Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago

“NOVEL ON YELLOW PAPER – or Work It Out for Yourself” by Stevie Smith (first published 1936)

            Let me say clearly that I took a long time to warm to the poetry of Stevie Smith (born Florence Margaret Smith, 1902-1971). I was repelled by people who wanted me to see profundities in jingles such as  “Aloft,/ In the loft,/ Sits Croft;/ He is soft”  - profundities which I still do not believe are there - and I found much of her work an awkward compromise between William Blake and nursery rhyme… not that there’s anything trivial about nursery rhyme (get me in the right mood and I will explain to you that the best surrealist poem ever written is “Hey diddle-diddle the cat and the fiddle”). But I gave her verse another go recently by reading James MacGibbon’s generous Penguin selection of it (published 1978), and found much to like in it. Stevie Smith creates a parallel world of her own – a bit like the world of Edward Lear – where her apparent (and contrived) little-girl naivete mixes with snarky satire and some searching theological questioning, helped along by her own primitivist line drawings.

I get the impression that Stevie Smith now is one of those literary people like Gertrude Stein; that is, more read about than actually read – or known only for a few much-quoted phrases like “not waving, but drowning”. The “legend” of her life is well-known, even to those who have never read her. She was the woman who held down the same unspectacular job for much of her life (secretary to a magazine publisher) and who lived in the same unprepossessing house in North London for over sixty years, far from the more fashionable London haunts of literati and chatterati, but able to mix with them anyway. She may or may not have had affairs with men (and perhaps women) when she was younger, but her closest companion for most of her adult life was her elderly, and staunchly Tory, aunt, with whom she lived and whom she nursed in her last illness. I am inclined to call Stevie Smith an eccentric spinster, but I think “spinster” is now a non-PC word which we are not meant to use in an age when single women prefer to brand themselves as strong, independent etc. Still, the word is appropriate here and for the age in which she lived. Perhaps most famously, she had a love-hate relationship with Christianity, never resolved in her work. Formally, she remained a member of the Church of England, but she also criticised it mercilessly, was sometimes inclined to chuck it in completely, and had her atheist moments. Somebody said she wanted passionately to believe in God, so that she could reject Him.

Stevie Smith’s poems (including some of her own recordings of them, with a surprisingly plummy, middle-class voice) are what she is best-known for; but she did write three novels, the best-known of which is still the first, Novel on Yellow Paper, published in 1936 when she was 33. It was, say most sources, written after a publisher had rejected her first collection of poems and suggested she write a novel instead. Calling it a novel is, of course, moot. Novel on Yellow Paper is a first-person, and usually present-tense, monologue about many thing, apparently linked only by loose associations. It is very, very strongly autobiographical, even if the names are sometimes fictionalised. Basically it is Stevie Smith talking about her life and preoccupations, including her prejudices (many) and her views on contemporary culture and religion and urgent and awful current affairs. It has been compared with the mental peregrinations of Tristram Shandy. The book is not divided into chapters, but there are breaks between Stevie Smith’s breathless paragraphs, which she says were imposed on her by her publisher. (And for this reason, I cite in this notice all quotations according to their page number in my old, 1951, Penguin paperback edition of the novel). Stevie Smith also has some orthographic peculiarities, such as always spelling “distraught” as “distraut”.

Why is it called Novel on Yellow Paper? Because, says Stevie Smith (p.12) she typed on yellow paper, in the office where she worked, so as not to confuse it with the official correspondence she is supposed to type on blue paper.

And why is Novel on Yellow Paper subtitled “Work it Out for Yourself”?

For many reasons, in fact.

On the first page, Stevie Smith addresses the reader: “Beginning this book… I should like then to say: Good-bye to all my friends, my beautful and lovely friends. And for why? Read on, Reader, and work it out for yourself.” (p.7) Or to put it more bluntly, readers will find her saying negative things about her friends. Much later, she repeats the challenge when discussing a sentimental old painting: “Yes, I remember now, that was Napoleon, and that was the retreat from Moscow and that one was called, let’s all have a good cry, Man’s Best Friend. But what was man’s best friend? Was it the dog or the horse, or Death that cut him off from all the cruel hungry frost and snow, and iron rations gone seven days since? That is where you can take your choice, you can do what you like about it. Work it out for yourself.” (p.79) As well as revealing her preoccupation with death – she often saw it as a welcome relief from life and sometimes discussed suicide – this quotation is once again telling readers to put two and two together, rather than having everything neatly explained.

She also keeps reminding readers that this novel is not really a novel, as in:

“But first, Reader, I will give you a word of warning. This is a foot-off-the-ground novel that came by the left hand. And the thoughts come and go and sometimes they do not quite come and I do not pursue them to embarrass them with formality to pursue them into a harsh captivity… And if you are a foot-on-the-ground person, this book will be for you a desert of weariness and exasperation. So put it down. Leave it alone. It was a mistake you made to get this book….” (p.32)

But I, Dear Reader, am a critic, and not a minor modernist novelist playing games with literary conventions. So I will work it out for you by piecing together what I can about the subject matter of this book, presented in fragmentary form by Stevie Smith.

The narrator calls herself Pompey Casmilus even though she was christened Patience (just as Stevie Smith was christened with the equally old-fashioned, Edwardian  name Florence). She works as secretary to the publisher Sir Phoebus (Stevie Smith worked as secretary to the publisher Sir George Newnes). Her mother was deserted by her father when he went to sea and never returned. She has an older sister. She has a cousin called Harriet who comes in and out of her life and who tells her about her trips to Greece. Her aunt came into her life when her mother was on the verge of a breakdown. Now she lives with her aunt whom she praises as “the Lion of Hull”. Her aunt has “a very managing disposition, is strong, passionate, affectionate, has enormous moral strength, is a fine old Fielding creation.” (p.64) The narrator has made many trips to and from Germany, always involving long train-journeys.

Need I tell you, Dear Reader (Okay, okay, you don’t like this “Dear Reader” stuff, but Stevie Smith does it all the time, so why shouldn’t I?) that all these details are simply the autobiography of Stevie Smith up to 1936? So I will stop pretending there is any difference between the author and the narrator in this “novel”, because there isn’t, and I will just treat is as artful autobiography.

Stevie Smith’s thoughts flitter here and there, but she settles on some topics for pages at the time.

There is, for example, the big matter of sex and courtship. Oh how daringly for 1936 Stevie Smith says: “Oh how I enjoy sex and oh how I enjoy it. There have been many funny things about sex in my life that have made me laugh and so now I will tell you.” (p.105) But somehow all she seems to tell us about are failed affairs with a couple of men. There was that German chap Karl who kept trying to get her to read Goethe, and who was her boyfriend when they rambled about in late Weimar Germany, but they fell out. And there was an English chap she calls Freddy to whom she was engaged, but it didn’t work out, and now she says she is glad that she avoided “the matrimonial swamp” (p.190). She, dear Reader, having never been married, apparently knows that matrimony is a swamp, and spends much time belittling those who are married and struggling to raise children.  I do not know anything about the state of Stevie Smith’s sex-life by 1936, but despite her bold statement about sex, what I sense in Novel on Yellow Paper is an outsider looking on at others’ activities and not quite approving. She makes fun of people who preach chastity and purity. But she is also put off by those hearty, progressive types who say go for sex whenever you want, with contraceptives and abortion as a back-up if necessary. Indeed she gives a very unflattering account of a raddled woman who lived her life just this way. And – goodness me – in her account of sex, Stevie Smith is actually very adept at evading and ducking the issue, spending pages dealing instead with Euripdes’ Bacchae and other Greek plays and Racine’s Phedre and – very interestingly - segueing from these matters to the topic of death and suicide. I mean, Dear Reader, talk about “the little death”. I mean talk about the culture of death.  I mean talk about an outsider’s despairing view of human relationships.

Of course Karl and her various trips to Germany bring in another big matter, viz. the matter of Germany and the Germans. Now, Dear Reader, remember this is the mid-1930s and remember that things are getting pretty ugly in Europe. But give the writer credit, because – much better than the witterings of Christopher Isherwood – she does diagnose fairly accurately the sort of moral rot and revived paganism in little ol’ Weimar Germany that led straight to Hitler. And clearly she thinks that a war is inevitable.  Of her Weimar-era trips she says: “Oh how deeply neurotic the German people is… Oh they are so strained and stretched and all the time they are wanting something so yearningly, it is something they don’t quite know, like a dream or something that is out of focus…Well I had that feeling in Germany, like the people were stripping themselves too naked, and doing it with oh such lovey-dovey yearning, yes, and saying: Is there anything more beautiful than the naked body? Oh yes thanks, right off without any call to hard work, I can think of things that are a whole lot more beautiful than the naked body. … Well this nakedness of Germany, with all its whimpering lovey-dovey get-all-together, and with its Movement, and Back to Wotan, and Youth, Youth, Youth, it makes you feel: God send the British Admiralty and the War Office don’t go shuffling on with their arms economies too long-o… Ugh, that hateful feeling I had over there, and how it was a whole race had gone mad. Oh heaven help Deutschland when it kicks out the Jews, with their practical intelligence that might keep Germany from all that dream darkness, like the forests had got hold of them again, and the Romans calling their Legions back along the Via Aurelia.” (pp.86-87)

She is already aware of the consequences of all this, because earlier she has written: “Ah that beloved Germany and my darling Karl. I too can see that idea of sleeping, dreaming, happily dreaming, Germany, her music, her philosophy, her wide fields and broad rivers, her gentle women. But the dream changes, and how is it today, how is it today in the year 1936, how is it today?” (p.41)

Now, Dear Reader, this was written in 1936 but you and I are living in the early 21^st century, and there is this thing called Wikipedia which manages to misinform the public about so many things. And when I looked up its brief summary of Novel on Yellow Paper in its entry on “Stevie Smith”, the jackanapes said that the key to the novel was Stevie Smith’s changed attitude towards Jews because earlier in the (ahem) novel she made a disparaging remark about Jews when she was the only “goy” at a party; but these horrible realities going on in Germany made her change her mind and be more compassionate about Jews. And while I don’t deny that this is partly true, I think it’s sheer journalistic laziness to declare that this is what the whole (ahem) novel is about. It is only one of the issues that Stevie Smith jumps about in.

And along with Sex and Germany, the other big one is Religion. As you might expect from a sort-of Anglican spinster with a beloved Tory aunt, Stevie Smith has that old English prejudice against Catholics, making mockery of  Fr. Ronald Knox (who had the audacity to move from Anglicanism to Catholicism) and Fr Martindale, who were both noted Catholic controversialists of the day (see pp.25-27 and also p.153). And like a nice suburban person who has never really been threatened, she ridicules the idea of martydom (so un-English!), comparing it with (would you believe?) her suffering from the “vulgarity” all around her.  (pp.155-156). Now there’s a sense of proportion for you.

But the state of her very own C. of E. troubles her. She is unsure of the institution, and remarks ironically: “Really , some of the people who go to church are just as good as those who stay away. But actually I am not a Christian actively. I mean I am actively not a Christian. I have a lot against Christianity though I cannot at the moment remember what it is.” (p.31)

In terms of doctrine, she is painfully aware that the C. of E. is dumbing things down, and pretending essential Christian teachings can be forgotten, in a desperate attempt to woo congregations back. She remarks: “It certainly is punk of the Church of England…. They say: we will cut out doctrine, and step down among the people, and not preach at all, but just have a good heart-to-heart talk, just ordinary men among men, just a helpful chat Sunday evenings, just not clever at all, but simple as abc, and just being kind and just being kind and. Oh I hate that. That is very base and treacherous. That is making a desert and a howlng waste of the church. That is making the Church of England all Arizona and salt deserts….” (pp.150-151). These are the words of somebody who wants the church to be a worthy intellectual sparring partner in her ongoing doubts and imagined affrays with religion and God. God, by the way, is the only one who knows what she would think of the even more diminished and doctrine-averse church of our own day. Stevie Smith, back in 1936, is aware that there was a branch of the Anglican church that was precise about doctrine, but she won’t go near it because, oh dear, it seems too close to those papists. So she goes on to remark sarcastically about the those awful, ritualist Anglo-Catholics and doesn’t resolve much… As in her comments about sex, she’s not quite sure which way to face, but then that’s the way with random cogitation, such as this book mimics.

I am irked by some of her dear old English prejudices, as in the following: “Oh how deeply thankful I am I didn’t go having an aunt with clever ideas about literature and painting. Oh how I dread those cultured gentlewomen, like you get so many of in America. Oh my, they put in so much energy getting cultured it frays their nerves, they’re all profoundly unquiet, and running out after the last opinion.” (p.98) We English middle classes don’t want to be taken as “clever” do we… even if we are? (And even if Stevie Smith accuses the C. of E. of failing to be clever.) And of course it’s those horrid Americans who are the worst culture vultures.

I mustn’t carp too much, though. Because in her verbal ramblings Stevie Smith does sometimes score a bullseye.

As in her evisceration of what was once the standard sort of radio broadcast for children: “You know the stuff they slop out to the sweet little BBC brattery? So wide-eyed and daisy-sweet, and solemn-young and sweet smell of childhood.” (p.180) 

            And as in her awareness of the misuse of a common word: “When a magazine is a ‘book’, you can reckon that’s the public Lord Victor has in mind. And that’s the public that won’t stand for highbrow nonsense.” (p.56)

            And as in the snobby mentality of some suburbanites: “It is funny that all the time in suburbs people are being ashamed of being in suburbs, and are having to show that they are not like that themselves, not that way at all, you know. And there will be some courteous deprecating laughter.” (p.199)

So you see, Dear Reader, I have unbent the very bent spoon that is Novel on Yellow Paper, and I have worked it out for you so that you don’t have to Work It Out For Yourself. And really a big part of you must now be saying “Why has he taken up so much space describing a book that sounds both very dated and rather silly?” And I guess a big part of me would agree with you, though at least in small doses I found some of this (ahem) novel to be amusing and it has its insightful bits.

But the twitter and chitter and chatter did get to me in the end, and I think I know why. Stevie Smith unwittingly tells me why. In describing a manipulative woman, she says “And she had a smile that was cunning and deliberate. It came out like it was spontaneous, but somehow you knew it wasn’t so-o-o spontaneous, but cleverly timed.” (p.107) This could be the best verdict on Smith’s own style. Her variety of shooting-in-all-drections, jumbled, I’m-just-writing-things-as-they-come-to-me style is, after all, always a kind of fraud, as, in a way, all so-called stream-of-consciousness writing is. The only genuinely spontaneous writing - writing coming out without forethought - would be the “automatic writing” that table-rappers and spiritualists once practised (and even that was probably a fraud). The writer is always conscious of what she is doing and aware of the effects she is creating. It is artful and cunning faux artlessness, faux naivete, and we are meant to take its evasions and blur-words and non-sequiturs as the delightful warbling of a charming chatterbox.

In the end, this role annoys me as much as the assumed infantilism in some of Smith’s worse poetry. And I wish she had worked more of it out for herself, so that I didn’t have to.