Some Tame Gazelle Book

3.5 stars
My first novel by Barbara Pym and this is her first novel, published in 1950, but started before the war and the setting feels pre-war as well. The title comes from a poem by Thomas Haynes Bayly:
"Some Tame Gazelle, or some gentle dove:
Something to love, oh something to love"
The premise is a simple one and the novel is based on Pym and her sister. Pym started it in her 20s and imagined herself and her sister in their 50s, unmarried and living together. Belinda and Harriet Bede are sisters in their early 50s living together in an English village. It is worth noting that this novel is very English, centering on the Church of England in a rural village and nothing much happens. There is plenty of irony and satire and Pym is a very astute observer.
Both sisters are very much preoccupied with the local Church of England clergy. Belinda has loved Archdeacon Hoccleve for many years, since they were at college;
"Belinda, having loved the Archdeacon when she was twenty and not having found anyone to replace him since, had naturally got into the habit of loving him, though with the years her passion had mellowed into a comfortable feeling, more like the cosiness of a winter evening by the fire than the uncertain rapture of a spring morning."
He married a rather more ambitious wife; Belinda doesn't really like her. Harriet is much more occupied with the younger clergy who pass through the parish in the role of curate and live in lodgings. She cooks and knits for them and invites them for dinner and afternoon tea. When the Archdeacon's wife goes on holiday, other visitors including a librarian and an overseas bishop come to visit and provide some minor disruption to the smooth running of village life. Both sisters get proposals of marriage during the book. Harriet receives an annual proposal from an Italian Count who lives in the village.
Pym has a way of showing the reader what is going on under the surface at times as with this conversation with the Count after another proposal is turned down, when Belinda says:
'' 'mustn't lose hope. ... I know she is fond of you and even if she will not love you, always remember' - her eyes lighted on the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 'that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I always think those lines are such a great comfort; so many of us have loved and lost.' She frowned: nobody wanted to be one of many, and she did not like this picture of herself, only one of a great crowd of dreary women. Perhaps Tennyson was rather hackneyed after all.''
There is no action, but a great deal of observation; it feels a bit like Miss Marple without the murders!
Poverty and the working classes make no real appearance and the servants are fairly anonymous. The bishop who visits has a diocese in Africa and Pym dissects the Church's attitudes to mission and the inherent racism masquerading as charitable concern. It must also be said that the male characters are also pretty grim and it is no surprise that there are so many unmarried women
As a comedy of manners and a satire on middle class English village life in the early twentieth century it works quite well.