Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of those authors who seems to forever hover on the periphery of my reading. I know a number of people who have read her and like her work. I even own two books by her, Lolly Willowes and a Virago edition of The True Heart. So I was excited to see her name turn up in the table of contents of The Persephone Book of Short Stories. Her turn finally arrived this weekend with "A View of Exmoor" published in The New Yorker in 1948.
So, after much expectation and anticipation I'm feeling a little ambivalent towards the story I just read. Maybe I read too fast and missed something? It's a simple story and I am just not sure what I should be taking away from it after turning that last page. It concerns a pair of boots. Inexplicable boots that no one was ever able to account for. Sound strange? Let me go back to the beginning.
It's 1936 and the Finch family are traveling from Bath, "where Mr. Finch was taking the waters" to the wedding of their niece Arminella in Devonshire at a time when weddings could be "garish". And the Finches are doing their best to prove that fact true.
" . . . Mrs. Finch in green moiré, Cordelia and Clara in their bridesmaids' dresses copied from the Gainsborough portrait of an earlier Arminella Blount in the Character of Flora, Mr. Finch in, as his wife said, his black-and-grey. Arden Finch in an Eton suit would have looked like any normal twelve-year-old boy in an Eton suit if measles had not left him preternaturally thin, pale, and owl-eyed."
What a group they must have appeared. On their return journey the car was increased by Arminella's piping bullfinch and a music box (to continue its education). All decked out as they were, they created such a sight that Mr. Finch decided to take a side road home. Unfortunately it was a way home that was unfamiliar to him and they soon ended up lost.
Lost they may have been, they nevertheless discovered a beautiful view. One too lovely to pass up, so they stopped, spread out a picnic lunch and complete with bullfinch in tow they sat and ate and enjoyed the view. And this is where the boots come in. The view reminds Mrs. Finch of her Aunt Harriet's inexplicable boots. They were in an ordinary cab open to the hot weather and seemed to have sat there quite a long time.
So here's the story surrounding the strange pair of boots. Mrs. Finch's aunt said a couple, a man wearing boots on his feet (so the extra pair must not be his?) and a hatless woman (women at the time never went about without a hat) were quarrelling. Weeping bitterly she snatched up the boots, ran for the cab (which by the way you would also never see in Exmoor where there are no open roads).
"She jumped into the cab, threw the boots onto the opposite seat, the driver whipped up his horse, and the cab went bumping and jolting away over the moor. As for the man, he walked off looking like murder. So what do you make of that?"
And the rest of the story attempts to answer just that question. Just what did happen to make the woman snatch the boots? And whose were they? And why didn't she have a hat. All interrupted by the bullfinch making an escape and the Finches trying to corral him back into his cage.
So what do you make of all that? It's all quite curious really. Not being familiar with Sylvia Townsend Warner, I am leaning towards the explanation that it's meant to be something of a farce and more comic than serious. Curious indeed. I liked it in a strange sort of way, but as I said I'm just not sure what to make of it all.
Next week: Diana Gardner's "The Woman Novelist". Six stories to go. I might try and read two a weekend in order to clear the slate for September and October when it will be time for ghost stories!