A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym

A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym

published 1958

 

[Excerpt - Preparing for a drinks party] ‘I’m longing to see what you’ve brought to wear,’ said Rowena later, when we were cutting up things to go on bits of toast and little biscuits. ‘Your clothes are always so elegant.’

‘It’s a sort of mole-coloured velvet dress,’ I said, ‘and I shall wear my Victorian garnet necklace and earrings with it.’

‘How lovely it will be to see somebody not in black! We all wear it here for parties – like a kind of uniform, just with different jewellery and little touches, you know. I suppose it’s because we get so few opportunities to wear it, and women always think black suits them, don’t they? Or they heard some man once say that it did.’

comments: I don’t suppose the party dress was nearly as fanciful as this one (& it's not velvet),  but I did want to show Wilmet distinguishing herself from the other women…

A Glass of Blessings came up in the mourning series of posts recently (a lilac coat), but there is more to Wilmet than that… I have read it several times, and always love it.

She is a very unusual Pym heroine: she does not resemble any of the others, not Dulcie or Mildred or Catherine, all different in their ways. Perhaps because she is least like one’s idea of Pym herself, where the other women seem to express some part of her character.

Wilmet is married and comfortably off and really only has herself to consider: she is a nice person, but she is quite self-centred, and lazy, but in a tremendously attractive way. She narrates the story in an honest-seeming manner, recording her casual thoughts and perceptions quite unabashedly. It is difficult to explain what is so splendid about her, but splendid is what she is.

It’s also a picture of middle-class suburban life in London, full of fascinating details. Wilmet enjoys church-going, and likes a bit of quiet flirting with Piers, her friend’s brother, while not paying much attention to her husband Roddy, and fighting off Harry, her friend’s husband.

She lives with her husband and her mother-in-law Sybil in a very satisfactory manner: you assume this arrangement will be the problem, but Pym does a very good job of showing them all very happy together. Life is extremely comfortable, but perhaps not very exciting, not how Wilmet might have hoped in the past.

‘…his manner more pompous than in the days when I had stood on his shoulders to write my name on the ceiling of an officers’ mess somewhere near Naples.’

And this is the item that Wilmet does have in common with Pym: both were in the Wrens in Italy during WW2, and perhaps suburban life is dull after that. I think the writing on the ceiling is from Pym’s own life. And Wilmet and her friend Rowena reminisce about Rocky Napier from those days – Rocky who is a character in Excellent Women.  

She goes to stay with Rowena and her room ‘seemed so very comfortable, somehow even more than my room at home – perhaps because I could be alone in it.’ When everyone goes in to town on Saturday morning, Rowena has this bizarre suggestion for Wilmet:

‘Would you like to go in and have a gin with Harry, while I wait in the car with the children?’ - taking self-abegnation too far.

There are descriptions of a Portuguese language evening class, and of a trip to a blood donors’ clinic, and a shopping expedition to buy a dress: the kind of scenes that don’t feature in novels much, a valuable resource.

And Wilmet is very good on her clothes.

I always take trouble with my clothes, and being tall and dark I usually manage to achieve some kind of distinction. Today I was in pale coffee brown with touches of black and coral jewellery.

 

Then there’s this, as she decides what to wear for a flirty lunch:

In my mind I went over all my clothes, allowing for every possible kind of weather – though if it were wet I should of course take a taxi, so that rain did not really matter. In the end I decided on a new dark grey suit with my marten stole and a little turquoise velvet hat.

The key detail is surely the taxi – most women in Pym novels wouldn’t dream of wasting money that way.

She has strong feelings about others’ clothes: on this very date:

I saw that he was wearing a duffle coat, a garment I do not approve of for grown men’s London wear.

She helps her sad friend choose clothes:

‘A sort of wool dress suitable for parish evening occasions’ – I turned the depressing description over in my mind. Poor Mary, was that really all the social life she had? I supposed that it must be….

‘And you could always dress up the neckline with pearls,’ I said enthusiastically, like a fashion magazine.

‘Yes, I have the string Father gave me on my twenty-first birthday,’ said Mary.

‘Oh, not English gentlewoman real pearls,’ I said. ‘I mean artificial ones like we saw downstairs – two or three strings at least – perhaps pink ones, they would give you a kind of glow.’

Wilmet discusses this same friend with a curate:

‘Ah yes, Mary is a fine person,’ he said thoughtfully.

I did not quite know what to make of this. I should not myself have felt particularly flattered at being so described, but then it was inconceivable that anyone should describe me in this way.

Alan Bennett is someone you might link with Pym, that gimlet eye for detail.

Wilmet mentions

A tall bearded young man, whose string bag revealed a loaf of bread (the wrapped sliced kind), a tin of Nescafé and two books from a public library, filled me with a kind of sadness, as if his whole life had been revealed

-Though it would be a very Pym-heroine set of things to be carried. But not Wilmet of course. A wonderful heroine who stands up to many re-readings.

And I like the book so much there will be another post...

Dress with black touches from Clover Vintage.

Fancy evening frock, same source.

Dark grey suit, Clover again.