Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Library paperback edition - 1937
After the rather depressing novels set between the Wars which I have read recently in the 'Jackdaw' Library series - Rupert Croft-Brooke's Night Out and Ethel Mannin's Crescendo - it has been a relief to turn to George Goodchild's story. Goodchild (1888-1969) appears to have been a fascinating character. He started his career in publishing, working in turn for Dent, Jarrolds and Allen & Unwin. He edited volumes of poetry and anthologies and wrote short stories and articles for magazines. He was also music critic for the Saturday Review and Outlook. He joined the Royal Garrison Artillery during the Great War and took part in the Battle of the Somme. He soon became a Lieutenant/ Acting Captain but was wounded, shell-shocked and gassed and repatriated to England. His editing of anthologies included England, My England, a War anthology (1914); The Blinded Soldiers' and Sailors' Gift Book (1915); Battle Poems and Patriotic Verse (1915); and Made in the Trenches (1916).
During a writing career of over 60 years, Goodchild had four pseudonyms: Wallace Q. Reed, Jesse Templeton, Manda McGrath and Alan Dare. It was under the latter name that he published Return to Eden in 1929, but with the title Body and Soul. In fact, I think that title is even more apt, as the story involves a young artist, Paul Stafford, searching for peace and a philosophy of life after serving in the War - recently he had come out of a sea of trouble (not only the hideousness of the Western Front, but the loss of a sister and mother in quick succession) into a haven of rest, and he desired nothing better than to dream a little longer.
He travels through France to the Côte d'Azur and books a sunny room in a hotel in Mentone. Here he meets Colonel Roppe (also once of the Royal Garrison Artillery) whose chief hobby was to visit Barclay's Bank three or four times a day and gamble on the exchange rates. There was also a wife and a daughter, Virginia, but to expect any intelligent conversation from the Roppe family was asking too much. Stafford starts to paint again but also decides to visit the halls of dazzling light, Monte Carlo's casinos. Here he eventually meets a strange personage. It was the girl who on his first visit had staked against the eleventh red, and won....he judged she was about twenty-two, and of fairly good upbringing. They bond over saving an injured pigeon and she tells him that she has a small son, Michael, but her young husband had been killed in Flanders one day before the Armistice. Their bond deepens and when Stafford decides to rent a villa, Yvonne agrees to become his housekeeper. Inevitably, they fall in love, she body and soul, he certainly body but does not address his 'soul'.
At the same time, a very wealthy Russian ex-patriot, who has fled the Revolution with enough jewels to live an ostentatious and wealthy lifestyle as a Russian Crœsus, desires to purchase one of Stafford's painting. Thus, the latter is drawn, unwillingly, into Serge Petroff's world, which includes his sultry cousin Lydia Kopki - a tall Russian girl with eyes like Chloe. She had that far-away look that is so characteristic of her type, a long but delicately moulded neck, and perfect arms. [Stafford] could have formed an opinion of almost all the rest of her anatomy, for there was little to conceal it. Serge buys a painting and Lydia poses nude for Stafford, much to Yvonne's disgust.
The South France idyll is shattered when Stafford decides, in his wanderlust way, that he wants to travel on to Switzerland, but not before, at last, Yvonne sleeps with him and is allowed to destroy the painting of Lydia. He spends the forthcoming summer avoiding the vast tribes of tourists round about the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn but, as winter approached, he decides to join the 'mob' in an hotel in Grindelwald. Here he meets Catherine Ryder, the daughter of the Dean of Portchester Cathedral. Her beauty entrances him and they get on well enough for him to return to England, visit her parents (a great pen portrait of her father - dark and lean and aristocratic. As an orator he was magnificent, but as a preacher he was a failure) and marry Catherine. It soon proves a major error. The last hundred pages describe the unravelling of their marriage; a disastrous decision to go to the Riviera where they meet up with Yvonne (now married to Stafford's old friend McBride), Serge and Lydia; their mutual decision to separate; more, rather aimless, wandering by Stafford. McBride, alerted to Yvonne's previous attachment to Stafford by a vengeful Lydia, casts her adrift. Like a cork on a turbulent sea, Yvonne floated among the human flotsam of the Riviera. The storm had passed and left her bruised and battered at heart...like Stafford, she had taken the lone road, but with a heavier heart than he.
I mustn't spoil the ending; suffice it to say that body and soul reunite. The last few chapters are written in an almost poetic style, with deeply felt feelings by Stafford and Yvonne (and the author?) Stafford finds not only his true love again but also his Soul. Reason! This reason which we rate so highly is but a limited thing. It cannot live in the blinding light of reality. Art! That, too, is not the uttermost. Its value lies in the joy it gives, not in itself. There is something beyond and above - something yet veiled, but willing to be revealed to him who finds the key. The Times Literary Supplement judged the novel a vivid though quietly recording pen. I feel the better for having read it and wish the fictitious Paul Stafford and Yvonne D'Indy a wonderful life together. It is an Eden they return to. They certainly deserved it!
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