An Excellent Woman Named Mildred

This little book was recommended by an excellent young woman in her own right who thought I might enjoy it. She was correct. It’s a deceptively ordinary story about daily doings in 1950’s London.

Truthfully, I am not sure where to begin, except to say that the unlikely, yet eminently worthy heroine of this story, one Mildred Lathbury, has given me much food for thought. Even her name has flown in the face of my preconceived notions of a woman named Mildred: one with a bad, curly perm, horn rimmed glasses on a beaded chain, and a voice like Roz from Monsters Inc. This Mildred is none of these. After you get to know her, you think of her name more as what it must have been in the ancient times of England; belonging at the very least to the village sage and not the American caricature we now conjure up in our minds.

In the realm of 1950's post WWII London, Mildred could very well be termed a sage of sorts. The men of that era preferred to call her kind "Excellent Women"; those capable, organized, level headed women that English men admired, depended on, but never married. Spinsters. Ministers' daughters, ex maids, ancestors of tradesmen etc. These women give off an air of capability in practical situations and are thus called upon, and assumed by the hopelessly impractical wealthy socialites, to be “the ones who know what's going on” and they leave it to them to 'sort it out'. It never even crosses their minds that these are women who want to be loved and woo'd underneath all that armor of capability and sense.

For me, this book is a great argument against a multi-generational, "landed gentry". Those wealthy land owners of Austen’s time who lived on vast estates from one generation to the next and who completely depended on the 'help' to run the thing. Whole families of children who did absolutely nothing but take rides in the countryside, go to endless parties, get embroiled in marriage proposals to the highest bidder, and lounge around the house or the club until they must dress for dinner. Whole roomfuls of adolescent, failure-to-launch men completely dependent on “the help” to navigate the daily things which remained a mystery to them, but without which they would be lost. Think of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves - Jeeves being the brains of the outfit and Bertie the clueless, befuddled Lord of the Manor so to speak. We laugh at fictional Bertie. We would have no patience for a REAL Bertie. Among these helpless men born to wealth, prestige, and the fixed assumption that they would be taken care of by the "help", there must have set in a kind of atrophied ability to run their own daily lives from one generation to the next. An inability that would be hard to eradicate easily. And even worse, a presumption that it was as it should be. Maids, butlers, grooms, cooks, and valets basicly ran the manor. That's what they were for. But the men of the Empire who were supposed to be the important upper crust of society are helplessly un-self sufficient in running their own lives. They probably couldn't even boil an egg if they needed to.

After the World Wars this whole system falls apart. All the men go off to war, both butlers and bosses together. There is a new freedom among the classes when all the dust settles in the 1950's but we still see these sons of landed gentry assuming that others are once again there to serve them and navigate those boring, domestic affairs of which they haven't a clue. This attitude seems completely embedded in their genes.

This is the world Mildred navigates. She is a minister's daughter who is accustomed to helping people and solving their problems. She has a work ethic and a moral duty to provide help when asked. And the wealthy little buggers in this book take full advantage of her and seem not to notice, given that ingrained sense of superiority passed down to them generation after generation. They instinctively like her, though, and know she is their superior in many practical ways. Mildred gives great advice to a young and charming married couple, she helps them move in to her building and thinks it her duty to help them out with the dull business of dealing with the movers and cleaning up after a party while they run off to luncheon with a friend. She is all at once a marriage counselor and maid. They completely assume she will have no problem with this. The curate at her parish assumes that because of who she is, Mildred secretly pines to be his wife and he automatically thinks she would jump to be first to marry him if he so chose - it is the way of things; an assumption that has never once crossed Mildred's mind. She is readily called upon by intellectual types to get through weird, awkward luncheons with their mothers. She is good at conversation. She saves them from having to deal with mummy all by themselves. She helps out at the Church bazaars and decorates the Church for Whitsun Eve with all the other excellent women while the men look on and drink tea - assuming this is their right. She never says no. You want desperately for her to say NO to all these selfish and thoughtless demands. But she never does. And somehow you grow to love her.

There is a kind of power in her capability and she knows it. They would be lost without her. She is solidly aware of this. And you are satisfied that she knows it.

She is acutely and humorously aware that these men are helpless. She is equally well aware that none of them would even think of marrying her. But they do own her a "swell brick". She has her poignantly lonely times. She has her times of the great "perhaps" of finding love and marrying someday. She is unmoored by a fine spring day and wants to throw off her sensible ways for the possibility of a romance. She even buys a little black dress. This all upsets her equilibrium, however, and she recedes back into the status quo in the end. The safe predictability of her status as spinster Curate's daughter. And somehow you are glad she doesn't marry any of these failure- to-launch men as you might suppose a novel of this sort to end.

This is a story of the beginnings of excellent women recognizing their worth. It starts with the Mildreds of the world. Of the melting down of rigid class distinctions. We are still at the crossroads by the end of the story, but one hopes for Mildred. That one day she will be praised for her worth and ability without condescension. That men will grow up and be able to take care of themselves and simply love excellent women for all the right reasons.

It’s a subtle little commentary on this theme, I believe. You are assured that Mildred is going to come into her own and if she one day does marry, she will be holding out for an adult and excellent man.

These are just my initial thoughts. There may be more as I noodle further…….

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull