Reading Denis Mackail's Greenery Street is like watching one of those sentimental old B&W films with a spunky yet glamorous heroine (complete with cloche hat and mini fur wrap) and handsome leading man who is ever the elegant gentleman. Only don't worry, it might be sentimental but it's never over the top, much more just a lovely story that you simply want to escape into for a while. Greenery Street is a portrait of a marriage, circa 1925. What drew me into this story of one couple's first year of marriage (a.k.a the "magic year") was the fact that it's such a happy marriage, which is not to say there weren't a few bumps along the way.
"It would clearly be an exaggeration to say that every young married couple begins life in Greenery Street. It wouldn't even be true to say that every house in Greenery Street contains a young married couple. Yet both these statements have frequently been made; and so accurately do they describe the spirit of the place, that no one has ever troubled to contradict them. We certainly shouldn't dream of contradicting them ourselves."
Number 23, Greenery Street, where Ian and Felicity Foster make their home actually exists. The inspiration for the novel came from number 23, Walpole Street in Chelsea where Denis Mackail and his wife Diana began their own very happy married life, though today it is broken up into three separate flats. Greenery Street is the setting for the many trials, tribulations and contented moments that will be enacted by our enviable couple. Many newlyweds take up residence there, being filled with the perfect starter homes, but once the children begin arriving thought for larger accomodations requires the couples to move on to more spacious surroundings.
"The modern reader of course finds it extraordinary that a five-storey terrace house was considered impossibly small for a couple with two children: among the many details of historical interest in the book is the Fosters' unquestioning acceptance that the house has to be organised in a certain way, with servants, dressing-rooms and nurseries and dining rooms; and that it was not large enough for a family."
This is 1925 you have to remember, and life for a middle class couple from a "good background" was quite different from what we know it to be today. Greenery Street is such a fascinating look at a particular slice of life in so many ways changed yet in some ways still the same. Couples will always need to learn how to manage their money and economize, and then there is the general business of just getting along together and trying to figure each other out. Although the novel is a bit short on plot, what carries things along is the simple day-to-day living it details. In the case of Ian and Felicity this means "the thrill of finding and furnishing a house, the servants, the petty mutual deceptions, the quarrels and the kisses, of which last there is a generous provision." I know I often read books high on thrills or with some deep, dark mystery to solve, but sometimes just reading about the normal, average business of living can be as comforting as it is entertaining.
Denis Mackail came from a highly literary and artistic family. Interestingly Mackail was the younger brother of author Angela Thirkell, whose Barsetshire books I've dipped into and enjoyed. I was disappointed to find out that Angela was somewhat of a hellion to be around while growing up. She was jealous of her younger siblings and bossed them about no doubt creating all sorts of antagonisms, which was to cause Denis problems later in life. While she cowed her brother and sister, she herself thrived. He also grew up in the shadow of a successful father whose accomplishments academically were nearly impossible to follow. Too fragile healthwise to fight in WWI he had to be a "reluctant spectator". He did manage to make a living from his writing and had a prolific output, though again he was to live in the shadow of his sister's more successful career. Unfortunately of his many works only Greenery Street is still in print. Sadly, Denis Mackail's happy marriage ended abruptly with the early death of his wife, after which he never wrote again. He said of himself:
"I was just trying to tell stories, to get bits of life on to paper, and, I suppose, to express myself. Where does all that gaiety and kindness come from when in real life I am a cynic and frequently a wet blanket as well?"
Mackail sounds like such a fascinating man who lived a life filled with his share of sadnesses yet he wrote such an amusing, entertaining and utterly charming novel.
Greenery Street is a book best enjoyed (though not mandatory) while snuggled under a blanket with a mug of steaming hot cocoa preferably while raindrops gently tap against the windows--much like how I enjoy watching my favorite B&W movies! By the way there are two sequels, Tales from Greenery Street and Ian and Felicity, which I am of course going to try and get my hands on. And now for an entirely different look at marriage I'm about to start Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance for a little contrast. I've yet to meet a Persephone Books title that I didn't like and I have every expectation that the next will be as good as the last.