Commonplace Book

'"...When I am a middle-aged woman and Mark is supreme in the home, I shall like nothing better than to have perhaps this very little place, and reign in it, and do all I can for people outside. Now does not that strike you all as an alluring prospect?"

"Yes, it sounds very nice," said Miss Griffin, who thought that it did, and who was perhaps the natural person to reply, as the arrangement involved the death of most of the other people present.'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 2)

Commonplace Book

'"It is a pity we have to be human," said Dudley. "Human failings, human vanity, human weakness! We don't hear the word applied to anything good. Even human nature seems a derogatory term. It is simply an excuse for everything."

"Human charity, human kindness," said Justine. "I think that gives us to think, Uncle."

"There are great examples of human nobility and sacrifice," said Blanche. "Mr. Penrose must know many of them."

"People are always so pleased about people's sacrifice," said Dudley; "I mean other people's. It is not very nice of them. I suppose it is only human."

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 1)

Special Friendships by Roger Peyrefitte (1945)

The overriding trope of this piece is ambiguity. But not so much of what is happening, as of what the characters are thinking and imagining about themselves. It is set I think in the 1920s in hyper-Catholic France. A fourteen year-old young minor aristo Georges de Sarre is sent for the first time beyond his local lycee to a religious boarding school. He is egotistical and a manipulator, but not so much so that it's revolting, rather fairly typical of clever ones of his age. He is initially fascinated by another boy of his own age whose cot is nearby his in the dormitory, Lucien, who has 'a great friend' also in their form, Andre. They have what was probably reasonably common at that age in those circumstances - a very strong bond amounting to a romantic connection, where the question of sexuality is probably waiting in the wings without being acted upon. Georges becomes jealous of Andre's connection with Lucien and, at a particular juncture, his manipulativeness wins out. He secretly intrigues for Andre to be 'found out' and expelled so as to have Lucien to himself - he wants what they already have. But once this occurs it seems like Lucien, having narrowly avoided the axe himself, escapes into the overwhelming religiosity of the school, and becomes penitent and a huge observer of all rites and rituals. He doesn't know it's Georges who is responsible for Andre's leaving. Georges turns his attention to a younger boy he's seen round about who is between a year and two years younger, Alexander, who becomes the absolute image of beauty and wonder to him, eclipsing his interest in Lucien by a long way. Lucien's intense passion for religion breaks and Georges is relieved to have someone to talk to again about these issues, while Lucien boldly looks forward to holidays and catching up with Andre. Georges' feeling for Alexander is no doubt teased by how difficult it is to see him alone. They have to keep excusing themselves from class at times when no-one would notice - and Lucien tells Georges of places like the rarely visited school conservatory which he and Andre had frequented. Georges and Alexander's connection is topped with an exchange of blood 'ceremony' which ties them in their minds forever. They occasionally kiss, but there's no sense of anything else specifically on their minds; there is, though, a strong undercurrent of very low-key eroticism. Things reach an apotheosis in a jaunt to the river and naked bathing, where Georges and Alexander steal off to a separate area and partake of a kind of enchanted trance of sharing and togetherness. Coming into this is a priest new to the school who, it emerges, has a fascination with all these goings on between the boys and a nose for hunting these situations out. Again, actual sexuality is extremely low in the mix, pretty well non-existent except for its background glow, and the priest's entire language when talking confidentially to the boys is of maintaining purity and goodness. This is despite his wanting them to exchange pyjamas and tell him all, so as to maintain their innocence! This priest's ambiguity of intention is a perfect emblem of the mixedness of the thinking of this piece - and along with Georges' more childlike manipulations, forms the core of what I think Peyrefitte is after. He enunciates the changeability of the boys' directions of thought, and the priests' orchestrations of the dangerous mix of religiosity and earthly passion in a profoundly believable way. The self-delusion of us all is pictured here in these twistings, ignorings and posturings - the deft changes of emphasis depending on who is one's interlocutor. Of course, in the light of recent revelations about the Catholic church and many others of equivalent overt probity and covert guilt, this narrative takes on significance to a phenomenal level. The confusions and choreography which are 'available' in these circumstances as a blind to others and the self are something to behold. Georges again employs his canniness to catch this priest out and get him removed, only to discover in one of the most established fathers a new nemesis - when he and Alexander are caught out bunking off, smoking and rolling about in the hay in a dilapidated gardener's hut on a visit to a local chateau. This proves, through this new priest's acuteness, to be the potential end of their love. Prevented from seeing each other really at all, Alexander naively proposes that they run away together in the holidays in a note. Georges agrees initially, but soon realises that it's a hopeless task, practically speaking. The priest is Georges' equal in manipulation, and manages to elicit from him a promise to return all of Alexander's notes in exchange for shutting up about the affair. He says that this is to preserve Alexander's as yet unsullied boyhood - they will, through this threat, ensure both silence and the younger boy's saving. The holidays finally come, the boys return home, and Georges, having fought a lot with himself over it, decides that he must return at least some of Alexander's notes, or be exposed. On doing so, he writes Alexander a letter to say that it's only a setback on their path, and that he had to do it, and reiterates his undying love. Unfortunately, the priest shows Alexander Georges' returned notes immediately, before Georges has even posted his letter of explanation. A couple of hours later Alexander is found dead in his father's study, having taken poison. Georges learns of it the following day in the paper and is devastated. The priest visits him, also to some extent heartbroken, explaining that he had hoped Alexander would become a man of the cloth himself. There is the slightest indication given by Peyrefitte that there was some sort of special interest in Alexander from this priest, a tincture of romance, but it's very hazy and undeveloped, which is further fulfilment of the blurred purposes at work here. It ends with Georges going through many tides of emotion in one day as he attends a mass with the priest and then chaperones him to the railway station and returns home afterward. These emotions range from deciding that he too will kill himself, to collapsing under the weight of established religion and purging himself of evil, and finally to deciding that he will take on Alexander's soul as part of his own and thenceforth do everything as two people in one, so that Alexander can keep on living through him. This novel does I'm sure cause consternation because of its subject matter, but I think it's a brilliant portrayal of the cloudy territory where roads of doubt and certainty, truth and lies intersect.