A Novel Way Of Making A Living!

Barbara Buncle is a frumpy, middle-aged spinster who knows nothing of life outside the village of Silverstream. She lives quietly in the cottage where she was once once a small fat child in a basketwork pram, and her old nurse Dorcas is now cook, maid and parlour maid. But Miss Buncle has a secret which turns village life upside down – for she has written a book, peopled by her fellow residents, and they are not at all happy with her portrayal!

Miss Buncle’s Book, by DE Stevenson, is a warm, light-hearted satire on village life between the wars, with its round of tea parties, church services and other events, and its strict social hierarchy. Everyone knows their place, from the delivery boy to Mrs Featherstone Hogg, who is very conscious of her status in the communty, and makes sure the community is equally aware of her position and accords her the deference she thinks she deserves. The one thing that (mostly) unites them is a desire to know who wrote the book – and to seek restitution from the author for besmirching their good names!

I’m not going to try and describe the plot – there are too many characters (who are all exceedingly well drawn) and too many threads to follow, so you’ll just have to read it for yourself. However, I will say that much of the humour comes from the villagers’ efforts to track down the unknown author. The chief suspect is the doctor’s wife, and Barbara escapes exposure. It’s a kind of comedy of errors, as well as a comedy of manners.

The nature of Barbara’s novel – denounced by Mrs Featherstone Hogg as ‘the wickedest book that has ever been written’ – is never explained in great detail, but Mr Abbott (the publisher) thinks the book was written by ‘a very clever man writing with his tongue in his cheek, or else a very simple person writing in all good faith’. His nephew Sam believes it is penned by ‘a genius or imbelicile’. And we are told:

The first part of Chronicles of an English Village was a humdrum sort of affair – it was indeed a chronicle of life in an English Village. It might have been dull if the people had not been so well drawn, or if the writing had not been of that amazing simplicity which kept one wondering whether it was intended to be satirical or not. The second part was a sort of fantasy: a golden boy walked through the village playing on a reeed pipe, and his music roused the villagers to strang doings. It was queer, it was unusual, and it was provocative and, strangely enough, it was also extremely funny. Mr Abbott was aware, from personal experience, that you could not lay it down until the end.

And when Mr Abbott meets Miss Buncle he thinks she’s an unlikely sort of author (she’s certainly an unlikely sort of heroine).

She was obviously a simple sort of person – shabbily dressed in a coat and skirt of blue flannel. Her hair was dreadful, her face was pale and rather thin, with a pointed chin and a nondescript nose, but on the other hand her eyes were good – dark blue with long lashes – and they twinkled a little when she laughed. Her mouth was good too, and her teeth – if they were real – magnificent.

Meeting Miss Buncle in the street, Mr Abbott (who was rather a connoissseur of feminine charms) would not have looked twice at her. A thin, dowdy woman of forty he would have said (erring on the unkind in the matter of the age), and passed on to pastures new. But here, in his sanctuary, with the knowledge that she had written an amusing novel, he looked at her with different eyes.

And he is equally taken aback by her honesty when she admits she wrote the book in a bid to make money. because her dividends are so ‘wretched’. Initially she thought of other ways to generate an income, like keeping hens (but she doesn’t like hens), or taking in paying guests (but she doesn’t want to draw business away from an existing guest house). It was Dorcas who suggested the book, says Miss Buncle, and she wrote about people she knew because that was all she knew,and as she wrote she saw people differently, and fictional Copperfield became muddled with real-life Silverstream.

The book, re-named Disturber of the Peace, is a huge success, but its effect on the people of Silverstream is as disruptive as the appearance of the golden boy in Barbara’s book. Life is turned upside down as people do and say strange things. At times life begins to imitate fiction and it becomes apparent that for some residents the plot lines in the book provide the key to their future happiness, while others finally find their voice and stand up for themselves.

And the the fall-out following publication is as transformative for Barbara herself– like Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, this is a Cinderella story, with the requisite happy ending (I do love a happy ending). So I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that neither Miss Buncle nor her life will never be the same again.

*First published in 1934, Miss Buncle’s Book has been reissued by Persephone and I think it’s charming – I really enjoyed reading it. I’m linking this to the Persephone Readathon being run by Jessie at Dwell in Possibility. And this is another unread book to be ticked off the list!

Vanessa Bell’s ‘Flowers Lit by Rays from a Table Lamp’ is shown on the endpapers. It was created for Allan Walton Textiles in 1934.