The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (1909)

'Elizabeth''s career has always to some extent existed behind the veil of her name, to the point where her capabilities have been shadowed a little by it I think. She could be Elizabeth Beauchamp, or von Arnim (which she has turned out to be at present), or Russell, or Frere, depending on whether one chooses her own name or those of her three partners through life. "The author of Elizabeth and her German Garden" or simply that first name is how she was known in her lifetime. All of which obscures the fact that she is one of the great comic writers of the twentieth century. The Caravaners, in terms of the skill and depth with which it is written and its ultimate resulting success, can quite legitimately take its place beside the greats. This veiled picture of a typical Prussian Junker baron, our narrator, with his fatuous prejudices, snobberies, chauvinism and unchallenged self-opinion, is carried through with subtlety and true mastery. A character like that, put on an English caravaning holiday in the Edwardian era, with a growingly rebellious wife and an assortment of (for him) quite challenging travelling companions, from a wiry Socialist to raffish sons of nobility, from elegant free-spirited German ladies to glaring astonished English schoolgirls, with no idea at all of how he comes across and how desperate they all are to get away from him, completely convinced of his own correctness and charm, is devastatingly and almost cruelly funny. The awkward fact which one suspects if a little of her biography is known is that the baron is probably at least a partial picture of her then husband, Henning von Arnim, if not a more substantial one! And this provides perhaps the book's only down-point: every now and then the comedy is too obvious and mocking - the actuation of intense dislike is too palpably clear. The veil is lifted just a little too much, and bitterness shows through. A brilliant example, nevertheless, of the comic art.

Commonplace Book

'"I don't dare to think what your father would have said."

"I don't know why, as he can't say it."'

from Men and Wives by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'"In the exceptional cases, the director is an artist, a temporary poet, who is never sure that he won't lose his job. The true poet, the true artist, advancing in years, getting older, improves his production, rarifies it, refines it, rids it of dross, enriches its spirit. This is possible because he works by himself, and his experience with life inevitably brings him to an intuitive understanding of ever new mysteries. A director on the other hand declines after a certain age, because his art has an immediate need of public approval, the basis for which has in the meantime changed. That reality which he believes he is portraying is no longer operative, it's over with, it no longer has customers. And now the problem arises: at what age does it become necessary to kill a good director?"'

from an entry, dated March 1960, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

Commonplace Book

'"...Mellicent, you must make up to Jermyn for being told that poetry is not worth a sacrifice, that his mother ought not to be sacrificed to it, when of course she ought. It is trying in such subtle ways to be told that you must not sacrifice your mother."'

from Men and Wives by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter II)

Wedding Day and other stories by Kay Boyle (1930)

This collection was first published in Paris in 1929, entitled simply Short Stories, in a limited edition - this is the subsequent trade publication. It was Boyle's first book, and shows her as an American under the influence of modernism in Paris in the twenties. Her strength is in spirit. It is a fighting one. These stories boil (what a superb surname for this writer) and rumble with suppressed anger and biting passions. She has a penchant also for interest in unusual circumstances; the situations here are intriguing and tasty. Some of the stories read reasonably straightforwardly and are marked in their originality and success. Her weakness shows in the others. It is in the ungrammatic and self-indulgent abrupt stops and massive disconnects - the excesses of modernism. One can almost see her, too young and flaming-eyed, at Parisian cafe tables, exclaiming in that all-too-familiar way of the indulged 'rebel'. What it does in terms of meaning is deflate; after the initial "Wow!" of many of these phrases comes the wrinkled forehead of wondering what she actually meant - the "Wow!" is revealed as a superficiality. I'm really looking forward to reading into her long career, especially watching that phenomenal fire and energy become disciplined out of these extravagances.

Notre Coeur by Guy de Maupassant (1890)

The major stumbling block with Maupassant is attitudinal. Instead of investigating his favourite subject as women, the human beings we all know, he investigates them as exemplars of a pedestalised ultra-symbol, Woman. Fateful coquettes is what most of them are. And it is no different in this, his last novel. Michele de Burne and Andre Mariolle have a meeting of hearts but with very different modes and expectations. We follow their changeable path through demi-monde Parisian society with Michele keeping her cool and Andre wanly obsessive. There is a beautiful sequence in a surreptitiously planned meeting at Mont Saint-Michel, where the whole landscape sings and the Mont is fabulously impressive as a place of exploration. Then things begin to complicate: Andre's obsession warms as Michele's cool is maintained. My reaction ran counter to Maupassant's intention I think - I had a lot more time for the 'cold' woman than her 'adoring' man. Maupassant's unknowing heartlessness is exemplified in his treatment of Elisabeth, a woman to whom Andre turns when he becomes dissatisfied. She is brushed aside miserably. My copy also includes six short stories, most of which are relatively standard fare, though vivid. The exception is Revenge, a masterly revelation of heartbreak, and the awful consequences when the mind can no longer cope and the world goes black.

Commonplace Book

'Menzies-Legh got up and went away. It was characteristic of him that he seemed always to be doing that. I hardly ever joined him but he was reminded by my approach of something he ought to be doing and went away to do it. I mentioned this to Edelgard during the calm that divided one difference of opinion from another, and she said he never did that when she joined him.

"Dear wife," I explained, "you have less power to remind him of unperformed duties than I possess."

"I suppose I have," said Edelgard.

"And it is very natural that it should be so. Power, of whatever sort it may be, is a masculine attribute. I do not wish to see my little wife with any."

"Neither do I," said she.

"Ah, there speaks my own good little wife."

"I mean, not if it is that sort."

"What sort, dear wife?"

"The sort that reminds people whenever I come that it is time they went."

from The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (Chapter XII)

Commonplace Book

'Now we will have to give this photographer an exemplary name, because the right name helps a great deal and indicates that the character will "live on." These semantic affinities between characters and their names drove Flaubert to despair. He spent two years finding Madame Bovary's first name, Emma. For this photographer of ours we don't know what to make up until, stumbling upon that golden little book of George Gissing's titled By the Ionian Sea, we discover the prestigious name "Paparazzo." The photographer will be called Paparazzo. He will never know that he bears the honoured name of a hotel-keeper from somewhere in Calabria, about whom Gissing speaks with gratitude and admiration. But names have a destiny of their own.'

from an entry, dated June 1958, in The Via Veneto Papers by Ennio Flaiano

The Poet Assassinated and other stories by Guillaume Apollinaire (1984)

I was ready to be thoroughly irritated by this, but was somehow charmed. The main piece, occupying half the book, is clanking surrealism, and has all the concomitant irritants - meaninglessness, half-bakedness, terrible lack of direction and fullness, but also conversely a few inspiring mind-spurts, and cheeky playfulness. The remaining fifteen pieces are characterised much more by eccentric whimsy, and are only sporadically surreal. Some, like The Moon King (a Ludwig of Bavaria dream) and Saint Adorata (a faux-archaeological Passion) are fascinating slow bursts of soft colour in the memory. Some are a little nastier or duller. The surprise was the last story, The Case of the Masked Corporal. The title has a sub-clause: That is, The Poet Resuscitated. It acts as a summary coda. One sees it initially as standard, replete as it is with bits of concrete prose. Then it opens out into the story of the poet in the Great War, avatar of Apollinaire himself, experiencing a return of many of the characters from the stories in the book, themselves resuscitated and carrying on where they left off. It ends with the sense of the end coming; will the poet be killed in the War, or was Apollinaire aware of his own coming demise? Here he touches the frizzled edges of emotion, albeit in code.

Commonplace Book

"...She felt herself setting out in thought, reticent and proud, and bitter in a small clean way like a cat selecting its paws. But she wanted to believe that there was something fresher and deeper that came of the mind, some force of which she would demand nothing if it would only be. She wanted to believe in a language that burned black the tongue of the one who spoke and scarred the one who listened. She would demand nothing of it, but to serve it, and be humble before it. She was ready to be humbled, but adequately humbled, not by the hate that beat all night at her pillow, nor by the love that slipped off down her cheeks at night acrid into the corners of her mouth."

from Summer, a piece in Wedding Day and other stories by Kay Boyle

Commonplace Book

"'May I ask where we dine?' I inquired, endeavouring to free the skirts of my new mackintosh from the door, which had swung to (the caravan not standing perfectly level) and jammed them tightly. I did not need to raise my voice, for in a caravan even with its door and windows shut people outside can hear what you say just as distinctly as people inside, unless you take the extreme measure of putting something thick over your head and whispering. (Be it understood I am alluding to a caravan at rest: when in motion you may shout your secrets, for the noise of crockery leaping and breaking in what we learned - with difficulty - to allude to as the pantry will effectually drown them.)"

from The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (Chapter III)

Commonplace Book

"Truly it is an excellent thing to be able to put down one's opinions on paper as they occur to one without risk of irritating interruption - I hope my hearers will not interrupt at the reading aloud - and now that I have at last begun to write a book - for years I have intended doing so - I see clearly the superiority of writing over speaking. It is the same kind of superiority that the pulpit enjoys over the (very properly) muzzled pews..."

from The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (Chapter II)

Rome For Sale by Jack Lindsay (1934)

This novel stands in sharp contrast to its predecessor, which was a sprightly inventive comedy. Here Lindsay shows his mettle in historical terms, with a complex and well-tensioned understanding of the conspiracy of Catalina to overthrow the corrupt Senate in ancient Rome, and establish a dictatorship in the name of the masses. With a vast array of characters, and his very fine understanding of the workings of their minds, and the tangents of thought brought about by the historical context, one would imagine that this second novel would be a surefire amplification of his credentials. But something perhaps in his passion for the material stymies this book, or perhaps the fault lies elsewhere. The effect is a becalming. The entire first half feels like a hopping from tile to tile and back again in a vast mosaic - the narrative drive is disturbingly missing. So while there is grandness of intent, vastness of scale, depth of vision into humanity, this enormous vehicle stalls nevertheless. Only when we reach the election, intended by Catalina as the catalyst for his actions, does the fire of onward energy match the huge intent. For a good portion of the last half he keeps this up, and then a tailoff begins. The final scenes of Catalina's death in battle are, though, stirring and beautiful.

Commonplace Book

"...All at once he felt rising with gathering strength within him the stern determination to end this torturing subserviency. She had nailed him upon a cross; he was bleeding from every limb, and she watched his agony without feeling for his suffering, even rejoicing that she had had it in her power to effect so much. But he would tear himself from his deathly gibbet, leaving there bits of his body, strips of his flesh, and all his mangled heart. He would flee like a wild animal that the hunters have wounded almost unto death, he would go and hide himself in some lonely place where his wounds might heal and where he might feel only those dull pangs that remain with the mutilated until they are released by death."

from Notre Coeur by Guy de Maupassant (Chapter IX)

The Princess Sophia by EF Benson (1900)

This novel is Benson's attempt at his own spin on Ruritania, which had been made popular, to put it mildly, by the phenomenal success of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda earlier this decade. It is Bensonian in that it is light in tone, lacking what I take to be (haven't read it yet) the serious historical element in Hope's work. Sophia is reigning in Rhodope, which roughly coincides with the bottom third of Albania, and is an inveterate gambler. After foiling a pretty unbelievable plot by her dashing but rather limited prince and her prime minister in a delightfully dramatic way, she realises that her son Leonard needs to be protected from the gambling instinct prevalent in him through simply being her child! He is sent off to Eton and then round the world on improving travels, she resumes her frequent trips to Monte Carlo on her royal yacht, and also gambles at the club she has established in the gardens of Rhodope's royal palace. One stormy night in Monte, an incognito Leonard proves himself a force at the tables, reveals himself, and manages to win the throne of their country from his mother as their highest stake! Fantastic madness, followed by an epilogue describing his benevolent reign which returns Rhodope to its former brilliance (by banning all gambling), which had been dulled by Sophia's introduction of the fascinating but morally enervating games of chance. Enormous fun, even though, in its confusion over the attractions and attenuations of gambling, it really doesn't know whether it's Arthur or Martha.