Review: The Soul of Kindness

The Soul Of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Flora is the only child of a widowed and over-protective mother, and a sheltered childhood. These have led her to grow up in a kind of fantasy world of prettiness and innocence, like an overblown Disney cartoon. She is well-meaning, but dim. Her limited life experiences mean that she has close to zero empathy and no self-awareness. Kindness is a virtue, and she seeks to embody this ideal. However, Elizabeth Taylor develops a witty and elegant narrative around Flora and the people connected to her, whether directly or indirectly. While some readers may feel that Flora is manipulative, I don’t think this is really the case. She has no ulterior motive in her kindness and does not seek betterment through her kindness. Why should she when she lives such a cosseted and luxurious life?

I enjoy the ironic humour running through this book. The excessive kindness is not narcissistic, but naïve. And it is this naïveté that results in a series of episodes each of which seems more extreme than the last. Her father-in-law, Percy, is given a cat by Flora, out of kindness, which he then has to look after, so that it becomes a chore, rather than a pleasantry. Worse, Flora encourages Percy and his long-term girlfriend, Ba, to get married, even though they are each perfectly happy living in their own homes and meeting when they wish to. They end up under each other’s feet in the same home, finding that marriage, for them, is a much more difficult way of life than the balanced and happy life they both had before. And so it goes on through the book as Flora heaps her kind suggestions and encouragements on people ill-equipped to deal with the conflict between fantasy and reality. (view spoiler)[The final episode in the book occurs after Kit, the brother of Flora’s pal, Meg, has managed to drop his hopeless ambition of being an actor and got an ordinary job earning an ordinary salary. When he is ill in bed with flu, Flora visits and, out of kindness, tells him again that he is very talented as an actor, that he has something worth developing, and that he should rejuvenate his aspirations. At first, he is buoyed up by this. But in the depressed state of mind brought about by the flu, he subsequently gets so depressed that he tries to kill himself. Of course, Flora cannot even begin to understand this, even though everyone else around her knows that her misplaced kindness was the spark that ultimately pushed Kit into suicide, which he fortunately survived. The immediate help and assistance of the Pakistani next-door neighbour was the type of kindness that was really meant when people praise it as a virtue. He selflessly helped to rescue Kit, and knew immediately not to call a doctor or any emergency services, since attempting suicide was not only a tremendous social stigma, but was also a crime that carried a prison sentence until was decriminalised by the Suicide Act 1961. (hide spoiler)]

So, the narrative has an elegant arc, beginning with an innocent and childlike kindness being displayed to small animals and children and developing through progressively more damaging episodes until it becomes life-threatening for some of the characters. What I take from this is a serious question about how to deal with someone like Flora and teach her about empathy and the damage that misguided kindnesses can do to people. A difficult question that I cannot yet answer.

This serious question is ornamented throughout with incisive writing that it is often witty and always beautifully observed. For example, when her baby was born, she suddenly wanted her friends to be godparents. This was a great example of her complete lack of empathy:

‘You will be one of Alice’s god-mothers, won’t you, darling?’ Flora asked. ‘It’s very kind of you, but may I remind you that I’m Jewish?’ ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. Of course it doesn’t matter,’ Flora said. When Meg came, Flora asked her the same question. Meg looked quite astonished. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe in God.’ ‘But of course you do, darling,’ Flora said comfortably. To Richard, that evening, she said: ‘It’s so miserable of everybody. I thought it would please them to be asked. It would please me. And if I were in their place, I’d do anything rather than spoil my happiness.’

Unlike Flora, Elinor, the wife of the MP Geoffrey Pringle, and Richard’s neighbour, constantly wrestled with things in her life that were not working out they way she would have liked. One listless Sunday afternoon, when she was lonely and feeling bitter about how busy Geoffrey was with trying to write a play instead of keeping her company, she took herself off for a walk. The inner turmoil in her mind was nicely represented in this passage while she reflects on where her life choices have led her:

In the St John’s Wood gardens, lilac trees tossed and lowered their branches, heavy with battered blossom. It was surprising what they could endure – or had to endure – of strain and stress. Oh, yes! God, she thought bitterly. (‘I’ll spend my Sunday tormenting those lilac trees I made.’) They haven’t even got free will, she thought dolefully. So that no one can make that an excuse for their misery.

One character with bucketloads of free will, of course, is the artist Liz Corbett, whose slovenly ways and squalid flat are part of a complex personality that produces paintings of increasing originality and artfulness. She seems to be the only female character in the book with a sense of identity and purpose in life. Even though she has never met Flora, she knows people who have, and she understands immediately how damaging and dangerous Flora can be. Ultimately, she is the only person who has the will and the sense to criticise Flora’s cruel acts of selfish kindness. Liz does not appear a lot in the book, but she seems the complete antithesis of Flora, being earthy, hard-edged and unsentimental. I think she is an essential character in the story to complete the panoply of contrasting characters.

And, of course, there are many sentences that are poetic in their structure and economy of words, such as:

Rain hissed hard into the bright, clean shingle and the crowds scurried for shelter.

I learned some new words from this book, which I shall try to remember: accidie, farouche, gyve, schizogenesis, to mention a few. Elizabeth Taylor had a rich vocabulary, and she knew how to use it.

There is much to admire about this book. The wit, the intelligent writing, the insights into the motivations and aspirations of different people and the dangers and insincerities that lie just beneath the ever-so-thin veneer of respectable suburban life. I recommend this book.

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