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literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

Bloomsbury Recalled

May 22, 2009 by Roy Johnson

memoirs and portraits of Bloomsberries from an insider

Quentin Bell is the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell, the nephew of Virginia Woof, and the friend of many of the major figures in the Bloomsbury Group. Bloomsbury Recalled is his scrapbook of reminiscences focused on some of its major figures, plus one or two minor characters many people will not have heard about. The first part of his memoir concerns his parents. He treads carefully between respect for their individuality and an objective account of their behaviour.

This even stretches to his description of a turning point in family life when his mother, still married to his father Clive, but entangled in a romantic liaison with the artist Roger Fry, realises that she is actually in love with the homosexual Duncan Grant, with whom she spent the rest of her life. This seems to epitomise Bloomsbury lifestyles without a doubt.

He also deals in separate chapters with Duncan Grant and his proclivity for rough trade; David Garnett and his relationship with Quentin Bell’s own ‘sister’ Angelica – who was actually the daughter of Duncan Grant; John Maynard Keynes who switched from men to a Russian ballerina and whilst being an important economist also became a farmer and landholder, seeking to create a feudal aristocratic lineage out of nothing.

There are also some surprising details – Leonard Woolf teaching his visitors to play bowls and keeping a pet monkey; Desmond MacCarthy, like something out of a novel by George Meredith, a man with eternal promise who did not deliver; E.M.Forster setting his trousers on fire during a visit to the Woolfs at Monks House; and Matisse boring everybody rigid with his vanity and egoism on a visit to the Stracheys. He also supplies brief glimpses of minor figures such as the art critic and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, and Ethyl Smyth, the pipe-smoking lesbian composer who fell in love with Virginia Woolf.

He writes with a rather touchingly old-fashioned naivety (‘Virginia broke her fast in bed’) and he certainly reaches into a rich lexicon of outdated terms (‘sodomy’, ‘catamite’, ‘buggery’, ‘pederast’) to describe the activities of Lytton Strachey and Maynard Keynes. He’s also good at bringing out contradictions which might surprise some people today – examples of great family wealth and yet Spartan living conditions, and upper class connections and yet socialist sympathies.

Don’t expect any rigour or consistency in chronology, place, or even subject. These are just personal memoirs built around themes – rather like an old jazz pianist sitting down and tinkling out variations on some of his favourite songs. He doesn’t even bother describing scandals if he has written about them elsewhere.

There are no scalding revelations here, but anyone who has the slightest interest in the Bloomsbury Group and its members will be grateful for a first-hand account which captures the flavours and textures of a bygone era which nevertheless has much still to teach us about the politics and the aesthetics of daily life and personal relationships.

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Quentin Bell, Bloomsbury Recalled, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, pp.234, ISBN 0231105657

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Twentieth century literature

Bloomsbury Rooms

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity

Bloomsbury Rooms is a beautifully illustrated book which explores the relationship between Bloomsbury notions of aesthetics and the actual interior designs of the homes in which its members lived. Christopher Reed takes their various houses as starting points – 46 Gordon Square, Asheham, Brunswick Square, Charleston, 52 Tavistock Square – for meditations on their socio-psychological development and the notions of art practised by Vanessa Bell, Walter Sickert, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant.

It should be said from the outset that although this has the size and has the high production values of a coffee table book, it is not a casual or an easy read. Christopher Reed situates Bloomsbury within theoretical concepts of art that were competing with each other in the early phase of European modernism in a serious and heavyweight fashion. And these theories themselves are analysed in a political and ideological manner. In fact his study is not only about Bloomsbury’s domestic interiors. He is profoundly well-read in the whole Bloomsbury oeuvre, and right from the start he emphasises the political radicalism out of which much of its artistic practices sprung.

He engages quite passionately with art theory, social criticism, and the philosophic relationship between politics and human relations to which they gave expression in their domestic lives. He sees this as an early version of an idea we now express as ‘the personal is political’.

His study challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from orthodox modernism. He argues that their aesthetics were formed by fully conscious choices, made by people who were often more politically radical than was generally acknowledged – both then and now.

Whatever you think of the book’s theoretical arguments, it’s a beautifully illustrated production, full of fascinating paintings, fabrics, decoration, interior design, and original graphics. It’s meticulously researched, fully annotated with extensive notes, an enormous bibliography, and a full index.

And Bloomsbury was a world of graphic and interior design, as well as literary culture. Vanessa Bell was a painter and book illustrator, Duncan Grant was a painter and interior designer, and Roger Fry was a painter, art critic, and at one time advisor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Many of their designs for the Omega workshops are in evidence here, as well as the decoration of their own homes in both London and the countryside. Artistic theory aside, for most readers it will be the photographs, illustrations, the paintings, ceramics, and textile designs which will be the main attraction here. There simply aren’t any other books in print offering such a rich glimpse into the visual world that Bloomsbury represents.

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Christopher Reed, Bloomsbury Rooms: Modernism, Subculture, and Domesticity, New York: Yale University Press, 2004, pp.314, ISBN: 0300102488

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Bloomsbury Women

January 7, 2018 by Roy Johnson

illustrated guide to female artists and writers

Bloomsbury Women is a beautifully illustrated and well-designed book. It features paintings, photographs, woodcuts, and biographical sketches of all the principal female characters in the Bloomsbury Group. Jan Marsh starts with an account of how the phenomenon that is ‘Bloomsbury’ came into being – a story that is now quite well known. But she puts more than usual emphasis on the female members of the group.

Virginia Woolf in a deckchair

There are any number of outstanding characters discussed – Dora Carrington, Nina Hamnett, Ottoline Morrell, and Katherine Mansfield – but the figure dominating her entire account is Vanessa Bell. Perhaps rightly so in the sense that she was both a reasonably successful artist, a powerful matriarchal figure, and someone who was connected to so many other members of the group.

She was the elder sister of Virginia Woolf, and was artistically successful as a painter in her own right. She was married to the critic Clive Bell; and she lived most of her adult life with fellow artist Duncan Grant. The painter and art theorist Roger Fry was also briefly one of her lovers. And she managed to keep them all friendly with each other.

There’s very little here that isn’t already well known to experienced Bloomsbury followers, but the biographical sketches are well woven together. There are also some excellent anecdotal gems which illustrate the culture of a bygone age, such as the advice Molly MacCarthy was given by her mother for facing life:

In all disagreeable circumstances, remember three things. I am an Englishwoman. I was born in wedlock. I am on dry land.

It was not surprising that following her engagement, Molly (daughter of the Eton Provost) suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by her fear of the ‘unknown’ (sex) – something she more or less shared with Virginia Woolf.

Jan Marsh is particularly good at explaining the new painting techniques being explored. She uses as illustrative examples pictures that are actually reproduced in the book – which creates a successful merging of visual presentation and textual analysis that is often absent in studies of this kind.

There’s a fascinating comparison of representation via written narrative and graphic illustration – writing and painting. She argues (persuasively) that Virginia Woolf’s experimental fictions were a form of post-Impressionism in prose

He discussion of the Omega Workshops reminds us how talented (if capricious) the younger Nina Hamnett was at this period, and there are excellent illustrations of her work to prove it.

The narrative is also structured around places – Garsington Manor, Charleston, Tidmarsh, Ham Spray, as well as the many Squares in the Bloomsbury district of London where many of them had town houses.

She ends on rather a downbeat note with a roll call of deaths. First there is Lytton Strachey, followed immediately by the suicide of Dora Carrington. Then comes Julian Bell, killed in the Spanish Civil War, Roger Fry, and finally, seemingly bringing this epoch to an end, Virginia Woolf’s suicide in 1941.

But the overall message of the study is far from pessimistic. It is a celebration of writers and artists exploring new possibilities in their work and the personal relationships they formed with each other.

Bloomsbury Women – But the book at Amazon UK

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Jan Marsh, Bloomsbury Women: Distinct Figures in Life and Art, London: Pavilion Books, 1995, pp.160, ISBN: 1857933249

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Bloomsbury: A House of Lions

June 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biographical portraits of Bloomsbury Group principals

It’s easy to make fun of the Bloomsbury Group, because they were a privileged upper-class clique; they were often snobbish; and they created personal relationships of extraordinary complexity. But Leon Edel takes a balanced and largely sympathetic view which helps to bring out their positives:

they were a group of rational and liberal individuals with an arduous work ethic and an aristocratic ideal…They had a passion for art; they liked the fullness of life…They wrote. They painted. They decorated. They built furniture. They sat on national committees. They achieved a large fame…They criticized the Establishment but, unlike most critics, they worked to improve it. They hated war. Some refused to fight; others believed they had to see the 1914-18 conflict through to the end. All actively worked for peace.

His account follows the unusual structure of starting with a portrait of one character, then passing on to another when the two meet. For instance, at Trinity College Cambridge, Leonard Woolf (stoic, disciplined, intellectual) meets Clive Bell (lightweight, bon viveur, artistic dreamer) and before long they both form friendships with Lytton Strachey (clever, lofty, neurasthenic).

Shortly afterwards Thoby Stephen, John Maynard Keynes, and Sidney Saxon-Turner join them as members of the Apostles, and all of them come under the influence of G.E.Moore, who published his influential Principia Ethica in 1903.

Edel’s account takes very much a psychological view of these characters – and yet it is from a distance. There is very little personal detail. You would never know from his opening chapters that Strachey and Keynes were lovers for instance.

Once the Cambridge connection is made, other characters are introduced: the charming Desmond MacCarthy, and Leslie Stephen, visiting his son Thoby in his own alma mater. He brings with him his two daughters Vanessa and Virginia, up for the May Ball. It is like the plot of a novel unfolding.

The individual studies are not biographical in the conventional sense. There is no attempt to document historical facts. Instead, they are impressionistic, psychological, and unashamedly subjective – though clearly based on detailed knowledge. This method has some interesting results when dealing with such topics as the sexual rivalry between the Stephen sisters, or meditating on the imagery of mirrors and death in Virginia’s writing.

After they all left Cambridge, Thoby Stephen began the Thursday Club in Gordon Square at which members were invited to discuss topic such as The Good, The Beautiful and Truth. Then Vanessa (less intellectual) established the Friday Club where the subject was Art – preferably modern.

Much of the rest of the story is reasonably well known. When Vanessa marries Clive Bell, Virginia and her younger brother Adrian set up a separate home in Fitzroy Square. Then Vanessa takes up with Roger Fry as a lover – only to replace him with Duncan Grant soon afterwards.

Edel covers the strange but ultimately successful marriage of Virginia and Leonard Woolf (though omitting to mention that Vita Sackville-West was for some time her lover); the impressive achievement of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians; and Maynard Keynes’ work at the Treasury and his role in the Versailles Treaty, which culminated in his resignation and the writing of Economic Consequences of the Peace.

His main focus is on the period 1900 to the 1920s – for that is when he sees the essential spirit of the group forming and having its strongest influence. By the 1930s a change of zeitgeist meant the modernist baton was passed on to a younger generation – though many Bloomsbury members (Duncan Grant and Leonard Woolf, for instance) carried on working into the 1960s and 1970s.

So despite its psychological approach, this is not a volume for gossip and tittle-tattle. For that you will need to consult other memoirs and biographies. But what Edel brings to this group portrait are his biographical skills, his enormous literary erudition, and an imaginative respect for his subjects.

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Leon Edel, Bloomsbury: A House of Lions, London: Penguin, 1988, pp.288, ISBN 0140580247

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Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts

July 25, 2009 by Roy Johnson

alternative lifestyles amongst modernist bohemians

What are Bohemians? Are they people who choose poverty in order to produce works of art – or characters who dress flamboyantly, take drugs, and parade up and down Kings Road in Chelsea, hoping to become famous? Well, it appears it can be either or both of those things – and more besides. Elizabeth Wilson brings together both major and minor bohemian figures from two centuries and both sides of the Atlantic in a scholarly attempt to define the phenomenon. She identifies the key element of Bohemia as a gravitation towards the city, to be free of the constraints of provincial life.

And she opts for Paris as its true birthplace – despite offering Byron as the first great Bohemian figure, though she does follow him with Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde who have stronger Parisian connections. Her chapters are built on themes, and the content can be both chronologically lose and geographically disconcerting. One minute it’s the opening night of Alfred Jarry’s scandalous Ubu Roi, next it’s California’s Venice Beach in the 1950s, and then on without pause to Viv Stanshull setting fire to himself in bed in 1995.

But at least this does have the virtue of suggesting that what she calls Bohemia can exist at any time and in any place. She speaks of it in the past tense, and yet there’s every reason to believe that this sort of world still exists – though as Malcolm Cowley, speaking of Greenwich Village in the 1920s observed, “Bohemia is always yesterday”.

She’s particularly good on the role of women in relation to Bohemianism – whether as muse to a male artist (Elizabeth Siddall, Alma Mahler) or as long-suffering wife-supporter (Dorelia John, Caitlin Thomas). But I think she’s stretching her notion of Bohemia rather for including relatively successful female artists such as Louise Colet and George Sand.

Despite her scholarly approach, her prose style occasionally slides into a poetic mode, as in her comments on the relationship between cafe life and smoking:

To smoke was more than a way of passing the time. It was the classic ‘displacement activity’ which gave coffee drinkers who had long since emptied their cup, lovers who had been stood up, and intellectuals who had lost their ‘circle’ the feeling that they were doing something, had a purpose. I smoke, therefore I am. Smoking orchestrated time, gave it a rhythm, punctuated talk, theatrically mimed masculinity and femininity, was the intellectuals’ essential accessory, and was also an erotic gesture, enhancing the mystery of some unknown drinker seated at her table, veiled in a bluish haze.

Her chapters are packed with interesting characters and rich in social history. She covers the surrealists, Parisian night life, and the cult of negritude in the 1920s, symbolised so magnificently by Josephine Baker.

Yet despite several attempts, she never gets round to defining bohemianism successfully. She simply chains together various types of outsider or larger-than-life figures. Sometimes her subjects are members of a quasi-artistic sub class, but often they are just alcoholics, scroungers, and hangers-on.

There’s a big difference between someone who produces great works of art but dies young (Modigliani) and someone like Marianne Faithful (mentioned more than once) who does very little except take drugs and who is no more than a talent-less has-been, .

Her book could do with a different title. Many of the people she describes were not really bohemian – just famous, dissipated, or so rich they could do as they pleased. Other were neither glamorous nor outcast. Some were fat, ugly, and badly dressed, and others cast themselves out simply by choosing not to work. But it’s a fascinating collection of portraits nevertheless.

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Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, London: Tauris, 2003, pp.275, ISBN: 1860647820

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Bookseller jargon

February 11, 2013 by Roy Johnson

understanding the language of the book trade

When buying second-hand books you’ll often come across bookseller jargon used to describe the goods they have on offer. These descriptions appear in both printed catalogues and on web site bookstores.

The bookseller is giving an accurate description of a book and its condition, but the description often contain lots of abbreviations and specialist terms (jargon). This can sometimes appear like a secret code, and might even include abbreviations of their own bookseller jargon terms.

There is a huge specialised vocabulary involved in the book trade – terms such as ‘foxing’ to describe discoloured pages, or ‘half-binding’ to indicate that the spine will be bound in a different material, usually leather.

It’s not necessary to learn all these terms, and you can often guess at the meaning of some of them. But knowing a few of the most common expressions can help you to get a better idea of what’s on offer – and save you from making a mistake.

Knowing something about this jargon can also help you to spot bargains when buying books for as little as a penny on Internet bookshop sites.

Bookseller jargon – example I

Let’s start with a fairly straightforward example from an advert on Amazon. It’s a second-hand copy of Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit. The description is quite simple, but it does introduce a few bookseller jargon terms.

Published 1935, illustrations by Phiz. Burgandy boards with gold inscription to spine, author’s signature on front. Possibly published 1935. Corners bumped and boards a little grubby. Tanning to edges, Binding is pretty tight and very little staining to pages. A few pages turned at corners. Others in series are available. Quick dispatch from Oxford based hospice charity,

author’s signature – This is very misleading, because it’s not a signature. Dickens’ signature is printed on the cover.

Corners bumped – The corners of the book covers are bent or creased with use and age.That’s fairly normal in an old book.

Tanning – The colour of the covers is fading because of exposure to light.

Binding tight – The book will not open easily and generally does not want to remain open to any given page.

pages turned at corners – A previous reader has bookmarked pages by turning down the corner of some pages.

One interesting thing to note here is that the publisher is not mentioned. In fact the publisher is Odhams, and this series was a mass-produced very cheap edition. Copies are very easy to obtain anywhere – so the price being asked for this copy (£6.85) is far too high.

Bookseller jargon – example II

Here’s a relatively simple example from AbeBooks. It’s an advert for a first edition copy of Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin. You will notice that although the advert is descriptive, a few more bookseller jargon terms creep in.

Book Description: London, The Hogarth Press, 1939, 1939. Octavo. Original rough grey cloth, titles to spine in red, top edge stained red. With the dust jacket designed by Humphrey Spender printed in black and red with a photograph of a park scene by Hans Wild. Light partial toning to endpapers, an excellent copy in the lightly rubbed dust jacket with just a couple of minor nicks and creases. First edition, first impression. Published March 1939; 3,550 copies printed.

Octavo – This is the size of the book – five inches wide and eight to nine inches tall.

toning – One of many euphemisms booksellers use to describe the discoloration of paper with age.

endpapers – The sheets of paper pasted onto the inner covers of the book

lightly rubbed – This is wear caused to the edges of the book or its dust jacket as a result of being moved on and off a shelf. Another term might be ‘scuffed’.

nicks and creases – Nicks are small cuts or abrasions, and creases are permanent folds in paper which often occur on book jackets and inner pages.

first impression – The book comes from the first batch to be printed for this title – this is a guarantee of the book’s rarity.

As you can tell from this, book collectors are very concerned about the physical condition of the books they buy — with good reason. This one was for sale for £3,750.00

Bookseller jargon – example III

Here is a much more detailed and complex example. This an advert for a set of volumes which are a genuine rarity and an antiquity from the eighteenth century essayists Addison and Steele.

Addison, Johseph; Steele, Sir Richard. THE SPECTATOR. London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper 1749.
8 vols. T.p. devices., engraved frontiss., dec. head and tail pieces. Some sporadic very light browning, ex-libris Sir Thomas Miller Bt. and with sm. ownership signature, top edge of a couple of leaves in vol. 4 sl. chipped, slightly rubbed gilt filleted edges with some sl. wear to corners, full speckled calf with some minor light staining to a couple of boards, raised bands dec. gilt compartments and leather title labels to rubbed and slightly chipped spines..
£125.00

Eight volumes – This is a genuine eighteenth-centry collection for only £120.00 – which seems good value to me.

T.p. devices – Title page with devices. This page lists the title and any subtitle; the author; the publisher; and the printer.

engraved frontiss – This is an engraved illustration at the beginning of the book, usually facing the title page.

dec. head and tail pieces – A decorative ornament found at the start of a chapter or a division in a book (very common in the eighteenth century).

very light browning – This is signs of discolouration in the paper – an indication of its age.

ex-libris – A Latin term which means ‘from the library of’. This is often indicated by a small label pasted into the book’s inside cover.

sm. ownership signature – A small signature of a (or the) previous owner.

sl. chipped – Slightly chipped. This usually means that small parts of the page are missing or frayed.

gilt filleted edges – Fillets are decorative lines impressed on a book cover. These have been rubbed, and perhaps lost some of the gilding.

sl. wear to corners – Worn perhaps as the books have been taken on and off shelves.

full speckled calf – The volumes have been bound in leather – and ‘speckled’ means the calf’s hide has been treated to create small dark spots or specks.

boards – This is the heavy-duty cardboard used in the construction of the book covers.

slightly chipped spines – Futher signs of use and age. This is to be expected on something three centuries old.

A full glossary of bookseller jargon

Common abbreviations used by booksellers

Book formats and sizes

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Brideshead Revisited

February 10, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, web links

Brideshead Revisited (1945) was the ninth novel written by Evelyn Waugh. He had established his literary reputation with a series of comic satires in the inter-war years including Decline and Fall (1928), A Handful of Dust (1934), and Scoop (1938). But Brideshead is altogether a more serious work, with only a couple of amusing interludes punctuating a study of aristocratic decline in the 1920s and 1930s. It was written during the Second World War, and along with Waugh’s later trilogy Sword of Honour (1952-1961) represents some of the most successful English fiction of that period.

Brideshead Revisited – commentary

The framed narrative – I

A framed narrative is one story enclosed within another. The term is used typically when the principal story is preceded or given its context by some sort of introduction. The ‘outer’ story might set the scene or supply the provenance for the ‘inner’ narrative. Then, when the principal story has been related, there may – or may not – be a return to the scene of the first. The outer elements ‘frame’ the main substance of the narrative. (For more on the framed narrative see below.)

Brideshead provides an excellent example of this framing technique. The novel opens towards the end of the Second World War when Charles Ryder’s infantry unit is stationed at Brideshead Castle. The mood and the atmosphere of this Prologue are austere and grim, with an emphasis on wartime food rationing and physical discomfort. But when the protagonist Ryder reaches the country estate and its ancestral house, he recognises it as the background to his earlier life during the previous twenty years.

His recollection of those years form the principal events of the novel – and they are in marked contrast to the prologue. Ryder meets Sebastian Flyte at Oxford University and is introduced to the extravagantly rich and somewhat decadent lifestyle of the English aristocracy. The events of the following years unfold in a privileged, indulgent, and cultivated milieu.

But then in the Epilogue the narrative frame is closed by a return to Ryder’s military existence in the 1940s. The beautiful ancestral home of the Flyte family at Brideshead is being vandalised by the billeted troops. The closing frame of the narrative matches that of the opening , and emphasises the contrast between the cultural values of the old and the new regime.

The first person narrative

Evelyn Waugh handles the delivery of the novel via first person narrative very skilfully. This mode is required to perform two important functions simultaneously– to reveal the character of the principal character, Charles Ryder, and to relate the series of events in which he becomes involved.

Charles is a sensitive and honourable chap who for the most part of the novel is operating outside his social depth. He comes from a lower social stratum than the people he befriends. It becomes immediately obvious to the reader that he is in danger of being led astray by his friendship with the recklessly indulgent Sebastian.

Fortunately, Sebastian is honourable too, even though he is on a self-destructive trajectory. But Charles does not fare so well with Sebastian’s sister Julia. Despite his attraction to her (which is signalled in the early part of the novel) it is obvious to the reader that she is essentially manipulative and cold-hearted, and in the end she rejects Charles in favour of her religious scruples.

Waugh also uses the device of narrative ellipsis: the reporting of important events are missed out of the story in order to create dramatic tension. For instance, Charles recounts his success as an architectural painter and his trip to Latin-America without at first revealing to the reader that he is married. It gradually emerges that he has discovered his wife’s infidelity – and thus has convincing reasons for not foregrounding the information.

He refers to at least one of their offspring as her child, which suggests that he suspects he might not be the father. All the subsequent exchanges between them reveal that Celia has been a cold and manipulative wife – just as Julia will ultimately be as a lover.

The main theme

There are two main themes in the novel – but they are closely linked. The more important theme is the decline of the English aristocracy, and the secondary theme is Charles Ryder’s attraction to all that its culture implies. As Evelyn Waugh remarked of his own design: “When I wrote Brideshead Revisited I was consciously writing an obituary of the doomed English upper class.”

The country estate of Brideshead Castle is the seat of the Flyte family and its head Lord Marchmain. The castle is gorgeously appointed and serviced by a large retinue of servants. But the titular head has decamped from the family home and is living with his mistress at a separate establishment in Venice. He is unable to regularise this situation socially because his wife refuses to give him a divorce, since she is a Catholic (a secondary or even tertiary theme).

But it gradually emerges that Lord Marchmain is running up debts because of this extravagant life style. And his offspring show every sign of accelerating the family’s decline. The family’s eldest son, emotionally constipated Bridey, eventually marries the middle-aged widow of a fellow matchbox collector. The daughter Julia marries arriviste Mottram, who cannot be formally recognised by the family because he is a divorcee. Even when Julia forms a relationship with the unhappy Charles Ryder, she cannot marry him because of a sudden resurgence of her Catholic beliefs.

The two younger members of the family are similarly blighted. Sebastian becomes a hopeless dipsomaniac and ends up destitute, attaching himself to a monastery in Tunisia. His younger sister Cordelia is entirely given up to nun-like behaviour and the pursuit of charitable works in war zones.

Yet Charles Ryder is clearly attracted to the world this family represents. He comes from a lower echelon of society. His father is rich enough to send him to Oxford and give him an allowance, but he limits this support – in a very amusing manner. Charles clings to Sebastian’s coat tails and accepts his generous hospitality and support.

He also falls in love with Sebastian’s sister, with whose good looks hers are frequently compared. There is another tertiary theme to the novel in the quasi-homosexual relationship between the two young men. And Ryder does eventually live at Brideshead with Julia (who inherits the house from her father). But he is denied his ambition to merge with the family because Julia is shocked by her father’s death into a resumption of her Catholic beliefs. Ryder’s outcome is to become “homeless, childless, middle-aged and loveless”.

It is no accident that this nostalgic yearning for an aristocratic heritage (even whilst recognising its decadence) has been the principal mood of two very glamorous and successful film adaptations of the novel. There was an eleven part television series in 1981produced by Granada Television, and an independent feature film in 2008 – both of which put enormous emphasis on this aspect of the narrative.

The novel also seems to have spawned any number of further aristocratic country house television dramas of the Upstairs, Downstairs variety. These depict late Victorian and early Edwardian upper-class life in a manner which simultaneously offers a sympathetic view of toffs with patronising sketches of life ‘below stairs’.

But the main purpose of these television and film dramas is to present comforting images of luxury, wealth, and cultivated living which offer a reassuring depiction of an earlier age to the viewer. Evelyn Waugh is partly responsible for dressing Brideshead Revisited in this nostalgic and escapist presentation of life.

But his view is also modified by having the glamour of Brideshead and transatlantic voyages sandwiched between grim scenes of Britain at war in the 1940s. He hopes the social vandals will not prevail, but he is not sure, and that doubt ultimately gives the novel its cutting edge.

The framed narrative – II

A typical and famous example of the framed narrative is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902). His novella begins with an after-dinner conversation between sailors on the Thames. One of the characters (Marlow) relates his experiences sailing up river in the Belgian Congo. When he has finished, the story returns to the group still moored on the Thames. The main story is framed both by the geographic location and the philosophic reflections Marlow offers on historical comparisons between Europe and Africa.

Another famous example demonstrates the incomplete or one-sided frame. Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw (1898) opens with a similar group of people swapping stories after dinner. One of the party relates a horrifying tale which reveals the experiences of a governess looking after two children in an old house that appears to be haunted. But when the fears of the governess reach their dramatic climax, the novella ends, without returning to the opening scene.

Brideshead Revisited – study resources

Brideshead Revisited – Penguin – Amazon UK

Brideshead Revisited – Penguin – Amazon US

Brideshead – Study Guide – Paperback – Amazon UK

Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited – Paperback – Amazon UK

Brideshead Revisited – DVD – Amazon UK
The full 1980 Granada television series in 11-parts

Brideshead Revisited – DVD – Amazon UK
The 2008 BBC feature film version.

Evelyn Waugh – by Henry Lamb

Brideshead Revisited – plot summary

Prologue

During the latter years of the Second World War, Captain Charles Rider and his infantry army unit arrive at their temporary headquarters in the requisitioned country house of Lord Marchmain at Brideshead Castle.

Book One

Ch 1 Ryder recalls his early days at Oxford University twenty years previously and his meeting Sebastian Flyte, who takes him to his family’s stately home at Brideshead.

Ch 2 Charles is reproached by his cousin Jasper for mixing with the ‘wrong set’. Then aesthete Anthony Blanche reveals a critical account of Lord and Lady Marchmain’s troubled marriage.

Ch 3 Ryder returns home for the long vacation. He is in debt, but his father ignores his requests for help, and makes his life a misery behind a facade of loving concern. Sebastian tricks Charles into returning to Brideshead, where he meets his sister Julia Flyte.

Ch 4 Charles spends an idyllic summer at Brideshead with Sebastian. They visit Lord Marchmain in Venice, where Marchmain’s mistress Cara gives Charles a vivid account of the Lord’s hatred of his wife, who refuses to divorce him.

Ch 5 During a subdued second year at Oxford, Charles meets Rex Mottram. There is an excursion to a party in London where Charles, Sebastian, and Boy Mulcaster get drunk and spend time in jail. Christmas at Brideshead finds the Oxford don Samgrass being pious and boring. Sebastian feels oppressed by his family and starts drinking heavily. Lady Marchmain puts emotional pressure on Charles, and Sebastian is eventually sent down for a term. Charles decides to quit Oxford and take up painting.

Book Two

Ch 1 As a punishment, Sebastian is sent on a tour of Levantine monasteries with Samgrass, and on return to Brideshead is forbidden drink. He reveals to Charles that whilst on holiday he gave Samgrass the slip and is still drinking.

Charles is reproached by Lady Marchmain and he leaves Brideshead. He sets up as a painter in Paris, where he is visited by Rex Mottram, who reveals that the Flyte family are losing money through profligate over-indulgence. Mottram marries Julia later in the year in a very quiet wedding.

Ch 2 Charles recalls Julia’s ambitions to marry and its arriviste connotations. She becomes secretly engaged to Rex Mottram only because she is jealous of his affair with a married woman. Rex tries (unsuccessfully) to become a Catholic. It is then revealed that he is divorced after a former youthful marriage in Canada. The family object, and the marriage is low key and disastrous for everyone..

Ch 3 Charles returns from Paris to join National Service during the General Strike of 1926. Lady Marchmain dispatches Charles to bring back Sebastian from Morocco, where he finds him in hospital. Lady Marchmain dies. Charles makes paintings of the Flyte’s house in London, which is being sold off to developers to pay Lord Marchmain’s debts.

Book Three

Ch 1 Charles eventually becomes a successful architectural painter. He travels alone in Mexico and Central America for nearly two years, then joins his wife Celia in New York. Sailing back to England they meet Julia Flyte with whom Charles is in love. There is desultory socialising on board and a heavy storm. Charles and Julia exchange accounts of their failed marriages, sleep together, and arrange to meet in London.

Ch 2 Charles has an exhibition in London, and he evades going home. Anthony Blanche reappears, reports that Charles’ affair with Julia is public knowledge, and criticises his paintings. Charles and Julia travel to Brideshead, where her husband Rex is living.

Ch 3 Two years later Charles and Julia are living at Brideshead. Bridey announces that he is going to be married but cannot present his fiancee because Charles and Julia are ‘living in sin’. He plans to move his new family into the house, with his father’s consent.

Ch 4 Divorce proceedings are set in motion by Charles and Celia, then Rex and Julia. Cordelia returns from nursing the wounded in the Spanish Civil War with news of Sebastian. He has continued drinking, has become derelict, and attached himself to a monastery in Tunis.

Ch 5 Suddenly Lord Marchmain returns from Italy in a severely enfeebled condition to die in his ancestral home. There is discussion about who will inherit Brideshead. Lord Marchmain disapproves of Bridey’s middle-class fiancee Beryl, and leaves the stately home to Julia in his will. Marchmain on his death bed reverts to his original religious belief. Julia then tells Charles that she cannot marry him and they must separate for ever.

Epilogue

Ryder and his men are occupying the ground floor of Brideshead, where troops have been vandalising the building and the grounds. He learns that Julia and Cordelia have gone out to Palestine to help in the war effort.

Brideshead Revisited – principal characters

Charles Ryder	the narrator, a young man who becomes a painter then a soldier
Lord Marchmain	head of the Flyte family, living in Venetian exile
Lady Teresa Marchmain	his wife, a devout Roman Catholic
Earl Brideshead	’Bridey’ the elder son, emotionally bankrupt
Sebastian Flyte	the charming, troubled younger son who becomes a derelict and alcoholic
Julia Flyte	the attractive but remote elder daughter
Cordelia Flyte	the younger daughter who is a selfless and devout Catholic
Celia Ryder	Charles’ vivacious but unfaithful wife
’Boy’ Mulcaster	Celia’s brother, a ‘Hooray Henry’ at Oxford
Rex Mottram	a Canadian arriviste who marries Julia then tolerates her affair with Charles
Anthony Blanche	an aesthete and homosexual friend of Charles and Sebastian

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Broken Wings

May 30, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Broken Wings first appeared in Century Magazine in December 1900 – which was a remarkably productive period for Henry James in terms of short stories. It was a year which saw the publication of Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Abasement of the Northmores, The Third Person, The Tone of Time, The Tree of Knowledge, The Great Good Place, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. He produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next major novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

Broken Wings – critical commentary

The story is quite unusual for James. It is almost romantic, certainly elegiac, and as delicate in tone as anything outside the most poignant scenes in his major novels.

It’s also a very tightly controlled and very touching study in two people coming to terms with their lack of success – and all the more so for the fact that they were once lionized by society. But with a well orchestrated structure in such a short piece, as they progressively reveal their vulnerability, they rediscover the original attraction they felt for each other.

In one sense it’s a very sceptical study of the relationship between commerce, fashionability, and art. Both Straith and Mrs Harvey cannot quite understand why they have been invited to a society weekend at Mundham. The truth is that they have been invited because they were once successful – but both of them realise that they no longer what they once were. They can keep up a pretence, but it is emotionally and practically demanding.

Both have been successful artists in the past, but now she writes articles for three and nine pence whilst he is reduced to producing dress design sketches for four and sixpence, and he hasn’t sold a painting for three years. They have lost their fashionability, or as Straith puts it “We are simply the case of being had enough of”.

Mrs Harvey warns Lady Claude that she will make ‘nothing’ from writing, even though she herself is the author of eight or ten novels that previously had brought her five thousand pounds a year. This is James showing the other side of the tapestry of artistic endeavour and social success. In a gesture of solidarity with his two characters he calls them ‘these two worn and baffled workers’.

Structure

It is a beautifully structured piece of work – five short separate scenes in which the truth of their state of affairs is revealed to the reader as they uncover the truth to each other. The forward movement of the narrative is also delicately balanced by movements in the opposite direction.

They start off as socially successful artists, but their apparent worldly success is gradually stripped away and they end up reconciled to their lack of prestige. But at the same time they rediscover the love they once had for each other – at a time before the temporal frame of the story.

Broken Wings – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Broken Wings – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

Broken Wings – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Broken Wings – plot summary

Part I. Stuart Straith, an artist, is a guest at a weekend party in an English country house. He circulates cautiously amongst fellow guests, warily conscious of another guest Mrs Harvey, who is mixing with celebrities.

Part II. Later the same evening Mrs Harvey, a literary woman, exchanges confidences with Lady Claude. She reveals to Lady Claude that she is not wealthy, that she finds Straith attractive, and that Lady Claude’s ambition to write novels will not make her any money.

Part III. Straith and Mrs Harvey meet at the theatre where they both agree to re-open what is obviously an old relationship. She claims to be unsuccessful, and senses that he is unhappy. He claims to be ‘beyond’ unhappiness.She offers to help him by promoting his work in her regular journalism.

Part IV. She visits him at his studio where it emerges that their previous relationship foundered on misconceptions on both their parts. They had both enjoyed a certain amount of artistic success, yet thought themselves unworthy of the other. However, when they compare notes on their current status, it is obvious that both of them are struggling.

Part V. Straith visits her new smaller flat where they lay bare their unsuccessful situations, and agree not to pretend any longer. They have been keeping up appearances in a way that kept them apart from each other, and they have also been trading on reputations which no longer reflect their true artistic status. They feel a bitter-sweet relief at having the courage not to pretend any longer to be ‘successful’ and having to circulate in society, and this gesture of solidarity re-unites them emotionally.

Principal characters

Mundham	an English country house and estate
Stuart Straith	an artist
Mrs Harvey	a widow and lady novelist
Lady Claude	a would-be novelist

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
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Brooksmith

November 24, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Brooksmith first appeared in Harper’s Weekly and Black and White in May 1891 – a sure sign that Henry James was attentive to the commercial opportunities of simultaneous publication – getting paid for the same story twice over.

James has always been known as a writer of refined sensibility, with a prose style renowned for its demanding complexities and subtelties of meaning; but it is often forgotten that he was a full-time writer who made a considerable part of his income from professional contracts with publishers. Despite the aesthetic demands he sometimes made of his readers, he had one eye closely on the literary marketplace.

Brooksmith – critical commentary

Brooksmith is not much more than a light character sketch, but it is composed in a delicately constructed arc – of the narrator’s appreciation of Brooksmith’s position in society. It starts from the narrator’s realization that Offord’s salon owes its success to Brooksmith’s sensitive ministrations. Brooksmith has become sufficiently attuned to Offord’s sophisticated culture that he is able to anticipate his needs.

Then as Offord himself declines the narrator becomes even more appreciative of Brooksmith as they form a complicit understanding of their relative positions. The narrator also begins to worry about Brooksmith’s future prospects. He realises it will be almost impossible to locate employment offering such a cultivated milieu.

The arc reaches its peak on the death of Offord, and from that point onwards Brooksmith begins his slow decline. He goes from one lower status position to another, at each step sliding down the social scale, until he disappears from society altogether. The narrator’s conclusion (which seems somewhat callous) is that ‘he had indeed been spoiled’.

Brooksmith – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Complete Tales of Henry James – Volume 8 – Digireads reprint – UK

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Brooksmith – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Brooksmith – plot summary

An anonymous narrator reflects on the successful salon maintained by his friend Oliver Offord, a retired diplomat. He wonders how the success is created and concludes that it is the subtle and tactful influence of Offord’s butler, Brooksmith.

When Offord falls ill and receives fewer visitors, the narrator begins to worry what will become of Brooksmith, who is so much a part of the establishment. When Offord dies, Brooksmith is left eighty pounds, but his employment and role disappear.

The narrator encounters Brooksmith amongst the staff at various other houses, and always feels a sympathetic sadness thatBrooksmith is working at a level which demeans his true value. Brooksmith eventually falls ill, but the narrator is still unable to help him.

Brooksmith gradually falls down the social order of the servant class and is last encountered as a casual waiter-on at a society dinner. No more is heard of him until a poor relative visits the narrator to report that Brooksmith has simply disappeared, and is presumed dead.