Constance have to contend with troubles and tragedies – but it is in the small everyday concerns with which they mainly concern themselves. Constance is a wonderfully intelligent woman, completely underestimating her own abilities as she manages her growing family with intuition and wry humour. Constance worries for her husband, his happiness and how he truly views her something she can’t help but wonder about in her letters to her oldest friend. She watches each of her children, detecting early their differing and unique personalities, worrying for them, agonising over their education, or pious Catholicism, their explosive angers and young loves.
In Constance, Mary Hocking has created a wonderfully wry and intelligent voice that put me very much in mind of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s characters. Hocking re-creates family life with breath-taking accuracy her astute observations very much in that Taylor tradition. Through Constance, we get to know Sheila too, and feel her confusion when her life takes an unexpected turn, but it is Constance who is the star of the show, I loved her. This is a truly delightful book, which can only be fully appreciated by reading it – I gulped it down within about twenty-four hours and was sad when there was no more, a very definite five star read, which has me anticipating more Mary Hocking eagerly.
This Mary Hocking novel is the one I chose to kick off my own #rememberMary month. It is the sixth novel by her that I have read – and has become an instant favourite.
The novel is written entirely in letters, letters sent from Constance to her girlhood friend Sheila. In 1939 as Constance and Sheila leave school they promise each other to keep in touch, Sheila is bound for University, Constance to begin work at the education office. The letters, warm, affectionate, always thoughtful and intelligent, occasionally angry – are sent at irregular intervals over the next forty seven years, until the two are inevitably separated. Sheila had always been the brilliant one, the prize winner, the one bound for Cambridge, and Constance is happy to bask a little in her reflected glory.
“This was your day. My mother had come to see old Addiscombe. I never can persuade her to give up hoping for academic success for me. She feels she owes it to Daddy’s memory to squeeze every opportunity dry. According to her, she said – I squirm as I write this – ‘If Sheila Douglas can get into Cambridge, I can’t understand why Constance shouldn’t be accepted. After all her father was a doctor.’
The reply, which I hope pleases you, was ‘Sheila Douglas is a quite exceptionally gifted girl for whom we have great hopes. One of her poems has been commended by Walter de la Mare, who is a friend of the chairman of the Governors.’ Later in the conversation she said, and one can imagine the glacial smile which accompanied the words, ‘Constance is amusing, but she has no mind. She will get married.’
The lives the two women live differ somewhat, although the connection between them remains strong, they can say almost anything to one another by letter, although they find talking on the telephone harder. Posted to Ireland with the WRNS, Constance marries Irish Catholic Fergus; with whom she is soon mired down in motherhood and domesticity. Settled in a miserable little Ealing flat, Fergus must contend with a job he doesn’t really like much, while Constance juggles with tiny children. Meanwhile Sheila marries a brilliant musician, the ambitiously creative Miles; theirs is a less conventional household, in a large enviable home in Richmond. Constance comes to envy rather, Sheila’s poetry writing and bohemian dinners. Later Constance, Fergus and their children manage to move out to Sussex where they settle much more contentedly. The two families visit one another from time to time and as the years pass, the children of each household become almost as at home in the house of the other, the families drawing together automatically at times of crisis. For nothing goes entirely to plan in life, as Constance and Sheila find, not everything quite living up to their girlhood dreams, and so often the realities of everyday life get in the way of friendship. The two women promise each other a holiday together as young newly married women, a holiday they never quite manage to take.
“Fergus explained to Mr Buggins (this is not his real name, but I have taken to referring to him in this way in case I should say something slanderous) that we had one or two things which we wished to talk over with him. While these things were under discussion, I stood beside Fergus, holding my new-born baby in my arms, my other children tugging at my skirts, and contrived to look both defiant and ill used, the way the gypsy women did when they were turned off the campsite near Western Avenue. Dominic, who felt it all very undignified, sulked, Kathleen glowered and Cuillane cried. It would have contributed much had Stephen cried too, but he is a cheerful baby and groped with pudgy fingers in Mr Buggin’s direction, his eyes full of delight as if another wonder of the world had revealed itself to him”
Both Sheila and Constance have to contend with troubles and tragedies – but it is in the small everyday concerns with which they mainly concern themselves. Constance is a wonderfully intelligent woman, completely underestimating her own abilities as she manages her growing family with intuition and wry humour. Constance worries for her husband, his happiness and how he truly views her something she can’t help but wonder about in her letters to her oldest friend. She watches each of her children, detecting early their differing and unique personalities, worrying for them, agonising over their education, or pious Catholicism, their explosive angers and young loves.
In Constance, Mary Hocking has created a wonderfully wry and intelligent voice that put me very much in mind of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s characters. Hocking re-creates family life with breath-taking accuracy her astute observations very much in that Taylor tradition. Through Constance, we get to know Sheila too, and feel her confusion when her life takes an unexpected turn, but it is Constance who is the star of the show, I loved her. This is a truly delightful book, which can only be fully appreciated by reading it – I gulped it down within about twenty-four hours and was sad when there was no more, a very definite five star read, which has me anticipating more Mary Hocking eagerly.
January 27, 2013
A novel that consists entirely of one half of an exchange of correspondence between two close friends over a period of 50 years or so would not normally be my idea of an enticing read. But, "Letters from Constance" by Mary Hocking, a writer whom I had never heard of before picking up a copy of the book in a charity shop for just a few pence, confounded my expectations. It is a delightful, subtle, unobtrusive and beautifully written story that is much more thought-provoking than many better-known (and seemingly weightier) novels of a similar vintage. I cannot recommend it too highly.
Constance and Sheila are two middle class friends who have known each other since their schooldays in England in the 1930s. They agree to keep in touch when their schooling ends during the run-up to the Second World War. As the title of the novel suggests, the story consists of the letters that Constance writes to Sheila (between 1939 and 1986) as the two friends seek to maintain a close bond with each other while their lives progress in different directions. Although the reader is given access only to Constance's written contributions to their enduring friendship, we learn as much about Sheila as we do about Constance. This is because Constance's letters more often than not refer explicitly to some aspect of her friend's life. So, the format of the novel may be unusual. But it is very effective.
Constance's letters show her to be a witty, intelligent, self-effacing person who has seemingly always had something of an inferiority complex in relation to Sheila. Sheila was more academically successful than her friend and later becomes a published and well-respected poet. Constance's post-school life takes a much more domesticated turn. She meets and falls in love with a young Irishman. They marry and then rear a large family. Sheila's public success comes at some considerable cost to both her personal life and her mental health. The novel details the ups and downs that both characters experience.
"Letters from Constance" is a beautifully written, intelligent story that examines the facets of female friendship and of family life in an accessible and humorous way. I particularly liked the character of Constance, who is a wonderfully warm person whose thoughts and ideas will resonate with many readers, male or female. This very good novel, which is unfortunately out of print in the UK, is well worth getting hold of. Indeed, it's so good that I intend to try to track down some of Mary Hocking's other books because, on the evidence of "Letters from Constance", they are also likely to provide hours of enjoyable reading. 9/10.
Constance and Sheila are two middle class friends who have known each other since their schooldays in England in the 1930s. They agree to keep in touch when their schooling ends during the run-up to the Second World War. As the title of the novel suggests, the story consists of the letters that Constance writes to Sheila (between 1939 and 1986) as the two friends seek to maintain a close bond with each other while their lives progress in different directions. Although the reader is given access only to Constance's written contributions to their enduring friendship, we learn as much about Sheila as we do about Constance. This is because Constance's letters more often than not refer explicitly to some aspect of her friend's life. So, the format of the novel may be unusual. But it is very effective.
Constance's letters show her to be a witty, intelligent, self-effacing person who has seemingly always had something of an inferiority complex in relation to Sheila. Sheila was more academically successful than her friend and later becomes a published and well-respected poet. Constance's post-school life takes a much more domesticated turn. She meets and falls in love with a young Irishman. They marry and then rear a large family. Sheila's public success comes at some considerable cost to both her personal life and her mental health. The novel details the ups and downs that both characters experience.
"Letters from Constance" is a beautifully written, intelligent story that examines the facets of female friendship and of family life in an accessible and humorous way. I particularly liked the character of Constance, who is a wonderfully warm person whose thoughts and ideas will resonate with many readers, male or female. This very good novel, which is unfortunately out of print in the UK, is well worth getting hold of. Indeed, it's so good that I intend to try to track down some of Mary Hocking's other books because, on the evidence of "Letters from Constance", they are also likely to provide hours of enjoyable reading. 9/10.
March 3, 2017
Sheila and Constance are friends from school days. As they grow up, marry, and lead very different lives, their friendship is sustained through letters. This book gives only the letters Constance writes, but they are very informative and revealing; a series of chronicles of life itself.
Constance marries an Irishman and Sheila a musician. There are the struggling years of raising a family, home and hearth, the seeking outlets for creativity and all of the frustrations women go through as they seek to preserve their own identity within the parameters of home and family. Both homes are vastly different but the two friends are able to maintain a close relationship in spite of their differences, for more than fifty years.
Constance examines and questions in her letters all of the facets of her life and of those around her; religion and faith, marriage, family, outlook, careers, the role of men and women, politics. As Sheila becomes a published author, Constance congratulates her and is genuinely happy for her, and finds to her surprise, that her own life, although at times seemingly dull, has had its own rewards.
"The children fill my life whether I want it or not; they are there and I am here and must answer their needs. For years there wasn't much of me left over by the time I had met all those needs. During those same years Fergus was working in an environment he liked less and less. I used to get tired and bored, angry sometimes, but mostly I loved having the children to care for. Did he have as much satisfaction as I did?
It is fashionable nowadays to assume that men have a better quality of life than women. But when I read the feminist writers it seems to me that so often they are comparing the lot of all women with that of a few exceptionally gifted and highly rewarded men."
I enjoyed this book and it was a fast read for me! I was so caught up in Constance's life that I agonized with her over each tragedy and triumph. There is much of the everyday life here, but there is also struggle, loss, and hard places to walk through.
I will be reading more of Mary Hocking in the future.
Constance marries an Irishman and Sheila a musician. There are the struggling years of raising a family, home and hearth, the seeking outlets for creativity and all of the frustrations women go through as they seek to preserve their own identity within the parameters of home and family. Both homes are vastly different but the two friends are able to maintain a close relationship in spite of their differences, for more than fifty years.
Constance examines and questions in her letters all of the facets of her life and of those around her; religion and faith, marriage, family, outlook, careers, the role of men and women, politics. As Sheila becomes a published author, Constance congratulates her and is genuinely happy for her, and finds to her surprise, that her own life, although at times seemingly dull, has had its own rewards.
"The children fill my life whether I want it or not; they are there and I am here and must answer their needs. For years there wasn't much of me left over by the time I had met all those needs. During those same years Fergus was working in an environment he liked less and less. I used to get tired and bored, angry sometimes, but mostly I loved having the children to care for. Did he have as much satisfaction as I did?
It is fashionable nowadays to assume that men have a better quality of life than women. But when I read the feminist writers it seems to me that so often they are comparing the lot of all women with that of a few exceptionally gifted and highly rewarded men."
I enjoyed this book and it was a fast read for me! I was so caught up in Constance's life that I agonized with her over each tragedy and triumph. There is much of the everyday life here, but there is also struggle, loss, and hard places to walk through.
I will be reading more of Mary Hocking in the future.
August 16, 2015
I got this on audio. Brilliantly written. Brilliantly read
November 3, 2020
An interesting narrative in the form of letters: one-sided, not a correspondence. We have only Constance's letters to her friend Shiela, who eventually is a published poet, to surmise two lives intertwined through two generations.
The book begins in the early part of World War II when Constance and Sheila are just finishing school, and continues into the 80s. Unfolding through these letters are the lives, romances, marriages, successes and failures of women of my mother's generation. Therefore, I could identify with the milieu of their children, but learned much about what it was to be a woman in the time period of Constance. Her tone is a bit querulous, which after a time begins to be depressing for the reader. It takes most of the book before she admits to actually loving her children or appreciating her spouse.
We learn, too, of Sheila's more dramatic life, which includes public success bought at great personal cost. I can't say that I enjoyed the book, exactly, but it was an engaging read and an excellent perspective on a particular generation in history.
The book begins in the early part of World War II when Constance and Sheila are just finishing school, and continues into the 80s. Unfolding through these letters are the lives, romances, marriages, successes and failures of women of my mother's generation. Therefore, I could identify with the milieu of their children, but learned much about what it was to be a woman in the time period of Constance. Her tone is a bit querulous, which after a time begins to be depressing for the reader. It takes most of the book before she admits to actually loving her children or appreciating her spouse.
We learn, too, of Sheila's more dramatic life, which includes public success bought at great personal cost. I can't say that I enjoyed the book, exactly, but it was an engaging read and an excellent perspective on a particular generation in history.
January 20, 2021
Life seems very fleeting when we see Constance grow from being a young girl just leaving school in 1939 to becoming a grandmother in just over a couple of hundred pages. Not that this is a hurried, fast-pace book at all, if anything it is the opposite. But lives tick on all the same.
recommended-to-read
May 15, 2025Recommended by Louise savage
July 22, 2018
Although I listed this novel on the forgotten books shelf, I am delighted to report that in 2016 Bello published Mary Hocking’s books in ebooks and print-on-demand formats. For this we can thank the blogger, Heavenali, who championed Mary Hocking’s work and suggested to Bello that it was time for a reprint of this neglected author. This terrific book is an epistolary novel that tells us the story of a 50-year friendship between two former schoolmates, Constance and Sheila, through the letters of Constance. The letters, written intermittently from 1939 to 1986, cover both the intimate details of domestic life and the cultural, political and religious background against which the two friends live their lives. Hocking has created an appealing narrator in Constance. Always considered the less studious and talented of the two schoolmates, Constance is a warm, feeling writer who grabs the reader’s interest and holds it tight. Highly recommend. A 4.75.
June 3, 2012
A really wonderful book
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews