So, that's one favourite author off the list. Back when I started blogging in 2007, it seemed that nobody much liked Virginia Woolf either - but plenty of people have come to the blogosphere since who share my love of Ginny. And there's never been any shortage of those who'll wax literary over E.M. Delafield, Barbara Comyns, and Persephone & Virago etc.
But... but... as of yet, I haven't found a blogger who loves Ivy Compton-Burnett as I do (although I think Geranium Cat is more in favour than not?). There is no-one who gets as excited as I do about her novels; most people, indeed, have either never read her, or run screaming from the thought of having to read her again.
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Had I know that Greig was Ivy Compton-Burnett's typist, I probably would have read this book much sooner (according to the date I scribbled inside, I've had it for nearly three years.) It's such an interesting perspective on this fascinating author. Gradually they became friends as well, but the Victorian/Edwardianism of Ivy's novels extended to her understanding of social mores, and it took quite a long time for her to unbend enough to treat Greig as a friend. As Greig writes, Ivy Compton-Burnett just couldn't quite understand her position - as a woman who had to earn her living, but wasn't a servant. The mechanics and background detail of writing fascinate me, and Greig is uniquely able to provide firsthand experience of certain aspects of Ivy's writing process - as the first person to be given the novels in longhand:
For Greig was not solely a typist, but also an ardent fan. This was how she got the job: she wrote to Ivy Compton-Burnett (and, incidentally, Rose Macaulay) expressing her admiration and asking that they consider her for future typing. Macaulay didn't take her up on it, but months later Ivy Compton-Burnett did. As an admirer of Dame Ivy's work, Greig combined professionalism with the sort of mad joy that any of us would feel at this privileged position with an author we loved. Greig echoes Pamela Hansford-Johnson when writing about her love of Ivy:I had not yet opened her parcel with the manuscript of her novel. We said goodbye to each other at the front door, and I flew back to the sitting-room. When I opened the parcel I found fourteen school exercise books of the cheaper kind, blue paper covers and multiplication tables on the back cover. I remember thinking this last detail quite a fitting logic for a book of Ivy's. Her books so often have a sort of inexorable logic about them, like twice one is two.
She really is love or hate. Greig goes on to explain her own love of Ivy Compton-Burnett, not quite as astutely as Pamela Hansford-Johnson does, but still in a fascinating manner. But it was her firsthand interaction with Dame Ivy which makes this book so thrillingly interesting to me. Greig has no illusions about Ivy Compton-Burnett's fairly terrifying character, but she also recognised the fondness behind it.Why did I like her books so much? I have been asked that question many times, sometimes with a note of incredulous exasperation. With Ivy one is either an addict or an abstainer. I became an addict from the first chapter of A House and Its Head. Most of my friends, unfortunately, are abstainers. Suggest her, and if they have ever tried to read one of her books their reply can be an indignant refusal.
Ivy Compton-Burnett was always keen for Greig to visit, and expressed an interest in her life which was far from perfunctory. They could not meet as equals, nor did they even use each other's first names for many years, but there was a genuine affection and (more characteristically) curiosity from Ivy. One gets the sense that Greig's other friendships were more free and easy, but that perhaps this was one of the most valued - and while Ivy Compton-Burnett wanted to meet Greig's friends, Greig felt she could only bring people who also admired Ivy's writing; few and far between. So, although Greig also grew to know Ivy's dear friend Margaret Jourdain, theirs was mostly an exclusive friendship, in a vacuum, as it were. Ivy's life, aging, and death are shown sensitively, from the angle of a friend who saw her all too rarely, and Greig balances Ivy's life and work excellently, being herself fascinated by, and involved with, both.Her fierceness, when it showed itself, and when I provoked it, was always short-lived. Any breach of normal decorum, and her standard was perhaps exceptionally high, was annoying to her, and she never failed to let this be seen. But having let it be seen, the matter was over.
I would have been scared rigid of Dame Ivy, I'm sure. Obviously manners maketh man, but decorum and etiquette often baffle me - and Ivy Compton-Burnett's standards were positively Victorian, as though she were part of the world she so often depicted through fiction. Ivy Compton-Burnett is one of those authors (like Virginia Woolf, like Muriel Spark) whose writing and personality I adore, but with whom I cannot imagine being friendly or even at ease. And yet I lap up their comments and views of the world, whether or not I agree - and Greig's perspective offers greater potential for these. A brief observation Ivy Compton-Burnett made to Greig is one with which I do very much agree, for her time but more especially for ours:
That's probably one of the wisest things I've ever read about writing, and if more writers today considered it then we wouldn't have the deluge of issue-driven books, which doubtless market well but prove rather uninspiring, to me, at least."Yes, that's the worst of writers today," Ivy said. "They will write about something. Instead of just writing about people, about their characters."
When people ask me where they should start with Ivy Compton-Burnett, I usually recommend either Pastors and Masters (as it is an early work; a sort of Ivy-lite) or simply say that they're all more or less the same, so it doesn't much matter. I'd now be inclined to suggest they start, in fact, with this book. Jumping straight into Ivy Compton-Burnett can be an intimidating prospect; I think becoming acquainted with her through Cecily Greig's eyes is a great halfway house, and one which (through Greig's infectious enthusiasm and personal insight) might well pique a reader's interest, and make Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels feel not only accessible but an absolute must. These sorts of books are rather hit or miss, but Cecily Greig's is one of favourite reads this year. Hurrah!
