Stella Gibbons

READING GROUP

Beyond Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons' other works

The 100 best novels / No 57 / Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) 

Her first novel has overshadowed all her other books, but there is much to relish in Gibbons' later catalogue

Sam Jordison

Friday 27 February 2017

Cold Comfort Farm has been an excellent choice for this month's Reading Group. It's provided - forgive me - fertile ground for discussion about the art of parody, transcending parody and race and class in the 1930s. Less seriously, but probably more importantly, it's also been highly entertaining and extremely funny: just the book to see us through the darkest month. I'm glad it came out of the hat – and I'm grateful to the readers who nominated it.

But something has been nagging at me as I've come to know more about the book and its author. Stella Gibbons might not thank us for focusing so completely on this novel, her most famous work. Her dazzling first novel made her name, but it also became a millstone. Late in life she described it as "some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but is often an embarrassment and a bore." She also lamented the fact that it had so eclipsed the 20-odd other novels, not to mention various collections of short stories and poetry, that she also published. Heard of Westwood? I can't say I had either until this month.Cold Comfort Farm overshadows most other novels from the 20th century too, so it doesn't seem entirely unfair that it should have had a similar effect on the rest of Gibbons' oeuvre. But reading about her uneasy relationship with this book – and her fondness for her others – piqued my curiosity, and so I thought I'd look at a few more things she's written.

I started with the short story collection Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm – of course I did! If that was the only other thing I'd read by Gibbons I'd probably be reporting that it's quite right that Gibbons is remembered best because of the Starkadders.

Looking on the bright side, the stories do provide a good snapshot of England immediately before the war (the book was first published in 1940). There are also some pointed attacks on contemporary mores that show there's more to Gibbons than making fun of Mary Webb. A story called Sisters is a bitter, angry indictment of those who judge women for loving outside of marriage. Another called To Love and to Cherish, meanwhile, is a sad account of how settling for marriage can also mean the death of ambition and a dearth of adventure. They're certainly worth reading if you're interested in rounding out Gibbons' character – although their value as standalone works is questionable.Looking on the Aunt Ada Doom bright side, some of the stories are awful. One in particular stinks: The Murder Mark contains the flimsiest denouement to a story about killing I've encountered for a long while, as well as one that is foreshadowed with all the subtlety of these drunk elephants.

Otherwise, most stories in the collection are fine, if fairly inconsequential. They aren't bad, but if they hadn't been written by the author of Cold Comfort Farm, it's unlikely anyone would seek them out. Except for one story - which is, of course, the one about Christmas at the farm.

Set in the years before Flora Poste arrived, when there was still a full bevy of Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm and Aunt Ada Doom was still worried about whatever it was she saw in the woodshed, Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is hilarious. There's another wonderful attack on an idiot clergyman, and some electrifying moments of Starkadder vileness. As the family await their meal, Aunt Ada Doom says: "Amos, carve the bird. Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!" Better still, Judith "tonelessly" says to her husband: "Amos, will you pull a cracker wi' me? We were lovers … once." There's also a bevy of near-Wodehousian one-liners: "The Starkadders so seldom saw a clean and handsome object at the farmhouse (for Seth was only handsome) that they now crept round, fascinated, to examine the book with murmurs of awe." It also has a quite beautiful, gentle ending that I shan't detail further because I'd urge you to read it for yourself.

I'd also urge you to go off and read some of Gibbons' other novels. Last week, I also downloaded the 1938 book Nightingale Wood, since it was the only audiobook I could get hold of and I had a morning of outdoor work ahead (moving some logs into my shed, fittingly enough). I've loved every minute.

Gibbons declared she wanted Nightingale Wood to be Cinderella brought "right up to date" – but now it's fascinating as a period piece. Gibbons is superb on middle class life in the years immediately before the second world war, on the erosions of class division and ongoing snobbery. There's something stupid and sad and lost about her quiet genteel characters trying to pretend that life can go quietly on as ominous noises from Europe grow ever louder. There's plenty that's enraging about the stifling judgements that this society heaps on women. There are a few hilarious moments and a funny comic character in the form of a hermit who lives in the woods near the suburban Essex setting, but generally there aren't so many of the big belly laughs of Cold Comfort Farm. This satire is far subtler, relying on icicle wit and sharp observation to lambast conventional morality.

Stella Gibbons

Gibbons also displays a tender side. There is real sadness in some of her characters, instead of deliberately heightened rural dolour – and it winds up as a love story that would please Jane Austen.

In short, Nightingale Wood is very impressive. What's more, from what I can make out, it appears to be a comparatively minor entry in Gibbons' long catalogue. A good number of her other books were recently re-released by Vintage and Rachel Cooke wrote a great article at the time, mainly recommending Westwood and Starlight. Clearly Gibbons is not – as she is often portrayed – a one-book author. It sounds as though we should be glad she also had a long productive life long after finishing Cold Comfort Farm, and lament the fact that she eventually gave up writing for publication (perhaps because she was so fed up with all her books except one being ignored).

Not that I want you to think her old age was miserable, however. Let's end with a lovely image. The current (excellent) Wikipedia article on Gibbons describes how from the mid-1970s on, she started giving regular literary tea parties at her home. At these, according to Jill Neville (who wrote Gibbons' entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), "she was known to expel guests if they were shrill, dramatic, or wrote tragic novels". Sounds like she still had plenty of Flora Poste in her …

THE GUARDIAN