The Captive Reader

Published in 1937, Summer Half by Angela Thirkell centers on the trials of Colin Keith and his fellow masters at Southbridge School, be they personal, romantic or professional (and having to teach Tony Morland, still obnoxious and all-knowing if somewhat subdued with age, is a trial by any standard).  As the novel begins, twenty-two year old Colin is determined to give up training for a career in law, which would see him relying on his parents for the many years of studying ahead of him, and to take up a junior position on staff at the local boys’ school.  Colin feels no calling to become a teacher – he finds the prospect more revolting than alluring – but with the misplaced high ideals of youth feels that he cannot possibly impose on his family’s resources, even though he is clearly better suited to the law and they are more than happy to support him.  Still, how happy for us that Colin suffers from such delusions as his time atSouthbridge makes for a truly delightful, sparkling novel.

Even before he walks into the interview, Colin’s attitude towards his new profession is not precisely cheery:

It had been madness to think he could be a schoolmaster.  Loathsome visions of novels on school life flitted before his eyes.  He saw himself falling in love with the headmaster’s wife, nourishing unwholesome passions for fair-haired youths, carrying on feuds, intrigues, vendettas with other masters, being despised because he hated cricket, being equally despised because he didn’t know the names of birds, possibly being involved in a murder which he could never prove he hadn’t committed, certainly marrying the matron.

But because this is Thirkell (and because, as she says in a preface note, it seems impossible that any school like this could possibly exist), Mr Birkett, the headmaster, hires Colin, more as a sort of kind indulgence of the young man’s good intentions than any long-term personnel plan for the school.  This is what characters do in Thirkell books and I love them for it, however impractical and fantastical it may be. 

Also on staff at Southbridge are Everard Carter, a well-liked housemaster in his mid-thirties, and Philip Winter, a temperamental young man who has the very bad luck to be engaged to the headmaster’s feather-brained, oft-engaged daughter, Rose Birkett.  Philip’s suffering is ongoing but even more amusing is the despair of Mr and Mrs Birkett at having spawned such a child:

Why the excellent and intelligent Birketts had produced an elder daughter who was a perfect sparrow-wit was a question freely discussed by the school, but no one had found an answer.  Mrs Birkett felt a little rebellious against Fate.  She had thought of a pretty and useful daughter who would help her to entertain parents and visitors, perhaps play the cello, or write a book, collect materials for Mr Birkett’s projected History of Southbridge School, and marry at about twenty-five a successful professional man in London.  Fate had not gone wholeheartedly into the matter.

Happily, the events of the novel are not confined to school grounds, though any school that educates Tony Morland (still able with his unique blend of condescension and benevolence to make grown men feel several decades younger than himself) and his like-minded friend Swan is of course able to offer ample entertainment, including a classics scholar with a chameleon named Gibbon and a love-struck Captain of Rowing attempting to compose odes to matron.  No, we are also introduced to Colin’s family, the Keiths, who are, in turn, just getting to know the sophisticated Noel Merton, “a very rising barrister, a dancer, a diner-out, a man of the world.”  Lydia Keith quickly established herself as my favourite Thirkell character when I started reading the later books this winter and she is no less engaging and overwhelming in her first introduction.  At sixteen, Lydia is a dangerous delight with her unpredictable mix of enthusiasm and intelligence, youthful self importance and adult confidence:

Lydia’s views were simple, but unassailable.  Being apparently incapable of connected thought, she saved herself a great deal of trouble by a kind of mental toss-up on any question that came under her notice.  Black was then black, and she thought no more about it.

Despite the large gap in their ages, she and Noel quickly become friends, with him proving to be one of the few people Lydia truly respects and whose criticism she will take under advisement.  The managing Lydia dictates and bullies everyone around her, of all ages, when the need arises and the reader can only share Noel’s amusement at her behaviour.  Whether she’s telling Noel that she’s coming to London to take him out to a play (already having purchased their tickets) or whether she using Tony and his friends as menial labour, orders from Lydia prove difficult for most of the other characters to resist.    

Lydia’s elder, significantly milder sister Kate plays a more prominent role in the novel’s romantic plot. To Noel’s dismay, it briefly seems as though Kate may have fallen in love with him.  To this perpetual bachelor, the though is rather upsetting:

Noel was ambitious but marriage was not among his aims.  Rather for him the life of the agreeable bachelor who is always in request as best man, trustee, valued guest, for whom good houses with well-bred host and fellow-guests, excellent food and wine, motors, yachts, will always be waiting.

Noel, when pondering this tricky situation, concludes that she only developed an affectionate interest in him because the first time they met he was in need of domestic care (staying with the family one night, he was lacking a toothbrush and pyjamas after missing his train to London) and he is absolutely right.  Kate is the sweet, mothering type who likes nothing better than to sit quietly, darning a sock or sewing on a button.  She is boring but admirable, a rather perfect match for the boring, admirable Everard Carter who, as a housemaster at Southbridge, can offer up scores of boys who need clothes mended, scraps tended to, and buttons sewn back on – though, as he learns when he first attempts to propose to her, it’s probably best to offer up more than just that when proposing marriage.  Declarations of love are not only suitable but necessary. 

I love Thirkell’s mix of humour and sentiment and I came away from Summer Half both amused and touched.  Her minor characters are handled sometimes more tenderly than her primary characters and, even though they may only appear three or four times over the course of the novel, I came to feel quite affectionately towards them – particularly young Featherstonehaugh, the Captain of Rowing.  But her sharper humour, devastatingly employed by both the narrator and other characters, is saved for skewering main characters to great effect.  Her romantic pairings are always predictable but nonetheless satisfying.  Nice people finding one another (or, in the case of Philip and Rose, violently parting ways to the relief of all) and going on to live nice, happy lives is the most perfect way to end any story.