Completely Foxed

During late evening strolls round the quiet streets near my home I occasionally have a close encounter with a fox. We stand there, yards apart, each daring the other to move first, till finally the beast will run off up a nearby drive while I continue on my solitary way. There is something mysterious about foxes, and I must confess that I find such meetings slightly alarming.

On a winter afternoon in the year 1880 a newly married couple, Richard and Silvia Tebrick, go for a woodland walk, during which Mrs Tebrick unexpectedly and mysteriously turns into a fox. Mr Tebrick carries his wife home and the couple continue to live together as best they can under these difficult circumstances. But over time, Silvia’s new bestial nature takes over from her fading humanity and their prospects become increasingly precarious. This transformation – established fact according to the author – forms the basis of David Garnett’s haunting and intriguing novel Lady into Fox which was published to some acclaim in 1922. One of its marvels is that a book so short – fewer than a hundred pages – can be simultaneously a comedy and a tragedy, a biting social satire and a touching love story. Garnett was a prominent member of the Bloomsbury Group, part of that generation of writers who delighted in attacking the values and social mores of their Victorian predecessors, and the novel can be read as a critique of old-fashioned patriarchal attitudes. Richard Tebrick longs for his vixen to retain the dainty and docile habits formerly displayed by his human wife, and he is tortured by the increasing wildness of her nature and her longing for freedom. When she tries to run off into the surrounding countryside he cries: ‘Silvia, Silvia, why do you do this? Are you trying to escape from me? I am your husband, and if I keep you confined it is to protect you, not to let you run into danger. Show me how I can make you happy and I will do it, but do not try to escape from me.’ It’s a sentiment expressed by men down the ages who fear their ‘Angel in the House’ will spread her wings and fly away spiritually, sexually or philosophically. The focus of the novel is on Richard’s reaction to his wife’s transformation, rather than on Silvia’s experience as a fox. He is on an emotional roller-coaster and we share his thoughts, feelings and cries of hope and despair, as he is driven towards the edge of sanity. Sylvia, on the other hand, and for obvious reasons, is silent. We can judge her views only by her actions – as when she uses her newly acquired vixen-like cunning to attempt an escape from a walled garden into the countryside beyond. Of the two, she is the one who adapts to the new situation more readily. Richard’s views may be old-fashioned, but, seeing his torment, we come to admire his loyalty and devotion to his wife. As the story progresses he sheds all decorum and becomes a dishevelled recluse, sleeping under the stars and joining Silvia in her hunting expeditions where he scrabbles about amateurishly on all fours. The sexual implications of the story are lightly touched on. At first the couple continue to share the same bed, but Silvia soon prefers to sleep on the floor. Later, Richard suffers jealousy over the success of his love rival – a local dog fox. Though so original, Lady into Fox had several possible influences, one of which was the wave of nostalgia for rural life that swept the country during and immediately after the First World War. This gave birth to some notable literary works featuring foxes and the people who hunted them – John Masefield’s long narrative poem Reynard the Fox in 1919 and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man in 1928 (see p. 36 of this issue). But the contemporary work with which it has most affinity is Mary Webb’s novel of 1917, Gone to Earth, in which the main character, Hazel Woodus, keeps a pet vixen and is depicted as a child of Nature identifying with ‘all things hunted and snared and destroyed’. Her hair is ‘tawny and fox-like’, and she is pursued by, among others, the local minister who hopes to make her into a respectable wife. The climactic scenes of the novels are virtually identical, though I won’t divulge them here. What gives Lady into Fox a real edge is the witty and ambiguous narration that allows it to be read and reread on so many different levels. Though set in a rural past it’s a thoroughly modern novel, and Garnett enters the story himself in the following dry aside: I met not long ago with someone who, after talking some little while and not knowing me or who I was, told me that David Garnett was dead, and died of being bitten by a cat after he had tormented it. He had long grown a nuisance to his friends as an exorbitant sponge upon them, and the world was well rid of him. No doubt this was a private joke – possibly for the amusement of the painter Duncan Grant to whom the book was dedicated – but it also gives our dubious narrator the opportunity to remind us that he has scrupulously avoided rumour and gossip in telling his story and has relied solely on verifiable facts. Lady into Fox is illustrated with wood engravings by the author’s first wife, Rachel Garnett, and they add immeasurably to its charm, being, like the story itself, amusing and oddly sad. The novel was so well-known in its day that it became the subject of a parody by Christopher Ward called Gentleman into Goose. Garnett meanwhile went on to write many other books, but he never outshone his startling and brilliant debut.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 79 © David Fleming 2023