This is by E.H. Young (1880-1949); it's available from Internet Archive; and it's another of the books that are celebrating their centenary this year.

Except it's not nearly as famous as The Great Gatsby or Mrs Dalloway or even Gentlemen Prefer Blondes...

In its day, though, says Rebecca Hutcheon, in the article that alerted me to William in the first place, it was a bestseller. It sold more than 60,000 copies; it was reprinted 20 times before 1948; and it was Young's most successful novel.

Mezei and Briganti quote a Virginia Woolf letter from 1938: "I bought a book for 6d in the Penguins called William by E.H. Young, and, for a wonder, enjoyed it greatly. She knows how to put in, and yet remain readable: so minute and yet so alive. And as its [sic] the kind of book I generally dislike, I think she must be a very good novelist, and wonder she’s not far more famous than dear old voluble Hugh [Walpole, presumably], and [H.G.] Wells and so on."

Penguins? Yes, William was one of the first 10 Penguin paperbacks (the brainchild of Allen Lane, who wanted to produce quality books at the fairly affordable price of 6d, the equivalent of the price of a pack of 10 cigarettes). The first batch was published in 1935, and the scheme was an instant success.


And here they are: "The three [Lane brothers] and other staff sat around a table in Vigo Street and brainstormed. They came up with all sorts of ideas, phoenix, and dolphins. Eventually, his secretary Joan Coles suddenly said, 'What about Penguins?' Allen liked it -- he thought it had 'a certain dignified flippancy'. Edward Young, a junior editorial member with artistic skill was sent off to the Zoo to sketch a penguin..."

Of these, I've read A Farewell to Arms and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (both a long time ago); The Mysterious Affair at Styles (just recently); and now William. So -- yes, we now have ANOTHER reading mission! Fill in the rest of the first 10 Penguins!

While "popular" enough to become an inaugural Penguin, Young was deemed "serious" enough to be studied by undergrads in a reading club at the University of British Columbia in 1932, alongside Siegfried Sassoon, Willa Cather, and Wilfred Owen, which suggests, say Mezei and Briganti, "that Young had established a reputation sufficiently important that she be studied in an academic context".

William was the first of Young's books to achieve international fame, and Mezei and Briganti ascribe this to its cleverness in laying bare the everyday realities of marriage and home: "In the exploration of domesticity Young found her most congenial medium." Yet, at the same time, reviewers "were intrigued by Young's unusual and audacious treatment of the pater familias, adultery, and bohemianism".

This double-edged quality is the reason Young is hard to categorize. As Hutcheon observes, "Her novels can hardly be described as romances. Love is often portrayed as destructive or imprisoning. Young was a feminist and campaigned for votes for women, but she saw human failings in both men and women. She admired strength of character in spite of gender... There’s a mixture of openness and coldness, and a sarcastic sense of humour which emerges spontaneously... Her novels sit between genres: not quite realist, not quite modernist, not quite romantic."

***

So, what is William about?

The man of the title is a successful shipowner, resident in a thinly disguised Bristol. Young lived in that city for 15 years, says Hutcheon, and most of her novels are set there -- "or rather in 'Upper Radstowe', her fictional version of real life suburban Clifton".

Confident, clever, and prone to making "disconcerting remarks" that his wife, Kate, generally doesn't understand, William is the eyes and ears of the couple, better informed and more tuned in to what others are thinking and expressing. They're a happy couple, although Kate often feels that "William kept nothing from her except the meaning of his words".


England's West Country

Poor Kate is a domestic paragon, but she worries constantly about her now adult children. She feels she doesn't really know them either: "She had given birth to five bodies and she would always be a stranger to their souls." She's the kind of mother who was really good with small children, but has struggled to adapt her behaviour to their inevitable adulthood.

And, crucially, Kate is a conservative, morally speaking, whereas William is much more open-minded. He wants the best for his children, and will act the puppet-master if he thinks he can bring that best about. But his lodestar is their happiness (as he understands it). He's not in thrall to any code of respectability.

In a bit of a helter-skelter of an opening section (where you feel you have to keep notes of the names to stay on top of things), we're introduced to:

-- Mabel, married to John Partridge; he's doing very well in the timber trade, but Mabel seems to get satisfaction out of dressing like a poor relation, and making out she's a martyr to the need for thrift; they have three boys, named Cromwell, Hampden, and Gladstone (really...); Mabel used to be "as careless as anybody", but something -- John, maternity? -- has changed her. Now she's the one that none of the others seems to like.

-- Walter, married to Violet; they have no children, and Kate thinks Violet spends too much money.

-- Dora, married to Herbert (Kate sees Herbert as a devoted husband, whereas William wonders if Dora is a little tired of him -- as almost always, it turns out that William is nearer the mark); they have a big house, lots of servants, and five children.

-- Lydia, the problem one, married to Oliver, who -- her mother feels -- spoils her; they live in London, where it's all "parties, theatre, people in and out", and they have no children; from the beginning, Kate worries about Lydia more than about the others, complaining that the couple's house is damp, and her daughter "sits about in uncomfortable corners, perhaps on the stairs, and reads and forgets to order the dinner, and tries a new way of doing her hair, and somebody comes to tea and she sits on the floor and smokes and listens;" for Kate this is all not as it should be, and Lydia "seemed to hold in her nature some element of disturbance".

-- Janet, a slightly mysterious young woman, is still at home, apparently nursing some painful burden (we later find out she has carried a torch for Oliver), but still very practical and helpful; at one point she goes off on a walking holiday with "a mannish sort of girl" called Marion; after that, she considers training as a social worker; both these ideas, predictably, worry the life out of Kate.



***

The driving-force of the novel, once we've been introduced to everyone, is Lydia's decision to leave Oliver, and go and live with novelist Henry Wyatt in a dark little house in Somerset.

Consternation!

The family divides into two over this eventuality:

Kate is appalled. It was bad enough that men should visit Lydia when Oliver was out; bad enough that she has stopped wearing her wedding ring; bad enough that Oliver should go off for a trip to Dartmoor all on his own. But this is utterly beyond the pale! Lydia is dead to her!

William, on the other hand, is much more understanding. He refuses to condemn. He sees Kate as "hard and inflexible", and tries to understand Lydia: "It's youth craving for perfection. They think they can get the real thing. They need it. They see a sort of immorality in putting up with mediocrity... There's a kind of nobility in it." But Kate is a million miles away from this viewpoint. He pleads for understanding. She can't give it.

Mabel and John are pruriently condemnatory. Think of John's position in the chapel... And what are they going to tell Cromwell, Hampden, and Gladstone?

Walter and Violet are quietly tolerant. Walter says it's not his business: "If she wants a home she can come to us." And the animosity he has long held towards John and Mabel Partridge has now found a vent.

Dora and Herbert, predictably, are split down the middle. Herbert is self-righteous and priggish, and stands with the Partridge camp. Dora refuses to condemn Lydia (and reading between the lines, you can see she admires her, perhaps even envies her, but she has children to think of, whereas Lydia doesn't).

Janet is pretty quiet. Initially, her feelings are complicated by what has happened to Oliver. But eventually she too comes down on Lydia's side.


Not always as easy as this...

***

Eventually, it's Kate's sense of pride that comes to her rescue. She may not forgive her daughter herself, but she won't criticize her in front of outsiders. She'll hold her head up high. She also finds a bit of an out in blaming poor Oliver. If Lydia left, it must be his fault...

William remains discouraged about the whole institution of matrimony. He says to his youngest daughter, "If marriage remains holy, it's a piece of good fortune: if it doesn't, who dare say the parties to it are wicked? There's a great deal of humbug about marriage, Janet, and a forced loyalty is the devil. And if Oliver couldn't hold Lydia by love, why should he hold her by law?" And why couldn't he hold her? Because he was weak... Whether it's fair to expect men to be strong is another question."

The additional complication in the whole thing is that Lydia is not actually that happy in her new situation either. William guessed as much from the letter Oliver let him see. Lydia was always clear that Henry wasn't exactly going to be an easy person. Being stuck in that dark place with Henry's late mother lurking in every corner isn't helping. And now Dora has visited, and thinks her sister looks ill, and might be regretting leaving Oliver: "After being jostled in a whirlpool," she says, "you might begin to think longingly of a pond." Her view is that Lydia ought to have several husbands, or rather no husband but several lovers: "She can't endure claims." Dora is actually quite perspicaceous (perhaps because of her own unhappy situation). "She loves him [Henry] for himself but she hates him for making her hurt Oliver. She loves him because she's alive where he is, but she hates him because he means to keep her. And she would hate him if he didn't.



***

The ending leaves you agog for more. What will happen to Lydia? She decides to stick with Henry. For now, anyway. But she's going to contiue to be a bolter, you can tell. You long for her to find some outlet other than marriage. But it's the 1920s. There are not that many openings. She seems to regret not having children, but there's a lot that's not explaind there. You just hope she ends up becoming a novelist...

And you hope William and Kate will be OK. They'll stick it out, come what may. But will they be happy? By the end William is realizing, despite his despair at his wife's attitudes, that she is the one "who remained most surely his. Their comradeship might break but it would always heal again; their love in spite of all its little rifts, perhaps because of them, was too strong in its daily use and habit to be destroyed, and yet they had expended on each other far less thought than they had lavished on the children to whom, at best, they were only old people to be dutifully loved." William doesn't really think that last bit, however. He still feels he's "a force"...

Will Kate come round? Really come round...? In a conversation with William, Lydia says she remembers her mother as "a wall, with flowers growing on it, ivy, clinging plants, but underneath a wall... I can't scale it. I can't get through." William, by contrast, is "only an old tree. I can get round you easily enough and climb into all your branches, except the very top ones, near the sky, near the stars, too fine a perch for the likes of me." Later, William recounts this conversation to his wife: "Beneath the flowers, Kate, she said there was a wall which she could not get through, but she was wrong there, I think." Yes, says Kate, "she can get through... I can't believe Lydia is right, but I can believe she is good."

That's all we're going to get from Kate for the moment... But at least it's a start.

By the close of the book Janet is secretly married. (Well, it's a secret as far as Kate is concerned. William knows. Of course.) Will this rather odd business work out?

And how long will desperate Dora put up with horrible Herbert? Will Mabel fall apart completely when her children, around whom she has built her entire identity, have left home? Will William ever get over his Lydia obsession? (He's way too bound up in her life for his own good.)

***

In all, this was a fascinating study of an era that was betwixt and between. I guess we tend to read more about the changes that the post-WWI environment had already ushered in: We see the wild parties and conspicuous adultery of the Fitzgerald novels, or the de facto sex work depicted in Blondes or Ex-Wife; we see the fallout of these changing mores in novels like The Children.

But William sets itself apart through its depiction of the divisions these changes caused on their way to realization. It wasn't just that one set of circumstances turned smoothly into another; it was a more a case of hand-to-hand family combat as old expectations confronted new demands.


E.H. Young

Young would have been well placed to understand the need for change. Hutcheon writes: "Like many of her characters, Young led an unconventional life. During the first world war she worked as a stable hand and in a munitions factory. Her husband, a solicitor named Arthur Daniell, went off to fight. After Daniell was killed at Ypres in 1917, Young moved to London and got a job in a school where her married lover, Ralph Henderson, was the headmaster. She was also a keen mountaineer in an era when there were few women climbers... This quiet radicalism filters into her fiction. Her characters are often sharp-tongued, independent and disillusioned by the roles they’ve been expected to play."

In all, this was a most enjoyable book, psychologically and sociologically rich. And she obviously has a lot more to say...