A Son of the Rock

In Virago Omnibus II, Virago, 1987, 90 p plus 9 p Introduction. First published in 1918.

On reading this I remembered watching a dramatised adaptation of the story at some point in the past. Not that it mattered: only the broad outlines were familiar and it’s the detail that counts.

Our first person narrator, Jenny Baldry, lives at Baldry Court at Harrowweald with Kitty, the wife of Jenny’s brother Chris. Life there is saddened by both the absence of Chris, away at the Western Front, and remembrance of his dead son. Thinking of Chris Jenny tells us of “That detached attention, such as an unmusical man pays to good music, which men of anchored affections give to attractive women.”

Jenny’s and Kitty’s relatively tranquil existence is disturbed by the visit of Mrs William Grey, once Margaret Allington, with the news that Chris is in hospital, not physically injured but suffering from shell shock (not actually named as such in the book and in any case now known as PTSD) and has lost his recent memory. He is convinced that he is in love with Margaret, whom he met over fifteen years ago and spent time with (remembered idyllically by him) at her father’s Inn at Monkey Island on the Thames, and only seeing her will satisfy him. His wife and son he remembers not at all.

The narrative is taut and claustrophobic, all three women’s behaviour restricted by the manners of the time, but notable for its focus on women affected by the Great War rather than the traumas of the trenches.

It’s also a little overwritten – and tinged by snobbishness “Wealdstone … the name of the red suburban stain which fouls the fields three miles nearer London than Harrowweald,” “‘I fancy it’ll do for a person with that sort of address,’” “the doctor (a very nice man, Winchester and New,)” with a touch of racism (“little yellow men”.)

As in that dramatisation the resolution seems a bit trite and too easily achieved.

Pedant’s corner:- plus marks for ‘rhododendra’, a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “with her head one one side” (on one side,) “cottage ornée” (cottage orné,) “She brought the punt across the said very primly” (across then said,) “‘something here that many interest you’” (that may interest you,) “I slid off the tree-truck” (tree-trunk makes more sense,) “to staunch a wound” (it’s ‘stanch a wound’.) “For it we left him in his magic circle there would come a time” (For if we left him in.)