I am going to start this post with a comment I have made before on Random but it does no harm to say it again. Many years ago I worked as an assistant in a library in Highgate, London. A lovely old place and the majority of readers (not customers as they are called nowadays much to my irritation) were elderly and would come in looking for “nice” books. As I was in my teens with a skirt up my backside and full of myself, I would inwardly sneer at their choice of books.
And their choices were usually E M Delafield, Miss Read, Dorothy Whipple and D E Stevenson.
And guess what? Now that I have reached a certain age I love these books too and it just proves that teenagers should realise they know nothing about anything. Sadly, we do not realise this until we are older and look back and think how obnoxious we were.
Anyway this preamble leads me to today’s post which is about D E Stevenson who I have been reading over the last couple of weeks. Dean Street Press, one of my favourite publishers, mainly because they publish all of the kind of books I like, have reprinted many of this author’s titles and I have the lot. I prefer some to others, obviously, as with so many titles there are some weaker and less interesting, but these are very much in the minority and I have derived so much pleasure from discovering them all.
The two most recent titles from Dean Street Press are Bel Lamington and the sequel Fletchers End and though I have battered old copies I had no hesitation in adding these to my collection.
Bel Lamington, or to give her full name of Beatrice Elizabeth Lamington, to explain why she is called Bel is an orphan totally unsuited to a working life, unsure and shy. Her parents were killed in a car crash and the aunt who brought her up has recently died and there is very little money so Bel trains as a typist and secures work in a London shipping company. She is like a fish out of water and has very little in common with her workmates who resent her promotion to private secretary and Miss Goudge, the bully who has been there for years all make her life a misery.
Note: in my working life I have had to supervise a typing pool of some twenty typists and I can assure you that nothing changes – pettiness, bitchiness and bullying were things I dealt with on a daily basis.
It is very clear half way through the book where the romance is leading to so we do not have to worry even though Bel is briefly infatuated with a local painter who turns out to be a bit of a rotter and after trials and tribulations she has a happy ending.
Here I have to mention that the happy ending takes place in Drumbruly, in Scotland which is the location of several of the author’s novels and it is most interesting, well to me anyway, when characters from earlier books pop up and rather fun as well.
In Fletchers End Bel is happily married and she and her husband move into a wreck of a house and repair it and her life is full of joy. But, and yes there is a but, there is an upset and the upset is the discovery of a Will that might turn their lives upside down.
Of course, all is sorted and ends happily but what I find interesting from the second book is how Bel has matured and grown. Once she is secure in her life she develops a wisdom that had been hidden. This comes to the fore in her dealings with her friend Louise, a doctor’s daughter with whom she went to school, and who I personally found a bit of a pain. Charming and lovely though she is she has a penchant in organising people’s lives and yet fails to sort out her own and it is Bel, quietly and firmly who brings about her friend’s happy ending.
I loved both these books. And yes, they are “nice” but I have come to enjoy “nice” and the gentle enjoyment engendered by reading D E Stevenson. I have read all of them now, even some of the more unknown titles which I have tracked down, and when I cannot make up my mind what to read, I pull one of my collection down from my bookshelves and sit and relax and feel contented.
If you have not read any by this author do try them.
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