... the colourless dark hue of the field dazzled before her eyes. She stood in the middle of the field, waiting for an answer to her cry. There was no answer. And yet the silence that had followed it had been so intent, so deliberate, that it was like a pledge. If any listening power inhabited this place; if any grimly favourable power had been evoked by her cry; then surely a compact had been made, and the pledge irrevocably given. [p. 167]
The novel begins in 1902. Laura moves from Somerset to London, to live with her brother and his family, after the death of her beloved father. Her father left her 'five hundred a year', and she is deemed unlikely to marry: but her family 'took it for granted that she should be absorbed into the household of one brother or the other. And Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of property forgotten in the will, was ready to be disposed of as they should think best.' [p. 6]
Laura, trying hard to like her religious sister-in-law and the brother who (mis)manages her wealth, lives a life of quiet desperation and secret indulgences -- second-hand books, expensive soaps, roasted chestnuts -- which she thinks of as 'a mental fur coat'. Buying flowers one day, she decides all at once to move to a small village in the Chilterns. The family object. Laura, very politely, does not give a damn.
Freedom is blissful. Laura is enchanted by the wildness of the countryside and by the people she meets. Occasionally, it's true, she is unnerved by strange noises or by a sense of being watched: but these phenomena don't distress her.
Then, without warning, her darling nephew Titus comes to stay: 'he had havocked her peace of mind' [p. 164]. Laura, feeling angry and trapped and cheated, cries out to the power she has sensed in the land: and the compact is sealed. Returning home, she finds a kitten in her room, and realises that she has made a pact with Satan (the 'Loving Huntsman') and that this ferocious little feline, which she names Vinegar, is her witch's familiar.
They get rid of Titus. "'My nephew who is plagued by the Devil' was as much an object for affectionate aunt-like interest as 'my nephew who has an attack of measles'. She did not take the present affliction more seriously than she had taken those of the past. With time, and a change of air, she was confident that he would make a complete recovery." [p. 223]. Laura is welcomed into the village coven (though this is, in part, a trick) and has an interesting conversation with a man who seems to be a gamekeeper, concerning women's rights, the immortality of woodlands, and the power of memory.
And that, effectively, is it.
I adore this book: perhaps more so now than when I first read it in my twenties. Laura is a confirmed spinster, and furiously rejects the life of service and obligation and 'an existence doled out by others' that her position in life -- ageing, not wealthy (thanks to Henry's unwise investments), not religious or philanthropic or artistic, unmarried in the 1920s when the ratio of men to women was dramatically affected by the First World War -- imposes on her. 'It had pleased Satan to come to her aid. Considering carefully, she did not see who else would have done so. Custom, public opinion, law, church, and state — all would have shaken their massive heads against her plea, and sent her back to bondage.' [p. 223] Oh, I could quote the whole book: Sylvia Townsend Warner's writing is wry and sharp and measured, and often dryly humorous. And I'm fascinated by the theology here: Satan as 'loving huntsman', who is more of a naturalist than a killer (especially after the carnage of Flanders), whose memory preserves ancient forests and sees through the fleeting works of humanity. 'As for the other, he was an imposter,' thinks Laura. She is well-pleased with the bargain she has made: with the power she has gained. There is no mention of hellfire, or damnation, or torment. Instead, there is a sense of freedom, of agency, and perhaps of pleasures that unmarried Laura, so uninterested in the men she met in London (and yet so delighted by dancing with red-haired Emily), has hitherto discounted.
An absolute delight, and a novel that doesn't feel especially dated despite being set almost a century ago.
Incidentally, I could write a whole other post on the various covers created for this novel over the years. You can see some of them here -- I am puzzled and vexed by the decision, in more than one edition, to rename the work as Laura Willowes, for the whole point is the prison of the Lolly-identity.
Here, however, is a quintessentially Sixties cover that delights and horrifies in equal measure:
Lovely review; I have to go re-read this, I read it first in my late thirties and was put off by it -- I was myself still hiding out in my first career of software engineer which was not too different from caring for the family of a financially irresponsible brother. Now I'm crossing my own threshold into a much freer life: I think!
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