I read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Friendship for the 1940 Club hosted by Kaggy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon from Stuck in a Book.
Books about female friendship are ubiquitous these days, but in Vera Brittain’s day (1893-1970) it was all about noble male friendship (a.k.a. mateship here in Australia) while close female friendships were sometimes the subject of speculation and gossip. Just as Brittain’s Testament of Youth (1933) was the first to step outside the male experience of WW1, so too was her story of her intimate but platonic friendship with a woman who meant the world to her. Testament of Friendship is poignant reading because Winifred Holtby (1898-1935) died aged only 37 from Bright’s Disease, (now known as nephritis, i.e. kidney disease.)
Despite its tragic conclusion, the book is a lively account of two clever young women determined to do something useful in the world. They met at Oxford, where in the absence of men mostly at the front, they enjoyed comparative respect for women. Both had served in the war, Vera as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse and Winifred in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), an experience which she used in her writing, as seen in the Sensational Snippet I published last week. Although Brittain’s pacifism cost her some respect during WW2 which was looming even as she wrote this tribute to her friend, Testament of Friendship documents how young women could be politically active as feminists, socialists and pacifists, and could take on significant roles in the issues of the day.
At the same time, the women shared a grief for all that had been lost in the devastation of that pointless war. Vera had lost her fiancé, her two close friends and her brother, while Winifred’s ‘love of her life’ returned psychologically damaged and not capable of settling to anything. Oxford, they found on their return, was a changed place too. Chapter VI explains how it was inhabited by three incompatible groups engaged in a spiritual tug-of-war:
- The dons in their academic twilight, barely illumined by occasional visits from younger or more enterprising colleagues who had joined the Army or taken posts in Government offices. These senior members of the academic staff had waited out the war in discomfort, not because they were pacificists, but because the chaos of war threatened their decorous intellectual routine;
- The returning servicemen, back to finish their interrupted studies, impatient with the university’s restrictions on their liberty after years of peril, independence and extreme responsibility. Ex-colonels and majors in their late twenties did not respect curfews to protect morality!
- The youthful contingent of schoolboys and schoolgirls who had spent the war in classrooms and on playing fields resented the transformation of Oxford by their disillusioned seniors. Even as the Treaty of Versailles was setting up the conditions for WW2, their aspirations were to build a new world. So battles raged in common rooms, debating societies and university magazines.
Of all that I have read about the aftermath of WW2, I had never come across this dissection of the ferment in universities!
Vera and Winifred were determined to be writers, and more importantly, to live to their potential rather than have lives circumscribed by society’s expectations. The support they gave each other was not just mentoring and encouragement, it was practical too. When Vera met her eventual husband (George Caitlin) who she refers to only as G., he had to fit into their relationship, not (as is so often the case even today), the other way round. In the event they opened up their home to Winifred and Winifred babysat Vera’s children John and Shirley, and became a much-loved ‘aunt’. Although they lived a privileged lifestyle compared to many, they both worked very hard at their craft, juggling domestic responsibilities which were not just the care of Vera’s children, but demanding obligations to extended family as well. There seem to have been endless crises necessitating extended periods of nursing in Winifred’s family when all her attempts to find quiet time to write were frustrated.
Writing this biography five years after Winifred’s death, Brittain is still haunted by guilt that she did not do enough for her friend in the last years of her life. Winifred was indomitable and she concealed how ill she was from everyone, but still Brittain cannot forgive herself.
Not one of us who loved her most dearly is guiltless; not even one. But if we ever stand before the Recording Angel and bitterly confess the measure of our joint responsibility for her premature end, it will be her loving, distressed astonishment at our remorse which alone will save us from our just punishment for the wrong we did her. (p.442)
Although this biography of her friend is a sincere testament to an important friendship, it is not a hagiography. Vera includes Winifred’s poetry at the start of every chapter and where relevant throughout the text, not because it’s particularly good poetry, but because it offers insights into Winifred’s thoughts and emotions. We read about some incidents where Winifred lost her temper, made imprudent decisions, and was taken in by exploitative activists from South Africa, but these pale into insignificance beside the anecdotes about Winifred’s courage, selflessness, generosity and thoughtfulness. She packed an extraordinary amount into her short life, as a journalist, a novelist, a lecturer, a fundraiser and speaker for great causes, and a champion of the people exploited by the white majority in South Africa.
In 1935 Winifred wrote this about feminism:
‘The old excuse ‘I’m only a woman’ is still heard in the land,’ she wrote in a Silver Jubilee [of George V] article published by The Queen the following spring, ‘but its power is waning. This is the foundation of all future achievement — to have faith in oneself and one’s capacity. All art, all leadership is impossible without that confidence which the past achievement of women, limited as it may have been, has made possible. ‘I’m a woman and proud of it’, is the modern cry. Tomorrow, perhaps, we shall hear less of both, and more of ‘I’m a human being, and so it is my responsibility to do such and such.’ And then it will matter less whether there has, or has not, been a woman Shakespeare. It will matter only that humanity achieves great art, great statesmanship, great science and great sanctity; that one sex is not shut off from such achievement and that both rejoice in what humanity at its best can be.’ (p.383)
Today, Winifred Holtby is best known for her novel South Riding, posthumously published in 1936. Wikipedia tells me that all her novels, together with a collection of short stories and a collection of her journalism, were reprinted by Virago in the Virago Modern Classics series in the 1980s. Her Will funded literary awards in her name.
Rohan Maitzen at Novel Readings has written extensively about Vera Brittain, both as an author in her own right and as part of the literary milieu that included Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West amongst others. I recommend browsing through Rohan’s posts with a cup of tea and a biscuit at hand if you want to find out more about this remarkable era in 20th century literature.
Testament of Friendship is second in Brittain’s Testament Trilogy.
- Testament of Youth (1933), which I read many years ago in 1979, see this review at The Guardian and Rohan Maitsen’s review at Novel Readings.
- Testament of Friendship (1940), see also Rohan Maitzen’s review
- Testament of Experience (1957), see Rohan Maitzen’s review
Update 11/4/23: Thanks to Ali’s comment below, I have discovered that Heavenali has a wealth of reviews of Winifred Holtby’s writing. Type Holtby into the search box at the top of her blog and you will find reviews of:
- Virginia Woolf, a critical memoir – Winifred Holtby (1932)
- The Land of Green Ginger – Winifred Holtby (1927)
- Remember, Remember! the Selected Stories of Winifred Holtby (1999)
- The Crowded Street – Winifred Holtby (1924)
- Poor Caroline – Winifred Holtby (1931)
- Mandoa Mandoa – Winifred Holtby (1933)
- Anderby Wold – Winifred Holtby (1923)
- South Riding – Winifred Holtby (1936)
Author: Vera Brittain (1893-1970)
Title: Testament of Friendship
Afterword by Rosalind Delmar
Publisher: Fontana Paperbacks in association with Virago Press, 1981, first published by Macmillan and Co in 1940
Cover design not credited
ISBN: 0006363539, pbk., 453 pages
Source: personal library, purchased for $3.00 from the (now defunct) Rhyll Book Exchange on Phillip Island.
You can hear more about South Riding at Backlisted.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Hi Lisa
Again thanks for a thoughtful review. Once again I urge all your readers to try Vera Brittain’s three Testaments as great, stylish writing of the “Lost Generation” period between the two wars.
I have to say that re your comment on the lack of a female Shakespeare, I feel just as strongly that it equally does not matter that there has not been a male Jane Austen, or Virginia Stephen let alone a Vera Brittain. When you reflect on the male accounts of the WW1 period in England, they are almost all by ex-soldiers and relate directly to their war experiences and the aftermath. Many are by fine writers such as Graves or Sassoon. No man that was a non-combatant has written anything that comes close to Testament of Youth or Testament of Experience.
Thanks again
Chris
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By: cbrowne99 on April 10, 2023
at 9:22 am
I’m glad you liked it, Chris.
I confess: I put Holtby’s comment in to show just how long it’s been and still that nonsense has not been put to bed. I’m reading a bio of Margaret Sutherland at the moment and there’s a lot in that about female composers not writing symphonies…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 9:54 am
Oh Lisa am on your team. Read these women writers at a dynamic time in my own life and have always a V.Woolf close at hand. I love Holtby’s commentary and so pertinent.
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By: Fay K on April 10, 2023
at 11:43 am
And what a great team it is! I think I have failed utterly to convey how much I loved reading this…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 11:59 am
Not so. You have excelled as always. And our own Australian women writers of that time taught me so much about this country.
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By: Fay K on April 10, 2023
at 1:31 pm
Aww, thank you Fay! #RaisingAGlassToYou!
(I get really tired of writers moaning about their self-doubts, but #JustThisOnce I will admit to having doubts about my reviews all the time!)
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 2:34 pm
Thanks for your thoughtful review Lisa. I read this book a great many years ago, probably around the time I read “Testament of Youth” the first time, and also “South Riding”. I must reread this one, and search out “Testament of Experience”. I was interested to read this review some months back in the Guardian. It could be of interest to you also: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/04/between-friends-letters-of-vera-brittain-and-winifred-holtby-review-a-strange-sisterhood
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By: Eleanor Dilley on April 10, 2023
at 1:42 pm
Thank you, Eleanor… I’ve had a preliminary look for South Riding, so far with no luck at my libraries, so next is the secondhand bookstores.
Yes, I saw that article, and I disliked it. Not least for the awful photo of Winifred because Vera tells us so often that she was beautiful.
But also because of the dismissive statement about G. He probably wasn’t perfect, he was probably a man of his time and yet this marriage made space for both of them to do their own thing. My first marriage coincided with the feminism of the 70s and we negotiated new ideas about women’s roles and marriage together. It wasn’t easy for either of us and all men who proved themselves adaptable in the long run get kudos from me. We need more of them!
I also don’t like the implied nastiness about Brittain’s privilege. Yes, she was white, and well-off, and healthy, but she was a brilliantly perceptive writer, and I am not keen on cheap post-mortem pop psychoanalysis (sadomasochism! envy! cruelty!)
I clicked on Rachel Cooke’s name at the Guardian, and based on the headlines of her articles there, I think she’s probably not best suited to literary criticism…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 2:32 pm
I will admit that I was rather taken aback by the review also, but didn’t want to comment on that if you hadn’t read it already. If you read ebooks, you can get “South Riding” here: https://www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Holtby,%20Winifred
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By: Eleanor Dilley on April 10, 2023
at 2:52 pm
I wonder if we reacted like that because we feel somehow ‘protective’ of Vera Brittain?
But I do (too often) feel that younger readers have got so hung up on all the ‘isms’ of the day that they can’t see what’s good about a book at all and that’s because they’re not willing to give any ground on the imperfections of the past.
Testament of Friendship is such beautiful writing, and so transparently honest about Brittain’s own failings too. Maybe she didn’t see some of the failings that we can recognise now, but expecting that she should, or shaming her because she didn’t, is just naff IMO.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 3:07 pm
PS Thank you for the link! I’ve put it on my Kindle:)
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 3:09 pm
You are welcome Lisa!
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By: Eleanor Dilley on April 10, 2023
at 3:20 pm
I read Testament of Youth and Testament of Friendship years ago, when I was much younger, and I know I enjoyed them both – but I think I would appreciate this book better now I am older and have more life experience, particularly of friendships made and lost. I think we often do not place enough emphasis on the value of close friendships – I have lost two wonderful friends through early fatal illnesses and one, tragically, through suicide – and I think I would get more out of reading this again now; and I have made a recent move to the Camden Haven area, which means some old friendships here rekindled and others in the Central West that I will miss. We are so mobile these days! Thanks for reviewing this Lisa.
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By: Sue on April 10, 2023
at 4:24 pm
Yes, I think that I am unusual now in that I’ve lived in the same house since 1978… and in that time, some friends have moved away and lost touch. LOL It’s too late when they’ve moved away to discover that they are not letter writers!
I was devastated when the only school friend I’d kept up with died in her 40s, we just do not expect deaths among people of our own age, though that changes as we get older.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 4:49 pm
I think we also find book after book about romantic relationships, or family relationships, but not many about friendships – yet friendships may keep us going when romantic partners fail and families grow up and depart.
I have an elderly (94 year old) friend who has lived in the same house for many decades, but now finds no neighbours that she knows to speak to, and she is quite lonely. She says it’s hard to be the ” last man (or woman) standing”. (I’m far away but phone her daily, the least I can do).
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By: Sue on April 10, 2023
at 7:18 pm
Yes, that’s hard. There was a woman like that at the funeral of my MIL, she was the ‘last one standing’ and I really felt for her loneliness.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 7:39 pm
I’m pretty sure I read all three back in the late 1970s when I read quite a bit about and by the Bloomsburys but the details have escaped me now. They were an amazing bunch and a fascinating era.
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By: whisperinggums on April 10, 2023
at 8:46 pm
They were indeed!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 9:53 pm
I read Vera Brittain’s trilogy many years ago but I think I should reread, and it’s probably more than 10 years since I last read South Riding. I think Virago has reissued a lot of the Holtby books again more recently than the 1980s, and they are out of copyright. But although the newer editions look attractive, most of them are lacking in the introductions or afterwords.
Persephone also publishes The Crowded Street, which I read (or reread – I don’t always remember which books I read by an author in the 1990s – or even 1980s!) probably 5-10 years ago.
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By: elkiedee on April 10, 2023
at 11:06 pm
On Bloomsbury women, there’s an excellent look at the experiences of 5 women (not Vera Brittain or Winifred Holtby though) living in Mecklenburgh Square between the wars. This includes Virginia Woolf of the Bloomsbury group, and the crime fiction author/religious writer Dorothy L Sayers, also HD and, less well known I think, but also very interesting here, Eileen Power and Jane Harrison.
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By: elkiedee on April 10, 2023
at 11:19 pm
Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, Faber & Faber (London) January 2020
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By: elkiedee on April 10, 2023
at 11:21 pm
Ah! By coincidence I have just started reading Beowulf a novel of the London Blitz, by Bryher, and the introduction has quite a bit about HD who was Bryher’s lover.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 12:43 am
Is this in a book Ellie?
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By: whisperinggums on April 11, 2023
at 7:57 am
Yes, Square Haunting by Francesca Wade. See the post below the one you responded to (I realised I’d forgotten to include the title etc in my post about it!)
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By: elkiedee on April 11, 2023
at 9:41 am
Ah, I missed that. Thanks.
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By: whisperinggums on April 15, 2023
at 9:51 pm
I’ve not read this but it’s one I keep meaning to – South Riding is one of my favourite novels. Lovely review Lisa and a reminder that I should really get to this!
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By: madamebibilophile on April 10, 2023
at 8:51 pm
Thank you!
Have you heard them talk about South Riding at Backlisted? They are hilarious…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 10, 2023
at 9:54 pm
No I haven’t – I’ll check it out, thanks Lisa.
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By: madamebibilophile on April 11, 2023
at 2:37 am
I read Vera Brittain’s trilogy many years ago but I think I should reread, and it’s probably more than 10 years since I last read South Riding. I think Virago has reissued a lot of the Holtby books again more recently than the 1980s, and they are out of copyright. But although the newer editions look attractive, most of them are lacking in the introductions or afterwords.
Persephone also publishes The Crowded Street, which I read (or reread – I don’t always remember which books I read by an author in the 1990s – or even 1980s!) probably 5-10 years ago.
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By: elkiedee on April 10, 2023
at 11:05 pm
My guess is that the books are out of copyright so can be republished at will, but the introductions are not, so they’re not included.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 12:37 am
There is also a biography of Winifred Holtby by Marion Shaw published in 1999 by Virago. I originally borrowed it from the library’s reserve stock I think but bought a Virago Kindle edition in 2012. Sadly I don’t suppose it’s available at that price in your part of the world but it’s currently £1.99 on Amazon UK. As Holtby is out of copyright some of her work is available in various quite cheap editions here too.
Sorry about the duplicate post, when I tried to post something else, my last post came up again and I thought I hadn’t posted it. Grr.
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By: elkiedee on April 10, 2023
at 11:14 pm
*chuckle* Joys of a digital life.
For some inexplicable reason, the electrical circuit that runs our microwave, toaster, coffee machine, shredder and *sigh* my computer has been playing up and all day it’s been shutting down and losing whatever I was working on, reading, thinking about and replying to. So I understand the discombobulation…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 12:41 am
This is a wonderful choice, Lisa – I’ve had both Brittain and Holtby on the TBR for decades and I really should get them out soon. And I’ve certainly read about the women’s friendship. If only there were more time to read…
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By: kaggsysbookishramblings on April 11, 2023
at 5:25 am
I’ll second that!
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 9:28 am
Great choice for the 1940 club. I read Testament of Youth but haven’t read this, no idea why. I am a big fan of Winifred Holtby, so I really must.
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By: heavenali on April 11, 2023
at 6:23 am
Ah… I’m hoping you have a review or two of Holtby… off now to your blog to search…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 9:29 am
Ohhhhh, what riches! I shall add a link to your reviews in my post.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 11, 2023
at 9:30 am
So glad someone covered this for the 1940 Club – and somehow I have never read it, though have owned for a very long time. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections on it.
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By: Simon T on April 12, 2023
at 1:13 am
Thanks, Simon, I hope you can get to it one day:)
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By: Lisa Hill on April 12, 2023
at 8:17 am
I loved Testament of Youth so much, I knew I wanted to do justice to Friendship whenever I get around to reading it. You response has made me even more determined to make sure I read it when the time is right for me. It sounds like one to savour.
I also have Vera Brittain: A Life by Mark Bostridge & Paul Berry on my TBR for one day soon I hope.
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By: Brona's Books on April 12, 2023
at 1:54 pm
I’ve got a short one by Hilary Bailey, but I really need to tackle some of the LitBios I’ve got of Australian authors…
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By: Lisa Hill on April 12, 2023
at 2:45 pm
I love this but haven’t read it for ages – I think I last re-read Testament of Youth but then didn’t do this one again, and we’re talking late 1990s then. One for my re-reading project if I ever get to it!
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By: Liz Dexter on April 13, 2023
at 7:15 am
That’s the thing about these clubs… it’s not just the individual titles it’s the combination of all the books read by everybody contributing and the memories they bring of our reading history and the discussions about the books we haven’t read, yet.
There’s always a ‘yet’.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 13, 2023
at 8:11 am
I am a big fan of this series and have also enjoyed several books about this group of women (Constance Savery seems to be ignored although she overlapped with Vera and Winifred at Somerville, probably because she wrote children’s books). I really enjoyed the BBC miniseries as well. Thanks for inspiring a reread!
I agree it is very upsetting to learn of the death of a friend (or child/parent of that friend) long after the fact. For this reason, when there is a death of someone relatively close to me, I sometimes offer to help make calls to get the word out. My mother reads the newspaper death notices every day but nowadays not everyone even realizes that is a way to share such sad news.
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By: CLM (@ConMartin) on April 17, 2023
at 12:34 am
Among my tasks as executor for my friend, I wrote to all the people in her address book to let them know that she had died. I received some lovely letters in return, from people I didn’t know, telling me how fond they were of her and how long they’d been friends and so on. But some of them also said that they hadn’t had a reply to their last letter and had wondered what had happened. I had put notices in the paper, but these friends were interstate so they didn’t see it.
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By: Lisa Hill on April 17, 2023
at 7:42 am