And another to add to my distinguished list of neglected writers by the teenage superior Elaine. Well, I have learned my lesson and over the last few weeks have read eight out of the 40-odd that are to be tracked down by D E Stevenson.
I am hoping, with the advent of Persephone reprinting Miss Buncle's Book and the new Bloomsbury imprint publishing Mrs Tim of the Regiment, that other titles will be forthcoming, but in the meantime they all appear to be out of print. I was fortunate enough to stumble across four when I was exploring a new second hand book shop in Colchester. I was rummaging through some boxes at the back of the shop (as you do) and found Winter and Rough Weather, The English Air, Celia's House and Charlotte Fairlie all marked up at 50p each. Was delighted but honesty made me tell the proprietor that these were probably worth more. 'Ah' said he 'but I haven't sorted those out yet. I was going to mark them up much higher'... I was conscience stricken and immediately handed them over for him to price but he took pity on me and said there was no guarantee they would go anyway and I obviously wanted them so I could have them for the pencilled price (obviously an old one) inside each volume.
What a lovely man.
And what do I think of these books? Well, my initial reading was that they were all very 'nice' books, very Richmal Crompton, very Angela Thirkell, very Dorothy Whipple. Celia's House and Charlotte Fairlie are very light reads and most enjoyable, as is Miss Buncle's Book but then I came to The English Air and changed my mind. This particular story was published in 1940 so just at the outbreak of the Second World War and tells the story of Franz von Heiden, the son of a Nazi official and an Englishwoman who died when he was a child, who comes to visit his cousins - and to study them. Franz discovers that his opinions and prejudices about the English are wrong and not what he had been taught to expect. They make him welcome into the family and when he realises he has fallen in love with Wynne, he is troubled at the remembrance of his mother's unhappy marriage and broken life in Germany and he resolves to leave and return home where he finds he is out of sympathy with the political masters whom his father serves. He has learned to love England.
"Franz was busy using his eyes, he looked at everything and tried to take it all in. At the top of a steep rise Wynne stopped the car and here he had his first real view of England. He looked out over a plain and saw fields and trees and woods, green and golden in the strong sunshine. He saw the silver snake of a river wandering in a leisurely manner towards the sea, and far away over the treetops, the land tilting up gently into hills. The air was very soft, the breeze fanned his cheek, the clouds moved slowly over the shallow tilted bowl"
To me this is pure Mollie Panter-Downes as she describes the English countryside in her glorious book, One Fine Day. Lots more of DE Stevenson to read I know, but I feel this novel, The English Air, is out of the ordinary and I found it unexpectedly gripping.
And then I came to Mrs Tim Flies Home and here we have the seemingly idyllic summer of Mrs Tim living in a small village with her children while her husband stays in Kenya where he is stationed. There is a close family friend, Tony, who it is hinted is in love with Mrs Tim but has taken on the role of devoted friend. There is gossip and rumours about this supposedly illicit friendship are spread around and we realise that under the serene, smiling surface of the village of Quinling, there are petty jealousies and small minds (as in Miss Buncle's Book). There are references to Trollope, the house where Mrs Tim is staying is called The Small House by its previous owner and D E Stevenson very cleverly gives the reader a hint of what is going to happen by Mrs Tim's son, Bryan heaping scorn on another of Trollope's novels, He Knew he Was Right:
"It was called He Knew he Was Right and it was the most awful tripe - all about a man who thought his wife was carrying on with another man and of course, she wasn't at all. The whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up in a few words but He Knew He Was Right, so it went driveling on until he had wrecked everything. A ghastly book!'
........Mrs Tim had a feeling that something was going to happen. It was an unpleasant sort of feeling; like a cloud in the blue sky of our pleasant carefree existence....Tim's letters were rather scrappy..."
I have the feeling that the more I read of this author, the more I am going to find that I have underestimated her. There is much more subtlety to her books than at first appears. Even thinking back on those I have stigmatised as 'nice', I already realise there are little subtle bits of malice popping up here and there.
Lat night I pulled up a bibliography of D E Stevenson on Google and printed it off prepatory to my upcoming visit to Hay on Wye. I am delighted to see that I only need to find another 38 and then I will have the lot.......
