A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (1939)

[Reading this brought on an extra urge, which was devising further Compton-Burnettesque titles as an extension of her bibliography. Each one which was convincing enough I will scatter through this summary in square brackets just for fun. I've allotted them each a year of publication and have managed to extend the author's career (and lifetime!) by quite a margin. We'll start with The Guessed and the Glimpsed 1973]. The main tonality of this instalment in the C-B lists is no different from those which have preceded it. [Destinies and Histories 1976]. There is still the late Victorian/Edwardian family; they still bicker endlessly, loving all the contretemps flickering between them, picking each other up and revealing faultlines with agitated glee. [Going Without Saying: An Autobiography in Dialogue 1978]. These cerebral scenes still have occasionally physical consequences where interlocutors are shoved aside, people run out of the house 'never to return', doors are kicked - bashing people's heads. [The Most and the Least (a magnum opus of 660 pages) 1981]. In other words, the fuming regurgitative spiral of interplay is the mode here as it always seems to have been. [The Exposed and the Excused 1983]. But nevertheless there has been a revolution. The change is in how much Compton-Burnett tells us via authorial interpolation. [A Pauper and His Plenty 1986]. Whereas the previous few novels have seemed to betray the author's wish to develop the project of scraping out everything except dialogue, this one tells a different story. [Yeasayers and Naysayers (a tiny novel of 76 pages) 1991]. That scheme has been dispensed with here; she gives us a great deal more in her own voice, describing how people react, how and where they move, the looks in their faces, and so on - the 'usual fare' of novel-writing. Now what has prompted this change? [The Moulded and the Marred 1993]. Did that particular effort reach a 'natural' end, or was this a specific piece which needed a more traditional approach? Will the all-dialogue project be taken up again in the next book? [A Firebrand and Her Foil 1996]. We'll see, but I will admit to the after-feeling of a great deal more filled-outness in this piece, and there's a form of satisfaction in it. [Compton-Burnett-reanimes has reached the grand old age of 112 by the time that that last mentioned novel has been published. I think I'll keep her going well on into her second century as good ideas for titles present themselves].

Commonplace Book

'"Dignity and decency depend up to a point on money," said Clement.

"Indeed that is true," said Dudley. "You have only to go round the cottages. It seems absurd to say that money is sordid, when you see the things that really are."'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 4)

Commonplace Book

'"How did you hear?" said Clement.

"Well, well, little birds flit about the chairs of people who are tied to them. And it would be rather a sad thing if they did not, as they would be the last to hear so much, when it seems that they ought to be the first. So the news came, I won't say how."

"I will do so," said her father. "It came through a tradesman's lad, who comes to our house after yours, or who comes to it on the way to yours and to-day chose to come again on his way back."

"So Jellamy was the bird," said Mark.

"Well, anyhow we heard," said his aunt. 'But I should have liked to hear it from one of you, coming running down to tell me."

"We should have been down in a few minutes," said Justine.

"Would you, dear? But the minutes passed and nobody came. And so we came up to hear for ourselves."

"A bold step for anyone tied to a chair," muttered Clement.'

from A Family and a Fortune by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter 4)

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)

Daughters and Sons by I. Compton-Burnett (1937)

This is unexceptional in the sense of being consistent with the rest of the author's bibliography to this date. But, of course, any reader of Compton-Burnett knows that her work, compared to any other writer of her era, or any other, with the possible exception of Ronald Firbank, is utterly extraordinary. This difference is most exemplified in reference to the interpersonal atmosphere between her characters, pictured by what they say to one another. These novels are Beckett for an earlier generation: stripped down to dialogue only, with only the slightest authorial interference where absolutely necessary (probably a total of about five pages of these two hundred and ninety). But not only does the whole direction derive from the fact that speech is the means, which is very unusual. The tone is equally so: a criss-crossing of tangential comment is made between the characters, taking each other up on greater or lesser points, reframing contentiously so as to bitchily challenge, uncharitably agreeing with the original statement perhaps, or most candidly not. Grabbing the original statement and referring it to someone else with vicious intent. And all very syntactically complex and spare - the reader's mind must dig around for intended meanings. In this one, an 1890s family is dominated by an intense matriarch. The son is an author; his wife is long dead, but his four children reside in the house, ranging in age from late 20s to 11. The unmarried daughter is also resident, and manages the household forcefully. They bat and swat one another with savage truths (and some untruths) whilst trying to stay afloat in the tight atmosphere. Various governesses come and go, more or less exhausted by the thick air. Their few friends, arranged in tight groups of their own with all sorts of powerplays and attitudes reigning, visit from time to time. They refer to the intensity of the atmosphere of the central family, but in reality are just as much so themselves. Which begs the observation, which I've made before and can't get away from, that these novels' one difficulty is their lack of differentiation. Compton-Burnett has a style like a parlour-game, it applies to everyone, and so the depth of the extraordinariness is undercut whilst being emphasised. The climax of this one comes when a rumour is spread by a subsidiary character that the matriarch's will has preferred the tutor to her two grandsons, a young man who has befriended her in her last days, seeming to be her only true friend amongst an ungrateful family. He reveals himself to be less than noble after her death and the rumour of the will, by not reconferring the family wealth back onto it, instead saying he will keep half for himself and marry the eldest of the son's daughters. She is so needful of escape from the family's clutches that she agrees. When the will is finally formally revealed, the inheritance is not as was rumoured; he has not only not inherited, but has looked grasping and ignoble to boot. This also calls for a question to be asked about Compton-Burnett's plot: how could such a wily character risk so much on only a rumour? Surely someone embroiled in such minute teasings and stabbings would have caution as a byword? So, this wildly entertaining niggle-storm was ever so slightly undone by obviousness.

Commonplace Book

'"What does Dr Chaucer call you, Stephen, as he always calls Alfred Marcon?"

"He never speaks to me; I have seen to that."

"What does he think of your seeing to it?"

"He does not know; I have seen to that too."'

from Daughters and Sons by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter IV)

A House and its Head by I. Compton-Burnett (1935)

This starts like many of her others. One is trapped under a too-tight bedspread, locked into a Victorian family's bitter, swiping atmosphere under a patriarch who is all-outdoing: "you may have an objection, or a comment; I know that you have no right to either, and don't know yourself sufficiently well to be able to make it. I know you far better, and understand that this attempting to comment or object is just a function of your needlessness" is how I'd put it, summing up Compton-Burnett's lead character here, Duncan Edgeworth. This feels surprisingly like a retread of previous efforts for the first half of this book - for the first time reading this author a slight sense of boredom overcame me. His daughters are struggling under him, as is his tired wife, and an orphaned male cousin who lives with the family. The people of their very tight village are similarly caught in the web of Duncan's all-requiring hyperattention (and a few other toxic webs of their own). But of course, the author, in her usual way, has them all react in ways in which they attempt to gain liberation - bitching, contesting, attempting to intimidate each other as well as him. Very few of these attempts succeed, because most of these people are extraordinarily hardy, necessarily so, in these super-accentuated circumstances. These stymied mutual harrowings, though now familiar, are still entertaining, and as usual expressed in terms of profound politeness on the whole, though occasionally they have a startling directness, just to mix things up. The veiled fight travels through a lot of plot: the wearing-down death of his wife; the surprise selection of a new young one; the birth of a son; the discovery of the new wife's mutiny with the orphaned cousin of which the son is the result; her banishment; the taking on of a third wife, an older woman who has lived with the family as governess and help for most of the daughters' lives; her pregnancy; the gas-death of the first son in sinister circumstances; the suspicion that Duncan and his third wife may have done away with the boy, who, after all, was not either of their child, in order to guarantee succession rights to their as yet unborn one; the marriage of the orphaned cousin and the youngest daughter; the extraordinary revelation, to us as readers, but otherwise only between a tough village matriarch and this youngest daughter, that the youngest daughter has conspired with a disaffected maid in the murder of the boy; Duncan is in the room when this revelation is embarked upon - has he heard?; the splitting of the youngest daughter and the orphaned cousin's marriage because of a lesser misdemeanour of hers; its eventual reconstitution for monetary reasons only with the family all coming together again under one roof. And everyone lived happily ever after! By the time this astonishing ground is traversed in the second half, Compton-Burnett has gripped the reader thoroughly, completely re-establishing her power of compulsion in the mind.

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'"...Yes, Almeric writes that all is well with them. To us it can only be well in a certain sense. We do not identify ourselves with their course."

"It is a pity you cannot have them to stay : I see it is hardly possible."

"I know you do feel it a pity. But it is not in the question in your father's lifetime."

"We could tell you when he is going away, to save you the tedium of waiting for his death."'

from A House and Its Head by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter XVI)

Commonplace Book

'"Well, Nance," said Mrs. Bode, "I remember you the heroine of a like occasion, as if it were yesterday."

"People who remember things, always remember them as if they were yesterday," said Cassie. "I remember it as if it were twenty-six years ago."

"Miss Jekyll's simple unflinchingness!" said Beatrice, with a smile.'

from A House and Its Head by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter XI)

More Women Than Men by I. Compton-Burnett (1933)

This is the first Compton-Burnett that I have enjoyed with out-and-out relish. There is the sense in this one that she's attacked the jugular just that little bit more firmly and assuredly. I think I also like the fact that it isn't set strictly in a family environment, rather in that of a girls' school. Josephine Napier is the headmistress. She has very strong and complicated relationships with her team of mistresses and the occasional master. She also has her gay brother's son living with her as an adoptee, and receives regular visits from that brother and his younger waspish partner. Erupting into the scene are an old friend who has also been a rival in love and her young daughter. The author's torturous attitude to conversation and interrelation and what they bring out in people, as well as what they don't, or what they just hint at, takes all this up in a whirlwind of words, depositing some things along the way, keeping others stirred thoroughly, and consistently re-arranging both the overt and the covert angles of each character toward the others. Fascinatingly, there is a point reached in all these jealousies, seeming altruisms, polite allowings, barbed vicious comments and tangled grips of power-play where a simple, physical, frightening fact is shown up, causing a death, witnessed by only two of them, which ripples a tiny bit in the ensuing couple of pages, and then is never mentioned again. Such is the Compton-Burnett insistence on the implied that one is consistently wondering whether one or other of them will bring it up veiledly, or be called to account by the other by implication, or will refer obliquely to it whilst discussing another matter. But they never do. Which is like life, I guess. These people are generally not like life, they are much too accentuated, which has been a sticking point for me in the past, but I have to admit that this time I cared a lot less, because there was something viscerally entertaining in all this lather of contest.

Men and Wives by I. Compton-Burnett (1931)

This accomplished novel has all the hallmarks I am beginning to associate with the author. It has a severe, biting, theatrical small scene where a group of very intense characters have a tendency to bounce one another with surprises, be they lies or truth. The characters in this instance almost flay one another with home truths, all expressed infinitely politely, or at least with an infinite gloss of politeness. Compton-Burnett's theme here is suicide and murder on the outside, but it's really about means of control. This is realised in contrasting ways and exemplified by two main characters, Harriet and Godfrey, who, though married, and well aware of each other's frame of reference in the world, are also at odds temperamentally. While Harriet is weak externally, and prey to nervous tension, she is able to control forcefully a lot of what goes on around her. Godfrey is externally hale and voluble, but temptable and dithering within, and a consistent changer of the story to suit his intentions - he always seems to know that some wholesale change of fortune or interpretation was what he had been thinking all along. The standard Compton-Burnett caveats apply - this book is no more easy reading than the Dalai Lama is a bullfighter.

Commonplace Book

'"....Somehow I cannot throw it off, that her being away should make so little difference. I could almost feel a little disappointed."

"Of course, it is awful to see human happiness," said Rachel.

"I think you know that was not my meaning."

"That is what I always mean."

"It is not always safe to judge other people by ourselves."

"I have always found it absolutely reliable."

"I think you are in jest," said Agatha with a forbearing smile, "or at any rate between jest and earnest. Your sense of humour is too exuberant."

"Is it? I had hoped it was subtle."

"Well, at any rate it runs away with you."

"Runs away!" said Rachel. "It must be exuberant."

"Are you two quarrelling?" said Geraldine.

"No, it takes two to quarrel," said Rachel.

"Well, what are you so deep in discussing?"

"My sense of humour. Your sister is describing it."

"Oh, sense of humour! I agree it does not make one popular," said Geraldine.

"A sense of humour need not be unkind," said Agatha.

"Doesn't it have to be just a little?" said Rachel.

"One may point one's shafts without realising it," said Geraldine. "When one has a selection of them, it is difficult to remember which are the sharpened ones."

"All the great instances of humour are mingled with tenderness and tolerance," said Agatha.

"Yes, that is what I meant. Only mingled with them. Just a little unkind," said Rachel.'

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

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

'"...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)

Brothers and Sisters by I. Compton-Burnett (1929)

This is Ivy Compton-Burnett's third novel and very typical. The thing to reckon with in her writing is the unreality. These deceptively quiet novels are full of characters displaying their frustrations with tight circumstances, usually associated with family. In this case the core is, extraordinarily, incest. Though unwitting transgression it must be affirmed. Her people inhabit a seething world where speech is a swordfight and amused irritation and its harsher darker companion-feeling the instigators. But the way this plays out is not what can really be called realistic, other than in its essence, perhaps. The play of it is theatrical, over-stark - "not the way real people behave or speak". This, by rights, should make it ultimately unsatisfying, and to some extent that's true, but there is an odd pleasure to be gained, mainly based in fascination with Ivy's originality of craft. What an unusual effort these books are. I can see why they are not popular, and conversely why she is lionised among a tiny sector of the reading population. Certainly the feeling is that she deserves notice, but so do her faults - she has virtually no universality in the ordinary sense at all, the sense that helps a writer survive down the ages. But I can't help it - I'm intrigued..........

Commonplace Book

'".....I must go home to see about the party's being a simple one, to be in keeping with the parlour, and with your bereavement; though I don't mean that was a second thought. But I do want to be loyal to the parlour to the last."

"You had better leave us out," said Robin, "to be loyal to the size of the parlour, and to the desire of your guests to talk about us."'

from Brothers and Sisters by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter X)

Commonplace Book

'"...Cousin Christian is a man whom anything that came out, or might come out, would leave simply as he was. I declare that he is. I say that about him."

"It goes without saying, doesn't it?" said Judith.

"I am glad it didn't have to this time," said Julian. "I can hardly bear that sort of thing to go without saying."'

from Brothers and Sisters by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter V)

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'...Women he carefully did not despise, regarding the precaution as becoming to an Englishman and a gentleman, and not considering whether it implied a higher opinion of women or himself. It was also true that no one had broken him in, if by this he meant that all had given up effort to improve him, few had loved him, and none were at ease in his presence.'

from Brothers and Sisters by I. Compton-Burnett (Chapter I)