The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki (1924)

The advent of this last volume of hitherto uncollected works, pulled together by the author's sister, must have been exciting news for devotees of Saki. I wonder whether the advance notices contained the information that not only would it include some of his last short prose pieces, and two short plays, but as well the nearest thing there was to a major work yet to be published, his very fine three-act play The Watched Pot. The short prose pieces are variable in their wit, but always entertaining. The short plays only allow scope for minor elaboration, but still amuse. The real star of these proceedings is the big play. It is set in a Somersetshire country house with a young gentleman at its head who is extremely eligible. However, Trevor is under the thumb of a fabulously domineering mother. Hortensia, likened by Saki to a 'permeating dust-storm', is running the estate in all but name. She is fiercely Victorian, not to be messed with, and has an iron in every fire. She is a huge supporter of Trevor's uncle Ludovic, who lives with them and is interested in getting into parliament. He isn't prepared to venture it under current circumstances, given that Hortensia, as family matriarch, would attempt to control the whole proceeding. His only hope is that Trevor will marry, meaning that his new wife would be installed in the house, relegating Hortensia to the dower house and relative obscurity. The action of the play takes place over a few days' stay by a group of young women, all of whom, in one way or another, would love that position. There is a fine counter-twist at the end, and along the way the wit sparkles as all of these threads of plot wind round and round one another, with strong personalities, hidden enmities and sneaking strategies all attempting to fox and outdo one another. By way of potential casting, one thing is almost certain - Eileen Atkins would make a superb Hortensia, though it would be unfamiliar to see her defeated in the end. Also included in this volume is a long memoir of her brother by Saki's sister Ethel, which is revealing of their shared, rather wrangled history. They were sent to aunts in Barnstaple when their mother died and their father went back to India. These aunts were huge personalities and often at loggerheads - I strongly suspect the elder one of being the model for Hortensia. The tension and lunacy which this vying between them produced, on top of their Victorian bans on certain freedoms, and their truly comic oddness of character, go a long way toward explaining both Saki's depictions of ogres and dominators and his frustration-induced wit in undermining them. This finale of a magnificent career, published 8 years after the demise of its author, firmly attests his genius.

Commonplace Book

'"Ancestors will happen in the best-intentioned families. Every social sin or failing is excused nowadays under the plea of an artistic temperament or a Sicilian grandmother. As poor Lady Cloutsham once told me, as soon as her children found out that a Hungarian lady of blameless moral character had married into the family somewhere in the reign of the Georges, they considered themselves absolved from any further attempt to distinguish between good and evil - except by way of expressing a general preference for the latter. When her youngest boy was at Winchester he made such unblushing use of the Hungarian strain in his blood that he was known as the Blue Danube. "That," said Lady Cloutsham, "is what comes of letting young children read Debrett and Darwin.""'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Flannelled Fool by TC Worsley (1967)

This is a plainly written early autobiography, remarkable for its discussion of homosexuality in the context of British public schools, both as a student and a teacher. Worsley's father was an extraordinary man, an athlete and womaniser who was one of those never-quite-satisfied types, always pushing for more, or for something different. The astonishing thing, given this personality profile, is that his early life was spent, on the whole most successfully, in the church! His charm is the probable reason; he was seen as an asset for reasons other than those of belief. The effect on his children, and particularly the author, of this testy, niggled, distant person was pretty numbing. Then the inevitable explosion of boredom and wrongdoing occurred and all the family's lives were turned upside down. He left, disgraced in the church, and was not much seen by them again. Worsley also recounts his time at school, echoing his father in terms of athletic prowess, and very slowly, with painful innocence and childishness, discovering his true nature of preferring males sexually. Though the substance of this material is not new, it is still fascinating and welcomely plainly put. He moves on to Cambridge, and thence to a junior mastership at a public school. There he causes a stir among the more traditional types by advocating modern types of tutorship, teaching and house-mastering. Supported by the more liberal members of staff and bolstered by a head who is sufficiently diplomatic to work around all the combatants' foibles, he achieves headway in some issues alongside some notable defeats. This part of the text highlights a minor issue for me, which is one of the suspicion of re-creation of events in re-ordered form to serve the purposes of drama. Thus two masters who are fighting catch one another at the same time trotting up to the head's office to blab, and both do a peculiar choreographed little curlicue and head off sheepishly in different directions. In another instance, the head returns a copy of a disputed Lawrence novel to Worsley on a silver salver with a pithy note attached. All too artfully convenient for my liking - he openly admits to the wish to alter events to make a more dramatically appealing narrative at another point. Otherwise, though, there is an admirable self-critical candour in this book. He's quite happy to admit to feeling profound interest in some of the better-looking or more seemingly needy young men at the school. Some of this will be a little difficult to read for some, but I think most of what he says has a refreshing honesty about it which can only help to make clear how filaments of emotion and longing can reverberate in these hothouse circumstances. So,with its portrait of the young post-war generation discovering the modern in their dislocated world, of the developing consciousness of left-wing politics that was prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s, this narrative also openly depicts taboo subjects with engaging simplicity.

Commonplace Book

'...Then I perceived that all such weakenings are the result of self-pity, the wish to be understood by a world which is interested intensely in a million things but not at all in understanding the bruised hearts of you and me.'

from Despoiling Venus (first part) by Jack Lindsay

Commonplace Book

'"I might break Sparrowby's neck."

"No one could have any reasonable objection to that course; Sparrowby is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...Government by democracy means government of the mentally unfit by the mentally mediocre..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...He comes into the category of those who are born to command."

"Possibly. His trouble so far is that he hasn't been able to find anyone who was born to obey him..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki