Aunt Clara

Noel Streatfeild’s novels for children are among those books spoken of with great affection by many readers. I remember I enjoyed Ballet Shoes when I was a child – though I don’t remember reading any of her others. This week I saw an announcement from Virago books that they will be re-issuing a couple of Noel Streatfeild novels as part of their classic children’s range. Great news, but Noel Streatfeild didn’t just write for children. Persephone books already publish Saplings a wonderful novel for adults, that poignantly chronicles the slow disintegration of a once happy family. Scottish publisher Grey Ladies also publish two Noel Streatfeild novels; I read Parson’s Nine in 2014 a lovely, engaging novel about a clergyman’s show more family.

So, imagine my delight when Dee from my lovely VMC Librarything group – included Aunt Clara by Noel Streatfeild as part of my Secret Santa parcel. It was a novel I hadn’t heard of, but the cover alone sold me on it. Hadn’t meant to wait quite so long to read it but it turned out to be quite a treat.

The reader doesn’t meet the Aunt Clara of the title straight away, instead we are introduced to curmudgeonly Simon Hilton. Unmarried, he lives in London with his cockney valet Henry (my one slight criticism is that Noel Streatfeild slightly overdoes the cockney rhyming slang) and has no time at all for his family. Simon and Henry are a rather marvellous team, they first met during the war when Henry was an air raid warden with nowhere to live.

“Henry was in no sense a valet, but he had strong views on how the elderly should be treated. You did what you could to make them comfortable. Gave them a share of anything that was going, and when possible let them have their little comforts. Simon was different in many ways from the other old persons Henry had met, but in one way he acted as he expected. Simon might talk in as independent a manner as him, but he was lonely and counted on Henry’s company. He tried to disguise it but Henry was not fooled.”

With his eightieth birthday looming Simon receives letters from his family proposing his birthday lunch should be held on a date more convenient to them all, which is the month before the actual date. Incandescent with fury – Simon sets himself on a path that will teach all the selfish, grasping, plotting family members a hard lesson. The only good one among the lot of them is Clara.

Clara has happily sacrificed herself for her family. First caring for her parents until their death – and now in late middle age, has taken herself out of the way of her selfish family and taken up refuge in a London mission. Her work with the mission has taken her into many homes of the poor and needy in London and everyone calls her Aunt Clara. In addition to this Clara is always on call for her family when needed, when great nieces need to be met off trains, or accompanied to the dentist, Clara will oblige. She is a sixty-year-old innocent – seeing nothing but good in everyone. Following an unexpected visit to Simon’s house while he is confined to bed, Henry draws Clara into Simon’s plans for his eightieth birthday lunch.

The lunch goes off exactly as old Simon had planned – leaving the sick old man laughing happily over it for the last few weeks of his life. All the hints he previously dropped to Henry don’t prepare him at all for what is to come.

Simon instructed the youngest generation of a firm of family solicitors to draw up a new – rather unconventional will. Charles Willis is the solicitor instructed to read the will (like an old Victorian novel) while port is served to the older generation of Simon’s family. Clara is one of five siblings, she along with the others, each married, with children and now grandchildren are summoned to the reading of the will. Here Aunt Clara (and her furious siblings) first hear Simon’s peculiar requests, the charges to her, which Clara can’t help but see as a ‘sacred trust’. In addition, she has Simon’s house, with Henry to look after her. The pair become good friends, and in the company of Henry and Charles, Aunt Clara sets about the tasks she has been set. In this way the psalm quoting, cottage loaf shaped Aunt Clara is thrown into the worlds of circuses, greyhound racing, London pubs and fair ground gambling.

“Charles was enchanted. Who else but Clara Hilton would choose to recite a hymn to a circus owner she had only just met, and who else, in that confident way, would talk about the power of prayer?”

Aunt Clara is unfailingly cheerful, her view of the world is never dimmed – and she immediately embraces all the people she meets in her non-judgemental, unselfish love.

Aunt Clara is an excellent antidote to the times in which we find ourselves living. Warm, engaging and very readable it was a real treat spending time with these characters. show less

A review I wrote in February 2020:

Aunt Clara by Noel Streatfeild (3.5 stars)

An interesting social commentary of a novel but a bit sedate and lacking in warm, well-rounded,
empathetic characters; characterisation is a bit one dimensional. Interesting look at post-war
society, morals, innocence and religion. None of the characters are particularly likeable, even the
eponymous Clara, and the plot lacks structure direction. I found it an interesting and unusual read
but not an exciting one. Aunt Clara was first published in 1952.