MANSE IN KIRKCUDBRIGHT

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 4

MANSE IN KIRKCUDBRIGHT

My Father’s House. By Panline Neville. Hamish Hamilton. 122 pp.

What a relief to come upon a book like this. A beauti-fully-written account of a beautiful, even idyllic, childhood. Not that one believes it was quite like this, but it is exceedingly pleasant to meet an author able to look baek and write of young years unbeset by Problems. Yet the setting could be taken by any modern novelist and quickly people with neurotics, domestic tyrants, plaster saints and insufferable children; racial discrimination could be worked into the plot, tod. Pauline Neville is one of the two children of the manse in a Kirkcudbrightshire village. Father was no dour, humourless Scottish minister—he was an Irishman. Mother was English, “tall and honey-coloured, and she glowed from within"—an unlikely pair to succeed in the- Church of Scotland. “It only father were not Irish,” Jamie (the brother) would muse, “we could live here in a state of ecclesiastical isolation befitting all Scottish manses. It is because he is Irish that people flock in and out of here all the time.” “It is because he is father,” the author-sister replied. Father always had time for discussion with his children and parishioners. Any problem could be taken into father’s study, which is remembered as blue, the colour of clarity. The atmosphere there gave a clarity of vision. Early in life the two children were taught that thinking with the mind and thinking with the emotions produce two entirely different results, and although neither of them managed it very well, they knew—and know—what father meant He also taught them about the little areas of perfection in life—the slow dropping of water from a leaf; the crisp and isolating glitter of morning frost; a smile that has

just washed its way through

Father was a reader, and books were the only thing he was acquisitive, even greedy about He loved the idea that a completely new book had come into the county library and the first person to read it was himself. The family never denied him this indulgence, counting it a human weakness that brought him nearer the rest of them. Books, he maintained, met the four moods in a man's nature: enquiring: requesting; receiving; disbelieving. In the first category came all the books of a technical or professional nature. Next came those that fitted an emotional need, and could be about art, love, anything to fill the emotional hungers. The receiving books were the ones that came just because of themselves and not because you had need of them. Lastly came the books that were read as a form of dope, not to be believed, but giving escape when needed. His daughter's autobiography would be a “receiving” book. One does not need it, but having come upon it, one is refreshed for having read it

The descriptive writing is immediately evocatory. On holiday, swimming in the Irish Sea “is to feel that you have climbed Everest and

seen God.” Tennis parties were “steamy sweat, related to thick white sweaters establisehed on tartan rugs thrown over green painted iron seats, tueked under rhododendron bushes.” The two shops in the village, “one good for liquorice allsorts, the other for boiled sweets.” Of the family, only father was naturall’ sociable and at the end of each social occasion “there would be a drifting towards his study where the cool serenity of the room disposed Of the hot day.” It is always difficult to write of family pets without sentimentality, and almost impossible to Involve the reader in the essentially private nature of' the relationship

between family and pet But Pauline Neville achieves this very well, with an economy of explanation. Oats, the dog, was disapproved of in the village as being given too much freedom. Moffat the cat protested if her routine or her comfort was upset in any way. It was a surprise then, when she came to Oats’s funeral, “We had not realised that she cared for much else beside herself, her home and, possibly, the cook.” “My Father’s House” is an unexpected delight among new books. The era (between the

wars) is close enough to be recognisable, but the peace and tranquility of this happy childhood is almost historical.