Today marks the start of a Mini Persephone Readathon, hosted by the ever-enthusiastic Jessie, and I’m delighted to be taking part. It’s just until Sunday – hence its “mini” status – so I thought I’d get started right away.
First published in 1946, To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski was published while the war was still fresh in everyone’s minds. And that memory is important because already routines were beginning to be re-established and conventions once again adhered to, things that had briefly loosened during the topsy-turvy war years and provided undreamt-of freedom for so many. Sometimes that freedom was productive – as for the men and women whose wartime experiences gave them careers their education or gender never prepared them for – and sometimes it was merely license to misbehave. And wartime misbehaviour is Laski’s focus.
We meet Deborah Robertson just as her husband, Graham, is about to depart for Cairo. Married for several years and parents to a young son, they are both upset at the idea of parting, trying to reassure one another of the strength of their passion. Passion, rather than affection, is certainly the correct word and the shallowness of their relationship is made clear as Graham reassures his wife that he will “be missing you every hour of every day, thinking how bloody attractive you are.” This is not a marriage of two minds, safe to say.
Before he leaves, Graham idiotically explains to his wife that the affairs he will have out East will only be with women he does not respect and so won’t mean anything and asks her to promise the same for her own affairs. Deborah, claiming the moral high ground, asserts that she will be comforted by her love for him, will spend her time caring for their son, and will remain completely unchanged by their separation.
Subtlety is not Laski’s strong point (to be fair, she never attempts it) so, unsurprisingly, the rest of the book is about how unfaithful Deborah is and how much she changes.
Bored with her son and country life, Deborah soon seizes the chance to move to London on her own (leaving her son in the loving and much more capable hands of the housekeeper). And even before she completes her move, she has her first affair. It is a meaningless thing, done more out of a sense of inevitability than anything, but it sets her on a path that she soon finds impossible to give up. Her attempts to abstain make her sour and petulant so, she decides, why not have fun. To be twenty-four, beautiful and free in wartime London is a heady thing indeed.
One man leads to another, then another, and so on. At first she can pretend love is involved but she soon realises that is not it. Her relationships have nothing to do with her feelings about the men, except perhaps for what they can give her – beginning with nice meals out, stockings, perfume, small things. But as she learns her new craft, her ambitions grow. She looks at her friend Madeleine, far more used to this lifestyle than Deborah and able to attract what Deborah thinks of as “grown-ups”, and “longed to graduate into a class genuinely competitive with her, and yet had no notion of what qualities she lacked that consistently prevented her from doing so.”
Deborah figures out those qualities – with the not altogether willing assistance of a Frenchman whom she has poached from Madeleine – and from there her career as a tart is assured. The men she sleeps with are barely people to her, only stepping stones on her path of self-improvement. Her moral qualms disappear alarmingly quickly; it is much nicer to have a new bag or hat or piece of jewellery than anxieties. And why shouldn’t she be happy rather than anxious or ashamed? As she says:
“I know it’s better to be happy than unhappy, and not only for me but for my baby as well. I like this sort of life, in fact, I love it, and seeing as how I’m hurting no one and doing myself quite a lot of good, I rather think I’ll carry on with it. I’ve come to the conclusion that conventional morals were invented by a lot of unattractive bitches to make themselves feel good.”
Laski is extremely popular with Persephone readers and one of their best represented authors – they have reprinted five of her books now: Little Boy Lost, The Village, The Victorian Chaise-Longue, To Bed with Grand Music, and Tory Heaven. And I can completely understand why. She epitomizes the middle brow, writing about seemingly-serious topics in a titillating way with basic, extremely readable prose (Little Boy Lost is particularly difficult to put down). Would I consider this a significant psychological portrait of a woman experiencing a moral crisis amidst a chaotic, collapsing social structure? Hardly. But, despite lacking nuance or depth, it is great fun. Laski knew what people wanted: a bit of excitement and a touch of the taboo to keep them glued to the pages, confidently smug that they could never be as morally inept as Deborah. It’s true but that is a very, very low bar to clear.
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I re read this earlier this year.It is good but gets a bit repetitive plot wise.
That it certainly does, despite it being such a short book.
Funny there are 2 books i read twice hoping they would be a tad better–this one and THE FRIENDLY YOUNG LADiES by Mary Renault.Have you done the same?
I love the title, which I’ve not heard of before. The Readathon sounds like good publicity for Persephone and I’ll probably join in even though I deplore their dislike of Angela Thirkell even as they published her brother Denis Mackail who I find rather wet.
It’s a wonderful title, isn’t it? I’ll always be thankful to them for reprinting Greenery Street, which I love, so I can forgive a dislike of Thirkell. What I will never be able to understand is their love of Dorothy Whipple’s awful melodramas.
I started early with another Laski novel – Tory Heaven. I love her books, they are all quite different, but I though To bed with Grand Music was excellent. She is very readable.
I find Laski interesting for the wide range of her subjects yet, despite each book having such a unique premise, her style remains constant. It’s quite fascinating. I’ll look forward to hearing what you think of Tory Heaven. I’m quite intrigued by it and love the idea of Laski writing something with a sense of humour – that’s one thing that has been missing from the three books I’ve read by her.
Excellent review, Claire! I’ve really enjoyed Little Boy Lost and The Village, and am looking forward to reading this as well. I’m so glad Persephone has published so many of Laski’s novels!