Old Bestseller Review: Olivia, by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey Bussy)

Old Bestseller Review: Olivia, by Olivia (Dorothy Strachey Bussy)

by Rich Horton

This book was written in the 1930s but not published until 1949, when it had quite a success. It was made into a movie in France in 1950, also called Olivia. The book was published as by its main character, Olivia, but the author was Dorothy Strachey Bussy (1865-1960), who was connected to the Bloomsbury Group though apparently somewhat tangentially. 

Olivia is a very short novel -- a novella, really, at just over 25,000 words. It tells the story of the title girl, who at the age of 16 is sent to a posh boarding school, Les Avons, in France. It's told by the older Olivia some decades after this time, which seems to have been in the late 1800s, parhaps about 1880. As in fact the author was born in 1865 and went to a posh boarding school, Les Ruches, in France, and wrote this novel decades later (in the 1930s) we can be forgiven for assuming it's a fairly autobiographical novel. 

Olivia had been at English schools for her previous education, and had not liked them. On coming to Les Avons she is delighted by the somewhat freer nature of the tuition.And she is immediately and especially enchanted with one of the two headmistresses, Mlle Julie. She considers her a wonderful teacher, and a gateway to certain sorts of literature (French tragedy seems a lot of it!), and also inspiring in other ways. And before long Mlle Julie quite openly makes Olivia her favorite, placing her in the prlvileged seat next her at dinner, singling her out for notice in class (though Olivia seems but an OK student), reading privately to her in the library. Olivia, on her part, develops an extreme crush on Mlle Julie, which seems to be reciprocated (though it doesn't seem that there is any physical consummation.) 

The other headmistress is Mlle Cara. Mlle Cara is an invalid, doing relatively little actual work at the school. It seems that Julie and Cara started the school together, with Julie's money but Cara's expertise, a couple of decades before, and were partners, certainly in business but surely sexually as well. But there has been a falling out, and as a result the school is divided. Each woman has a very close ally on the staff: an Italian woman called Signorina for Julie, and a German woman, Frau Riesener, for Cara. And the students too sort themselves into camps (and Cara seems to greatly resent that Olivia gravitated to Julie's camp.)

So things go through the school year, Olivia becoming more and more infatuated, being invited on trips to Paris, and eventually hoping that Mlle Julie will come to her bedroom -- but Julie seems aware that to start a physical relationship with a student might get her in real trouble. We meet some of the girls in Olivia's circle, including a very beautiful American (who is angling to marry a Duke and, we are told, eventually does) and, on a visit, Mlle Julie's previous favorite, a level-headed woman named Laura. But things come to a head late in the novel not because of Olivia but rather due to a final break between Julie and Cara, leading to a somewhat melodramatic conclusion. 

It's really a very nicely done slim story -- just about exactly the length it needed to be (it would have worn out its welcome had it gone on longer.) Olivia's 16 year old feelings seem real, and her reactions honest. The prose is graceful and effective. Evidently the book was first written in French, then translated to English for its first publication, and retranslated back into French for French editions. How much of this is directly from the author's life is up for question: Dorothy Strachey, later Dorothy Bussy, was bisexual, married and had a child, and had affairs with both men and women. Bussy herself wrote to her close friend André Gide: "I hope you didn't think that my entire story was true. A large part of it was, but an even larger part wasn’t." (Apparently her letters to Gide were written in French, and his to her were written in English.) The somewhat famous headmistress of her school, Marie Souvestre, seems likely to have been a lesbian (though Wikipedia dances gingerly around that question): she had a partner at her school, and after a breakup started a new school, eventually living with a former student. Indeed, Dorothy Strachey later taught at Souvestre's school in London, Allenswood, and indeed she taught Eleanor Roosevelt there. (Roosevelt kept up a correspondence with Souvestre until the latter's death.) 

The Stracheys are a rather famous family, particularly Dorothy's brother Lytton, who was part of the Bloomsbury Group and wrote respected biographical and critical works, such as Eminent Victorians and a biography of Queen Victoria. One of the earliest Stracheys wrote an account of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda which is regarded as some of the source material for The Tempest, and which for that matter was the impetus for establishing a colony on the till then uninhabited archipelago. The family line includes numerous civil servants, some artists (including Dorothy's daughter Jane Simone Bussy), an important songwriter, a major computer scientist, etc. But they produced surprisingly little fiction. Olivia was Dorothy's only story, and her niece Julia Strachey wrote two (quite good) novels (which I review here) and some short stories, and that's about it. (And so I've read all the novella or novel length fiction the Stracheys have published!)