Josephine Tey
Page 29
The novel is set in ‘Leys Physical Training College’, a fictional establishment, but one that is based very firmly on Beth MacKintosh’s real-life college, Anstey. ‘Leys’ is a local Inverness place name, perhaps the name of the hospital where Beth was a VAD, one more example of her enjoyment in choosing names for her fiction. The book is so accurate in its description of the college building and grounds that a former Anstey student could pinpoint the exact room where ‘Miss Pym’ stays.
Miss Pym is a visiting lecturer, and old schoolmate of the headmistress Henrietta, who comes to give the students a talk on psychology, and stays because she likes the atmosphere and then becomes interested in the students themselves, before becoming involved in the mystery surrounding the student Rouse’s death.
Rouse’s death had its real-life counterpart in Beth’s accident in the Oban High School gym in the 1920s, while the impetus behind the crime reputedly was based on how Beth felt when she was passed over for first prize in art and recommendation to art college when she was at the IRA.7 However, it is not entirely certain that the murder is the real ‘crime’ in the book. In some ways, Henrietta’s short-sightedness in not offering a prestigious teaching post to Mary Innes and offering it instead to Rouse is presented as equally dreadful. Innes herself also accepts blame for being unable to control her reactions. It is an intensely moral book. The mystery is not just who committed the crime, but who is to blame and why, and it shows how small decisions are more important than large ones in creating criminals – and creating people.
The world of women at Leys College is described in detail, as are Miss Pym’s impressions of people and her shock when her assessments turn out to be wrong. The appearance of her characters was important to Tey, as she was describing girls in a physical environment, but they are always linked for her with description of character. Josephine Tey has a keen eye for describing the sporting: ‘Except for a string of two-year-olds in training, Lucy could think of nothing more attractive to mind and eye than that set of burnished and controlled young creatures busy dragging out the booms.’8 She was well aware of the physical training and control necessary to produce a gymnast, but did not stint on the descriptions of the injuries that training could produce. In Miss Pym Disposes characters are revealed not only in physical description, but also through insights about what details (such as the type of shoes a character wears) mean about a character’s background (Mrs Innes is poor) and what that might then mean for the development of not only that person, but also the others they come into contact with (how would being poor have affected Mary Innes?). The minutiae of everyday life lead to revelations about the self and others. This is the way both Miss Pym and Alan Grant approach understanding their suspects – in fact, the way they understand all of those around them.
Miss Pym Disposes is a murder mystery where the mystery does not happen until the final third of the book, and we are not even sure there has been a murder until even later. Tey was playing with the conventions of mystery or crime writing, and she was getting better at it with each novel. She was also subverting other restrictions by using the crime genre: if Miss Pym had been marketed as a ‘straight’ novel it would probably have been aimed at women, whereas ‘crime’ novels cut across this problem, being generally read equally by men and women. Crime fiction may not have been taken seriously by all critics, but it had many benefits for the author, and many authors were taking it extremely seriously indeed.
Josephine Tey had written two successful crime novels already, and was starting to see the possibilities of the genre: the way the author can use the framework and structure to build upon and climb through, leading the reader to unexpected places, and exploring whatever topics please them safe in the knowledge that the reader will follow, so long as the author never forgets to present a solution to the book’s central crime. In The Man in the Queue the murder happens in chapter one; in A Shilling for Candles we are given the familiar character of Grant to identify with. In Miss Pym Disposes we have an unknown central character, the unusual and untypical setting of a girls’ physical education college, and no immediate mystery. There is a lot of psychology, face-reading and, finally, a murder that might not actually be the main crime in the book after all. The title hints at the moral, religious core of the book: Miss Pym is advised to ‘let God dispose’ – but chooses not to. We have to make up our own minds, as readers, whether or not she has made the right choice. Josephine Tey’s character development and the way that she played with unorthodox structure were the strengths of her crime writing, and they were what she used to advantage in all her novels from this point onwards. This character-driven approach was also typical of crime novels of the period. Although Josephine Tey had started writing in the Golden Age of the crime novel, and is usually associated with this era and the strange halcyon summer of the interwar years, most of her mysteries are actually from the late 1940s and early 1950s, and can be seen as a bridge between the more ‘classic’ crime novel which centres on a puzzle, and the modern crime novel with its focus on character and realism. Her Tey books, though often very ‘modern’ in feel, are sometimes vague about dates, occasionally mentioning ‘the war’, but not going into other details.
Beth was always a great reader, and she continued to read the detective fiction that was being written. There are two that come to mind when reading Miss Pym Disposes – Laurels are Poison and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night. Laurels are Poison had been published in 1942, one of the long series of crime novels written by Gladys Mitchell and featuring her detecting character Mrs Bradley. Grouping Mitchell, Tey and Sayers together shows how broad a church ‘crime fiction’ can be: although superficially Laurels are Poison’s setting of a women’s teacher training college foreshadows Miss Pym Disposes, Mitchell is writing a different sort of breezy entertainment. Her books have dated faster than Tey (or Sayers) because of some of her views of morality, as well as her then-up-to-date discussion of lunacy, or her depiction of black servants. Gladys Mitchell’s work is currently being reprinted, and is undergoing a minor revival, well deserved as it brings readers her bracing, puzzle-solving plots. Mitchell was a fan of Gordon Daviot and Josephine Tey, and makes reference to this in her novel when Deb plans to suggest that her students put on a production of Richard of Bordeaux.9 Some critics have seen echoes of Gladys Mitchell in Tey, and it seems Tey had read Mitchell’s work.10 There’s every chance Mitchell and Tey met in person, albeit briefly, as they crossed the same literary circles, though Beth preferred to observe, while Mitchell was a joiner, a member of the Society of Authors, PEN and the Detection Club.11
The Detection Club was set up in 1930, and was a social meeting place that counted among its members Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and G. K. Chesterton, among many others. The club still exists, but there is no record that Josephine Tey was ever a member.12 She may, however, have met Dorothy L. Sayers elsewhere, as they shared an agent in the early 1930s. Josephine Tey’s mystery novels have more in common with Dorothy L. Sayers’s than with others of the Golden Age of crime writing, but in person the two women were very dissimilar, as Dorothy was as loud and outgoing as Beth was quiet and reserved. There are rumours that they did meet, and that Sayers was unimpressed.13 Their careers have many parallels, though, and by the 1940s Sayers had moved towards the theatre, and towards religious topics. Her radio plays, such as The Man Born to Be King, had been broadcast during the Second World War, and were controversial to some for the way that she chose to put modern language in the mouths of historical, Biblical characters – the same approach that Gordon Daviot had taken both in Richard of Bordeaux and in her own recent Biblical plays like The Little Dry Thorn and the shorts in Leith Sands. The thoughtful subject matter of the best of Sayers’s Wimsey novels, and their strong sense of morality – such as Wimsey’s unhappiness at condemning criminals to the death penalty – are appealing in the same way that Josephine Tey’s characters are. ‘Neat but not gaudy,’ says Alan Grant in The Daughter of Time, echoing Sayers,
and Gaudy Night is an obvious companion to Miss Pym Disposes.14 The books both deal with the return of the author to her alma mater, but where Sayers meditates at length on the fitness of women for Oxford life, and the constant clash between intellectual and social life – the endless choice for women between a career and a family – Anstey students have a calm certainty about their careers and their futures.
Beth herself had managed to find the balance between work and her family obligations caring for Colin – but, unlike Dorothy L. Sayers, who had a child and was married (though not to the father of her child), Beth had not had the choice between marriage and work.15 Circumstances had taken that choice away from her when Hugh McIntosh died. Gaudy Night is concerned, on one level, with whether marriage can take place between intellectual equals, and how this can be negotiated. Miss Pym mentions vaguely ‘the Alan years’, but, now that she is older and the choice of marriage is no longer open to her, she sees the advantages of her single life. Dorothy L. Sayers is equally clear that marriage should only be undertaken to the right man. Harriet Vane’s creator wrote her someone perfect, but Josephine Tey shows that, even if there isn’t someone perfect, there is still plenty to live for.
Beth always said that she never regretted her choice of Anstey, and the college was a supremely good training ground for life. It achieved for its students the elusive balance between the mental and the physical, with the potential to produce well-rounded individuals. Miss Pym Disposes, in its murder theme, shows how the intense training could be flawed, but in writing the book Josephine Tey showed how well the training could work. Given the subject matter of the novel – unfairness, death, murder – the reader might be expected to be left with a bitter aftertaste after reading, but instead is left feeling that the book has created a world that we want to re-enter: we want to know, as Lucy does, how Desterro’s wedding will go. The characters live on after the book is finished. They have hope.
Miss Pym Disposes became a cult novel for students at Anstey, where it was received with delight.16 Anstey produced a yearly magazine, which was sent to Old Girls, and Beth, still at her ‘home’ address, had never lost touch with the college. The communications with Old Girls had become more frequent towards the end of the war, which was probably one impetus behind the writing of Miss Pym Disposes – the reason being that the college was making arrangements to celebrate their Jubilee year, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the college, in 1947. Two major events were held for Old Girls, the first being a dinner at the Normandie Hotel in Knightsbridge, London. The lunch was well attended, and students and Old Girls were surprised and pleased to find the author of Miss Pym Disposes had made the effort to attend. Many other students who had not been in touch with the college for years also appeared. Anstey held fond memories for many of its students. Its reputation had only been enhanced in the fifty years since it was founded and its longevity and health were rightly seen as a great achievement. An ‘almost pre-war lunch’ of three courses, followed by coffee, was offered, and then students from several different eras gave short speeches reminiscing on their time at college and the changes that had taken place.17 No one from Beth’s time spoke, and none of the other students from her graduating year were there. The atmosphere, however, was extremely welcoming and positive, and the report in the following college magazine read in part, ‘it seemed almost incredible that so many people could have benefited and gained such privileges from one person’s initiative and energy and I only wished Miss Anstey could have seen the happy result of all her effort’.
Rhoda Anstey had founded an impressive college which had provided a strong foundation for several generations of women students, who had gone on to do remarkable things. The college magazine gave brief summaries of many of the former students’ careers, which ranged from being organizer of PE for Wolverhampton, owner of a country inn, selector for Midland Women’s Hockey Association, housewifery at home and as far away as Kenya, and appointments in the Ministry of Education. At the bottom of one page is the listing for E. MacKintosh, authoress, mentioning both Richard of Bordeaux and Miss Pym Disposes, alongside pleas for news of other graduates of 1917, and testimonials from other former students: ‘[I] have had a very busy time since May,’ wrote one Mrs Williamson, ‘with farm and poultry work, as my husband broke his leg very badly just below the knee. How very useful I have found my training in Massage and First Aid! The doctor is astounded at the wonderful full recovery and use of the knee.’18 Anstey students were nothing if not varied, and Beth found their company at the meal in London congenial.
A further lunch was held at Anstey itself in July 1947. The principal of the college was now Miss Squire, who had taken over in 1927 from the Mrs Bridgeman whom Beth would have remembered from her own time at Anstey.19 The new principal, Miss Squire, had trained at Bedford before working for a time in Edinburgh and then in Bristol. Miss Squire had made an impact from the beginning of her appointment, and, increasing student enrolment, she continued to push for official recognition for the college, and the highest, university level certification, as well as keeping up with new trends in physical fitness such as the interest in mountaineering and outdoor pursuits. Just two years later, by 1949, the college was sending students to the Highlands to train, to Glenmore Lodge in Aviemore.20 Beth felt on familiar ground with both Anstey and the new principal. A large photograph exists of all the students, Old Girls and staff who attended the second Jubilee event at Anstey itself, but it’s not clear enough to distinguish whether Beth attended this second event. In the second row, a smiling woman in dark hair, seated next to some of the staff, looks familiar. Beth certainly kept up her connection with the college now that she had re-established it, and was to visit the college again at a crucial point in her life.
Josephine Tey was not trying to hide her past any more. Although she was still using a pseudonym she had exposed part of the secret to a journalist and had become much more comfortable with it, and she was returning also to her earlier life as Beth MacKintosh. ‘Mary Innes’ in the novel makes a resolution at an early age that will take her back to a home town that she hates: was it the right decision or not? I think Beth’s personal assessment of her own life led her, after the Second World War, not only to re-think her past and to use it as a basis for fiction, but to come to accept the choices that she had made. It was this acceptance that led to the renewed creativity that gave us the Josephine Tey books. Living in Inverness and caring for Colin was not always easy, or her preferred choice, but she felt it was the right choice, and had made it work.
Beth’s personal situation in Inverness, after the Second World War, had changed considerably. When she was little, she had been part of an extended family, and, although she was a private person, she had plenty of relatives around her. After the Second World War, it becomes harder to trace many of Beth’s relatives. Partly this is because records are not made public until after a certain amount of time has passed, and 1946 is still relatively recent compared with researching Beth’s ancestors from the late 1800s, but partly it is because Beth and her father Colin had grown so distant from her immediate family. She had become quite isolated in Inverness, partly through her own choice, but partly also because of the losses and changes of the Second World War. Inverness, even after the troops, evacuees and prisoners of war left, was no longer the same sort of town with the same old people. The class system that Colin had fought so hard against was changing, new families were moving in, and the housing shortages after the war led to a building programme that was to expand the town dramatically, with new houses, for example, being added to the post-World War I building projects in Dalneigh.
From being at the centre of those two hopeful families, the Hornes and the MacKintoshes, Beth was now on her own with only Colin. Although he maintained some links with Applecross and Shieldaig, Colin had grown apart from the other members of his family living in Inverness, though he still had close friends who lived nearby. At over eighty, Colin was now in failing health, and neighbou
rs remember Beth having to support him when he walked.21 Although Colin still owned and ran his fruiterer’s shop, he relied more and more on his two shop assistants, Annie Macpherson and Barbara Cameron. Perhaps worried about his health, Colin wrote a will in 1946 which shows that he valued his shop assistants’ help highly, making financial provision for each of them.22 He did not, however, leave any provision for any of his other relatives except his daughters. His nephews and nieces were not mentioned by name, and it becomes difficult to trace what happened to Colin and Josephine MacKintosh’s brothers and sisters and their children. Certainly at least one of Beth’s cousins, Peter Horne (son of Josephine’s younger brother Robert) had died in the First World War, and other cousins had died young, but there seems now to be no one left in Inverness who claims kinship with Beth MacKintosh.23
The cousins who had grown up and married had either moved away, or had gradually lost contact with Colin and Elizabeth. For example, there is no further trace of Colin’s older sister Mary, or her illegitimate son Donald.24 Robert Horne had remarried after the death of his first wife, but he too had died in 1943, and his ‘second’ family don’t seem to have kept in close contact with Colin and Beth. Colin had simply outlived many of his siblings and in-laws, and those of his family who were still in town simply had little in common with him, and so had lost touch. Robert Horne, for example, was a school janitor, and although his family tree, and the repeated use of certain names, clearly shows the interest he took in his family history, it was the Ellis and Horne connections that he favoured – there was no interest in his brother-in-law Colin, or literary works by one Elizabeth MacKintosh.25