Father (British Library Women Writers) - Softcover

Von Arnim, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712353186 ISBN 13: 9780712353182

Publisher: British Library Publishing, 2021

Synopsis

‘There came a moment, she imagined, in the lives of most unmarried daughters, and perhaps in other people’s too, when they must either bolt or go permanently under.’

Since her mother’s death Jennifer has devoted years of her life to her father, managing the family home and acting as his secretary. After the sudden announcement that he has taken a new wife, Jennifer, at 33, seizes the opportunity to lead an independent life. Quickly she secures the lease of Rose Cottage and turns her attention to her own needs and interests. Published in 1931, Father explores the concept of spinsterhood in a time when the financial and social status of single women were often dependent on male family members. While Jennifer is desperate to experience life on her own terms within her reduced financial means, her neighbor Alice is pre-occupied with ensuring her position as head of her brother’s household is never challenged.

British Library Women Writers 1930's.

Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal, and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise, and inform.
 

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) was born Mary Annette Beauchamp. In 1891 she married Graf Henning von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a member of the Prussian aristocracy and settled in Berlin. She published her first novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden In 1898 and from then on was published simply as "Elizabeth" or "author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden." After her husband's death, she married Earl Francis Russell, older brother of Bertrand Russell.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Mother said, dying, “You’ll take care of father, won’t you—”
“Always,” sobbed her kneeling, heartbroken daughter.
“Don’t leave him, Jen.”
“Oh mother, I promise—I won’t ever. Not ever, ever—”
No; one will never leave father. But what if father, not left, meticulously
attended to, taken care of, obeyed and cherished, after twelve solid,
faithful years of it, without saying a word to a soul comes back to tea one
afternoon with a new wife? Ten, isn’t one released? Hasn’t one completed
one’s job? Can’t one with a clear conscience, indeed must one not, hand
him over, and at last, at last—oh, how glorious!—be free?

Father, however, didn’t seem to see it that way. He appeared to take it for
granted that his daughter would continue about him as before, side by
side with his new wife, on the ground that homes were the natural places
for maiden daughters; and when she reminded him that she was thirtythree, he merely inquired with acerbity, for in his heart he was thinking
she ought to have been married and out of the way long ago, whether
being thirty-three altered the fact that she was a maiden daughter.
He was, that is, doing his duty by her; and, as sometimes happens with
duty, the doing of it made him cross.
Now the last thing father had meant to be on his wedding day was
cross, so naturally, when he found himself being it, he became much
crosser, and at last, as will presently be told, there was quite a scene.
To begin with, though, all was blandness. There wasn’t a cloud at the
tea-table. Father was very pleasant indeed, if faintly apologetic—not– 
embarrassed, for he was never that, but there was a faint flavour of apology
in his manner, which was perhaps not to be wondered at, since his new
wife was ever so much younger, one could see at once, than his daughter,
and he sixty-five.
“You mustn’t think, Jennifer,” he said after tea, which had been the
oddest meal of her life, as he called her into the back diningroom where,
protected by folding doors from anything that might be going on in the
front one, they had worked together so long—she the obedient handmaid
waiting on his thoughts, taking them down as they emerged from him,
typing and re-typing them, over and over again with dogged patience
typing a single paragraph, a single sentence, sometimes for days working
on a single sentence till it was, in father’s eyes, as near perfect as it could
humanly be got,—“you mustn’t think, Jennifer,” he said, “that I’ve sprung
this on you unfairly.”
Pleasant, he thought, surveying this workroom of his, this back
diningroom looking on to the backs of other diningrooms in the parallel
street behind, with its cold neatness and sombre, rep-covered furniture,
its type-writing table for his daughter between the maroon windowcurtains,
its big writing-table for himself, with the revolving chair from
which he dictated,—pleasant to leave it for a while. He hadn’t had a
holiday for years; not since, now he came to think of it, poor Marian’s
death. There had been too much to do to think of holidays. Years slip by
remarkably quickly when one is busy. And Jennifer, too—his eyes came
back to the sturdy, heavy, shortlegged figure—pleasant to have a change
from Jennifer. She was losing, he had noticed lately—since, that is, he had
become acquainted with her who till that morning was Miss Baines—her
freshness a good deal, and soon, if she didn’t take care, would be a regular
old maid.
Father didn’t like old maids; not to be shut up alone with, most of
every day, in the back diningroom as well as at meals, and he couldn’t
help feeling relieved to think that this stretch of his life was over. Yet
he admitted, making the best of things, that if his daughter weren’t an
old maid, or weren’t that which would certainly presently become one,
neither would she have been living at home, efficiently helping him in his
work. She had been very useful. She would still be useful. It cut both ways,
he thought, trying to console himself for her continued presence in his
house, now that he could do without her.
“You mustn’t think, Jennifer,” he therefore said, in case it should happen
to be exactly what she was thinking, “that I’ve sprung this on you unfairly.”
“No, no,” she reassured him, looking at him without seeing him, so
much dazzled was she by what she did see; but if ever a thing had been
sprung on someone, was it not this on her? As to unfairly, what did she
care about unfairly, when she was free?
She blinked. Trough and beyond father she saw doors flying open,
walls falling flat, and herself running unhindered down the steps, along
Gower Street, away through London, across suburbs, out, out into great
sunlit spaces where the wind, fresh and scented, rushed to meet her, and
the birds, and the stars, and those glorious vague beings in the Bible called
sons of the morning, sang together for joy. Father, provided for; she, with
a clear conscience, free; the twelve years during which youth had been
ebbing away, the years shut up in the back diningroom at a typewriter,
with no hope that anything would ever be different and no thought of
anything but sticking to her promise and taking care of the helpless,
gifted man, finished and done with—what did they matter now? Not a
jot, thought Jen, her wide-open eyes shining with the reflection of what
she saw through and beyond father. She could feel the wind—she could
feel it, the scented fresh wind, blowing up her hair as she ran and ran …
“Oh!” she exclaimed, taking a long breath, and clasping her hands; for
really she couldn’t help it—she, so quiet always, so careful never to show
the least excitement, nor any wish, couldn’t help just that one small cry.

Father naturally thought it was a reproach, or the beginning of reproaches.
It might well be that it was. Many reproaches, also those in his own
writings, began with precisely this exclamation, and he was aware that the
occasion was one on which grown-up children are apt to make unpleasant
comment.
But he hadn’t brought his daughter into the back diningroom, and left
his young bride alone with empty teacups, in order to be reproached. Far
from this, his motive in taking her aside had been to assure her, before
proceeding on his honeymoon, that what he had done would in no way
make a difference to her, and that her mind might be at rest. This was
what decent fathers in the circumstances did. He was a decent father; his
intentions towards her, whatever his private wishes might be, were good;
and, aware of this, his eye, as he looked at her when she clasped her hands
and so ominously exclaimed, grew cold.
Of course he knew his marriage was sudden, and also he knew it might
be called secretive; but how much better if all marriages were sudden and
secretive, and accordingly undiscussed beforehand. These things should
be taken simply, considered father. They were not important, except to
the two persons concerned, and should be accepted without fuss. Father
hated fuss, and the flapping of feminine wings. Also, he long had needed
more relaxation in his life of work than the astringent affection a daughter
could provide, and latterly had been quietly making up his mind to get
it. No one could say he hadn’t properly matured in widowerhood, with
twelve years of it, austere and withdrawn, to his credit. Besides, was he
not an artist? And should not every side of an artist have its proper outlet?
If proper outlets were withheld too long, the need for them inevitably
became apparent in the artist’s work, and unbalanced it.
Not that father was of those who think they ought to fall in order
that they may rise, to wallow in order that they may emerge. He disliked
anything violent; his nature was a quiet one; his habits solitary. But, quiet
as he was, and solitarily as he preferred to live, from time to time, being
human, he had yet a kind of itch, a kind of gnaw, a kind of—who shall
describe exactly what father had? Anyhow it got into his work; especially
in spring, in the nesting season, when even the sparrows in the sooty
backyard seemed to have secured something denied to him. And lately
he had been conscious that those parts of his books which had to do
with love, from March onwards loomed out of all proportion to the rest,
besides becoming steadily more lush, more full, and conspicuously, of, as
it were, sap.

Father abhorred sap; he shuddered at written lushness. On no account
must his work be permitted to sag away from the Greek serenity, the
Elizabethan simplicity, which was what so deeply endeared it to his small,
fastidious public. And when a reviewer said of his last book, obviously
referring to the love scenes, “Mr. Richard Dodge’s style”—he was spoken
of as Mr. Richard Dodge, because there are many Dodges—“is curiously
broadening,” it was the last straw.
Broadening. Detestable word. Detestable symbol of a detestable
thing. In the interests of his style, having accidentally found Miss Baines
he woo’d her; in the interests of quiet and talk avoidance, he married her
without telling anybody but herself. She was so young that she thought
a secret marriage an immense joke, and also she easily did what she was
told, for it saved, she thought, a lot of trouble, and also, again, her age
was the age of hero-worship; so that when father, the great Richard
Dodge, celebrated in two continents, the chief hero of her relations, who
belonged to an eagerly literary set, suddenly loomed into her life and
without loss of time began to woo, she was awestruck. It never would
have occurred to her to refuse him. That very morning father had married
her; and, as such a thing as getting married hadn’t happened to him for a
long while, he had been feeling almost excited, very nearly buoyant, quite
apart from, and in addition to, his satisfaction at knowing that his style
would now cease to broaden, now that he would have a domestic outlet
for breadth, and his love-scenes would once more become exquisite
rather than lush.
What simple remedies life provided, he had been thinking, pleased,
at tea, a meal during which his daughter had behaved quite well; what
agreeable simple remedies. A young wife, four weeks on the continent—
he was taking her to Norway—and a return, purged and detached, to that
which was most important to him in the world; good work, without a
word in it which wasn’t the exactly, the beautifully, right one.
And now here was his daughter going to do her best to spoil it; starting,
he was afraid, a scene. Fuss, after all, was not going to be spared him.

“Surely,” he began, forestalling what she might, disagreeably, be about to
let loose on him, “surely on my wedding day, of all days—”
“Oh, but I’m only trying to realise!” she interrupted, her hands pressed
tightly together, her eyes bright and wide open.
“My dear Jennifer, there’s nothing for you to realise,” he said, a little
stiff because of having to be patient. “Tis will make no difference to
you. Do you suppose I would allow a newcomer, however dear to me, to
oust my daughter from her rightful home?”
Certainly his daughter should never be ousted. She had looked after
him dutifully and well from the day her mother died; and of late years,
once he had trained her to the needful unremitting application and
accuracy, she had been most helpful in his work. Grateful was an odd word
to use in regard to their relationship, thought father, but he was grateful to
Jennifer; and being grateful, being a decent father, he had firmly made up
his undoubtedly reluctant mind,—for every man prefers to have his young
wife to himself,—that so long as she was unmarried, and he was alive, she
should never want for a home. Could any parent say more? He doubted
it. Would most parents in his position say as much? He doubted that too.
Yet here she was exclaiming, in answer to his kind and reassuring words,
her eyes, he noticed, unusually bright, filled, he feared, with the light of
imminent unseemly criticism, “No difference? No difference, father?”
“No difference at all. Don’t be foolish, Jennifer,” he said, trying not to
speak too sharply, it being his wedding day; but indeed her words sounded
exactly like the first words of fuss. “Except,” he continued, “that sometimes
now in the evenings you will be able to talk to another woman, instead of
playing chess with me, our daily life will go on just as regularly as before.
Tree people instead of two. Really, Jennifer, that’s all it amounts to—
and of course the immediate fact that I shan’t be here to dinner tonight,
nor in the house for the next few weeks. Make your arrangements. Give
your instructions. I’m afraid,” he went on rather quickly, as she seemed to
be about to open her mouth, “my absence for a time is inevitable, but it
will leave you undisturbed in making the necessary alterations in regard
to—well, rooms. And it’s not as if you won’t have plenty of work to keep
you busy. I’m taking Netta to Norway, and during my absence there’s
that fifth chapter to be gone through again—a most important chapter,
as you know, with alterations which need great care. Set your mind at
rest, my dear,” he finished, giving himself a pull in the direction of proper
paternalness, and bending forward and lightly kissing her on the brow—
that was what fathers kissed daughters on, and for years now he had been
thoroughly tired of brows—“set your mind at rest, and while I’m away get
on with that fifth chapter.”
Tere; he had settled Jennifer; said what was right; behaved as a father,
in the circumstances, should. And following up the kiss with a brief pat
on her rather heavy shoulder, her solid, unvirginal shoulder—he had often
wondered why Jennifer, a spinster, should be so solid—he began going
towards the door.

She, however, went quickly after him, and laid her hand on his sleeve.
“But, father—” she said, her face close to his.
What a pasty creature she was, he thought, in spite of his annoyance
noticing, from long practice as an artist, her details. All his heroines were
rosy—freshly, delicately, dewily rosy, because of Jennifer’s opaque and
colourless skin. Her eyes, too, he thought, coldly examining her, weren’t
blue like his, or brown like her mother’s, but hazel, and father had a
theory that people with hazel eyes were really all a little mad, or at least
became mad before they had done. True, Jennifer had shown no signs of
madness up to now,—was, on the contrary, oppressively steady and quiet
and uninteresting; still, people with eyes like that weren’t altogether to be
trusted. The best thing about her was her voice, which was remarkably
and quite unusually agreeable; but as he didn’t particularly want to talk
to her—what in the world would he have to say?—it wasn’t of much use
to him. And the next best thing was that she had really very pretty, even,
white teeth, which lit her up surprisingly when she smiled, changing her
face, indeed, altogether.
The trouble with Jennifer was that she didn’t smile; or so rarely that
one almost forgot she could. She should do it more often. It was her duty
to make the best of herself, if only because his eyes so frequently were
obliged to rest on her face. Besides, it was every woman’s duty to make the
best of herself, and Jennifer’s not doing so no doubt accounted for the fact
that she was still on his hands. Off those hands she ought, of course, to
have been long ago; yet if some man had reft her from him before he was
ready, as now, for her to go, it would have been extremely awkward, father
knew; he couldn’t have run his house without her; his work would have
suffered considerably; in fact he was unable to imagine what would have
become of him. Those conditions, however, were over now. The moment
was ripe for a husband to come along and r—
Father, who had been looking at his daughter with a hostile eye because
of that hand on his arm, a hand objectionably firm, as if determined that
he shouldn’t get out of the room till fuss had been made and endured,
here suddenly left off seeing her, and stood slowly rubbing his nose up
and down between his thumb and forefinger, which was what he did
when searching for a word; because what, he wondered, was the infinitive
of reft? It must have one. All verbs had one. Now what, now what, he
asked himself, forgetting the face so close to his and the hand on his arm,
forgetting even the charming creature patiently sitting alone with crumbs
and teacups in the next room, could possibly be the infinitive of reft?
So well did Jen know this trick, and the accompanying sudden
blankness in his eyes, that from long habit she nearly let go his arm and
looked round for her fountain pen, in readiness to fx the precious word
the instant it was caught. Instead, however, she did a thing that was very
unlike her, and unlike, too, anything anybody had ever done to father
before, with whom few were friends and none took liberties—she shook
his arm; not much, but unmistakeably.
Brought back by this extraordinary behaviour with a shock to the
present, and to the menace of his daughter’s attitude, he stared at her
for a moment in astonishment, and the instant she opened her mouth
to speak checked her. Whatever she was going to say, father, roused and
offended by the familiarity of that shake, was determined she shouldn’t
say it, and withdrawing from her detaining hand he informed her,
with no further attempt at benevolence, that what she had to do now was
to waste no more time but go upstairs and see about the things he ought
to take with him; and he continued, turning his back on her and once
more making for the door with his curious, shuffling tread, “I’ve told you
I mean well by you, and I now add to that that I leave in half an hour.
There's nothing more to be said.”
“Oh, but there is, there is! Father, you must listen—”
Tere; she was beginning again; coming after him; coming after him
out into the hall, where everybody could hear. What preposterous conduct
was this? Couldn’t a man marry a second time without bringing a hornet’s
nest about his ears? And if anyone had a grievance, wasn’t it he, who had
a maiden daughter to support and put up with, and was shouldering the
burden of two women in the kindest, most uncomplaining spirit?
“Well, now, what is it?” he said, this time with unconcealed irritation
as she, following close on his heels, once more put her hand on his arm—
caught hold of his arm in fact, actually holding him back who had a bride
waiting and a train to catch. “Surely anything you wish to say can wait till
my return?”
“No,” said Jen, a note in her voice he had never heard before. “No.
That’s just what it can’t do. It’s most important, father, and you positively
must listen.”
 

Edition details

• Publisher: British Library Publishing
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712353186
• ISBN 13: 9780712353182
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304