Every now and then a book unexpectedly comes up and grabs you and when this happens, it is truly a wonderful thing. It happened to me earlier in the year with Michael by E F Benson and now this author has done it again with An Autumn Sowing, an out of print copy of which I found in a charity shop. In fact, this is the fourth by this author I have found in this particular place so I can only a assume that whoever has them is reading them and turning them out. I keep checking and have been lucky in my searches.
I have had this on my shelves for some time so not quite sure why I picked it up on this particular occasion, I was in my dressing gown, had woken early and made a cup of tea when I did so. Went back to bed at 7.30 am there I stayed until 9.30 am when I finished this simply wonderful book and then I lay back and thought about it for a bit. On the surface of it, the story is a simple one "Thomas Keeling, pillar of Bracebridge society, dwells at The Cedars, a spacious residence furnished with such treasures as a small stuffed crocodile. But Keeling stalks unmoved through this opulence, cherishing a secret retreat, his book lined study... when he was here he lost completely a certain sense of loneliness which was his constant companion"
Thomas is married to Emmeline ' who thirty years ago had probably been exceedingly pretty in an absolutely meaningless manner. She had a good deal of geniality which, so to speak, led nowhere, and a complete absence of physical cowardice, which might be due to a lack of imagination". This description is pure Austen, could be Mrs Bennett we are talking about here.
He has three children but the two sons seems vague shadowy figures who the author seems to dispense with quickly as if he found them pretty uninteresting and our main focus falls on Alice, aged 25 unmarried and likely to remain so. Mr Keeling finds little mental sympathy within his family and spends as much time as possible in his library where, once a week, a young man employed by him in the book section of his store, Charles Propert, comes to sit with him and discuss books. He learns that Charles has a sister, now alone after the death of their mother, who is coming to live with him and as she is a secretary, she is given a post as Mr Keeling's assistant or 'typewriter'.
As the months pass by and Mr Keeling and she get to know each other when she comes to catalogue his library for him, he realises that he has come to love her. He looks up at her window late at night, he arrives at the office early, he takes a walk where he knows she will be "God, there's no fool like an old fool' he said to himself as he skirted with a wide berth past the tussocks where the larks were nesting". His family life becomes more and more meaningless to him and his irritation and impatience with his wife and Alice's infatuation with the new parson, Mr Silverdale (a pure Mr Elton figure), grows. All he can think about is Norah and the growing hope that she loves him too. One morning they meet in the bluebell woods when they both know the situation has to be resolved:
"The grave smile with which she had welcomed him grew a shade graver, a shade more tender.
'Do you know that I love you?' he asked. 'Yes I know.....we will sit here a little while, it mustn't be long...there is a way out and you and I are going to take it...I shall leave....sit by me and very soon we must walk back over the down and when we come to the skylark's nest you shall go on and I will follow after a few minutes...let's go through these few months as if pasting them into our memories, we must have the same remembrance as the other".
I want to emphaise here that though An Autumn Sowing is dated, obviously, it is in no way mawkish and I found it very moving. The love that grew between Thomas and Norah is so beautifully described, the gradual awareness of each other, the vague suspicions of Emmeline that perhaps something is not quite right, the tension gradually increases throughout the narrative and it was this that kept me absorbed right to the end as I wanted so much to find out what happened.
After this meeting Thomas trudges home, alone and unhappy, to face his life without the woman he truly loves but when he arrives at The Cedars it is to be met with the news of a loss that has rendered his daughter, Alice, prostrate with misery and grief. He has never been particularly close to her, but when she comes to him in his study:
"He understood her completely, for he knew what it was to lose everything that his soul desired and his heart went out to her in a manner it had never done before. She sat there, helpless with grief, and only someone like himself, helpless also, could help her. Her silliness, her fussiness had been stripped off her and he saw the simplicity of her desolation. From him had fallen his hardness and in him she divined a man who, for some reason, could reach out and be with her"
It is Mr Silverdale for whom she grieves, the vain, fussy, self centered parson who she had loved hopelessly and in the midst of her new found understanding of her father she asks why he understands: "you never liked him, how is it you can help me like this.....you thought him silly, you thought me silly" He smiled at her "Yes......but I respect love"
I found that last line very moving, indeed I found this entire scene moving and powerful. The books I have read so far by E F Benson have varied wildly from setting and strength of writing, some of them have been light hearted, some just light, others not very impressive but, as with Michael, a gem is suddenly unearthed. I thought An Autumn Sowing a remarkable book and, ultimately a tragic one. Tragic in that Thomas felt no redemption because of his love, no exaltation that Norah had loved him, just misery and hopelessness and the knowledge that he has to keep himself busy as he has nothing else. At the close of the narrative, he resolves to throw himself into his work, open another store and bury himself in business. He has no expectation of any future happiness and the final sadness is that his library no longer holds solace for him:
"Here was his secret garden, which from boyhood he had tended and cultivated with every increasing care and each shelf to him was now only a reminder of Norah. He had dreamed of leisure hours here, free from the grinding millstone of business and now he only wanted to get back into the roar and thump of its wheels..........he had found love and it had been plucked from him. And with its vanishing his secret garden had blossomed with bitter herbs, rosemary for rose and rue. ......the room was intolerable to him, he stifled and struggled in its air of bitter longings....there was nothing here that belonged to the life that stretched in front of him.
It was late, he went out turning the key in the lock...."
A quite wonderful book. Out of print but if you stumble across a copy at all, I beg you to grab it and read it.
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