The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

The setting for The Priory is Saunby Priory, a large house somewhere in England which has seen better times: its 'West Front, built in the thirteenth century for the service of God and the poor, towered above the house that had been raised alongside from its ruins, from its very stones. And because no light showed from any window here, the stranger, visiting Saunby at this hour, would have concluded that the house was empty. But he would have been wrong. There were many people within.'

This sentence is typical of the opening of a Dorothy Whipple novel. Gently, deceptively gently, but straightforwardly, it sets the scene and draws the reader in. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt; then, as soon as their lives have been described, the Major proposes marriage to a woman much younger than himself - and huge change ensues.

It is a classic plot (albeit the stepmother is more disinterested than wicked) and the book has many classic qualities; yet there are no clichés either in situation or outlook, just an extraordinarily well-written and deeply transportative novel by the writer who has been called the twentieth-century Mrs Gaskell.  

Above all, The Priory is a very subtle novel, so subtle that, as with all Dorothy Whipple’s books, it is very easy to miss what an excellent writer she is. As Books magazine wrote in August 1939: 'Because it is so unaffectedly and well written, and because it conveys very effectively a sense of the old house and what is meant to be the various persons connected with it, The Priory carries a punch out of proportion to its otherwise artless-seeming content.’ Meanwhile Forrest Reid, the Irish novelist and friend of EM Forster, described it in the Spectator as being ‘brilliantly original and convincing. It is fresh, delightful, absorbing, and one accepts it with gratitude as one did the novels read in boyhood.'

And The Priory makes an interesting companion piece to PB no. 39 Manja, which is also a long novel about families in the inter-war period, also a wonderful, unforgettable read, and also first published in the late summer of 1939 – but set against the background of a changing society in Germany, rather than rural Britain.

Endpaper

The endpapers are taken from 'Wychwood', a 1939 screen-printed satin furnishing fabric designed by Noldi Soland for Helios; the pattern has an appropriately rural simplicity.

Picture Caption

'Kitchen Scene in the Beverley Arms' 1929, FW Elwell ©  FW Elwell Estate/National Trust, Nunnington Hall