Angela’s alter ego, revealed by Sally Phillips
Like Agatha Christie’s Ariadne Oliver, Angela Thirkell had an alter ego, Mrs Laura Morland, to whom she could attribute her own feelings and frustrations about her writing career.
We first meet Laura Morland in High Rising (1933) when she is 45 (but doesn’t always look her age) and already a successful author. Her husband, who was nothing but an expense when he was alive, had conveniently died when Tony was a few months old and she was left to support her four sons.
By the time of High Rising the three eldest had established successful careers and were scattered all over the world and Tony was about 10 or younger although textual evidence suggests 12/13,(his real age is confused). He is full of energy, talks all the time, is incredibly self-centred and boastful and devoted to his model railway, about which he is amazingly knowledgeable.
She had sent him to school at an earlier age than his brothers, partly so that he should not be an only child under petticoat government, partly, as she remarked, to break his spirit. She fondly hoped that after a term or two at school he would find his own level, and be clouted over the head by his unappreciative contemporaries. But not at all. He returned from school rather more self-centred than before, talking even more, and, if possible, less interestingly. Why the other boys hadn’t killed him, his doting mother couldn’t conceive.
High Rising chapter two
Thirkell aficionados have differing opinions about Tony. Some (mothers of sons perhaps?) love him, others find him intensely irritating. Thirkell obviously has a fondness for Tony as the first two books in the Barchester series are almost entirely devoted to him and she also wrote some short stories about him for Harper’s Bazaar.
Laura’s husband had left no money, and in order to educate her sons she decided to write a novel. She realised that next to murder, racing and sport, 50% of the great reading public liked to read about clothes (although she was not particularly interested in them herself). She did some serious research in department stores and settled down to write bestsellers. And succeeded. She had a large steady reading public who were fascinated by the clothes business.
As she put it, “I wrote a story about a dressmaker’s shop, in a kind of desperation and then a publisher saw it and said it was so bad it was worth publishing so after that I wrote a book every year till it got into a kind of habit”. Although ostensibly about Madame Koska’s dressmaking establishment the books were really thrillers, she “could not decide whether the fitter, known to be a Russian ex aristocrat, had been abducted by political enemies or joined the anarchists”.
“Good bad books”
Readers are told that Mrs Morland’s books are always the first to be chosen from the library trolleys taken round at the hospital; Americans were said to be “crazy” about them because they were so typically English. Laura herself described them as “good bad books” – not very good but good of a second-rate kind. She always answered all her fan letters and was flattered by appreciation from young people since she thought she was writing for grown-ups. She had a flat in London, a house in the country, a middle-class car and a cook housekeeper so I think we can assume that she was a financial success. While she herself was inclined to denigrate her work, her publishers considered she wrote good workmanlike texts.
Any real author, she felt, without rancour, would, after having used the same kind of typewriter for about twenty years, remember offhand how to change a ribbon, but no vestige of remembrance ever clung to Laura’s mind. The diagrams in the book were undoubtedly meant to be helpful, but they were always drawn from an angle at which you had never seen your machine, nor ever probably could, and assumed that you would remember which was Catch Point Release Lever and which Left Hand Spacer Stop—
High Rising chapter three
or words very much to that effect.
She considered herself a good speller (though her typewriter had its own ideas about spelling). Indeed she had a love-hate relationship with the typewriter – one of my favourite parts of High Rising is the two pages she takes to change the ribbon. However, like any author who writes a long series of books (including Thirkell herself), Mrs Morland can sometimes get her characters confused and, for example, marries off a thirteen year-old, because she forgot what she had written about the girl in an earlier book.
A pseudonym
It was not generally known that, under an assumed name, Mrs Morland had written “The Life of Molly Bangs” – a courtesan who “lived at hack and manger with half the aristocracy” and whom Laura had found in some memoirs and thought worth following up. “I really enjoyed going to places like the British Museum and the Newspaper Library, and making notes in an exercise book which I always lost”. And this is exactly what Thirkell herself did. The Fortunes of Harriette: the surprising career of Harriette Wilson (1936) is the life of a courtesan extraordinaire, although published under Thirkell’s own name.
Although she frequently explains that she does not really belong in Barchester, “I only came to live here”, she fits into the community of High Rising extremely well. She has a lot of friends and plays a full part in village life, lecturing at the Women’s Institute and the local Conservative Association, supporting the formation of a Pony Club and knowing everyone.
We are told very little about Laura Morland’s appearance, but we can be sure that she always dresses appropriately and with good taste. Her house was comfortable and guests were assured of a welcome and good food provided by Stoker (her “faithful handmaiden”) even if Laura herself was not necessarily keen to see them. She enjoyed the company of young people and gave them good advice, and always kept the confidences she received over the years.
Mrs Morland does get the occasional proposal but, although she says she likes men “very much”, they are always refused. Laura is totally unbusinesslike but (luckily) has an excellent relationship with her publisher, Adrian Coates.
“I like dealing with my publisher direct. If I came to you I’d have to see underlings half the time, but I can always see Adrian whenever I like. And then he hasn’t got a wife, so there’s no bother about being asked to dinners and that sort of thing.’
High Rising chapter four
‘So thank you ever so much,’ said Laura, turning her charming tired eyes on Mr. Johns, and pushing some loose ends of hair under her hat, ‘but really I think I’m very well as I am, and anyway I’ve got a new contract for three more books on very good terms.’
This was pure showing off, as Laura had very little notion of what terms, good or bad, should be. But as she got a good deal more money on each book she wrote, she was quite contented—and if she had known it, she was getting very good treatment as well.
In Three Score and Ten (1961), the last book of the series, Robin, Tony’s 10 year-old son (and just like his father!) is staying with Laura while his family enjoy measles. He feels that 70, his grandmother’s age next birthday, is such a great age that it deserves a party. Like most small boys he is preoccupied with food, and his suggestions for the menu include “fride eggs, bread and driping and merangs”. Luckily the idea is taken up by Laura’s friends and, with their money behind it, the resulting party is a magnificent occasion and makes a fitting end to the series.
Laura herself was only mildly interested, and expected to be disappointed by the day, but is overwhelmed at finding herself so popular and everyone being so kind – but still considers it bliss to be back in bed after it is all over!
So how much has she changed over the twenty-five years we have known Laura Morland? In truth, not very much. She is older and, in the way of elderly ladies (not that we would necessarily consider 70 elderly today, but this was 1960), less inclined for energetic activity. But all the great and good of Barsetshire are proud to consider her a friend and it is not surprising that she is one of Thirkell’s most popular characters.
This article was originally written for the July 2024 issue of The Scribbler, a “retrospective literary review”, and reproduced, with our thanks, by the permission of the editor,
Shirley Neilson.
See The Scribbler and Greyladies (well-mannered books by ladies long gone)
website for more details.
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