Miss Dobson

Courtesy - as is often the case nowadays - of 99 pence of expenditure at the local Oxfam, I have just re-read "the incomparable Max"'s only novel, the 1911 frivolity Zuleika Dobson.  And if Max Beerbohm can be called just "Max", I can call the lovely Zuleika (a tautology, that's what the name means) just "Miss Dobson".  This is a book I first read when probably rather drunk with the idea of Oxford, and his is certainly a book to get drunk on.  It is a fantasy, set in the mythical Oxford college of Judas (I wonder how many made up Oxford colleges there are in popular literature?), of a second rate female conjurer who is utterly bewitching and utterly heartless.

She turns the heads of everybody in the university, most notably that of the nonpareil Duke of Dorset, who is ineffably conceited, rich and talented, and who is the social mark af all the university.  I don't suppose there is anybody who doesn't know the plot, so I won't be spoiling it if I tell you he determines to sacrifice himself in the Isis during eights week (translation, in the River Thames where it runs through Oxford, after the summer inter-college rowing races).  His suicide is followed by hundreds of others, and Oxford is deserted as a result - she takes a few hours to reflect and regret, and sets out for Cambridge.

I loved this thirty years ago, and I could love it still now, it is written with such panache, such confidence, and such imagination - except that it is really a little long.  The idea is marvellous, but a hundred or so pages would have done nicely, and it is well over twice that length. But if you don't know it, it's well worth a look, although you mustn't think that Oxford was ever at all like this!  But the scenes in which the gods rather regret releasing the two black owls which presage the death of a member of the Duke's family, and so grant his every whim in recompense, are masterly; he only thinks that a certain cloud would be a little further left to be placed to best advantage, and lo!, it is so.  And the sangfroid with which the Duke, only an hour before his suicide, orders the family tomb made ready and pays his landlady's bill, stopping to check most carefully before he hurls himself to his death, is tremendous.

In fact, the only thing I can't really forgive either Max or the Duke is that, thanks to his ill-timed plunge into the Isis, Magdalen (my own college, as you may have guessed) were bumped by Judas and ceased to be head of the river.  This is unthinkable - Magdalen was the power on the river at that time - the 1908 Olympic coxless four was entirely drawn from Magdalen and won gold; and 8 of the 9 members of the Gold medal winning 1912 Olympic Eight were also from Magdalen - and the idea that they were deposed by a fictional college is plain silly!

Comments

[Mr Cornflower]

There are so many sly Edwardian felicities in Zuleika Dobson, one hardly knows where to start...picking a couple at random, the Duke of Dorset's family name, Tankerville-Tankerton, is pronounced "tavvy-tackton"...and Zuleika does not just set out for Cambridge, she dispatches her maid to Oxford Station with an instruction to the Stationmaster to prepare a private train. Wonderfully, archly, self-consciously over the top and quite preposterously funny.
And we should honour not just the heroic rowers of Beerbohm's era but also our modern crews and the renaissance of Magdalen rowing...since you and I went down, Lindsay...

[glo]

I noticed that Jane Austen used a lot of French words in Northanger Abbey, mostly in the first half of the book. And so are you doing lately - what a coincidence(!)

It is not Max or the Duke that you should forgive for the defeat of Magdalen but the author of the book! This is fiction, not truth or history; the characters of the book are not responsible for what happens. Being a Powellite, you share the opposite opinion, I know that. I remember that we already discussed that topic. And I was reminded me of this sentence from Powell:
"Because a novel's invented, it is true."
The quotation is from this post:
http://booksdofurnisharoom.typepad.com/books_do_furnish_a_room/2008/02/dance-hsh.html#comments

That said, I notice that my mind is dangerously starting to "bagshawerize", I am afraid.