Tag Archives: John Verney

THE THORNFIELD HALL NEWSLETTER

Spring 2025, Issue 4

In this issue, I consider the pros and cons of Zoom, show you my latest collectible books, and “review” a charming collection of John Verney’s humor writing and cartoons.

Va-va Voom! It’s a Zoom World!

“Then the faces of all the other women in our book group popped up, each in a separate little frame, like the celebrities on Hollywood Squares. Some of the women’s mouths were moving soundlessly. Only Evelyn’s frame was empty until she whizzed by, calling [the dog].” – “The Great Escape,” from Hilma Wolitzer’s Today a Woman Went Mad at the Supermarket

My husband recommended Zoom. “You should try a Zoom book event. It’s a necessary skill in the 21st century.”

Is it? They said that about cell phones, but I prefer the landline.

“But why don’t you try Zoom? I mean really.”

I have many answers.

• Djuna Barnes didn’t have Zoom.
• I’m not crazy about the telehealth thing.
• I’m cutting back on screen time.
• I have to go pick up a latte.

He seems to enjoy it, whoever he is!

Finally I gave in.

I arrived out-of-breath, unfashionably late, because I needed to download the Zoom app first – actually, it downloaded itself – several times! Suddenly I was whisked into the “room” with tiny pictures of people in the margins of the screen. I would have turned off my picture, but I’d been told it was considered rude, and anyway I didn’t know how.

There was a large, eclectic crowd. You know how it is: in any big group, some people “raise their hands” again and again. It’s like a game show: who can push the button the fastest? Now that I was there, I figured I might as well chat, but I could not find the raise-your-hands icon. The other silent ones were probably also hunting for the button. It was a lot of lonely women in their kitchens, if you know what I mean. I do not exclude myself from that category: I was in the living room.

I sent a thank you note to the leaders. Is that the protocol?

Technology seemed fun at first, but now we are technology.

By the way, I was enchanted by Hilma Wolitzer’s short story, “The Great Escape.” (See the epigraph.) Set during the Covid lockdown in New York, this story centers on a group of nonagenarians trying to conduct their book group on Zoom. You can read my review of this 2021 short story collection here.

My Latest “Collectible” Books

I have four words for you, two of them initials: C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

I am obsessed with his 1920s translation of Proust.

Years ago I bought a cheap Modern Library set of Moncrieff’s Remembrance of Things Past. I paid $5 for it. But it disappeared long ago, and I am determined to replace my set. However, it’s cheaper to collect the books separately. So there is much looking in carts outside of bookstores, and crawling on floors covered with books in overstuffed bookstores.

So far I’ve found Cities of the Plain, the fourth book in the series, in the 1954 edition. The book jacket is lovely: no bent corners, no rips. And I’m fascinated by the list of titles inside the book jacket. Actually I have some of these old Modern Library editions: Webb’s Precious Bane, H. G. Wells’s Tono-Bungay, etc.

My other find is a tiny Everyman’s Library edition of George Eliot’s Adam Bede. It is adorable, even smaller than my old Modern Library book. Having read five new books lately, only one of them excellent, I must return to the classics. I have six different pairs of glasses, so I should be able to read the tiny print with no problem.

Verney Abroad

I love John Verney’s illustrations. I was and am hooked on his smart, witty children’s novels, Friday’s Tunnel and February’s Road, about the Callendar family. Mr. Callendar is a journalist who investigates slimeball politicians, etc., and his oldest son and daughter, Friday and February, investigate on their own. The police interview February at one point. Paul Dry publishes these two masterpieces by Verney and his memoir, Going to the Wars.

I picked up this strange little book, Verney Abroad, in a book bin outside a shop. It is amusing travel writing, complete with illustrations and cartoons. It has only 95 pages, and I wish there were more. It is VERY slight.


Have a jolly spring, or mud season, as we call it! And be sure to let me know about your Zoom experiences.

John Verney’s “February’s Road”: Political Skulduggery & Infelicities of Journalism

Why do classics go out-of-print? Even if you write the title and author in a reading journal – which I sometimes do – with a date beside it, the number of pages, and other arcane data – it does not necessarily recall the actual book. 
 
Perhaps you never wrote down titles of John Verney’s witty 1960s novels.  I didn’t! But I never forgot them. And I may be an expert on February’s Road (1961), because I own an old copy and have read it multiple times. This gem of a children’s book has been neglected, forgotten, and might even be banned by right-wingers (if they had read it, that is), because it is political novel for adults, disguised as a children’s book.
 
Narrated by February Callendar, a witty girl who likes ponies, hunting, comics, and pop records by Cliff Richards, this sharp-tongued narrative heads straight for an investigation of political skulduggery. The Ministry of Highways announces its plans to rush a trunk road through Cowdray Park, an unspoiled piece of land near the Callendars’ ramshackle country house.  They cannot fight it, because Feb’s father, Gus Callendar, a writer for The Messenger, has ranted for months about the need for new roads in England.
                     

Illustration by John Verney

The villagers are agog. They do not want the road there. But when someone damages the bulldozers the night before work starts on the road, the police suspect February – unjustly, but her fingerprints are found on a pan.  Shortly thereafter, a flock of reporters descend on them.  When the first reporter knocks on their kitchen door, Mrs. Callendar, though she should know better as a journalist’s wife, invites him in because it is cold.

Here are a few witty excerpts that reveal Verney’s comical impressions of the infelicities of journalism and journalists. 


We asked him in for tea and he told us he was what they called a “stringer” – that is, he had a job on the Querbury Advertiser, but also reported for one of the largest, and nastiest, of the London dailies if anything cropped up locally.  They had phoned him and told him to get a story about – me!


Mrs. Callendar asks if he is ever ashamed of prying into people’s problems – but she puts sugar in his tea at the same time.

“Well, of course, I do often get asked that question, Mr.s. Callendar,” he answered very politely. “I think you should perhaps try and see it from this angle…”  And he told us how he himself deplored unnecessary prying and would certainly put a stop to it when he became editor of The Times, but that meanwhile any self-respecting reporter had a responsibility toward the public at large…


And then other reporters and a photographer show up and are invited in. February goes on:  “He asked if Mummy would like a snap of the family having tea.  Mummy never can resist snaps of us children…”

The Callendars forget the reporters, busy as they are with the chaos of family life, but then Friday (February’s brother) bursts in on Tuesday morning with an armful of papers. 

February observes:

For sheer imaginative fiction, the young men we’d entertained at tea were geniuses, and to read them you’d think I had sworn to take on the Ministry of Highways single-handed, but the headings will give you an idea of the sort of stuff.”YOU’VE GOT TO FIGHT THESE DAYS,” SAYS FEBRUARY.  “GOOD OLD FEB FAIRLY BASHED THOSE BULLDOZERS!” SAYS BROTHER FRIDAY… THE FIGHTING CALLENDARS… . HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER….

Verney also shows the  positive side of journalism:  a smart American columnist at The Messenger understands that February is a red herring, a distraction from  the politics and profit motive of the road. Thrillingly, he recruits February to help him do research. There is a certain amount of espionage.

Oh, and by the way, some papers are classier than others: The Times and The Messenger are the only two that report  the damage to the bulldozers without conjecturing about February.

This book is sheer enjoyment, my favorite of Verney’s four books about the Callendar family. 

By the way,  Paul Dry Books has reissued Friday’s Tunnel (the first book in the series) and February’s Road (the second).  This is good news indeed!