Winifred Blazey’s stories succeed foremost because of the author’s loving attention to details. Having read her fourth and final novel, 1942’s seriocomic Grace Before Meat, I feel that the principal thread that connects all of her books is a careful crafting and presentation of a world in microcosm; it’s a goal that perhaps all novelists should aim for, but many writers don’t seem especially interested in achieving. This ability to conjure and ornament a believable, busy world around one’s protagonist organically engages the reader, while providing assurance that the narrative is (likely) in capable hands.
In short, Winifred Blazey welcomes her readers into the worlds she creates, and she lets us fully understand why all those little details matter to her protagonists, and why those details should in turn matter to her readers. With her début book, Dora Beddoe (1936), it was those specifics of her unhappy antihero’s bleak and monotonous existence that allowed us to understand the character’s desperate murderous mood. In Indian Rain (1938), the author’s most accomplished story, traveler Lovat Cleave absorbs all the kindnesses and cruelties humans are capable of before he begins to understand himself. And even the author’s weakest book, 1941’s The Crouching Hill, is filled with details that bring into sharp relief the group of visiting schoolmistresses, their young charges, and the dreary lodging house where tragedy strikes.
In short, Winifred Blazey welcomes her readers into the worlds she creates, and she lets us fully understand why all those little details matter to her protagonists, and why those details should in turn matter to her readers. With her début book, Dora Beddoe (1936), it was those specifics of her unhappy antihero’s bleak and monotonous existence that allowed us to understand the character’s desperate murderous mood. In Indian Rain (1938), the author’s most accomplished story, traveler Lovat Cleave absorbs all the kindnesses and cruelties humans are capable of before he begins to understand himself. And even the author’s weakest book, 1941’s The Crouching Hill, is filled with details that bring into sharp relief the group of visiting schoolmistresses, their young charges, and the dreary lodging house where tragedy strikes.
With Barbara Grace, Blazey creates her first fully likeable protagonist; it is 1912, and the newly certified schoolteacher applies for a position she hears about while on a walking tour of the countryside. The village of Candleford Hainault will soon be needing a replacement schoolmistress, and the promised autonomy of the rural post appeals to the independent young woman. Despite warnings from friends and misgivings from family, Barbara sets out on her own and soon clashes with the family of servants she has inherited. This leads to a confrontation with the rector and his cousins when she appeals to eject the unruly Baker clan from her adopted house, and ruffled feathers when Barbara takes her case to Randall Winter, the village squire. Barbara makes progress with the children but her alliance with the suspicious villagers around the headstrong newcomer is uneasy at best. When a late-night walk makes her a potential witness to a grudge-driven murder, Barbara finds herself giving evidence at an inquest.
Grace Before Meat, then, is nothing more nor less than the story of an outsider learning the ways of the community she chooses to invade, while gradually understanding how to align her own progressive ideals with the stubborn but pragmatic code of the locals. For Barbara, it is a story of incremental survival, of tiny battles won, of ground gained or retreated from on a daily basis. And it is in these details that the novel provides much of its engagement, for we want to see Barbara succeed. While the character has a strong work ethic and can stand up for herself, Blazey takes care to balance those admirable qualities with vulnerabilities fitting a woman just out of adolescence: Barbara is also proud and self-assured to the point of vanity on occasion, but usually has the good sense to realize her flaws after the fact.
Grace Before Meat, then, is nothing more nor less than the story of an outsider learning the ways of the community she chooses to invade, while gradually understanding how to align her own progressive ideals with the stubborn but pragmatic code of the locals. For Barbara, it is a story of incremental survival, of tiny battles won, of ground gained or retreated from on a daily basis. And it is in these details that the novel provides much of its engagement, for we want to see Barbara succeed. While the character has a strong work ethic and can stand up for herself, Blazey takes care to balance those admirable qualities with vulnerabilities fitting a woman just out of adolescence: Barbara is also proud and self-assured to the point of vanity on occasion, but usually has the good sense to realize her flaws after the fact.
Candleford Hainault’s population is lively and skillfully sketched in, and certain rural domestic observations resonate more fully than their few paragraphs of description might suggest. A fistfight between a villager and a blacksmith – “The smith’s breathing was fairly noisy, but he seemed less distressed than Toby. The latter was hitting him four times to every one, but the smith, when he landed, landed heavily, all his ox-strength behind the battering blow” – or a queasy assignation between a truant schoolgirl and an older man lingered in my memory days after the story was finished. The book’s final chapters are set, ironically, in the schoolroom, this time to accommodate a public inquest, and although interesting this section feels slightly anticlimactic. After so many pages where Barbara Grace drives the narrative, it is jarring to then yield focus to a fussy coroner, no matter how entertaining his dyspeptic interviews of the plain-spoken villagers might be.
Still, the inquest ends and Barbara has the last word, with chivalrous Toby Rittlestone waiting in the wings should she choose to stay in Candleford Hainault after all. It’s a strong final book from a writer I wish had produced more; in her best moments, her prose is just as engaging and witty as that of Gladys Mitchell, Winifred Blazey’s roommate and companion in the years she was writing these novels.
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