My Friends by Jane Duncan



the books: My Friends the Mrs Millers

published 1965


My Friends from Cairnton

published 1966


both by Jane Duncan






[It is the 1920sthe young heroine – who is about 18 in this passage – has just met an old schoolmate who is about to get married]

I was at an age when I was somewhat confused about weddings and matrimony in general. It is difficult at this distance of time to formulate this confusion of mine and this distrust that was in me of the pageantry of the bride with her white lilies, surrounded by a bevy of bridesmaids with their red roses which were a symbol in my mind of ‘roses, roses all the way’, a symbol which my mind, even out of its very limited experience, rejected as completely false….

Even my hard-headed grandmother and my sensible aunt at Reachfar always greeted the news of an engagement with a dewy-eyed pleasure that sat strangely upon them, and seemed to set great store by the form and ceremony of the occasion, down to the last detail of the trimming the bride’s going-away hat…

It seemed to me grossly unimportant if, at the initial ceremony, the bride carried sweet peas or thistles or whether her honeymoon nightdress was of crepe-de-chine or sackcloth.


observations: Sometimes I think that I am the only person to have read a Jane Duncan book in 30 years, but if there are more of us, then surely we would all be saying in unison: ‘well she would say that, wouldn’t she?’ Heroine (and, one assumes, Jane Duncan’s alter ego/Mary Sue) Janet Sandison – who features in 19 books about her not wildly exciting life – has a very smug happy partnership with Twice Alexander, and is commonly known as Mrs Alexander, but she is no such thing. She lives in sin, unable to marry because of Twice’s RC starter wife who refuses to divorce him. As ever, the infuriating Janet thinks she is more moral than anyone else because of this. She is forever judging others, and taking a high virtuous line about this and that, and knowing for sure that her rules of living are the only correct ones, but she seems very light-hearted about the living in sin, for her era – both Jane and Janet were born in 1910. (It is a tribute to Duncan’s larger-than-life character that I seem to be ending up criticizing her for having unmarried sex, something I would never normally do). But I think this excerpt shows that subconsciously Janet does want to be married –she is exemplifying sour grapes in the true sense of the metaphor.

CiB is covering two of the books this time – they aren’t bad, both featuring a lot about life on the (fictional) West Indies island of St Jago in the 1950s, the usual of-its-time farrago about race relations, and flashbacks to idyllic Reachfar, and not-so-nice Cairnton, both in Scotland, places she lived in her youth.

There is a description of another young woman in the Scotland of the 1920s:
‘You know how bonnie she is and she’s got so much personality - ’ In the 1920s ‘personality’ meant ‘sexual attraction’ in most vocabularies, ‘ – I mean, she’s got what they call IT.’
That has changed over the years – ‘she’s got a lovely personality’ in my day was the answer to ‘is she pretty?’ and meant ‘no she isn’t’. The question of sex appeal and IT was a great trope of Agatha Christie’s (she liked the idea of having a ‘come hither’ look) and also turns up in Nancy Mitford.

We have had some lovely weddings brides and dresses on the blog (being superficial, like everyone else except for Janet) – see the labels below – but none for a while. This picture, from the National Library of Ireland, is a 1928 wedding, complete with lilies and bridesmaids and roses. It was held at Lismore Castle, one of the homes of the Dukes of Devonshire.

Comments

  1. Moira - It's funny you'd mention how judgemental Janet is. I picked that up in that snipped you shared. But at the same time, it's an interesting look at the customs of the day. And it's really interesting also about the whole discussion of sex appeal. Christie uses it and so do other authors of the day and they find such clever ways of bring it up without being 'unseemly.'

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    1. Thanks Margot, and yes it's such an interesting thing to think about, the whole question of women and their sexiness, and how you get that information out - reading older books can be a revelation!

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  2. Glad you managed to sneak in a Mitford mention, I was getting withdrawal symptoms, but I'm ok now I have had my weekly fix!
    I think we've been down this road before, but I don't think I've ever read a book by anyone called Jane.....we all know where this tangent ends.

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    1. Yes, best not to go into the whole Jane thing just yet. Plenty of time when we next have a challenge.... and I knew you were missing the Mitfords so I made sure to include one.

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  3. Your use of the term 'starter wife' really made me chuckle - and I'm afraid I have not read this author ... yet!

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    1. Thanks Sergio! And I think Jane Duncan is one of those authors where my claim is that I'm reading it so you don't have to....

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  4. I am glad to know that you are reading these so I don't have to. Actually these sound a bit more interesting than others you have mentioned. Jane is judgmental but I agree with her about weddings. I avoid them (but then I am antisocial) and it is money spent frivolously. But... When I care enough to go to one, I cry.

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    1. Weddings can certainly get out of hand, Tracy, and some of the modern arrangements (the expense, the demand for everything to be part of a plan, the elaborate weekends beforehand for the couple's friends) make me sigh, so I agree with you. But they don't have to be like that, and a really good wedding is lovely...

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  5. I've been lurking for a while here but am emerging because I've been re-reading Jane Duncan (read her when I was young and wanted to re-visit) and rather enjoying them, but there are lots to go. But I too agree with her about weddings, on the whole - though there was a young woman on the radio yesterday saying she'd only spent £500 on hers, which I thoroughly approved of. And okay, it was the early 70s when I got married but I wouldn't have been seen dead in a white dress...
    On the other hand, I do like old wedding photographs, and the one you chose is delicious!

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    1. Are you blogging or reviewing them? - I'd love to read someone else's view. I am quite critical when I write about them, but I am enjoying going through the series enormously. I first read them when I was a teenager.

      I got married in the 1980s, and there was a move to informality then, which I highly approved of, and I thought that would continue, so I was horrified when things swung back the other way, with over-the-top arrangements and mad expense. But from blog and picture point of view - elaborate is better!

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  6. I discovered Jane Duncan in my late teens as well- my mother owned most of them. I tend to enjoy them less for Janet and more for the minor characters who appear- here I love Kathleen Malone, the great singer, and Violetta Cervi, the flirt with a warm heart. I felt she did a good job of presenting them as people in their own right, and in showing a bit of the tensions that existed at the time between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. I think her minor characters are often more likeable than Janet in some ways.

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    1. We really do share a lot of book tastes! The author/heroine very much annoys me sometimes, but as you say, the minor characters and the social details are always worth it.

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    2. We both have good taste! :)

      Janet definitely tends towards the preachy and perfect at times, but for me, the snapshots of the era are what make the books interesting. There's a lot of stuff in "high society" kinds of diaries and books from the time, but we don't often get to see what things looked like for someone who wasn't wealthy or titled.

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    3. Yes you are so right - it is very interesting to get those details, I think the books are a real sociological record.

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