The Captive Reader

When I had Covid earlier this year, I went down hard.  Racked with a cough that settled in my lungs, scarily familiar to the pneumonia I had some years ago (when my brother lovingly described me as sounding like a dying hippopotamus), and dazed with fever, I was in no mood to read.  But when the worst had passed, leaving me weak but relieved, I settled down with a book I’d been meaning to read for the last few years: Desire by Una L. Silberrad, a New Woman novel from 1908 that was one of the very first titles reissued by Handheld Press (and is still available as an e-book).

When Peter Grimstone meets Desire Quebell, she is a sparkling young figure in London society – stately, clever, and a master of light social gab.  For Peter, somewhat timid in the city where he hopes to establish himself as a writer, she is impressive but impossibly distant – until she reaches out with an unusual proposal.  Having just learned that her fiancé has a woman who has loved and supported him, and a child with her, she is determined to do the noble thing and drive him back to her.  Recognizing Peter as a discrete and trustworthy accomplice, she engages his help as a decoy suitor, during which time a legitimate friendship emerges between them.  Peter doesn’t agree with Desire’s plot and doubts the man will reacts as she plans, but while that doesn’t dissuade her, it does cause Desire to begin examining her actions and those of the people around her in more detail.  Peter does not understand why Desire cannot address the cad head on but for Desire it is unthinkable:

…custom and common sense always demanded of the people among whom she lived to tread lightly among the deeps of emotions if by any chance they had to be touched; one should always laugh at things even if it were sometimes for fear one should cry.  Desire had assimilated the lessons more completely than most…

Their friendship is disrupted when Peter’s father falls ill and Peter gives up his London literary dreams to return to his parents and run the family potteries.  Shortly after, Desire’s own path alters radically when her father dies and his estate is left entirely (and against his intentions) to her cold step-mother, with nothing for Desire, his beloved but illegitimate child.  Independent and extreme as always, Desire strikes out to live on her own and earn her way, disappearing entirely from her circle of friends.

When Peter and Desire find each other again, they do so as equals.  He’s struggling with the grindingly tedious business-side of the potteries and she has discovered a talent and passion for bookkeeping, making her perfectly positioned to help.  She soon takes over the bookkeeping, managing the potteries alongside Peter and moving into the family home, where she forms a particularly warm bond with Mrs. Grimstone and begins to shed the protective layers that were so much a part of her London persona.  Here she has the freedom to care about her work – which she does, passionately – and people in a way she never has before.  She blossoms with a new sense of purpose and industry, in a role that suits her many talents that she was unable to use in London drawing rooms:

…she listened and asked questions, showing [Peter] almost entirely the man side of her versatile self.  There was very decidedly a man side to her, a man with some of the great financial adviser’s characteristics, shrewd, far-seeing, accurate in perception of essentials, with a judgement for mass rather than detail: a person who brought the ways of the big world to the problems of Grimstones, and saw them in quite another light from what Peter did.

The company thrives under the joint leadership of Peter and Desire, as do they.  Working and living alongside one another, they become increasingly close until one day Desire realises this is much more than just friendship (though, wonderfully, that is the heart of their unique relationship).  However much she has softened, she has still not learned how to deal with all her emotions and so she flees.  It takes a very melodramatic twist featuring Peter’s ne’er do well brother to bring her back but all ends well and it is just wonderful.

I am predisposed to love a novel about a woman asserting her independence and learning to support herself, but it is the friendship between Desire and Peter that makes this book so special.  Desire is clearly the stronger personality, but Peter is able to disagree with her and make her reconsider things (sometimes), and he is willing to defer to and trust her with a business his family has built and relies on.  The companionship between them grows steadily and warmly and I loved it all so much.

This has gone firmly on to my shelf of favourites and I look forward to reading it again in sickness but also in health.