Monthly Archives: November 2024

Book review

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912

The Lost World is an unashamedly escapist adventure story. Although published shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, there is barely a hint of the looming conflict. There is one brief glimpse of the real world – when celebrating the success of the stories of Malone, the plucky young reporter for the Daily Gazette, his editor tells him “What a three column article for the paper! What a foundation for a career! A correspondentship in the next great war might be within my reach.” As with so many other texts of this period, the inevitability of a future ‘great war’ is accepted as a matter of fact. I also find it interesting that it was referred to as ‘the great war’ even before it had started! – great here is simply a reference to scale rather than the later suggestion that it was glorious in any way.

You will be familiar with what happens in The Lost World because it is the source of many of the tropes of the genre to which it gives its name. Malone, the reporter mentioned above, asks his editor for an assignment to somewhere exotic and challenging in order to impress Gladys, the woman he loves. In rejecting his marriage proposal she tells him that she will only marry a man of action and achievement:

“He must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife’s life of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul,”

Malone takes this rejection at face value, and decides to find a way of meeting her expectations. His editor is sceptical as to whether such great deeds and strange experiences can be found any more:

Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very—very exalted. I’m afraid the day for this sort of thing is rather past. The expense of the ‘special meesion’ business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in any case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would command public confidence who would get such an order. The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there’s no room for romance anywhere.

The mention of an ‘experienced man with a name to command public confidence’ gives him an idea. He suggests that Malone approaches Professor Challenger for a place on his next expedition. Challenger is a blimpish, cartoon-like figure who challenges to a fist-fight anyone who cast doubt on his account of his recent expedition to the Amazon, where he claims to have discovered a lost world where dinosaurs still roam.

At a rowdy public meeting Challenger announces he is going back to the Amazon, and Malone volunteers to join him, along with Professor Summerlee, a zoologist who has publicly questioned Challenger’s claims and Lord John Roxton, a professional adventurer. It is not long before the Atlantic has been crossed and the party of explorers sets off up the Amazon in search of the Lost World. Their party, along with the ubiquitous native guides, quickly reaches the isolated plateau, cut off from the surrounding countryside, where the prehistoric wildlife is to be found. There’s an economy to the narrative – not much time is wasted with exposition, speculation or character development. The cliffs to the plateau cannot be climbed, but the party is able to scale a nearby spire of rock. Using a tree as a bridge they cross over to the plateau.

A treacherous guide, seeking revenge on Roxton for a grudge held from a previous adventure, pushes the tree-bridge off the pinnacle, stranding the party of four, who have no choice but to set off and explore this lost world. They encounter dinosaurs and other animals, insects and plants previously thought extinct, many of which are highly dangerous. It’s not just the wildlife they have to be cautious about, because while Malone is off one night exploring the plateau’s central lake, his companions are taken prisoner by some ape-men, referred to by Malone (acting as the novel’s narrator) as the missing link. Roxton escapes and with Malone’s help rescues the others, together with some indigenous cave people who are at war with the ape-men. A battle royale ensues in which the white men’s guns tip the bitter long-running struggle in the favour of the cave men, wiping out the ape-men and enslaving their women and children.

Eventually the explorers find a tunnel leading off the plateau and on to civilisation. The novel ends with a rerun of the public meeting in which Challenger’s claims about the lost world are repeated and once again challenged, the difference being when he produces a young pterodactyl as proof, triggering a small riot. The novel doesn’t quite end there. Two final scenes close the show. First, Malone returns to Gladys, who had married a banker in his absence, the very opposite of the man of action she described. I think the reader is meant to conclude women are fickle from this scene, but my reaction was that she was letting Malone down gently. At a private celebratory dinner Roxton then reveals that he has brought back £200,000 worth of diamonds from the expedition, making them all rich. With nothing to keep him in London Malone he decides to accompany Roxton back to the lost world. If this was the cinema the ending would be a great set-up for Return to the Lost World, but Conan Doyle obviously thought better of the idea (Hollywood disagreed, and Return to the Lost World is actually a real film!)

You may be wondering why I am reading Edwardian adventure novels? I think the simple answer is that they give an insight into how people – not everyone of course, but in particular the educated novel-reading and -writing classes – were thinking about the Empire and Britain’s place in the world at the close of the Victorian era. There was a nervousness about a decline in military strength relative to countries like Germany, France and Austro-Hungary. The Boer War had exposed serious weaknesses in the strength of the British army, particularly if conscription were ever to be needed. The trade unions were flexing their muscles and had set up the Labour Party. The world was changing and the extent to which these changes were reflected in the books people wrote and read at the time, and how their feelings about these changes are worked through in the stories, fascinates me. The Lost World is mainly an exercise in escaping the chaos that was about the erupt across Europe – but it doesn’t always succeed. When Malone and companions are fighting for their lives in the decisive battle between ape-men and cave-men, the struggle is a visceral matter of life and death:

For an hour or more after we entered the wood, there was a desperate struggle in which for a time we hardly held our own. Springing out from among the scrub the ape-men with huge clubs broke in upon the Indians and often felled three or four of them before they could be speared. Their frightful blows shattered everything upon which they fell. One of them knocked Summerlee’s rifle to matchwood and the next would have crushed his skull had an Indian not stabbed the beast to the heart….Once our allies broke under the pressure, and had it not been for the execution done by our rifles they would certainly have taken to their heels. But they were gallantly rallied by their old chief and came on with such a rush that the ape-men began in turn to give way… I was emptying my magazine as quick as I could fire, and on the further flank we heard the continuous cracking of our companion’s rifles.

War is brutal and lethal, as Europe (and Conan Doyle) were about to fight out.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912

Aside
Book review

Hag-Seed, by Margaret Atwood, 2013

Hag-Seed was part of the Hogarth Press’s ambitious project to commission authors to rewrite and reimagine Shakespeare’s plays as novels. It was an interesting project that Hogarth planned to coincide with the four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. But it does mean that Atwood was commissioned to write the book. It’s not a labour of love or a story she felt compelled to tell. When artists are commissioned to paint a portrait nobody thinks this sullies the purity of their creativity, but when authors take on a similar project there is a slight whiff of commercialism that leaves a bad taste and a lingering thought that the author might not be fully committed to the project. Would Atwood have written this novel if there wasn’t the promise of a cheque at the end of it? Was she at her best, or just getting the project done?

Briefly, Hag-Seed is a retelling of The Tempest. Felix Phillips, a theatre producer, is working on a production of The Tempest as part of the Makeshiweg Theatre festival, when he is unexpectedly sacked and replaced by Tony Price, his assistant. He disappears from public view in a form of exile, living in a secluded shack miles from anywhere. Felix lost his daughter when she was three, and to keep her memory alive he imagines she is with him in his shack, keeping him company.

After several years he secures a teaching position at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute as part of a literacy programme. His work proves an unexpected success. Four years into the programme, having successfully produced Macbeth, Richard the Third and Julius Caesar, Felix ambitiously decides to stage The Tempest. Fortune casts an opportunity for revenge in his way – Tony is now a politician and plans to visit the prison to see the literacy programme in action, totally unaware of Felix’s involvement. The novel climaxes in a chaotic performance of the play with Felix being restored to his former position

There are multiple versions of The Tempest in this novel. Attwood provides a synopsis of the original play at the end of the text – to be honest, if it were needed it would have been better placed at the beginning. There is then the production Felix is working on when he is deposed from his role as artistic director of the Makeshiweg theatre festival by his assistant, Tony. Attwood mocks modernist staging of the play in which “Ariel, he’d decided, would be played by a transvestite on stilts who’d transform into a giant firefly at significant moments. His Caliban would be a scabby street person – black or maybe Native – and a paraplegic as well, pushing himself around the stage on an oversized skateboard.”

The third version of the play is the one Felix inhabits – his story closely follows the plot of the play. In this version Felix is Prospero, deposed Duke of Milan, (Felix applies for this teaching position using the name Mr Duke) his daughter is both Miranda and Ariel, and other roles are filled by his friends, associates and acquaintances. Attwood doesn’t follow the plot of the play mechanically – there isn’t an exact correspondence between Felix’s life and the events of the play – but there is a broadly similar story arc. Caliban is one of the most interesting characters in the Tempest, but he is the one character who does not have a clear equivalent in the novel. Aspects of his role are taken by the prisoners, but they are perfect inmates who engage in the dramatic process, learn their lines, obey Felix’s rule about only swearing using curses found in the play (not something you would get professional actors to comply with I suspect!) and never once threatening any form of rebellion or misbehaviour.

A fourth version of the play is performed by the inmates of the Fletcher County Correctional Institute who participate in the literacy programme. In fact the inmates put on two versions of the play – one which is recorded and broadcast throughout the prison and another ‘immersive experience’ version (the fifth) acted out while everyone is watching the video of the first (or is it the fourth?) version.

The initial ending of the novel falls a little flat. Felix’s cunning plan to get his old job back succeeds flawlessly. End of story. No possible recriminations or attempts at revenge from the powerful people that he has crossed and bested. Attwood then uses an interesting theatrical device to give the reader an improved, secondary ending. The inmate players are invited to present their ideas about what happens to the play’s characters (and by inference the lives of their equivalents in Felix’s world) after the play ends. They come up with some really imaginative ideas that I thought showed Attwood finally breaking free from the constraints of the structure she has imposed on herself.

Hag-Seed, by Margaret Atwood, 2013

Aside
Book review

Lost Horizons, by James Hilton, 1933

Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizons, is in many ways an unconventional adventure story. It is almost completely devoid of action scenes – there’s no fighting with ghastly foreigners; situations in which primitive natives are impressed by the explorers’ gadgets are conspicuous by their absence; there are no encounters with wildlife, traditional or Jurassic. It does admittedly share some DNA with the classic Victorian Lost World adventure story. It opens conventionally for example, with a complex framing device in which a story is told by one traveller to another about a tale they once heard:

“Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had.”

It takes some time before we penetrate these layers and get to the central story, in which four Western travellers, escaping from violent civil unrest in China, are taken by airplane to a secret valley in the Himalayas. Here they discover Shangri-La, a hidden and mysterious community governed by a monastery populated by enigmatic monks. Shangri-La has a secret – there is something about the valley that gives its inhabitants extremely long lives (we never discover what causes this effect, but it only applies to people who come to live in the valley, not the indigenous residents who barely feature).

The novel’s central character and narrator is Conway, an Allan Quartermain-type figure. Conway is a diplomat who is still haunted by his experiences in the First World War:

Twelve years earlier he had grown to hate the perils of trench warfare in France, and had several times avoided death by declining to attempt valorous impossibilities. Even his D.S.O. had been won, not so much by physical courage, as by a certain hardly developed technique of endurance.

Conway is accompanied by his junior envoy, Mallinson, Barnard, an American businessman, and Miss Brinklow, a missionary. Mallinson is keen to return to the outside world, but eventually learns that there is a price to Shangri-La’s gift of long life – once you go there you are never allowed to leave. While the others gradually come to terms with their life sentences, albeit in a very comfortable cage, Mallinson plots his escape, and finally persuades Conway to help him. While we are left to guess at Mallinson’s eventual fate, the last we hear of Conway is that he is trying to return to the remote and inaccessible valley.

Lost Horizons looks back nostalgically to the great adventure novels of the turn of the century when there were believed to be still undiscovered parts of the world. In those novels the focus was Africa or South America, but Hilton sets his story in an even more remote area, the unexplored zone between Nepal, Tibet and China.  

“there came over him, too, as he stared at that superb mountain, a glow of satisfaction that there were such places still left on earth, distant, inaccessible, as yet unhumanized. The icy rampart of the Karakorams was now more striking than ever against the northern sky, which had become mouse-coloured and sinister; the peaks had a chill gleam; utterly majestic and remote, their very namelessness had dignity.

While British explorers and adventurers from Victorian novels would often treat the ‘foreigners’ they meet with contempt, Conway is a much more mature, might I even say liberal, traveller:

Conway had no race or colour prejudice, and it was an affectation for him to pretend, as he sometimes did in clubs and first-class railway carriages, that he set any particular store on the “whiteness” of a lobster-red face under a topee.

A persistent theme in the novel is the idea that Shangri-La will provide a safe haven for the coming global war. The idea that Europe was going to erupt into a war zone was common place at the turn of the century, but Hilton is prescient in his prediction that the same thing was going to happen again, this time on a global scale. Barnard, one of the kidnapped travellers who we eventually find out is a Wall Street financier on the run from the police, wanted for an unspecified financial crime, presumably embezzlement, is happy to stay in hiding because he believes the global economy is close to collapse. The head monk, Perrault, who established the monastery in the late eighteenth century, sees the speed of technological change happening in the world as likely to lead to war on an industrial scale:

“he saw the nations strengthening, not in wisdom, but in vulgar passions and the will to destroy; he saw their machine power multiplying until a single-weaponed man might have matched a whole army of the Grand Monarque. And he perceived that when they had filled the land and sea with ruin, they would take to the air… “But that was not all. He foresaw a time when men, exultant in the technique of homicide, would rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing would be in danger, every book and picture and harmony, every treasure garnered through two millenniums, the small, the delicate, the defenseless —all would be lost”

Perrault describes the coming war as a storm, and is clear that it will be an apocalypse of unprecedented scale and ferocity:

“The storm… this storm you talked of…”

“It will be such a one, my son, as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are levelled in a vast chaos. Such was my vision when Napoleon was still a name unknown; and I see it now, more clearly with each hour. Do you say I am mistaken?”

Conway answered: “No, I think you may be right. A similar crash came once before, and then there were the Dark Ages lasting five hundred years.”

“The parallel is not quite exact. For those Dark Ages were not really so very dark—they were full of flickering lanterns, and even if the light had gone out of Europe altogether, there were other rays, literally from China to Peru, at which it could have been rekindled. But the Dark Ages that are to come will cover the whole world in a single pall; there will be neither escape nor sanctuary, save such as are too secret to be found or too humble to be noticed. And Shangri-La may hope to be both of these. The airman bearing loads of death to the great cities will not pass our way, and if by chance he should, he may not consider us worth a bomb.”

One inconsistency in the novel troubled me perhaps more than it should. The four travellers were kidnapped and taken to Shangri-La. Why? If people there don’t die for centuries, why the need for an infusion of fresh blood? The population of the valley may have been dwindling but we are told it is regularly topped up by explorers accidentally wandering into or near the valley. Conway and friends don’t bring any much-needed skills or experience and there’s every chance that Mallinson in particular will react violently to his kidnapping and life imprisonment, never to see family and friends again. He certainly doesn’t see Shangri-La as any kind of paradise:

There’s something dark and evil about it. The whole business has been like that, from the beginning—the way we were brought here, without reason at all, by some madman—and the way we’ve been detained since, on one excuse or another. But the most frightful thing of all—to me—is the effect it’s had on you.”

I appreciate I am over-thinking this. This is really a comic-book story in novel form that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Hilton’s characterisation rest on stereotypes and the central conceit is more than a bit silly. The idea of a lost civilisation hidden from the outside world and containing secret treasures is a key feature of many late Victorian novels as the British empire began to approach the full extent of its reach and people came to realise there probably weren’t many more lost horizons in front of them.

Attitudes to sex in Lost Horizons

There are surprisingly frequent and explicit references to sex in Lost Horizons. Hilton has an interesting approach to this topic. References to sex in the novel are usually tangential and tentative but nevertheless surprisingly frequent and ultimately unambiguous. Traditionally adventure stories would skirt around the issue of sex, usually not mentioning it at all. But in Lost Horizons it is a part of people’s lives, just not one that can be talked about using everyday language. Instead euphemism is the order of the day. Take this example in which the missionary, Miss Brinklow, is discussed. Conway tells us that

“it was to Miss Brinklow that he spoke first. He realized that she was neither young nor pretty —negative virtues, but immensely helpful ones in such difficulties as those in which they might soon find themselves.”

Indirectly phrased this may be, but Conway is clearly saying that Miss Brinklow’s age and lack of attractiveness is going to helpful in the circumstances that they may soon find themselves – in other words that she is less likely to be raped because of her age and looks.

Later there is this exchange between Chang, their mysterious host at the monastery, and Conway, about sexual desire, and whether it can be a source of conflict in Shangri-La:

“Quite often,” replied Chang with a broad smile. “The lamas, of course, are immune, and so are most of us when we reach the riper years, but until then we are as other men, except that I think we can claim to behave more reasonably. And this gives me the opportunity, Mr. Conway, of assuring you that the hospitality of Shangri-La is of a comprehensive kind. Your friend Mr. Barnard has already availed himself of it.”

Conway returned the smile. “Thanks,” he answered dryly. “I’ve no doubt he has, but my own inclinations are not—at the moment—so assertive

How wonderfully euphemistic. ‘The hospitality of Shangri-La is of a comprehensive kind” – which translates as ‘the women in the village are available for sex if your urges become uncontrollable’. Barnard has already been down there getting some; Conway is for the time being under control.

There is more than a hint of homo-eroticism in the relationship between Conway and the much younger and more inexperienced Mallinson:

Conway reached his hand towards Mallinson’s, and the answering grip was hot and eagerly affectionate. Mallinson went on: “I don’t suppose you realize it, but I’ve been terribly alone these last few weeks. Nobody seemed to be caring a damn about the only thing that was really important—Barnard and Miss Brinklow had reasons of a kind, but it was pretty awful when I found YOU against me.”

However, they get a grip on themselves and later on both men compete for the affections of the silent, doll-like Lo-Tsen. Lo-Tsen is a Manchu princess who entered Shangri-la in 1884 as a girl of 18. Although she is now 70 she still looks 18. She is used by Chang and the monks as a way of persuading arrivals to accept their new lives in Shangri-La and we are told she is content in this role, although she is only ever seen through the eyes of other, male characters. Mallinson drops heavy hints that his relationship with her has become physical. When asked by Conway how he knows she will help him escape, he replies:

Mallinson half-turned away, his face lit with a grave shyness. “Because I DO know… Perhaps you’ll think less of me for it… but I DO know. I’m afraid you never properly understood her, Conway. She was cold on the surface, but that was the result of living here—it had frozen all the warmth. But the warmth was there.”

“To be unfrozen?”

“Yes… that would be one way of putting it.”

“And she’s YOUNG, Mallinson—you are so SURE of that?”

Mallinson answered softly: “God, yes—she’s just a girl. I was terribly sorry for her, and we were both attracted, I suppose. I don’t see that it’s anything to be ashamed of.

Again it is not particularly hard to de-code Hilton’s euphemisms – these are really single entendres, in which unfreezing her warmth is unquestionably Mallinson’s way of telling Conway that he has had sex with her, and he follows this certainty up with an assurance that her body is that of a young woman.

Novels of this kind would often be read by children, so to find such frankness about sex and sexuality is unusual. You normally find more carefully coded language to allow room for ambiguity about the nature of characters’ relationships. Here instead hot-blooded Englishmen are expected to have sex with native women and are largely unapologetic about it.

Lost Horizons, by James Hilton, 1933

Aside
Book review

Goodbye, Mr Chips, by James Hilton, 1934

I knew ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips‘ from the faithful-to-the-book and gentle 1939 film version of the story, featuring Robert Donat. (A later film version, a musical no less, starring Peter O’Toole bears very little relation to Hilton’s story). It is a charmingly nostalgic portrait of a retired schoolmaster looking back over his life, but has some unexpected depths to its discussion of imperialism and jingoism.

Mr Chipping is a classics teacher (Latin and Greek) at Brookfield, ‘a good school of the second rank‘. Brookfield is a public (that is, fee-paying) boarding school set in the English countryside:

Across the road behind a rampart of ancient elms lay Brookfield, russet under its autumn mantle of creeper. A group of eighteenth-century buildings centred upon a quadrangle, and there were acres of playing fields beyond; then came the small dependent village and the open fen country.

Told in retrospect from his retirement and old age, Goodbye Mr Chips is his recollection of the years spent teaching generations of young boys. Cleverly it is also a commentary on the changing times that Mr Chips lives through, from the mid-nineteenth century to the early nineteen-thirties. A recurring feature is that many of his students go on to die in various imperial wars:

Dear me, I remember Collingwood very well. I once thrashed him—umph—for climbing on to the gymnasium roof—to get a ball out of the gutter. Might have—umph—broken his neck, the young fool. Do you remember him, Mrs. Wickett? He must have been in your time.” Mrs. Wickett, before she saved money, had been in charge of the linen room at the School. “Yes, I knew ‘im, sir. Cheeky, ‘e was to me, gener’ly. But we never ‘ad no bad words between us. Just cheeky-like. ‘E never meant no harm. That kind never does, sir. Wasn’t it ‘im that got the medal, sir?” “Yes, a D.S.O.” “Will you be wanting anything else, sir?” “Nothing more now—umph—till chapel time. He was killed —in Egypt, I think….”

At another time, reminiscing with his housekeeper, Chips remembers two other students:

“And that affair about the rat that Dunster put in the organ loft while old Ogilvie was taking choir practice. Ogilvie was dead and Dunster drowned at Jutland”

There is also a tragic scene where a student is worried his father has been lost on the Titanic – look at the sad final line. Chips chastises a child because his work that day is not up to scratch:

“Grayson, I don’t want to be—umph—severe, because you are generally pretty good—umph—in your work, but to-day— you don’t seem—umph—to have been trying at all. Is anything the matter?” “N-no, sir.” “Well—umph—we’ll say no more about it, but—umph —I shall expect better things next time.” Next morning it was noised around the School that Grayson’s father had sailed on the Titanic, and that no news had yet come through as to his fate. Grayson was excused lessons; for a whole day the School centred emotionally upon his anxieties. Then came news that his father had been among those rescued. Chips shook hands with the boy. “Well, umph—I’m delighted, Grayson. A happy ending. You must be feeling pretty pleased with life.” “Y-yes, sir.” A quiet, nervous boy. And it was Grayson Senior, not Junior, with whom Chips was destined later to condole.

Chips is a conservative man, resistant to change, and feels threatened by the phenomenon of women exploring increasing freedoms as the century comes to a close:

He did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at home or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the nineties, filled him with horror.

But he then meets a young woman who manages to change his mind and his life:

Her name was Katherine Bridges; she was twenty-five—young enough to be Chips’s daughter.

Chips is 48 at the time. The relationship is described largely from Chips’s perspective and he is untroubled by the age gap. There’s a suggestion that Katherine is aware that it is a little creepier than that – she explicitly compares their relationship to that of teacher and pupil:

On the night before the wedding, when Chips left the house to return to his hotel, she said, with mock gravity: “This is an occasion, you know— this last farewell of ours. I feel rather like a new boy beginning his first term with you. Not scared, mind you—but just, for once, in a thoroughly respectful mood. Shall I call you ‘sir’—or would ‘Mr. Chips’ be the right thing?

Sadly we see far too little of this bright and entertaining character, because Hilton has her die in childbirth soon after their wedding. This is a pity because Katherine brings new life to Chips and indeed to Brookfield itself and challenges many of his preconceptions and prejudices. An example of this is when an exchange visit in planned between Brookfield and a state school in the East End of London. The idea of the exchange is unpopular with the school authorities and underlying their objections is some fairly obvious class prejudice, but she argues passionately for the visit to go ahead, claiming:

“Chips,” she said, “they’re wrong, you know, and I’m right. I’m looking ahead to the future, they and you are looking back to the past. England isn’t always going to be divided into officers and ‘other ranks.’ And those Poplar boys are just as important—to England—as Brookfield is.

His brief relationship with Katherine, cut brutally short, makes Chips re-evaluate many of his ideas. He becomes something of a radical or free-thinker. During the Boer war he challenges the populist anti-Boer sentiment:

It was typical of him that he did not share the general jingo bitterness against the Boers. Not that he was a pro-Boer—he was far too traditional for that, and he disliked the kind of people who WERE pro-Boers; but still, it did cross his mind at times that the Boers were engaged in a struggle that had a curious similarity to those of certain English history-book heroes—Hereward the Wake, for instance, or Caractacus. He once tried to shock his fifth form by suggesting this, but they only thought it was one of his little jokes.

Although he is not an entirely reformed character and is caught making what we can infer is an Anti-Semitic jokes about one of his students:

Once Chips had got into trouble because of some joke he had made about the name and ancestry of a boy named Isaacstein.

Later he outrages the school by expressing sadness at the news of the death of the school’s former German master on the Western Front, despite the fact that he is killed fighting for ‘the enemy’. Expressing sympathy for the loss of a former teacher who fought for his homeland was one step away from treachery, but by this time Chips is virtually irreplaceable at the school, the majority of masters of fighting age having joined up, so the indiscretion is overlooked. Hilton gives Chips a nobility that comes from old-age and having lived through tragedy. Slowly Chips becomes a sage-like observer of the breadth of English history, including the end of the Victorian era and the birth of a new century:

He had been left a vision that grew clearer with each year—of an England for which days of ease were nearly over, of a nation steering into channels where a hair’s breadth of error might be catastrophic. He remembered the Diamond Jubilee; there had been a whole holiday at Brookfield, and he had taken Kathie to London to see the procession. That old and legendary lady, sitting in her carriage like some crumbling wooden doll, had symbolized impressively so many things that, like herself, were nearing an end. Was it only the century, or was it an epoch?

After his retirement, Chips’ career has one last flourish. He returns to the school, never having really left, to return to teaching and eventually become acting Headmaster when the current head and most of the teaching staff volunteer or are conscripted for the Front. The years and the major historical events begin to speed past:

1915. Armies clenched in deadlock from the sea to Switzerland. The Dardanelles. Gallipoli. Military camps springing up quite near Brookfield; soldiers using the playing fields for sports and training; swift developments of Brookfield O.T.C. Most of the younger masters gone or in uniform. Every Sunday night, in the Chapel after evening service, Chatteris read out the names of old boys killed, together with short biographies. Very moving; but Chips, in the black pew under the gallery, thought: They are only names to him; he doesn’t see their faces as I do…1916… The Somme Battle. Twenty-three names read out one Sunday evening.

Goodbye Mr Chips is an enchanting portrait of that special brand of teacher that leaves a lasting impression on their students. It is warmly nostalgic for the pre-War years that are only hinted at in the story’s closing paragraphs – even in 1934 the storm clouds massing over Germany were hard to ignore. And while the story is nostalgic it is honest about cost of the first world and earlier wars and about the challenges the new century brought to many people.

Goodbye, Mr Chips, by James Hilton, 1934

Aside
Book review

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 1915

Is there a better, more striking opening to a novel than this?

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin*. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

The Metamorphosis is wonderfully enigmatic. Of course the reader is invited to consider the story as an allegory about difference, but everyone will see it from their own perspective. For some it will be about how we treat the disabled, for others about race, gender, sexuality or religion. Its ambiguity is its strength, leaving the reader to interpret and reinterpret it without the constraints of simplistic X = Y parallels.

This is a powerful story in which not a word is wasted. Consider that opening line and the reference to waking from ‘troubled dreams‘ – did Gregor’s transformation cause the troubled dreams, or were the dreams the origins of his transformation?

Gregor Samsa is a travelling textile salesman, bullied by his boss and unable to leave his miserable job because of debts owed by his parents, with whom he lives. We know very little about Gregor other than at one point he was in the army – “On the wall exactly opposite there was photograph of Gregor when he was a lieutenant in the army, his sword in his hand and a carefree smile on his face as he called forth respect for his uniform and bearing“, which is obviously a dramatic contrast with his life as a travelling salesman, and even more so after his metamorphosis. He has made a sad attempt to brighten his room up by cutting a picture from a magazine and framing it: “It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.” Perhaps this is being fanciful, but could it be that the three-fold repetition of the word ‘fur’ suggests this woman has undergone her own transformation? Change, metamorphosis, isn’t always a bad thing, it implies. We also see this idea at the end of the novel (novel not being the completely correct term – The Metamorphosis is barely fifty pages long) when after Gregor’s death, Grete, his younger sister, begins her own metamorphosis:

All the time, Grete was becoming livelier. With all the worry they had been having of late her cheeks had become pale, but, while they were talking, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa were struck, almost simultaneously, with the thought of how their daughter was blossoming into a well built and beautiful young lady. They became quieter. Just from each other’s glance and almost without knowing it they agreed that it would soon be time to find a good man for her. And, as if in confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete was the first to get up and stretch out her young body.

Gregor’s father is also transformed by the end of the novel, changing from the redundant aging tyrant of the opening chapters to something far more respectable and impressive:

He was standing up straight enough now; dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by the employees at the banking institute; above the high, stiff collar of the coat his strong double-chin emerged; under the bushy eyebrows, his piercing, dark eyes looked out fresh and alert; his normally unkempt white hair was combed down painfully close to his scalp. He took his cap, with its gold monogram from, probably, some bank, and threw it in an arc right across the room onto the sofa, put his hands in his trouser pockets, pushing back the bottom of his long uniform coat, and, with look of determination, walked towards Gregor.

The point of view of the narrator in this paragraph is interesting. The fact that the narrator recognises Mr Samsa senior’s uniform as coming from “probably, some bank” suggests this is Gregor’s perspective – an omniscient narrator would know which bank the uniform is from. This is not the consistent viewpoint, but often we see things through Gregor’s eyes.

His initial reaction to his metamorphosis is quite phlegmatic – he decides to go back to sleep and (despite the fact we have just been told his transformation is not a dream) thinks to himself “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense” The dawning realisation that this is not nonsense at all, this is happening, is not narrated in the text – the reader is left to work gradually through that process themselves. We wait page after page for some explanation of Gregor’s situation, but it never comes. Instead we read in vivid detail about what it would be like to be a monstrous insect:

Hardly aware of what he was doing other than a slight feeling of shame, he hurried under the couch. It pressed down on his back a little, and he was no longer able to lift his head, but he nonetheless felt immediately at ease and his only regret was that his body was too broad to get it all underneath. He spent the whole night there. Some of the time he passed in a light sleep, although he frequently woke from it in alarm because of his hunger, and some of the time was spent in worries and vague hopes which, however, always led to the same conclusion: for the time being he must remain calm, he must show patience and the greatest consideration so that his family could bear the unpleasantness that he, in his present condition, was forced to impose on them.

Always thinking about his family, he gradually comes to terms with the changed world he is confronted by:

Out of consideration for his parents, Gregor wanted to avoid being seen at the window during the day, the few square metres of the floor did not give him much room to crawl about, it was hard to just lie quietly through the night, his food soon stopped giving him any pleasure at all, and so, to entertain himself, he got into the habit of crawling up and down the walls and ceiling.

The Metamorphosis is a powerful, disturbing book. it is available free online and can be read in little more than an hour. It’s also a great introduction to the dark, troubling world of Franz Kafka, who I think is rightly regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.

*This translation – ‘horrible vermin‘ – is a bit literal for my tastes. Other translations are available. Wikipedia tells me that the phrase “ungeheuren Ungeziefer”, describing the creature into which Gregor metamorphoses, has been translated many different ways. These include:

  • gigantic insect
  • monstrous kind of vermin
  • monstrous vermin
  • giant bug
  • monstrous insect
  • enormous bug
  • gargantuan pest
  • monstrous cockroach
  • monstrous verminous bug
  • a vile insect, one of gigantic proportions
  • some kind of monstrous vermin
  • some sort of monstrous insect
  • some kind of monstrous bedbug
  • huge verminous insect
  • a kind of giant bug

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 1915

Aside
Book review

Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, 1938

Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s memoir of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, he tells how he stumbled into the war having originally intended to observe the conflict and ‘write newspaper articles’, but then quickly got caught up in the revolutionary atmosphere in Barcelona and signed up to fight. After some rudimentary training he describes his uneventful but miserable time on the front lines in Aragon and then his involvement in the May Days conflict in Barcelona. Although he returned to the front line after this short break, his time in Spain was brought to a sudden end when he was shot through the throat. A further close shave followed quickly when the political group he was serving in, the POUM, was declared an illegal organisation causing Orwell and his wife to flee for their lives, following closely by the police. The memoir elements of the book are interspersed with Orwell’s commentary on the war and the May Days conflict, in which he is heavily critical of the actions of the Government forces.

This analysis of the May Days conflict is central to this narrative and all subsequent commentary on the book. Orwell saw the May Days as a microcosm of the struggle between revolutionary socialism and communism. This isn’t some obscure metaphorical parallel but a real time playing out of the conflict between Trotskyism and Stalinism , fatally undermining the ability of countries such as Spain to resist fascism. Orwell comes down firmly and unambiguously on the side of revolutionary socialism and against Communism as represented by the Soviet Union and its counterparts in Spain and elsewhere. You could argue that as an almost accidental member of the POUM militia (he joined because it was aligned with the Independent Labour Party) it would have been impossible to imagine him taking any other position – who cheers on the people who are trying to arrest you and who are killing your friends and comrades. all the while telling the world that you are a fascist collaborator?

A common accusation levelled against Orwell’s non-fiction is that it is to a greater or lesser extent made up. He didn’t shoot an elephant, witness a hanging, etc. This accusation is almost never expressed as simple dishonesty – instead critics talk about things being ’embroidered’ and of ‘journalistic licence’ – but that’s what they mean. Homage to Catalonia was attacked on this basis from the moment it was published – instead of being an honest eye-witness account of the six-month period Orwell was in Spain, it is alleged that it is a carefully edited and at times simply untrue portrait of the war, most contentiously the street fighting in Barcelona. One critic who takes this position on HtC is Paul Preston, an academic at the London School of Economics. His Light and Shadows in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia dissects HtC in meticulous detail and gives credit for the book’s vivid descriptions of the conflict, but is assiduous in picking up on contentious issues in the account. To take one fairly minor example, early on in the book Orwell contrasts the food shortages being experienced by the ordinary citizens of Barcelona with the food being wasted in the barracks. Preston observes

“If Orwell’s POUM unit could really afford to waste food, it must have been a rarity among the Republican forces.“

To support this rather snide comment (it is implied that Orwell is lying, but not directly stated), Preston refers an extremely hostile essay on HtC by Bill Alexander called George Orwell and Spain. This essay was part of a collection of critical attacks on Orwell published in 1984 called Inside the Myth (see what they did there?) Why Alexander’s account is considered reliable and Orwell’s dishonest is not explained. But if Orwell was lying about the food shortage situation, Preston implies, his other observations might also be untrue or unreliable.

There’s fundamental category error in many of Preston’s cricitisms of HtC. For example he claims

Orwell’s eye-witness testimony guarantees the inclusion of Homage to Catalonia in any list of important books on the war. However, it would certainly not be there as a reliable analysis of the broader politics of the war and particularly of its international determinants.

Whereas of course it never claims to be a reliable analysis of the broader politics of the war, as a few minutes spent reading it will clearly demonstrate. Orwell goes out of his way to stress the partisan and incomplete nature of his account:

In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war. (HtC)

Another accusation repeated by both Preston and Alexander is that Orwell was some kind of literary tourist, travelling to Spain simply to collect content and material for future books and articles and was not really interested in the Spanish or their struggles.

“Orwell had no understanding of the world wide significance of the struggle in Spain, he knew little of the national efforts of the Popular Front government to achieve a united front against fascism, he had never seen the Republican flag, he did not agree with the actions of the POUM – he took the rifle in the role of an outsider, a journalist looking for different experiences to figure in a future book.” (George Orwell and Spain, Bill Alexander, 1984).

Again Orwell anticipated this criticism. Initially it was the case that he had gone to Spain to write, but the sincerity of his subsequent conviction – he returned to the fighting despite the betrayal (as he saw it) of the May Days, was shot in the throat and came very close to death – is hard to doubt. In fact Orwell wrote very little about his time in Spain outside of HtC, and the book struggled to find a publisher and was famously a commercial and literary failure. You can question the accuracy of some of his writing, but surely the authenticity of his convictions cannot be questioned.

Some of the other claims made against Orwell, crafted solely to undermine his analysis of the war, are petty in the extreme. For example Preston casts doubt on the record of events at the end of the book when he is at risk of being arrested for his association with the POUM, claiming he (Orwell) couldn’t speak Spanish. There is however unambiguous eye-witness evidence that contradicts this allegation. It is also not disputed that Orwell commanded a group of young Spanish volunteers who presumably had little English. Orwell was a bright man and a quick learner and surrounded by Spanish speakers I can easily imagine he learnt the basics of the language quickly. The alternative – that he did not learn any significant amounts of Spanish during his months there and subsequently invented conversations to fit in with his anti-Government narrative – is surely far less likely?

I don’t want to spend to much time on the case for the defence, because frankly Homage to Catalonia doesn’t need it. It is superbly written and an important snapshot of pre-war European politics. It explains very clearly why Orwell become a convinced socialist and I would argue that it adds significantly to any reading of 1984 in its portrait of Stalinism. I challenge anyone to read his description of revolutionary Barcelona and not be moved, even if you accept that in doing so Orwell was overlooking the bloodshed of the early days of the conflict:

It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. […] And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that
I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

The book ends with this wonderful and profoundly prophetic description of returning to England, an experience any English tourist will recognise:

“And then England—southern England, probably the sleekest landscape in the world. It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from seasickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage underneath you, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday. The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth’s surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.”

Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, 1938

Aside
Book review

When It Was Dark, by Guy Thorne, 1903

Christopher Hitchens called When it Was Dark a “piece of trash novel which makes ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or the ‘Left Behind’ series seem like Proust or Balzac or George Eliot.” He was being generous, but with that ‘recommendation’ I felt compelled to check this out. Sadly, other than it being a historical curiosity it has no redeeming features whatsoever. Worse, it is deeply anti-Semitic and racist. As always, I read these things so you don’t have to!

The central concept of the novel is actually a potentially compelling idea. Archaeological discoveries in the Middle East at the end of the nineteenth century were causing scholars to rethink earlier ideas about the bible, more specifically about the life of Christ. Some religious people found those discoveries and the interpretations put upon them threatening to their beliefs. Christian faith had at that time already faced significant challenges from  the scientific advancements of the nineteenth century, chief of which was of course Darwin’s theory of evolution, which had led many to question the literalist interpretations of the bible, reinterpreting many of the stories as fables. If Christ could tell stories that we intended to help people understand morale issues without being taken literally – whether or not there was a real ‘Good Samaritan for instance simply isn’t important – then why could that principle not be extended to the whole text?

Thorne’s starting point is that Christianity, specifically the form of Christianity practiced in the United Kingdom, rests solely on a belief in the literal truth of the resurrection. Anything that challenges that faith is in turn a challenge to morality and social order. Without a belief in the resurrection there is no reason why people should not behave lawlessly, following their baser instincts rather than the teachings of Christ. Anyone wanting to undermine the social order, anyone with malevolent intent against Christian society, would simply have to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the resurrection did not happen.

Take a minute to think about that. Thorne is arguing – and his novel was hugely popular and very widely supported from pulpits throughout the land – that the reason we don’t rape and murder one another is not because we belief in the importance of social order, not because we believe in God, not because Jesus told us how to relate to one another, not because of the centuries of Christian teaching, but because the resurrection literally happened. As soon as that one building block of faith is removed, everything comes crashing down.

So that’s what happens. A malevolent character forges the ‘discovery’ of the tomb of Christ and blackmails a senior archaeologist from the British Museum to confirm the discovery is authentic. The forgery is of such a high standard that the many other independent experts from around the world also confirm its authenticity – apparently only British experts need to be bribed, everyone else just goes along with the Brit. Once news of the discovery spreads, society quickly begins to crumble.

Even the author himself finds this thesis implausible. He quickly recognises that for most people the resurrection isn’t the lynch-pin of their faith. Millions of people around the world are not Christians, and they manage to sustain a civil society reasonably well. The response of the Roman Catholic church is quite hilarious. The Pope issues an instruction to all Catholics that they must ignore the archaeological finds, and forbids them from even talking about it. Civil society in Catholic countries, even in areas of the United Kingdom with a significant Catholic population such as Liverpool, resists the breakdown in order experienced elsewhere. Muslim countries are also largely unaffected and many Christians are able to adapt by accepting that the resurrection was a fable in the same way many already thought of other bible stories. But Protestant England suffers:

There was the curate at Wigan, who had shot himself and left a heart-breaking letter of mad mockery behind him; there were other cases of suicide. There was the surging tide of crime, rising ever higher and higher as the clergy lost all their influence in the slums of London and the great towns…. “the evil was growing and spreading each day, each hour.” True as it was that the myriad lamps of the Faithful only burned the brighter for the surrounding gloom, yet that gloom was growing and rolling up, even as the clouds on which her unseeing eyes were fixed as she walked along the shore. Men were becoming reckless; the hosts of evil triumphed on every side.

Moral law will be abrogated for a time. The whole moral fabric of Society will fall into ruin at once until it can adjust itself to the new state of things. There will be war all over the world; crime will cover England like a cloud——”

The novel’s villain is industrialist and MP Constantine Schuabe. The ‘foreign’ sounding name given to the character is not a coincidence, of course – throughout the novel anything evil or negative is given foreign connotations. Schuabe’s Jewish ethnicity is emphasised every time he appears. This is how he is introduced:

“The man was tall, above the middle height, and the heavy coat of fur which he was wearing increased the impression of proportioned size, of massiveness, which was part of his personality. His hair was a very dark red, smooth and abundant, of that peculiar colour which is the last to show the greyness of advancing age. His features were Semitic, but without a trace of that fulness, and sometimes coarseness, which often marks the Jew who has come to the middle period of life. The eyes were large and black, but without animation, in ordinary use and wont. They did not light up as he spoke, but yet the expression was not veiled or obscured. They were coldly, terribly aware, with something of the sinister and untroubled regard one sees in a reptile’s eyes.

The jaw, which dominated the face and completed its remarkable ensemble, was very massive, reminding people of steel covered with olive-coloured parchment. Handsome was hardly the word which fitted him. He was a strikingly handsome man; but that, like “distinction,” was only one of the qualities which made up his personality. Force, power—the relentless and conscious power suggested by some great marine engine—surrounded him in an almost indescribable way. They were like exhalations. Most people, with the casual view, called him merely indomitable, but there were others who thought they read deeper and saw something evil and monstrous about the man; powerless to give an exact and definite reason for the impression, and dubious of voicing it.”

It’s worth spending a moment on this description. The author tells us Schuabe gives an impression of massiveness – and he also has ‘very massive’ jaw. Can things be ‘very massive’? Its not the usual way of describing something very big. Schuabe is both not handsome (“Handsome was hardly the word which fitted him“) and in the very next line “a strikingly handsome man“. This is not a stereotypical portrait of a Jewish villain from Victorian literature – there is no suggestion he is motivated by avarice or greed and there is no mention of his nose which is often used as a marker of Jewish identity in such texts. But he is something possibly much worse – he intends to destroy Christian society.

Later in the novel Schuabe is described from the perspective of another character, Father Ripon:

“His hair, which could be seen beneath his ordinary hard felt hat, was dark red and somewhat abundant. His features were Semitic, but without a trace of that fulness, and often coarseness, which sometimes marks the Jew who has come to the period of middle life. The large black eyes were neither dull nor lifeless, but simply cold, irresponsive, and alert. A massive jaw completed an impression which was remarkable in its fineness and almost sinister beauty.“

It’s good to see that he hasn’t changed and that the author hasn’t taken the trouble to find anything new to say about him. This account is given before Ripon has been introduced to Schuabe, so the reader is working out with him at the same time who this mysterious stranger might be. But Thorne assumes the reader is probably a bit stupid, so provides heavy hints about his identity by using identical descriptors. In other words it is horribly clumsy writing.

I confess I got one thing wrong about this novel. About half way a new character is introduced, Sir Michael Manichoe. Manichoe is described as

“the stay and pillar of “Anglicanism” in the English Church… a man of great natural gifts. The owner of one of those colossal Jewish fortunes which, few as they are, have such far-reaching influence upon English life, he employed it in a way which, for a man in his position, was unique.….in his public life Sir Michael was diplomatic enough. He worked steadily for one thing, it is true, but he was far too able to allow people to call him narrow-minded. The Oriental strain of cunning in his blood had sweetened to a wise diplomacy“

I thought this character would eventually be exposed as part of the conspiracy, and it is possible the author was going to go this way at first and then changed his mind – certainly the reference to an Oriental strain of cunning is a hint that there is more to Manichoe than meets the eye. But in fact no, he’s just a well-meaning rich man who helps the small group of people working to expose Schuabe’s conspiracy. This is done remarkably easily – Schuabe has left clues and the means to reveal his forgery all over the place and the crime quickly crumbles. A bitter end comes to him and his collaborators, one which Thorne takes great pleasure in describing in a postscript.

This is a piece of Edwardian trash that really should have never been reprinted if it weren’t for Hitchens’ passing reference to it. According to the internet Thorne wrote over 120 novels, which tells you a lot about the care he put into his work. It’s a glimpse into a mindset of an embattled faith struggling to come to terms with a changing world. I was reminded of some of the invasion literature I have written about here previously which took a similar approach to challenging readers’ ideas about the UK’s place in the world. Edwardians had lost the certainty of the nineteenth century and were worried about what was to come – turns out they were quite right to feel that way!

When It Was Dark, by Guy Thorne, 1903

Aside