The Boarding-House by William Trevor

First published: 1965

Type of work: Comic realism

Time of work: August, 1964

Locale: A southwest suburb of London

Principal Characters:

• William Wagner Bird, a dying boarding-house owner
• E. A. Clock, a visiting nurse, resident, and co-inheritor of the house
• Studdy, (alias
• Moran, ), a petty crook, blackmailer, resident, and co-inheritor of the house
• Miss Clerricot, a middle-aged secretary and resident of the house
• Rose Cave, a middle-aged resident
• Major Eele, a resident with sexual interests
• Thomas Orpen Venables, a resident who is an office worker
• Tome Obd, a Nigerian who is a failed law student
• Mr. Scribbin, a resident who is a railroad fancier
• Mrs. Slape, the cook
• Gallelty, the cook’s helper, a Manx girl
• Mrs. le Tor, a prospective resident

The Novel

The Boarding-House begins with the death of William Wagner Bird, its owner. A somewhat corpulent man with a deformed foot, Bird had received the house from its former proprietor by testament of will. As if consumed by some monstrous practical joke, Bird in turn willed the house to the two tenants least likely to get along, Nurse Clock and Mr. Studdy. The bulk of the novel traces out the initial hostility and eventual cooperation of these two residents and the unfolding stories of the other tenants of the residence at Number 2 Jubilee Road.

At first, the strict routine of the house remains fairly undisturbed by the death of its owner. Breakfast and afternoon tea continue to be served on time; cocoa after an evening of television-watching sends the inmates off to bed. Slowly the reader is introduced to the lives of the tenants, however, and is granted a privileged perspective through two devices. First are the brief but telling entries on each of the residents contained in Mr. Bird’s “Notes on Residents,” a sort of diary kept by the deceased on when and why each one of the tenants came to live in his house. Second, the reader is allowed to follow the various characters outside the precincts of the boarding-house and to see the lives they lead away from the others. It is soon apparent that none of the tenants is quite what he or she originally appeared to be, and the tension between appearances and actuality provides the impetus for the fiction, eventually supplying the novel’s denouement.

Initially, Nurse Clock is appalled at the idea of having to run the boardinghouse with the help of Mr. Studdy, a man of both unclean habits and grasping financial characteristics. Studdy is equally put off. He has carried a pin behind his coat lapel for years with which to stick Nurse Clock’s knee. Eventually, the two come to realize that Nurse Clock’s notion of turning the boarding-house into an old people’s home will satisfy both their needs, hers to be in charge of others, his to have an endless supply of potential victims of his petty thievery. They therefore decide to pool their talents and resources, particularly since, according to Mr. Bird’s will, the current residents are not to be evicted unless by their own choice, and no one has any intention of moving, as the two new owners soon find out. Nurse Clock and Studdy then resort to a combination of bribery, blackmail, and bullying in order to make way for their new and decrepit clientele.

Major Eele has a contretemps with a woman, which gives Nurse Clock the excuse for having him leave; Studdy, through various and nefarious means, blackmails Miss Clerricot into departing. Mr. Scribbin is at first bullied because he plays his train records too loudly, and when that does not work, he is bribed to take himself off. Rose Cave is offered a position in the new establishment waiting on the old folks, and Venables is simply told to go (Nurse Clock and Studdy know that he is too timid to resist). Mr. Obd has just been rejected by a woman whom he has been courting for more than a dozen years. Distraught enough to plan revenge on Mr. Bird, who he believes is haunting him with a ghostly presence and laughing at his predicament, he sets fire to the boarding-house one night after taking two bottles of aspirin and burns it to the ground, thus forcing everyone in the house onto the street and in the position of having to find a new place to live. He also destroys the plans of Nurse Clock and Studdy (who by this time have had a falling out), because the house was not insured, thereby assuring that they have nothing with which to build their old pensioners’ home. With the destruction of his boarding-house, Mr. Bird dies a second time.

The Characters

Like Trevor’s other fiction, The Boarding-House is a work not only of character but also of characters. William Trevor has populated his novel with the pathetic and the looney. Each of the main figures harbors a secret desire: Major Eele frequents strip-tease clubs, especially those employing black dancers; Miss Clerricot desires to have a man make an indecent pass at her; Tome Obd has been courting a white woman who befriended him twelve years before. The death of Mr. Bird, watched over by Nurse Clock, precipitates an unveiling of the various personalities who have been living within the orderly and protected environment of his boarding-house.

Major Eele, of somewhat dubious rank and position, spends his days attending what he calls “art” films, mostly of the African ballet type, and his evenings sitting before the television set in the communal lounge of the boarding-house berating Venables or making racist remarks at Mr. Obd, the Nigerian. The Major is of the old school: He is obtuse and blustering, possessing an uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and to be unaware that he has done so. He at first mistakes Mrs. Le Tor for what he describes as a “professional” but later goes out with her and confesses his blunder, only to have her retaliate by getting him drunk and embarrassing him at the boarding-house. Like his former wife, Mrs. Le Tor manipulates the Major and shows him to be a blundering incompetent, especially when exposed to female attention, a weak spot and the source of his secret desires.

Mr. Studdy lives a secretive life as well, but as a petty criminal and blackmailer. He spends his days following people and then writing them vaguely incriminating letters asking for small sums to ensure his silence concerning their indiscretions. He has developed a whole repertoire of tricks to cadge drinks and cheat shopkeepers out of small change. Studdy’s life changes when he inherits half of the boarding-house from Mr. Bird. Much to his surprise, he begins to cooperate with Nurse Clock and her schemes for turning the residence into an old people’s home. His motives are not benevolent, however, as he envisions endless opportunities to swindle the aged pensioners out of their cash and to pry into their private lives by rummaging through their personal correspondence, which he imagines they will bring with them by the bale.

Nurse Clock is a curious figure. Dedicated to ministering to the old and dying, she enjoys her control over the ill, which she applies with a cheerful bullying. When she inherits the other half of the boarding-house, she immediately begins to plan for its renovation into a home for the elderly, with her in charge. She is able to manipulate Studdy into going along with her plans through a combination of outwitting him and playing on his natural greed. By the conclusion of the novel, she has manipulated Studdy so that he, too, is on his way out, and she sees the time when the whole operation will be under her control.

The other characters, although carefully drawn, form the background against which the story unfolds. Lonely spinsters, abandoned by their mothers, like Rose Cave, or simply abandoned by time, like Miss Clerricot, complement the equally lonely bachelors, Stibbins and Venables, in this microcosm of postwar British society. The Boarding-House is a novel of characters, each with his or her own story and each hiding secret desires and wishes, which they have been unable to fulfill in their limited and limiting lives.

Critical Context

William Trevor is an Anglo-Irish writer and must be seen in the context of two cultures, one Catholic and traditional and the other Protestant and modern. Although The Boarding-House does not foreground these tensions, the Irish Studdy and the English Major Eele suggest the later direction of his fiction. Although well received, Trevor’s fiction has not garnered the sort of widespread acclaim which would make him widely recognized, especially in the United States (although the publication of his collected stories in that country has given him increased importance and has assured that his later fiction will enjoy increased visibility).

In like manner, The Boarding-House received good reviews in the British press but did not receive much notice abroad. This results partly from Trevor’s particularly English brand of humor, a style made current in the United States later by such English groups as Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Beyond the Fringe. Since then, Trevor’s stories have appeared regularly in such publications as The New Yorker and have gained wider critical as well as popular acceptance.

Bibliography

Barrett, William. Review in The Atlantic Monthly. CCXVI (August, 1965), p. 126.

Chapin, Victor. Review in Saturday Review. XLVIII (June 26, 1965), p. 39.

Gitzen, Julian. “The Truth-Tellers of William Trevor,” in Critique. XXI (1979), pp. 9-72.

Hogan, Robert. The Irish Short Story: A Critical History, 1984.

Levin, Martin. Review in The New York Times Book Review. LII (June 30, 1965), p. 31.

Rhodes, Robert E. “William Trevor’s Stories of the Troubles,” in Contemporary Irish Writing, 1983. Edited by James D. Brophy and Raymond J. Porter.