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Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. (1938) French title: Cette sacrée vertu.
I bought Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson after reading Jacqui’s enthusiastic review confirmed by Max’s review, both excellent, as always.
I was drawn to this story of a mousy spinster who gets shaken up in her life after a serendipitous mix up. Miss Pettigrew works as a governess not by choice but out of obligation. She needs to work for a living and it’s the only profession she knows. It’s not a calling and she’s not very skilled at it. With the years, the family she works for are getting worse and she’s been ill-treated by her employers. Miss Pettigrew is poor, she’s lonely and she doesn’t have any other option than taking another job as a governess. The last family you hired her bullied her and she dreads starting anew somewhere else. Her resistance to harship is getting low and her work agency has sent her to an address to start a new position. She feels like she’s going to the gallows.
Outside on the pavement Miss Pettigrew shivered slightly. It was a cold, grey, foggy November day with a drizzle of rain in the air. Her coat, of a nondescript, ugly brown, was not very thick. It was five years old. London traffic roared about her. Pedestrians hastened to reach their destinations and get out of the depressing atmosphere as quickly as possible. Miss Pettigrew joined the throng, a middle-aged, rather angular lady, of medium height, thin through lack of good food, with a timid, defeated expression and terror quite discernible in her eyes, if any one cared to look. But there was no personal friend or relation in the whole world who knew or cared whether Miss Pettigrew was alive or dead.
She musters the courage to knock at the door of her new employer and she’s immediately welcomed by Miss LaFosse who thinks that Miss Pettigrew is her new maid. They don’t have time to exchange a word before Miss Lafosse begs for Miss Pettigrew’s help. Indeed, Miss Lafosse has a lover at home (Nick) and her other lover (Michael) is coming soon. She wants Miss Pettigrew to make Nick leave before Michael arrives. Without thinking, Miss Pettigrew obeys and successfully pushes Nick out the door. Miss LaFosse is convinced she’s got a new best friend and takes Miss Pettigrew under her wing.
Miss LaFosse is young and pretty. She’s an actress and a flirt. She runs in totally different circles than the ones Miss Pettigrew is used to. Worse than that, she lives a life Miss Pettigrew has been taught to consider sinful and dissipated. But Miss Pettigrew is at the end of her rope, she decides she’s not in a position to judge Miss LaFosse and she quite enjoys the attention she gets from her.
Miss Pettigrew now forgot all about her original errand. For the first time for twenty years some one really wanted her for herself alone, not for her meagre scholarly qualifications. For the first time for twenty years she was herself, a woman, not a paid automaton. She was so intoxicated with pride she would have condoned far worse sins than Miss LaFosse having two young men in love with her. She put it like that. She became at once judicial, admonitory and questioning.
She’s swept off her feet and dizzy with the whirlwind of Miss LaFosse’s love life. And as the day goes on, Miss Pettigrew questions the values she was taught and that she respected all her life. The French title of the book is Cette sacrée vertu, or in English This bloody virtue and it sums it all. What good did it bring her to be good and virtuous? What joy did it bring in her life?
In a dull, miserable existence her one wild extravagance was her weekly orgy at the cinema, where for over two hours she lived in an enchanted world peopled by beautiful women, handsome heroes, fascinating villains, charming employers, and there were no bullying parents, no appalling offspring, to tease, torment, terrify, harry her every waking hour.
Is that all that she can hope for? A life where her only happy place is a two-hour visit to the cinema? She starts thinking that she might deserve more than being a bullied and poor governess. As the story unfolds, we see a character coming out of her safety shell to dare living. This kind of plot could be mawkish but it’s not. It’s served by Watson’s witty prose and she turns this late blooming into a light and bittersweet comedy. Her sense of humour is fantastic, as you can see in these passing lines:
Miss LaFosse sat in front of the mirror in preparation for the greatest rite of all, the face decoration.
Miss Pettigrew, completely submerged in unknown waters, did her best to surmount the waves.
It is also vivid thanks to energetic dialogues that reminded me of vaudeville and comics.
‘???…!!!…???…!!!’exploded Nick again.
Totally Captain Haddock, no?
Reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was a real delight. It’s funny as hell, lovely and still thought-provoking. Of course, there’s the condition of women and the difficulty to work for a living. Miss Pettigrew also shows that living as a saint might be commendable but not that enjoyable and Miss LaFosse demonstrates that living as she wants, duty be damned, is a lot more pleasant and that in the end, it doesn’t hurt anybody.
Kim at Reader Matters, listed Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day in her list of five uplifting reads. I think she’s onto something there.
Highly recommended.
Rendezvous in Venice by Philippe Beaussant
Rendezvous in Venice by Philippe Beaussant. (2003) Original French title: Le Rendez-vous de Venise.
In Rendezvous in Venice, Philippe Beaussant tells a story about art, about family and transmission, about mentoring and love. The first part of this billet is without spoilers and the second part explores the novella a bit farther but includes spoilers.
Part I
Pierre stumbles upon his dead uncle’s notebook. Uncle Charles was his mentor as an art historian and Pierre was his assistant during the last fifteen years heard of Charles’ life. He thought he knew everything about him. Charles was a bachelor, he appreciated women as works of art but never really as flesh and blood people. Or so Pierre thought. Reading through the notebook, he realizes that a long time ago his uncle had a passionate love affair with a younger woman named Judith, that this love story had its turning point in Venice.
Pierre is stunned. He never knew this side of Charles and he starts wondering whether he knew him at all. Pierre is also involved in art as an academic. He learnt everything from Charles, who was well-known in their academic world. He inherited Charles house and lives there with his old servant. The décor remained untouched. The memories of Charles were to remain untouched and this notebook upsets their careful order.
Rendezvous in Venice is a wonderful little book that masterfully mixes personal stories and art. As Pierre remembers Charles, he brings back their discussions about art and portraits of the Italian Renaissance. It is told with the words of a man who loves paintings and painters, who wants to share his passion with people beyond his inner circles of scholars. And I love academics who reach out to the masses who don’t have their erudition and will never have it but are still capable of finding beauty in a painting by Botticelli. Several portraits are mentioned in the novella, all with a heady mix of reverence and familiarity.
There’s a Proustian atmosphere to Rendezvous in Venice. Anyone who loves In Search of Lost Time will love it too. I will explore this side of the novella in the second part of this billet. The open reference to Proust could be irritating but it’s not. It is done with fondness. It is made of the same deep knowledge and feeling as the references to paintings that I mentioned earlier.
Beaussant knew these paintings and books so well that he could interlink them with his own story without it being awkward. It is made to share something wonderful and not to show off academic knowledge. Rendezvous in Venice is written by someone who wants to uplift you with their knowledge and not put you down with your lack of education.
This is a book to read after a visit to the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. This museum was the mansion of a rich couple who were passionate about art, and especially about the Italian Renaissance. The museum displays their collection, in their house and their apartments are furnished for the visitors to see. The mansion is Boulevard Haussmann, not far from where Marcel Proust used to live.
I heard about Rendezvous in Venice on Jacqui’s blog and you can find her review here. Thanks Jacqui, I owe you one. It was a delight.
Part II.
For readers who have read In Search of Lost Time, you will feel Proust at every corner while reading Rendezvous in Venice. The choice of Venice is not a coincidence. If it were just about Renaissance paintings, Florence would have been more appropriate. Venice is a key place for the Narrator in Proust, one he dreams about a lot.
Then, there’s Charles, the uncle who has the same name as Charles Swann. Swann and Odette’s story is told in Swann’s Way. The reader discovers Swann, passionate with paintings and art, seeing in Odette the features of a woman in an old portrait. Uncle Charles also sees Judith that way. Both Charles seem to have the same perfect manners of cultured people.
Page 50 of my edition we are reading extracts of Charles’s notebook and he mentions his memory, the way he plays with names related to Judith in his head. Her way of speaking is compared to a sonata. (J’en dégustais le son, comme on écoute une sonate. or in English, I tasted their sound as one listens to a sonata.) In The Guermantes Way, Proust plays with names of places and people. The Vinteuil sonata is also a pattern through In Search of Lost Time but plays an important role in Swann’s love for Odette.
Page 52, Charles describes in his notebook his attempts at bringing back Judith in his memories. The way he describes his quest is a lot alike Proust’s. It is a way to concentrate in yourself and remember. It is a lot like the passages after the death of the Narrator’s grand-mother or the grief after Albertine’s death. Uncle Charles grieves the death of his relationship with Judith.
A few pages later, Uncle Charles says J’ai compris que notre amour était mortel. (I understood that our love was mortal) which is exactly what happens with Charles in Swann’s Way. Both Charles understand that art is immortal and human love is mortal. They just choose a different path. Swann marries Odette and they have a daughter, Gilberte. Uncle Charles breaks up with Judith after she tells him that she wants a child with him. Judith marries someone else and has a daughter with him, Sarah. If we go further, the love story of the next generation also goes the other way. The Narrator falls in love with Gilberte but nothing comes out of it. Pierre falls in love with Sarah and they have a child together.
And page 80, in the middle of Charles’s notebooks, there it is, the open reference to Proust. The Narrator had dreamed of Venice. The volume Albertine disparue is the one that matches with the tone of Uncle Charles’s notebooks. In this volume, the Narrator mourns Albertine’s death and his lost love and he finally goes to Venice. Uncle Charles has to write about Judith, still mourning their relationship.
Pierre inherited of Uncle Charles’s house and Sarah moves in for a while. Mariette disapprove of the disruption. Sarah is impulsive, different from Pierre. Françoise didn’t like Albertine and hated that she moved in with the Narrator. When Sarah leaves Pierre, Mariette will say:
| Mademoiselle Sarah…Son placard est ouvert…Il est vide. Elle a emporté ses affaires? Elle est partie? | Miss Sarah…Her dresser is open…It’s empty. She took her things? She left? |
Albertine Gone opens with Françoise exclaiming Mademoiselle Albertine est partie! (Miss Albertine is gone) Let’s face it, both servants are happy to see the intruder leave.
The whole novella breathes Proust. Swann and the Narrator’s love for art. Mariette, Uncle Charles’s old servant who sounds exactly like Françoise. Uncle Charles is very ill and bedridden for the last years of his life but still continues to work as an art historian like Proust himself who finished In Search of Lost Time in bed.
There are probably other references that I missed but I shared the ones I noticed with you.
Book Around the Corner 