WHILE her husband’s fame has ensured that Compton Mackenzie remains a household name, his first wife, Faith Compton Mackenzie, remains a forgotten author. Full marks then to the literary historian Kate Macdonald for publishing Faith’s first and last works, her collection of 14 short stories, Mandolinata (1931), and the second of her two novels, Tatting (1957).
Although written when Faith was in her late seventies, Tatting draws on the early years of her marriage when at his invitation, the couple stayed with Fr Leighton Sandys Wason, incumbent of the Cornish parish of Gunwalloe, before moving into Toy Cottage, which now sports a simple slate plaque recording that “Sir Compton Mackenzie novelist lived here 1908-9”. No mention of the forgotten Faith.
The novel tells of a similar newly married young couple, Guy and Laura Mallory, accepting an invitation to stay in his Cornish vicarage with Anglo-Catholic Fr St John, a writer of nonsense rhymes, “who mocks the Church of England with illegal practices”.
Central to the narrative is the tatting Miss Josephine Want, one of “the church fowls, pecking about the altar steps with farmyard familiarity”, who has pursued Fr St John from his previous parish and, uninvited, ensures for herself easy access to the vicarage, even spending nights there. Later, when Guy’s mother (modelled on Faith’s formidable mother-in-law) joins the house party, she readily spots Miss Want’s obsession, telling Guy that “it was easy to penetrate the obscurity of her copious logorrhea.”
But, before then, the Mallorys persuade an impoverished and fading Irish artist, Ariadne Berden, to join them. She is based on the Irish artist Althea Gyles, who, in London, nearly starved to death. Ariadne sets about painting a fresco in the Lady chapel of Fr St John’s church, which necessitates his regular inspection.
The eccentricities of Cornish life are reflected in the conflict between chapel and church, the hawking of an illegally shot fox for reward, and a peeping-Tom farmer who is also a local preacher. The novel climaxes with the unmasking of those responsible for a series of pornographic cartoons before everything returns to normal. In her introduction, Kate Macdonald describes Tatting as “a character-driven novel intended to amuse and to prickle . . . : a very strange episode from Faith’s own strange and remarkable life”.
The stories that make up Mandolinata are set in Capri, where the Mackenzies lived after Cornwall, France, and England. It would be wrong to say that they are a delight; for the two involving a child are heartbreaking, but show that, despite the stillbirth of her only child, Faith had a real understanding of children’s minds. The stories are beautifully crafted, economic, and surprisingly modern, particularly in their handling of sex, love, and marriage. Many make one smile at the twist in the conclusion, leaving one wishing for more.
Canon Anthony Phillips is a former headmaster of The King’s School, Canterbury.
Tatting and Mandolinata: A novel and fourteen short stories
Faith Compton Mackenzie
Handheld Press £13.99
(978-1-912766-84-0)
Church Times Bookshop £12.59