Rosamond Lehmann- Reflections Upon completing My Read Through of her Work With my Recommendations

  Invitation to the Waltz is a novel almost without flaw: delicate in structure, beautifully written, minutely observed, moving and frequently very funny. Undoubtedly  Rosamond’s best work, it is on this and on its distressing sequel, The Weather in the Streets, that her reputation must ultimately rest. Alone of all the Lehmann novels, Invitation is light and optimistic in tone, its inspiration drawn not from disappointment and betrayal but from the prospect of love requited and future contentment. Significantly, it is also the most outward-looking, least self-concentrated of Rosamond’s novels, written during that brief period of time when she was fulfilled in her marriage, anticipating years of happiness with Wogan, of bringing up children, and of productive work; as for Olivia and Kate, so for her: everything was about to begin.  Selina Hastings in Rosamond Lehmann A Life

                                                         1904 to 1990

• Dusty Answer (1927)
• Invitation to the Waltz (1932)
• The Weather in the Streets (1936)
• No More Music (1939)
• The Ballad and the Source (1944)
• The Gipsy's Baby & Other Stories (1946)
• The Echoing Grove (1953)
• The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life (1967) (non-fiction)
• A Sea-Grape Tree (1976)

Rosamond Lehmann is one of the great English between the world wars novelists.  She focuses on the country l  upper class, in which she grew up, most often focusing on the romantic lives of women.  Her by far best works are Invitation to the Waltz and The Weather in the Streets, no wonderful novels, a pure delight for readers.

I decided to read all of the fiction of Lehmann through a combination of reasons.  Amazon recommended to me Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings.  I read and greatly enjoyed this book.  It places her in the context of England between the wars and shows her connections to the many distinguished literary figures in the era.  At the same time i was reading this book I reread from long ago The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne Booth in which he talks about how authors achieve their effects. (This is a brilliant book and I recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in the novel.). Booth offers lots of illustrations of his ideas but he suggests that interested readers don't take his examples but read works of fiction not mentioned in his book to see if they are illuminating for us. After reading Hastings' book, I checked for Lehmann's works on Amazon.  Only her memoir The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life seems even in print.  Then through a very fortuitous contact, I was given kindle editions of all nine of her books, forthcoming from Open Media Press.  The books are not very  long, none much over 250 pages so, beginning with her acknowledged master work, Invitation to the Waltz, Selina Hastings calls it a "perfect novel" and I loved it, I decided to read them all.

On a  perhaps a bit waggish note, one could say Lehmann characters are often the sort of people Saki writes about in his satirical short stories.  Everyone has servants.  I found through the focus Booth gave me an appreciation of the artistic sophistication of Lehmann.  Her narrative methods are a mixture of devices, many of the sentences, even in the lesser novels, are pure gems.  The middle chapter of Invitation to the Waltz is just hilarious, a perfect presentation  of the persons at a country dance.  The depiction of the pretentious young poet down from Oxford made me laugh out loud as I marveled at what a wonderful scene I was witnessing.  

As of right now, most readers will not find it easy to acquire her out of print works.  My guess is they will soon be back in print as Kindle editions but this is just my guess.  

Rosamond Lehmann, at her best, is a great writer.  Perhaps her very serious involvement with spiritualism after the death at 26 of her daughter Sally impacted her literary productivity but Invitation to the Waltz and The Weather in the Street, a sequel, belong on any serious lover of the novel life time list.

Mel u

Rosamond Lehmanm Three Set in Rural England World War Two Fictions (written 1943 to 1946)

"The wartime stories, all three commissioned by John for New Writing, are moving, funny and impressionistic, giving a vivid picture of domestic life at Aldworth under the wearisome restrictions of war. They also provide a touching celebration of maternal love, with lifelike portraits of Hugo and Sally (John and Jane), she cheerful and impulsive, he sensible and resourceful, barely managing to control a masculine exasperation with the silliness of the womenfolk."  From Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings

Books by Rosamond Lehmann (1904 to 1990)

"When the Waters Came"

"A Dream of Winter"

Wonderful Holidays  - A Novella

With the reading of these three World War Two era works, I think I have completed my read though of Rosamond Lehmann's fiction and her memoir and theories on spiritualism The Swan in the Evening Fragments of an Inner Life. 

• Dusty Answer (1927)
• Invitation to the Waltz (1932)
• The Weather in the Streets (1936)
• No More Music (1939)
• The Ballad and the Source (1944)
• The Gipsy's Baby & Other Stories (1946)
• The Echoing Grove (1953)
• The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life (1967) (non-fiction)
• A Sea-Grape Tree (1976)

Selina Hastings considers two  World War Two short stories and the Novella Wonderful Holidays to rank with the very best of the work of Lehmann.  

The first two works are not long, with estimated reading times of six and twelve minutes focus on families life, dealing with war time austerity and rationing and the war about loved one's in the military services.  The risk of air raids or rocket attacks from the Germans was less in rural England as the distance from London increased but was a possibility.  

Wonderful Holidays, Lehmann says of it "The third and longest, ‘Wonderful Holidays’, a superb piece of work, closely founded in fact, was serialised in four issues of New Writing during 1944–5, and describes the somewhat hectic staging of a revue to be performed in support of relief packages for soldiers and sailors, is really an enchanting work and a could way to finish up a first read through of Lehmann.  It shows how rural children from comfortable families dealt with the war.  

I will soon to a post on my observations on completing a read through of Lehmann's oevere and an account of why I undertook this effort.  

Mel u

Two Short Stories by Rosamond Lehmann- "The Gipsey's Baby" and "The Red-haired Miss Daintreys" - 1946

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Seagrape Tree 1976

As far as I can determine, Rosamond Lehmann published five short stories, all published in a collection, The Gipsey's Baby and Other Stories.  Selina Hastings says these stories can stand with the best of her fiction.  Three are about English life during World War Two, one story is Lehmann's rare voyage outside her social comfort zone and one draws on her life experiences.

"The Gipsey's Baby" has been compared to "The Doll House" by Katherine Mansfield.  Both deal with an encounter of an affluent family with poor neighbors.  I was surprised by the very negative descriptions of the poor family in the story.  The family is described as filthy dirty, almost subhuman.  The family first meet when the dog of the rich family kills the cat of poor family and the rich father goes to the poor home to apologize and offers their father some money.  Soon the children of the poor family begin to visit. The poor family live in total squalor.  I wonder what values could be found lurking under this story.   The depiction  of the Gipsey in the story is kind of strange.  It made me sad to read what can only be construed as a racist treatment of the Gypsies.  The descriptive power of Lehmann is very high.  

"The Red-Haired Miss Daintreys" is a very good superbly written story.  It depicts the start and long term development of a forty year friendship.  

Soon I will post on her three WW II short stories 

Mel u

A Sea Grape Tree by Rosamond Lehmann 1976. Her Last Novel

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Sea Grape Tree 1976

Rosamond Lehmann knew that A Sea Grape Tree would be her final novel.  Selina Hastings tells us that the critics were not overall kind to this novel.  The setting is a resort on a Caribbean Island.  The clients are upper class English men and women.  One of the weakness of Lehmann as a writer is her seeming inability to see anyone outside the narrow social range in which she is comfortable as fully developed. I found the opening paragraph of the novel in which she depicts a local woman, twenty with three children and no husband as a black Modanna almost laughably atrocious 

"Every evening, before the hour of sunset, Princess, the young maidservant, starts to light the lamps in the hotel: oil lamps, long glass funnels enclosed in brass containers with handles. Taking one in either hand, swinging them to the rhythm of her languid barefoot gait, she goes down, down the steep spiralling rock path to Captain Cunningham’s bungalow. As darkness falls she is enfolded in soft light, she becomes a lustrous image, a black Madonna with a golden aura, borne through waist-high hibiscus bushes by invisible bearers to the sea. Her black eyes catch a gleam; and moths and fireflies drift to the lamps and hover round her. Sometimes she has set some object or other nonchalantly upon her shapely astrakhan-capped head: a jug or a bowl for instance, or a roll of toilet paper, or the Cunninghams’ clean laundry"

The black Madonna is assumed to have the lowest of sexual morals.  Tell me you did laugh at the image of her walking along with a roll of toilet paper on her head.

The drama in the story is in the interactions of the guests with each other and their reaction to being on the tropical island.  By this point in her life Lehmann was very much into Spiritualusm, the communication with the dead in various ways.  In fact the sinister Mrs Jardin is buried on the island but she communicates nevertheless.  There are scenes of "spirit writings" that let us see how the communication took place.   A man paralyzed from the waist down in the war has a passionate affair with a younger female guest, times have advanced since her first novel and there is a gay English couple.  

The Sea Grape Tree is only half as long as most of her other novels.  It does have some good parts and I am sensitive to what I perceive as the racism and classism of this work.  The return of Mrs Jardin, who we met in The Ballad and the Source is interesting, bordering on weird.  

Only those really into Lehmann will read this novel and that is as it should be.  

I will shortly post on her memoirs The Swan in the Evening and then on five of her short stories.  

Drawing on Selina Hastings' great biography, i learned that  in 1933 Lehmann spent six weeks on the island of Tobago with a wealthy gay man, Paul Cross.  His family owned a house there.  

                                        Rosamond Lehmann and Paul Cross, 1933, on the beach, Tabago         

Mel u

The Swan in the Evening by Rosamond Lehmann (1967, with an epilogue added by the author in 1981)

"This is my last testament. What else is left that I might say? I am in my eighty-first year, so it seems more than likely that this particular stage of my journey is drawing to a close. Once the thought of living on through time without Sally was too huge, too hopeless a burden to be borne; but nowadays I seem to live partly out of time: so that that lacerating illusion we create by having to deal life out in packets of days, months, years has largely disappeared...Over the years I have been taught by Sally and by others, some of them discarnate, something of how it will be when I wake up after I have shed my body; so I look forward, I look forward. But physical bodies fight so tenaciously sometimes to hang on. I do pray that mine will let go easily. No matter how far ahead of me Sally has gone –and I know she has –she will be waiting, as she promised. She will pull me through the door."  From the Epilogue to The Swan in the Evening

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

Lehmann's daughter Sally, at age 24, died in 1958 while living in Jakarta with her husband.  This tragic event changed radically the thoughts and life of her mother.  Some would say it drove  her into a world of spiritualism, others would say it put her in touch with a deeper reality.  I am inclined to this view. 

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Seagrape Tree 1976

The Swan in the Evening is a cross between a memoir and an account of Rosamond Lehmann's deep believe in spiritualism.  Spiritualusm, taken as the belief that the spirits remain intact after worldly death and can be communicated with by those who have the faith and ability to do so.  Spiritualusm gained strength in England because of the huge death tolls for of World War One with thousands of young men killed almost before their lives really began.  Survivors took comfort in the belief that the dead had merely transferred to another state.  Soon this became broadly felt in the wider culture.  Charlatans arose to take advantage of those in great pain and elaborate theories arose about the departed.  Lehmann from the death of her beloved daughter Sally, at age 24, felt she as often in direct communication with her daughter.  She saw her daughter as remaining in her physical condition but somehow without a body.  This belief set dominated Lehmann's life.  In a snide joke Nancy Mitford, as reported by Selina Hastings, use to laugh about Sally having a butler in the afterlife. 

Much of A Swan in the Evening deals with Lehmann's communications with her daughter.  She goes into some depth in her account of life after death and the interaction of the living with the dead.  Lehmann knew most would not taker her views seriously and she accepted that.

This is a book only those very into the work of Lehmann, as am I, will want to read.  

Mel u

The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann. 1953

"The central theme of The Echoing Grove is narrated with hypnotic intensity, and the complex time scheme, moving back and forth between past and present, focusing on one protagonist, then another, is deftly accomplished."  From Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Seagrape Tree 1976

There was a nine year hiatus  between The Ballad and the Source and The Echoing Grove.  Rosamond Lehmann said every word to as as difficult for her as composing poetry.  It is the story of two sisters, now both widows.  The plot centers  on a love triangle, the love of two sisters, Madeleine and Dinah, for the same man, Madeleine’s husband, Rickie.  As I read on in Lehmann I can see her narrative skill increasing.  Many of her sentences are exquisite.  The relationship of the sisters to each other and to Rickie is very subtly conveyed.   It is very much a novel of intense conversations.  

Some suggest that Lehmann's male characters are not as well developed as are her women.  Lehmann says many who read The Echoing Grove on publication saw Rickie as a thinly disquished Cecil Day, poet Laurete of England and long term lover of Lehmann.  Lehmann repudiated this but the biographical data supports this.

The Echoing Grove is a challenging work, psychologically acute with great conversations.   As of now I will refrain from endorsing it as other Lehmann books are more pleasurable.  Upon completing my read through of her fiction and her memoirs I will  write a sort of overview post explaining the reasons behind my reading of her oevere nearly straight through,  in this I will make recommendations to new Lehmann readers.

Mel u

A Note in Music by Rosamond Lehmann. 1930

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Seagrape Tree 1976

If one wanted to be snide about the people in Rosamond Lehmann's second novel A Note in Music they could be described as the kind of people Saki pokes fun at in his short stories. I found the novel most interesting from a technical stand point.  She is rhetorically very sophisticated.  After reading the novel I turned to  Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings for her thoughts on the novel.  I found myself in complete agreement with her so I shall share her opinion.  

"Although A Note in Music is in a minor key, it has some remarkable qualities, recognisable as a lesser work by an accomplished novelist, rather than as a poor novel. Its main influence is clearly Virginia Woolf, specifically Mrs Dalloway, but the work is no imitation. The characters are drawn with subtlety......Technically, too, A Note is interesting, the narrative perspective moving from one character to another, carrying a story-line which is cleverly constructed –in spite of its partial undermining by a dire sub-plot involving a brave little prostitute with a flowerlike face and tubercular cough, with whom both Tom and Hugh become separately involved. The vengeful portrait of the dark, grimy city is memorable, a grim contrast, with its sour streets and screeching trams, both to the lavish luxury of the local mansion and to the warm and fertile southern countryside to which Grace escapes for a brief holiday"

I am doing a read through of Lehmann.  Unless one is doing that I see no reason for most  to read or buy this book other than to follow the literary development of Lehmann .   I have begun her The Echoing Grove and have high hopes for it.  To those new to Lehmann, start with An Invitation to the Waltz then read a sequel to,this Weather in the Streets.  These are both great novels.  Her prose can be exquisite and her insights run deep.

Mel u

The Ballad and the Source by Rosamond Lehmann. 1944

Upon publication in America, 600,000 copies were sold when it became Book of the Month Club Selection.  Hollywood, though no movie was ever made, paid then then huge sum of $250,000 for the movie rights.  

"The book opens in a manner reminiscent of the opening of Dusty Answer, with the sudden coming to life of a nearby house whose owners have been long away. ‘One day my mother114 told me that Mrs Jardine had asked us to pick primroses on her hill, and then, when we had picked as many as we wanted, to come in and have tea with her.’ The elderly lady who welcomes them inside is like a figure from a fairytale."  from Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings

Rosamond Lehmann on The Reading Life

1901 to 1990. England

Dusty Answers 1927

A Note in Music 1930

Invitation to the Waltz  1932

The Weather in the Streets  1936

The Ballad and the Source 1944

The Gypsey's Baby and other Stories 1946

The Echoing Grove  1953

The Swan in the Evening 1967

A Seagrape Tree 1976

The Ballad and the Source is an account of the long term relationship between a new neighbor and the children in the family next door,  with a mysterious somewhat sinister older lady, Mrs Jardin, who was a friend of their mother.  Her closest contact will be the ten year old when we meet her Rebecca.

Selina Hasting tells us that this novel received at best mixed reviews. Much of the conversation is in indirect speech and their is a very condescending portrayal of a cockney woman,  Contemporary readers said it reads as if Lehmann had never heard an actual cockney speak.  There are lengthy conversations where the aristocratic Mrs Jardin mocks the accent of the cockney woman and vice versa when she mocks Mrs. Jardin mocking her.  

"The story is long and the plot difficult to follow through all its convolutions; at one point even the enthralled Rebecca is obliged to admit, ‘My head was whizzing round, 117 hectically active but at the same time hopelessly confused.’ Although parts of Mrs Jardine’s ‘ballad’ do have a powerful, hypnotic effect, a major obstacle to enjoyment is that so much is conveyed at second hand: out of a total of 317 pages, 179 are in indirect speech, which has the effect here of thickening and dulling the narrative flow. Mrs Jardine is by no means the only offender, for there are three others, the worst Tilly, a chirpy little seamstress talking page after page in a dire version of an educated lady novelist’s idea of Cockney; worse still, she and Mrs Jardine lengthily quote each other, ‘imitating’ each other’s voices so that the reader sometimes has to cope with Cockney imitating refined imitating Cockney, and vice versa...As always Rosamond is faultless in her treatment of children and in her understanding of the child’s point of view; and substantially the best parts of the novel are those describing Rebecca’s thoughts and feelings, her relations with her sisters, and their interaction with Sybil Jardine’s three grandchildren...brother Malcolm, and the youngest, the spoilt, manipulative Cherry. For the rest, despite the undoubted quality of the writing, it is hard for a modern reader to comprehend how such ‘a thumping melodrama’, as even its author referred to it, could have been taken seriously, let alone praised and enjoyed."  Selina Hastings

The spirit of Mrs Jardin returns in Lehmann's last novel,A Sea-Grape Tree

Mel u

Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann (1927)

Earlier this month I read a novel by a writer, Rosamond  Lehmann,  quite famous in her day but perhaps faded a bit away now, An Invitation to the Waltz.  I loved this elegant, insightful book, especially for the long middle section devoted to a waltz in a country town in England.  I enjoy reading biographies of writers and very much like and do highly recommend Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings.  I was kindly given a review copy of her first novel, Dusty Answers just as I was An Invitation to the Waltz, her second work, by Open Media Publishing, a very dynamic company.

          Rosamond Lehmann (1901 to 1990, England)

Dusty Answers is the story the changing over the years relationships of Judith Earle and her cousins.  We first meet Judith, living with her affluent parents in a big house on the Thames River, when she discovers her six cousins are moving into the house next door, vacant for a long time.  We see the development of adolescent romances, Lehmann is a very acute depictor of the emotions and analytic processes of young women.  ( I guess as the father of daughters 17, 20, and 22 I am preinclined to notice such matters.)   She presents brilliantly the intense sometimes minutely  observed nuances in their thought processes. 

The cousins only stay at the house during vacations so we see emotional and physical changes impacting their relationships.  

I enjoyed this book very much.  My favorite section was devoted to Judith's early days at Cambridge, at a time when women were just starting to be allowed to attend.  We feel Judith's initial awkwardness in the opening days of school, where she is for the first time on her own, where everyone seems to already have a circle of friends but her. Even in the women's housing their are economic class distinctions, some students have beautifully furnished rooms, others Spartan.  It is lots of fun to see Judith get used to college life.   There are a lot of engaging gossiping conversations I enjoyed sitting in on.

In a very daring for 1927 treatment, we see Judith fall in love with a beautiful fellow student, Jennifer.  Relationships between women in this age bracket can be very intense without being sexual but clearly they love each other.  

Lehmann, I think, published nine books.  Open Media Press has all the books listed on their webpage with links to Amazon but none of the books as of now seem available for sale.  I hope this means that they will soon be available as Kindles.  

Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century. - from Open Media

This novel along with other works by Lehmann are being  published by Open Road Media.  The next time you are looking for something to read, especially if you prefer E reading as I do, take a look at their very well done webpage.  They have on offer books by over 2000 authors, all very well described and fairly priced.

http://www.openroadmedia.com/

Mel u

Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings (2002, 512 pages)

Just a few days ago I read my first work by Rosamond Lehmann, An Invitation to the Waltz.  I am now reading her first novel, which was received with great acclaim and made her famous, Dusty Answers.  

I greatly enjoy reading biographies of authors.  A good literary biography has to find a way to talk about the tale without losing the teller.  The temptation for biographers is to work backwards from the works and derive the writings of an author from her or his life experiences.  The literary biography is getting off to a very good start in the 21th century.  Recently I have read and posted upon very good biographies of Marcel Proust, his translator C. K. Scott Moncreiff, Colette, the Italian writer, Elsa Morante, Constance Fenimore Woolson, a neglected American writer, the incomparable Clarice Lispector and Iréne Nemirovsky.  Selina Hasting's Rosamond Lehmann is a suberb edition to this list.  

Lehmann (1901 to 1990) was born into an affluent family.  Her father was the founder of the literary journal Grata, a liberal member of parliament, a world class rowing coach and a pretty decent father.  Lehmann grew up pampered living a beautiful house on a river.  She was home schooled up until she entered Cambridge, just about the time women were first granted degrees.  She had a deep love for literature, particularly the great Victorian writers.  

Hastings tells us that as a writer and a woman Lehmann was always somehow in the not completely benevolent shadow of her great beauty.  (When I read this I thought of Clarice Lispector.)  She published seven novels, a collection of short stories and a spiritual autobiography.  She frequently lectured and was a vehement anti-Fascist.  

Once Lehmann graduates from Cambridge, Hasting structures the central part of the biography as an account of the men in Lehmann's life and the vagaries of her relationships.  She married in 1928, Wogan Philipps, Second Baron of Milford and an accomplished  artist.  They had two children, a son Hugo and a daughter Sally.  The marriage slowly disintegrated as the husband became deeply committed to communism and fought in the Spanish Civil War.  They divorced and she never remarried.

       Wogan Philips

 

  She had four long term love affairs, in each case her lover left her, sometimes for another woman.  Her longest romance was a nine year relationship with Cecil Lewis, a post Laureate of England.  She never got over the extreme almost unbalanced bitterness she felt toward Lewis, who was in fact married to another woman for the duration of their affair, when he left her for another woman, a well know actress.   Lehmann like and needed male validation of her beauty and sexual charisma.  I was surprised to learn of her brief fling with the James Bond Ian Fleming, on two trips to Jamaica. She has her share of short term relationships.

The biggest tragedy in the life of Lehmann was the death of her beloved daughter Sally in 1958.  Sally, also called STH,  was living in Indonesia where her husband had a government position. She died of a virus.  This event pushed Lehmann into a thirty year involvement  with spiritualism.  I learned, and it made perfect sense, that Spiritualusm first came to favor in England because of all the deaths of young men in their prime in World War One.  Of course Spiritualusm was fraught with many charlatans who claimed to let you communicate with the dead.  Lehmann for many years would write out letters from her daughter detailing the after life and was deeply involved in Spiritualusm. 

Hastings has a personal connection to Lehmann and I greatly respected her keeping this for the end of the book.  

For sure Hastings, who is deeply knowledgeable about the era, loves the work of Lehmann.  Lehmann. was  not, as I perceive her, always a joy to be around, she had a large ego combined with a strong need for male validation and a phobia of abandonment that impacted all her relationships.  She was highly intelligent, very into the best of literature, conscious of the power of her beauty, maybe as she aged a bit deluded on this, in need of validation from high status literary men, knew every body who was anybody in England, a writer of sublime power.  At her very best she belongs in the top ranks of 20th century writers.

There is a huge amount to be learned from Rosamond Lehmann A Life by Selina Hastings.  I strongly recommend it to all with an interest in the period. It is the very model of a literary biography. I would suggest you first read at least her Invitation to the Waltz.  

I have begun Hastings biography of Somerset Maugham, a close friend of Lehmann who stayed at his chateau in the south of France on several occasions.

Mel u

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann (1932)

"Invitation to the Waltz is a novel almost without flaw: delicate in structure, beautifully written, minutely observed,  moving and frequently very funny. Undoubtedly Rosamond’s best work, it is on this and on its distressing sequel, The Weather in the Streets, that her reputation must ultimately rest."  - Selina Hastings

I totally agree with Selina Hastings, whose suberb biography of Rosamond Lehmann I will soon post upon, invitation to the Waltz is a near flawless work of art.  I would add that it is also incredibly funny at times and a great look into the outlook of late adolescent girls.  In one segment I will talk a bit about, I actually gasped for joy at her wonderfully wicked comedic treatment of the guests at the waltz in a small English town.

         Rosamond  Lehmann 1901 to 1990 

The novel is set in small town England and is divided into three sections.  The opening segment is about the excitement generated when a teenage girl receives an invitation to a waltz, her first.  Lehmann does a wonderful job creating the feeling of excitement this generates in the family.  We are there for all the preparations.  The central and by far the longest section is devoted to the waltz.  It is a recurring event open to people of all ages.  Of course the girls in the story are excited over which boys will be there.  Once there the big worry is who to dance and chat with.  I admit I was a bit shocked to see that at the dance was an old lecher who used the opportunity to dance with young girls and pull them into him, the girls were of course disgusted by him.  Around people their parents age he is the epitome of an English country gentleman.  

There was one conversation that was just to brilliant for words.  One of the waltz guests is down from Oxford, just a bit older than the girls.  He is a poet, convinced he and his peer group are great writers, too brilliant for anyone at the waltz to follow.  Lehmann does just an almost too perfect rendition of the pretentiousness  of the young poet and the girl's reaction to him.   Just this section made the book a wonderful experience for me.

The last segment is after the waltz.  The girls have met people of a higher social standing, realized older men may not be as gentile as their patents think they are and of course they have their crushes on the handsome young men at the waltz, 

I really liked this book.  The prose is just so elegant.  I hope to reread it, perhaps next year.

I have begun her first novel Dusty Answers.  

Lehmann had  a fascinating life, deeply involved with many illustrious and not so much people, especially in Bloomsbury.  

Mel u