'Quartet in Autumn' by Barbara Pym

        A week or so ago, I finished Barbara Pym's late novel 'Quartet in Autumn' - a book I have been meaning to read for some time now; a fragment of a wider and perhaps now lost  Anglo-Catholic culture.  (After  dipping into Mervyn Peake's behemoth 'Titus Groan' I am now currently reading the patrician 'The Soldier Philosophers' by Anthony Powell.)
As you may remember I have written about 'Quartet in Autumn' before when I was reviewing Paul Scott's panoramic and intricate 'Jewel in the Crown', set in the final years of the British Raj. 

     Both writers had been shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize - Scott for 'Staying On' set in Post-Independence India, and Pym for 'Quartet in Autumn'.  Both writers were deserving of public recognition, but the prize went to Scott who was by then not only an alcoholic but dying of cancer. He was to ill to be present at the award ceremony and died four months later in March 1978. Pym at the time was in remission from breast cancer, but it returned and she died in early 1980.  
      'Quartet in Autumn' was conceived in the wake of her diagnosis and treatment in 1971,  when she was working in the office of the International African Institute in London, and it was the first of novel of hers to be published since 'No Fond Return of Love' in 1961.  Early on in the book, in language that reflects the opinion of various publishers, there is a description of the sort of novel that one of the main characters is looking for: 'She had been an unashamed reader of novels, but if she hoped to find one which reflected her own sort of life she had come to realize that the position of an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman is of no interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction.' 

    All of that changed, however, in the mid '70s when, following an article in 'The Times Literary Supplement', there was a shift critical opinion, with 'Quartet in Autumn' being published in 1977, followed by 'The Sweet Dove Died' in 1978.  Four novels were published posthumously.

      'Quartet in Autumn' is the story of four co-workers who share a single office.  They are all roughly the same age and are all facing retirement. The office is in some un-named and un-described organization in central London, in the early '70s.  Faceless perhaps, I suppose.  I suspect, though, it is some form of institute of higher education, possibly in Bloomsbury. There are two men, Edwin and Norman, and two women, Letty and Marcia, one of whom, Marcia, has, like Barbara Pym herself, undergone a mastectomy. What any of these four does exactly is a mystery, or rather an irrelevance, as this novel is, apart from the impending fear of old age - loneliness, illness, and death, essentially about those bonds that develop between people who have been thrown together in the workplace - people no doubt that wouldn't have naturally formed friendships - and what happens to those relationships where circumstances change, and how much we owe to them.

     Pym is the chronicler of the mundane, of lives that have not been successful according to the world.  The depicter of the precarious life, the life lived in the bedsitter or the rented room, of the small pleasure.  A sense of the inadequate and the failure pervades her work,  of roads un-adopted where 'removed lives, loneliness clarifies'.

Little St Mary, Cambridge

      I'm staying in Cambridge for a few days.  This morning I headed north to Ely on the train for my first visit to the city in some seven years, and this afternoon I headed into Cambridge city centre to Little St Mary and King's College Chapel.  A busy day, and I'm going to start with the parish church of St Mary, Fitzwilliam St. - almost opposite Pembroke College - known as Little St Mary to differentiate it from Great St Mary, the University Church.  It doesn't, as you might have expected, refer to its size.  Yes, it has no aisles or transepts, and no tower, and it is unicameral, having no architectural distinction between nave and chancel, but that single space is on a large and ample scale; with the exception of King's College Chapel and Great St Mary's, larger and grander in conception than any other medieval church in Cambridge.  Larger than some cathedral choirs in, say, Scotland or Wales.   I mention that because St Mary's is a fragment - like the chapel of Merton College Oxford, the chancel of an intended collegiate church. Built to serve Peterhouse next door (the buildings are actually connected) and it served as both parish church and college chapel until 1632, Matthew Wren (uncle of Sir Christopher Wren, if you were wondering) built the chapel at Peterhouse

     Built in the Dec style St Mary's has some very fine window tracery. The interior is vast, limewashed and light-filled, rather East Anglian in feel. It smells of stale incense, and it is a church I'm rather fond of (although these photos don't do it justice) and I've worshipped there on a couple of occasions in the past. The roof is a Victorian recreation of the original (I think by Sir George Gilbert Scott - he restored the church 1856-7 so it seems likely.), and it works rather well, like being in an upturned boat.  Whatever was the original form there was, until that restoration, a rather fine Jacobean roof; perhaps it dated to the time of Robert Crayshaw, the priest, poet and mystic.  It is also possible to mourn the loss of the 18th century paneling, that covered the lower walls of the chancel. Half way along the length of the church is a door and recess on each side; these originally led to chantry chapels of the 'barnacle' variety.  The south one, unblocked, now leads to a Lady Chapel of the SSPP, 'Back to the Baroque', Anglo-Catholic Congress type.  The work of T H Lyon and dating from 1931. A period piece. 

     Following on from Scott senior, his son, the ill-stared George Gilbert Scott Jnr worked at St Mary's (see the reredos at the back of the church behind the font), as did Sir John Ninian Comper after him.

St Mary, Stamford

     The fourth in my occasional series on the medieval churches of Stamford, and I ought, immediately, to lay my cards on the table.  This is my favourite church in Stamford; not so much for the architecture - I think the best over all church is St Michael's - but because it belongs to the Anglican tradition I find the most comfortable; Anglo-Catholicism.

     Not that the architecture of St Mary's is in any way substandard.  The tower (EE) and spire (Dec) are quite superb, helped by its position rising abruptly from the street at the crest of St Mary's Hill.  They look wonderful from any angle but the view from below, say standing on the Town Bridge, is imposing. Perhaps St Mary's is the most urban of all the churches in Stamford for it has no graveyard on its n side, and the one it has is small and surrounded by tall and architecturally significant buildings. A delightful spot, St Mary's Place.

     The interior also possesses that less tangible, not so easy to achieve quality of the numinous - something my photographs singularly fail to capture. (Alas!) Clutter is, thankfully, down to a minimum, but is always something to be on one's guard against. The fittings contribute enormously to this sense of the sacred for they are mainly the design of a great Arts and Crafts master, the now largely forgotten, John Dando Sedding. The rood screen, alas unfinished, the parclose screens and choir stalls and the High Altar are all by him, as is the decoration of the chancel roof.  The quality of the work is excellent.  The church had already by then undergone a series of 19th century restorations including one by Edward Browning, 'restoring' the chancel in 1860 and installing the present e window and ceiling.  To the n of the chancel is the 'Golden Chapel' with a wooden barrel vault given by William Hikham and his wife in the early 1480s, at the time when the church was undergoing an extensive rebuild in the Perp style. The chapel, I think, may have belonged to the Guild of the Corpus Christi, though the Guild of St Mary was based in the church too and Hikman was a member of the Guild of St Katherine.  The font is sadly rather tucked away in a corner near the s door, but I presume its position would make perfect sense if the main entrance was still the s porch and not the north door.

Addendum 31.08.23 I didn't know when writing this post that the dossal curtain behind the High Altar was designed by the great 20th century church architect Sir John Ninian Comper.

Currently reading.....

   'George Fredrick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America' by Michael Hall.  Bodley, (1827-1902) was one of the foremost architects of the late Gothic Revival; and an architect of refined and superlative taste.  The designer of some wonderful churches.  This hefty book, which is lavishly illustrated, is the first monograph to be published on this slightly enigmatic yet highly influential man. Sir John Ninian Comper, Robert Lorimer and Charles Ashbee all trained and worked in his office. 

   Bodley began as the designer of High Victorian churches, before reacting against that very hard type of architecture and returning to the style of Pugin, creating churches that are at once deeply rooted in the English Medieval tradition but open to influences from Europe; and, like George Gilbert Scott, he was one of those late Victorian architects who dispensed with Gothic when it came to domestic design contributing to the emergence of the 'Queen Anne Revival'.  Bodley's mature churches are elegant and refined perhaps even a little patrician, but they represent to me at least an intellectual and sensual anglo-catholic culture I find deeply attractive and satisfying.

London and Walsingham

     It's been an eventful week.  A week ago today I took the train into town and a wonderful party at the Art Workers Guild in London's Bloomsbury.  Think architecture meets interior design, meets journalism, meets academia, meets literary London.  The host was my friend Ben Pentreath; the occasion was the launch of his stylish new book 'English Houses'.  With beautiful photography by Jan Baldwin its a lavish, seductive book.  The hall of the Guild (by F W Troup 1914) was decorated in the best Pentreathian manner with armfuls of dahlias that Charlie, Ben's husband, had brought up from their house in Dorset. I'm sure the waiters had been chosen as much for their looks as their hospitality skills. In the long years of caring it was the sort of invitation that came along rarely, and one that would be invariably declined.  The logistics of it would have been just too much hassle. Initial nerves were overcome, and I had a lovely evening meeting new people and catching up with old friends. I briefly met Ben's business partner Bridie Hall (it was her birthday) and Max, her dog and a total charmer.  Ben and Gabby Deeming, the Decoration Director of House & Garden magazine, both made speeches.  And I left with my copy of 'English Houses' autographed.  'Result', as they say.

     The other event of the week was of a totally different nature. And one I'm reticent to speak of, partly because at times I am such a piss-poor Christian, but that was in its quiet way such a profound experience that I feel compelled to share.  On Saturday I joined a local pilgrimage party and headed east across the great, flat extent of the Fens and into Norfolk and to Walsingham. Here is my post from last year.  The morning's weather was superb again. Walsingham has this amazing air of serenity that, I think, is quite unique. The sun was warm and the apple trees were heavy with fruit in the garden of St Seraphim's church, like a painting by Samuel Palmer. The afternoon was, however, unfortunately wet.  After attending two indifferent services in the Anglican shrine (Pilgrim Mass and Sprinkling - both meagre food for pilgrims) I found myself attending Orthodox vespers upstairs at the Anglican Shrine.  The chapel was minute - hardly really more than a landing.  So narrow a space that the iconstasis had room only for two doors instead of the usual three.  An elderly priest lead the service, supported by a choir of one - I think it was his wife. From such meagre resources was created something incredibly moving, incredibly spiritual and powerful. Numinous. Transcendent.  The congregation varied between two and seven, but that didn't matter.  It had a deep integrity that somehow what was going on downstairs in the Anglican bit simply did not possess.

     I've been attracted to Orthodoxy for a long time, but rarely attended a service.  The opportunity has rarely arisen.  To attend therefore something that is so freighted with expectation is to risk disappointment.  I needn't have worried, the experience exceeded expectation.  I need to return.

Walsingham II The Church of St Mary

     Walsingham's parish church stands a little aloof from the village it serves.  From the road the tower is perfect, but seen in conjunction with the body of the church it is too small. Still, it is a beautiful building, possessing both a south porch and a rarer west porch.  The window tracery is a bit mannered, the little arches being straight and not curved. To step into the church into its great white, pristine space is to step not back into the ancient past but something more recent, for in July 1961 the church was gutted by fire.  By all accounts the pre-fire church possessed a remarkable atmosphere.
     St Mary's was rebuilt by Laurence King who was then favoured by the sort of Anglo-Catholics who in the past would have patronised Martin Travers and the Society of Ss Peter and Paul. There is plenty of work by King at the Anglican Shrine. His work slips between Modernism and the Gothic Revival and the Back-to-Baroque of Martin Travers depending on context. Often all three get jumbled up together.  He has too that Travers trick of rubbing ochre on to statues to prematurely age them.  It can be seen on the statue of St Catherine of Alexandria below, where it also adds a third dimension to what is essentially a graphic image. I suppose the rebuilt St Mary's is one of his jumbles. The church was rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire, and then furnished with Gothic Revival furniture from elsewhere and new furnishings of King's design hovering around between Gothic and Baroque with the odd bit of Sixties Psychedelia mixed in.

     The interior, sparkling white, and almost embodies what Hewlett Johnson, 'The Red Dean', wrote:

'....with great cool spaces, with whitened walls, with windows through which one could see the trees and fields and clouds, enlivened here and there with a splash of colour, or a patch of heraldry....an altar rich in hangings set on riddels, broad and majestic in its form, but severe in its splendid restraint....Flowers should stand in glass vases upon the altar or in great bowls on the floor beside it; or on a low stand by the chancel steps.  And there should be flowers in the porch to welcome me....The few lamps, ceremonial or otherwise, should be largely conceived and hung by great cords from the roof....The pulpit should rise all alone unjostled by any seats, and the font in splendid isolation should face the altar from the west, with its own rich cover nobly hung by a great chain or cord from the roof. Nor should it lack homely or intimate touches.  Round the empty aisle there should be chapels or corners for special purposes, and the children should not be forgotten.  But the main impression should be that of space, broken only by a few significant and exquisitely beautiful things; and every detail of the church, from the latch on the door to the buffet beneath my feet, should bespeak a car and a thought worthy of God's House.  Such a church, with its impalpable air of freshness and vitality would recall us time and again to meditation and refreshment.'

     Almost but not quite. There is a coldness here, which I think is partly down to the mechanical carving of the rebuilt piers and arches, the institutional flooring and the strange colours things, like the roof, are painted.  Was it really necessary to repaint the hanging rood (by Comper) and the Lady Chapel reredos (by Bodley)? To denude them, thereby? The detailing of the west lobby is really excellent, the organ case above is not. The most splendid thing in the church is the great seven sacraments font, which escaped the fire without serious damage. Shame that King didn't replace all of the font cover that was destroyed in the fire.

Walsingham I

     Walsingham is one of the major pilgrimage sites in Britain, and since my late teens the place has a held a deep attraction to me-  a place of refreshment, a place of incredible serenity, that is also in quite my favourite part of the world: North Norfolk.  In the Middle Ages it outshone all other Marian shrines in England such as Ipswich, Willesden or Egmanton, vying with, and eventually outpacing, the great shrine of Thomas a Beckett at Canterbury in popularity.  Pilgrims travelled from across northern Europe to visit.  Suppressed at the Reformation, the shrine was revived between the Wars, on a different site, by the then spikily anglo-catholic parish priest, Fr Hope Patten.  The church commissioned by Hope Pattern from Milner & Craze, 1931-7, looks like it has dropped in from suburban London and has decided to stay.  At least it has a pantiled roof.
     Regardless of the attractions of the shrine, Walsingham is a beautiful, if somewhat faded, village - the affluence of the North Norfolk coast has yet to trickle south.  Village, however, is not quite an accurate description, for the High St, in particular, has a bit of an urban feel. The Shell County Guide to Norfolk is happy to call it a small town.  There are old buildings and several lovely Victorian shop fronts, which once housed the butcher and the baker but are now crammed with any amount of saint-sulpicerie.  There are also the remains of the Priory, which sheltered the original shrine, and now part of the grounds of a small country house, and the friary - again part now of a house. The religious live dominates: retired clergy slowly wending their way home with the shopping and nuns cautious behind the wheel of an automobile as they navigate the narrow streets. Unfortunately 'The Martlet', which was a fantastic stationers and book-bindery, has closed earlier this year; however there are a couple of good antique shops and an excellent farm shop.

     One thing to look out in the following photographs for are the black-glazed pantiles.  A speciality, I think, of East Anglia, if not Norfolk only.  I can't think of anywhere else.
     And then, quite unexpectedly and quite deliciously on the very edge of the village, and formed out of the former railway station, is a Russian Orthodox church.

     Anyway, on Saturday, with all my contradictions and stupidities, I went on pilgrimage.  The weather was perfect, and it was in its way quite a profound experience.  Here are some of the images I took.