The Sweet Dove Died

I have all of Barbara Pym's books and have read most more than twice. The first time I read it, this was not one of my favorites. In fact, I barely liked it. But I just read it again and found that I enjoyed it much more this second time. Much more. I'm still not sure that I like the uncertain ending, but perhaps it does work after all. After "A Glass of Blessings" this may be my favorite Pym...and that's a surprise to me.

Written during her "wilderness years" between the early 1960s and her critical rediscovery in 1978, THE SWEET DOVE DIED is one of Barbara Pym's darkest novels but also one of her finest. The fortyish protagonist, Leonora Eyre, is wealthy, elegant, and beautiful; she is also unmarried and idle, and fills her days doing little other than attending to her own minor pleasures, primarily acquiring Victoriana. At an auction she meets Humphrey, an antique dealer, and his nephew James, whom is young, single, handsome, and very impressionable. Leonora schemes to make James another of her acquisitions, while the sixtyish Humphrey makes plans of his own concerning Leonora; complicating matters even further are the dowdy Phoebe, who also longs for James, and the malicious young American literature professor Ned. This novel returns Pym to her concern with the relations between unmarried straight women and men of alternative sexualities, first explored in her A GLASSFUL OF BLESSINGS; it is, I think, an even finer work than that previous novel, and casts a much colder eye towards its subject. Almost all the characters are petty, spiteful, snobbish and materialistic: Leonora is the worst among them (with the exception of Ned), but Pym's achievement is to make her readers care about her protagonist despite her selfishness and her self-deludedness. In its own way this book is something of a minor masterpiece; it brings off its story absolutely perfectly.

The definition of entangle is to write or knit together confusedly. This rather describes the progress of the characters in Barbara Pym's THE SWEET DOVE DIED. Humphrey Boyce has an antiques shop. James, his orphaned newphew, commences to work at the shop after finishing at Oxford. At an auction they meet Leonora Eyre. Later Humphrey plans to have lunch with Leonora who is in her fifties. This is a novel of manners and amusement. Leonora, whose dinner with a friend and two very young men is described as being disappointing, regrets that James is not present, too. She finagles the interactions with Humphrey to go back to the shop to see James and accepts a ride with James because conveniently he is going in the direction of her house. James is too young to assume that a woman living alone is to be pitied. For Christmas Leonora receives a paperweight from Humphrey and a card from James. She puts James's card near her bedside table. After Christmas Leonora's new social life with Humphrey and James picks up again. When the shop is the subject of a burglary Leonora sends flowers. Through various machinations she actually sends James's young woman friend to Majorca, but she cannot best a male friend Ned who, for a time, captures James's attention. I am certain Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen many times. Clearly the thrust of their works differ. Barbara Pym is not concerned with setting up a young person for life in some sort of matrimonial arrangement. Nevertheless, the means used, the comedy, the irony, the light touch and excellent writing are similar. "A sweet dove died" comes from a Keats poem.

This was the second Barbara Pym book I have ever read and it confirmed to me that she is greatly underrated as a writer. Though not perhaps as brilliantly comic as Excellent Women, Sweet Dove Died is gently satirical in the most delicious way. The type of woman she deals with is, this time, the affected 'lady of a certain age', rather than the humble and worthy types. One could almost imagine that this is how Madame Bovary may have turned out, had she had lived a city life. There is nothing prudish about Pym and readers today may be struck by how 'modern' she still appears, particularly in her depiction of the younger male characters in this novel. Greatly enjoyable.

I happened upon this slim volume by accident the other day - and what a happy accident it turned out to be. Barbara Pym's "The Sweet Dove Died" is a novel of unrequited love - an unnatural love of an older woman for a much younger gay man. There are shades of the Tennessee Williams classic "The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone," yet the writing style is more akin to Patrick Gale's early works "The Aerodynamics of Pork" and "Kansas in August."Pym's novels are what used to be called "comedies of manners." Her work is immediately engaging, always amusing, and quite pointed in its depiction of a woman so consumed with the appearence of perfection that she misses every opportunity for happiness.