About the Book
It is the late 1920s. Topsy is a girl about town, a society deb, a dashing flapper. She writes breathless, exuberant letters to her best friend Trix about her life, her parties, her intrigues, and the men in her life. She deploys her native acumen and remarkable talent for kindness as well as being a doughty fighter for what she thinks is right (she hides a fox from the Hunt in her car). Then Topsy is unexpectedly drawn into politics, and to her amazement, she is elected as a member of Parliament.
Topsy’s extensive social life, her adventures in and out of the House of Commons (and her audacious attempts to legislate for the Enjoyment of the People), and her wartime activity as the mother of twins were recorded faithfully by the great comic writer A P Herbert as a series of satires in Punch.
Format: Paperback (360 pages) Publisher: Handheld Press
Publication date: 11th July 2023 Genre: Modern Clssics, Humour
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My Review
The Voluble Topsy, which will be published on 11th July 2023 by Handheld Press and is available to pre-order now, brings together three collections by A P Herbert – The Trials of Topsy (1928), Topsy MP (1929) and Topsy Turvy (1947) – in one volume. Subtitled ‘A Young Lady’s Chatter About Love, Politics and War, 1928-1947’, Topsy is described by the publishers as ‘the Bridget Jones of the 1920s’.
Topsy’s letters to her friend Trix with their eccentric spelling, malapropisms and mischevious pen pictures of acquaintances and public figures are an absolute hoot. The italicisation of certain words to suggest emphasis means you can hear Topsy’s voice in your head. (I think they might make a great audiobook – perhaps even a Topsy podcast?) One of the most amusing features of the letters is the eccentric terms of endearment with which she addresses Trix. Some of my favourites were ‘night-light of the North’, ‘my crystallised cherry’, ‘my aromatic angel’ and ‘my distant wood pigeon’.
As Kate MacDonald points out in her excellent introduction (Handheld Classics all have excellent introductions), Topsy ‘could never be accused of being pretentious or too learned’. Topsy is happy to offer her opinion on all sorts of things, regardless of whether she knows much about them or not. During a short stint as drama critic for a newspaper, she describes Shakespeare’s Othello as ‘written in the most amateur style… never using one word if it was possible to use three’, summarises the play as being about ‘one absolute cad and one absolute halt wit and one absolute cow‘ and offers the opinion that if they put the play on in the West End not a soul would go to it.
By far my favourite section of the book was the first, the letters that make up the collection The Trials of Topsy. Preaching the virtues of ‘the simple life’, Topsy deprecates the current fixation with exciting deeds, announcing her intention to shun anyone who’s flown the Atlantic or ‘needlessly swum something’. As she says, ‘all this rapidity is too volatile and bilious’. Instead she gives the example of her friend Albert Haddock who has ‘the most seductive mussel in a glass tank which only moves once in four days, my dear it’s too refreshing’.
In a foretaste of her future political career, Topsy has to step in when Haddock, who is standing as a candidate in a by-election, is unexpectedly detained and unable to give a speech. (I couldn’t help thinking of a similar scene in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.) As Topsy herself admits, ‘some of the things I said caused microscopic riots in one or two corners’.
Elected as an MP in unusual circumstances, Topsy divides her time between trying the patience of the Party whips and attempting to progress Private Member’s Bills, including one to reform the Gaming Laws. It contains a clause that would make it unlawful to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Nice try, Topsy. Unfortunately, it’s not long before Topsy becomes rather disillusioned with her constituents, confiding to Trix that she has come to the conclusion ‘my constituency is ‘THE cradle of the nation’s half-wits’. I confess I found this section of the book quite hard going as much of it seemed to be a satirical take on events or talking points of the day that won’t have the same relevance for modern readers.
In the final section of the book, Topsy, now a housewife and mother, unburdens herself to Trix about the continuing privations in post-War Britain, everything from the sluggish postal service to problems getting reliable tradesmen. No change there then… By the end I had some sympathy for poor old Haddock, increasingly chastised by Topsy for what she considers his slovenly ways. As she reports to Trix, ‘my dear his note-case is one protuberant mass of everything except notes, so about once a week I have a birds-nesting day and ruthlessly evacuate the loose tobacco and pipe-cleaners and patent medicines and pieces of string, my dear too miscellaneous…’ Of course, she remains completely devoted to him.
There is a rather lovely note to her Christmas letter to Trix in December 1945 in which she reports ‘it’s not quite snowing, but the house is thick with fog, the gas is anaemic, my tiny hands are frozen, I rather think all the pipes will explode to-night, gangsters I’m quite confident surround the home… but after all there will not be no sireens to-night, and peering through the fog I seem to see Britannia in the arms of Father Christmas, utterly illumined by rays of hope…’
Topsy’s letters to her friend Trix were first published in the weekly magazine Punch, each letter being three or four pages long. I think replicating that experience by dipping in and out, reading a few at a time, would be the ideal way to consume them; Topsy in small doses, if you like. I read the entire book over a couple of days for the purpose of this review and it did start to feel a little like binge-watching a comedy series that has 76 episodes and not getting all the jokes.
Having said that, Topsy is a brilliantly imagined character and, my fallen lily, she deserves to be rediscovered.
I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Handheld Press.
In three words: Witty, spirited, quirky
About the Author
A P Herbert (1890-1971) was one of Britain’s great comic writers and librettists and had a long career as a Member of Parliament, during which he was a dogged campaigner for the reform of outdated or unjust British laws.
About the Book
About the Author
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