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A Note in Music
"She was fairly comfortable, she told herself (putting in the last hairpin) - quite comfortable really, embedded thick and flat now in her life. Nothing mattered, nothing would ever happen for her again."
In a grey manufacturing town in the north of England live Grace Fairfax and her dull, conventional husband Tom. At thirty-four Grace is settled and childless, inhabiting an outer world of dreary routine, sustained by an inner world of lush, wistful dreams. Her only friend is Norah, energetic, chaotic, equally resigned in marriage to the irritable university professor Gerald MacKay. Then Hugh Miller and his red-haired sister Clare descent upon the quiet town. Upon all four the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts a different spell, conjuring up what might have the lost dreams of youth, the hope of new passions to come. With their departure life thus violently disrupted will be the same, but never quite the same again.
In a grey manufacturing town in the north of England live Grace Fairfax and her dull, conventional husband Tom. At thirty-four Grace is settled and childless, inhabiting an outer world of dreary routine, sustained by an inner world of lush, wistful dreams. Her only friend is Norah, energetic, chaotic, equally resigned in marriage to the irritable university professor Gerald MacKay. Then Hugh Miller and his red-haired sister Clare descent upon the quiet town. Upon all four the hypnotic charm of these two visitors exerts a different spell, conjuring up what might have the lost dreams of youth, the hope of new passions to come. With their departure life thus violently disrupted will be the same, but never quite the same again.
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
16 people are currently reading
312 people want to read
About the author
Rosamond Lehmann
43 books125 followersRosamond Nina Lehmann was born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, as the second daughter of Rudolph Lehmann and his wife Alice Davis, a New Englander. Her father Rudolph Chambers Lehmann was a liberal MP, and editor of the Daily News. John Lehmann (1907-1989) was her brother; one of her two sisters was the famous actress Beatrix Lehmann.
In 1919 she went to Girton College, University of Cambridge to read English Literature, an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time. In December 1923 she married Leslie Runciman (later 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford) (1900-1989), and the couple went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was an unhappy marriage, and they separated in 1927 and were divorced later that year.
In 1927, Lehmann published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to great critical and popular acclaim. The novel's heroine, Judith, is attracted to both men and women, and interacts with fairly openly gay and lesbian characters during her years at Cambridge. The novel was a succès de scandale. Though none of her later novels were as successful as her first, Lehmann went on to publish six more novels, a play (No More Music, 1939), a collection of short stories (The Gypsy's Baby & Other Stories, 1946), a spiritual autobiography (The Swan in the Evening, 1967), and a photographic memoir of her friends (Rosamond Lehmann's Album, 1985), many of whom were famous Bloomsbury figures such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Carrington, and Lytton Strachey. She also translated two French novels into English: Jacques Lemarchand's Genevieve (1948) and Jean Cocteau's Children of the Game (1955). Her novels include A Note in Music (1930), Invitation to the Waltz (1932), The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Ballad and the Source (1944), The Echoing Grove (1953), and A Sea-Grape Tree (1976).
In 1928, Lehmann married Wogan Philipps, an artist. They had two children, a son Hugo (1929-1999) and a daughter Sarah or Sally (1934-1958), but the marriage quickly fell apart during the late Thirties with her Communist husband leaving to take part in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II she helped edit and contributed to New Writing, a periodical edited by her brother. She had an affair with Goronwy Rees and then a "very public affair" for nine years (1941-1950) with the married Cecil Day-Lewis, who eventually left her for his second wife.
Her 1953 novel The Echoing Grove was made into the 2002 film Heart of Me, with Helena Bonham Carter as the main character, Dinah. Her book The Ballad and the Source depicts an unhappy marriage from the point of view of a child, and has been compared to Henry James' What Maisie Knew.
The Swan in the Evening (1967) is an autobiography which Lehmann described as her "last testament". In it, she intimately describes the emotions she felt at the birth of her daughter Sally, and also when Sally died abruptly of poliomyelitis at the age of 23 (or 24) in 1958 while in Jakarta. She never recovered from Sally's death. Lehmann claimed to have had some psychic experiences, documented in Moments of Truth.
Lehmann was awarded the CBE in 1982 and died at Clareville Grove, London on 12 March 1990, aged 89.
In 1919 she went to Girton College, University of Cambridge to read English Literature, an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time. In December 1923 she married Leslie Runciman (later 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford) (1900-1989), and the couple went to live in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was an unhappy marriage, and they separated in 1927 and were divorced later that year.
In 1927, Lehmann published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to great critical and popular acclaim. The novel's heroine, Judith, is attracted to both men and women, and interacts with fairly openly gay and lesbian characters during her years at Cambridge. The novel was a succès de scandale. Though none of her later novels were as successful as her first, Lehmann went on to publish six more novels, a play (No More Music, 1939), a collection of short stories (The Gypsy's Baby & Other Stories, 1946), a spiritual autobiography (The Swan in the Evening, 1967), and a photographic memoir of her friends (Rosamond Lehmann's Album, 1985), many of whom were famous Bloomsbury figures such as Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Carrington, and Lytton Strachey. She also translated two French novels into English: Jacques Lemarchand's Genevieve (1948) and Jean Cocteau's Children of the Game (1955). Her novels include A Note in Music (1930), Invitation to the Waltz (1932), The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Ballad and the Source (1944), The Echoing Grove (1953), and A Sea-Grape Tree (1976).
In 1928, Lehmann married Wogan Philipps, an artist. They had two children, a son Hugo (1929-1999) and a daughter Sarah or Sally (1934-1958), but the marriage quickly fell apart during the late Thirties with her Communist husband leaving to take part in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II she helped edit and contributed to New Writing, a periodical edited by her brother. She had an affair with Goronwy Rees and then a "very public affair" for nine years (1941-1950) with the married Cecil Day-Lewis, who eventually left her for his second wife.
Her 1953 novel The Echoing Grove was made into the 2002 film Heart of Me, with Helena Bonham Carter as the main character, Dinah. Her book The Ballad and the Source depicts an unhappy marriage from the point of view of a child, and has been compared to Henry James' What Maisie Knew.
The Swan in the Evening (1967) is an autobiography which Lehmann described as her "last testament". In it, she intimately describes the emotions she felt at the birth of her daughter Sally, and also when Sally died abruptly of poliomyelitis at the age of 23 (or 24) in 1958 while in Jakarta. She never recovered from Sally's death. Lehmann claimed to have had some psychic experiences, documented in Moments of Truth.
Lehmann was awarded the CBE in 1982 and died at Clareville Grove, London on 12 March 1990, aged 89.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
March 29, 2022
"Time was not real, except as one made it so. Why not bind it to one's purpose, make it servant instead of master?"
Beautifully written. Lehmann kept me anticipating how each character's life would change after Hugh and his sister visited their sad, dull town. For some reason (vague spoiler ahead), I was expecting happy, neat endings for all, but it was a mixed bag. More realistic, yes, but I really was left incredibly depressed by the fate of one particular character.
I was also very pleasantly surprised by the multiple gay characters (keep in mind this book was published in 1930) and how well written they were, not caricatures at all but three dimensional and so realistic that I actually had a crush on one (Hugh). His scenes and conversations with Grace were some of my favorite sections. Thinking back on it, there were so many touching moments in this book I wish I could highlight them all, but my review would just become one long list. Either way I can't do "A Note In Music" justice!
If you enjoy Elizabeth Taylor and Anita Brookner, I can't see why you wouldn't like this!
Beautifully written. Lehmann kept me anticipating how each character's life would change after Hugh and his sister visited their sad, dull town. For some reason (vague spoiler ahead), I was expecting happy, neat endings for all, but it was a mixed bag. More realistic, yes, but I really was left incredibly depressed by the fate of one particular character.
I was also very pleasantly surprised by the multiple gay characters (keep in mind this book was published in 1930) and how well written they were, not caricatures at all but three dimensional and so realistic that I actually had a crush on one (Hugh). His scenes and conversations with Grace were some of my favorite sections. Thinking back on it, there were so many touching moments in this book I wish I could highlight them all, but my review would just become one long list. Either way I can't do "A Note In Music" justice!
If you enjoy Elizabeth Taylor and Anita Brookner, I can't see why you wouldn't like this!
February 7, 2017
A seductive stranger becomes the symbol of everything two married women secretly long for.
Beautifully written, lyrical and descriptive.
The pains of women in love told with feeling.
A moving portrait of marriage-and the truths that remain unspoken.
I loved it!
Beautifully written, lyrical and descriptive.
The pains of women in love told with feeling.
A moving portrait of marriage-and the truths that remain unspoken.
I loved it!
December 3, 2017
A Note in Music was Rosamond Lehmann’s second novel. Her first novel Dusty Answer published three years earlier was an enormous success, and A Note in Music is a worthy successor to that extraordinary debut.
This is a gloriously nuanced novel, a portrait of marriage and the disappointments of an ordinary middle-class life.
Grace Fairfax is thirty-four, childless following a still-birth some years earlier, she is married to the dull, hard-working, conventional Tom. Living in a dull northern town, her life is one of unvaried routine. However, Grace has a glorious inner life, a woman of imagination, in tune with the countryside she loves so much, she knows herself capable of great love, and still misses the southern country of her youth. A year earlier, a fortune teller had told Grace that her life lacked purpose, Grace wasn’t surprised.
“The country haunted her still, she said to herself: not a day passed without bringing some picture remembered or imagined. Dawn and sunset were not in these skies, behind the slate roofs and red brick chimneys of the residential quarter – but in her mind’s eye, over country spaces; and spring and autumn still made her sick for home. How many times had she not thought of the summer evening when a bird had sung in the poor lilac tree in the front patch?… But that would never happen again, now that the trams came to the end of the avenue.”
Norah MacKay is Grace’s best friend, she too a woman living a somewhat disappointed life. Married to bad tempered university professor; Gerald, mother to two boys, Norah once knew great passion with Jimmy – lost in the war.
“It was such a great love, she whispered to herself: how could it be (for the thousandth time) that it had not availed to save him? That was his fault…so like him…just as everything was coming right at last. In spite of her, he would not, could not care to save himself. To her passionate feminine instinct for life he had opposed his masculine indifference; and somehow, in the general destruction of mankind by man, he had disappeared with a smile and a shrug, and defeated her.”
When brother and sister Clare and Hugh Miller arrive, temporarily, in the town they bring with them the sense of another way of life – a freedom, and independence that both Grace and Norah recognise and respond to similarly. Clare, an old friend of Norah’s stays with the Mackays for a time, infecting even the dour Gerald with the promise of unimagined possibilities. Hugh is passionate, exudes vitality, freedom and the ability to do just as he pleases. Clare is young, beautiful and irresistibly unconstrained. Hugh, the reader realises is perhaps not quite all Grace and Norah think he is, and while his charisma is not as obvious to the reader at times, (and I think this is deliberate – as it shows how we can respond most extraordinarily to the almost anyone if our imaginations can make them into something else) there is no doubting his effect upon Grace in particular.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...
This is a gloriously nuanced novel, a portrait of marriage and the disappointments of an ordinary middle-class life.
Grace Fairfax is thirty-four, childless following a still-birth some years earlier, she is married to the dull, hard-working, conventional Tom. Living in a dull northern town, her life is one of unvaried routine. However, Grace has a glorious inner life, a woman of imagination, in tune with the countryside she loves so much, she knows herself capable of great love, and still misses the southern country of her youth. A year earlier, a fortune teller had told Grace that her life lacked purpose, Grace wasn’t surprised.
“The country haunted her still, she said to herself: not a day passed without bringing some picture remembered or imagined. Dawn and sunset were not in these skies, behind the slate roofs and red brick chimneys of the residential quarter – but in her mind’s eye, over country spaces; and spring and autumn still made her sick for home. How many times had she not thought of the summer evening when a bird had sung in the poor lilac tree in the front patch?… But that would never happen again, now that the trams came to the end of the avenue.”
Norah MacKay is Grace’s best friend, she too a woman living a somewhat disappointed life. Married to bad tempered university professor; Gerald, mother to two boys, Norah once knew great passion with Jimmy – lost in the war.
“It was such a great love, she whispered to herself: how could it be (for the thousandth time) that it had not availed to save him? That was his fault…so like him…just as everything was coming right at last. In spite of her, he would not, could not care to save himself. To her passionate feminine instinct for life he had opposed his masculine indifference; and somehow, in the general destruction of mankind by man, he had disappeared with a smile and a shrug, and defeated her.”
When brother and sister Clare and Hugh Miller arrive, temporarily, in the town they bring with them the sense of another way of life – a freedom, and independence that both Grace and Norah recognise and respond to similarly. Clare, an old friend of Norah’s stays with the Mackays for a time, infecting even the dour Gerald with the promise of unimagined possibilities. Hugh is passionate, exudes vitality, freedom and the ability to do just as he pleases. Clare is young, beautiful and irresistibly unconstrained. Hugh, the reader realises is perhaps not quite all Grace and Norah think he is, and while his charisma is not as obvious to the reader at times, (and I think this is deliberate – as it shows how we can respond most extraordinarily to the almost anyone if our imaginations can make them into something else) there is no doubting his effect upon Grace in particular.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2017/...
June 14, 2023
The secret was to look to the present chiefly, the future a little, the past scarcely at all
So, I looked at the present of a few people. Two married couples a pair of siblings, and a few others. Yet, there is no present time without the past and some kind of vision/hope for the future. And I got that too.
as one rushes headlong, flying with Time, portions of life split off and float away, one little world after another; and looking back, one sees them behind one as stars and constellations
Do I know what become of the characters, what future was waiting for them? No.
For the first step towards improving the present and future is not to be morbid about the past.
But, I got a delicate and honest glance at them. I am not sure I understand them fully. But it is just so - we barely know ourselves. Time spent with this story was time spent with me, trying to understand myself better, while trying to understand characters.
And all of a sudden, for the first time in his life, it struck him how profoundly each individual life is concealed. In spite of all public indications such as faces, words, actions, the blank persists.
[4.5 stars]
August 10, 2022
I first reviewed this book on Goodreads in 2012 and evidently, according to my goodreads review, I bought the book for $3 in a bookshop by a river. Which river I can’t now recall but that 2012 review of mine still stands and I’m not taking any stars off her either. If anything I am more appreciative. I noticed on reading A Note in Music for the third time how effectively she moves from one point of view to another. We know who we are with in every single scene. I was also blown away this time by her lyrical descriptions of the countryside. I leave you with one of my favourites:
“Some essence of the spirit of the spring day seemed to hover, brooding and shining upon the long, sunny stretch of water. The lake was girdled with trees and bushes, and wild song welled out as if from the throats of hundreds and hundreds of choral branches. The unfolding leaves covered the boughs with a manifold variety of little shapes. Knots, hearts, points, clusters of rosettes, dots and tapers of budding foliage, made up embroideries of infinite complexity in jade, in greenish-silver, in honey-yellow; but some were tinged with a russet flames, haunting the eye with an autumnal prophecy.”
“Some essence of the spirit of the spring day seemed to hover, brooding and shining upon the long, sunny stretch of water. The lake was girdled with trees and bushes, and wild song welled out as if from the throats of hundreds and hundreds of choral branches. The unfolding leaves covered the boughs with a manifold variety of little shapes. Knots, hearts, points, clusters of rosettes, dots and tapers of budding foliage, made up embroideries of infinite complexity in jade, in greenish-silver, in honey-yellow; but some were tinged with a russet flames, haunting the eye with an autumnal prophecy.”
June 16, 2010
Grace Fairfax has been married for years to a hardworking but tedious husband; her outer world is drearily routine, but her inner world is lushly imaginative and dreamy. When the magnetic Hugh Miller enters her life, Grace feels as though her inner life is finally becoming a reality.
Critics complained about the dreariness of the characters and their failure to connect, but that's not what bothered me; I found the characters largely engaging and thought part of Lehmann's theme was, in fact, failure to connect. However, there were too many characters and plot threads introduced without being explored sufficiently to keep them interesting.
Critics complained about the dreariness of the characters and their failure to connect, but that's not what bothered me; I found the characters largely engaging and thought part of Lehmann's theme was, in fact, failure to connect. However, there were too many characters and plot threads introduced without being explored sufficiently to keep them interesting.
March 15, 2020
Beautifully written, but rather melancholy.
September 22, 2017
This is the story of two marriages - one happy, one not - and the story of everybody falling for Clare and Hugh, a young brother and sister, who are the least deserving of love.
I picked this up from a charity shop because I browsed some of the dialogue later on in the novel and it sounded promising. It turns out that most of the book is a lead-up to those dialogues. Norah and her husband Gerald, for example, are completely unrelatable people until the final pages on which they reveal themselves to be capable of empathy and understanding.
The novel is focalised through all of the main characters at different stages, contributing to the feeling that each of their individual viewpoints is severely claustrophobic - most of all that of Grace Fairfax who is purposeless and secluded after her baby was stillborn and her puppy died. She is ill-adjusted and full of regret and never meant to marry Tom anyway. All the characters are held back by a lack of communication with people close to them and some never manage to open up (especially Grace's progress is only superficial).
I'm not quite sure where the ending of the novel is supposed to leave us. Has Grace grown enough throughout the year to be able to catch up to Norah's emotional maturity and apply this to her own marriage? Why does Hugh, undeserving as he is, get the last word? His obssession with fellow student Oliver and jealousy for Norah's cousin Seddon - Oliver's latest love interest - does not justify his utter oblivion for other people's feelings.
This is the first novel by Lehmann I have read and it's supposedly her odd one out. It doesn't allow intimacy with any of the characters until very late (perhaps too late) in the story and leaves many things unresolved. I can see how Lehmann fit in with the Bloomsbury set and this was only her second novel but it's lacking direction a little bit. I am hoping to read some of her other novels though.
I picked this up from a charity shop because I browsed some of the dialogue later on in the novel and it sounded promising. It turns out that most of the book is a lead-up to those dialogues. Norah and her husband Gerald, for example, are completely unrelatable people until the final pages on which they reveal themselves to be capable of empathy and understanding.
The novel is focalised through all of the main characters at different stages, contributing to the feeling that each of their individual viewpoints is severely claustrophobic - most of all that of Grace Fairfax who is purposeless and secluded after her baby was stillborn and her puppy died. She is ill-adjusted and full of regret and never meant to marry Tom anyway. All the characters are held back by a lack of communication with people close to them and some never manage to open up (especially Grace's progress is only superficial).
I'm not quite sure where the ending of the novel is supposed to leave us. Has Grace grown enough throughout the year to be able to catch up to Norah's emotional maturity and apply this to her own marriage? Why does Hugh, undeserving as he is, get the last word? His obssession with fellow student Oliver and jealousy for Norah's cousin Seddon - Oliver's latest love interest - does not justify his utter oblivion for other people's feelings.
This is the first novel by Lehmann I have read and it's supposedly her odd one out. It doesn't allow intimacy with any of the characters until very late (perhaps too late) in the story and leaves many things unresolved. I can see how Lehmann fit in with the Bloomsbury set and this was only her second novel but it's lacking direction a little bit. I am hoping to read some of her other novels though.
March 22, 2021
honestly, i liked this book. it was quite boring - but it makes sense for it to be uneventful. the main characters' lives are so terribly sad, i very honestly thought grace would end up killing herself at the end of the book. it's a whole story filled with ghosts and regrets, about missed opportunities, about loves that would never happen again : Norah and her dead lover Jimmy, Grace and her baby (and her puppy), Hugh and his lover (?) Oliver. (I would literally give out my right arm for a book just about Hugh and Oliver, honestly).
So maybe it's me developing Stockholm Syndrome after being force-fed Rosamond Lehmann for a good three months now, but I genuinely liked this book.
So maybe it's me developing Stockholm Syndrome after being force-fed Rosamond Lehmann for a good three months now, but I genuinely liked this book.
June 16, 2023
At the beginning the book shows us two women, two couples closed in their unhappiness and in a flat life. We understand that there is and can be much more underneath and we hope that something will happen to them. Despite her rough exterior, Grace has a rich inner life and her personal reflections are complex and fascinating. Nora is very busy with family life but she is lively and creative, and she tones down her utterances to ensure marital tranquility. An encounter with a man will change their lives, or rather their way of seeing things (and change him a little too). Not much, but just enough. Both couples acquire a greater awareness of themselves and their relationship. Perhaps here the romanticized part is a bit pushed, extreme: in reality they would probably have taken the shortest route, and the couples would have broken up. In the final dialogue between Gerald and Nora Gerald's words sound a bit unreal.
There are beautiful descriptions of natural environments.
There are beautiful descriptions of natural environments.
June 13, 2023
Re-read because I thought it might have relevance to a research project of mine. I'm not sure I've ever re-read this since I bought a copy for 50p (yes, first edition though lacking dust jacket) sometime in the 1970s. Appreciate it more now, I think, than I did then. (Certainly one to bring up when there is that 'no-one has written about middleaged women' claim...)
April 3, 2013
This is a domestic novel about unhappy people. The writing is sparse and Lehmann is expert in saying a lot with very little words. It's small domestic scenes where what's important is the silence, the void and the unsaid words between people. it centers around the unhappy marriages of Norah and Grace, both of whom have married men who fought in the Great War that has left a mark on them. Lehmann only gives you small hints of that mark since her characters are rarely self-reflective. They go through life like a routine, like they've given up on ambition and happiness and have settled into a lifeless domestic life. It's a melancholy novel where it's made up of small episodic scenes that build up a portrait of life. If it was a film, it would be one that had numerous long takes of people doing very little but feeling a lot. And in this quietness, there's a lot of beauty as well as sadness.
I think you have to have a certain maturity to appreciate this book since it's a book about marriage and the ways people don't know how to communicate and don't get their needs met. It's when the youthful idealism of love and ambition fades and people are left with the day to day difficulties of domestic life. It's also about lives that are lived unexamined because they know it would make them feel so unhappy and regretful.
I think you have to have a certain maturity to appreciate this book since it's a book about marriage and the ways people don't know how to communicate and don't get their needs met. It's when the youthful idealism of love and ambition fades and people are left with the day to day difficulties of domestic life. It's also about lives that are lived unexamined because they know it would make them feel so unhappy and regretful.
May 9, 2015
A so-so variation on the theme of people leading stunted lives in the provinces. At the centre of the story are 2 couples, Tom and Grace on the one hand, Gerald and Norah on the other. All of a sudden, a young and handsome aristocrat, Hugh, blows into the drab northern town to try his hand at running a family business. Hugh is still pining for a guy he met at Oxford, and with whom he may have had an affair. However, since he has to spend some months in this dump, he floats around, awakening love in the bosom of Grace, Norah, and even a hair-dresser who turns tricks to complement her income. Hugh's sister Clare, who used to be friends with Norah before her marriage, turns up too, and captivates Gerald. Most of these characters spend an unforgettable Summer afternoon fishing and playing tennis on an estate belonging to one of Norah's cousins. But of course, nothing happens, Hugh and Clare disappear again, and the only real change is that Grace's maid falls pregnant (not by Hugh!). Hugh and Clare didn't feel nearly as charismatic to this reader as they felt to the other characters in the book. The whole Chekhovian atmosphere is laid on pretty thick, and the descriptions of nature are altogether better than the long-winded psychological analysis.
July 10, 2016
This was definitely Beatrix's favourite of Rosamond's books. She read it when she was on holiday with Henrietta when it came back. Her letter to her sister was full of praise about the beauty of the prose and the characters. In a way I think Beatrix liked it because it was the lives of very ordinary women that she was in no danger of becoming. They were the dull wives and mothers in society whose lives were pretty empty and meaningless. The prose was quite nice, but it was a little hard to feel sorry for them when they had chosen such pointless lives in the first place. There were however, several nice passages. But it all felt a bit too futile.
October 22, 2025
Un livre qui se lit comme la chronique d'un moment clé de la vie de deux femmes dans le nord de l'Angleterre prises dans des vies conjugales insatisfaisantes et qui rêvent d'un ailleurs meilleur et un peu fantasmé. Comme d'hab, Rosamond décortique les sentiments de ses protagonistes de façon ultra précise comme bonne émule d'Henry James, mais à tel point que ça en devient parfois un peu abscons. L'histoire est ténue car le propos est 'sychologique. Reste que la chronique est assez douce et assez juste, l'amitié feminine mise en avant. Au final, l'idée est de se contenter de ce qu'on a même si ce n'est pas ce à quoi on rêvait. Dur. Mais réaliste.
June 4, 2023
Impressionist portrait of two couples caged by marriage , manners and habits . Post WW1 in a Northern town the writing takes us behind the surface of the stereotype but exposes the limits of the middle-class mores as two women wrestle with their unsatisfactory lives as two charismatic sibs enter the stage . You can feel the pain and tension in the enormous spaces between the thoughts and actions . Brilliant . Why risk it all when you can settle for less ...
May 4, 2023
Lehmann deals with so many daring themes for the time - repressed sexuality, circus freak shows, attempted abortions, moonlighting prostitutes and does it all with beautifully elegant language and a deep sense of humanity.
May 7, 2015
Beautiful. I liked her "Invitation to the Waltz" slightly better but this was wonderful and on many levels a deeper read. Will definitely read more of her stuff.
February 14, 2016
Beautiful and true.
June 7, 2019
Lehmann writes about love but never in the clichés of the romantic novel. She writes elegantly and with such insight.
September 30, 2025
(4.5 Stars)
It’s been a while since I last read anything by Rosamond Lehmann, the critically acclaimed author of the excellent novels Invitation to the Waltz (1932) and The Weather in the Streets (1936) – both bestsellers in their day. First published in 1930, A Note in Music was Lehmann’s second novel – probably less well-known than her others, but in my opinion just as good. It’s an exquisitely observed exploration of two loveless, unfulfilling marriages and the shifts in dynamics that occur when two captivating visitors enter this stagnant world. Interestingly, A Note was less positively received than Lehmann’s highly successful debut, Dusty Answer, which I’ve yet to read. Nevertheless, E. M. Forster was an enthusiastic fan, and the novel enjoyed one or two good notices elsewhere. I really loved this one and hope to find a place for it in my 2025 highlights.
Set in an unnamed provincial town during the interwar years, A Note in Music features two married couples, Grace and Tom Fairfax and their friends, Norah and Gerald MacKay, all of whom are discontented and unfulfilled in their different ways. Following the stillbirth of her son and the loss of a puppy, Grace feels isolated from Tom, her unexciting but dependable husband of ten years. Nevertheless, inertia holds her back from doing anything to address this. When Grace considers her life, it is one long sequence of empty days with nothing to look forward to and few achievements to look back on. While the Fairfaxes’ lives are outwardly dreary, Grace’s inner world is richly imagined, inspired by the lush countryside she had to relinquish when she married Tom and her accompanying dreams of romantic love, which now seem a distant memory. In short, she longs to feel something, even if it is just pain.
Everything that was difficult or disagreeable slipped off his consciousness. He [Tom] would be clouded for a moment and then shake himself and come back smiling, a little apologetic, appealing: ‘Let’s all be comfortable and jolly again.’
And she [Grace] would go on sulking, sulking—unresponsive, knotted inwardly like a skein of grey, harsh, tangled wool. (p. 12)
Grace’s close friend, Norah, is also far from happy. Trapped in a disappointing marriage to Gerald – an irritable, resentful University Professor – Norah must slavishly devote herself to domestic routines, taking care of the couple’s boys and tending to Gerald’s many needs and quibbles.
He [Gerald] was in his knotted mood because…probably because she [Norah] had stayed out longer than he expected; because he knew he would not give as good a lecture as he wished to; because the boys had had buttery fingers at tea…something of that sort. Now he was asking her to come and untie him—and defying her to try. Why should this vampire family so prey on her and pin her down that even one afternoon’s freedom became a matter of importance, to be regretted afterwards? Why should she let him forever drain her to sustain himself? (p. 52)
In truth, Norah is still grieving over the loss of her great love, Jimmy, a rather wild, unreliable man who died in WW1. Nothing she has experienced with Gerald can begin to fill that gaping need, leading to a lack of fulfilment for Norah despite her undoubted love for the boys. Like Grace, she internalises her sorrow, allowing it to fester without a suitable release.
Into this troubled world comes Hugh Miller, a bright, sensitive, passionate young man who charms everyone he meets. Hugh is related to the owner of Tom’s firm, instantly establishing a connection with the Fairfaxes, who befriend the new arrival and his sophisticated, liberated sister, Clare, hoping some of the Millers’ sparkle will come their way.
He [Hugh] seemed to have a secret of mastery, of confidence, of being at home in the world. He would disregard inauspicious detail, and be lucky, and know how to manage his life as he wanted it.
What past had shaped him, what experiences defined him so clearly? He was a creature compact of youth, but he was not a boy.
Had he ever loved a woman, she wondered, or been loved? (pp. 63–64)
Grace, in particular, is captivated by Hugh, seeing in him everything she yearns for in life, exposing desires and needs that have remained unmet during her barren marriage to Tom. During a series of brief interactions with Hugh – the occasional chat and a glorious afternoon of boating and tennis in the country – Grace experiences a sort of awakening, a heightening of the senses that manifests itself in a kind of love. Nothing can come of it, of course, but the experience enlivens Grace nonetheless.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025...
It’s been a while since I last read anything by Rosamond Lehmann, the critically acclaimed author of the excellent novels Invitation to the Waltz (1932) and The Weather in the Streets (1936) – both bestsellers in their day. First published in 1930, A Note in Music was Lehmann’s second novel – probably less well-known than her others, but in my opinion just as good. It’s an exquisitely observed exploration of two loveless, unfulfilling marriages and the shifts in dynamics that occur when two captivating visitors enter this stagnant world. Interestingly, A Note was less positively received than Lehmann’s highly successful debut, Dusty Answer, which I’ve yet to read. Nevertheless, E. M. Forster was an enthusiastic fan, and the novel enjoyed one or two good notices elsewhere. I really loved this one and hope to find a place for it in my 2025 highlights.
Set in an unnamed provincial town during the interwar years, A Note in Music features two married couples, Grace and Tom Fairfax and their friends, Norah and Gerald MacKay, all of whom are discontented and unfulfilled in their different ways. Following the stillbirth of her son and the loss of a puppy, Grace feels isolated from Tom, her unexciting but dependable husband of ten years. Nevertheless, inertia holds her back from doing anything to address this. When Grace considers her life, it is one long sequence of empty days with nothing to look forward to and few achievements to look back on. While the Fairfaxes’ lives are outwardly dreary, Grace’s inner world is richly imagined, inspired by the lush countryside she had to relinquish when she married Tom and her accompanying dreams of romantic love, which now seem a distant memory. In short, she longs to feel something, even if it is just pain.
Everything that was difficult or disagreeable slipped off his consciousness. He [Tom] would be clouded for a moment and then shake himself and come back smiling, a little apologetic, appealing: ‘Let’s all be comfortable and jolly again.’
And she [Grace] would go on sulking, sulking—unresponsive, knotted inwardly like a skein of grey, harsh, tangled wool. (p. 12)
Grace’s close friend, Norah, is also far from happy. Trapped in a disappointing marriage to Gerald – an irritable, resentful University Professor – Norah must slavishly devote herself to domestic routines, taking care of the couple’s boys and tending to Gerald’s many needs and quibbles.
He [Gerald] was in his knotted mood because…probably because she [Norah] had stayed out longer than he expected; because he knew he would not give as good a lecture as he wished to; because the boys had had buttery fingers at tea…something of that sort. Now he was asking her to come and untie him—and defying her to try. Why should this vampire family so prey on her and pin her down that even one afternoon’s freedom became a matter of importance, to be regretted afterwards? Why should she let him forever drain her to sustain himself? (p. 52)
In truth, Norah is still grieving over the loss of her great love, Jimmy, a rather wild, unreliable man who died in WW1. Nothing she has experienced with Gerald can begin to fill that gaping need, leading to a lack of fulfilment for Norah despite her undoubted love for the boys. Like Grace, she internalises her sorrow, allowing it to fester without a suitable release.
Into this troubled world comes Hugh Miller, a bright, sensitive, passionate young man who charms everyone he meets. Hugh is related to the owner of Tom’s firm, instantly establishing a connection with the Fairfaxes, who befriend the new arrival and his sophisticated, liberated sister, Clare, hoping some of the Millers’ sparkle will come their way.
He [Hugh] seemed to have a secret of mastery, of confidence, of being at home in the world. He would disregard inauspicious detail, and be lucky, and know how to manage his life as he wanted it.
What past had shaped him, what experiences defined him so clearly? He was a creature compact of youth, but he was not a boy.
Had he ever loved a woman, she wondered, or been loved? (pp. 63–64)
Grace, in particular, is captivated by Hugh, seeing in him everything she yearns for in life, exposing desires and needs that have remained unmet during her barren marriage to Tom. During a series of brief interactions with Hugh – the occasional chat and a glorious afternoon of boating and tennis in the country – Grace experiences a sort of awakening, a heightening of the senses that manifests itself in a kind of love. Nothing can come of it, of course, but the experience enlivens Grace nonetheless.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025...
June 26, 2018
I have found this literary Masterpiece in an online vintage book store (Google shbi).
1. The writing of Rosamond is so magical and the language so rich that I literally like underlined 50 times in the entire book. This is a highest sparing some of my philosophy collections.
2. The best part of this novel is, it excellently delves into the emotions of Grace, the protagonist about romance, thoughts, regret, etc
3. I really admire authors like Rosamand, who create an ambience so that, you can literally imagine te entire scene happening, as if on a screen in your mind's eye.
Feel awesome to have found and read this.
Will shelve it in my mini-library for a re-read later on this year.
1. The writing of Rosamond is so magical and the language so rich that I literally like underlined 50 times in the entire book. This is a highest sparing some of my philosophy collections.
2. The best part of this novel is, it excellently delves into the emotions of Grace, the protagonist about romance, thoughts, regret, etc
3. I really admire authors like Rosamand, who create an ambience so that, you can literally imagine te entire scene happening, as if on a screen in your mind's eye.
Feel awesome to have found and read this.
Will shelve it in my mini-library for a re-read later on this year.
April 5, 2023
I thought this was an exquisite novel that just kept going deeper and deeper. I generally like an interior novel and this checked that box big time - reverie, memory, longing - each character dealt with their lack of fulfillment in such a particular and specific way. A young man and his worldy sister arrive in Northern English town and change the lives of two couples but not in any kind of expected way. A gorgeous novel about loneliness, marriage, aging, friendship and attraction.
November 12, 2020
A Note in Music takes a snapshot of lives in the late 1920s in a way that felt very reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, whose book Jacob's Room, gets a small cameo mention. I enjoyed it a great deal, and especially appreciated how Lehmann developed multiple perspectives and showed what characters weren't saying to each other.
December 22, 2023
I enjoyed the book it was a good insight into stale marriage and the characters were interesting enough, and the storytelling was good, but I have been spoilt by reading Virginia W and Vita SW, Although a work of fiction, the storyline is realistic and that's what made me give it 4 stars..
September 21, 2025
very good - quiet observation on two couples and other characters in a northern town. interesting to see that the early 80s virago edition noted that lehmann made changes to the original edition (with no indication of the extent of these).
December 23, 2022
Nice but a little slow. But nice anyway, very atmospheric.
May 30, 2017
depressing and deary but deep with some wonderful passages ,.
March 16, 2013
In her introduction, Janet Watts calls this novel from 1930 “sombre in colour and mood.” I agree, and yet, like its protagonist, the unprepossessing middle-aged housewife, Grace, there is something about it that attracts and holds me, almost I might say enchants me.
Grace’s existence in a provincial town in northern England is humdrum indeed. She has Annie to do the housework and cooking, so there is little for her to do all day while her husband Tom is at the office. She lumbers along, thinking that “Nothing mattered, nothing would ever happen for her again.” She has only one friend, Nora, who occasionally drops by to take her for a drive. Tom, himself, has no friends, aside from some people he goes fishing or plays golf with on weekends. Tom’s goal in life is to keep everything “comfortable and jolly”, but Grace does not have even such a slight ambition.
Nora has left behind her gay, debutante years to keep house for her morose husband, Gerry, and their two rowdy boys. She possesses all the vitality that Grace lacks, but even Nora sometimes longs for “rest from this perpetual crumbling of the edges, this shredding out of one’s personality upon minute obligations and responsibilities. She wanted, even for a few moments, to feel her own identity peacefully floating apart from them all.”
The two couples’ lives are upended when handsome, cosmopolitan, young Hugh Miller comes to town to try his luck working for his uncle who owns the firm where Tom works. His sister briefly joins him; she had known Nora in the old days but has managed to retain her sophisticated lifestyle. This bright twosome bring home to Grace, Tom, Nora and Gerry just how dull their lives are.
As I started the book I could not imagine that people could lead such unexamined lives. But Lehmann gently teases out what is good in them, their small wounds and disappointments. This is a book about that stage of life when we realise our choices are narrowing, and we can’t help but wonder if it’s too late to change our way. I feel privileged to have been given access to the inner lives of these people, to have my perplexity cajoled into compassion.
Grace’s existence in a provincial town in northern England is humdrum indeed. She has Annie to do the housework and cooking, so there is little for her to do all day while her husband Tom is at the office. She lumbers along, thinking that “Nothing mattered, nothing would ever happen for her again.” She has only one friend, Nora, who occasionally drops by to take her for a drive. Tom, himself, has no friends, aside from some people he goes fishing or plays golf with on weekends. Tom’s goal in life is to keep everything “comfortable and jolly”, but Grace does not have even such a slight ambition.
Nora has left behind her gay, debutante years to keep house for her morose husband, Gerry, and their two rowdy boys. She possesses all the vitality that Grace lacks, but even Nora sometimes longs for “rest from this perpetual crumbling of the edges, this shredding out of one’s personality upon minute obligations and responsibilities. She wanted, even for a few moments, to feel her own identity peacefully floating apart from them all.”
The two couples’ lives are upended when handsome, cosmopolitan, young Hugh Miller comes to town to try his luck working for his uncle who owns the firm where Tom works. His sister briefly joins him; she had known Nora in the old days but has managed to retain her sophisticated lifestyle. This bright twosome bring home to Grace, Tom, Nora and Gerry just how dull their lives are.
As I started the book I could not imagine that people could lead such unexamined lives. But Lehmann gently teases out what is good in them, their small wounds and disappointments. This is a book about that stage of life when we realise our choices are narrowing, and we can’t help but wonder if it’s too late to change our way. I feel privileged to have been given access to the inner lives of these people, to have my perplexity cajoled into compassion.
October 19, 2019
A very good, very moving novel. And one of those most astutely drawn gay characters I've come across in literature. Not as psychedelic as her first book "Dusty Answer," but still, a marvelous immersion into the thoughts and fears of her characters; a lacerating journey into two unhappy marriages. It answers the question: "What happens when marvelous women marry uninteresting husbands?"
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