Greenbanks

Greenbanks, Persephone Book No. 95, was picked as the Choice of the Book Society in the summer of 1932. Some weeks later, the novelist Hugh Walpole wrote about Greenbanks at length. It had been chosen because of its creation of character. To put it plainly, in Dorothy Whipples picture of a quite ordinary family before and after the war there is some of the best creation of living men and women that we have had for a number of years in the English novel. She is a novelist of true importance.

He went on: I believe Greenbanks will be remembered for a long time to come because of the characters of two people in it, the grandmother Louisa and the granddaughter Rachel. In them Dorothy Whipple has performed splendidly the great job of the novelist, which is to increase for us infinitely the population of the living world. Every character in this quiet book is alive. Louisa is an old woman rather muddle-headed, generous, sometimes irresponsible, always governed by the emotions of a loving, anxious heart, which is at the same time never sentimental, who has become as real to me as any of the ladies in Cranford. Rachel is alive from the first instant. She, perhaps, is more of an achievement than Louisa, for kindly dear old women are frequently successful in novels, but a child who is real and charming and quite natural, moving through those difficult years from 10 to 18, cannot be easy to create. This is a quiet and a true book. It is also a beautiful book.

The Spectator reviewed Greenbanks at the end of September 1932, after Cold Comfort Farm (of which it preferred the first half). It said: Greenbanks is a pleasant, quiet, delightful domestic book, lifted head and shoulders above the ranks of pleasant, quiet, delightful domestic books by the uncanny accuracy of the portraiture and the lightness and delicacy of its touch. Louisa lives at the house, with her brood gathered more or less around here. Jim and Ambrose, her virtuous and self-satisfied son and son-in-law, make league against Charles, her rolling-stone son, whom she adores. Laura, her daughter, marries the wrong man out of pique. It is all perfectly ordinary and far from undistinguished. The portraits of Laura, Rachel, and Ambrose (particularly Ambrose) are as good as they can be.

Greenbanks was Dorothy Whipples third novel after Young Anne (1927) and High Wages (1930). Yet the first mention of it in her diary was despairing: I cannot get on with Greenbanks. Shall I ever have done with it? However, when she handed the book over to her agent, and was so relieved to get rid of the book, she was sorry to see Louisa, Rachel, Kate, Letty, Ambrose – all of them, troop silently away. They have finished with me…. Quite quickly there was a mostly nice report from her publishers Reader pointing to the very shrewd and natural gift of depicting her middle-class characters etc, etc. Then her English publisher called it much her best work and the former was good and her American publisher wrote: Greenbanks is one of the loveliest books I have read in a long time. When she received Hugh Walpoles Book Society piece, she copied down phrases so that I can turn to it when I fe...