Authors: Winifred Holtby
Caroline's lead-part as the founding organiser of the ill-fated Christian Cinema Company is unquestioned, but her primacy among the female characters is to a degree challenged by the naturally intelligent Eleanor with her wide-eyed idealism and straightforward aspirations. Eleanor is Winifred's archetypal
modern woman in the making, and as such the oracle for
feminism in Poor Caroline. Eleanor is half South African to allow
Winifred to recall her favourite foreign land, the only country
outside Europe she visited, and a place to which she could
remain closely attached because of her friendship with Jean McWilliam (of
Letters To a Friend)
in Pretoria. There she
espoused the plight of the natives, a cause with which she became closely associated after her tour of 1926. The heroine of The Land of Green Ginger, who dreams constantly of far-off places, is also
half South African. She came to England as an infant after the
death of her non-Afrikaans father. Eleanor leaves South Africa
following the same bereavement, but is an adult newcomer to
England.
If Winifred's letters had been lost, or her biography not
written by her closest friend, we could still glean from Eleanor a central obsession of her creator; namely, in Eleanor's words, 'this
intolerable burden of immunity'. In order to overcome this
inverted inferiority complex, the rich but orphaned young lady
seeks out suffering and struggle, hardship and adversity: 'I have
capital behind me, and education, and opportunities. All this ugliness and poverty can't really hurt me.' Winifred likewise bore the hang-ups of privilege and wealth, which her talent
exacerbated. In marked contrast to Vera Brittain, she was also
unscathed by the bereavements of the Great War. 'I always feel
when I take my pleasures that I have snatched them in the face of
fortune,' she wrote. 'But I am glad when I take them, all the
same' she concluded, for she was, like Caroline, with her
penchant for sweet foods, beautiful flowers and pretty clothes, no
ascetic, but someone who took pleasure in rare luxuries.
Winifred's nature was happy and optimistic. Believing she had
no real problems, she deliberately put herself out for others in an
almost self-sacrificial way to atone for being among those 'who
have been gifted by fortune, we who are rich and healthy and
unbound'. Overworking herself to pay back the debt she felt she
owed to life, this sense of immunity was clearly cauterised by her
collapse into virtually constant ill-health, which this personal
complex must ironically have helped bring on.
If Eleanor voices Winifred's horror of immunity, the Anglo-
Catholic curate, Roger Mortimer, represents the author's
connected religious leanings. Religion, which, she once admitted,
was one of the chief reasons for unhappiness in her life, was not prominent in her public utterings, but is a more obtrusive feature
of her stories - Winifred had undergone a period of theological
crisis, just about resolving her beliefs in an experience similar, it
seems, to Roger's call to the Church one night in France.
Eleanor's uncertainty about contributing to the Christian
Cinema Company is also suddenly clarified as a result of
listening to Roger's sermon condemning compromise. Roger's wavering between Catholicism and Protestantism, as between
the demands of his vocation and the temptation of earthly love,
recalls Winifred's earlier portrayal of Wyclif in
The Runners,
her
only full-length prose work never published. Roger's dilemma
also foreshadows the serious mess the endearingly sensual lay
preacher, Huggins, creates for himself in
South Riding.
Vulnerable
vicars, whether venal or virginal, thus crop up regularly in
Winifred Holtby's novels. But churchmen are not exclusively
ogres or figures of fun. Roger, initially timid, develops into one of
Winifred's nobler male characters, overcoming his image to Eleanor of 'a comic curate, praying among the buns'.
Love scenes, Winifred freely admitted, were difficult passages
for her to write. Her own love life involved one
spasmodic and
unsatisfactory relationship. She wrote of 'being disappointed if I
go through life without once being properly in love. As a writer, I feel it my duty to my work, but they [men] are all so helpless and such children'. Along with so many women of her generation she
was affected by the dearth of adequate men after the
Great War,
which does to some extent account for the rarity of strong male characters in her novels and the
frequency of listless survivors,
either physically or psychologically crippled. Nevertheless, Roger Mortimer, despite being manipulated by Caroline and besotted with Eleanor, is healthy and shows moral strength as
well as progressive views on love and marriage. Equally, Eleanor
is independent and direct. Indeed, she represents a new
departure in Winifred's attitude towards women's self-deter
mination. The earlier heroines are shackled by domestic ties of
one form or another. Mary Robs
on and Joanna Leigh, farmer's
wives, are spirited individuals circumscribed by the restraints of
their position in the family and in the community.
Poor Caroline
is about the divergent tendencies of philanthropy
and exploitation, and the humour, tinged with sadness, arising
from their clash in an oddly constituted Company, bringing
together incompatible people. The Jewish merchant, Isenbaum,
and the dilettante, St Basil, scratch each other's backs. Johnson
and Macafee are out solely for themselves. Roger and Eleanor
have more palatable ulterior motives, but they too use Caroline.
Eleanor is no impressionable altruist, but entertains self-
professed business ambitions and involves herself in her relative's
project for the sake of being associated with an apparently good
cause. Even Caroline, the only true believer in her brain-child
for the actual spiritual benefits she intends it to bring, is perhaps
merely trying to justify herself when society has no real further need of her. Although Vera Brittain accurately described her as
'a self-deceived optimist with an unbalanced devotion to
hopeless projects', Caroline is so observed as to be likeable
despite her absurdity. Her world of 'uplift, good works and
propaganda' was very much her creator's sphere as a fervent
believer in education and the benefits of religion. Winifred,
however, was no unrealistic idealist like Caroline. Her optimistic
canvassing on behalf of the League of Nations or South African
Trades Unions was not so earnestly self-important as to be above
self-mockery - there could be an element of self-parody in her
Caroline, despite Winifred assuring Lady Rhondda: 'Caroline is not a symbol of me, but an expression of herself
...
I meant to
leave the impression of someone silly but vital, directly futile but
indirectly triumphant.'
Caroline's demise is not treated tragically, because it leads to
the prospect of future benefit. Parallel with this undefeated
attitude lies a positive view of progress, both moral and
technical.
Poor Caroline
may not be most memorable as a
discussion of the ethics of scientific progress, but the issue is not
raised lightly, and admonitions c
oncerning society's future are
deliberately made. The Christian Cinema Company falls
between two stools not just for lack of a unified commitment, but
also, it is suggested, because the twin aims of the Company may
be contradictory in practice. In
Mandoa, Mandoa!
Bill Durrant
comes to a conclusion about colonial development in terms
which apply to Caroline's contusion of commerce and morality:
'You can either make a profit out of people or you can lecture
them for their own good. But you can't do both with any effect at
the same time.' If this is a truism,
Poor Caroline's
message would
be 'to distribute uplift' rather 'than dividends among mankind. It was easier to Do Good than to Make Money.' The personal
motives affecting a decision about how best to utilise a
technological breakthrough show how the issue has even gained
in relevance in the last half century. Johnson's every word
deserves suspicious scrutiny, but amidst the regurgitated
verbiage we find some valid, if gratuitous, observations, for instance when he chastises Macafee as a lover of science for science's sake: 'Ah, you scientists, who pursue the means an'
despise the ends, take care.'
A fine writer's themes and obsessions continually engage
important issues with a perspicacity which remains modern and pertinent over and beyond the particular fictional and historical
context. Winifred Holtby was a flash of brilliant dynamism, who
threw herself with a combined sense of duty and conviction into
the burning issues of her day, hoping to help improve society.
Her texts and speeches were persuasive in the twenties and
thirties and, fortunately, she left an artistic testament which
enriches posterity. For despite her dichotomy she was able to
combine her dual instincts as writer and reformer without
making Caroline's alleged sacrifice of one for the other: 'If I'd
had more time I could have been a poet ... only between the claims of art and science I had to choose, being by nature a
pioneer and fighter.' If Winifred Holtby was by nature a writer, then appropriately it is her novels which fight on as the lasting
vehicle for her pioneering beliefs.
George Davidson, London, 1984
Opening Chorus
on
that April evening, in 1929, the five-thirty train from King's Cross to Kingsport was half an hour
late. Betty and
Dorothy Smith, returning home from Caroline's funeral,
had to scramble through luggage, porters and trolleys and
run along the platform, nearly dropping their newly ac
quired parcels,
in order to catch the last train out to Marsh
ington. But their mother was waiting for them in the
dining-room with sandwiches and tea; the fire leapt gaily; their father drifted in from the billiard-room professing indifference, but really agog for news, and the pleasant atmo
sphere of home-coming was
augmented rather than decreased
by the lateness of the hour and the precariousness of sub
urban
connections.
'Tea?' Mr. Smith asked himself. 'Well, I wouldn't mind
a cup as it is here. Now, girls, how's London? Have you got
Caroline safely underground?'
'We have, we have,' laughed Betty, helping herself to a
ham sandwich. 'We've buried her and, if you ask me, pretty
nearly canonized her. What with a purple pall over the
coffin, and the service so High that it nearly fell over itself
backwards, and Uncle Ernest green in the face with trying
to find his way among the prayers and things, it was the
grandest funeral I ever saw.'
'And who is paying for all that, I should like to know?'
snorted Mr. Smith. 'As Caroline's nearest relative I natur
ally have
some
feelings on the subject.'
'Well, you'll be relieved to hear that the actual Church
service was all done free, so far as I can gather. That Father Mortimer Caroline was always writing about got his Church
to do it.'
'Yes, and do you know,' interrupted Betty, 'he isn't old at
all - he's quite young - young enough to be Caroline's son.'
'Grandson.'
'Son, anyway, and
quite
sweet. Not a bit like a curate, and a perfect lamb in his vestments, or whatever you call them.'