This Little World

by Francis Brett Young

The book traces a few months in the life of a picturesque, quintessentially English village with its roots in the Middle Ages. On the surface idyllic, the author strips bare its underlying tensions, prejudices, rivalries, tragedies, successes and failures. Set in the early l920's on the threshold of social change, some village inhabitants still bear the scars, physical or emotional, of the Great War. The old, impoverished gentry, with their time-honoured ideals of duty and paternalism, are challenged by the arrival in their midst of a rich, retired manufacturer whose well-intentioned but inappropriate aspirations threaten the way of life of the whole village. This Little World is a rural saga which follows the activities and relationships of a variety of characters, and includes several budding romances. All takes place under the scrutiny of old Miss Loach, the self-appointed guardian of village morals. Add to this some lyrical descriptions of the Worcestershire countryside and you have a skilfully woven, thoroughly readable and delightful book.

Genres: Historical Fiction

435 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Francis Brett Young was born in 1884 at Hales Owen, Worcestershire, the eldest son of Dr Thomas Brett Young.

Educated at Iona Cottage High School, Sutton Coldfield and Epsom College, Francis read Medicine at Birmingham University before entering general practice at Brixham in 1907. The following year he married Jessie Hankinson whom he had met during his medical studies. She was a singer of some repute, having appeared as a soloist in Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts.

Francis based one of his earliest novels Deep Sea (1914) in Brixham but was soon to be caught up in the Great War. He served in the R.A.M.C. in East Africa, experiences recorded in Marching on Tanga.

After the war Francis and Jessie went to live in Capri where a number of novels with African as well as English backgrounds were produced. Popular success came in 1927 when Francis was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Portrait of Clare.

The Brett Youngs returned to England in 1929, staying for a while in the Lake District before settling at Craycombe House in Worcestershire in 1932. During this period Francis was at the height of his fame and his annually produced novels were eagerly awaited.

During the Second World War Francis laboured on his long poem covering the spread of English history from prehistoric times. Entitled The Island, it was published in 1944 and regarded by Francis as his greatest achievement.

Following a breakdown in his health Francis and Jessie moved to South Africa where he died in 1954. His ashes were brought back to this country and interred in Worcester Cathedral.

Reviews

[Dorcas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lovely story very reminiscent in style to R.F. Delderfield, and in theme to Dorothy Evelyn Smith's The Lovely Day and Margaret Kennedy's The Feast. It's a "slice of life" tale set in a small village in the Midlands some years after WW1. The village is picking up the pieces, sadly depleted of it's fine men, and people's lives and businesses are topsy turvy. Those who were wealthy gentry before the war find themselves struggling to pay their bills, and conversely, some everyday Joe Shmoes are rolling in money as a result of businesses (such as munitions) which thrived during the war.

As with many 'slice of life' books, no one character is given more attention to others, in fact its difficult to find a main character at all, but in this book you can almost do it in the form of Miles Ombersley who has just inherited his father's ancestral estate...complete with debt.

It's a story of everyday people and how life changes them from the inside out. You will see how some are ruined through bad choices (otherwise termed "bad luck") and become less likeable, while others actually mature and flourish under tests of character.

FBY's descriptions are a delight to the senses.They make you step back and say, Now why didn't I think of that! I'll give you an example:

One character, while driving into town on business, notices the growth of traffic on the roads and muses to himself how the brightly painted motor vehicles glide slowly and smoothly like newly hatched butterflies in every color, making his Silver Ghost seem so old fashioned by comparison...

I also liked his tongue in cheek humor. For instance when an old woman is lying prone, dying, the doctor calls for her next of kin and privately begs the good lady to brace herself for the shock in her sister's appearance. "Oh,Laura was never a beauty", she replied blandly.

Or when said old lady recovers, she is told how the doctor saved her life her response was "his charges were certainly moderate. His bill for the whole of my illness was less than three pounds..."

I just love that!

One other thing I enjoyed near the beginning of the book was the minister complaining to the doctor about how difficult it was to rouse the village to camaraderie. He says,"It isn't that I want to improve them, I want them to enjoy themselves without being self conscious, I want to give them more fun!"

"Merry England and all that? No, Vicar, that hobby won't gallop. You see, England isn't merry by nature, and I doubt if it ever was. We have no abandon. We're stiff Northerners, self conscious and reserved. You can't make us unbutton...We English people are such individualists. Our homes are our castles; we're always on the defensive. Five hundred years ago we jolly well had to be. Then our lives, though you'd hardly believe it, are tremendously full and as different from another as -what shall I say- our cottage gardens. We hate what you call "being organized"- unless we're convinced that it's absolutely necessary for some specific reason. A war, for instance...and even then, though we take it like lambs, we like to pretend that our organization is voluntary...."

It's been too long since Ive read Francis Brett Young. His books are so well worthwhile. If you dislike Hardyesque descriptions you probably wont have the patience for this but I drank in every word. It's brilliant!

CONTENT:
SEX: None (past indiscretions of town characters mentioned)
VIOLENCE: Mild (a car crash)
PROFANTY: Very Mild

MY RATING: G

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel originally published in 1934 is over 600 pages long, but it is quite a quick read -although for various reasons it has taken me 5 day. I loved having this to come home to and I am rather sad I have finished it. The novel highlights how the world began to change for many people after the first world war. The city began to encroach upon the countryside, electricity and such things as petrol pumps were brought to small rural communities - and the the landed gentry had to make way for the new rich, some of whom had made their money in munitions during the war that left so many families grieving.

[Teaspoon Stories · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is England, the thing, the idea, which we fought for. And that’s why, though I don’t actually belong here, I love this place and these people.” So reflects the Rev Arthur Winter, one of Francis Brett Young’s many lonely and disappointed outsiders who provide observant and introspective commentary on the changing world around them.

It’s this love of place - very specifically in the form of the semi-fictional village of Chaddesbourne, deep in rural Gloucestershire in the years immediately following the end of the First World War - that’s central to the novel. The village is the little world of the novel’s title. And love of this village and its village life is expressed by different people in many different ways.

There are those whose love of the village drives their determination to change it. This is sometimes expressed as the response to the transformation caused by the disorientation and dislocation of WW1: “They came back from the war, these grim heroes, and expected the new generation, which knew nothing of their old, wrecked world, to conform to standards it had never known or cared about.”

But those who want to change the village aren’t just the young folk with their natural impulse for the exciting new things of the 1920s - jazz and shingled hair, fast cars and the glamour of the cinema. There are older ones too who see the benefit of improvements in the form of electricity, drains, radio and telephone, arterial roads and modern healthcare. For people like Mr Hackett, the retired industrialist who becomes a (very privileged) villager, and dogmatic schoolmaster, Morgan Jones, this isn’t just about changing fashions - it’s a fervent belief in progress and in making society better for everyone. It’s a question of greater fairness all round and improving everyone’s standard of living.

On the other hand, there are those whose deep love of the village means they see these changes as dangerous and destructive to the rhythm and ritual of village life as it’s been lived for centuries. The literal demolition of old ways and buildings is unsettling and threatening. Primary among those fighting to protect the village from the modern onslaught is Colonel D’Abitot Ombersley, the squire of the village and the conscientious upholder of ancient rights and responsibilities. And while the malevolent Miss Loach won’t even contemplate change because of her obstinate beliefs and bigotry, other more sympathetic characters (such as young Catherine Ombersley) recognise the sadness of things passing - a way of life and its deep rooted sense of community and continuity.

Then there are the characters in the middle, who see both sides of the argument. Ted Hadley, publican of the Ombersley Arms, retains his professional neutrality as landlord. The vicar, Rev Winter, is also ambivalent to change - disconcerted by the effect of the new secularism on the traditional church but progressive in his attitude to social improvement more generally. And young aristo, Jack Ombersley, who likes to think he’s a rebel with his fast motors and disrespect of tradition but who’s actually riddled with old-fashioned prejudices (he patronisingly finds Elsie Cookson “extraordinarily pretty in her shop-girl way”).

Young Dr Anthony Selby is also sympathetic to the views of both camps. It’s his observations and reflections that become so central to the narrative that we suspect he might just be the voice of the author himself. There are certainly many key autobiographical similarities. In the novel, Selby comes to recognise that change is irresistible and compromise inevitable. He pushes hard for improved housing and healthcare. But he’s wistfully aware of the old rural landscape that’s on the cusp of vanishing forever. And he regrets with poignancy the passing of so much tradition and beauty.

One of the most striking aspects of Francis Brett Young’s distinctive writing style is his intense imagery describing the beautiful but cruel natural world running in parallel with human life in the village. Some examples of this are:

- The trapped butterfly flapping against the vestry window as a metaphor of the vicar’s own lonely, stunted life.

- The rooks in the village elm trees cawing and keening like a Greek chorus, commenting on the tragi-comedy of the villagers.

- The officious letters of complaint from the prim and sanctimonious Miss Loach accumulating “like a drift of beech leaves” on the desk of the dutiful but weary Squire Ombersley.

- Rain water constantly flooding, pouring and dripping - rotting crops. penetrating buildings, eroding human effort.

- Distant thunder when Catherine Ombersley plays Beethoven on Dr Shelby’s piano.

- The oak trees that Colonel Ombersley plants on his estate taking eighty years to mature, an “act of faith” in the (frankly, quite unlikely) continued existence of his family-owned ancestral lands.

Just as Francis Brett Young focuses on the cruelty and indifference of nature as well as its beauty, so any tendency toward the nostalgia-infused sentimentality of chocolate-box villages and cottage gardens is corrected by a streak of gritty realism. Here’s a deeply rural novel - set just 12 miles from the sprawling, industrial metropolis of Birmingham - that encompasses infant mortality and disease, domestic abuse and violence (middle-class drunkard, George Cookson, pushing his wife into the fire), squalor and poverty, marriage breakdown and bankruptcy. The world of the novel’s title may be little but its orbit is most definitely controlled by greater forces.

In signing off, I have to say something about Francis Brett Young’s sophisticated writing style and remarkable vocabulary. His sentences regularly run to over a hundred words, in contravention of most journalistic style guides that currently advocate an optimum sentence length of between ten and twenty words. Francis Brett Young not only has me breathless with the length and complexity of his sentences. He also has me reaching out for the dictionary, looking up wonderful words that are strange to me. Here are a few from this novel - I wonder how many you know?

- “sequoia”
- “ponderable”
- “houzing and tissacking”
- “inconsonant”
- “strepitous”
- “plethoric”
- “mizzling”
- “erysipelas” 


[Fuggle91 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problems we have have always occurred! Simple, but I learned to take comfort from history and feel part of the human chain, hand in hand across the centuries. Golden with nostalgia and a real heart render. Why dont the TV companies dramatise this and at least four other Francis Brett- Youngs?

[Hana]

Village saga set in the early l920's on the threshold of social change i the aftermath of the Great War.