Happy New Year of Reading Dead Writers! 

Let us begin with my favorite Barbara Pym novel, No Fond Return of Love.  I adore this book, set on the fringes of the literary professions in London in the late ’50s or early ’60s.  In a pulp paperback edition, the blurb on the cover would say  INDEXERS IN LOVE!, perched above an illustration of two buxom women gawking at a handsome man.

But this is not the real story, of course.  Pym did not write romance novels; she did not even write romantic comedies.  Her quirky comedies are gently satiric. Her heroines wear sensible shoes.

Pym’s wry sense of humor about the nature of love highlights the heroines’ whimsical quotations of poetry.  No one is very young; no one falls desperately in love.  Love is a relationship based on sex, common interests, and often convenience.  In reality, the two indexers, Dulcie Mainwaring and Viola Dace, are not romantic:  they are lonely women who meet at a conference for editors, indexers, and proofreaders.  Dulcie attends to meet new people and recover from her broken engagement to a younger man, Maurice.  Viola, a black-clad bohemian, takes one look at Dulcie’s sensible shoes and knows it was a mistake to attend.

But was it a mistake?  As at all academic conferences, people devote much time to socializing.  And the stunningly handsome, middle-aged editor, Aylwin Forbes, is an object of attraction.  Viola attended purposely to be near him after hearing that his wife left him.  And  Dulcie becomes mildly interested after Alwyn faints at the podium and she sensibly applies smelling salts to revive him. 

Viola and Dulcie run into each other in London and bond over Aylwin. Dulcie is not seriously interested, but she does idle “research “on Alywin at the Public Records office, the  public library, and perhaps the British Museum in her free time.  She and Viola walk in Aylwin’s neighborhood at night, because his house is near Viola’s bed-sit, and when they run into him, all three are embarrassed. But that is not all:  they also attend Alywin’s brother Neville’s church. There is, unfortunately, a substitute clergyman: Neville has gone home to Mother for Easter because, most inconveniently, Miss Spicer has fallen in love with him.  He has problems with women in every parish. The two brothers are too good-looking.

Dulcie’s whimsy and insatiable research are hilarious. She and Viola invite her former fiance, Maurice, her neighbors, and Aylwin to a dinner party, and she and Viola manage to be charming. But Aylwin is interested in neither Dulcie nor Viola. He prefers Dulcie’s 18-year-old niece, Laurel, though he is almost fifty. 

At the end, allusions to Mansfield Park charmingly sum up the not-quite love story.  It ends most satisfactorily, though not quite as one would expect. Pym, in my opinion, mockingly tweaks the marriage plot, though there is usually at least one marriage in her novels, and the couples seems happy enough. Dulcie spends a lot of time making marmalade and doing other domestic tasks. She would welcome love, but does not actively pursue it, despite appearances. Whether there is any fond return of love is not entirely clear

And that’s the inimitable Barbara Pym.

In Barbara Pym’s charming novel, No Fond Return of Love (1961), the whimsical heroine, Dulcie Mainwaring, attends an indexing conference. Dumped by her fiancé, she needs to meet new people, though the conference may be prosaic.  And she cannot help but mock the the titles of the papers on the program:  one is simply called,  “Some Problems of an Editor.”

Though many conference-goers share Dulcie’s comical views, the black-clad Viola Dace, her next-door neighbor at the dorm,  haughtily sets herself apart: she is here because she “knows one of the lecturers.”  She does not, however, know him well:  she has  a crush on Dr. Aylwin Forbes, whose wife has recently left him.

That evening, Dulcie joins the ranks of Aylwin Forbes admirers.

“Who is that good-looking man?” Dulcie whispered to Viola, as they stood in the ante-room waiting for the final gong to sound for dinner.

“Good-looking man – where?” Viola had been lost in her contemplation of their fellow conference members,  who were not, on the whole, good-looking.  Indeed, she had been wondering what conference could possibly consist of good-looking people, unless it was one of actors or film stars.  But as soon as Dulcie spoke she knew who it must be, and was annoyed and disappointed that she should not have felt his presence in some mysterious way.

Dulcie and Viola become friends, sort of, mainly because of their Aylwin crushes.  And when Viola’s landlady kicks her out, she asks if she can live with Dulcie in her big house in the suburbs.  Dulcie hesitates, because her niece is staying with her, but she is flattered that Viola likes her. And their Aylwin-mania continues:  Viola lounges in a park near Aylwin’s house, Dulcie walks in his neighborhood and spots him on the Underground (he can’t place her), and one night the two women walk past Aylwin’s house, where, embarrassingly, they are seen and have to make an excuse. 

Even funnier, Dulcie does research on Aylwin’s family:  she learns that Aylwin’s brother is a vicar, and visits the church, where a woman is crying because of her crush on the too good-looking vicar.

I chortled throughout this rereading.  In the realm of love, Dulcie practices the gentle art of indexing.  And all turns out surprisingly well for everybody. Pym is just so funny!