I honestly don’t enjoy writing critical reviews, I really don’t. Why would I go out of my way to read disappointing, dated, shallow novels that have very little to recommend them? But there’s little point me reviewing a novel dishonestly is there, emphasising the positive and glossing over the weaker points simply to present a sunnier face to the world? So when I say ‘Crome Yellow’ was dull and largely pointless I take no pleasure in doing so.

So what happens? Very little. Perhaps that’s the point? Aspiring writer Denis Stone goes to stay for the summer with a group of guests at Crome, a country house that gives the novel its name. His hosts are Henry Wimbush and his wife Priscilla. Wimbush is an amateur historian; Priscilla has a gambling problem and is a believer in astrology and the paranormal. A cast of eccentrics and thinly disguised portraits of Huxley’s acquaintances people the rest of the house, including younger guests who provide romantic interest for one another if not the reader. No-one has a real job, saving perhaps the local priest who pines for the Second Coming. Chapters are filled with readings from Sir Henry’s history of Crome, the priest’s sermons, and long walks on the terrace. The hours crawl by. A Bank Holiday fair finally provides a climax of sorts to the novel, which then ends abruptly and disappointingly.

This was Huxley’s first novel, and it was well received. It set him on the career path which led to ‘Brave New World’. So I am clearly missing something. The question is, what?

First there is the eternal fascination of the Country House novel. Crome Yellow is set in a time – the early 1920’s – when the world had just been turned upside down by the Great War. While the war is mentioned, no-one seems to have participated, nor been affected, when in reality houses like Crome would have lost their heirs, the staff would have been depleted, and the local village would have undoubtedly lost many men. The war hasn’t led to anyone questioning their place in society or the future of the country.  There’s a useful definition of the country house novel in the Wikipedia entry for ‘Crome Yellow’. 

“a diverse group of characters descend upon an estate to leech off the host. They spend most of their time eating, drinking, and holding forth on their personal intellectual conceits. There is little plot development.”

Obviously that’s not a particularly flattering description of this remarkably robust genre, but I think it is accurate. Which begs the question – if not much happens in country house novels, why have they proven so popular, particularly now that the world they describe has long since passed away? That’s probably a question for another post.

If his characters are impervious to the threats to their status, Huxley himself anticipates the passing of the world he describes:

“Ten years more of the hard times and Gobley (another country house like Crome) with all its peers, will be deserted and decaying. Fifty years, and the countryside will know the old landmarks no more”. 

The country house setting therefore can act as a metaphor for the country as a whole. A typical feature of this world is that it is supported by an army of almost invisible servants. At the opening of Chapter 30 the narrator tells us that “Denis had been called“. Note the use of the passive voice – there is no indication of who had done the calling (that is to say, had told him it was time to get up for the breakfast that mysteriously appears prepared each morning). He is barely aware that his whole existence depends on people whose identity he hardly acknowledges. No wonder therefore that this world will not outlast the next twenty years or so, even if writers will remain fascinated with country houses long into the following century.

Most readers will be unlikely to miss the foreshadowing of ‘Brave New World’ in a couple of brief references in this novel. One character pontificates about a generation of the future that will “take the place of Nature’s hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world.” (28)

and later about the stratification of society:

“in the Rational State ….human beings will be separated out into distinct species, not according to the colour of their eyes or the shape of their skulls, but according to the qualities of their mind and temperament. “(129)

Huxley was to return to these ideas a decade later in Brave New World which suggests it was this rather than the petty interests of his younger characters that really caught his interest when developing this novel.