Novel: The Good Companions

Overview
J.B. Priestley’s 1929 novel The Good Companions is a generous, panoramic picaresque that follows a ragtag touring concert party across provincial England. Moving from canal towns and factory districts to seaside piers and shabby theatres, it weaves together the fates of three strangers, Jess Oakroyd, Miss Elizabeth Trant, and Inigo Jollifant, whose chance convergences revive a failing troupe and briefly turn companionship into a vocation. It is a warm, humorous portrait of interwar English life that balances buoyant entertainment with quiet notes of melancholy and change.

Plot
Jess Oakroyd, a middle-aged Yorkshire mechanic and family man worn down by the grind of work and domestic discord, slips away from Bruddersford in a fit of restless freedom, tramping south along canals and roads. At the other end of the social map, Miss Elizabeth Trant, a comfortably fixed but lonely gentlewoman, feels the ache of purposelessness and decides, on impulse, to back something lively. Inigo Jollifant, an ill-paid, idealistic schoolmaster with a gift for music and words, walks out on a humiliating job and lets the road take him.

Their separate journeys intersect with the “Dinky-Doos,” a threadbare concert party stranded by bad luck and worse management. Sensing both romance and rescue, Miss Trant supplies capital, Inigo supplies songs, arrangements, and a light touch at the piano, and Oakroyd supplies hands, humor, and the practical knack to keep props, scenery, and spirits patched together. Rechristened “The Good Companions,” the troupe sets out on the variety circuit, stitching one-night stands into a fragile livelihood.

Among the performers is Susie Dean, an ambitious young song-and-dance artist whose talent begins to outgrow seaside piers and faded halls. The troupe’s progress is episodic, bucolic walks, dreary digs, larky rehearsals, blustering managers, sudden bursts of applause, yet a real chemistry forms. Inigo polishes numbers that suit Susie’s quicksilver charm; Oakroyd becomes cherished for his kindness and comic good sense; Miss Trant finds in organization, risk, and shared meals the community she had imagined from afar.

Success, when it comes, threatens the very fellowship that made it possible. A London agent notices Susie and tempts her away to the brighter risks of the West End. Inigo, half-devoted to the party and half-called by larger stages, is soon drawn toward the metropolis as songwriter and collaborator. Miss Trant, having steadied the troupe and proved her daring, recognizes that her role was to start the music, not to hold everyone in place. Oakroyd, who has tasted freedom and friendship, looks toward a wider horizon and the hope of a fresh beginning overseas.

Themes and Tone
The novel celebrates the accidental solidarities of travel and work while acknowledging their transience. Companionship is shown as a living, provisional pact: real while it lasts, formative even as it dissolves. Priestley’s affectionate social canvas ranges across class and region, voicing Yorkshire bluntness, middle-class gentility, and theatrical patter with equal sympathy. The backstage business of the concert party becomes a democratic art, a craft that dignifies its practitioners and charms their audiences. Running beneath the comedy is a tender awareness of impermanence, of the music hall’s waning heyday, of youth’s brief blaze, of England between wars, caught between stability and drift.

Ending
As Susie blossoms into a London star and Inigo steps into the professional theatre, the Good Companions quietly disband. Miss Trant withdraws with a light heart, enriched by the very risks she once shunned. Oakroyd, the novel’s stout soul, heads for new continents, carrying with him the memory of shared songs and shared burdens. The parting is neither defeat nor betrayal; it is the natural cadence after a chorus well sung. For a time these strangers made a moving home together, and that, Priestley suggests, is its own kind of success.