The Captive Reader

I have been promising a review of Introduction to Sally by Elizabeth von Arnim since I read it in June.  Worse, I have been callously and constantly mentioning it since then, enraging those of you who wanted to know more and were waiting on an actual review.  Well, rejoice!, for here it is.

From the opening line, there is no doubt that you are reading von Arnim and what a perfect line it is:

Mr Pinner was a God-fearing man, who was afraid of everything except respectability.

Mr Pinner is an Islington shopkeeper and for years he and his wife have longed for a child.  Finally, they have a daughter and, recognizing that she is the answer to their prayers, they name her Salvatia (Sally for short).  Unfortunately, Sally turns out to be unusually difficult to raise.  She herself is docile and obedient, all that a daughter should be, but she is far, far too beautiful.  Her parents have to keep her under lock and key after the age of twelve, once love-struck (or at least lust-struck) men and boys start following her around.  All the Pinners’ energy goes into protecting the exquisite Sally, whose unthinking innocence makes her welcome the smiles that come her way even though her strict morals mean she would be horrified if she knew what it was those men wanted from her.

It is more than enough work for two people, guarding Sally, but unfortunately Mrs Pinner dies while Sally is still in her teens.  Mr Pinner discovers that he can’t run the store on his own, can’t afford to hire help, and absolutely cannot handle the volume of admirers who appear when Sally works there.  Seeking a simpler life, he buys a shop in a small village near Cambridge whose chief attraction is an almost entirely female population.  Foolishly though, Mr Pinner failed to anticipate the mobility of young undergraduates in possession of motor cars.  When Mr Jocelyn Luke enters the shop and falls instantly and desperately in love with Sally, Mr Pinner is horrified.  Horrified, that is, until Mr Luke reveals that he wants to marry Sally.  Thrilled at the prospect of handing the responsibility for Sally over to someone else, Mr Pinner does all he can to encourage the match and the two are quickly married, the persuadable Sally having been as eager as ever to heed her father’s advice.   Now it is Mr Luke’s burden to hide Sally away and he finds the task just as exhausting as Mr Pinner did.

The widowed Mrs Luke, a doting mother with grand schemes for her son’s brilliant future, is dismayed to hear that he is married and to the daughter of a shopkeeper no less.  Once she sees Sally though, she too falls victim to the girl’s beauty and launches a determined mission to mould the young girl into the kind of presentable, middle class bride Jocelyn Luke needs by his side in order to succeed.  Sally, whose only ambition is for a small home to keep and fill with lots of babies, does not make a good student.  Meanwhile, Mrs Luke is being courted by her neighbour Mr Thorpe, who had no chance as long as Jocelyn was unmarried but now that the tight mother-son bond has been broken redoubles his efforts, making up in determination what he lacks in precision:

‘Marriage never harmed a man yet,’ said Mr Thorpe still more firmly, aware that he was being inaccurate, but also aware that no one can afford to be accurate and court simultaneously.  Accuracy, Mr Thorpe knew, comes after marriage, not before.

The story is a farce mixed with a fairy tale.  The adventures of simple Sally in ever elevating circles of society (she ends up the protégé of a duke) are delightful and I took a callous amount of pleasure in poor Mr Luke’s hopeless attempts to protect his stunning bride from any male gaze but his.

Introduction to Sally is good.  Very, very good in fact and very, very unexpected.  Von Arnim always manages to surprise me but never more so than here.  She has a uniquely sharp eye for the absurdities of humour behaviour and an extraordinary talent for capturing that in dry, humourous prose.  Here she is entirely without sentiment or sympathy and each character is more ridiculous than the last.  It is pure farce – far purer than I had ever expected from von Arnim who usually balances humourous writing with darker themes – and entirely, wonderfully, hilariously entertaining.