Good works
Christopher Hawtree
Spinsters of this Parish Sybil Oldfield (Virago £5.95)
'IQ he has the profile of a gorilla and once L./acted Ophelia — does that conveY anything to you?' Sybil Oldfield does not quote Virginia Woolf's description of F. M. Mayor in her biographical study. Although she conveys a rather more charitable view of this little-known, fascinating novelist' unearthing much obscure material in the process, she does so in a considerably less vivacious manner. Not only does Sybil Oldfield (a lecturer in English at Sussex) write in a leaden way' frequently breaking off to provide element. ary comments on social and political history with allusions from Gottfried von Strasburg to Simone de Beauvoir and beyond, she has also chosen to write F. M. Ma_31(3_1': biography in conjunction with that of Ma" Sheepshanks. This is done on the slender grounds of their upbringing in contrasting families, their meeting at Cambridge in the 1890s and their subsequent, intermitter contact. No sooner has one become abs°rr ed by Flora Mayor's quietly tragic' domestic life than one stumbles over a ,I ther account of Mary Sheepshanks's wor- thy, philanthropic activities. The effect is of watching a game of tenfil,s between unevenly matched partners. 'It w" always so easy to caricature Mary Sheep' shanks, in the intervals of seeing her, a'd someone exclusively public-spirited an outward-looking as she stumped (or hohbl ed) along in her dogged, frowning, reform" ist way, armed with facts about the latest deplorable world situation,' remarks Mrs Oldfield. It is a temptation that she h'es stoutly resisted, but as the centurY on and Mary Sheepshanks becomes Mvoly- °r1eY ed with organisations ranging frorn College via the German Babies' Teats Fun to the League of Nations, one beccirrigies weary of the rambling accounts taken fr° the unpublished Autobiography which she wrote in the years before her suicide in 1958. Over four closely-printed pages, for example, are taken up by a 1913 letter to Bertrand Russell in which she described the state of the suffrage movement in various German towns; while the facts might be historically important, they are presented in such a hectic, artless manner that it is dif- ficult to be in the least interested by them. 'Being kissed is so odd,' Flora Mayor wrote to her twin sister, Alice, in 1903 when describing a proposal of marriage from Ernest Shepherd. To turn to this after reading of Mary Sheepshanks's concerns is to remember that Jane Austen was writing While Napoleon ravaged Europe. After her time at Cambridge, with its exposure to a world of ideas, and a continental trip with her sister, Flora found herself back in genteel Kingston-upon-Thames where a life of sketching and playing the piano was in- tetruPted only by organising bazaars and tea-Parties. The full horror of it is conveyed In Alice's deadly sentence, 'Aunt Ina came to lunch — conversation languished so much we were thankful to untwist tangles of gimp..., At the same time, Flora was writing her first stories, to be published in 1901 as Mrs Hammond's Children, but her masterly The Third Miss Symons was still 12 years °Cf.IMeanwhile, she shockedther family with the idea of going on the stage. Spinsters of the Parish is perhaps at its best in describ- ing, with copious extracts from Flora's un- Published Stage Journal, her discovery that the Profession was overcrowded and the struggle pretty tough. Virginia Woolf was her in allocating her such a grand role; ner looks and abilities were not enough to companies her much more than walk-on parts in `ornpanies touring with dreary, now forgot- ten Plays. 'At last we came to a nice-looking house with a clean woman. We asked for rooms and she asked if we were profes- nals. We owned the sad fact and she said was sorry she had such a dreadful ex- perience with pantomime people she was never going to take any again.'
As
euan actress, she hid behind the i.clonYm of Mary Strafford. It was as ricira Mayor that she had voluntarily taught at Morley College for a while, there met Ernest and, in time, come to regard herself tas. Flora Shepherd. Their engagement, his 91) to India, the delayed correspondence with its muddle about the time and place of the wedding, and, before it could take Place, Ernest's death from a disease of the intestines follow a classic pattern. (Mary heePshanks in her turn fell unrequitedly in e'ive with Russell's friend Theodore L h.ewelYn Davies, who drowned after hitting "jis head on a rock.) Flora kept a Grief °lona/ for ten years. There had been little so far to distinguish 'I_ ra's life from that of many another spinster of the time. Mrs Oldfield provides Some interesting contemporary views of the Phenomenon, one which was often ridicul- ZIss .In the most hideous way. With The Third SYmons in 1913 Flora provided a vivid account of the subject — one whose qualities as a work of art met with praise from both the Daily Telegraph and New Statesman. Perhaps the novel's subsequent obscurity was caused by the Great War (Flora spent this in helping at her brother's school, which bore a resemblance to Llanabba Castle and makes one regret she did not write about it). It is astonishing to reflect that both this and The Rector's Daughter, published by the Woolfs at Flora's expense in 1924, should have re- mained unknown for so long. While the packaging falls from many Modernistic works, these two gain in stature all the time. They provide, like their heroines, a link bet- ween the two centuries; their worlds are recognisably secure, filled with solid ob- jects, but the heroines' minds and feelings are explored in a limpid prose which never cloys. Although her teacher's report — 'few ideas and rather imperfect style' — could well be applied to the disappointing novel, The Squire's Daughter, which she publish- ed three years before her death in 1932, it could hardly have been less prescient about the other two.
That they should have emerged from so uneventful a life is one of the mysteries of art. If Mrs Oldfield does not come remotely close to solving it, she has collected some interesting material which could, perhaps, be published in full. Regular purchasers of Virago paperbacks will have noticed that those made in Finland are much better printed and bound; this one, sadly, was produced at The Anchor Press, Tiptree, which seems to work to war economy stan- dards.
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