REREAD: The Four Graces
Nov. 5th, 2025 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Four Graces: D.E. Stevenson. Collins, 1946
It’s over two decades since I first read this book, and I’d honestly forgotten that I owned it and had read it. It introduces us to the Grace family, but is connected to the Miss Buncle/Mrs Abbot books, which I’ve read subsequently.
I was going to say that the title is a misnomer, as only three of the four Grace girls feature prominently because they live at home, but on reflection, their widowed father, the vicar at Chevis Green, is as important a character as his daughters. Because there were four daughters, Liz, Sal, Tilly and Addy, I was thinking of the March sisters – Sal used to be delicate and everyone assumes she’ll be a homebody for all her days, but the comparison doesn’t hold up at all.
It’s set during the second world war, but in the countryside over the course of a summer, so while the war is a reality, meaning that several characters are not where they would be otherwise, doing things they would not be doing otherwise – Liz is a farmhand, Addie is serving in London, while others are evacuated to Chevis Green from the capital – it isn’t dwelt upon. Stevenson was clearly writing to cheer her original readership. It overlaps a little with Mariana and The Whalebone Theatre, so I really ought to try to read something from a different era next. Like the first, it was written almost contemporaneously, but what it has is charm.
The likeable Grace girls are in their twenties. Tilly, who we meet first, is musical and shy, somewhat conservative, but sensitive. Liz it the most outgoing and outspoken, while Sal is, we soon see, the one who keeps it all going (and her father’s favourite, though he would deny it.) Addie, the youngest, is the most selfish and flighty. Thanks to the wedding of a family friend (and the war), Roderick Herd meets the Graces, and stirs up some unease in Tilly, who senses he will change things. He does. By the end of the book, Liz, pondering the summer that was, realises a great deal has changed in all their lives.
Another man, a clumsy giant and expert in Roman Britain, William Single, comes to stay at the vicarage for the summer. Despite the sisters’ concern about him, he turns out to fit in as the girls chatter, defer to their father when necessary or manage him when they feel it necessary. Less happily, someone else also comes to stay and really and truly stirs things up, even as (village) life goes on, with the new lady of the manor settling in, various people turning to Sal, and William revealing himself to be a most helpful creature.
We’re meant to see in Mr Grace a fundamentally good and sincere shepherd, although I didn’t think much of his theology. He has tended to think of his daughters as girls, although Liz has had one unfortunate love affair, but they are old enough to marry, and in a world where officers may be called abroad on duty at any time, romance happens at speed. But when assumptions are made by people who think they know best and one is jealous of one’s own sister, this can cause misery. It is all sorted by the end, and the Graces are good natured and well trained enough to listen to their consciences and examine themselves frankly.
There’s perhaps some self-consciousness or even meta in the popular author Janetta Walters, who doesn’t write literature, but neither are her books trash, for Liz and Sal have taken pleasure from them. That is where Stevenson places her own writing, you feel. She finds the comedy in human nature – from the villagers to the central household – and, as I say, there’s a real charm to the writing, and cheering up readers who were worrying about more than rationing at the time was an admirable job. I enjoyed reading it (although I’m aware that it hadn’t stuck in my mind.)
It’s over two decades since I first read this book, and I’d honestly forgotten that I owned it and had read it. It introduces us to the Grace family, but is connected to the Miss Buncle/Mrs Abbot books, which I’ve read subsequently.
I was going to say that the title is a misnomer, as only three of the four Grace girls feature prominently because they live at home, but on reflection, their widowed father, the vicar at Chevis Green, is as important a character as his daughters. Because there were four daughters, Liz, Sal, Tilly and Addy, I was thinking of the March sisters – Sal used to be delicate and everyone assumes she’ll be a homebody for all her days, but the comparison doesn’t hold up at all.
It’s set during the second world war, but in the countryside over the course of a summer, so while the war is a reality, meaning that several characters are not where they would be otherwise, doing things they would not be doing otherwise – Liz is a farmhand, Addie is serving in London, while others are evacuated to Chevis Green from the capital – it isn’t dwelt upon. Stevenson was clearly writing to cheer her original readership. It overlaps a little with Mariana and The Whalebone Theatre, so I really ought to try to read something from a different era next. Like the first, it was written almost contemporaneously, but what it has is charm.
The likeable Grace girls are in their twenties. Tilly, who we meet first, is musical and shy, somewhat conservative, but sensitive. Liz it the most outgoing and outspoken, while Sal is, we soon see, the one who keeps it all going (and her father’s favourite, though he would deny it.) Addie, the youngest, is the most selfish and flighty. Thanks to the wedding of a family friend (and the war), Roderick Herd meets the Graces, and stirs up some unease in Tilly, who senses he will change things. He does. By the end of the book, Liz, pondering the summer that was, realises a great deal has changed in all their lives.
Another man, a clumsy giant and expert in Roman Britain, William Single, comes to stay at the vicarage for the summer. Despite the sisters’ concern about him, he turns out to fit in as the girls chatter, defer to their father when necessary or manage him when they feel it necessary. Less happily, someone else also comes to stay and really and truly stirs things up, even as (village) life goes on, with the new lady of the manor settling in, various people turning to Sal, and William revealing himself to be a most helpful creature.
We’re meant to see in Mr Grace a fundamentally good and sincere shepherd, although I didn’t think much of his theology. He has tended to think of his daughters as girls, although Liz has had one unfortunate love affair, but they are old enough to marry, and in a world where officers may be called abroad on duty at any time, romance happens at speed. But when assumptions are made by people who think they know best and one is jealous of one’s own sister, this can cause misery. It is all sorted by the end, and the Graces are good natured and well trained enough to listen to their consciences and examine themselves frankly.
There’s perhaps some self-consciousness or even meta in the popular author Janetta Walters, who doesn’t write literature, but neither are her books trash, for Liz and Sal have taken pleasure from them. That is where Stevenson places her own writing, you feel. She finds the comedy in human nature – from the villagers to the central household – and, as I say, there’s a real charm to the writing, and cheering up readers who were worrying about more than rationing at the time was an admirable job. I enjoyed reading it (although I’m aware that it hadn’t stuck in my mind.)
