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Some Tame Gazelle, Or Some Gentle Dove: Something to Love, Oh, Something to Love!

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Some Tame Gazelle, Or Some Gentle Dove: Something to Love, Oh, Something to Love! EXCELLENT WOMEN Something to Love 141 CHAPTER FOUR Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove: Something to love, oh, something to love! Thomas Haynes Bayly. His most recent library book had been a Barbara Pym. He had read with envious disbelief the gentle and ironic story of a village parish where the curates were entertained, fed, and generally spoilt by the female members of the congre­ gation. P.D. James: A Taste for Death 142 EXCELLENT WOMEN Something to l.ove EXCELLENT WOMEN 143 Something to Love 4 SOMETHING TO LOVE 4.1 introduction This thesis will examine those characteristics which Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner have in common, with regard to their themes, characters, and style. The preceding critical appraisal of the work of these novelists has already foregrounded some correspondences; what follows is an in-depth examination, elucidation a nd assessment of shared traits. In 1965, Philip Larkin took it upon himself to write a letter to Charles Monteith, an editor at his own publisher, Faber & Faber. The letter Is impor- tant, as it vividly isolates some of the most important characteristics of Pym's writing; it is also important in that Larkin's remarks may be applied equally to the work of Anita Brookner: "I feel it is a great shame if ordinary sane novels about ordinary sane people doing ordinary sane things can't find a publisher these days. This is the tradition of Jane Austen and Trollope, and ·r refuse to believe that no one wants its successors today. Why should I have to choose between spy rubbish, science fiction rubbish, Negro-homosexual rubbish, or dope-take nervous- breakdown rubbish? I like to read about people who have done nothing specta- cular, who aren't beautiful and lucky, who try to behave well in the Ii mited field of activity they command, but who can see, in the little autumnal moments of vision, that the so-called 'big' experiences of life are going to miss them; and I like to read about such things presented not with self-pity or despair or romanticism, but with realistic firmness and even humour·. That is in fact what 144 EXCELLENT WOMEN Something to Love the critics ca ll the moral tone of the book. It seems to me the kind of writing a responsible publisher ought to support (that 's you Charles!)" (Epstein, 1986:39-40). "Ordinary sane people doing. ordinary sane things", people who aren't "beautiful or lucky", and who "try to behave well" are certainly the protagonists who people Pym's world, and Pym, in a letter to Philip Larkin, clearly echoes his sentiments: "I like writing, but am rather depressed at future prospects for my sort of book. Once you said, I think, that not everybody wants to read about Negro homosexuals. It seems appropr iate that I am now reading James Baldwin's Another Country lent to me by a young friend. A 'powerful' very well-written book, but so upsetting - one is really glad never to have had the chance of that kind of life!" (Pym, 1984d:226). 4.2 Love in its various guises Diana 13enet (1986), in a seminal work entitled Something to Love: Barbara Pym's Novels, finds the title of Pym's first novel a perfect epigraph for her work as a whole. According to 13enet, Pym "looks with a compassionate but penetrat ing eye at love in its different aspects" (1986:1). This need for "some- thing to love", whether it is romantic love whi ch is requited or unrequited, homosexual or heterosexual, or simply emotional sustenance from family and friends, is the key theme in Pym 's work, and "in Pym's universe, the heart and EXCELLENT WOMEN 145 Something to Love mind require an object as the bridge from their fearful isolation to the world of feeling and caring" (Benet, 1986: 1) . Within Pym's exploration of this subject, Benet isolates five recurrent topics, and these gather increasing power and depth with each novel (1986:11). There is the need for love (emotional closeness, the wish to belong, options for emotional fulfilment) which culminates in Quartet in Autumn. Other characters are given a purpose in life by the needs of others, and so a sense of responsi- bility "vis-a-vis other living things" (Benet, 1986:12) provides these characters with their niche in life. Observation versus participation is another recurrent theme in the novels; although this provides much of the gossipy comedy in Pym's works, "the person who is only an observer is an unfortunate" (Benet, 1986: 13). In Pym's analysis of romantic love, the power of the imagination is pre-eminent; with the exception of a few clear-headed people, Pym's heroines fall in love with Images of their own creation - thus "imagination has the power ••• to shape the self and others" (Benet, 1986: 13). Finally, there are the "unsuitable attachments"; although some of these attachments are superficially unsuitable because of difference in social class or some or other minor infringement of dress or behaviour, Pym deems no attach- ments truly unsuitable, unless they are "those devoid of affection or those motivated by purely self-enhancing reasons,. such as the wish to feel superior, the need to prove one's power to attract others, or the desire to possess someone" (Benet, 1986:14). 146 EXCELLENT WOMEN Something to Love Pym a nd Brookner have in common this quest for love, and this chapter will therefore explore this theme in some depth. (Brookner's search for emotional fulfilment appears more circumscribed than Pym's; her theme of hares and tortoises is more sharply defined, although this is also a recurrent motif in Pym's novels.) It is also important to note t he development of this theme in Pym's novels, as the later works are more than comedies of manners, and chronicle the lives of individuals who respond to the indignities of emotional isolation, rejection and loss by clinging gamely to the wreckage of their lonely lives. 4.3 Some Tame Gazelle Benet avers that Some Tame Gazelle develops as an "unmarriage" plot. Pym turns the staples of the romantic novel upside down: "her heroine and hero are settled into late middle-age; love in their world is rarely anguished or even unsettling; marriage is not the glorious conclusion to the heroine's story, though she is given the option; and marriage itself is not the supreme love- inspired choice by which a man supposedly validates a woman's singularity or worth" (Benet, 1986:16). The novel's epigraph- Thomas Haynes Bayly's Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove: Something to love, oh, something to love! EXCELLENT WOMEN 147 Something to l-ove provides the central theme of the novel. Belinda Bede, the chief protagonist, having loved the Archdeacon for over thirty years (he is now married to the formidable Agatha), is not entirely oblivious of his failings: Naturally one did not think of the clergy as expecting anything in the way of material luxuries • • . Belinda paused, for she was remembering the vicar, Archdeacon Hoccleve, and how one couldn't really say that about him. But then dear Henry was different, In some ways not like a clergyman at all. For although Belinda had loved him faithfully for over thirty years, she sometimes had to admit that he had very few of the obvious virtues that one somehow expected of one's parish priest. His letter in this month's parish magazine, announcing the arrival of the new curate, had a peevish and condescending tone that a stran­ ger might have thought not quite the thing {or an arch­ deacon. But the village was used to It (STG:6). The unsuitability of the visiting curate as a possible love object is clearly indicated in the opening lines. Belinda and Harriet, two spinster sisters in their fifties, are entertaining the new curate to supper, as curates are Harriet's particular proteges: Neither she nor Harriet had ever married, but Harriet was making her usual fuss over the new curate and was obviously prepared to be quite as silly over him as she had been over his predecessors. She was especially given to cherishing young clergymen, and her frequent excursions to the curates' lodgings had often given rise to talk, for people did like a bit of gossip, especially about a respect­ able spinster and church worker like Miss Harriet Bede. There was naturally nothing scandalous about these visits, as she always took with her a newly b·aked cake, some fresh eggs or fruit - for the poor young men always looked half starved - or even a hand-knitted pqllover or pair of SOGks, begun by her in a burst of enthusiasm and usually finished, more soberly, by Belinda. And then of course she would ask them to supper (STG:5-6). STG refers to PYM, Barbara. 1984b. Some Tame Gazelle. London Granada. 14 8 EXCEJ,U:NT WOMEN Something to Love The covert animosity between Belinda and Agatha Hoccleve (more overt in Agatha's "good" clothes from the "best houses", in contrast t o Belinda's tasteful but dowdier apparel, and in minor social skirmishes) is revealed in the conver- sation about Harriet's suitor, Count Bianco. The undercurrent of ever-so-gentle malice is prototypical Pym: Ricardo Bianco was an Italian count, who for some unexplained reason had settled in the village many years ago. He was a gentle melancholy man, beloved by every­ one for his generosity and courtly manners and he had admired Harriet Bede for more years than could now be remembered.
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