The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons
published 1950, sometimes listed as 1949
Faint unearthly light and a deep hush lay over the fields; when a star glided out now and then from behind the scudding brown clouds its bright eye entered the scene as if alive and watching them, and the snow sparkling and crinching underfoot in the torch-rays seemed protesting as if aroused from cold, light sleep. Suddenly bells began to peal, faintly and far away; another tower in the night took up the sound; then Saint Wilfred’s three miles off, and soon the air was filled with it. Strange, wild, rejoicing sound! untamed yet familiar, having nothing to do with any peace except that peace which comes after unimaginable struggle and passeth understanding, clanging and ringing out over the darkened earth to remind it of the unbelievable truth.
The Christmas-y picture is by John Verney, 20thC author and
illustrator who wrote some wonderful
children’s books. At the end of
this post you can find out more about the series of pictures of
which this is one. With thanks again to Sebastian Verney, his son. The magazine
is from 1948, so spot on. I know the picture is full of people and the text isn't, but I still thought they fitted together.
Sylvia has just arrived in a small village in Sussex, ready to join a local farm as a landgirl, and stops off at the local café. It is Christmas Eve.
The place certainly did look
pretty; but corny, of course, like an old-fashioned Christmas card, she
thought, and even the pub’s shut—anyway, I’m not going to try muscling in
there—and I suppose you could die in the street before anyone’d take you in and
give you a cup of tea; gosh, a cup of tea’d be marvellous. Then, on the
opposite side of the street, she caught sight of the Linga-Longa Café. As
usual, its windows were so steamy that it was impossible to see what was that
it was impossible to see what was going on inside, but there were people, and
they were moving about; and there was a notice hanging in the window that said
OPEN. Hardly believing in her luck, she crossed the road and opened the door.
comments: This entry got rushed through the system:
The Matchmaker came
up in the comments on another post. There might have been various reasons for
that – deep interest round here in WW2 Home Front and post-war books, landgirls
and prisoners of war. A number of
Gibbons books have featured in the past, I have enjoyed many of them. Matchmaker
has been described as an updating of Jane
Austen’s Emma – a subject of much discussion on the blog
lately.
Then, I just did posts on Ember
Lane by Sheila Kaye-Smith: she’s one of the authors
said to have inspired Gibbons to write the all-time classic that is Cold
Comfort Farm.
In fact it was Ember Lane, but an unlikely detail:
chicken farming. Twice in recent months we have looked at the trope of men
(mostly) moving to the country to invest their modest savings or army gratuity
in poultry, almost certainly doomed to failure. A particularly dreary way to
lose your money – you wish they had played poker or bought stocks and shares or
a racehorse.
So – here’s part of the conversation
Susanna 3
December 2025 at 10:59
Good to spot another example of the unsuccessful
ex-serviceman poultry farmer - as discussed in your post on Casual Slaughters.
Though that was good fun and this one sounds thoroughly miserable.
Anonymous 3
December 2025 at 15:42
There's a chicken farmer in a book by stella gibbons can't
remember title, just postwar. Lucy
Christine Harding 3
December 2025 at 20:56
That popped into my mind too. I think it might be The
Matchmaker.
Marty
3
December 2025 at 22:15
I think Christine is correct. One character's life
practically revolved around his flock!
Christine Harding4
December 2025 at 13:52
I wouldn’t recommend it. One read is one too many! Started
well, but ended up making me want to hurl it across the room. Usually, when
books are ideologically unsound/politically incorrect, I think you have to
place them in the context of their time. But for some reason this one made me
really furious.
And you would want to slap the Matchmaker....
Anonymous5
December 2025 at 07:25
Adding my voice to the negative chorus - the only book I've
read by Stella Gibbons that I've really disliked. Sovay
1.
Clothes
In Books5
December 2025 at 10:11
This is hilarious - I am absolutely going to have to skim
through it now.
So I did! And Everybody was right – it’s not a nice book at
all, and I did want to hurl it across the room (but it was on Kindle). It is
seriously hard to believe that clever, light, charming Gibbons, good-hearted
and easy-going, wrote this snobbish, horrible, Mary Sue piece of nonsense. (Yet
I mysteriously have a lot to say about it, and there will be another post
later.)
And I remembered more about the book as I read it: I was a
huge fan of CCFarm, and years later
discovered she had written other books (via Arthur Marshall’s column in
the New Statesman back in the day, if you’re interested) and decided to try
one. Unfortunately I hit on The Matchmaker, and as a result did not read
anything else by her for literally years. I cautiously started again, but only
during blog days, and have really enjoyed some of them…Another Christmas
entry here.
So what is so bad about it? (it should be said that of
course some people like the book very much, find it very enjoyable)
Gibbons always had a tendency to snobbishness, but would
save herself with some sweet comments, an eye for the absurdity of it all. In a
post on The
Bachelor, I said the author ‘is a strange mixture of
being sometimes judgemental and sometimes not…she can be excruciatingly snobbish, but also empathetic’,
and I gave an example there that I think very much summed that up.
No such redemption here. It is unchecked.
Alda is the heroine, mother of three girls, husband still
away most of the time, house bombed. She moves into a fairly horrible cottage
in the country while she waits for new accommodation and to get her husband
back. A positive: The book is good on making it clear how many wartime
restrictions carried on for years after the fighting finished – the POWs,
rationing, rules and restrictions, people not released from their wartime
roles.
Alda is a piece of work, who genuinely believes she is
better than everyone else. Gibbons seems to agree: this reader doesn’t. She is
determined to marry off her great friend who comes to stay, and Sylvia, above.
More complaints in another post in the New Year; but I did
like these two festive scenes - the book covers a year with deep attention to
the seasons.
Pen and ink drawing by Edmund Xavier Kapp: it is ‘ready for Christmas at the canteen under St Martin-in-the-Fields’, from the Imperial War Museum.
Comments
Post a Comment