If I could choose a novel to live in, Greenery Street by Denis Mackail would be as perfect a choice as any. Do other readers do this? Flip through novel after novel, auditioning characters, settings, and plotlines in search of that combination which suits them best, a sort of literary Goldilocks? But how could you not want to live in a world with such sweet young residents as Ian and Felicity Foster of Number Twenty-three, Greenery Street?
Like most well-loved comfort reads (which this certainly is), Greenery Street isn’t about anything in particular. It is a simple and delightful chronicle of the first year of a marriage, full of humour and affection. How often do we see happy marriages in fiction? Happy courtships most certainly, but so many novels dealing with married life seem to revolve around infidelities, abuse, or depression. Cheerful stuff. So to see a novel that celebrates the married state, revealing in its benefits to both partners, is most encouraging.
I found Ian, the husband, to be a particularly touching character for his close resemblance to so many young males of my acquaintance. His appalled reaction to Felicity’s revelation that she does in fact want to have children, despite her having insisted otherwise during their courtship, was identical to that of some of my newly married friends (and, I am assured, of my doting father who, when he married my mother at the age of twenty-two, was certain he did not want children). And even if Ian hadn’t endeared himself to me after his marriage (which he did, time and again), I think I would have remained fond of him for his enthusiasm and awkwardness on first dining with Felicity’s parents.
I must admit that I initially harboured some contempt towards Felicity for her inability to balance her chequebook but she really is a loveable creature and, like Ian, I couldn’t find it in me to stay mad at her for long. Instead, I choose to blame her mother for this omission in Felicity’s education – a much more satisfactory conclusion. Felicity’s cataloging of Ian-related knowledge over the first months of the marriage felt so very true to the behaviour of a new wife coming to terms with her husband and cohabitant, a very different and more complex creature than the young man who courted her. Felicity is also the source of some rather comical maxims, stemming from her deep maturity and knowledge as a married woman and remarked on with amusement by the narrator:
‘…if I had a daughter and she got married, I should say: “now, then, my dear; I’ll tell you anything that you really want to know, but otherwise I’m not going to ask you any questions or give you any advice at all.”’
Would you really, Felicity? What an extremely remarkable mother you would be. (p.92)
I am intensely jealous of her though. I would dearly love to believe that after I marry my days will consist of lunching with my mother, giving directions to the servants, and visiting the library but, tragically, modern realities intrude. Married or not, my life is most likely to resemble Ian’s daily grind in the City. In fact, Mackail’s description of Ian’s work life sounds remarkably familiar:
In the course of three years he had learnt enough to be able to do nearly all the work of the man immediately above him, and to make the man immediately below him do almost all the work that he was supposed to do himself. This system is known as ‘efficient co-ordination’, and carried to its logical conclusion implies that the head of the firm does no work at all, and that the junior office boy is ultimately responsible for everything. Roughly speaking, this sums up the position in any smooth-running organization. (p.19)
From beginning to end, I was charmed by the Fosters and their dear house on Greenery Street. All the delights of finding and setting up their first home together (and the less delightful task of paying off the related bills), of learning one another’s quirks and habits, and of dealing or, as the case may be, not dealing with disciplining the servants could not have been read with more amusement or interest. Knowing, as the narrator forewarns us, that any couple’s time in Greenery Street is limited – those charming homes so well-suited for couples proving not quite equal to the housing of hopeful families – made the novel more precious, for even as I anticipated the announcement of a young Foster I couldn’t help but lament what his or her arrival would mean for Ian and Felicity and their beloved first home.
The Persephone foreword assures me that there are not one but two sequels to Greenery Street: Tales from Greenery Street and Ian and Felicity. Has anyone managed to track copies of these down? I’ve fallen rather in love with Denis Mackail based both on this book and on Rebecca Cohen’s description of him as a shy but loyal man, bullied by his elder sister (Angela Thirkell), devoted to his wife, and considered by P.G. Wodehouse to be a ‘genius’, and feel I must read more of his works.
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Over the weekend I finished off P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe. It’s less full of bon mots than you might expect (but rather full of balance sheet considerations) however it does contain some rather wonderful letters to or remarks about contemporary authors of Wodehouse’s acquaintance that must be shared.
The Captive Reader 