Rochester’s Wife by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1940. This edition: Ace, circa 1970s. Paperback. ISBN: 978-0441733255. 335 pages.

My rating: 5/10.

*****

This is one of the “secondary” D.E. Stevensons, and, I believe, a “stand-alone” book, as none of the characters seem to reappear in any of the other stories. Though published in 1940, the time frame is pre-W.W. II, as there are only a few references to the “situation in Europe”, and, though the atmosphere is cloudy with foreboding, the focus is on the troubles of the individual characters, versus those of the wider world.

Young (in his late twenties) Dr. Kit Stone has returned to England after four years of travelling round the world seeking adventure. He had long cherished the ambition to become a sailor, but his (widowed) physician father had pressured him into studying medicine instead, with a view to taking over the family practice. The elder Dr. Stone died just as the younger Dr. Stone qualified, and the practice was instead sold, with the proceeds being split between the family’s two sons. The elder brother, Henry, had gone into business as a successful stockbroker and invested his share accordingly, while Kit, suddenly at loose ends, has decided to see something of the world.

Kit’s travels are touched on continually throughout the novel, and sound quite fascinating in and of themselves. He’s been in China, “looking for the war”, and has seen more of it than he had planned for. There is a reference, near the end of the book, to his standing in a marketplace when a shell fragment kills a mother and baby standing next to him; he is “spattered with their blood”, and there is a statement that he has seen quite a lot of blood in his travels. Strong stuff for this mild romance! Another incident, which has more bearing on the eventual plotline, is that Kit has had experience with diagnosing and treating a case of insanity while in America. One would rather like a full itinerary of his wanderings; he seems to have covered quite a lot of ground!

So now Kit is back in England, and though he still feels that he can’t bear to be “tied down”, he allows his brother to persuade him to try out steady employment for a while. Henry’s business partner, Jack Rochester, lives in the village of Minfield, just out of London. Jack’s wife, Mardie, is good friends with the elderly village doctor, who is getting overwhelmed with the demands of his practice, and when she hears of Henry’s brother’s sudden return, puts forward the idea that perhaps Kit might be interested in a position as assistant to the Minfield practice.

So Kit, rather reluctantly, agrees to try out life in an English village. Dr. Peabody welcomes him with gruff suspicion, which we (and Kit) immediately see as merely hiding hte proverbial heart of gold. The Peabody household consists of the elderly doctor, his bitter spinster daughter Ethel, and a grandson, precocious (and exceedingly likeable)young Jem, who is living in England for the “healthy climate” while his parents reside in Ceylon on a tea plantation. They are soon joined by another daughter, Dolly, recently married and, unbeknownst to her family, newly pregnant. Her husband, stationed in Malta, has asked her to stay in England because of her pregnancy, and Dolly’s reluctance to share this news with all and sundry has led to some speculation that perhaps her marriage is already in trouble, because otherwise why wouldn’t she be following her spouse?! Dolly and Ethel are the classic bickering sisters, and their feuding and continual cutting comments to each other add a lot of spice to this rather pedestrian tale.

The heart of the novel is an (apparently) doomed love triangle between Kit, the absolutely beautiful, charming and saintly Mrs. Rochester (Mardie), and her high-strung husband, Jack. Kit is immediately smitten with Mardie; Mardie is deeply in love with Jack; Jack depends on Mardie for emotional support as he deals with his stressful job, and much is made of how happy Mardie and Jack were in the first year or two of their marriage, though now, in year three, things are rather more difficult.

As young Dr. Stone is absorbed into the Minfield world, all seems to be going well with the “settling down” process, but for the unrequited love bit. Kit yearns for his unavailable love, and we start to see little hints that perhaps his passion isn’t exactly unappreciated and unreturned, but of course, there is that rather prominent husband in the picture. Jack, however, is showing signs of what could be charitably described as nervous tension; his personality is deteriorating by the day, and Kit and Dr. Peabody are soon looking up the characteristics of “insanity” in their medical books, and talking of bringing in a specialist.

The ending of this tale is a bit sloppy and unlikely, though everyone ends up neatly paired and with problems happily solved. I’m sorry to say that this is not one of D.E. Stevenson’s better efforts among those I’ve read so far, though there are many diverting situations throughout the book, mostly concerning secondary characters. We have the relationship between the Peabody sisters, young Jem with his brilliant talent for mimicry, an elderly Scottish housekeeper, Hoony, and her illegitimate grandson, Wattie, and, off in the background, the very happy marriage between Henry and his rather liberated wife, Mabel, who dabbles in the stock market quite successfully on her own, with her husband’s proud approval. The relationship between the two brothers, Kit and Henry, is nicely portrayed as well. They do seem a likeable family, with reassuringly human flaws fully recognized and easily forgiven by the reader.

A reasonably decent read, though I found myself groaning and figuratively smacking hand to forehead occasionally, especially regarding the whole “insanity” thing, and the remarkable (!) scenario the author has dreamt up for its resolution. Definitely worth reading as part of the D.E. Stevenson canon, though I’m afraid I closed the book and said farewell to the characters with a feeling more of relief than reluctance!

And I must say something about the dreadful paperback cover. (Cover illustrations being, as some of you may have gathered by my continual harping on the subject, something of an issue with me.) Why, oh why do publishing companies insist on putting “current” illustrations on books set in past times? The characters illustrated on the Ace cover are obviously from the 1970s in dress and hairstyle; I cringe when I look at it. The only thing that that I found attractive (and here is the hort in me speaking) is the rather lovely inclusion of a border of tall orange daylilies (probably Hemerocallis fulva ‘Europa’ from the looks of them), in the foreground of the trio of tennis players and extending around the back of the cover.

Much more appropriate is this other cover, which captures the mood and setting exceedingly well.

I am coming to the end of my personal stash of D.E. Stevensons, and the more I read of her the more eager I am to go on with building the collection. It’s going to be an expensive year, I fear. Even the tired old paperbacks are seriously overpriced, but I’m afraid I’m now hooked and will be playing the seeking game to the full extent that my pocketbook allows.

Part of the fun is the glorious awfulness of some of Stevenson’s scenarios – I just now have realized I’ve made no mention of the Jane Eyre references in this particular novel – nothing subtle about that, is there?!

D.E. Stevenson. When she is good, she is very, very good, but when she is bad … maybe she’s even more interesting!

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I’m going to review these together. They were both quite wonderful, so much so that, pressed for time as I am this week, I cannot let them pass onto the “have read” list without mention. In my opinion, this trilogy, Vittoria Cottage, Music in the Hills, and Shoulder the Sky, have the Miss Buncle books beat all hollow. Good stuff! I can see these going on my treasured keeper shelf.

Please try to ignore the desperately ugly covers on these re-released paperback editions. I find them quite embarrassingly inappropriate to the content, which, while “romantic” enough to please the most sentimental, is not cloyingly so as these would lead one to believe. I had some explaining to do to family members who saw me reading these – “What the heck is that?! You’re slipping, old girl …!”

*****

Vittoria Cottage by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1949. This edition: Collins-Fontana, 1974. Paperback. ISBN: 0-00-613-444-0. 191 pages.

My rating: 8.5/10.

Middle-aged Caroline Dering has just been widowed, and, aside from her genuine and seemly sorrow at the death of someone who has shared her life for many years, she is not at all steeped in sorrow. Her lately departed spouse, Arnold Dering, was of a complaining and perpetually malcontented disposition. While  his wife and three children were accepting of his character – Caroline thought that he always meant well, and suspected that at rare moments Arnold recognized and truly regretted his deep pessimism – but by and large enjoyed themselves much more in his absence.

The scene is set for what is to become a series of three novels by descriptions of the village of Ashbridge and the far from cottage-like Vittoria Cottage, ancestral home of the Derings. Though she has merely “married into” the local family, Caroline fits into the local hierarchy almost immediately, and by and large leads a deeply contented life, caring for her children, volunteering for various worthy causes, keeping house and gardening. The children are all grown up, with James away in Malaya, and lovely but discontented Leda (she takes after her father in full) and boisterous Bobbie making their way out into the larger world from the safe haven of their village nest.

To-day Caroline Dering was not working in her garden. She had taken a basket and gone up the road to the gravel-pit to pick blackberries. There was a thicket of brambles, there, and Caroline knew it well. Every year she made this pilgrimage and every year she returned with her harvest of big, black, juicy berries to make into jelly and to bottle for the winter. It was curious (thought Caroline, as she began her task) how the years seemed to telescope when you looked back. Surely there were less than three hundred and sixty-five days between each picking! She remembered the first time she had come. She and Arnold had come together – they had just returned from their honeymoon and settled at Vittoria Cottage – but Arnold had not enjoyed picking blackberries, he had got a thorn in his finger and had torn his trousers on a wild-rose bush and he had suggested that in future they should employ some of the village children to undertake the task. After that Caroline had come alone until James was old enough to help … and then the little girls had joined the party and blackberrying had become an event, a yearly picnic, which took place, weather permitting, upon James’s birthday.

Now, once again, Caroline came alone. The girls had other things to do and Caroline had no use for reluctant assistants. Next year … would James be here? And if he were here would he want to come and pick blackberries on his birthday?

World War II has been over for several years, but England is still very much in coping and recovery mode. Society is fast changing into some sort of new normal, and though things are steadily improving, there is still food and fuel rationing, and a strong atmosphere of “making do”, which makes for some quite fascinating scenarios as we progress through the book and look over Caroline’s shoulder as she goes about her days.

Life in Ashbridge gets suddenly quite interesting with the arrival of the mysterious Mr. Shepperton, who is apparently very reluctant to discuss his past, and who arouses even more suspicion because he appears to have no old belongings or clothing, a real rarity at that place and time, immediately post-war – “everything new!” the village gossips whisper with raised eyebrows.

Caroline’s lovely younger sister Harriet, a successful actress ducking away to her sister’s home for a respite from a difficult and failed recent stage production in London, brings some ex-urban dash and sparkle to village gatherings, and with the unexpectedly sudden return of James from Malaya, and the trials and tribulations of Leda and her fiancé Derek, the local squire’s son, there is plenty of scope for complications, dilemmas, surprises and sometimes unexpected resolutions.

I thought the characters were very well drawn and (mostly) very believable. Caroline is our heroine, but she is not a perfect person by a long shot; her flaws are well on display, but we forgive her them because she is ultimately exceedingly likeable, as is her sister and most of the other players in this excellent domestic drama. It ends quite abruptly, but this served merely to make me keen to get my hands on the next episode in this extended tale, which I was fortunate enough to acquire along with its sister novels recently.

On to Music in the Hills.

________________________________________

Music in the Hills by D.E. Stevenson ~ 1950. This edition: Ace Books, circa 1970. Paperback. ISBN: 0-441-54725-7. 282 pages.

My rating: 8/10.

Having more or less settled the fates of Caroline Dering and her sister Harriet Fane in the previous novel, Vittoria Cottage, this next one follows Caroline’s son James, who, at loose ends after his military service and several years spent “chasing terrorists” in Malaya, is looking towards his future.

Deeply in love with his childhood companion Rhoda, he is struggling with her rejection of his marriage proposal. While we suspect that she is in love with James in her own way, Rhoda fears that, as a rising professional painter, marriage would spell the end of her career goals, and that she would be a discontented wife as well as a poorer artist, having to split her focus between two roles, doing neither well.

James takes it very well, all things considered, and hies himself off to the community of Drumburly in Scotland, where he has been invited by his aunt and uncle to reside at the remote Mureth House, a prosperous sheep farm. Jock and Mamie Johnstone have no children of their own, and are hoping that their nephew might be interested enough in farming life to take over Mureth some day. James has always cherished a desire to be a farmer himself, so the situation looks like a success all around; the story follows some of James’s apprenticeship and details the day-to-day occupations of a hill farmer of mid-2oth century Scotland; quite nicely detailed and striking true in the telling.

We have sheep rustlers and romantic entanglements and, of course, more than a few misunderstandings between various parties, all neatly tidied up as the story progresses. Perhaps not as strong a narrative as the preceding Vittoria Cottage, but definitely engaging. I enjoyed it greatly.

The characterizations of the local inhabitants are often well drawn; we all know people just like these.

I’m looking through the book for a snippet to share with you, but am finding nothing really suitable – everything is so enmeshed with the  rest of the story that to take a bit out of context would do it no justice, so you’ll have to take my word for it that this is a well-written post-war domestic drama, with much to recommend it as escape reading in our hectic modern age.

Music in the Hills is followed by a third book to form a trilogy, Shoulder the Sky, also published as Winter and Rough Weather. I’d read this one some months ago, liked it a lot, and reviewed it here: Shoulder the Sky

Reading this trilogy has made me into a confirmed D.E. Stevenson fan. This is good stuff, for which I am ready to forgive some of the less than stellar output by this writer. She definitely had highs and lows in her output, but the Vittoria Cottage trilogy is quite decently lofty.

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