The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911 - Juliet Nicolson

...described in Juliet Nicolson's book, the summer of 1911 was one of the hottest of the last century. It is often said that the British love to talk about the weather. Well, people of all backgrounds must certainly have found plenty to say during the five month period covered by this book. The events of the summer were diverse, including a coronation, strikes at the dockyards, a hectic calender of social occasions for the wealthy, and a daily battle ...
...soaring temperatures as the thread that links together the people who appear in her book. Whether aristocrats or factory workers, they were all experiencing 'The Perfect Summer'. But was it really so perfect?

'''About the Author'''
This is Juliet Nicolson's first book, although on graduating from Oxford she worked in publishing PR for many years and has also had articles in The Spectator and The Telegraph. She is the granddaughter ... more

Vividly described in Juliet Nicolson's book, the summer of 1911 was one of the hottest of the last century. It is often said that the British love to talk about the weather. Well, people of all backgrounds must certainly have found plenty to say during the five month period covered by this book. The events of the summer were diverse, including a coronation, strikes at the dockyards, a hectic calender of social occasions for the wealthy, and a daily battle to survive for the poor. Juliet Nicolson uses the soaring temperatures as the thread that links together the people who appear in her book. Whether aristocrats or factory workers, they were all experiencing 'The Perfect Summer'. But was it really so perfect?

About the Author
This is Juliet Nicolson's first book, although on graduating from Oxford she worked in publishing PR for many years and has also had articles in The Spectator and The Telegraph. She is the granddaughter of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and she is lucky enough to live in a cottage in the grounds of Sissinghurst Castle. In her introduction to 'The Perfect Summer' she says that she was motivated to write this book because she had been rereading L.P.Hartley's novel 'The Go-Between', which is set in a similarly hot and heady period. 'The Go-Between' was one of my own favourite books when I was in my early teens, so this immediately captured my attention. Juliet Nicolson says her aim was to try and give a sense of what life was like in the summer of 1911. She explains that by concentrating on a relatively small time span she has been able to examine the little details of people's experience in the hope of bringing her subject to life. She writes about royalty and politicians, butlers and ballet dancers, plus many others. 'The Perfect Summer' was chosen as the Daily Mail's book of the month in August 2007 - but please don't let that put you off as I am now about to try and convince you that it might be exactly your cup of Earl Grey.

A Reluctant Queen
By the spring of 1911, there was a sense of excitement. There had been a year of official mourning for King Edward the Seventh, who had died the previous May. 'The Perfect Summer' begins as preparations are being made for the coronation of his son, George the Fifth. One of the first people Juliet Nicolson introduces to us in some depth is Queen Mary, wife of George the Fifth. It doesn't matter if I am reading history, biography or fiction, I always like to feel that I know what makes people tick and to gain an idea of what type of personalities they have. I must say that I think the author's portrait of Queen Mary is very endearing. Although Mary and George had already been married for seventeen years, Mary was unenthusiastic about her role as Queen and anxious about the forthcoming coronation. She is described as a shy person, not good at small talk, bored by the long dinners and public engagements she had to attend. There are some ways in which she seems alien to us, for example that she could wear only black and purple for the whole year of mourning. However in other ways she was easy for me to relate to. Her mother-in-law was often difficult, and was averse to vacating Buckingham Palace so that George and Mary could move in! Mary's sisters-in-law were cool towards her, while George comes across as a rather stuffy man, very set in his ways. Mary found her own small means of rebellion, such as wearing long dangly earrings which George disapproved of.

Also during May we meet Winston Churchill, then aged 36. His photo appears in the book and he looks rather baby-faced, not at all like the heavy, jowly man we are used to seeing in his later years. We learn about Winston's home life, that his nickname was Pug, and that he had such tender skin he would only wear pink silk underwear on which he spent £80 a year!

Silver Nipple Rings
Moving into June, the party season picks up speed and those in the upper classes seem constantly occupied with fancy dress balls or house parties. One famous debutante who is featured is Lady Diana Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland whose ancestral home was Belvoir Castle. Known as something of a wild child, Diana shocked the conservative mothers of her fellow debs with her behaviour and was never out of the gossip columns.

I was surprised at how empty the lives of many of the 'idle rich' sounded. The aristocracy did not work in any way that we would recognise. I had the impression they spent all their time seeking out entertainment in some form or other, such as playing bridge, visiting private clubs, or enjoying country house weekends which they called Saturday-to-Mondays. These weekends were decadent, lavish events, with ladies needing 6 changes of clothes for each day! One thing I really did not like the sound of was what Juliet Nicolson describes as 'small silver rings clamped into the nipples'. These allowed ladies to wear very low-cut evening dresses, without the frock falling right off their bosoms and revealing all. Whereas nowadays a suntan is the fashion, back in 1911 the palest skin was poshest. Ladies whitened their skin using powders and creams, and highlighted their blue veins with a crayon. At these Monday-to-Saturdays, breakfast alone would consist of various cooked meats including devilled kidneys and tongue, as well as omelettes, porridge and kedgeree. I suppose guests needed the energy for all their romping! In a strait-laced society the weekends offered many opportunities for secret liasons and a certain amount of bed-hopping was common.

I have to admit that by this stage of the book I was starting to tire of reading about the antics of the upper classes. Here and there is a mention of unrest brewing at the dockyards, but there is very little information about this compared with the pages of lengthy accounts of the gentry at play. I found myself wondering what life was like for the ordinary citizens of the middle and working classes and I hoped Juliet Nicolson would extend the scope of her writing to tell me more about people throughout the rest of society. Although there are a couple of pages about the rural poor, in fact it is late July (halfway through the book) before we begin to gain much of a different perspective on the summer of 1911.

What the Butler Saw
We now meet Eric Horne. Again Juliet Nicolson gives us a real insight into the character she is writing about. This is greatly aided by information from the secret diary Eric kept during his forty years as a butler in the country's grandest stately homes. Eric recorded all manner of things, and provides an ironic, sometimes resentful, voice of commentary on the attitudes of those he served. I enjoyed this section of the book which describes life 'below stairs'. It is astonishing to hear how many staff were required to keep these grand houses running. However even in 1911 the numbers of staff were dwindling because of innovations such as piped water and electric lighting.

Strike Days and Holidays
We are into August when the author begins to cover the issues surrounding the dockworkers' dispute. Most working families lived on a shoestring so to go on strike without any pay was a drastic act. In this part of the book Juliet Nicolson introduces us to Ben Tillett who co-founded the National Transport Workers' Federation. I found him quite a fascinating person, very passionate about improving pay and conditions for workers. In the August heat the East End tenements where many of the London dockworkers lived must have been dreadful with the stench of overcrowded bodies. In factories across the country, large numbers of women also went on strike, including workers at the Idris soft drinks factory, and the chain makers of Cradley Heath in the West Midlands. There were riots in some cities as the hot weather fuelled tempers and trouble flared. I found this part of the book very interesting as this is an important stage in the development of the trade union movement, but once the workers have succeeded in winning an improvement in their wages Juliet Nicolson's main focus returns to those better off in society.

We now read about the painter Augustus John, the novelist Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf) and others. The growing trend for day trips or longer holidays at the seaside is described. Meanwhile for poorer families the only chance of a break from their usual routine was to find work hop-picking on farms in the countryside, especially in South East England or Worcestershire.

By mid-September the temperatures were cooling and life seems to have been settling down again after these heady months. However for many of those who appeared in this book, the summer has been significant in one way or another, and ripples of change are slowly spreading across society. There follows a brief epilogue, relating what happened later on in the lives of some of the people we have learned about in the course of 'The Perfect Summer'.

My Thoughts
Overall I enjoyed 'The Perfect Summer' and I learnt a lot from it. Juliet Nicolson's style of writing is quite literary, but always easy to read and never dull. I would categorise her book as popular history, by which I mean that it is accessible and entertaining for someone without any specialised knowledge of the era. I guess that serious academic historians may find the book too lightweight and eclectic, lacking in a central theme. As I have not read much else on this period I cannot comment on how accurately Juliet Nicolson has portrayed the events and personalities of 1911, but she has a lengthy bibliography at the back of the book and has clearly done her research.

My main criticism of the book is that in my opinion the author has focussed too much on the rich and famous, expecially in the first half of the book. I feel that if she had discussed the issues of industrial unrest earlier these would have provided more of a contrast with the often vacuous pursuits and preoccupations of the aristocracy. She could have better explored some of the tensions within society if she had drawn out the undercurrents of the workers' dissatisfaction and placed them alongside the sections on what the upper classes were doing. It is obvious that many of the privileged classes were unaware of the awful conditions that the lower classes endured. I feel that the book would have had a better balance to it had Juliet Nicolson been able to run the stories of rich and poor in parallel, rather than in separate sections of the book. Maybe that was not the book that the author wanted to write - but if it had been me writing it (and it is really a great idea for a book) then I think I would have tried to give a more rounded view of society.

One other very small point that I noticed was that at the back of the book the author gives a list of who's who, in case the reader wants to check the identities of those featured. Juliet Nicolson heads this list Dramatis Personae, which I think is just a teeny bit pretentious. Sorry Juliet - perhaps it's my own working class sympathies and prejudices, but I think Latin headings are out of place and possibly alienating to some readers.

On the whole I found this an intelligently written account which is so full of life that it is surprising the events covered took place almost a century ago. Many of the people mentioned in the book really engaged my interest and made me want to know more about them.

While I enjoyed 'The Perfect Summer' I doubt I would read it a second time. If anything I would look out for another book on this period which gives more time to the struggles of the working classes rather than the lives of the privileged few. However Juliet Nicolson's book has definitely sparked my curiosity.

If you like to read history which is not too heavy-going then I would certainly recommend 'The Perfect Summer'. There are several pages of black and white photos and also a detailed index. The copy I have been reading is a hardback from the library, but I see both hardback and paperback versions are available from Amazon, prices from £6.99.

 

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