I was not aware of Anthony Powell or his acclaimed book series, A Dance to the Music of Time, before I started planning this year’s reading list for the interwar period. I was introduced to it while searching for novels about Britain in the period. Of course I’d already included Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell, and at first I wasn’t sure about adding Dance, simply because it’s so long, twelve books, and also because Powell wrote it in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Then I discovered the four volume Folio Society edition and couldn’t resist. I found the volumes on eBay and paid £150 for the set; probably too much; but they do look impressive on my bookshelf. They are the usual beautifully bound and printed Folio quality, and are as-new, despite having been printed 20 years ago. It simply reinforces my view that most Folio books are bought and left on the shelf unread until the owner, or their heirs, decide to sell them.
Anthony Powell, was born in 1905 into an aristocratic military family. He attended Eton and Oxford, where he was a friend of Evelyn Waugh. He published several novels in the 1930s and was an army officer during the war. Dance is his best regarded work, often described as a Roman-fleuve, with Powell as the English Proust. The series is narrated by Nicholas Jenkins, who, to all intents and purposes, is Powell. He is born around the same time, is the son of an army officer, attends Eton and Oxford, and then lives in London and publishes his first novel in 1931, the same year that Powell published his. One assumes that the characters in Dance are modelled on Powell’s family and friends. It’s the semi-autobiographical basis of Dance that probably makes it such an acute lens into upper class society of the time.
While reading about Dance, I also discovered Hilary Spurling’s book, Invitation to the Dance. It’s a guidebook to the series with a character index, an art and music index, and a synopsis. I immediately ordered it from Amazon, and it’s been incredibly useful for keeping track of the vast cast of characters. You know you’ve got a serious work in front of you when it requires a guidebook!
This review covers the first volume of the four volume Folio publication. Each volume contains three of the original novels. The individual novels are not long, each under 200 pages, so the volume in total was around 500 pages. I’ll give a brief synopsis of each of the books below. Spurling gives a useful guide to the approximate time period that each of the book’s chapters covers, I’ve used this to give each novel’s period.
A Question of Upbringing 1921-24
This covers Jenkins time at Eton and Oxford. Spurling thinks Jenkins was born in 1906 or 7, so he’s 14 or 15 when the series opens. We are immediately introduced to some frequently recurring characters: his school friends Charles Stringham and Peter Templer, a bumbling accident prone boy, Kenneth Widmerpool, their housemaster Le Bas, and Jenkins’ Uncle Giles. Neither Eton nor Oxford are explicitly named. In between Eton and Oxford Jenkins spends some time in France where he encounters Widmerpool. He is also invited to Templer’s family home where he falls in unrequited love with Templer’s sister Jean. The book ends with the details of Oxford don, Sillery’s, tea parties, and a crash in Templer’s car. He also meets aspiring poets Masters and Quiggin, the latter a rather miserable Marxist northerner.
A Buyer’s Market 1928
This opens with Jenkins established in London, working for a publisher of art books. He attends debutante balls, and there is an epic description of a single evening, narrated over two chapters, where he encounters Stringham by accident and falls in with large cast of characters. Widmerpool also reappears, now as city gent working in finance. Later in the book he makes friends with an artist, Barnby.
The Acceptance World 1931-33
Jenkins is still living in London. He has just published his first novel, although he only mentions it in passing. Uncle Giles reappears with a mysterious fortune teller, Mrs Erdleigh. Much of the action features the manoeuvring of Masters and Quiggin as they in turn work as secretary to novelist St John Clarke. Jenkins again encounters Templer and is invited to his house where he finally consummates his love affair with Templer’s sister Jean. The book ends with an excellent comic account of an Eton old boy’s party hosted by Le Bas.
Back in the 90s, when I still used to watch TV, there was a famous series of commercials for instant coffee, collectively known as Love Over Gold. I was so infatuated with them that I even read the spinoff novel. It was awful. The commercials gave brief 30 second glimpses into various points during a love affair that lasted several years. Dance reminded me of this a little. We are dropped into a scene; sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for just an hour or so; then some time goes by; sometimes a few months, sometimes a few days, before we encounter Jenkins again in a new situation. The same cast of characters enter and exit, and often talk about each other. We might not meet or hear of someone for a few years and then discover that their circumstances have changed; perhaps they are now married, maybe they’ve secured a wonderful new job after being disappointed before. The characters often pop up in unexpected company; Uncle Giles introduces Jenkins to his new love interest, a clairvoyant named Mrs Erdleigh, but we next meet her as the companion of Jimmy Stripling, a friend of the Templars. It’s partly this gossipy soap opera quality that makes it so compelling.
Powell is a master of character construction. Much of the text is simply Jenkins describing each person in turn at the party or event where he finds himself. Jenkins often finds he has to reassess people as time passes. He might have thought that Widmerpool was an inconsequential oddity at school, but later he admits that he was wrong, and Widmerpool’s dogged endurance at achieving his aims overcomes his accident prone awkwardness. Despite constantly embarrassing himself he advances nonetheless. I really enjoy the way Powell develops the cast through the series. He revels in human frailty; he loves a bore, or a failure. Uncle Giles threads through the story complaining about everything and blaming everyone but himself for his misfortunes. Even the more confident and able characters find themselves brought low. Stringham the suave cynic descends into alcoholism. Templer, always successful with women, finds himself bullied, dominated, and then cuckolded by his former model wife. The one character we don’t really feel we know is Jenkins himself, at least by the end of these first three books. He’s rather aloof. He doesn’t talk about himself very much. We don’t hear anything about his work, or the novel he’s writing. He hardly mentions his family, despite being very interested in the families of his friends. Powell, by making his narrator a fellow novelist, allows him to reflect on the art of novel writing, somewhat breaking the fourth wall. There’s one scene where Jenkins, waiting in the Ritz to meet the poet Masters, muses on the difficulty of capturing human character in prose.
I recently read a book on Kurt Vonnegut’s advice on writing. Vonnegut tells his students to write simply and clearly, not “like an upper class Englishman from one hundred years ago.” I wonder if he had Anthony Powell in mind when he said that. If you want simple direct writing, you won’t find it here. The language is baroque in its complexity. Powell will never use a simple word when he can impress you with his vast vocabulary. I found myself Googling for the meanings of words several times at each sitting. Often the language is hard to parse and I found myself reading passages slowly aloud in order to better understand them. It certainly requires concentration. It’s a matter of taste of course, but I really enjoy Powell’s style. It feels luxurious; as if my brain is being massaged by a master of prose. At other times though, Powell can be quite snappy and direct, especially during the more comic scenes. Some of the reviews I read called Dance, a comic novel series. I wouldn’t say that’s it’s primary aim, but it is very funny in places. There’s a wonderful scene when, as Jenkins leaves the house in France where he’s been staying, he resolves to reveal his feelings to a young woman, but then confesses to the wrong woman. In another scene he visits a memorial exhibition by the (fictional) artist Isbister, and gives a wonderful commentary on the awful paintings. The final set piece, Le Bas the housemaster’s old boys dinner at the Ritz, is a comic masterpiece, as Widmerpool bores his audience to tears with an uninvited speech, Stringham is so drunk he almost passes out, and Le Bas brings proceedings to an end by having a stroke.
The first three books cover a period of about twelve years from approximately 1921 to 1933. Actual history doesn’t intrude much. There is some mention of people who fought in the war - and the chip-on-the-shoulder guilt of those who didn’t. Later on in the 1930s, there’s reference to the great depression, but we never encounter anyone seriously hard up. Jenkins inhabits a comfortable London middle class world of debutante parties, art galleries, and lunches at the Ritz. It’s an extremely privileged life. He never meets any working class people, except perhaps servants. Where it is revealing of the times is in the minutely observed thoughts and opinions of the large cast of characters. Powell is an acute observer of elite political trends. He captures the craze for communism and socialism in the 30s, and there is also the first mention of fascism in the guise of Foppa, the Italian restaurant owner’s daughter, an ardent supporter of Mussolini. Another character, Werner Guggenbuhl, is a severe and unfriendly leftist, as is the poet Quiggin. Powell is obviously not sympathetic to the left, nor to fascism, but then we have to remember that he wrote this post WWII. One wonders if his opinions would have been more fascist friendly, like many of the upper classes, if he written it pre-war?
I am now a fully immersed convert to the world of A Dance to the Music of Time. I’m keen to discover what happens to the vast cast of characters as the remainder of the 1930s and then WWII pass, and what they make of life in old age in the 60s. Will they celebrate or deplore Beatlemania? I’m planning to read volume 2 later this year and the remaining two, one per year. Watch this space!