4 - Ageing and its Discontents

Summary

In November 1962 Taylor went with the 78-year-old Ivy Compton-Burnett and Ivy's friend Herman Schrijver to the first British production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. The performance was sparsely attended: ‘Would you call it an intellectual audience, Herman?’ Ivy asked, in a ‘too-distinct voice’. ‘Do you think they are staring at us, because they think we are intellectuals?’ was Schrijver's whispered answer. ‘Of course they don't think that,’ she said scornfully. ‘We are far too well-dressed.’ Taylor found Happy Days hugely impressive:

The play - just the middle-aged woman buried in a mound - was to me quite unexpectedly wonderful … really devastating, and as much as one can bear - a middle-aged woman's gallantry (I see so much of it) signifying the human tragedy - the terrifying attempts at optimism and the Molly Bloom nostalgia.

Taylor had often created characters who spent much of their time inventing routines and distractions to help them through the day and stave off awareness of the vacuity surrounding them: Lily Wilson, Esme, Mrs Meacock. But it is interesting that the novel on which she began work soon after seeing Happy Days, The Soul of Kindness (1964), should be filled to overflowing with such characters - Patrick, Meg, Percy, Elinor Pringle, Mrs Secretan. Most are as desperate as Winnie to elicit a response of some kind, almost any kind, from another person; whenever they succeed, it is the highlight of their day, and uncertainty as to whether they will succeed is the main spur that keeps them going. Commentary on this novel has tended to concentrate on Flora, a younger, dippier version of Bertram in A View of the Harbour, who ignores reality in favour of sentimental optimism, narcissistically convinced that her good intentions invariably produce good effects. Her character is strongly if rather programmatically drawn, but perhaps more interesting is the study, following on from Angel, of those around Flora who help to keep her going; those who allow her to inflict her unmeant damage because they need to have an image of blitheness in their lives, and who need to be offered false comfort because no other kind is available.