The Story of Stanley Brent – Elizabeth Berridge (1945) 75 pages

Oh dear, I am so behind on everyone’s blogs and of course my own blogging. I hope everyone is well and reading lots of lovely books, and that those in the northern hemisphere are enjoying the longer, lighter days. I’m really hoping May sees me catching up with the blogosphere, and against my better judgement I’m going to give my annual Novella a Day in May a bash too…

Elizabeth Berridge is a writer that I really wanted to get to, and thankfully she has a couple of novellas to her name, so this month seemed the perfect time. The Story of Stanley Brent was her debut and at 75 pages it just makes my criteria for a novella* rather than a short story (in modern editions, my old edition is a bit shorter so I’m starting the month by cheating 😀 )

Opening five years into the last century with a proposal of marriage hastily undertaken on an aunt’s landing, Berridge expertly sets up the themes of her novella: domesticity, social awkwardness, romantic hopes butting up against worldly realities (in this instance, not being able to embrace fully as Ada is in a dressing gown and risks her decency).

The proposal brings out the very different characters of the titular protagonist and his betrothed:

“Ada saved quietly and fiercely for a good home, Stanley lived in the moment and hoped for some stroke of luck, content with the right to kiss his fiancé and hold her hand without reproach, to sit out dances with her. She was promised to him, that was enough.”

Things being enough while Ada hopes for more, will continue through their marriage. Stanley, so determinedly placed by Berridge at the centre of the story, is rarely the leading man of his own life. He drifts into middle management but doesn’t drive the estate agency in any direction and fails to keep up with the changing world. The First World War happens away from him, unable to join up due to a back problem. The Great Strike has a limited impact on his life beyond the train disruption challenging his commuting routine.

His lack of reflection or insight has traumatic consequences for Ada on their wedding night. The impact of total sexual ignorance is dealt with frankly by Berridge, reminding me of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach:

“That her body, washed meticulously and yet ignored by her, should attain such an importance, should cause a good and decent man like Stanley to be so – so bestial and undignified, was shattering. If Stanley could not be trusted, who could? And yet her friends who were married seemed happy enough, they had children… at this a fierce fearful doubt struck her. Suppose they, as Stanley had said, taut and angry, his patience gone, suppose they enjoyed this hateful and frightening thing?”

Somehow the couple recover, conceive two children, and things tick along. Ada has an extra-marital affair, Stanley drinks more heavily over the years. They are lives of quiet desperation, and I felt Stanley’s story was a sad one, all the more so because he didn’t seem to realise he had the power to make it a different one.  

“He shook his head. It was all too big for him, he must keep to the small things, the concrete reasons, solid as stepping stones in turbulent waters.”

His father-in-law is another powerless, sad man in the story, one who plays an unfinished tune on the violins he makes and mends. A melancholy refrain in the book but somehow I didn’t find TSOSB depressing. It ends on a hopeful note, but one which may or may not be realised.

I was so impressed by this first encounter with Elizabeth Berridge and it definitely made me keen to read more. I have Across the Common by her and it’s fewer than 200 pages so maybe I’ll even manage it later this month 😊

Someone less impressed than me was a previous owner of my very old secondhand copy, who inscribed it with the following:

“Berthe, from Mother. Sorry, a very bad choice. No Spiritual Outlook. October 1945.”

I would love to have known how Berthe found it. I hope she enjoyed it more than her mother did.

*70-200 pages