Amy Lee's story has been told and the writing, money and envy elements in Stella Gibbons's My American covered; now there is some amusing material, an unexpected connection and yet another unconvincing element to be commented on.
I find this very funny:
“It was May Day, and Mrs. Beeding was indignant because on her way out to buy sausages she had been held up by a procession of Communists and on her way back from buying sausages she had been held up by a procession of Fascists.”
Such processions were very common in London in the years leading up to World War II. This is from 1936, the year of Amy Lee's 21st birthday:
I know from experience how unpleasant it is to be pestered to say something or do something or go somewhere by someone who just cannot keep quiet or sit still and must have company at all times, but the descriptions of the young Mona Beeding's unwelcome, sometimes unbearable, demands do have their funny side in addition to being very painful to read because of the memories they stir up.
Amy's first evening with the Beeding family after her father's death slowly turns into a nightmare:
“Only Mona was left, a bored and ever-present peril to the occupied, lounging round the room, picking up things and dropping them again, putting on the headphones and taking them off, interrupting Baby’s game, saying at intervals she wished she hadn’t finished her knitting.
“Then go out and buy some more and start a new bit, do, Mona,” said her mother firmly at last, looking up over her spectacles. “Take sixpence out o’ my purse an’ go on, now, at once. You’re more worry than a blowfly over the meat, goin’ on like that.”
Mona decided that she would. “Coming, Aime?” She stopped by the door and caught hold of her friend’s pigtail. “Coo! Isn’t your hair thick! I wonder you don’t get spots on your face. Coming?”
Amy’s control snapped. She jerked her head violently away and sprang up, her imploring eyes turned on Mrs. Beeding. Mrs. Beeding did not fail her. “Go on, now, Mona. Amy doesn’t feel like going out just now. You run on...”"
Once again, Amy Lee is very lucky to have Mrs Beeding to come to the rescue and get Mona off her back. This comment about Amy is a good description of what can happen to fragile, unprotected children when they are in the wrong environment or with the wrong people:
“She was quite plainly porcelain to the Beeding’s clay, and Mr. Ramage knew that porcelain, especially the natural porcelain that does not get its fine glaze from money and culture, can crack and chip with painful ease when bumping alongside earthenware pots.”
Charlotte Brontë and demands to join in
It is always useful to put things into context; such experiences are very common in the lives of introverts, creative people and those who are different on the inside from the herd members who surround them. Their persecutors refuse to accept their requests to be left alone, which can be caused by a lack of inclination and/or ability to do what the other person wants, a need to rest and recharge after being overloaded, a wish to do something very different from what is proposed or a wish for the company of very different people from those around them.
Mona's attempt to drag Amy out to the shops reminds me very much of what the quiet and sensitive Lucy Snowe says about 'rude and intrusive treatment' in Charlotte Brontë's Villette, much of which is autobiographical:
“When I first came, it would happen once and again that a blunt German would clap me on the shoulder, and ask me to run a race; or a riotous Labassecourienne seize me by the arm and drag me towards the playground: urgent proposals to take a swing at the “Pas de Géant,” or to join in a certain romping hide-and-seek game called “Un, deux, trois” were formerly also of hourly occurrence...”
There is a difference here in that the schoolgirls have many other options when it comes to companions for their games; their attentions may be as much a sign of acceptance as an attempt to round up a stray herd member!
Lucy Snowe is an adult and has the authority of a teacher. She manages to get the schoolgirls to leave her alone by politely refusing to give in to their demands. Their attempts to make her join in their games die away, and she is left in peace to sit, read, dream and think her own thoughts in the 'classe'.
Leaving London for ever
Yet another unconvincing element in My American is Amy's attitude towards London once she has settled in the US with her new family and started writing a very different kind of story:
“She liked to remember London, and thought often and with affection of her friends there, but she did not miss the city painfully or long to live there with Bob. She had always been unhappy in London, whereas her happiness in Alva was so new, continuous and delightful that she never ceased to wonder at it.
On her last visit to England two years ago she had revisited all her former haunts with the kind of fearful pleasure that a freed prisoner might feel as he curiously turned over in his hands the chains that had bound him. She had been Up Highgate...”
So why then did Stella Gibbons stay close to the place where she had been so unhappy as a child and express her great love for the area in her writing?
I doubt whether Amy Lee would really have been happy to live so far away from London and its amenities and attractions. How could she bear to leave all the familiar scenes and the beauties of Highgate and Kenwood behind?
“Here was Highgate Village, with all the little old shops lit up. It stood on the highest hilltop for miles. Amy was always glad when the Number 11 tram got to the bottom of Highgate Hill in case it ran away faster and faster, and fell at last into the twinkling, sparkling mass of lights at the bottom.”
This vintage poster, with the red tram on the right of the picture starting to descend the steep hill, might have been designed specifically to illustrate the above description of the start of Amy's nightmare journey:
