High Rising by Angela Thirkell

Is it snobbery to be aware that there is a class system and being born born into a more favoured one, the upper middle class, is a piece of acceptable good fortune? Dismissing Angela Thirkell (1890 – 1961) as a crashing snob because she writes about what she knows is a projection of dismal whiggery

All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?
A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of drunkard’s eye.

In her delightful novels set in the Trollopian loam of Barsetshire she ironically adopts the continuing saga mentioning old Frank Gresham, Lord Pomfret and the Thorne Institute. I may be making that last up, but it doesn’t matter. She even occasionally addresses the reader as Anthony might, usually to dismiss a character - ‘we will speak no more of X who plays no further part in our story’. Bishops, canons and members of the inferior clergy though patched poor are still and all gentry. Bounders are clearly signalled and they are not necessarily outsiders but of course, as in life, they often are. In High Rising (1933) the focus is on Laura Morland a widow aged 47 with four sons who makes a living writing trashy thrillers with a haute couture setting which she earnestly hopes that her friends will never read. They in fact do and she is successful enough to educate her sons. Tony, an eleven year old schoolboy and model railway builder and train spotter, with the garrulous nerdaciousness that implies, is still with her. Her loving exasperation is beautifully observed.

When she got back to the house she found that Tony had already unpacked most of his railway all over the drawing-room floor, flung his coat and cap on the sofa, and settled down to the construction of a permanent way.
‘No, Tony,’ said his mother firmly. ‘Put all those things back in the box and take them upstairs. You know you have your own play-room. I will not have your rubbish all over the drawing-room floor. And take your clothes off the sofa and go and wash for supper at once.’
‘But, mother, you wanted to see the railway, because of settling about the engines.’
‘I don’t want to see the railway now, or ever,’ cried Laura, goaded to exasperation, ‘at least not this evening, and not in the drawing-room. Pack it up at once.’
Unwillingly, with a delicious, pink, sulky face, Tony put his engine and lines away, piled his coat and cap on the box, and staggered from the room, with faint groans at the tyranny under which he lived.

Stoker the cook and maid of all work watches over Laura with benign strictness that casts to one side formal differences.

When Stoker had removed the soup plates and brought in the fish and fried potatoes, she settled herself in an easy attitude against the kitchen door, nursing her elbows, and began to impart information.
‘Just as well I come down a week before you,’ she began. ‘There’s always more than enough to do. I tell you, when I saw the way things were, I felt my back open and shut with the nerves.’

The gently tart nature of her wit is a cumulative thing and the moral sense is refreshing. Men admire women for their beauty and their goodness. Women are often of a firm decided type who get on with it.

Thirkell’s books are to be found on fadedpage.com in all formats. After High Rising I recommend Cheerfulness Breaks In. They are beautifully written. Now find a shady tree.