Book review - Love Among the Haystacks

David Herbert Lawrence was a prolific writer of short stories. This book collects six: ‘Love among the haystacks’ (1930), ‘The lovely lady’ (1933), ‘Rawdon’s Roof’ (1928), ‘The rocking-horse winner’ (1926), ‘The man who loved islands’ (1929) and ‘The man who died’ (1929). Lawrence died in 1930, aged 44.

‘Love among the haystacks’ is a well-observed bucolic episode in the lives of two brothers, Maurice, the youngest, and Geoffrey. It suffers from the use of dialect, which slows the pace and hinders the reader’s comprehension. The brothers are working in the fields, stacking hay. The local vicar joins them briefly accompanied by his children’s governess, a Pole, Paula, who is about the same age as the brothers. Accidentally on purpose, Geoffrey topples Maurice from the haystack; fortunately, he survives the fall and is presently administered to by Paula: ‘Maurice lay pale and smiling in her lap, whilst she cleaved to him like a mate. One felt instinctively that they were mated.’ (p18)

Geoffrey befriends Lydia, the wife of a tramp who sponges off the field labourers. Lydia’s story is a tragic one, told in the barn while the pair shelter from rain. The boys get their girls.

‘The Lovely Lady’ concerns the unpleasant Pauline Attenborough, 72, her niece Cecilia and her son Robert. Strange, that of all the names to choose, Lawrence opts for Paula in the above story and Pauline in this one. Pauline was ‘lovely’ in the sense that she appeared to most people to be only half her age in looks. Robert’s elder brother died in odd circumstances. Cecilia is attracted to Robert, but his domineering mother is in the way. The only person Pauline ever loved was herself. A story about power and lost love.

‘Rawdon’s Roof’ is a rather slight tale. Rawdon insisted that no woman would ever sleep again under his roof. Laced with wry humour: ‘One looked at the roof, and wondered what it had done amiss.’ The reason for Rawdon’s ire is a failed love affair, of no great consequence.  A little irony and an amusing confusion of names are not enough to quicken interest.

‘The Rocking-Horse Winner’ is known as a ghost story, which is a shame, as that fact detracts from some of the surprise. It was published in The Ghost Book edited by Cynthia Asquith.  A beautiful mother found she could not love her children – a boy and two girls. There was never enough money for them to maintain their social standing in the town. ‘The house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money!’ (p82) The family seemed to have no luck in the money stakes. Uncle Oscar visits regularly and catches young Paul on his rocking-horse, riding a ‘winner’ in his imagination. Then he announces the name of the winning horse – Sansovino at Ascot, which won last week! Paul has a strong affinity with the butler, Bassett, who likes a flutter on the horses. Before long, Paul’s racing on the rocking-horse suggests winners of races yet to be run, and both Bassett and Paul and eventually Uncle Oscar dabble successfully. Paul is striving to grasp the luck that his parents lack, so they can be happy. It ends tragically.

‘The Man Who Loved Islands’ is about Mr Cathcart, who bought an island and was master of all he surveyed. There also dwell in a few cottages an old married couple, a widower and his son and two daughters. So he wasn’t quite alone. Financial circumstances prompted the islander to move to a smaller island, where he took the widower and his daughter to work for him. On this second island ‘there were no human ghosts, no ghosts of any ancient race. The sea, and the spume and the weather had washed them all out, washed them out so there was only the sound of the sea itself, its own ghost, myriad-voiced, communing and plotting and shouting all winter long.’ (p110) He has sex with the daughter, Flora, and she becomes pregnant. He flees to a third island, wanting to be stripped of humanity, wanting nothing to do with his fellow men and women. He seeks emptiness. A wasted life.

‘The Man Who Died’ was originally titled ‘The Escaped Cock’. There are echoes from the previous story: ‘In his own world he was alone, utterly alone. These things around him were in a world that had never died. But he himself had died, or had been killed from out of it, and all that remained now was the great void nausea of utter disillusion.’ (p130) The dead man walking is a resurrected Christ who falls in love with a priestess of Isis. It ends with the phrase ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ – the same ending found in Gone With the Wind!

I’ve read a number of D.H. Lawrence’s books and found this one a disappointment. He distances himself from the characters, and tells the stories rather than shows us through emotions. Yet his observation of nature is excellent, so much so that you can almost smell the flowers, feel the stubble of the cut wheat and the damp presence of rain and sea surf. 

The cover of this copy (1981) was one of a series by Yvonne Gilbert.

FFB - Over by Christmas

Over by Christmas, a historical novel by William Dayshe, MBE, was originally published in 2008; it's now available again, with a splendid new cover.

The title employs the phrase used by many at the start of the First World War; sadly, those hopes were greatly optimistic and the conflict lasted four years, claiming thousands of lives. So many lives. In a brave and bold attempt to reflect those lives and times, William Daysh has examined a number of real life people and imagined other fictional characters, blending them into an engrossing novel about cataclysmic events.

Some two years before the outbreak of war, Prime Minister Asquith, 59, fell in love with 24-year-old Venetia Stanley. Married and a father of five, Asquith confided state secrets to Venetia. Alongside him were politicians and military leaders whose bickering and antagonism towards each other simmered and often affected the decision-making process during the war. Among these were Churchill, Admiral Fisher, Lord Kitchener, Bonar Law and Lloyd George. Naturally, the common soldier and sailor sent to fight the politicians’ war were oblivious of the in-fighting and preening self-importance of their leaders. Which was just as well, for morale if not for the war itself.

One family who went to war was the Royals. George followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the Royal Navy as a gunnery rating. The naval town of Gosport is brought to life, as are the hardships of serving at sea. Time ashore is savoured and George spends much of it with his best mate, Bill, a tradesman who was deemed unfit for service. It is during one of his visits that he meets Bill’s live-in girlfriend, Carrie, who is an unwed mother.

The scene is set for a love triangle. Before any kind of relationship can be sorted for George, his ship is called to the South Atlantic to avenge a bitter naval defeat under the guns of German Admiral von Spee’s heavy cruiser Scharnhorst. It seemed that no sooner was that action successfully concluded than Churchill, Admiral Fisher and the Prime Minister concocted a scheme to invade Turkey through the Dardanelles, thereby breaking through to relieve Russia. Little did they realise that this Gallipoli campaign would have dire consequences for more than one political and service career. George’s ship was sent to the Dardanelles, where he would be involved in a landing party and life-and-death situations.

Inevitably, Carrie and George are drawn to each other, but life is not going to be simple for this ill-starred couple, it seems…

Daysh manages to juggle several balls with assurance during the narrative. The conditions at the home front are well depicted and the emotions of Asquith’s wife, Churchill and the confused Venetia are realistically conveyed. The narrative is aided by the inclusion of excerpts from Asquith’s letters to Venetia – he tended to write at least once a day to her. The battles at sea, and the rise of ungentlemanly submarine warfare, are recreated in suspenseful and taut prose. The bickering between Churchill, Lord Fisher and Kitchener make grim reading when it is realised how many lives are at stake. At one point, it is mentioned that the loss of ships is causing concern – they’re hard to replace, whereas men are plentiful. Saved for the closing chapters, there is an intriguing revelation from Carrie’s past that puts much into perspective.

We learn of Asquith and his infatuation, his peers and faulty decision-makers; we share in the trauma and loss of conflict at sea and on the Turkish peninsula; and we empathise with those left at home to pick up the pieces and make something of their lives during a period of grey austerity. Everybody seems to realise that no matter what the outcome of the war – and by the book’s close, the conclusion is not certain – nothing will ever be the same again. Highly recommended.