Fanny Skeffington is turning fifty. She has been a great beauty; divorced from her husband, she has had many suitors. But she has just recovered from a serious illness to discover that age has caught up to her and she is not longer beautiful by any stretch. With a life based on looks, Fanny begins to examine her past and the men who have pursued her, and, in the vein of a modern day movie, she begins to see them one by one to see what has become of them. Of course, her lovers have grown old as well.

What could be sillier in other people’s eyes than a woman kicking up a fuss because she, too, in her turn, had grown old and her beauty was gone? Yet what could be more tragic for the woman who, having been used all her life to being beautiful, found that without her looks she had nothing left to fall back upon?

But there is a delightful bit of humor scattered among Fanny’s almost pathetic attempt to discover if her life has had or might possibly still have any meaning. Elizabeth von Arnim put me in mind of Oscar Wilde, with her humor laid like a mosaic over the very serious issue of aging. There is one section in which there is a very comical misunderstanding between Fanny and an ex-lover’s sister, which left me completely in stitches. My husband was shooting me some strange looks, as I was laughing over it while the news was playing--and we all know there is nothing to laugh about on the news these days.

Published only one year before her death, I imagine the 74 year old von Arnim was struggling herself with the advent of age and the changes it brought.

So that, though she might be eighty-three in the years of her body, she was nothing like so much in those of her mind; and after all, it was minds--wasn’t it?--which kept bodies alive.

What of all the years one must live when youth and beauty have passed? After all, a woman of fifty might have almost that many years still ahead. As her cousin says in a rather ungallant attempt to comfort her, “No, my sweet, but you are going to be half a hundred, aren’t you.”

But in an empty present, how difficult to be grateful for even the fullest, most delightful past. It was like, when you were hungry, trying to get satisfaction out of all your past good dinners.

Circumstances for woman have certainly changed since this book was published, but the overall need of a person to have purpose and meaning in every stage of life has not. I am finding that Elizabeth von Arnim is a writer well worth rescuing from the obscurity of the past. I have now read two of her books and I am anxious to read more.
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As Fanny Skeffington is recovering from a serious illness, she imagines a visit from her former husband. They were married only five years; after multiple instances of infidelity she divorced him. He’s been out of her life for more than twenty years, but Fanny finds it hard to banish him from her thoughts. To make matters worse, Fanny’s fiftieth birthday is just weeks away, and she’s having a difficult time coming to terms with this milestone. Fanny sees herself unchanged from the young, beautiful socialite of years past, and to prove it she decides to visit her past lovers.

Not surprisingly, Fanny is in for a bit of disappointment. Fanny’s lovers include a university student, a wealthy older man, and a humble clergyman serving the poor. Surprises abound, on both sides of each relationship, and Elizabeth vonArnim describes each encounter with her characteristic wit. While Fanny never quite accepts her loss of beauty and social status, she begins to understand how her life has fallen short of ideal. The ending is both surprising and satisfying, but leaves the reader wondering whether she has completely learned her lesson. ( )

Lady Frances Skeffington, nearing fifty, had divorced Mr Skeffington some twenty-two years ago. Since then, she never really thought of him, although "It was thanks to the settlements he had made on her, which were the settlements of an extremely rich and extremely loving man, that she was so well off.... --- that she was free." Suddenly, however, she was seeing him at places like right there at the other end of the breakfast table, places where he decidedly was not present. Was it another result of her recent bout of diphtheria, the one that had caused her to lose so much of her beautiful hair? And as of that wasn't enough, now the coterie of men who had courted her all her life "...like her hair had dropped off".

Fanny had been a generational beauty, the one against whom all others were measured. She had never had to develop any skills or interests beyond those demanded of someone in society, as her beauty was her entrée. Until now, her busy social life had never left her time to notice this lack. Society is cruel to older women however, and as her calendar emptied Fanny began to wonder how best to make a comeback, and how to occupy her time. She decided she would get in touch with her former conquests.

While we are quick to notice the passage of time on the faces and figures of others, we are often the last to notice it on ourselves. Such was the case with Fanny, as she finally had to convince herself that all the dissembling she had been doing about bad lighting, lack of sleep and recent illness was pointless; the years had caught up with her. Why shouldn't they, they had certainly caught up with everyone else in her circle. Even worse,

... she thought how very disturbing it was if being older, besides its many other drawbacks, included the freedom to do what one used to be protected from by the proprieties. She could, then, go off alone now with anybody who wanted her to, to Paris or the other places one went off to, and nobody would say a word. Why, what a cold, naked world, with no fences left. How miserable everything was.

Wealthy fading beauties are not people who usually attract our interest or sympathy. Such a story could easily drift into the maudlin, or become trite, but Elizabeth von Arnim is a skilled writer who uses wit in such a manner that Fanny becomes, if not sympathetic, at least likeable. Although Mr Skeffington was written in 1940, and very much reflects its time and place, the reader knows all too well that there are still Fannys out there, the inevitable now stayed briefly by "work", but still inevitable. Not all of them will have the serendipitous outcome that awaited this Fanny.

Mr Skeffington was Elizabeth von Arnim’s last published novel, written when in her 70s it certainly shows a certain preoccupation with ageing – (as did her 1925 novel Love). Elizabeth von Arnim’s adorable irony is present from the first page, her voice is instantly recognisable. I quickly settled into this occasionally poignant story of Fanny Skeffington’s self-evaluation, as she approaches her fiftieth birthday. (Spoiler, a certain book blogger not a million miles away will herself be approaching that birthday in thirteen months’ time – so, despite still having this year’s birthday to get out of the way first, I entirely sympathised). Although, I must say I do take great exception to the idea of fifty being as ancient as it is regarded by everyone in this novel.

Lady Frances Skeffington managed to rid herself of a husband with a roving eye, finding it hard to forgive dalliances with seven successive typists. Fanny seems to rather congratulate herself for this, there is little in the way of regret. Attempting to help her dear, adored brother; Trippington, Fanny married a wealthy Jewish businessman, and converted her religion in order to do so – she has never bothered to change it back. There are one or two slightly iffy remarks about Job Skeffington’s Jewishness – but nothing like as bad as I have read elsewhere – and it seem to highlight the attitudes of the times rather than the author’s – at least that’s how I saw it. The wealthy Mr Skeffington, made a very generous settlement upon Fanny when they divorced twenty-two years earlier, and Fanny has lived a very nice life ever since. A large London house, fully staffed, a country cottage, a fabulous social life, and many adoring lovers. Fanny was always a beauty, she knew she was beautiful, and enjoyed it.

Now she is rapidly approaching her fiftieth birthday, she has recently recovered from a long illness, which has ravaged her face, she has been obliged to visit a top beautician and wear some artificial curls pinned into her hair. Still, Fanny doesn’t consider she is too much changed, and believes she can still charm her much younger male admirers (although she is forced to admit they haven’t been around much lately).

One day in her Charles Street house, she becomes aware of Mr Skeffington’s presence, just as if he never left. Of course, she knows he isn’t really there – she hasn’t seen him at all for over twenty years – so it’s most alarming to see him looming at her as she eats her morning grapefruit.

“If she shut her eyes, she could see him behind the fish-dish at breakfast; and presently, even if she didn’t shut her eyes she could see him behind almost anything.
What particularly disturbed her was that there was no fish. Only during Mr Skeffington’s not very long reign as a husband had there been any at breakfast, he having been a man tenacious of tradition, and liking to see what he had seen in his youth still continuing on his table. With his disappearance, the fish dish, of solid silver kept hot by electricity, disappeared too – not that he took it with him, for he was far too miserable to think of dishes, but because Fanny’s breakfast, from the date of his departure to the time she had got to now, was half a grapefruit.”

Worried that she may be going a bit funny – what with that birthday fast approaching, she decides to consult the renowned nerve man, Sir Stilton Byles. Here poor Fanny gets a rather dreadful shock, far from telling her she looks very young for fifty (as she had expected) he says he rather thought she was sixty – and that her love days are over, and she really should have kept Mr Skeffington – poor chap!

Fanny is furious, in a rage she stalks off to Oxford to track down her most recent (very, very young) lover, who she finds in the fond embrace of another girl. On the train to Oxford she runs into her cousin George, of whom she is hugely fond – but even he manages to irritate her by telling her she looks tired, and looking at her in a way she doesn’t like. Also in Oxford, she meets a rather marvellous old lady, who rather grumpily tells Fanny exactly what she thinks – and takes her for being an actress from a touring group because of her painted face.

“What could be sillier in other people’s eyes than a woman kicking up a fuss because she too, in her turn, had grown old, and her beauty was gone? Yet what could be more tragic for the woman, who, having been used all her life to being beautiful, found that without her looks she had nothing to fall back upon? ‘That’s what is wrong,’ she thought. ‘There ought to be something to fall back upon. Somebody ought to have told me about this in time.'”

Slowly Fanny is forced to acknowledge that her looks are not what they were – for a woman known to everyone for her charm and beauty it is a hard lesson. Over the next few weeks as her birthday approaches Fanny meets up with several of the men whose hearts she once broke as she tripped her way charmingly through life. There is Lord Conderley, now married to a nice sensible wife with young children, a rabble-rousing, fasting clergyman Miles in Bethnal Green, Sir Peregrine Lanks hard bitten and so successful, he once turned down the Home Secretaryship, and Sir Edward Montmorency, home after twenty years’ governance in the Pacific. Each of these men help Fanny face who she is now, and never far from her thoughts is Mr Skeffington.

They years have not treated these men any kinder than they have Fanny, they are all drastically changed too – whether it be married and aged, exiled, or embittered. The most poignant change is in that of Miles Hyslup, who Fanny meets again preaching on the streets of Bethnal Green. Miles lives with his worn-down sister Muriel, his heartbreak over Fanny having led him to live a life of austere, religious sacrifice.

I refuse to say anything much about the ending – just to say it was a tiny bit of a tear-jerker.

This is a joyous little read – Fanny is definitely a woman of her time and her class – let’s be clear she doesn’t present as much of a feminist. Von Arnim shows us a society who put a too great importance upon such things as beauty and youth, for women of that class beauty and charm were all that mattered. Each of the men in Fanny’s life had wanted her to be something to them she didn’t want to be – in a sense she was always just herself.

Apparently, this was made into a film starring Bette Davis – I haven’t seen it – so don’t know how true to the book it is – but I would be interested in seeing it. ( )

Interesting book. This is the same author as The Enchanted April, BUT not the same type of story.Give this book 100 pages to get into it.Not as good as The Enchanted April but an interesting read. ( )