Books Do Furnish A Room

The Age of Innocence

A Kipling character remarks somewhere that Jane Austen's only issue was Henry James!  If The Age of Innocence is representative of her writing, he could could have added Edith Wharton.  This is a very beautifully written book, elegant and perceptive, dealing with the troubled elites of New York in the 1870s - although Wharton was already writing with both historical and geographical  perspective, living in Europe after the First World War.  The main character is Newland Archer, a well off, well connected young man who becomes engaged to a quite charming girl very early in the novel.  He's very fond of her indeed, but he doesn't, perhaps, quite love her with all his heart.  And marriage to her is the acceptance of form over substance, of manners over feelings, and of the small town parochialism of late C19th New York, which he longs to abandon.  He wants to travel and to read adventurously!

For her, marriage to Newland is all she dreams of, but the arrival of a glamorous cousin threatens her joy - not that she would be so ill-bred as to talk to him about it, or to show her feelings to anybody at all.  But, as someone comments late in the novel:

You never did ask each other anything, did you?  And you never told each other anything.  You just sat and watched each other ... well, I back your generation for knowing more about each other's private thoughts than we ever have time to find out.

The novel spends almost its whole 300 pages watching Newland worry about what to do, follows him making his final decision (does he decide, or is he a pawn in the hands of stronger forces?), and puts him in his social context.  But an important character is the city of New York, physically and morally small, unsure of itself, with an old elite and a new one, and a mix of modern and eighteenth century feelings.  The elite at play in town and country, vivid physical descriptions of houses and cold weather, and rich family conversations and plottings, all provide a rich web of happenings and conflicting views which keep your interest without the slightest hitch.

It's a beautiful book, elegant and thought provoking, but one theme deserves, in the light of recent discussion over on Cornflower, a little more notice. This is a book about a woman (about a whole class of women) who do little with their lives except keep home for their husbands - who lead fiercely independent lives with little regard for modern conceptions of partnership - and to live quite, unassuming, unadventurous social lives.  With time, money and freedom, they elect to do nothing.  A year into marriage, Newland is beginning to be bored:

She had spent her poetry and romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past.

I refuse to compare this book to All Passion Spent, or I shall get into trouble.  But in The Age of Innocence there is a psychological richness, an elegance of writing, and a coherence of thought which lifts this novel into the realms of the very fine indeed. I recommend it to you all.

Dance: BDFAR

The war is over, and life is settling down – or settling into new patterns – in Books Do Furnish a Room, the tenth novel in the Dance sequence. In some special sense, it’s my signature novel, as a glance at the title of this blog will tell you.  And it marks another change of pace: the last three novels are much more spaced out in time than the earlier ones, much less overlapping, and the pace of Nick’s life seems more measured, more mature – partly, of course, he is older, partly he has a life and an identity, which is more settled, which will flux less than formerly – though plenty of interest still remains.  And partly, there is a sense of relaxation, of ease, after the prolonged crisis and tension of the second world war.

Literary life dominates the book, literary life, a funeral, and a disastrous love affair.  Nick, seeking the consolation and solitude of serious study after the claustrophobia of the war, is at Oxford, writing a book (as Powell himself did) on Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1622) – something I keep meaning to read.  He starts the novel with one of the great Powell sentences:

"Returning to the University at forty, one immediately recaptured all the crushing melancholy of the undergraduate condition." 

While there, he hears that his brother in law, Erridge, has died.  The funeral is one of the great set pieces in which he specialises, full of brilliantly observed detail, tiny behaviours, and an apparent passivity which almost un-noticed moves both plot and understanding along apace.  Here are two of his comments on mourners – first on a bumbling but likable elderly relative who went to Singapore when young:

Unlikely he had taken with him a girl like Mona, though one could never tell.  Barnby always used to insist it was misplaced to speak categorically about other people’s sexual experiences, whoever they were.

And then on two MPs:

The two had gravitated together in response to that law of nature which rules that the whole confraternity of politicians prefers to operate within the closed circle of its own initiates, rather than waste time with outsiders; difference of party or opinion having little or no bearing on this preference.

And finally, Jeavons explains why a couple being discussed had got divorced:

I bet they suited each other a treat in their own way.  Married couples usually do. ... People get divorced just because they don’t know they suit each other.

I quoted some time ago the novelist Trapnel's diatribe against critics; in this book, he turns reviewer himself, and upsets the management and a ‘house’ writer.  But as far as Nick is concerned – by now books editor on a literary magazine –

... the juggernaut of critical opinion must be allowed to take its irrefragable course.  If too fervent worshippers were crushed to powder beneath the pitiless wheels of its car, nothing could be done.  Only their own adoration of the idol made them so vulnerable.

The novel goes on, with subdued drama on every page, and ends in a truly magnificent scene in which Trapnel, drunk, discourses on naturalism and realism in literature – exquisitely funny – just before suffering a serious of desperate hammer blows to his personal myth and all that he holds dear.  I’d love to tell you about it, but there are novitiate readers to consider!

Kathmandu

I was in Kathmandu for a few days last week, and I thought you might be interested to see a few of my photographs.  I was there on business, but in the few free hours, managed to see quite a lot locally, though travel was curtailed by local riots which closed many of the roads and  gave you the choice of being a prisoner in the (admittedly very nice) hotel, or going out on foot.  Naturally, I walked out – and managed to visit one of the great Buddhist stupas, and the Hindu temple of Pashupatinath, as well as the main squares of Kathmandu and Patan, two ancient cities which have merged into one conurbation.  Bhaktapur, the quiet jewel of the three, which I visited in 1985 (!), was out of reach thanks to unruly students and their distaste for paying a market rate for fuel.

Floating flowers welcome you.

Bodhnath stupa, which I could see from my bedroom, an important Tibetan Buddhist centre, with literally hundreds of prayer wheels - including a couple of monsters.

Kathmandu Durbar square, crowded with temples and palaces - and monks.

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Patan Durbar Square, quieter and more contemplative than bustling Kathmandu.

Hindu temple at Pashupatinath, a major site for cremation, along the holy river Bagmati.

A dominant feature of the prevailing Kumari architecture is the intricate wood carving, as in these windows.

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Siva and Parvati look out over Kathmandu from their temple - unusually benign portrayals of the god of destruction and creation and his fearsome consort.

Lament for the Makaris

In the dark days of the year, a dark poem, almost a dirge.  This is William Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris, Quhen He Wes Sek (Lament for the Poets, When He was Sick).  This is a long poem, and perhaps a slightly difficult one because of the language, but it is a shame to translate it into modern English.  Even if a few words remain obscure, the thrust and the music will be clear.  Dunbar lived from 1456 - 1513 or thereabouts, and this is probably his masterpiece.  It has a secondary fame as being central to Michael Innes' crime thriller, Lament for a Maker, which I also heartily recommend!  If you can't face it all, sample the early stanzas, and then read the great conclusion, from line 76 onwards, where all the names are those of poets that are now dead, and who he laments, while accepting the inevitable for himself as well.

I THAT in heill was and gladnèss
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Our plesance here is all vain glory,	5
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
The state of man does change and vary,
Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary,	10
Now dansand mirry, now like to die:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
No state in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker
So wannis this world's vanitie:—	15
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Unto the Death gois all Estatis,
Princis, Prelatis, and Potestatis,
Baith rich and poor of all degree:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.	20
He takis the knichtis in to the field
Enarmit under helm and scheild;
Victor he is at all mellie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
That strong unmerciful tyrand	25
Takis, on the motheris breast sowkand,
The babe full of benignitie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He takis the campion in the stour,
The captain closit in the tour,	30
The lady in bour full of bewtie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He spairis no lord for his piscence,
Na clerk for his intelligence;
His awful straik may no man flee:—	35
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Art-magicianis and astrologgis,
Rethoris, logicianis, and theologgis,
Them helpis no conclusionis slee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.	40
In medecine the most practicianis,
Leechis, surrigianis, and physicianis,
Themself from Death may not supplee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
I see that makaris amang the lave	45
Playis here their padyanis, syne gois to grave;
Sparit is nocht their facultie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He has done petuously devour
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,	50
The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
The good Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
Ettrick, Heriot, and Wintoun,
He has tane out of this cuntrie:—	55
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
That scorpion fell has done infeck
Maister John Clerk, and James Afflek,
Fra ballat-making and tragedie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.	60
Holland and Barbour he has berevit;
Alas! that he not with us levit
Sir Mungo Lockart of the Lee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Clerk of Tranent eke he has tane,	65
That made the anteris of Gawaine;
Sir Gilbert Hay endit has he:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill
Slain with his schour of mortal hail,	70
Quhilk Patrick Johnstoun might nought flee:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He has reft Merseir his endite,
That did in luve so lively write,
So short, so quick, of sentence hie:—	75
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
He has tane Rowll of Aberdene,
And gentill Rowll of Corstorphine;
Two better fallowis did no man see:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.	80
In Dunfermline he has tane Broun
With Maister Robert Henrysoun;
Sir John the Ross enbrast has he:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
And he has now tane, last of a,	85
Good gentil Stobo and Quintin Shaw,
Of quhom all wichtis hes pitie:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Good Maister Walter Kennedy
In point of Death lies verily;	90
Great ruth it were that so suld be:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Sen he has all my brether tane,
He will naught let me live alane;
Of force I man his next prey be:—	95
Timor Mortis conturbat me.
Since for the Death remeid is none,
Best is that we for Death dispone,
After our death that live may we:—
Timor Mortis conturbat me.	100

Old Silk Road

Colin Thubron is a travel writer I have not read before, although I have heard of very good reviews of his writing.  I have almost finished Shadow of the Silk Road, which  was published last year.  The Silk Road has many routes, and many myths, but he journeys from Xian in central China into Central Asia and out to the Mediterranean through Iran and eventually Syria.  I have an interest in this route from long ago, reinforced by my time in Afghanistan, but the main reason I read this (apart from the 3 for 2 offer!) was his reputation as a writer.  The journey is a little disjointed, and he spends much more time in China than anywhere else, and the leisurely pace of the first half of the journey is slightly lost as he goes on into Central Asia and beyond.  In addition, he had to skip Afghanistan because of the war against the Taliban, so he flew back and did that section later - which must have been very frustrating.

His writing is very fine, elegiac and haunting on occasion, pleasantly down to earth on others.  He takes travelling seriously, learning Mandarin and Russian for different trips (both useful on this one) and this gives him an edge over many others.  He has a powerful historical sensibility, and he tells you much about cultures past and present, rather than filling pages with trivial incidents of the road.  But there is a lot of travelling narrative as well, meetings with locals, imprisonment because he could prove he hadn't been through an area with bird flu, a close run thing with death on the road, and so on.

I found the China section absolutely fascinating.  It's somewhere I haven't visited at all, and its so huge I suspect I would struggle to get under the skin in anything like the way Thubron has.  But he paints a very complex and rather disturbing picture.  On the historical front, it was interesting to hear how little homogeneity there is amongst the Chinese people, how they have often been invaded and absorbed their invaders into their Chinese-ness - but how sometimes, the invaders have powerful identities persisting until now.  There are many minorities in the north who feel other - Uzbeks, for example - and who are impatient with the Chinese myth and the rule of Peking.  A wonderful illustration of this is the Great Wall - it is a long way from the current border in many places.  But he emphasises cross cultural contacts - not just the Marco Polos, but regular trade over centuries, and the exporting - often involuntarily - of the secrets of paper making, silk, and gunpowder.  And there are haunting, exciting tales of Roman soldiers in the north west of China, occasional finds of coins, stories of Chinese mercenaries who spoke unknown tongues but stormed city gates under the famous tortoise of Rome, with its great oblong shields.  And, every now and then, there are men and women who have round eyes, blue eyes, fair hair - something I saw in Afghanistan, where it was attributed to Alexander the Great's troops, or to more modern Russian ones - probably with some truth in both cases.

But there was a sinister, modern theme, too - of headlong development, of mass movement of Chinese into other ethnic areas, of unsympathetic environmental, social and industrial policies.  China is so vast, much must remain, but Thubron's account made me want to leap on a plane and see China before it is concreted over and the cultural variety forcibly discarded. 

A fascinating book - I'd recommend it on China more than on the other areas, but I'd very readily read Thubron again.

Dance: MP

The end of the war approaches, and in The Military Philosophers, Nick is posted to London.  One doesn't look at a string of pearls and remark the beauty of the fourth one along - one is ravished by the ensemble.  So it is with Dance to the Music of Time, and yet, and yet, if I had to choose, this might be the finest novel of them all.  First, the mood is lightening, though the war is still very present and weariness and loss are everywhere.  But there is enormous richness in the cast of characters, some superbly funny passages, and much serious reflection.  And there are a couple of passages of prose which are amongst his finest, and some hardly visible technical mastery which is dazzlingly effective and entirely unobtrusive.  I had real difficulty selecting a passage or two to highlight, but I've done my best.  If you know this book, you will have your own favourites; if you don't, when you read it, you will be continually surprised at the gems on my cutting room floor.

To start with, there is the most wonderful portrait of the civil servant of legend, one Blackhead.  Early in the book, Nick is told:  "Until you have dealings with Blackhead, the word 'bureaucrat' will have conveyed no meaning to you", and we are then treated to an extended whimsical essay on his status, then to an exquisite example of his method, too long to quote here.  But professional writers, and civil servants, know that to write briefly is much harder than to write at length - Horace's tag is perfect for all time.  Here, this is toyed with, reversed and left hanging, to illustrate and amuse.  Blackhead has written a long minute, or official note, on how stores should be issued to Allied troops:

Blackstone had written, in all, three and a half pages on the theory and practice of soap issues for military personnel, with especial reference to the Polish Women's Corps.  Turning from his spidery scrawl to Pennistone's neat hand, two words only were inscribed.  They stood out on the file:  Please amplify.  D Pennistone. Maj.

Blackhead, of course, misses the point and is outraged at this slur on his competence, believing that Pennistone really thinks he has missed some crucial information.  But later, all is explained (David Pennistone is a philosopher serving in the Army in the same branch as Nick):

"What on earth were you about, David, minuting Blackhead please amplify?"

"Has it upset him?"

"Beyond description".

"Good ... Renan says complication is anterior to simplicity.  I thought Blackhead would make an interesting experiment for trying out that theory".

"We can only pray Renan was right".

"Renan would find prayer charming but ineffectual".

Later, Nick is in France, escorting visitors round newly liberated Normandy (the war is still on), and leaving their hotel one day, realises too late that he has stayed at one of the key locations in Proust, Balbec (or Cabourg in real life):

... a faint sense of disappointment superimposed on an otherwise absorbing inner experience was in its way suitably Proustian too: a reminder of the eternal failure of human life to respond a hundred per cent ...

A rather pessimistic, but wonderfully true comment.  No wonder he is such a fine novelist, who can face reality like that and not be downcast.  And what a novelist, what a web he is weaving for us.  Six, nearly seven, novels earlier in The Acceptance World, Powell (or Nick) describes a large South American family seen while he is waiting in the Ritz.  They are quite incidental, they take no part in the action, they are merely a focus for Nick's musings.  And here, in MP, he is talking to a South American military attache, who remarks that:

I was here - what -  fifteen years ago, it must be.  With all my family, an absolute tribe of us.  We stayed at the Ritz, I remember.  Now ...

And that is all.  But a tiny silver thread has been drawn across seven books and fifteen years, binding the characters and reader into a complex web of knowing and understanding, strong and almost invisible.  But now the war is over, and it is on to happier times.

Dance: SA

The Soldier's Art continues Nick Jenkin's Dance through the war.  The tone is immediately more intense, as he finds himself in thrall to a man he dislikes in a post which is without interest and without prospects.  The war is not going well, for Britain or for him personally, yet the novel never drags, is never despairing. 

However, there is a passage of pure horror, on leave back in London, when two of Nick's relations are killed on the same night in separate events.  Nick learns of the first of them from a cabaret performer, who has just returned from performing at a nightclub, the Madrid.  The events are invested with an extreme poignancy by the connection with the nightclub and it's tawdry glamour, and the fact there has been no preparation in Nick's mind that anything unusual has happened.  The whole passgae is too long to quote, but believe me, it takes some skill to write that lightly and impose such weight: eventually Max Pilgrim (the singer, portrayed by Marc below) says "It was Bijou's last party" and the reality sinks in.

There are also wonderful views of the many different types of soldiers, many of whom I recognise from having worked with the Army in Kabul, including a hilarious discussion mid exercise between Nick and his Divisional Commander on the merits of Trollope.  And there is a final despairing moment of pathos at the end when Nick, having been told about the suicide of a fellow officer, is asked:

"What do you think of the news?"

"Well, it's rather awful, sir.  Biggs was in my Mess - "

"Oh, I don't mean Biggs", he said.  "Haven't you seen a paper or heard the wireless this morning?  Germany's invaded Russia."

An immediate, overpowering, almost mystic sense of relief took shape within me.  I felt suddenly sure everything was going to be all right.  This was something quite apart from even the most cursory reflection upon strategic implications involved.

It were premature to say that he was right, yet the mood lifts a fraction with this news, on the last page of Soldier's Art, preparing us perfectly for the final instalment of the war.

Rannoch, by Glencoe

This week's poem is a hard, bright stone of a poem, immensely physical in it's evocation of landscape.  It is a landscape that I love, but when I first read this - and the other four that form the set - I hardly knew Scotland.  Rannoch, by Glencoe by T S Eliot is one of the poems that opened a door for me into the great halls of this poet, at an age when Waste Land and Four Quartets were too forbidding.  I love the clang of the lines, balance of the heavy words, the brooding menace of the opening images.

Here the crow starves, here the patient stag
Breeds for the rifle. Between the soft moor
And the soft sky, scarcely room
To leap or soar. Substance crumbles, in the thin air
Moon cold or moon hot. The road winds in
Listlessness of ancient war,
Langour of broken steel,
Clamour of confused wrong, apt
In silence. Memory is strong
Beyond the bone. Pride snapped,
Shadow of pride is long, in the long pass
No concurrence of bone.

Wild places

Cornflower's post about wild places, combined with an awareness that I have been very text heavy recently, gives me an excuse to put up a few pictures from my recent Namibian trip.  No literary connections, just amazing landscape.

Dance: VB

With The Valley of Bones, we are into the three novels of the Dance sequence set in the second world war.  When I first read Dance, I liked these novels least of all, but my view changed gradually and now they are some of my favourites.  They are in no sense "war novels", for although Nick Jenkins is in the army, he does not see action  - but the unusual surroundings of war, the intensity and strain, and the upsetting of social strata, all create unparalleled opportunities to observe and comment on how and why humans behave.  And, of course, what he is describing is of great interest in its own right, especially in the third "war" novel, The Military Philosophers.

Nick finds himself in Valley of Bones in an out of the way regiment in South Wales, with which he has - almost extinct - family connections.  The soldiers are largely bank employees among the officers and miners among the men.  Apart from widening Powell's social field dramatically, this new gallery offers a host of intriguing characters, some drawn in cameo and some more fully.  The boredom, routine, and petty irritations that make up much of army life, and of war itself, are well to the fore; but there is never any lack of pulse, and occasional leaves back to London draw in the characters and themes we have got to know over recent novels.  And his pungent observation of relations between the sexes is unimpaired; here, Umfraville describes the difficulty of persuading his first wife (there were several!) to marry him:

'There was all that business of "Not tonight, darling, because I don't love you enough", then "Not tonight, darling, because I love you too much" - Christ, I've been through the whole range of it.  The nearest some women get to being faithful to their husbands is making it unpleasant for their lover.  However, that's by the way.  The point is that Dolly married me in the end.'

But he is just as sharp on the subject of getting a bit older: 

" nothing dates people more than the standards from which they have chosen to react",

and on people who pride themselves on being realists, and who can be brusque or even rude on that account:

Kedward dealt in realities.  There is much to be said for persons who traffic in this corn, provided it is always borne in mind that so-called realities present, as a rule, only a small part of the picture.

Finally, Powell - through Nick - remains conscious that books (his books?) really only reach a few.  Having failed to get a literary point across, Nick says:

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illustrates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.  Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

Moody murders

Over Christmas, I read two very different murder mysteries by Susan Moody.  I bought them blind, having enjoyed a story of hers in an anthology, attracted by the largely irrelevant fact that one of her heroines was a bridge player.

One was Penny Black, starring the gorgeous, black, and aristocratic Penny Wanawake, and the other was Grand Slam, featuring Cassandra Swann, a rather plump bridge teacher.  I didn't think either of them outstanding but they were both quite fun in a fairly rough and ready sort of way.  Both are slightly at the thriller end of the genre, and both allow their heroine a lot more freedom than the police would like - there's an absence of that dry, academic deduction that Michael Innes might feature, for example, with a greater reliance on personality and a little bit of red pepper action.  There's also quite a lot of sex in both novels, but nothing at all explicit or vulgar!  I'd not seek Moody out again, but might be tempted on a train journey, or to pick one up if I saw it in a secondhand shop.

Dance: KO

The Kindly Ones is an extraordinary novel in the Dance sequence, and represents Powell's need or desire "reculer pour mieux sauter".  You have been left at the end of Casanova's Chinese Restaurant expecting the oncoming war, and the tempo and mood are right for a plunge into the horrors and the confusion of the second world war.  But that has to wait for an entire novel (I'm very conscious at least two regular readers are going through Dance for the first time at the moment, and I don't want to spoil things!) while you go right back to Nick's childhood in 1914, and then forward again to the months just before the second war, and into the phoney war.  This is for several reasons - the first war adds to the burdens of the world, and also introduces Nick's parents (Powell waited for his own parents' deaths before drawing on them for his novels).  Finally, he is able to enrich some existing themes through this detour, and to create new ones.  The title, incidentally, refers to Greek habit of using this phrase to refer to the Furies, who, in the young Nick's words

"inflicted the vengeance of the gods by bringing in their train war, pestilence, dissension on earth; torturing, too, by the stings of conscience.  That last characteristic alone, I could plainly see, made them sufficiently unwelcome guests".

When General Conyers (by then retired, but still a courtier) hears about the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand, which rang up the curtain on the first world war, he remarks that

There will be trouble about this. Bad trouble. They'll have to postpone tomorrow night's State Ball

- a nice admixture of disaster and trivia.  This drama has been preceded, in the best Shakespearian tradition, by a remarkable, hilarious, passage to do with a housemaid's thwarted love, which I will not share - partly it's too long, partly because I want others to reach it fresh.

The novel then returns gracefully, almost seamlessly (Powell's technical profieciency in constructing the novel is unsurpassed), to 1939, but with a lot of personal and political storms in the air.  Increasing military activity, marital unhappiness, death of family members all contribute to the mood - but with a lot of amusement, too.  One of these incidents gives rise to the most powerful line in the entire sequence, when somebody (I won't say who) is talking about a loved one who has left him:

She can be tough, you know.  One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are.  You know that already.  It is how nasty the nice people can be.

The Kindly Ones ends with Nick arranging to enter the army, worrying what kind of a figure he will make at the great age of about 30.  The reader is very conscious that he is entering different territory altogether:  indeed, three great war novels stretch before you, of which more anon.

Mary and Darnley

This week's poem, Mary and Darnley by Humbert Wolfe, is a bit of a museum piece - who reads Wolfe now?  He wrote in the 1920s, and I discovered him by accident in a second hand bookshop in 1978, when I was still young enough for the over-written, self conscious language.  But this particular poem stuck in my mind over the years, and I thought I'd share it with you.  In fact, it's only the first half the poem, but it's pretty self contained.  I don't expect you to rush out and buy volumes of Wolfe, but I hope it's of interest.

Mary Stuart said to Darnley, "Nay, do not scold me!
Not my fault, but your fault, that you could not hold
me.

I came out of France into Scotland, hearing
the faint, cold sound of the Morte in the forest-clearing,
and now when the air is wild with it, and they rend me,
what in your love has turned on the hounds to defend
me?

No, you have flinched like the rest, while my throat is
torn,
Darnley, and your love is the last high note of the horn.

Go back to the King, and tell him Mary has told you
that she would have given the world to be held - as she
did not hold you."

Dance: CCR

The fifth volume of Powell's Dance sequence is Casanova's Chinese Restaurant.  In spite of the frivolous, even reckless, sound of the title, this is the volume in which serious clouds gather for the first time.  The writing is still light, and the medium is still the acute description of complex social interactions, but there are increasing voices from a wider world - the Abdication, political events in China, the Spanish Civil War.  There is gloom present, and the young are not only not unaffected, they are the worst affected.  Describing the house in which his step mother-in-law lives, with a number of her step-children, Powell writes:

The accommodation in the house of several younger members of the family had not resulted in much outward gaiety of atmosphere.  On the contrary, the note struck as one entered the hall and ascended the staircase was quiet, almost despondent.  The lack of exhilaration confirmed a favourite proposition of Moreland's as to the sadness of youth.

"I myself look forward ceaselessly to the irresponsibility of middle age", he was fond of stating.

And towards the end of the book, building on the final paragraph of A Buyer's Market, three novels before, which I quoted a few days ago, Powell invokes a different but no less frightening image of the future - readying you for the next volume and the descent to war.  Life is slipping out of the control of these young men and women:

Once, at least, we had been on a ghost railway together at some fun fair on a seaside pier; slowly climbing sheer gradients, sweeping with frenzied speed into inky depths, turning blind corners from which black, gibbering bogeys leapt to attack, rushing headlong towards iron-studded doors, threatened by imminent collision, fingered by spectral hands, moving at last with dreadful, ever increasing momentum towards a shape that lay across the line.

Dance: ALM

A long, empty day at court yesterday on jury service, which enabled me to read the fourth volume of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, At Lady Molly's.  At this point, the characters are really getting into their stride as adults, and both Jenkins and Widmerpool, the quiet narrator around whom the whole thing revolves and his unlovely and not always welcome companion throughout life, develop dramatically.  And yet, when Jenkins meets Isobel Tolland, he feels both on the threshold of a wonderful love affair - and all the dreamy ennui of a man who has seen and understand all life already.

"Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I would marry her?  Something like that is the truth; certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those vague inchoate sentiments of interest of which I was so immediately conscious.  It was as if I had known her for many years already; enjoyed happiness with her and suffered sadness.  I was conscious of that, as of another life, nostalgically remembered.  Then, at that moment, to be compelled to go through all the paraphernalia of introduction, of 'getting to know' one another by means of the normal formalities of social life, seemed hardly worth while.  We knew one another already; the future was determinate.  But what - it may reasonably be asked - what about the fact that only a short time before I had been desperately in love with Jean Duport; was still, indeed, not sure that I had been wholly cured?  Were the delights and agonies of all that to be tied up with ribbon, so to speak, and thrown into a drawer to be forgotten?  What about the girls with whom I seemed to stand nightly in cinema queues?"

Not worth reading?

Has everyone read about Pierre Bayard's new book, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read?  Of course, I've been doing this for years, and this is another book I certainly don't intend to read!

Dance: AW

Still reading my beloved Powell - and have now finished The Acceptance World.  This is a novel in which much shaking up goes on, as the initial pattern of early adult life is altered by changes of career, marriage, shaking off the shackles. The writing is sublime, and each minor description carries a considerable load of meaning and illumination.  Here, for example, Nick Jenkins, the main protagonist, describes the writer Quiggin arriving at the Ritz unexpectedly, a man strong in his self conceit, talented, but defensive about his humble origins and always keen to pursue his radical political views:

"Pausing, with a slight gesture of exhaustion that seemed to imply arduous travel over many miles of arid desert or snowy waste (according to whether the climate within or without the hotel was accepted as prevailing), he looked about the room; gazing as if in amazement at the fountain, the nymph, the palms in their pots of Chinese design: then turning his eyes to the chandeliers and the glass of the roof.  His bearing was at once furtive, resentful, sagacious, and full of a kind of confidence in his own powers.  He seemed to be surveying the tables as if searching for someone, at the same time unable to believe his eyes, while he did so, at the luxuriance of the oasis in which he found himself.  He carried no hat, but retained the belted leather overcoat upon which a few drops of moisture could be seen glistening as he advanced further into the room, an indication that snow or sleet had begun to fall outside.  This black leather garment gave a somewhat official air to his appearance, obscurely suggesting a Wellsian man of the future, hierarchic in rank.  Signs of damp could also be seen in patches on his sparse fair hair, a thatch failing to roof in completely the dry, yellowish skin of his scalp."

Walking round London 11

On the final day of last year, I completed the Capital Ring walk with the excellent company of a friend for the south of the river sections.  We started the last leg at Wimbledon Park tube station on another cold, dank day, and struck off across Wimbledon Park, a busy municipal park originally designed by Capability Brown (can he really have designed everything attributed to him?  Or did he lend his name to a host of pupils and imitators, a profitable franchise?).  Then through streets for half a mile or so, passing the desolate AELT&CC (Wimbledon to you and me - the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club) before entering Putney Heath for six miles uninterrupted green and bosky walking.

Putney Heath was marked by this Christmas tree, still growing and several hundred yards from the nearest house, beautifully decorated.  And further on, there is the famous windmill - though whether it's on Putney Heath or Wimbledon Common is a moot point; they run into each other indistinguishably.

The windmill is apparently an unusual hollow post design, with its own museum: windmill anoraks this way please.  It is, though, a nice feature, and a small plaque tells you that Baden-Powell (Chief Scout of the World) stayed here while writing part of Scouting For Boys.  And just behind the windmill is the London Scottish Golf Club, proudly displaying its yellow shield and red lion.  The club was founded to give Scots in London something to do when their nation gave up rugby.  There is a charming club rule that members must wear a red top while playing; this is so they can be found easily in the thick dark rough when they get lost.   Further on, across a couple of fairways, is Queen's Mere, a favourite haunt of Wombles.

Just after the golf course is a rather fine war memorial, surrounded by trees in an area of public woodland and grassland.  The design is commonplace, but the setting superb.  From there, a brief foray across the A3 and into Richmond Park by the Robin Hood gate.

Richmond is very much home territory for me, but it's a big place - at least 2.5 miles wide and long - and still has some surprises.  First, we stopped for lunch and admired the herds of deer, red and fallow (it's a fallow deer in the picture below), and listened to and watched a group of ring-necked parakeets, Asian birds which have naturalised across the south east of England, and which are new since I have been coming here.  They are spectacularly bright green, with long tails and a piercing screech;  I love them, but that view is not unanimous!  The walk across the Park is superb, almost entirely green and pleasant, especially if you have had the West London ear operation which means you no longer hear the jets coming in, more than one a minute, to Heathrow.   At the heart of the gardens are the Pen Ponds, rich in wildfowl, and extremely cold.

From the Ponds, we turned away from my normal route to the Star & Garter home, and turned past Pembroke Lodge - posh teas, nice views.  Originally this was the mole-catcher's cottage, but has been enlarged and upgraded to the point that members of Earl Russell's family lived there at one time, and the great Bertrand Russell spent his childhood there.  (He was a fine writer, but on the twin assumptions that Principia Mathematica will be beyond all my readers except Dark Puss - it's well beyond me - and that everyone has read A History of Western Philosophy, I've put Sceptical Essays in the list: witty, provocative, and trenchantly written.  Unpopular Essays is just as good). Round the corner of the Lodge for a fine view west, over the Thames valley to Twickers and in better weather to Windsor, and to visit Henry's Mound.  This is a prehistoric barrow, much landscape gardened, from which Henry VIII watched for a signal in 1536 from the Tower of London that Anne Boleyn had met her end.  Now, it is enclosed by a formal holly hedge, pierced so that you can see down an avenue of trees all the way to St Paul's cathedral in the City.

Down through Petersham, a quick and fruitless search for Vancouver's tomb in the churchyard, and out to the mighty Thames.  A mile or so further on, and I was back at my starting point - here I am below, having done the 78 miles, and eager for my tea!

I'm now looking for another modest walking challenge - perhaps the length of Father Thames?

Dance: BM

On with Dance, and the second volume, A Buyer's Market.  I want to share a wonderful piece of writing with you, but it's a secret secret of Powellites, and I don't think I dare.  But there is a test of your reading in this book which is subtle and precise (and completely fair), when something momentous happens but you might not notice!  Powell, I think, is deliberately devaluing the event by this approach - but if you've read this book properly, you'll know what I'm talking about, if you haven't, I won't spoil it for you.  By the way, I missed it the first time.

A Buyer's Market is a novel about the uncertain process of becoming an adult - when does it begin, does it ever end? - and is full of uncertainty and discovery.  Most of all, there is the feeling that life is just beginning, that you have to take advantage of the experience, or it will pass you by.  The very last paragraph in the novel is wondrously telling:

"Certain stages of experience might be compared with the game of Russian billiards, played (as I used to play with Jean, when the time came) on

those small green tables, within the secret recesses of which, at the

termination of a given passage of time—a quarter of an hour, I think—the

hidden gate goes down; after the descent of which, the white balls and the

red return no longer to the slot to be replayed; and all scoring is doubled.

This is perhaps an image of how we live. For reasons not always at the

time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly

to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really

know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we

ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering

uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."

Cherry trees

This Friday's poem is from an author I took a lot of convincing to read, A E Housman.  He was an extraordinary man, brilliant, unhappy and pessimistic - wonderfully portrayed, old and young, in Tom Stoppard's Invention of Love.  I was given A Shropshire Lad nearly 30 years ago, but the poems lay unread until I had seen the Stoppard, and now I adore them.  He has a deceptive ease and simplicity, and there is gentle pain in every stanza, but they so reward reading and re-reading.  The short poem I have chosen has no title, but after it's first line, we will call it Loveliest of trees, by  A E Housman; I would particularly suggest you also look up Is my team ploughing if you don't already know it.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Dance: QU

I promised I wouldn't exhaustively review every volume of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, but offer little snapshots.  Well yesterday I read the first, A Question of Upbringing, and here is my offering, an extended quotation:

"Being in love is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests. In general, things are apt to turn out unsatisfactorily for at least one of the parties concerned; and in due course only its most determined devotees remain unwilling to admit that an intimate and affectionate relationship is not necessarily a simple one: while such persistent enthusiasts have usually brought their own meaning of the word to something far different from what it conveys to most people in early life.  At that period love's manifestations are less easily explicable than they become later: often they do not bear that complexion of being a kind of game, or contest, which, at a later stage, they may assume.  Accordingly, when I used to consider the case of Jean Templer, with whom I had decided I was in love, analysis of the situation brought no relief from the uneasy, almost obsessive thoughts that filled my mind ..."

I've now moved onto the next volume (which alternates with Su Doku and a wonderful posthumous book by Roger Deakin on woodlands, Wildwood) as I wait at the Crown Court to be summoned for jury service; already, his emotions are getting tangled up with another, quite different woman.  Ah, si jeunesse savait!

New Year's gift for Harriet

Trespassing on Harriet's territory here, to offer her a woman reading.  You are never alone when reading, but these beasties are not my normal company.  I always hope there is an angel on my shoulder, or at least a daemon (in Pullman's sense), but who knows?  This vision is by Otto Frello, 1975.