We all have our preferences and guilty pleasures. I once
categorized my fondness for the detective novels of British author
Patricia Wentworth as the latter, but I'm past that. I am tickled
by her thought, charmed by her syntax, and am an unmixed fan of
her observations on life. Her adequately crafted plots are well
toward the bottom of my list of reasons for reading and rereading
her novels annually.
What makes us love an author? Do we see something
of ourselves in them? My friend
Linda actually reads the Victorian novels of Mrs.
E.D.E.N. Southworth. A professor friend wrote his thesis
on Jack London, and annotated London's semi-autobiographical Martin
Eden. Weightier minds than mine return to Shakespeare.
Dickens repays a reread. I come back to Patricia Wentworth
mysteries for the pleasure of the author's company. She had me at
hello when I stumbled across her in a used bookstore, and paid
five whole dollars for a hardback compendium of three of her
novels. I saw bits of my own style of decision-making on the first
page: "Tea, or coffee? It was always a moot point whether
refreshment-room tea was nastier than refreshment-room coffee...
Miss Treherne decided she would have coffee. She liked it less
than tea, and would therefore not mind so much whether it was good
or bad. It would at any rate be scalding hot."
This is a minor observation, but of course, that's the stuff of
good writing. A minor observation that encapsulates a character,
if the reader's antenna is sensitive. In this case, Miss Treherne
has a disposition not to complain, and to make sensible
adjustments in the face of adversity, which is why (spoiler alert)
she is able to thwart, with help, a nefarious plot against her.
Help comes in the dowdy form of Wentworth's "elderly" detective,
Miss Maud Silver, who springs from the same culture, the same soil
(literally), as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. It looks like she
even predates Miss Marple by a few months, which would be a cherry
to top the sundae of my appreciation for Wentworth. Miss Silver
has a laundry list of characteristics that appear faithfully in
almost every novel in which she herself appears: her furniture -
Victorian, her dresses - invariably ugly, her hats - black, of
felt or straw, with trimmings described with care in every,
blessed, book. Her omnipresent knitting. I surely haven't said
anything yet that makes you love her, and Wentworth goes out of
her way to trot out the off-putting aspects of her detective,
including her propensity to quote Alfred Lord Tennyson at the drop
of any unprincipled hat.
Maybe that's what I love. Wentworth
has a kindly view of human nature that allows for bad sartorial
taste and outdated reading habits and yet... through the screen of
questionable decisions on style emerges a consistent pattern of
right thought and right behavior. Miss Silver is invariably
unselfish and invariably wise, and, when the plot requires it, she
has a connection with "Providence" that enables her to be exactly
where she needs to be to prevent murder and mayhem.
Modern readers may find this boring. What, is there no nuance to
her character? No chink in her Victorian armor? No human weakness?
No, I'm afraid not. Perhaps this is not realistic. It doesn't
bother me; I like the safe mooring of an infallible character in a
very fallible world. Call me childish.
My appreciation is very little dampened by the flaws in her work.
I find the weak and fainting female character from Central Casting
that Wentworth occasionally employs annoying. Always given a soft
name like Lila or Ina, this character cannot be expected to answer
a question, lift a finger, or move her pretty self out of harm's
way. She is seldom the hero, but her total inability to solve any
sort of problem is often the source of the plot. Wherever she
appears, I grind my teeth. In every instance, though, Wentworth
writes in a foil - a plucky get-it-done sort of girl with a robust
name like Marian or Ray - upon whom the solution depends, even as
the plot depended on her weak-kneed sister. (See The Ivory
Dagger or The Case is Closed).
Another critique is the formulaic pattern of a Wentworth novel.
She was, after all, writing when every mystery writer worth his
ink was trying out the limits of the form. They all had their
tricks. But Wentworth, while using a spice rack full of tricks,
seems to me to be more about the details that reveal the character
that saves the day. Plotting within the confines of the detective
novel provided her some fun, and then more opportunity to reveal
what she believed about life in a paragraph here, a paragraph
there, on page after page of sixty some-odd novels.
If my fondness for Patricia Wentworth were all about plotting or
characterization, these shortcomings would be deal-breakers. But
it isn't. I’ll cheerfully buy a ticket for whatever ride she takes
me on, for the pleasure of the author's company. It's not just
Miss Silver, much as she delights me, or her plucky Girl Fridays
or her beefy male heroes who always, always, end up married
happily to Friday; no, it's Wentworth's observations, quips and
descriptions that speed them along their eventful journeys through
life in greater Great Britain.
(Allow me to digress. This is a pet topic, and I'm rather letting
myself go. Another justifiable critique is the homogenous nature
of Wentworth's body of work. Everything I can think of is set in
Merrie England, with a cast containing no character of any sort of
color. The time is invariably the first half of the tumultuous
twentieth century. (Oh! Except some early works. Her first novel
is set in the French Revolution. Entitled A Marriage Under the
Terror, this prize-winning potboiler launched her career in
1887. Before 1923, actually, a few of her books are set in
far-away places with strange-sounding names, and are usually not
part of my annual reread.) But here's my point - the very
homogenous-ness of time, place, and people make the observations
on human character especially pointed. We aren’t distracted by
colorful native dress, whether Scandinavian or African, to occupy
our mind's eye; we won't be entertained by descriptions of
tropical beaches or Swiss Alps. No, we will be served a platter of
commentary on the ways of daily life in mid-century England, and
we will be entertained by the detail of the ordinary as it reveals
tiny insights into human character. The common culture of the
characters makes the make-up of their mind the focus, not their
quirky mannerisms. There will be a lot of rain and a great deal of
tea. But how the tea is made, served, and sipped tells us things
about the characters, the same things we would learn if they were
interacting with rice in China or beans in Mexico. [Excuse the
trite examples - I'm out of my area of expertise when it comes to
international foods.] It's not the tea, it's the detail, and
Wentworth follows that excellent authorial maxim of writing about
what she knows.)
Most of Wentworth's characters, like
Christie's, are imported straight from Central Casting, yes. But
her observations about them and handling of them have much to say
about the human condition, and are permeated with kindness.
Kindness, my favorite virtue, the winning attribute of God's that
draws humankind to Him, kindness. Wentworth people may be
stock characters, but she mixes them up in a kindly manner that
is, I think, unique to her. She has room in her writer's heart for
all sorts of opinions, all sorts of styles. One leading lady
eschews face powder and lipstick, the next embraces both. In one
book, an old family manse is an albatross around the family's
neck, in the next, it’s a heritage to be cherished. The same
happens with people. She'll write a feckless youth into a book -
the sort of young man who is destined to live his fictional life
as a bad guy - but, for instance, in The Fingerprint, he
is an unlikely hero. His love interest is an untruthful and
manipulative wench of seventeen who is believably turned toward
goodness by novel's end. This sort of girl is seldom allowed to
heal or grow in fiction. In modern works, she's a character who is
fine as she is - we'll allow some lying, some selfish behavior,
who's to judge? She faces no consequences in current fiction. And
in the fiction of Wentworth's day, the minx was too useful as a
generator of heartbreak and mayhem to waste precious page space
reforming her. But Wentworth does. She sees human weakness with a
gimlet eye, and moves heaven and good solid British earth to
transform and redeem it on the pages of her mysteries. The process
gives me hope that I too, am redeemable, even in my least
attractive moments.
Patricia Wentworth reforms that girl and many, many others. Some
characters, by merely meeting dowdy Miss Silver, have their
come-to-Jesus moment. I'm okay with that - Jesus had that effect
on people. A character's fate hangs in the balance in the moment
when they meet Miss Silver and decide whether or not to trust her.
This out-of-date lady detective is a human litmus test that
reveals the state of the character's heart. Wentworth lets some
walk out of her Victorian chambers to their doom, but they had a
choice.
I like the old-fashioned notion of excellent personal principles
leading to happiness and, in the case of a Wentworth mystery, True
Love. There's a lot of True Love in these books. It undoes their
effectiveness as mysteries, because, once the reader is familiar
with the author, they know that no True Love-er could've dunnit,
and that sadly depletes the number of suspects. So be it. I'm not
in it for the plotting, as I mentioned.
What then does a sedate British lady detective from eighty years
ago have to say to the world we find ourselves in? Some would say,
not much. The particulars are, after all, stunningly
different. What, hats and gloves and stockings are worn at
all times? What, 'tea' is a meal, and seems to take place, come
hell or high boiling water, at precisely four p.m.? What, all the
villagers can listen in on each other's telephone calls on the
party line? What, the 'estate' is 'entailed' and so the family’s
second son is penniless? Many particulars have changed, certainly,
but human personality has not, and underlying character is
Patricia Wentworth's specialty.
I won't apologize for being a fan. Below are three favorite
excerpts, beginning with one of fifty-odd descriptions of Miss
Silver, all equally tongue-in-cheek, yet kind:
...a small, dowdy-looking woman… curled fringe under a close
net, small neat features under a black hat with a bunch of
mignonette and pansies pinned on one side and two old-fashioned
hatpins keeping it in place, black cloth jacket with the
shoulder line and waist of a bygone day, laced shoes very neatly
blacked, thick grey stockings, and a fur tie which had probably
been at its best round about the time of King George V's
accession to the throne. Black gloved hands carried a small case
and a tidily rolled umbrella.
from Miss Silver Deals with Death
Miss Silver has her own reading habits:
She did not care for the book they had given her at the library
yesterday, and she thought she would change it. She would prefer
a novel in which the characters had at least heard of the ten
commandments and did not begin drinking at ten in the morning
after having kept it up for most of the night. Their behaviour
under this alcoholic stimulus she considered to be totally
lacking in interest.
from Through the Wall
And here, my favorite from among many commentaries on village
life:
The Melbury police, to whom the disappearance had been
reported, had sent over a constable to make inquiries, but
rumour had it that he had found it quite impossible to induce
Mrs. Maple to hear his questions. It being well known in the
village that she didn't hold with the police and could at any
time be as deaf as she chose, nobody was surprised. It was, in
fact, considered that Constable Denning had taken an unfair
advantage by submitting a set of questions in writing and Mrs.
Maple's defensive action in mislaying her glasses and declaring
that she couldn't read a word without them was warmly approved.
from Vanishing Point
Read that out loud and note the flow. Marvel, if you will, at just
how much information, opinion, and insight is worked into three
sentences. Little literary feats like this endear the author to
me. I trust her to take me on a journey through the labyrinth of
human personality, wrap it up in excellent syntax, and leave me
refreshed, amused, and even enlightened.
What makes us love an author? Do we see something
of ourselves in them? My friend
Linda actually reads the Victorian novels of Mrs.
E.D.E.N. Southworth. A professor friend wrote his thesis
on Jack London, and annotated London's semi-autobiographical Martin
Eden. Weightier minds than mine return to Shakespeare.
Dickens repays a reread. I come back to Patricia Wentworth
mysteries for the pleasure of the author's company. She had me at
hello when I stumbled across her in a used bookstore, and paid
five whole dollars for a hardback compendium of three of her
novels. I saw bits of my own style of decision-making on the first
page: "Tea, or coffee? It was always a moot point whether
refreshment-room tea was nastier than refreshment-room coffee...
Miss Treherne decided she would have coffee. She liked it less
than tea, and would therefore not mind so much whether it was good
or bad. It would at any rate be scalding hot."
Maybe that's what I love. Wentworth
has a kindly view of human nature that allows for bad sartorial
taste and outdated reading habits and yet... through the screen of
questionable decisions on style emerges a consistent pattern of
right thought and right behavior. Miss Silver is invariably
unselfish and invariably wise, and, when the plot requires it, she
has a connection with "Providence" that enables her to be exactly
where she needs to be to prevent murder and mayhem.
Most of Wentworth's characters, like
Christie's, are imported straight from Central Casting, yes. But
her observations about them and handling of them have much to say
about the human condition, and are permeated with kindness.
Kindness, my favorite virtue, the winning attribute of God's that
draws humankind to Him, kindness. Wentworth people may be
stock characters, but she mixes them up in a kindly manner that
is, I think, unique to her. She has room in her writer's heart for
all sorts of opinions, all sorts of styles. One leading lady
eschews face powder and lipstick, the next embraces both. In one
book, an old family manse is an albatross around the family's
neck, in the next, it’s a heritage to be cherished. The same
happens with people. She'll write a feckless youth into a book -
the sort of young man who is destined to live his fictional life
as a bad guy - but, for instance, in The Fingerprint, he
is an unlikely hero. His love interest is an untruthful and
manipulative wench of seventeen who is believably turned toward
goodness by novel's end. This sort of girl is seldom allowed to
heal or grow in fiction. In modern works, she's a character who is
fine as she is - we'll allow some lying, some selfish behavior,
who's to judge? She faces no consequences in current fiction. And
in the fiction of Wentworth's day, the minx was too useful as a
generator of heartbreak and mayhem to waste precious page space
reforming her. But Wentworth does. She sees human weakness with a
gimlet eye, and moves heaven and good solid British earth to
transform and redeem it on the pages of her mysteries. The process
gives me hope that I too, am redeemable, even in my least
attractive moments.