For the #1936Club: South Riding by Winifred Holtby

In her preface to the 1988 edition of South Riding, the late Shirley Williams (daughter of  Winifred Holtby's close friend and literary executor, Vera Brittain) describes Holtby's most famous book as;

'the great epic of local government.'

Does that make you want to read it?

I imagine not, and this would be a terrible shame, as it is a wonderful novel, full of vivid, fascinating characters, dramatic events, wheelers, dealers, lovers and haters, all set against the backdrop of a country in flux, and in a landscape of cliffs and marshes, windswept wastes and busy towns - South Riding may not exist, but the location of this story is very firmly Holtby's native Yorkshire.

And above all it is the story of Sarah Burton, a teacher returning home from London to take charge of the local girls' high school; of Robert Carne, local farmer, horseman and councillor; of Midge, his strange and somewhat hysterical daughter; of Mrs Emma Beddows, the first female Alderman of South Riding; and of Lydia Holly, child of the Shacks, who wants more than fate has given her. 

And above even that, it is the story of a community, of change, and resistance to change, of suffering, resilience and hope. It is, as Marion Shaw points out in her introduction;

'an enthralling narrative'

 

Sarah Burton (Anna Maxwell Marshall) arrives in Kingsport (2011 BBC adaptation)

The year is 1932. Sarah comes back to Kiplington full of ideas and aspirations; she wants to inspire the best of her girls to reach for more than marriage, motherhood and domestic drudgery. 

'I was born to be a spinster, and by God I'm going to spin.'

She finds herself with a mixed bag of staff - some keen and enthusiastic, some less so - and none less so than her indolent deputy, Dolores Jameson, who is just waiting for her fiance to be promoted so that they can marry and she can (and by law must) give up her job. She sees no point in educating the girls above their station;

"What I always say is, the important thing is to equip these girls for life. And most of them will go into shops, or become nursemaids, or help their mothers run lodging houses till they marry. So really, so long as they've been to the High School, and can count as High School girls, I don't see it matters so much what they do here."

Her alter ego is Miss Sigglesthwaite, the science mistress, academic, well meaning, but a hopeless teacher whose life is made a misery by the cruel mocking of the girls and Dolores' patent derision. Miss Sigglesthwaite has to stick at her job to support her sister and invalid mother, and Holtby shows, in her study of this sad, all too self-aware, soul, a real understanding of the dreadful position such women find themselves in.

Lydia Holly, oldest daughter of the feckless, fecund Bert and worn out Annie, is a prime target for Miss Burton's progressive ideas. Lydia's seen what men, marriage and motherhood can do to a woman and she wants none of it; instead she sits on the roof of her derelict railway carriage home and reads Shakespeare. Lydia's story allows Holtby to explore extreme poverty and what it does to people, both physically (the vastly overcrowded Shacks have no sanitatiton, no running water, no electricity - disease is rife) and mentally; how it limits and destroys their lives - but it is also a gripping story in its own right. We are rooting for Lydia, but Holtby pulls no punches about how difficult her life is going to be. 

Joe Astell (Douglas Henshall), Sarah Burton and Robert Carne (David Morrissey) in the 2011 adaptaton

Meanwhile, Robert Carne, owner of Maythorpe Hall, is sinking into debt and disaster. The once grand estate is in ruins, the farm is losing money. Carne is a good farmer, an outstanding huntsman and a well-liked employer; the reason for his penury is not ineptitude but love - love for his wife, Muriel, now committed to a psychiatric care home with what appears to be inherited mental illness. Her care, and the numerous demands she made before her illness, have drained the coffers. Carne and the rather odd Midge now rattle around the denunded hall with just one servant, but he is a proud man and still rides to hounds. As the months pass by, his predicament becomes increasingly desperate.

So where does the council come into all of this? As Holtby shows, it concerns and affects every aspect of these people's lives. Sarah must appeal to it if she wants new buildings. The Hollys and their near-destitute neighbours are dependent on it for better housing and a decent road. And Carne and Mrs Beddows, best of friends though with views rarely in alignment, must negotiate its intrigues and power-snatches, he in an ultimately doomed attempt to halt progress and retain the tradition of benevolent feudalism, she to fulfill her mission to improve the lives of her fellow citizens. At the centre of the council sits Anthony Snaith, self-made businessman and ice-cold manipulative schemer; yet Holtby even manages to go some way to persuading us to understand him. There are no caricatures in South Riding.

There is so much else in this brilliant novel, so many subplots and stories. Every character, from Carne and Burton right down to local dancing teacher Madame Hubbard, Councillor Ezekiel Huggins, haulage contractor and lay preacher, Bessy Warbuckle (Huggins' near nemesis), Lily Sawdon, ailing wife of the publican, and even Sir John Simon, Alderman Snaith's cat, is fully formed and real. There is also a lot of comedy, in particular in the fixes Huggins gets himself into, and the bargains he tries to make (with men and also with his Maker) in order to get out of them.

Reading South Riding put me in mind of Our Friends in the North, a much more modern but equally panoramic study of very similar issues. This television series may be set in late 20th century Sunderland, but its themes of poverty, poor housing, corruption, blackmail, and the old order versus the new, are just the same. And like South Riding, Our Friends in the North is also a cracking story with unforgettable characters. The difference between them though, is that at the end of the South Riding, and even though the prospect of another war is clearly signalled, Holtby emphasises the importance of community:

'....we are members, one of another. We cannot escape this partnership.  This is what it means - to belong to a community; this is what it means, to be a people.'

In the post-Thatcherite Britain of 1995 Peter Flannery (the writer of Our Friends in the North) cannot offer us any such assurance.

South Riding by Winifred Holtby was first published in 1936 (the year after Holtby's early death) by Collins & Co Ltd. It was republished in 1988 by Virago.