Begin Again

Introduction

On the first page of a notebook filled with carefully pasted press cuttings, Ursula Orange has inscribed, in touchingly school girlish handwriting: Begin Again, Published February 13th 1936. Later she adds: American Publication Aug 7th 1936, and then a pencilled note: Total sales 1221.

She was 26, a young married woman, and this was her first novel. There are plentiful reviews from major publications in Britain, Australia and America. Begin Again by Ursula Orange is included in the Washington Herald’s Bestsellers’ list for August 1936, where it comes higher than Whither France? by Leon Trotsky. The Daily Telegraph praises her insight into the strange ways of the New Young, their loves, their standards, their shibboleths, and their manners … An unusually good first novel, in a decade of good first novels.

To be greeted as the voice of the new generation must have been thrilling for a young writer, and a year later her second novel was published. To Sea in a Sieve opens with the heroine Sandra being sent down from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, the college which Ursula herself had so recently left. Rebellious and in pursuit of freedom, Sandra rejects convention, marries an ‘advanced’ and penniless lover, and the novel lightheartedly recounts the consequences of her contrariness.

But despite her light tone, Ursula Orange takes on serious themes in all her work. She explores the conflicts between generations, between classes, between men and women. Her characters embrace new and modern attitudes to morality, sex and marriage, and take adultery and divorce with surprising frivolity. She understands young women’s yearning for independence, their need to express themselves and to escape the limitations of domesticity – though she often mocks the results.

In 1938 she had her first child, Gillian, and by 1941 when her third and most successful novel, Tom Tiddler’s Ground, was published, the chaos of war had overshadowed the brittle ‘modern’ world of her generation. With her husband now away in the army, Ursula and her small daughter left London to take refuge in the country, where she could observe firsthand the impact of evacuation on a small English village (just as her heroine Caroline does in the novel).

Tom Tiddler’s Ground is set in 1939-40, the months later known as the phoney war. The evacuation of London is under way, but the horrors of the Blitz have not yet begun. The clash between rustic villagers and London evacuees, the misunderstandings between upper and lower classes, differing approaches to love and children, the strains of war and separation on relationships and marriage: all these indirect effects of war provide great material for the novel. The Sunday Times describes it as taking a delectably unusual course of its own, and for all the gas-masks hiding in the background, [it] is the gayest of comedies. It’s a delightful read to this day, and includes an astonishing number of elements, ingeniously interwoven – bigamy, adultery, seduction, fraud, theft, embezzlement, the agonies of a childless marriage and the guilt of a frivolously undertaken love affair.

The book reveals a real talent for dialogue and structure. As Caroline arrives for the first time at her new home in a Kentish village, the scene, the plots and sub-plots, the major characters and the themes are all established on a single page, almost entirely in dialogue.

Red car, said Marguerite ecstatically as Lavinia’s Hulton sports model, with Alfred in the driving seat, drew up alongside.

Excuse me, said Caroline, leaning out, but can you tell me where a house called The Larches is?

The Larches! Alfred was out of his seat in a minute, and advancing with outstretched hand: Have I the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Cameron?

Good God! said Caroline, taken aback. So you’re – are you Constance’s husband by any chance, or what? (It might be. About forty. Not bad-looking, I will say that for Constance. That slick, smart, take-me-for-an-ex-public-schoolboy type. Eyes a bit close together.)

Yes, I’m Captain Smith. (Caroline found her hand firmly taken and shaken.) And Constance and I are very very pleased to welcome you to Chesterford.

But that isn’t Constance, said Caroline, feebly indicating Lavinia. Alfred gave an easy laugh.

Oh no! Constance is home waiting for you. (Or I hope she is and not hanging round after that slum-mother and her brat, curse them.) This is Miss Lavinia Conway, he said, taking her in a proprietary way by the elbow to help her out of the car.

How do you do? said Caroline, recovering herself. (.... Who is this girl? Good God even I didn’t put it on quite so thick at her age. Can’t be Alfred’s little bit, surely?)

Part of the entertainment throughout the novel is the contrast between the perfect politeness of everything expressed aloud, and the bracketed thoughts that are left unsaid. Ursula Orange uses the device not to convey complex interior monologue, in the way of Virginia Woolf or Joyce, but as a comic, sometimes cynical, commentary on her characters’ evasions and self-deception.

The notices and sales for Tom Tiddler’s Ground were good, but Ursula must have been disconcerted to receive a personal letter from her new publisher, Michael Joseph himself. He had been away at the wars, he explains, and has been reading the novel in hospital. He writes that he was immensely entertained and predicts that it is only a question of time – and the always necessary slice of good luck – before you become a really big seller … But then he adds: The only criticism that I venture to offer is that Caroline’s unorthodox behaviour … may have prevented the book from having a bigger sale. I think it is still true, even in these days, that the public likes its heroines pure.

Whether influenced by Michael Joseph’s strictures or no, in her next novel, Have Your Cake, the clashes of moral values, of hidden motives, of snobbery and class distinction, are not taken so lightly. Published in August 1942, it features an ex-Communist writer who (in the words of The Times) is one of those devastating people who go through life pursuing laudable ends but breaking hearts and ruining lives at almost every turn. But lives and hearts are not ultimately broken: the notices are good; sales figures top 2500 – evidently the Boots Family Public, and her publisher, were pleased.

By 1944 when Company In the Evening was published, Ursula Orange’s crisp dialogue-driven style has altered. Told in the first person, with greater awareness and self-analysis, it is the story of Vicky, a divorcee whose marriage had been abandoned almost carelessly (and somehow without her ex-husband discovering that she’s having their child). Vicky finds herself coping single handedly in a household of disparate and incompatible characters thrown together by war. Less engaging than Ursula Orange’s earlier heroines, Vicky seems particularly hard on her very young and widowed sister-in-law, who is just so hopelessly not my sort of person, in other words what her mother would have called common.

The novel is full of the taken-for-granted snobbery of the era – hard for the modern reader to stomach. In fact Vicky raises the issue, though somewhat equivocally, herself.

"When I was about 19 and suffering from a terrific anti-snob complex (one had to make some protest against the extraordinary smugness and arrogance of the wealthy retired inhabitants … ) I practically forbade Mother to use the word ‘common’ … "Don’t you see, Mother, it isn’t a question of phraseology, it’s your whole attitude I object to."

But just as one starts to feel sympathetic, she adds:

Goodness, what mothers of semi-intellectual daughters of nineteen have to put up with!

As the novel progresses, Vicky’s faults are acknowledged, her mistakes rectified, her marriage repaired. She returns contentedly to ordinary married life in the middle of the worst war ever known to history.

Perhaps this context is the point. The New York Times praises Ursula for her admirably stiff upper lip: Ursula Orange, calmly ignoring as negligible all that Hitler has done, … has written a novel that is a wet towel slapped nonchalantly across the face of the aggressor. Her light and entertaining novels were indeed helping the nation to carry on.

At last in 1945 war came to an end. English life returned to a difficult peace of deprivation and scarcity. Tim Tindall, Ursula’s husband, had been almost entirely absent for 5 years, a total stranger to their young daughter. He had had – in that odd English phrase – a ‘good war’, seeing action in North Africa, Salerno and France. After his return, the family opted for country life; Tim picked up the reins of the family’s publishing firm, commuting daily to London and an independent existence, while Ursula passed her time in Sussex with Gillian and her new baby son. That year she published one more novel, Portrait of Adrian, which escapes to an earlier period and the happier existence of young girls sharing a flat together in London.

Ursula’s horizons seem gradually to narrow. She had been the smart, modern voice of a young and careless generation that no longer existed, and she did not find a new place in the post-war world. Severe depression set in, leading to suicide attempts and hospital treatments. Her literary life had virtually come to an end. She undertook two projects but these were never realized, perhaps because they were well before their time: an illustrated anthology of poetry for teenagers, a category as yet unnamed; and a play about Shelley’s as yet unheralded wives.

In Footprints in Paris, (2009) their daughter, the writer Gillian Tindall, describes her mother’s decline as she becomes someone who has failed at the enterprise of living…. London now began to figure on her mental map as the place she might find again her true self. But the hope of finding a fresh life when the family moved to a new house in Hampstead, proved illusory. Six days later, having by the move severed further the ties that had held her to life … she made another suicide attempt which, this time, was fatal. She was not found for two days.

But we cannot let this sad ending define the whole of Ursula Orange. It should not detract from our enjoyment of her work, which at its entertaining best, gives us a picture of a sparkling generation, of intelligent and audacious women surviving against the odds, with wit as well as stoicism, with courage in the face of deprivation and loss.

Stacy Marking

Prologue

You are listening, aren’t you, mummy? said Leslie Fisher anxiously.

Yes, dear, of course.

This was true. Mrs. Fisher always listened to what her only daughter had to say. It was only because it was ten o’clock on a Saturday morning with the breakfast not yet cleared away that a lurking consciousness of Cook to be interviewed and the grocer to be phoned showed occasionally through her interest.

It’s not, continued Leslie, patiently, that it’s not a very nice life here. But you see I can’t help feeling that I’m not getting anywhere.

Mrs. Fisher did not agree or disagree. To her daughter’s annoyance she simply reverted to the dull subject of money.

I’m sure you would be sorry if you went and spent Grandfather’s hundred pounds straight off. Now I’m quite willing to let you have a year in London at an art-school if you think that’s what you’d really like.

"I know that’s what I need now, corrected Leslie, if I’m ever to do anything with my painting."

I told you Miss Wilkinson was giving some local classes here this summer, didn’t I, Leslie? I thought you might be interested.

Leslie sighed. She had been afraid her mother had not understood.

That wouldn’t be the slightest use, she said quickly, Miss Wilkinson’s sort of classes would never lead on to anything. Besides, I’m not interested in landscape at the moment. I want to study fashion drawing and poster work.

She paused expectantly, but her mother did not ask her to what this would lead. She merely reiterated:

I really wouldn’t advise you to dash up to London and spend Grandfather’s hundred pounds on a studio straight away. Now why not try living with Aunt Sybil? You’d be very comfortable there—

Comfortable! Leslie shuddered at the epithet. She had lived in comfort at home for nearly five years; she believed now that it was not a thing she valued in the least. She stared gloomily at the breakfast table, at the June sunlight dancing on the well-polished silver kettle and tea-pot, through the window at the border, now a blaze of tulips and lupins, much admired by her mother’s visitors; and reflected with a touch of regret that she did not care at all for silver tea-pots and tulips, a comfortable house, a large garden and all the placid leisurely routine of life in her Berkshire home. No. It was the precarious, the dangerous, the colourful that would really appeal to her. She would like to live in an attic with an enormous skylight and canvases stacked all round the walls; she would like to cook sausages and kippers over a gas-ring and share them with her artist friends. She would like to stay up all night and sleep all day. She would like to have a frying pan and a loaf of bread and an alarm clock of her own. She would like to wear trousers and a bright yellow sweater and paint her front door a vivid green. She would like to cut off her hair and sleep on a divan and live her own life.

She tried very hard to be patient with her mother.

I think if I’m to get on, she said, it’s rather important to have the right atmosphere.

Yes? Of course, dear, I only want you to be happy. I’m quite willing to give you a year in town.

Leslie sighed. She did not in the least want her mother only to want her to be happy; she did not want to be given a year in town on her mother’s money. She wanted it to be acknowledged that there might (indeed almost certainly would) be a future for her in the world of art. She wanted to make a gesture, to believe in herself, to sink her small capital and gamble on her own ability: and of course to find out that she had been right. From her mother she wanted nothing but comprehension. Not, no, most certainly not, indulgence.

I wish I could make you understand, mummy.

I’m afraid I don’t quite see what it is I’m to understand, Leslie.

"Well, you see, mummy, it isn’t that I’m exactly asking you for anything. I really want just to tell you that I’ve decided to spend Grandfather’s money on just this thing."

There was a moment’s silence and Leslie hoped, a little anxiously, that her mother was not offended.

Mrs. Fisher was not. The slight frown on her forehead was due to the strain of financial calculations. She said slowly:

But, Leslie dear, I don’t see how your food can possibly cost you less than—

At this point a diversion was created by Alice, the maid, who came in and said: Please, madam, Robinson says did you know the new chicken-house has arrived and shall he put it up in the lower field with the others?

Tell him I’ll come and see him about it in ten minutes, said Mrs. Fisher. "Leslie, I was just going to say—there is Robinson crossing the lawn. Is that one of the sides, I wonder? Good gracious, it doesn’t look to me at all like the one I ordered from the catalogue. I wanted the one with the little windows. Perhaps he’d better not unpack any more until I’ve made sure. . . ." Mrs. Fisher hurried out of the room.

And that, thought Leslie disgustedly, is the event of the day. The arrival of a new chicken-house!

When her mother returned, reassured (it was only the back wall that was windowless), Leslie had found material for a new argument against living at home.

You see, mummy, I haven’t really any part in this sort of life, have I? I mean new chicken-houses and all that sort of thing are very nice, but—well, it isn’t even as if the chickens were mine, is it?

But I thought you didn’t like chickens, Leslie?

I don’t, said Leslie instantly. I’m just explaining that chickens and gardens aren’t the sort of thing I care about.

No, dear, I know you don’t. It’s really very seldom I ask you to feed them, isn’t it?

No, no, I know. Leslie paused. An exasperating sense of being at cross-purposes assailed her. They seemed to be agreeing; and this, she felt sure, must be wrong. It’s not only that I’m not interested in the sort of things people do here, she continued, it’s the way they talk too.

Talk? said her mother, surprised.

Well, you see, they don’t talk really, do they? explained Leslie. The sort of people who live down here never seem to me to talk about anything. Not even the girls my own age. Sylvia Perry and I were discussing it the other day. We were listening to the people at a tennis-party, and we agreed afterwards that nobody said anything in the least remarkable the whole afternoon. But you don’t like Sylvia, do you?

Sylvia was an old school-friend of Leslie’s, and the Perry family lived not far from Leslie’s home.

I think she’s so rude to her mother. And Mrs. Perry is such a nice woman—oh, that reminds me. . . .

What? said Leslie, instantly curious.

Nothing that would interest you, dear, replied her mother with a twinkle of amusement, only about some cuttings Mrs. Perry promised me.

Leslie’s curiosity died an immediate death.

Sylvia is rather like me, she said, in feeling that, living in the country as we do, we’re getting more and more out of touch with things.

I hope you won’t begin to show it quite so plainly as she does, said Mrs. Fisher, remembering a recent tea-party at which Sylvia had been peculiarly ungracious. Mrs. Clarke was horrified at the way Sylvia talked about St. Ethelburga’s. You know I asked Mrs. Perry and Sylvia to meet her because I thought she’d be interested. She’s sending her little girl there next term. But the things Sylvia said about her old school! And the way she snapped up poor Mrs. Perry when she tried to smooth things over by telling Mrs. Clarke that Sylvia was really very happy there! I don’t suppose Sylvia really meant it all, but it was very tactless.

Mrs. Fisher knew that she was an indulgent mother, but she flattered herself that she would never permit Leslie to behave as Sylvia sometimes did.

Oh, tactless, said Leslie airily. When Sylvia’s interested in a thing I don’t suppose she bothers about being tactful. Leslie, who was herself both by training and by temperament a polite person, had recently begun to find Sylvia’s ruthlessness rather admirable.

Evidently not, said Mrs. Fisher, with some asperity. (It had been difficult to bring the tea-party to an amiable close.)

That’s just it, mummy, pursued Leslie, that’s what I mean about people never talking here. If anybody ever gets off safe topics like—like chicken-houses—well, then people don’t understand and get annoyed. It isn’t like that with people who live in London. I mean people like Jane and Florence, said Leslie, mentioning two more of her old school-friends. Jane and Florence had been up at Oxford. Now they were sharing a flat in Maida Vale and went off cheerfully to their typewriters every morning.

Mrs. Fisher resented Leslie’s choice of a chicken-house as symbolic of the neighbourhood’s conversational resources. She said, What do Jane and Florence talk about, then, that’s so interesting?

Oh—just everything, said Leslie grandly. Just— She searched for something more explicit but found it eluded her. Everything, she concluded.

She knew, not only from Jane and Florence’s conversation (it had been some time since she had had a really good talk with them) but also from the pages of modern novels exactly the way in which young people living their own lives in London talk together—an attractive mixture of an extreme intensity and a quite remarkable casualness. Henri says Marcovitch’s new poems are the finest things he’s ever read—will certainly found a school of their own. By the way—hand me the marmalade—Elissa is living with Henri now. He says he needs her for his work at present. Clearly the sort of person who talked like this lived a much freer, a much wider, a much better life than the sort of person who merely said, Good morning, mummy. Did you sleep well? When Alice brought my tea this morning she said a tree was blown down in the orchard last night.

It was impossible to put into words this feeling that somewhere, waiting for her, almost expectant of her, was a life into which she would plunge as into her natural element. Leaving home would be like jumping into the river and swimming with the stream instead of lingering stupidly on the bank. Leaving home would be like stepping into a gaily painted bus which would rattle briskly off to some destination infinitely alluring if not precisely specified.

I feel, said Leslie inadequately, "as though Jane and Florence were getting somewhere. And I’m not."

Oh, yes, tell me about Florence, said Mrs. Fisher. She felt a motherly affection for this old school-friend of Leslie’s. Although she had not seen her for some years she had followed her career, as reported by Leslie, with interest. You say she’s getting on? Does she like her job any better then?

Leslie was a little disconcerted by her mother’s passion for the concrete.

I’m not sure that she’s exactly ‘getting on’ at her job. As a matter of fact, I think she’s probably rather wasted there. But she has an interesting sort of life, you know. I believe she’s nearly finished her novel. She’s always wanted to write. Just as I’ve always wanted to work at art, said Leslie, neatly bringing the conversation round to herself again.

Mrs. Fisher looked a little surprised, and Leslie, oversensitive about herself, fancied that her mother was silently holding the word always up to ridicule. She rushed into speech again.

Yes, I know I said when I left school that I wanted to stay at home. But that was years ago. Besides, what I really meant was that I thought it was landscape I was interested in. I couldn’t tell, could I? But now I find it isn’t. Leslie shook her head, remembering regretfully the few unfinished canvases in the attic, the odd water-colours pinned experimentally on the walls. And now I believe I should do well in something quite different. I’ve been finding out about poster work and fashion drawing and magazine illustration. Have you ever noticed how bad most illustrations are, mummy? I know I could do better than that. There’s a course I could take—a place near Baker Street—I believe I could make something of it. I really believe that’s what my line is. Leslie gazed at her mother enthusiastically.

Well, dear, if that’s what you’ve set your heart on—certainly . . .

It was a pity that mummy’s kindness was so infinitely more damping than any opposition could be. Set your heart on! The phrase had all the associations of an indulged childhood, of toys clamoured for, of treats demanded and given. Leslie, who liked to think of herself, artistically speaking, as an apostle responding to a call that could not be ignored, replied, I can’t help feeling that if I don’t do something about it now I shall never do anything with my art at all.

Mrs. Fisher, apparently unmoved by this prospect of ultimate unfulfilment, merely gazed thoughtfully at her daughter’s flushed face. Leslie, nervously afraid that she was going to talk about money again, rushed on, "And you see the whole point is that if I’m really to get on I know I must have the right sort of life. It wouldn’t be the least good living with Aunt Sybil. It really wouldn’t. You do understand, don’t you, mummy?"

That you don’t want to live with Aunt Sybil?

It’s not exactly not wanting. It’s just that it would be no good.

Well, where would you like to live then, dear?

That’s just it. I want to find out everything like that for myself. I don’t want you to bother about it at all. Leslie paused, drawing solid comfort from the thought of Grandfather’s hundred pounds. I want to experiment on my own.

Mrs. Fisher realized that her daughter was secretly yearning not for sympathy, not for kindness, but for opposition; for opposition, so that she could have an excuse for breaking away, flaunting her independence and Grandfather’s hundred pounds; for opposition, to snap the ties which had bound their lives together so happily and which now were beginning to fret the child. Perhaps it was only natural—but it was hard to accept the implication suggested, probably unconsciously, by Leslie’s absurd insistence on her hundred pounds—that her obligations to her mother rested only on a financial basis.

"I want this to be absolutely my affair," reiterated Leslie.

Very well, dear, said Mrs. Fisher resignedly, thinking that for the life of her she would not be able to prevent herself from taking a passionate interest in all the details of her only child’s existence.

Of course when I’m living in town, said Leslie, a stray pang of compunction suddenly assailing her, I’ll see you often—come down here—and you must come up and see me. You mustn’t be lonely. . . .

Leslie had grown up accepting her mother’s widowhood almost as a matter of course. It was only recently, since she had begun to think about leaving home, that she had found cause to regret that there were only the two of them in the family. It had always seemed to her quite natural that all her mother’s affection and a great part of her interests should be centred in herself. Now it occurred to her for the first time that this was somehow wrong.

Fortunately Mrs. Fisher was too practical-minded to sentimentalize over the prospect of losing Leslie.

Oh, you needn’t worry about that, dear. I know I can’t expect to have you always with me. I have all my interests here, you know—the garden and my friends. (Mrs. Fisher looked out of the window as she spoke, noticing with automatic concern that the peonies in the bed by the laburnums seemed in need of water, and that Robinson was just carrying down the perches and nesting-boxes of the despised chicken-house.) "But I should like to feel that—well, that you weren’t short of money and were looking after yourself properly." (It really was too much to ask of her that she should immediately stifle all maternal solicitude.)

You really haven’t any need to worry about all that, said Leslie earnestly. As a matter of fact, I want you to have a talk with Jane and Florence when they come down next Saturday. You know that’s really why I wanted to ask all my London friends to a party here. I want you to meet them. I want you to talk to them, so that you can see for yourself that they’re different from the girls who just do nothing down here. They—they seem to me to be making something out of their lives. They—they make me feel purposeless. Whenever I—

How many exactly are coming, Leslie?

Well. There’s Jane and Florence. You know Florence.

Yes, said Mrs. Fisher, remembering a long-legged school-girl with untidy hair, awkward movements and a tendency to become suddenly intense. A nice child—I liked her, she added kindly.

I hope you’ll like Jane too. They live together, you know. Jane always seems to me to be typically modern. In the best sense, I mean, added Leslie hastily, not like that silly film last night.

No, no, of course not, said Mrs. Fisher reassuringly, recalling some of the more startling incidents in the drama in question.

And then Henry, continued Leslie, he’s Jane’s fiancé, you know. They were up at Oxford together. That’s where they met.

I see, said Mrs. Fisher, thinking that the university must have changed considerably since her husband was at Christ Church. His reminiscences of Oxford, she remembered, had always been exclusively male.

And Sylvia is motoring over—of course she’s not really a London friend, but she’s a friend of Jane and Florence’s, and she’ll fit in all right because she’s not at all the sort of girl who just stays at home really—is she? Although she doesn’t actually do anything else.

"No, I always think she’d be much happier away from home," agreed Mrs. Fisher, sympathetically recalling poor Mrs. Perry’s face at the tea-party.

And then there’s Claud, continued Leslie. Sylvia is bringing him over. He’s a friend of hers. I’ve only met him once. He’s very nice.

I wonder if that’s the young man Mrs. Perry was mentioning the other day, said Mrs. Fisher interestedly. She said he was such a nice boy and she’d never known Sylvia faithful to any one else.

Leslie was faintly shocked at this glimpse of maternal interest.

I don’t believe there’s the slightest idea of an engagement between them, she said, and I think it’s rather hard on Sylvia if her mother goes about talking like that. As a matter of fact, Sylvia was saying to me the other day that she didn’t think she’d ever want to marry. She doesn’t really believe in it.

Oh, I see, said Mrs. Fisher, instantly deciding that Sylvia’s love-affair must have suffered some slight setback. Probably this also accounted for her ill humour the other day.

And then to make up the numbers, concluded Leslie, rather apologetically, I’ve asked Bert and Bill Anderson. They’re rather dull, and I’m afraid they won’t mix very well. But I knew they were both going to be home this week-end and it seemed convenient one way and another.

A very nice party, dear, said Mrs. Fisher. How many do you think will stay to supper?

You know, said Leslie eagerly, "I’m sure you’ll notice it as soon as you meet Jane and Florence. The difference, I mean. It’s not only the way they