The Worst Witch? (Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Date:	19/07/01 (680 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Err, it's probably my favourite book

Disadvantages: but you may not like it, and I may not have done it justice

Imagine. You're single, you're not all that old, and you are from a country background of love and privilege. You've been brought up in a large country house, with your two brothers, and you've been mistress of this house, running it, looking after your father and brother, and following all the country pastimes, and family traditions that span centuries of use. You've also read the whole of the library, and so you've a knowledge, various and eclectic, even if you haven't been to school. You're happy, if a bit unthinking in your happiness. Then your father dies, and your other brother takes you to London to live with him, and his wife.

This is 1902, you see, so, although:

"There were some forward spirits who wondered why that Miss Willowes, who was quite well off, and not likely to marry, did not make a home for herself and take up something artistic or emancipated".

Exactly. And Lolly doesn't. She goes to London:

"Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of family property forgotten in the will, was ready to be disposed of as they should think best"

Becoming, gradually, a sort of general, fairly useful factotum, bowed down by the stifling kindness of her relatives, and the lack of anything 'real' to do. Her life is now regimented, sensible, and wholly ruled by other people's desires. Life is, basically, dull:

"After evening service came cold supper,.....it was rather a cheerful meal with extra trivialities such as sardines and celery. The leaden weights had already started upon their downward course"

Her brother and sister-in-law try, in vain to 'marry her off' to various stuttering clerics, whom she tolerates, but does not encourage, and, gradually, as her brother's law business fluctuates in prosperity, her income sinks in to the London household, and even her own slight demurrings at her fate, which take t
he form of long autumnal meandering walks, and purchases of fresh flowers, become slightly frowned on by those around her. She becomes indispensable, and is a 'Good Aunt'. Until one day, that is, when she takes one particular walk, and, partly fuelled by a series of coincidences, decides to go to live in "Great Mop", a small village in the Chilterns.


I'd love to give you quotes about the walk, the way in which she announces her decision to different members of her family, and the 'revelation' that leads to her decision to leave (she is now 47), but I'm trying not to quote too much. This, actually, is really difficult, as what I'd like to do is just give you the whole book, in quotations. The problem with "Lolly Willowes", you see, is that most of its humour, its social commentary, and its "just-rightness" comes from the way that Sylvia Townsend Warner writes it.

As a plot, it could seem dull, so far, and later it just seems weird. As a series of 'themes' it sounds far-fetched and crass, but, when you read it, Warner's way of 'placing' characters, and describing a social situation with wit, and a unique individual style just sing out from the page. She turns phrases so neatly, beautifully describing social and cultural stereotypes, and although we're talking about stereotypes from some years back, I'll defy anyone reading it not to recognise a modern equivalent of 'Titus', just as we recognise modern equivalents of 'Pooter' in 'Diary of a Nobody', and the 'Miss Bingleys' in "Pride and Predjudice".

Anyway, that, for the moment is by-the-by, and I'll get back to the plot. Laura (Lolly), despite rational reasoning from Henry ( that brother), does go to live in great Mop:

"Have done with your trumpery red herrings"

she exclaims, as they argue, and a better phrase I'd love to
see. She takes rooms in Mrs Leak's cottage, and begins, slowly to 'settle in'. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't miss London life at all. Plus, she notices things, and she listens. This isn't giving you any idea at all, though. One more quote? Well, here she is, out walking, and listening to a goods train in the far distance:

"In the goods yard at Paddington she had almost pounced on the clue, the clue to the secret country of her mind. The country was desolate and half-lit, and she walked there alone, mistress of it..........baffled, she stared back at the moon, and shook her head. For a moment it had seemed as thought the clue were found, but it had slid through her hands again. The train had reached the top of the cutting, with a shriek of delight it bagan to pour itself downhill. She smiled. It amused her to supose it laden with cabbages......inevitably, and with all the augustness of due course, they would reach their bourne at Apsley Terrace. They would shed all their midnight devilry in the pot, and be served up to Henry and Caroline very pure and vegetable"

It's the 'pure and vegetable' bit I love about this particular quote. Warner almost falls into purple prose, but pulls herself up, just short of it, much like how Lolly stops short of a 'mystical experience' of some sort. Both prose and character are saved by wit, and this, really, is one of the most interesting things about the book as a piece of writing.

So, I'll just race through the rest of the book, and say that she finds that 'Great Mop" is home to a great deal of witchy activity, not in the 'Sabrina' sense, but in the 'locals gadding around a field nude' sense. Lolly, not unaturally, is disappointed with her first experience of a 'sabbath'. To avoid the urge I've got to quote her, yet again, I'll just say that she compares it to her 'coming-out' experience. It's nothing bu
t a mirror of real life, just with different social 'games', complete with a rather dull 'prince of darkness' wearing a mask. Poor Laura. She's escaped from one set of social chains only to find another, albeit more to her taste, but still not yet 'there'.

But she does get 'there', or sort of, but that's the very end of the book, and after her nephew Titus comes to stay, and, 'bohemian' though he is, gets a rather lovely, and apt come-uppance for baiting his Aunt. One more quote, just one, from the very end of the book, where Laura is talking to someone rather unusual:

"Nothing for them (women) exept subjection and plaiting their hair.....It sounds very petty to complain about, but I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by the by the dust is age, settling down. Settling down! You never die, do you? No doubt that's far worse, but there's a dreadful kind of dreary immortality about being settled down on by one day after another"

Dreary immortality. That phrase sums up so many things. And although "Lolly Willowes", from that quote, sounds like a feminist book, it isn't, really. More, it's a 'people' book, telling people to be who they are, and enjoy it, and not worry about the whys and wherefores of what they want to be. To me, it's all about breaking the rules. It's a sort of 'self-awakening' book, but that little phrase makes it sound much crasser than it is. 'Self-Awakening' implies lots of realisation, and obvious metaphor, whereas the metaphors in "Lolly Willowes", of witches, covens, traditions and chrysanthemums, not only work, but are interesting in themselves. I can't think of many novels that I can say that about.

So, it's almost a racy plot, because of it's subject matter, but it's also a brilliant social comedy. Warner was a columnist, and it shows.
She also, although a very talented, and, for a time, feted writer, chose to live with her partner, Valentin Ackland, in West Chaldon. I wouldn't say that she sunk into obscurity, though. She wrote reviews and articles up until her death in 1978, many of them for the "New Yorker".

Yes, Warner was a lesbian, and not a covert one. I think she was probably way too intelligent, witty and too good a writer to care. Anyway, she'd broken through social boundaries in a time much harder to than it is now. I only mention her choice of sexuality here, because it does have bearings on the book I'm talking about. "Lolly Willowes" talks about real freedom of choice, not just spurious social 'settings', and it's one of the things I love about this book. If you're interested in her life, at all, and it is, extremely interesting, then I'd recommend a biography written by Claire Harman, and published by Minerva press.

I really like 'Lolly Willowes', you see. It's one of those books I'm almost scared to review, because I so want to do it justice, and yet I know I can't unless I just quote it verbatim. It's about? Oh, well, freedom, and humour, and silly people who try to stop freedom. It's about breaking rules in a way that hurts no-one, and it's about having the strength to live for yourself, and not apply any silly 'themes' to your life, unless you've created them. And it also gives me:

"Have done with your trumpery red herrings"

Is there anyone else out there who loves this line as much as me?

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