Letter

Christina Hardyment came to the office last week and talked about her book Dream Babies. She started by reminding us that the concept of the ordinary runs through many Persephone books and that many of them touch on family life; and she quoted from the first page of Persephone Book No.41, Hostages to Fortune (‘”My word”, Catherine thought, “that’s not a baby, that’s a person”’) and from The Home-Maker, Persephone Books No.7, and also from Rosamond Lehmann’s A Note in Music and Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love to illustrate this theme. She then talked about a child-care ‘guru’ who wrote contemporaneously with these writers, Charis Frankenburg, an Oxford graduate who wrote Common Sense in the Nursery in 1922 (reprinted several times over the next twenty years).  Mrs Frankenburg was extremely sensible about things like giving babies lots of fresh air and not over-stimulating them; and she concluded her introduction by saying, wisely but  controversially, ‘Let the final word be this: Children should be, of all the people in the house, the most important and the most seriously considered, but they should think that less attention is paid to them and to their likes and dislikes than to any other member of the household.’

Christina then turned to the theme which is central to her book, which is that the experts’ advice change with the changing times, in particular the libertarian approach alternates with the disciplinarian.  She talked about Mrs Hester Thrale, Truby King, Dr Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford, describing the latter as ‘kind but firm’ in the way she urges babies towards twelve-hour sleeps and her belief that ‘almost all bad behaviour is because the child is over-tired or because of tummy troubles’; overall, Christina believes, Gina Ford’s success is a sign of our times, an example of society turning away from the recently prevalent liberalism.

That evening I went to a wonderful play at the Orange Tree Theatre, Susan Glaspell’s 1922 Chains of Dew. I thoroughly recommend this to anyone who can get to Richmond.  It is about Seymore Standish who ‘leads a double life,’ wrote Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. ‘Back home, in his Midwestern town, he is a pillar of the community: a husband, a father, a director of the bank.  In 1920s New York he is lionised as a radical poet.  His fashionable East Coast friends urge him to break out of respectability and declare himself for liberal causes.  In particular his friend Nora wants to conscript him for her big project – promotion of birth control.  But Standish holds back – he must protect his wife and mother, he says.’

The comedy lies in the games people play.  Seymore likes his life the way it is, however much he protests otherwise.  And his Midwestern wife is not ‘the little woman’ he pretends she is to his New York friends.  In The Times, Sam Marlowe called this play ‘exhilarating’ and Michael Billington in the Guardian called it ‘astonishing’; anyone seeing the play will agree with them.

Otherwise, the reviews of the film of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day continue to come in, and there was a piece about the book and about us in Publisher’s Weekly.

If you are anywhere near the British Library (or planning to come in to Persephone Books indeed) do go to the charming exhibition about Charleston and Grace Higgens.

The new Biannually, with details of the three new Persephone books, goes out on April 10th – we very much hope you enjoy it, and the new books.

Nicola Beauman
Lamb’s Conduit Street
30th March 2008