Period Piece: A Cambridge Girlhood by Gwen Raverat, for the #1952Club

This is a gently affectionate and often amusing memoir of a Victorian childhood from an unusual perspective – Gwen Raverat was a granddaughter of Charles Darwin and had an outspoken American mother. In 1883, Maud Du Puy came from Philadelphia to visit an aunt in Cambridge, England. She was pretty and sociable but not well educated or academically inclined so it seems a little surprising that she enjoyed the university life of Cambridge and attracted several suitors.

George Darwin was the second son of Charles, who had recently died, and was scientifically inclined as well. He was a Fellow at Trinity University, 17 years older than Maud, and although he was not the most dashing of the men she met that year, he was persistent, and they were married in 1884. Gwen (1885-1957) was the eldest of their four children and her look back at her extended family is full of sly humor.

Gwen grew up in an eccentric and at time illogical household, where her mother ran the household with unusual quirks, balancing a sort of prudishness with the societal (and hierarchal) expectations of an academic wife and theories with which she brought up her children:

Another excellent thing was that we were sometimes left to shift for ourselves, more than was usual for children in our class and time; although this was only partly in consequence of my mother’s views on independence. It was also largely a result of the casual happy-go-luckiness – not unaccompanied by laziness – which was one of her most attractive qualities. She was of course inexhaustibly energetic about anything that interested her. She would go to great trouble and make long expeditions to find a cook for someone else; but if a cook for herself was needed, she was bored, and would go to almost equal trouble to get someone else to do the tiresome job for her.

Charles Darwin died before Gwen was born but he was still a presence in this family’s lives, especially when they visited his widow in Kent (she, too, was from an illustrious family, the Wedgwoods):

The faint flavor of the ghost of my grandfather hung in a friendly way about the whole place, house, garden, and all. Of course, we always felt embarrassed if our grandfather was mentioned, just as we did if God were spoken of. In fact, he was obviously in the same category as God and Father Christmas. Only, with our grandfather, we also felt, modestly, that we ought to disclaim any virtue of our own in having produced him. Of course it was very much to our credit, really, to own such a grandfather; but one mustn’t be proud or show off about it; so we blushed and were embarrassed and changed the subject. It was probably the same wish not to seem presumptuous, which gave my uncles the odd habit of never claiming him as their own father, in conversation with each other. They always said, ‘Your father said so-and-so’; to which the other uncle often answered: ‘Well he was your father, too.’ Sometimes stupid people even made jokes about our being descended from monkeys! This annoyed us very much. We thought it in bad taste.

Maud thought her daughter should become a mathematician but Gwen eventually blossomed as an artist. After being educated at home by a governess, followed by a few unhappy years at a boarding school, she studied at the Slade, where she met her husband. She became known for her wood engravings: in addition to this book, she illustrated an edition of Countess Kate some will know. Her style reminds me somewhat of Edward Ardizzone.

from Period Piece

This book was chosen for the 1952 Club, hosted this week by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. One part of this book reminded me of Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink (which I reread for the #1937Club a year ago). Although the sisters in that book grow up in California, when they are shipwrecked, Mary reminds them they are Wallaces and they sing the patriotic “Scots, Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled,” which always restores their self-confidence. Gwen and her siblings have a more cynical response to governesses who idolize Robert Burns:

Wahaeing is one of the chief pursuits of the Scotch, as Burns states in his difficult poem . . . And they wahaed about Bruce and Wallace, and rubbed in spiders and tartans and porridge and the insufferable and universal superiority of the Scotch (No, I will NOT say Scots) to such an extent, that we could only get into corners and thank our stars that we had not a drop of Scotch blood in our veins.

I suppose the Wallaces and the Darwins are not alone in their strong feelings about Robert Burns!  

Title: Period Piece
Author and Illustrator: Gwen Raverat
Publication: Faber and Faber, paperback, originally published in 1952
Genre: Memoir
Source: Thanks to my friend Nicky who gave me this copy!

Off the Blog: I'm in London!  We are off to St. Etheldreda's and Hampstead Heath today . . .