A few months ago , when I was looking up something or other to do with a book, I noticed that Margery Sharp, one of my very favourite authors, was born on 25th January 1905.

I thought that it would be lovely to throw her a party on her ‘110th birthday – that’s today!

Because I know that there are others out there who love her books, because I know there are others don’t know her and who would love her too, and because all but one of her books are out of print and need to be reissued, they really do.

I knew that there were others who knew and loved Margery, and it’s been lovely to find that there were more of us than I realised, and to find that so many others were ready to accept a recommendation and try a new-to-them author.

I’m looking forward to reading lots of posts, and of course I have to tell you about the book I read for the occasion.

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The story of ‘The Gipsy in the Parlour is quite simple, but the execution makes it something very special indeed.

The year is 1870, it is the height of summer, and on a Devonshire farm the three Sylvester women are anticipating the arrival of another to join their ranks.

“Themselves matched the day. The parlor was hot as a hothouse, not a window was open, all three women were big, strongly-corsetted, amply-petticoated, layered chin to toe in flannel, cambric, and silk at a guinea a yard. Their broad, handsome faces were scarlet, their temples moist. But they stood up to the heat of the parlor as they stood up to the heat of the kitchen or the heat of a harvest-field: as the sun poured in upon them so their own strong good-humour flowed out to meet it—to refract and multiply it, like the prisms of their candlesticks, the brass about their hearth. Nature had so cheerfully designed them that even wash-day left them fair-tempered: before the high festivity of a marriage their spirits rose, expanded, and bloomed to a solar pitch of stately jollification.”

Charlotte had arrived first, the bride of the eldest of four brothers. On her wedding night she unpacked her own sheets and goose-feather pillows and she gave the nuptial chamber a good turn-out before she undertook those other duties of a married woman to her husband’s complete satisfaction. And the next morning she was up at dawn, serving hearty breakfasts.

She was a formidable woman of the very best kind; she cheerfully revolutionised the households, and she did a little match-making, resulting in brothers number two and three bringing home brides with the same physique, the same attitude to life, and the same work ethic.

They worked together wonderfully well – Charlotte, Grace and Rachel – and they raised fine sons and saw them off to distant corners of the British Empire, to establish farms of there own.

And then that the youngest of the four brother brought home a bride.

It was clear from the start that Fanny Davis would not be like the other Sylvester women. They were fair and magnificent; she was dark, small and weak. She had worked in a hat shop!

Charlotte accepted that Fanny Davis would not be working alongside her sisters-in law, that she would be different. Grace and Rachel agreed. The household found a new equilibrium.

On the eve of her wedding Fanny Davis developed a mysterious malaise. She could recline on the sofa in the parlour, she could receive visitors, but she could do no more than that. The doctor was baffled.

And so Fanny Davis, sly and self-willed, came to rule the household.

The pictures that Margery Sharp paints of the Sylvester household and the cuckoo in the nest are wonderful. Some of the credit must go to her inspired choice of narrator: Charlotte’s eleven year-old niece who spends her winters with her family in London and her summers on the farm tells the story, some years after the events that she describes.

The pictures of the farm that she paints are so vivid, and her youthful perceptions are lovely:

“It wasn’t at that time, particularly uncommon. Ladies lay in declines all up and down the country…No common person ever went into one. Common persons couldn’t afford to. Also, there needed to be a sofa. No sofa, no decline.”

Her narration is effective because she has a little more faith in Fanny Davis that others might, because she can be drawn into her orbit as her ‘little friend’, and because she has her own role to play in the story, in London.

I suspect that there is more than a little of the author in her character, and through her the author tells her story with the idiosyncratic, subversive wit that I have come to love. Nobody else could have told this story quite like this.

I wish I could tell you her name, but it is never given.

Aunt Charlotte cared for the ‘invalid’ but her young niece – quite innocently and inadvertently – effects a ‘cure’. The Sylvester women are delighted – until the full story comes out.

I had a good idea of what was going to happen,  but it was lovely watching the drama unfold. The joy really was in the telling.

I especially loved watching Charlotte take London by storm!

There were flaws in the story – the Sylvester men were horribly underwritten – but the number and the quality of the good things swept any reservations that I had away.

But I so loved the Sylvester women, I was delighted by the telling of the story that played out on the farm in Devon, and the end of that story was exactly right.

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Now, please do tell me if you’ve read a book for Margery Sharp Day. I’ll post a round up once the day is done.

And please don’t worry if you haven’t – Margery Sharp posts are welcome on any day of the year!

It’s happening on 25th January – her 110th birthday – and the plan is for as many people as possible to read one of Margery’s books and post about it on her birthday. You don’t have to have a blog, you can post on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Librarything, Booklikes – wherever you like! I’d just ask that you tell me about it, so that I can share your post and include you in the round-up that will follow a day or two after the event. All of the details – a badge, a bibliography, and links to lovely reviews – are here.

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I’m still not sure what I’m going to read for the day, but I think it will be one of these three:

Lise Lillywhite

The Flowering Thorn

The Sun in Scorpio

Or it might be time to read ‘The Innocents’ – which is sublime – for the third time and see if I can finally find the words to explain just how wonderful it is.

In the meantime I’ve re-read Margery’s penultimate novel, ‘The Faithful Servants.’ It was published in 1975, when she was seventy years old and, though it isn’t her best work, it still has much that is wonderful.

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In Victorian England the family of Joseph Arbuthnot, a roguish elderly gentleman, were waiting for him to leave this life, anticipating a nice legacy. He confounded them with one final act of devilment. He left his entire fortune to create a foundation that would support faithful servants in need of charity.

There would be one or two days a year when applicants might apply to the trustees with a letter supporting their claim from their priest or for their employer.

Old Jacob named The Copstock Foundation after his loyal housekeeper, suggesting that maybe she had been rather more to him than that.

The family was confounded but they fell in line, putting forward various members to act as trustees over the years.

The books follows the family history and interesting cases presented to the trustees over the years that followed.

My favourites stories told of:

• Miss Quartermaine and Miss Xavier, who would live happily together a London flat.
• The maid who applied to support a lady who claimed to have been a Russian Grand Duchess.
• Mrs Crankshaw, a cook whose first request was for a glass of port.

A string of character sketches reflect the changing world over the course of nearly a hundred years. They’re very nicely observed and drawn; laced with wit and balanced with a clear-sighted understanding of the harsh realities of life for some. Sometimes the story is cosy, but there are moments that are – quite rightly – a little uncomfortable.

I would have liked to spend a little more time with the different applicants and a little less time with the trustees. Their dealing with the applicants were wonderfully entertaining, and they learned ever so many lessons along the way, but when they were on their own they were just a little bit dull. And I do agree with a review I read that suggested Margery Sharp was at he best when she followed the life of a single character through a novel.

But, that said, these sketches are lovely; there are many wonderful – and surprising – moments; and I was so pleased when Margery pulled a thread from the past to bring the story together, as she had done so cleverly in earlier books. There are things in this book that nobody else could do as well as Margery Sharp, and it is a very fine entertainment.

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 Now, just one more thing – what are your plans for Margery Sharp day?!