South Riding (3 page)

G
WYNETH
R
OGERS
}

N
ANCY
G
REY
}

L
ESLIE
T
UCKER
} Midge’s friends at the High School.

J
UDY
P
EACOCK
}

J
ENNIFER
H
OWE
}

M
RS
. G
REY
, Nancy’s mother.

M
R
. S
TILLMAN
, an undertaker.

R
EX
, an Alsatian, bought by Tom Sawdon.

A
DDIE
}

M
AIMIE
} married daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Sawdon.

D
R
. S
TRETTON
Specialist at Kingsport.

S
IR
W
ILSON
H
EMINGWAY
Specialist at Leeds.

P
RATT
, a commercial traveller.

A
N EX
-O
FFICER
, camping at the Shacks.

L
ADY
C
OLLIER
, aunt of Colonel Collier.

E
RNST
, German Communist friend of Sarah Burton.

M
ATRON AT
T
HE
L
AURELS
, Harrogate.

D
R
M
C
C
LEMMAN
, psychiatrist at Harrogate.

M
R
. T
HOMPSON
, a Relieving Officer.

M
ILLIE
R
OPER
, a dressmaker.

M
RS
. B
RASS
, a jeweller’s wife.

M
RS
. S
NAGG
, landlady to Millie Roper.

R
ICKY
B
ARNES
, a carrier.

D
AVID
S
HIRLEY
, a coal merchant.

M
RS
. P
OLLIN
, a drug taker.

M
RS
. F
ORD
, an inmate of the County Mental Hospital.

D
R
. F
LINT
, Medical Officer at the County Mental Hospital.

M
OTHER
M
AISIE
, an inmate at the County Mental Hospital

K
ATE
T
HERESA
, a kitten at the Mental Hospital.

M
ISS
T
REMAINE
, a deaconess.

S
PURLING
, an employee of Huggins.

B
ERTIE
B
EDDOWS
, son of Jim and Emma, gassed in France.

S
TANLEY
D
OLLAN
, retired solicitor, afterwards Councillor.

M
ISS
E
MILY
T
EASDALE
, Board of Education Inspector.

M
ISS
V
ANE
, succeeds Miss Sigglesthwaite as Science Mistress.

D
R
. W
YTTON
, Medical Officer of Health for South Riding.

M
R
. E
DWIN
S
MITHERS
, Clerk to the County Council.

M
R
. P
RIZETHORPE
, County Librarian.

C
OMMANDER
S
TEPHEN
K
ING
-H
ALL
, Broadcasts a description of the Silver Jubilee Procession.

South Riding
is an extraordinary book, and it was written by an extraordinary woman. It’s as bold and ambitious as
Middlemarch
by George Eliot, a portrait of a whole community at a time of change and stress, with an endearing and idealistic heroine at its centre.

Why read it now, or dramatise it for television? Well, of course there’s always the timeless reason that it has a strong story, and is full of vivid characters that engage our sympathies. But it feels timely as well: it was written, and set in, the 1930s, a time of forced austerity that offered governments, and local government too, stark challenges and choices. How do we deal with a recession? Do we cut public spending, slash welfare, and in general batten down the hatches, repeating the mantra that “we’re all in this together”? Or do we embrace the alternative of bold programmes of public works, creating employment and stimulating the economy in that way? Rather thrillingly, in this book, the South Riding Council embarks on the latter course, following the examples of Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States, and Chancellor Hitler’s programme in Germany. And if you thought that PPF, public-private financing, was born in the Blair-Cameron era, you might be surprised to see it in action here. Alderman Snaith wants to do well by his constituents, certainly, but he’ll make sure that there’s something in it for him as well.

We tend to think of local government as worthy but boring.
South Riding
shows what vital importance it can have in people’s lives. Joe Astell is a case in point; he has moved away from revolutionary socialism because he has found he can affect more change for the good by quietly beavering away on council committees, making unlikely alliances with hard-faced businessmen to get better roads, schools and housing for the people he serves. And then we have the richly human figure of Councillor Huggins, haulier and lay preacher, who is passionate in his desire to better the lives of the slum-dwellers in the Shacks, but fatally compromised by his weakness for the pleasures of the flesh, and easily tempted into a bit of insider dealing.

At the centre of this society sits Mrs Beddows, a very lively septuagenarian, whose character was inspired by Winifred Holtby’s mother, the first woman alderman to serve on the East Riding County Council. Her guidelines are common sense, her deep knowledge of the community, and a hard-headed optimism about human nature and the possibility of making life better. Her relationship with her husband has been disappointing and unfulfilling, and she pours her emotional energy into her council work. She also enjoys a very close and intimate relationship with Robert Carne, the farmer and horse-breeder who would be the romantic hero of the book, if Winifred Holtby believed in romantic heroes. Carne is a man who is out of joint with his times. He is deeply traditional and instinctively conservative. His family has for generations had the status of someone like Jane Austen’s Mr. Knightley, but the 1930s were not a good decade for the Knightleys of this world. And Carne has his personal tragedy, too: he married an aristocratic wife, whose wild extravagance and subsequent decline into insanity have drained his resources, both financial and emotional. He has a daughter, Midge, thirteen years old, physically delicate and emotionally volatile.

Sarah Burton’s arrival on the scene disturbs the precarious balance of this complex society. She’s a local working-class girl made good, who has returned to Yorkshire to apply for the post of headmistress of the local girls’ grammar school. Years younger than the other candidates, she stands out in other ways too: she’s sexually attractive, a gifted and inspiring teacher, fiercely ambitious, opinionated, politically sophisticated, combative, a socialist, a feminist and a pacifist. The governors find her slightly alarming, but appoint her, because she’s clearly much more talented than the opposition. Astell warms to her progressive ideas, and Mrs. Beddows welcomes her as a local lass who wants to put something back into the community. Robert Carne immediately and instinctively loathes her and everything she stands for.

The reader will of course immediately start to imagine a happy ending for the fiery young heroine and the ‘big heavy handsome unhappy-looking man’, but this isn’t
Pride and Prejudice
, and Winifred Holtby isn’t looking for happy endings, at least of the simpler sort. She had experienced a good deal of disappointment and frustration in her own life, as well as dazzling success.

It’s a remarkable life. Winifred Holtby was born just before the turn of the century, the daughter of a prosperous farmer in the East Riding of Yorkshire. She went to school in Scarborough, where she experienced the German bombardment of the town from battleships in the North Sea. Seventeen people were killed and a great deal of damage was done. Winifred wrote vividly about it for the school magazine: ‘Over the town hung a mantle of heavy smoke, yellow, unreal, which made the place look like a dream city, far, far away. Only the road was real, and the tight pain that caught us across our breast – it was not fear but something inexplicable that hurt, and yet in some strange way was not wholly unpleasant. Someone was down; with a bang they fell full length on the road and lay winded; then someone picked her up and they ran together . . .’

Her talent as a writer was recognised early and encouraged both by her teachers and her parents: her mother published a book of her poems when she was still at school. She won a scholarship to Somerville College in Oxford, and spent the interval between school and college terms as a probationer nurse in London. It was round about this time, in 1916, that ‘Bill’, a childhood friend, but several years older than Winifred, came home wounded from the war and declared his passionate love for her. She was too immature and unsure of herself to accept his love, and ‘Bill’ returned to the front feeling bitter and rejected. Later she realised that she was, after all, in love with him; but although he remained in her life, their relationship was never satisfactory or fulfilling. He was wounded for a second time, but it seems that he suffered more psychologically, becoming detached and disillusioned and unable to commit to anything.

Winifred went up to Somerville, but by the end of her first year felt ‘unbearably marooned in this half-dead, war-time city of elderly dons, women students, and wounded men on crutches’. She applied to join the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) in France, and spent a year there, in rather less danger than she had experienced in Scarborough, though she saw plenty of suffering. She returned to Somerville in 1919, and it was here that she met Vera Brittain (famous for her autobiography
Testament of Youth
), who was to share most aspects of her life until she died.

Still not greatly impressed by Oxford, Vera and Winifred certainly stimulated each other. It was a kind of
folie à deux
, but in a good way, and after leaving college they determined to conquer the literary world together, writing novels, journalism, and taking prominent roles in the Women’s Movement nationally and internationally. Winifred travelled all over Europe, and went on a lecture tour to South Africa at the age of 27. By her thirties, she was suffering bouts of ill health, and she died tragically young at 37, soon after finishing
South Riding
. Vera Brittain wrote a fascinating and moving account of her life in
Testament of Friendship
.

Adapting
South Riding
for television has been a fascinating challenge. When Stan Barstow adapted it in the 70s (with Dorothy Tutin in the lead), he had thirteen 50-minute episodes to play with – we had only three hours in which to tell a complex story. Inevitably, some characters and plotlines had to go, and readers coming to the book after watching the adaptation will find many new things to marvel at. But I hope we’ve been successful in capturing the essence of the novel, and in introducing Winifred Holtby to a new generation of readers.

Andrew Davies

M
Y
D
EAR
M
OTHER
,

Because you are a county alderman and because this book concerns a county council, I feel that I owe you a certain explanation and apology.

I admit that it was through listening to your descriptions of your work that the drama of English local government first captured my imagination. What fascinated me was the discovery that apparently academic and impersonal resolutions passed in a county council were daily revolutionising the lives of those men and women whom they affected. The complex tangle of motives prompting public decisions, the unforeseen consequences of their enactment on private lives appeared to me as part of the unseen pattern of the English landscape.

What I have tried to do in
South Riding
is to trace that pattern. I have laid my scene in the South East part of Yorkshire, because that is the district which I happen to know best; but the South Riding is not the East Riding; Snaith, Astell and Carne are not your colleagues; the incidents of the schools, housing estates and committees are not described from your experience. I have drawn my material from sources unknown to you. You had no idea that this was the novel I was writing. Alderman Mrs. Beddows is not Alderman Mrs. Holtby. Though I confess I have borrowed a few sayings for her from your racy tongue, and when I described Sarah’s vision of her in the final paragraph, it was you upon whom, in that moment, my thoughts were resting.