9. Ivy Compton-Burnett

And why we should all read her novels

In my third year at university, I studied twentieth century literature for a term. The Oxford system allows you to choose what you want to read, and so I looked at all my favourites. This may or may not have been a good strategy, given my mark in my final exam, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it: Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, P G Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Saki et alia. A dream syllabus.

My tutor also introduced me to the works of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett, who bear some similarities to each other, both being brittle, savage and often very funny. Compton-Burnett’s style is inimitable: claustrophic, largely told in dialogue, and with hardly any description of place at all, you find yourself drawn into them as if by a spell. It’s like Jane Austen without the romance, or Agatha Christie with Greek tragedy laid on.

I haven’t picked up a Compton-Burnett for twenty years, and it wasn’t until I attended a talk on her (given by Richard Davenport-Hines) that I was moved to investigate her once more.

Born in 1884, the daughter of a doctor, she was one of twelve children, and many of her siblings came to terrible ends (two sisters dying in a suicide pact). Despite the aristocratic-sounding name, the Compton-Burnetts were in fact decidedly middle-class: her mother, the daughter of the Mayor of Dover, introduced the hyphen (much as plain old Thomas Quincey’s mother introduced a “de”.)

She survived in the kind of genteel semi-comfort that one doesn’t see much of these days: she was the sort of person who was brought up never to touch capital for self-indulgences. Davenport-Hines made a very persuasive case for her novels, talking of their uniqueness. (He said she had no modern influences: this is something I’d like to investigate further.) Compton-Burnett was a classicist, and she studied at Royal Holloway (where I taught for a while).

For a fortnight or so, every time I went into a bookshop, I looked for a Compton-Burnett. I searched under C, I searched under B, but of Compton-Burnetts there was a distinct lack. I was even sent, by an over-eager assistant, to the children’s section of a second hand bookshop, under the misguided impression that I was searching for Frances Hodgson-Burnett. (A fairly happy accident, as it turned out, since I found a good copy of William Mayne’s Ravensgill). I sought her here, I sought her there, I sought her everywhere. Eventually, my local bookshop uncovered the fact that Pushkin Press has four of her novels in print; only two were available, so I ordered them.

A House and its Head is riveting. Set in the Edgeworth’s country house where everything is pared back (there are no male servants, only female, which is seen as more economical), it begins with the patriarch, Duncan, on Christmas Day, wondering where his children and nephew are. The grown-up Sibyl and Nance are clearly biding their time in their bedrooms; Grant, who will inherit as Duncan has no heir, may well be consorting with a maid somewhere. Duncan’s first act is to destroy the book that Grant has been given for Christmas - it’s presumably something like Darwin - thus showing his spite and power.

What follows mounts in tension to a terrifying climax. When Ellen, Duncan’s pale and ineffective wife, dies (presumably with a great sense of relief), Duncan marries again before her headstone has been made, a young woman hardly older than the children. It is one of Compton-Burnett’s greatest talents that despite her brevity and lack of explanation, you feel that you really know these characters: Alison is young and silly, and it’s not long before she falls for Grant’s charms. A child is born: but with a distinctive lock of white hair that comes from Grant’s mother’s side of the family. That poor child has not long to live, and dies in his room, suffocated by gas. The novel then becomes a detective story, and it would be remiss of me to give you more information about who dunnit and why. Forensic in her attention to detail, if Compton-Burnett mentions something, you can be absolutely sure it will have significance later on. It would almost be a parody of a country-house murder mystery, if it were not so menacing, and were it not for the total lack of morality. People literally get away with murder.

Compton-Burnett balances terror and unease with comedy. A chorus of neighbours stands about, commenting snidely and insinuatingly. The portrait of Ellen is moved about the house, as Duncan’s new wives come and go. There is a sense that the Edgeworths are locked in a cage of their own making, and that it’s impossible for them to escape.

Whilst Henry Green, a similarly neglected writer, has had something of a comeback, with Vintage editions of his novels, there are none for Ivy. Hilary Spurling has written a two-volume biography, which I shall add to my teetering pile of books to be read, alongside the seventeen other novels I’ve now got to catch up on.

Even so, It’s about time Compton-Burnett took her place among the pantheon of greats. Though set largely in the late nineteenth century, they are resolutely modern.

I think I’ve found a new obsession, and I can’t wait to start the next one.

NB: A word of warning: do not order the New York Review of Books editions of C-B. They change all the spellings into Americanisms. Hideous!

IN OTHER NEWS

I’ve had a week of writing, and am progressing very well with a new project, being about 27,000 words in. I hope to have more on this soon…