The Edwardians by V. Sackville-West (1930)

I can see why this has been called a bad book. But I can't really accede. I think the thing it does badly is symbolising particular tropes in too clumsily generic ways. A really good example happens near the end, when we're at the coronation of George V. At a particular point of the proceeedings the peeresses must reach up and put on their coronets, tiaras and what not. The subdued rustle is heard of this happening, and then many of them surreptitiously also reach for small mirrors to adjust for perfection. The author then really pushes the boat out by having 'many dowagers' tut-tutting this behaviour from the galleries, all of these apparently thinking to themselves how unladylike this vain behaviour is, and how it wouldn't have been allowed to occur, or even thought of, in their day. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that it's too wholesale. Sackville-West also includes slightly forced or banal conversations to do the same work on a few occasions. My feeling is that, were this novel to be analysed to the hilt for perfidiousness, it would be these moments that are the true culprits. The experience of reading this strange piece is another matter entirely; it somehow has a stark freshness, with plenty of cool space between the bursts of intensity. Despite looking creaky in our times, I think it would have looked quite modern in its own - it doesn't quite consist of the standard, filled-out, conservative prose that would have been seen as "regulation" back then. It is the story of a young man of the aristocracy who meets an explorer at a weekend party at his great house in 1906, and is challenged by him to see himself freshly, unencumbered by his position. Sebastian is ruffled by this challenge, but it is fed by his sense of youthful bucking against propriety and tradition, and his feeling of stifledness. We then follow him through parts of the next five years experimenting with defying expectations in various ways, with the explorer's words in the back of his mind. (An interesting aside: the explorer's name is Anquetil. I've been experimenting with various ways of pronunciation: French origins retained would make it On-ke-teel, but usually Norman-sounding names have been mangled-Anglicised over the centuries, so perhaps it has ended up as An-kettle?) The connections with what came after are somewhat striking - was this novel a source for / a dry run for Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited? Not only the challenge to orthodoxy, not only the symbolic picturing of the times and the class, but also the name of the main character? I can't remember whether Sackville-West thought anything about this, but have a feeling it was noticed and marked, at least. Though I am sad not to see her following up on the truly modernist promise of Seducers in Ecuador, there's still just enough here to keep up some enthusiasm for this unusual writer's strange journey.