Gardener's nightcap - Muriel Stuart

As a newly inspired gardener, I was pleased to be reminded of Gardener’s nightcap by this review by Rambling Fancy during Persephone Reading Week. This is a lovely little book to dip into, a nightcap indeed. I can imagine a true gardener having this on their bedside table & reading a couple of pieces a night before they fall asleep to dream of their gardens. The illustrations by Philip Gough are lovely & it has one of the prettiest endpapers of any of the Persephones. Someone during PRW asked which endpaper fabric we’d like to have made up into a dress or blouse. Well, this is one of my favourites along with the lovely fabric from The Far Cry (which is or used to be available from the Persephone Shop). As there’s no plot, I thought I’d just quote a few extracts that give a flavour of the book’s charm,

Cut the marrows when they are six inches long, & you have a delicate dish. Of course if you grow your marrows as large as Zeppelins there is no help for you. They must cumber the ground as usual.

Yet the first duty of a garden is quietude – a place where peace may be fostered, where the eye, wounded by the glare of modern roads & modern houses, may rest upon grey shadow & green shade. But from the noisy street one is so often led into the noisy garden.

The Colt’s Foot is enchantingly named Son-before-Father, because its flowers always appear before the leaves. Its name Colt’s Foot refers to the large hoof-shaped leaves, the resemblance being probably strengthened by the shaggy flower stems.

I felt I was being led through a gorgeous garden by a very knowledgeable host, full of her own opinions but willing to give good advice to the novice gardener.

I’m spending the day in town tomorrow. I’m off to see the Rupert Bunny exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Then, a bowl of noodles at the Chocolate Buddha & a concert by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra at the new Recital Centre. I’ve booked tickets for four of the MCO’s Sunday afternoon series this year. They’re playing some of my favourite pieces including the Beethoven & Mendelssohn violin concertos. Tomorrow it’s one of the Bach violin concertos & Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for strings among other works. I’m looking forward to seeing the Recital Centre too as it will be my first visit.

Persephone Reading Week - Daddy's gone a-hunting

I hope I’ve just scraped under the wire for Persephone Reading Week with this review. After thinking I wouldn’t finish a new Persephone in time, I have done just that.

Daddy’s gone a-hunting is the story of Ruth Whiting’s life of suburban frustration & misery in the late 1950s. Ruth is married to Rex, a dentist who lives in London during the week & only comes home for the weekend. She has two younger boys at school & an 18 year old daughter, Angela. Ruth is at home, alone, surrounded by other wives in the same situation. They’re all bored, spending their time in gossip & shopping. Rex is unfaithful. He thinks Ruth doesn’t know but she is well aware of his mistresses. He’s an unsympathetic character, impatient & rude to his wife & daughter although he loves his sons & enjoys spending time with them. Rex’s relationship with his latest mistress, Maxine, is incredibly pathetic. He’s middle-aged, fat & unattractive yet he pleads for compliments & favours from this silly girl.

Ruth & Rex had to get married when she became pregnant & Rex resents Angela because of this. His whole attitude is that Ruth virtually trapped him into marriage & I think he justifies his affairs as his “revenge” for the way his life was hijacked. It’s ironic that he tells Ruth that if Angela ever became pregnant out of wedlock he’d throw her out. Angela does become pregnant to her truly awful boyfriend, Tony. The letter Tony writes Ruth worming his way out of paying for the abortion is horrible, self-serving & selfish. This dilemma, in the days when abortion was illegal, brings Ruth & Angela gradually closer together. Angela is a sulky, awkward girl who has always felt superior to her ineffectual mother. She’s ungracious in her fear although desperate for her mother’s help. It’s only at the end that they seem to reach an understanding. The machinations Ruth has to go through to help Angela (without Rex finding out) are frightening. It’s hard to believe this was just over 50 years ago. I was born in the 60s & the state of women’s lives depicted here hardly seems to have moved on from the 19th century novels I love so much. Thank goodness for feminism is all I can say!

Daddy’s gone a-hunting reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, the classic story of the suppression of a woman’s life by the medical establishment & her family. The scenes of Ruth’s breakdown, when the awful Miss de Beer is brought in as nurse/housekeeper/jailer are beautifully done. Ruth’s despair is captured in the scene where she’s trying to escape from the house to visit a doctor who may help with Angela’s abortion. She creeps in stocking feet out of the house,

It was impossible to open the garage doors silently; but by now, even if she was heard, it would be too late. She put on her shoes, pushed the doors back & got into the car. The engine coughed, stuttered & died...She imagined Miss de Beer storming into the garage in her candlewick, her hair in armour, wrenching her out of the car, telephoning Rex...Reversing into the drive she saw the lit square of Miss de Beer’s window & an agitated figure wrestling to open it. She put her hand out of the car & waved cheerfully, keeping her hand fluttering as she swerved away down the drive.


The unreality of the lives of the women trapped in suburbia is highlighted at Christmas when the children are home from school & the husbands are home for over a week,

The women ran around in a fluster, like nuns forced on a secular outing. Between their husbands & their children they didn’t know where they were. The quantities of food made them, used to cream cheese & water biscuits, ill. They were agitated at the prospect of having to explain themselves, of having to live in public for so long. As the time of arrival came nearer they telephoned each other, breathlessly, as though for the last time.

I usually don’t read the Introductions of novels until after I’ve read the book as I don’t like to know too much of the plot. This time though I did read Valerie Grove’s introduction first. It really set the book in the context of Penelope Mortimer’s life. She was married to John Mortimer, barrister & famous author of the Rumpole books. Penelope Mortimer’s novels were created out of her own life to a great extent & this book describes a period in Mortimer’s life when similar things were happening to her. She had periods of mental breakdown, her marriage was blighted by her husband’s unfaithfulness & she lived a similar life to Ruth’s. Mortimer always worked though, at her novels & journalism, so her life had more purpose than poor Ruth’s seems to.

Daddy’s gone a-hunting is a terrifically readable book. The characters & situations are full of a kind of black humour as well as despair at Ruth’s thwarted life. It’s not typically Persephone in period but the themes of domesticity & relationships are very much in the tradition of other Persephone books such as Joanna Cannan’s Princes in the Land & Richmal Crompton’s Family Roundabout.

Persephone Reading Week - Little Boy Lost

I had planned to review one of my favourite Persephones as part of Persephone Reading Week as well as read a new one. Well, I’m going to have to cheat a bit as I’ve started Penelope Mortimer’s Daddy’s gone a-hunting but I just don’t think I’m going to finish it before the week is up. I’ve had a really busy week & I’ve been falling asleep over my book with Abby on my lap early every night this week. So, I’m just reviewing my favourite Persephone. Little Boy Lost is one of my top 5 Persephones. Don’t ask me what the others are because they change! At this moment, the list would be Little Boy Lost, Few Eggs & No Oranges, Fidelity, They Were Sisters & A House in the Country. Ask me in a month’s time & they would be different but Little Boy Lost & one of the Dorothy Whipples would always be there. I’ve read all of these more than once & they really sum up for me what Persephone is about & why I love their books. Compulsively readable, with characters the reader cares about, full of domestic details about houses, clothes, relationships, the way they lived then.


Little Boy Lost is the story of a man's search for his son, lost in France during WWII. On a deeper level, it is the story of a man's search for himself, rediscovering his capacity for love after the experiences of war. Hilary Wainwright saw his son John just once, the day after he was born in Paris. Hilary's wife Lisa was working for the Resistance and was captured and killed by the Gestapo when John was a baby, and the child disappeared. After the war, Hilary is contacted by Pierre, a friend of Lisa's, with news of a child who may be John. Hilary sets out to find this child. His search takes him through the devastated French countryside to the small town where the child lives in an orphanage. Hilary's growing relationship with little Jean (the name given to the child) is very moving. Hilary's resistance to love, to being hurt again is vividly portrayed. Jean is a delightful child, a representative of the many thousands of children left orphaned and lost by war. The reader longs for these two lost souls to fall into each other's arms. By the end of the novel, I didn't care whether Jean was Hilary's son or not. The unsentimental yet deeply moving style of the novel is totally engrossing, once started, I could hardly bear to put it down.

I love the fact that Persephone’s books about WWII were written at the time or shortly after. This gives them such immediacy, especially in the books written in the middle of the war. The outcome was unknown & the experience of living in Britain with all the uncertainty that comes from war makes these books compelling. Little Boy Lost takes the reader to a France devastated by years of occupation. The countryside is blighted. People are trying to rebuild their lives. So many families have been shattered. This is a book about hope, the hope that maybe one family can be put back together again & move forward into a better future. Little Boy Lost should be read once very quickly to find out what happens to Hilary & Jean & then, read it again slowly & admire the way Laski has written this lovely novel.