Sally on the Rocks, page 1
Sally on the Rocks
Winifred Boggs
First published in 1915
This edition published in 2021 by
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London nw1 2db
Preface copyright © 2021 Lucy Evans
Afterword copyright © 2021 Simon Thomas
Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7123 5304 5
e-ISBN 978 0 7123 6708 0
Text design and typesetting by JCS Publishing Services Ltd
Contents
The 1910s
Winifred Boggs
Preface
Publisher’s Note
i “The new bank-manager is a bachelor, and simply rolling”
ii “I am absolutely on the rocks, Lovey”
iii “Isn’t there a man called Bingley?”
iv “Gracious! What a husband for ‘Mrs. Alfred Bingley’!”
v “You needn’t be afraid your nose will ever be put out of joint!”
vi “You can put on your boots without a chair”
vii “I hope I don’t disturb your rest?”
viii “Wealth lost, something lost; honour lost, much lost; courage lost, all lost”
ix “I am sick of the war!”
x “Stop! … oh, you little idiot!”
xi “What on earth are you doing here?”
xii “Jimmy, that is the girl you told me about?”
xiii “I might have known she would fail me”
xiv “What sort of an Italian tour?”
xv “Won’t you give me another chance?”
xvi “You are hateful! I wish I hadn’t saved you”
xvii “Here’s luck to my husband’s wife!”
xviii “I am afraid we are lost, my very dear Miss Sally”
xix “But perhaps bank-managers don’t curl?”
xx “Oh, Mr. Bingley, what a mercy you are safe!”
xxi “I think he’s set on not getting better—dying belike, Miss Sally”
xxii “Will you stay with me to the end?”
xxiii “Parson’s Sally is to marry Mr. Bingley of the bank”
xxiv “How fond you are of The Mountain!”
xxv “After all, what could mother really know? She wasn’t a man”
xxvi “I am lower than the beasts that perish”
xxvii “Sally? Sally!”
xxviii “Then I also give you a week”
xxix “Just fancy if there was a divorce in Little Crampton, Mr. Bingley!”
xxx “I never guessed there were two of me”
xxxi “Even the ‘soft job’ has got to be paid for”
xxxii “In the midst of death …”
xxxiii “I did some hustle for a husband”
Afterword
The 1910s
In 1910, the average salary for a man is around £70 a year.
In the 1910s, the average age at first marriage in the UK is about 26 years for women and 28 for men.
During the 1900s and early 1910s, emigration is very high in the UK – as many as 8.7 per 1,000 people in England and Wales, and 18.7 per 1,000 in Scotland.
1914 (July): The First World War begins. A week later, Great Britain officially enters the conflict.
1915: Sally on the Rocks is published.
1915 (May): RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland, with the loss of 1,198 civilian passengers and crew. With American passengers among the dead, the incident is considered a major factor in building support for America’s eventual entry into the War.
1915 sees the highest number of marriages in England and Wales to date (360,885), though this record is beaten in 1919.
In 1915, infections account for the most deaths in every age group for men under 75, and for almost all women’s age categories. Antibiotics would not be discovered until the late 1920s.
1916 (January): The Military Service Act is passed, conscripting single men between the ages of 18 and 41 (with some exceptions) to the army. This was extended to married men in May 1916. When Sally on the Rocks is published, recruits are still voluntary.
1919 (December): The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 enables women to join the professions and professional bodies, sit on juries, and be awarded degrees.
Winifred Boggs (1874–1931)
Winifred Boggs was the popular author of more than a dozen novels in the early twentieth century, but her reputation appears to have been short-lived and very little is now known about her life. During her lifetime, many of her novels appeared simply as ‘By the author of The Sale of Lady Daventry’, her sixth novel, from 1914, described by the publisher as ‘the novel that made a reputation’. Few biographical details were included alongside the early editions of these works, and it has not proved easy to discover much else about this elusive author.
What is known is that Boggs was born in 1874, and published under the pseudonyms Edward Burke and Gloria Manning, as well as under her own name. She was a frequent contributor to The Lady’s Realm, a woman’s magazine that targeted upper-class women readers and which closed in 1914 or 1915. Sally on the Rocks was originally published in 1915. The Times Literary Supplement said, ‘It is difficult now to give a fresh touch to satire on village life, but Miss Boggs has succeeded’; while another contemporary reviewer commented, ‘Sally is a personality in herself, one whom every reader will like, if only for her breezy charm and honesty’.
Several of Boggs’ novels were translated into Spanish, including La Ruina de Sally. Her final novel, The Romance of a Very Young Man, appeared in 1930, and she died the following year.
Preface
Sally on the Rocks seems to have all the tropes we might recognise from a romantic comedy: a love triangle, a waspish spinster, a broken heart. But this novel has many hidden depths. The First World War and a meddling letter from the village troublemaker are what propels our heroine, Sally, towards Little Crampton, the village at the centre of the story. Winifred Boggs finely draws the characters we recognise from other village stories. The gentle clergyman, the officious bank manager and the ambitious widow are all present, but not as they first seem. Boggs’ description of the village and its inhabitants draws us into a novel which is so much more than a comedy of manners.
At 31, when Sally arrives in Little Crampton she is not only on the rocks but on the shelf. She believes that marriage will be the only thing which can save her. But regardless of that possibly unpromising premise, Sally on the Rocks is an unexpectedly feminist novel. At different turns the usual stereotypes are upturned. Despite the love triangle, the female rivals find a sisterhood. The differing consequences of men and women’s behaviour are discussed. Even the baddie of the piece is recognised as an intelligent woman without a real outlet.
When so little is known about an author, perhaps there is a tendency, particularly with women writers, to try and learn something about them from the characters in their novels. Winifred Boggs remains an enigma known only by her novels. Would she be a Miss Maggie? Or a Mrs Dalton? Or the eponymous Sally, who is so generously depicted? We can only draw our own conclusions about the author who writes such strong and nuanced female characters.
Above all, Sally on the Rocks will make you laugh. From the schemes Sally dreams up in pursuit of her quarry to the interior monologues of the bank manager in thrall to his dead mother’s book of aphorisms, there is so much warmth and light in this novel. With Sally we have a complicated and endearing character you cannot help but root for.
Lucy Evans
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections
British Library
Publisher’s Note
The original novels reprinted in the British Library Women Writers series were written and published in a period ranging, for the most part, from the 1910s to the 1950s. There are many elements of these stories which continue to entertain modern readers, however in some cases there are also uses of language, instances of stereotyping and some attitudes expressed by narrators or characters which may not be endorsed by the publishing standards of today. We acknowledge therefore that some elements in the stories selected for reprinting may continue to make uncomfortable reading for some of our audience. With this series, British Library Publishing aims to offer a new readership a chance to read some of the rare books of the British Library’s collections in an affordable paperback format, to enjoy their merits and to look back into the world of the twentieth century as portrayed by their writers. It is not possible to separate these stories from the history of their writing and as such the following novel is presented as it was originally published with minor edits only, made for consistency of style and sense. We welcome feedback from our readers, which can be sent to the following address:
British Library Publishing
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London, nw1 2db
United Kingdom
Sally on the Rocks
Wealth lost, something lost;
Honour lost, much lost;
Courage lost, all lost!
chapter i
“The new bank-manager is a bachelor, and simply rolling”
The successful littl
The ‘white flower of a blameless life’ availed you little; sooner or later Miss Maggie got hold of it, threw it in the mud, said in effect, “Just look at this beastly thing!” and held it up to the shocked gaze of the neighbourhood.
Most people have something they would prefer to keep to themselves, not so much sin as folly—some miniature skeleton. Whatever it was, Miss Maggie with her gimlet eyes and corkscrew methods ‘got it out of you.’
It was she who discovered, within three days, that the new doctor and his wife had emerged from ‘shops,’ and Mrs. Hill, who was given to what is called ‘swank,’ had to walk humbly in Little Crampton thereafter. Miss Maggie also discovered—though this took longer—that the lawyer’s new wife, who seemed so modest and quiet, had once kicked a lavish leg before the footlights.
As a matter of fact, Miss Maggie’s discoveries would need a volume to themselves, and may be dismissed.
The stranger had pitfalls to right of him and pitfalls to left of him; all of them unpleasant, and some of them fatal. If you fell in and crawled painfully to the top, you encountered Miss Maggie’s pole, which thrust you down again. As you floundered in the deepest mire you condemned Miss Maggie to a yet deeper Pit, but you had to leave Little Crampton just the same.
You might think that when you had successfully passed the test of the gentry all was well. You were very much mistaken. There remained High Street. You must buy only in High Street, and ‘the best of everything,’ which really meant the worst of everything—at village prices.
If you failed, then High Street insinuated to your face that you were no lady, and your house was to be let at a sacrifice. The greeting of Mr. Alfred Bingley, bank-manager and lay-reader, denoted the temperature of your banking account and was a useful chart with its ‘set fair,’ ‘very warm,’ ‘cool,’ or ‘heavy fall,’ as the case might be. If your banking account was not up to the Little Crampton standard, it behoved you to bank elsewhere.
Yet it was a place of unrivalled beauty, a garden in the heart of a garden. There were long stretches of moors, where, unless you had spent your boyhood upon them in getting lost and found, you were swallowed up by a maze the moment you left the beaten tracks. Short cuts led to miles and miles of despairing search—and to scandals.
In the autumn Little Crampton flamed in crimson and gold and purple. Acres of corn tossed their heads in the breeze, rustled in the silent night watches, whispering of strange things. There were defiant poppy faces laughing here and there among the gold, cursed at by the farmers, uprooted and forbidden, yet living their radiant hour just the same. There was a mantle of purple heather on the moors spread flat for all to tread on, and wrapped closely round the hunched shoulders of ‘The Mountain.’
The Mountain really represented an object lesson, since it showed that in Little Crampton it was the habit to make mountains out of mole-hills. Neither was ‘The River’ as important as it sounded. There were other rivers in Europe, some of them larger. There were even people who had not heard of Little Crampton.
There was the strangest, most wonderful sea, for though by climbing The Mountain you could get sight of it, sometimes hear a low murmur, and it seemed within a walk, yet it never was, and there was no road to it. It lay, like the magic of to-morrow, always just a trifle ahead.
Maybe those of Little Crampton who had grasped the Great Adventure, and laid hands upon To-morrow, had reached its shimmer of gold and grey, but no living tongue claimed this feat, and many held that it was but a mirage. At any rate, it was only the very young, or rather foolish, that went on trying to reach it.
If you were a male Little Cramptonian, you fared forth to make your mark in the world; if you made it, you returned, still ‘in the prime of life,’ to retire. If, on the contrary, the world made its mark on you in the shape of painful dents, you still returned, though only to await that magic To-morrow.
If you were the common or garden non-adventurous woman, you stayed, waiting for things to happen. When you awoke to the fact that ‘things’—for the best of reasons—hardly ever happened in Little Crampton, it was always too late. The tide of youth and hope, coming in with a clamour, had gone out swiftly, leaving a long stretch of barren grey shore behind it. No longer the flow, only the inevitable dragging ebb. Little Crampton had its tragedies, tragedies of duty, of foolishness, of inefficiency—that greatest of all tragedies. They were written in the faces of those women who had lacked grit or opportunity to break away, but still asked themselves that “Dare I ?” which never had an answer; they were dying in the dead faces of those who had ceased to ask even that question, because they no longer cared. That final dreadful thing called ‘resignation’ lay behind those hopeless eyes now.
Linked with tragedy walked comedy; tragedy laughing, comedy weeping; bound together for all time, and sometimes hard put to it to say which was which.
If you came in the guise of a lady, and especially a young widow, it was ages before people called. Miss Maggie was finding out about you.
If you came in the guise of a bachelor—unusual and thrilling—Miss Maggie had still to find out about you first, only it would not take so long as if you were a young widow of pleasing exterior. You would get an invitation of some sort before she got her first call, but if you and the young widow ‘happened’ on the same day, it was simply all over with both of you—especially with the young widow.
The sooner you discovered that Miss Maggie was neither to be defied nor ignored, but appeased, the better. Also that it would save time and trouble to tell her your own version of the worst. No matter how small the skeleton she pounced upon, the lady could make its bones rattle so loudly that you would be deafened yourself.
If you were a curate she invariably had you removed by the bishop under the most scandalous circumstances. Not that you were likely to be a curate; to go to Little Crampton had become equivalent to being unfrocked. Instead of the curates there were ‘helpers’ and ‘lay-readers,’ but even they knew Miss Maggie would find out about them if they were not very careful. Happy the immaculate Alfred Bingley, who could positively invite inspection of his past and his present.
The Reverend Adam Lovelady did his best against Miss Maggie, but he was only a man, and she was a woman. But for the curse of sex she must have been famous as a ruthless criminal barrister or investigator. As it was, she made the foolish as infamous as possible, and had a malicious joy in life. When anything was brewing, or had just brewed, she was overwhelmed by invitations to tea and the very best cakes, which she devoured with appalling voracity. But it was worth it; she invariably knew the most dreadful details.
If you were a male stranger, ‘passed for the present’ by Miss Maggie, you would be sure to receive an invitation to dinner from Mr. Alfred Bingley—provided of course your balance at the bank was all it should be. After dinner you would probably have to hear about Mr. Alfred Bingley’s wonderful mother, and the wonderful book she had left behind her. You might even be favoured with extracts, after which it depended upon your own cook and your carnal appetite whether you ever accepted another invitation. On the whole, Mr. Bingley’s dinners were considered the best part of Mr. Bingley. When he was not thinking them out, or exercising to get an appetite, or eating them, or banking, he was acting free curate for the good of the souls of Little Crampton.
Even so a dull time had fallen upon Little Crampton, so dull a time, in spite of the war, that Miss Maggie Hopkins wondered if nothing could be done to introduce a certain liveliness.
Suddenly she thought of Sally Lunton.
Sally Lunton had been very lively indeed six years back, and made the tongue of gossip wag fast, for the Reverend Adam Lovelady’s black-eyed ward was quite the liveliest specimen Little Crampton had ever found in its midst.
