Back to the Classics #6

I read this book for the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2022.

Classic that's been on Your TBR List the Longest. I bought this book, probably for about $3.00, in the early 1990s, when her books were re-released by highbrow publishers, only to end up in the catalogs of remainder distributers like Hamilton and Daedalus. 

A Family and A Fortune – Ivy Compton-Burnett

This 1939 story of family conflict takes place in 1901. The setting is a beautiful country house in rural England.

The Gaveston family deals with its share of trials. In their dear but old house, the plaster is coming off the walls and the east wall is sinking. Oldest son Mark (28) is the heir and facing a disagreeable future of spending all their income on keeping a roof over their heads.

Middle son Clement (26) is an academic, so he’s smart, aloof, prone to fighting over crumbs and holding on to the few that he obtains. Born to a 45-year-old mother – surprise! - youngest son Aubrey is a smart dumb 15-year-old, like Tibby in Howards End. Aubrey is the butt of teasing and bullying from his older brothers. Protective but suffocating older sister Justine (30) unfailingly calls him “little boy.” By the end of the novel Aubrey is given to uttering pithy enigmatic comments on the action along the lines of a stage manager. Or a supernatural being viewing mortal lives from far above.

Mother Blanche (61) is kind and good but weak and vague so her family loves her without respecting her. Plain-spoken Justine calls her ironically “little mother.”

Mrs. Gaveston dealt with the coffee with small, pale, stiff hands, looking with querulous affection at her children and signing in a somewhat strained manner to the servant to take the cups. She had rather uncertain movements and made one or two mistakes, which she rectified with a sort of distracted precision. She lifted her face for her children's greetings with an air of forgetting the observance as each one passed, and of being reminded of it by the next. She was a rather tall, very pale woman of about sixty, who somehow gave the impression of being small, and whose spareness of build was without the wiriness supposed to accompany it. She had wavy, grey hair, a long, narrow chin, long, narrow, dark eyes in a stiff, narrow, handsome face, and a permanent air of being held from her normal interest by some passing strain or distraction.

Like the mother in Men and Wives, Blanche is an insomniac, which undermines her health. Father Edgar (57) thinks he loves his family but living in a fog of conceit and greed he is distant with his sons: he doesn’t even know how old Clement is, but at least feels that he should. Acting as father to the kids is Edgar’s brother Dudley, also wise and giving and though ethical to a fault, nobody’s fool.

Mr. and Mrs. Middleton are the principled outsiders in the novel, besides put-upon Miss Griffon. This is a change from ICB’s previous practice of numerous non-family members standing in for the reader and expressing shocked responses to the goings-on in the family. The Middletons give ICB the chance to poke fun at the universal relish of gossip (Sarah) and the blocks of writers (Thomas):

He had wanted to write and had been a schoolmaster, because of the periods of leisure, but had found that the demands of the other periods exhausted his energy. After his marriage to a woman of means he was still prevented though he did not give the reason, indeed did not know it.

Numerous characters have blind spots in this novel. I dislike spoilers so I won’t discuss them in a review.

The pot is stirred with the arrival of Blanche’s sister, Matty (Matilda) and their 87-year-old father Oliver. They’ve had to move into the lodge on Edgar’s grounds because their investments have gone south and by keeping up appearances Aunt Matty’s housekeeping has burned through their money. A venomous blend of self-pity, cruelty, and entitlement, disabled Aunt Matty is a tyrant, driving her companion Miss Griffon into a state of constant terror. Aunt Matty employs stings and goads in her conversation making her a trigger of fear and derision among the niece and nephews.

Another ruction occurs when a family member inherits a sweet bequest of tin for which everybody puts in dibs. ICB uses the fallout of the inheritance to examine the wellsprings of generosity and how the characters respond to gifts. Is it true generosity if there are stipulations on how the gift is to be used? Does it count as generosity if the source of the urge to give is the wish to be admired? Given true generosity depends on the spirit in which a gift is given, what of the goodwill of the receiver of the gift or benefit? How fragile and fleeting is gratitude? To what extent do the obligations incurred when one receives a gift depend on the character of the beneficiary?

But ICB plans a more eventful year for Family Gaveston. Then there’s a death (a great sickbed set-piece), then an engagement that gets broken and repaired, then a terrible illness (another great sickbed scene), then another death. It’s a busy year for a family that sees things through in their own fashion.

Besides providing more authorial comment than in previous novels, ICB has her characters deliver less unconsoling food for thought in this one.  Justine says the hidden side of people is not always the weaker, less noble, side. Miss Griffon, though treated like dirt beneath Aunt Matty’s feet, observes that everybody is important. In an echo of Schopenhauer, her advocate Uncle Dudley says that life is such a sad affair that we had better be tender with and kind to each other. Though an ICB theme is “how should we then live,” mind, she herself offers no prescriptions. 

ICB’s most memorable characters, as is the case for many writers, are the heavies. But ICB’s villains are such paper tigers, better pitied than scorned. The nice people defend themselves – Justine is Aunt Matty’s niece, not her mother’s daughter - even while they coolly accept the heavies as unavoidable parts of life. Like houses that fall apart, like sickness and death, like snow that falls relentlessly when a middle-aged woman is thrown out of the house. 

Through lack of intelligence and ignorance –Aunt Matty just doesn’t know any better how to deal with her disability or her anger, Edgar isn’t wise or brave enough to care for himself - lots of human beings end up as adults that are just defenseless, coming up with no better response to trouble than anger and dismay. In their ignorant state, helpless Matty- and Edgar-types accept generosity and kindness thoughtlessly, mindlessly. And decent people keep up the fight by not becoming what they dislike in weak people like Aunt Matty and Edgar.

ICB is notorious as a difficult writer. But in this, her seventh novel, she concedes a little to wandering attention among readers, who in 1939 had on their minds anxiety about the coming war with Hitler's Germany. ICB delivers plot twists that are over-the-top but don’t go so far as shockers in her earlier novels. She provides a bit more authorial explanation concerning business and characterization than her first six novels. Be warned, however, she still kicks the third-person omniscient narrator to the curbside 

Most of the action is conveyed in dialogue. I must admit that on the first reading two scenes (chapters) had me reeling, unable to focus enough to do justice to the conversation. The novels of ICB must be read twice so readers can appreciate that ICB plays fair. The second reading will reveal clues that ICB shrewdly puckishly placed to hint at coming incidents.

Other Reviews of ICB Novels: click the title to go to the review

Pastors and Masters (1925)

Brothers and Sisters (1929)

Men and Wives (1931)

More Women Than Men (1933)

A House and Its Head (1935)

Daughters and Sons (1937)

A Family and a Fortune (1939)