Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay

In thinking of Arnold she forgot the Catholic Church, and slipped into an ecstasy of love. Oh, yes, she would be a Mohammedan if Arnold wished it. For Arnold she would be a Roman Catholic, learn to talk, read books, be intelligent, sociable, and like other people. She would eat off as many plates as he liked--hundreds and thousands of plates, and a fresh knife and fork with each of them. She would have meals cooked and laid in courses, and not snatch things out of the larder when hungry. She would, in brief, fully embrace the higher life, and, if to join Arnold's church were part of this, Arnold's church she would join. She would be ready to accept whatever the Church taught as belonging to the deposit of faith. She would learn, if necessary, to answer all those foolish questions in the Catechism. She would even undress modestly, thinking about death.

Denham Dobie is a loner. Living in the high mountains of Andorra, she prefers the solitude of nature to people, long walks to long talks. When her father dies, she's whisked to London by her aunt Evelyn, who ushers her into a world she can barely understand, full of dinners, gossip, and the restrictions of social convention. She falls for a publisher named Arnold Chapel, and they marry, but it doesn't take long for their incompatibility to be revealed: Arnold is a creature of London, attached to the pleasures of people and society, all the things which are, for Denham, sheer torture.

There's something of the "holy fool" about Denham: her ignorance of social convention makes her a powerful critic of it. She's constantly questioning why one "must" wear this instead of that, or have their servants "turn out" a different room each day, or eat six-course meals instead of eating simple food from the pantry whenever they are hungry. But Macaulay takes Denham's character farther than this, past social satire and into something more extreme and perhaps less palatable than a simple introvert. Except for Arnold, she really has no interest in people whatsoever. When she discovers a small cottage on the Cornish coast with a secret cave and passage to the sea, Arnold buys it, thinking that perhaps they will spend a holiday or two there, but Denham means to live there forever, away from London, away from all people, hidden in her cave.

Macaulay never quite suggests that Arnold and Denham's marriage is a mistake, though their incompatibility ultimately drives them to separate lives. What is more disturbing, actually, is that the love they share is sincere and ineradicable: "Love was the great taming emotion; perhaps the only taming emotion." Denham is right, of course, when she doesn't understand why people must change for others, when each can just go on living as they prefer. But of course, it doesn't work that way; love drives people into bargains they might otherwise never have made. It transforms, and not always in ways we would otherwise choose.

One of the more interesting satirical aspects of Crewe Train is the way it deals with writing and the publishing world. Both Arnold and Denham's uncle are publishers as well as writers. Arnold writes a book called Lone Jane, a piece of modernist nonsense that's clearly meant to be an attempt to get inside Denham's head. ("A woodpecker, that's a woodpecker, because the woodpecker would peck her, why did the lobster blush, because it saw the salad dressing, no, because the table had cedar legs; can't remember the questions, only the answers...") Denham, not recognizing the attempt, remarks that Jane "was a little queer in the head." Later, Denham's aunt Evelyn also tries to put Denham on paper, writing a salacious romance that drives the Arnold character into the arms of a character modeled on her own daughter Audrey. It's nonsense, but the story spreads, as Evelyn spread the story of the secret passage beneath the cottage, and in the same way ruins everything: the friendship between Arnold and Audrey, and very nearly the marriage of Arnold and Denham, for whom Evelyn has invented a Cornish fisherman lover. Macaulay seems to be suggesting here that literature is merely a kind of fancy gossip, and she may not be too far off there.