Peter and Paul #1940club

Peter and Paul, by Susan Scarlett (1940)

Kaggsy of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book have been running reading weeks that focus on books published in a particular year for absolutely ages now, and I’ve been increasingly keen to join in. This year I’m finally doing it! I’ve got another (very different) book on the back burner for the end of the week, but fancied something lighter and jollier to get under my belt first, and found this fantastic list of 1940 recommendations from Helen at She Reads Novels. Seeing that one of Noel Streatfeild’s adult novels was on the list, I remembered that Streatfeild had written some light romantic comedies under the name of Susan Scarlett, and hied me to Fantastic Fiction, where I found that she’d published several titles in 1940! Peter and Paul stuck out to me for the title (it refers to twin girls, who are really named Petronella and Pauline), and there’s something about a pretty-one-plain-one dynamic that speaks to a little part of my soul.

Like a lot of the Susan Scarlett novels, it’s a sort of fairytale romance set in a dressmaker’s shop (or department store or otherwise in the context of clothes and retail). There must have been a major market for this subgenre; as Elizabeth Crawford notes in her helpful introduction, this was wartime and female readers really needed a bit of light relief. Petronella and Pauline are twin sisters, daughter of a provincial vicar and his kind wife. Petronella is absolutely stunning–the sort of beauty that has never been denied or experienced a moment’s unkindness, because everyone wants to pet and spoil her. Pauline is a much better human being—thoughtful, generous, honourable—but “plain”. (How this is possible, genetically speaking, when they’re twins is never really dwelt on. Maybe they’re fraternal, not identical?) Needing some way to introduce them to men, which the tiny village and narrow horizons of the  parsonage cannot provide, Mrs. Lane arranges for both girls to take posts at the London dress shop Reboux, owned by David Bliss, the son of the local aristocratic lady.  Pauline falls for him at once, but he has eyes only for Petronella, who is clearly the wrong match. Will Pauline’s goodness and kindness win David’s love? Will Petronella be ousted by the gold-digging manageress Moira Renton, and learn the error of her ways?

Oddly, it’s sort of hard to answer any of these questions. Pauline has David’s esteem and friendship from the start, and we know thst he finds her refreshing and comforting, once referring to her as “the key to the gate of childhood”. Once he recognises Petronella’s shallowness, he starts to spend much more time with Pauline, but we never get a solid resolution of their arc, in the form of a proposal. Petronella manages not to get fired (despite Mrs. Renton’s machinations, which are pretty nasty); instead she is discovered by a talent agency and offered a Hollywood contract, which takes her neatly out of the picture. She does not, however, appear to grow as a person in any way; it is what she has always wanted, and she has always somehow  gotten what she wants. Another girl who works at the shop, Eloise, asks her at one point, “Don’t you ever think?”, to which Petronella replies, “Not often. Things just happen, don’t they?” You’d be forgiven for expecting the plot to encompass Petronella’s learning that things don’t just happen, and that if they have done to you, that’s not necessarily a benefit. But no: she gets what she wants, or at least it’s strongly implied that she does, despite her priggish father’s disapproval, and that’s the end of that.

Indeed, although it’s marketed as a light romance novel, there’s a curious cynicism running through Peter and Paul. Pauline’s “plainness” is so matter-of-factly accepted by everybody, and the difference in the way she and her sister are treated by the world is too. Scarlett doesn’t say it’s a good thing; in fact it’s pretty obvious that it isn’t; but she doesn’t deny that it happens, that life really is easier for very beautiful people. It reminded me painfully of a time when I lost a lot of weight (thanks to an eating disorder and poverty—0/10, not recommended), and people—strangers and acquaintances alike—were noticeably, startlingly, nicer to me. It is probably the strangest and saddest interpersonal dynamic I have ever experienced.

So, then. Was it a good start to the 1940 Club? Actually, yes: there’s absolutely no mention of the wider political or social situation, but that tells you a lot in itself, and I got a strong sense of what it might have meant to people reading the first edition of Peter and Paul, to have something witty and romantic to take their minds off things. Was it a good introduction to Streatfeild’s novels as Susan Scarlett? I think I could have picked a better one. Recommendations welcome!