The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

First published: 1956

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The end of the nineteenth century

Locale: The Scottish countryside and London

Principal Characters:

• Rose Aubrey, the narrator, a young girl
• Mary,
• Cordelia, and
• Richard Quin, her siblings
• Clare, her mother, a talented concert pianist who relinquished her career to rear her family
• Piers, her father, a newspaper editor and writer of political pamphlets
• Constance, a childhood friend of Clare and the wife of Clare’s cousin Jock
• Rosamund, her daughter, a friend of the Aubrey children

The Novel

The Fountain Overflows concerns the Aubrey family and their adventures and misfortunes as the four Aubrey children grow up. One of these children, Rose, is the narrator, and through her eyes the reader sees the events that affect the family, events as varied as a visitation by a poltergeist, murder, and poverty. Her childhood is not a typical one, and the difference can be attributed to her parents, the fountain that overflows, providing the children with a source of energy and an abundance of experiences.

Her handsome and eccentric father, Piers, is a newspaper editor and occasionally writes persuasive political tracts. Unfortunately, he can become so involved with his concern for justice that he antagonizes his friends and benefactors and ignores his family. At other times, however, he devotes many hours to carving intricate wooden toys for the children. Yet his compulsive gambling on the stock exchange has driven his family into poverty. Rose’s mother, Clare, gave up a promising career as a concert pianist when she married and began rearing a family. She notices keenly her husband’s lack of attention to the details of living. Being constantly in debt, dealing with bill collectors, and tolerating her husband’s infidelity, she has worried herself into a scarecrow of her former appearance, now “thin and wild-looking and badly dressed.” Because of her interest in music, however, she is able to provide her children, except for Rose’s older sister Cordelia, with a strong base on which to develop.

At the beginning of the novel, the family, previously subjected to sudden shifts in locale brought on by Piers’s inability to get along with his superiors and his colleagues, is in Scotland contemplating yet another move, this time to London. Since it is summer, though, the children and Clare stay on a Scottish farm while Piers begins his job as an editor for a small paper in London and prepares for their arrival. Farm life is wholesome and delightful for the children, but Clare is worried, as well she might be. Piers neglects to write, she discovers that he has sold her prized antique furniture, and as the summer draws to a close, she does not know the address of the London house to which she and the children must move.

London proves to be their home for several years as the children approach adolescence. Rose and her twin sister, Mary, planning to be concert pianists, are taught music by their mother. It is understood that they have inherited their mother’s talent. Unfortunately, Cordelia has not, but she persists in playing the violin. Unlike Rose and Mary, Cordelia suffers under her family’s poverty. She practices the violin desperately because she sees it as a means to a more comfortable future. Her desire to be a famous musician is encouraged by Miss Beevor, her music teacher at school, who idolizes her and is unaware of Cordelia’s lack of musicality. Miss Beevor suggests that Cordelia give paid performances, an idea which horrifies Clare, but she is helpless to prevent it. Should Clare refuse to allow it, Cordelia would believe that she had been cruelly used.

There are two additional families which figure in the novel. One of these families consists of Constance, Clare’s childhood friend; her husband, Clare’s cousin Jock; and their daughter Rosamund, about the age of Rose and Mary. Since Constance also lives in London, Clare wants to reestablish their previously close relationship, but Constance hesitates. Clare, taking the initiative, visits, discovering Constance’s house to be inhabited by a poltergeist. Perhaps the happenings are real, perhaps they are tricks perpetrated by Jock, a lout despite his being Clare’s relative, or perhaps Rose (being a young girl) perceives ordinary occurrences as extraordinary. As Rose reports, however, the strange happenings cease with Clare and Rose’s visit. Constance and Clare renew their friendship, and the Aubrey children have found an understanding companion in Rosamund.

There is also the Phillips family, whose daughter Nancy is Cordelia’s classmate. Wealthy though the Phillipses are, their money does not prevent tragedy. The mother, Queenie Phillips, is accused of poisoning her husband. To provide Nancy and her Aunt Lily a haven away from the gossip of their neighbors, the Aubreys take them in. Nancy soon goes to live with her father’s brother, but Aunt Lily remains throughout the trial of Queenie. Since the judge assumes Queenie’s guilt, the trial is a farce. Because of the obvious prejudice, Piers rightly thinks that he can win Queenie a reprieve. Risking going to jail himself, he argues the point in an as-yet-undistributed pamphlet. The government, fearing the public reaction should the pamphlet be released, commutes the death sentence.

After the trial, a period of calm ensues for the Aubrey family, but eventually it is disrupted by Piers’s new project, writing a book. Either the subject of the book or the act of writing it throws him into despair. His situation deteriorates, until one day he does not recognize his wife when he passes her on the street, Soon after, he abruptly abandons his family, leaving only a note. Even though he was eccentric and often estranged from the family, his absence is deeply felt. Rose comments, “He had apparently given us more than we knew, for now we felt bitterly cold.” Clare’s prime concern, however, is with her husband’s well-being. Discovering that a hidden wall cabinet has been opened, she is somewhat relieved, hoping that whatever Piers took is valuable.

Her children’s comfort is assured, for unknown to anyone, Clare has all along provided for them in case of a disaster: The family portraits, long thought to be fakes, are real, including the one by Thomas Gainsborough. The sale of the portraits will provide for the needs of the children until they are established in their careers. It is already decided that Rose and Mary are to be musicians, and Richard Quin, the youngest, will also go in that direction, but Cordelia is more difficult, since she insists that she is a musician when she is not. A crisis is precipitated when the unfortunate Miss Beevor takes her to a cruel but famous teacher who reveals the truth. Cordelia, devastated, tries to poison herself. Through the careful ministrations of Rosamund, who plans to become a nurse, Cordelia gradually puts music aside, takes an interest in sewing, and seems to be headed for marriage. The conclusion mirrors the hope that Rose has had throughout. As she earlier remarked, “we . . . believed that whatever happened we would be all right. Certainly we would be all right. But it might take some time before we could get things settled.”

The Characters

The character of Rose Aubrey is largely autobiographical. Rebecca West’s mother gave up a promising musical career to rear a family. Similarly, her father had interests in writing and politics, repeatedly lost money on the stock exchange, and abandoned his family. Afterward, West’s mother sold a valuable painting to provide for her children. Much of the rich texture in the novel can be attributed to West’s vivid memories of her childhood in such a household.

Rose, as the narrator, unifies the text; her consciousness colors all the elements in the novel. There are, however, two different Roses. The first is the young girl, who, luckily for the reader, is uncommonly perceptive for a child. The second is the mature Rose, who, after a span of fifty years, is reflecting on her childhood. Some of the novel’s quiet optimism comes from this double vision.

The characters in the novel can be categorized according to their stabilizing influence or lack of it. Generally, the women in the novel provide order in a chaotic world. Clare is the center of her family. Her warmth, understanding, and accessibility provide the children with security in spite of the ragged clothes and decrepit furniture. In addition, she teaches the children the value of music, enabling them to see beyond their poverty. Like Clare, Constance has the fortitude to overcome difficult situations. Their children—Rose, Mary, and Rosamund—have the same ability to meet disasters and to survive, an important trait in the world of the novel where men are in control and are, nevertheless, a destabilizing force.

The most important male figure in the novel is Piers, whose gambling throws his family into poverty and whose wholehearted devotion to his ideas threatens to fragment the family. Rose, understanding her father’s commitment to justice, is proud of him, and she pities those who do not have her father as their father. Yet she also realizes that his strong commitment often means that his family is secondary. Realizing that he is willing to go to jail for his beliefs and knowing that he gives little thought to the fact that the family would be destitute, Rose comments, “I had a glorious father, I had no father at all.”

While Clare is able to negate the detrimental influence of Piers on Rose, Mary, and Richard Quin, she cannot alleviate Cordelia’s pain. To their acquaintances, Cordelia seems to be more normal than the other Aubrey children; even the teachers like her, a situation that worries Rose. Concerned with surface appearances, Cordelia imitates the mannerisms of famous performers, and she affects “to be mindless and will-less as grown-ups like pretty little girls to be.” As such, her life is concerned with the outward show, and so, the lack of nice clothes, a stylish house, and a typical father causes her great consternation.

The major characters are carefully drawn, with the exception of Rosamund and Richard Quin, who never fully materialize. They are presented only through the soothing effects that they have on others. Rosamund plays chess with Rose’s father so that he can relax, and she cares for Cordelia after her suicide attempt. As for Richard Quin, he has the capacity to calm the most anxious and is often chosen by his sisters to comfort the mother. Their own likes and dislikes, however, are never described.

Yet the minor characters are often invested with life. There is Queenie Phillips, who is consumed with her thoughts that apparently lead to the murder of her husband. There is the boorish cousin Jock, who acts the fool because of his depressing world view. There is talkative Aunt Lily, whose outlandish costumes must be moderated so that she does not harm Queenie’s case, and Miss Beevor, who sees in Cordelia all that is beautiful but who harms her through her desire to help. These characters are unforgettable in their fullness.

Critical Context

In her seventy-year career as a writer of fiction, criticism, history, biography, and journalism, Rebecca West wrote a half dozen novels, each radically different from the others. The most critically acclaimed and the most popular, however, is The Fountain Overflows, published in 1956, twenty years after her previous novel. Among its strengths are the strong voice of the narrator; the sharply detailed London setting; the richly described minor characters, prompting one reviewer to call it “a real Dickensian Christmas pudding of a book”; and the discussions of feminism and art, long-standing concerns of West. She wrote on the role of art in society in earlier works, in The Strange Necessity and in her novel Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy (1929). Her interest in feminist issues extended for an even longer period. Her first publications appeared in 1911 in the feminist journal The Freewoman. In order to save her family the embarrassment of having a daughter who wrote for a journal that advocated free love, she changed her given name, Cicily Isabel Fairfield, to Rebecca West after a character in Henrik Ibsen’s play Rosmersholm (1886).

The Fountain Overflows was intended as the first book of a trilogy. The second volume, This Real Night (1984), was published a year and a half after West’s death and received mixed reviews. West did not finish the third and concluding volume, which was published in 1985 as Cousin Rosamund. While West’s reputation will rest securely on her journalism and her nonfiction works, in particular Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record of a Journey Through Yugoslavia in 1937 (1941)—a commentary not only on Yugoslavia but also on the political situation in Europe in the period preceding World War II—her novels, especially The Fountain Overflows, should not be slighted.

Bibliography

Deakin, Motley F. Rebecca West, 1980.

Kobler, Turner S. “The Eclecticism of Rebecca West,” in Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction. XIII, no. 1 (1971), pp. 30-49.

Ray, Gordon N. H. G. Wells and Rebecca West, 1974.

Redd, Tony. Rebecca West: Master of Reality, 1972.

Wolfe, Peter. Rebecca West: Artist and Thinker, 1971.