Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Sonia by Stephen McKenna (1917)

I think two facts are pertinent to start with. One is that the running heads in this novel do not show the title, but the subtitle: Between Two Worlds. So my guess is that it was set as that, and the title was changed shortly before publication. There is a 1916 novel of that name listed in the British Library catalogue, by an American author, Philip Everett Curtiss. Perhaps either Curtiss himself objected to another of the same title so soon after, or McKenna or his publishers, Methuen, decided it wasn't wise. The other important fact is that, once published, this became by far McKenna's widest success, including the astonishing feat of being the 10th bestselling novel in the USA in 1918, and fifteen printings in its first year in the UK. It starts as the story of a group of well-heeled friends going to school in the midst of the frivolity of the late Victorian/Edwardian period. The school, Melton, seems to echo Winchester in terms of its location. The three main male characters are there together - our narrator, cool-pair-of-hands George Oakleigh, who is witty, upper middle class, destined for parliament; his personable but commanding Catholic aristo friend, Loring, destined for grand country house inheritance in the old order; and their rebellious ally, son of a lord, master of languages, kicker-around-the-world from childhood, O'Rane. The fourth main character is female, Sonia Dainton herself of the (new) title, who is the spirited daughter of a local family whose sons also attend the school, and to whom two of our three boys are 'attached' by familial connections of long standing. This school story is characterful, wise and entertaining, as Oakleigh and Loring try to tame O'Rane's exaggerated independence. They go through the wrench of leaving school a few years of massive development later, but this has been sweetened for O'Rane by his engagement to Sonia. As their careers progress, Oakleigh and Loring head into parliament, and O'Rane into business, but Sonia has grown headstrong and will have him no longer. Their young adult lives are coloured by this frosting between Sonia and O'Rane, and then her projected marriage to Loring which also goes haywire, and results in further awkwardness. Sonia through this period is a kind of talisman figure, constantly getting into more and more scrapes of loucheness and 'bad' behaviour. The whole acts as a portrait of the generation before the war and how its upper element coasted, not as an indictment necessarily - that was just how it was, and there were good and intelligent people everywhere, trying to make things work, and not just for themselves. Then comes 1914, and our team are placed all over, with much preoccupying them, serious and otherwise, and about to be taken up with a slide into disaster which will wipe most of that into insignificance. O'Rane loses all his money in a business catastrophe; Loring is in the House of Lords but dissatisfied; Oakleigh has lost his seat; Sonia is cavorting dangerously in, of all places, Germany. As war breaks out, O'Rane must go in commando-style and get her over the border to safety, but this does not result in any thawing of relations - they are both too proud. Two of our men enlist - Loring to his eventual death, O'Rane to horrific wounding ending in blindness. He heads back to Melton to take up a post as a master - his charisma and experience endear him very much to the boys. Sonia, much calmed, is living with her family nearby, and helping in the hospital which has been made of their home. She comes to see O'Rane in a very different frame of mind, devastated at his blindness. The piece finishes with their marriage and an ecstatic plea that the war may induce a society based on care rather than carelessness. I'm guessing that what made this so popular was the fact that it purported to be a picture of 'the way we live now'; it does seem a brave and very current attempt to see the society of before the war and to project what the assaulting cost of the war might create in the way of a better one. Naming the novel after Sonia is awkward because, although she is in many ways a catalyst in the book, she is not a good heroine, or even particularly likeable. And it did have moments where the engine-steam seemed to run a bit thin. So, a good McKenna, but, despite its success, a great one only in moments.

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