There are novels which, from the opening sentence, immediately draw in the reader, starting them on a journey. Sometimes this can be a rather solitary expedition, while in other cases the reading traveller finds themselves in the company of someone who, by the end, has possibly become somewhat less of a stranger. The traveller may have learned something too. One such novel is The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor, first published in May one hundred years ago by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Although Flora Macdonald Mayor (1872-1932) published several other books, including a volume of ghost stories, today she is almost certainly only remembered for this one novel.
‘Dedmayne is an insignificant village in the Eastern counties.’ The first two chapters of The Rector’s Daughter are an intense Impressionist portrait painted with economy and poise. The reader is introduced to Dedmayne and its society (or lack of it). We see the Rector himself, Canon Jocelyn, who has been in charge of the parish for forty-three years and at eighty-two still cuts a ‘thin, stately figure’. The Rector is a literary man, scholar and author, expert in classical and theological subjects: when not undertaking his few liturgical and pastoral duties, he keeps to his study. His intellect and cool objectivity make him a figure of some authority for the clerical colleagues and young curates who seek his counsel.
The Rector’s daughter is Mary, who at thirty-five has remained at home with her father, a widower. She cares for Ruth, her ‘imbecile’ sister. The two Jocelyn sons have long since married and moved away. Over the years the Rector has become distant from Mary: ‘he became occupied with St Augustine, and had no leisure for her’ (10). She now occupies a role in a world of duties and responsibilities, both at home and in the parish and village: ordered and reasonably secure, but at times confining and stifling. ‘Such was Mary’s life. […] Sometimes she felt the neighbourhood, the village, even her father, becoming like shadows. On the whole she was happy. She did not question the destiny life brought her. People spoke pityingly of her, but she did not feel she required pity’ (17).
Into this life of quiet desperation comes Robert Herbert, the clergyman son of Canon Jocelyn’s closest friend, who is appointed to a nearby village. Friends and servants speculate on the possibilities. Mary realises that her life could be about to change: she ‘felt less solitary; she knew not why’ (28). The two are attracted to each other: each seems to be able to supply something currently missing in their lives. ‘They were silent; soon they were again opening their hearts to one another’ (79). They understand each other, but neither can ever quite say what they feel, so strong are the codes of custom and reticence they cannot bring themselves to breach. Herbert goes to stay with a friend at Buxton, and – predictably – falls in love with the much younger Kathy Hollings. They become engaged. Back at the Rectory, Mary wanders into the old Nursery, which she would not now have the opportunity to restore to use. ‘It seemed a room of the dead. […] I may go on fifty years’ (88).
A year later, the Herberts’ marriage falls under strain as Herbert’s infatuation with Kathy has worn off and he realises their basic incompatibility. Mrs Herbert retreats to the French Riviera with her hedonistic friends. When Mary meets him again and they finally acknowledge what they mean to each other, there is nothing to be done. In her misery Mary translates a poem whose final lines she renders as: ‘For thee I am outcast from God, / I have forfeited Heaven for thee’ (129). Neither Mary nor her father are able to take the steps that would most help the other: they have grown too far apart. Yet after the Rector’s death, when Mary is forced to move to Croydon to live with her aunt, in the crudely-built ‘red-villa road’ she achieves a sort of freedom, as ‘her natural tenderness found many outlets’ (208).
As an aside, it is intriguing to speculate on when The Rector’s Daughter is set. At first it seems most likely to be contemporary, as Cubism and Metroland are mentioned and the forays into artistic London life and the Riviera fast set evoke the period; yet it is as if the Great War has never happened. It is not spoken of and has had no discernible effect. There is, rather, a late Victorian or Edwardian sensibility throughout, especially evident in the chapters set in the eastern county, which have a greater depth of reality than those which take place elsewhere. F.M. Mayor’s England seems a stolid and serene one for its time, its ancient institutions and rural counties at least only overlayed by as much change as the railways brought.
Perhaps the key is Mary Jocelyn herself. The confusion and turbulence of change, the collision of overlapping outlooks and worlds, is summarised and symbolised in and through her. The novel is titled for her – although only in terms of relationship and position. She exemplifies the inherent conflict between duty and freedom, friendship and renunciation, providing insight through her developing self-knowledge and the self-examinations which grow increasingly intimate and rejecting of illusion. Nevertheless, as Rosamond Lehmann commented: ‘[Mary] is herself an individual, to an extraordinary degree. At the same time she becomes, to me at least, a kind of symbol or touchstone for feminine dignity, intelligence and truthfulness.’
(John Howard)
Odd to think that very soon it will no longer be possible to refer to the "Twenties" and be properly understood.
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