‘It doesn’t do to read too much,’ Widmerpool said. ‘You get to look at life with a false perspective. By all means have some familiarity with the standard authors ...but it is no good clogging your mind with a lot of trash from modern novels.”
Bless Widmerpool for this and I'm wondering whether anyone else has had any luck with Book One of A Dance to the Music of Time...
If not take heart because it was fourth time lucky for me so this might just not be the 'right' moment for you. It was with some determination that I sat down on New Year’s Eve with A Question of Upbringing (1951) and told myself this just had to be read if I was going to set up this wonderful book-a-month project to launch a new decade of reading. Previous fails saw me no further than page twenty or so and even picking up the book gave me heart sink.
Isn’t it amazing what a different copy can do....and also a pledge to come back here and write about it at the end of the month. Good font, line spacing and the much-loved no-tussle floppy pages in this newly-jacketed edition from Arrow Books.
I will add that, as usual, a read like this often takes me off in one direction and it is that trail I will share here each month. If you are reading along you may have taken an entirely different path, seen completely different things (in fact I hope you have) and that is absolutely fine and how this works best. Nothing 'gospel' or erudite about my pronouncements, just a starter for ten, so please do add your own thoughts and trails in comments if you want to.
I’m a bit of a genogram person, even with the most straightforward of books, so I was in my element with Nicholas Jenkins, his slowly-expanding social circles and my new Muji notebook with its beautifully smooth paper.
First at boarding school, thence to France and then to university. I'm always mildly amused by all this ‘going up’ and ‘going down’ and ‘sent down’ university lingo, but I’ve also enjoyed being a bystander to Jenkins’ life, and those invisible power struggles in a room full of people. The verbal slings and arrows now observed by a mature Nicholas Jenkins, but largely unnoticed or interpreted differently by his younger self. All those competing personalities vying for attention and the little glimpses of reality...why has 'Quiggins' hirsute leg' stuck in my mind....I've no idea.
And then some really sensitive observations of friendships and how they end..
'One of these parting of the ways that happen through life.'
'Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.'
Maybe it was this that made me sit down and write (with pen and ink and paper) a long letter to a 'friend' of many years ago whose Christmas letter seemed replete with anxiety about a terrible year past and uncertainty about what the future may hold. Ours a friendship that saw us through some interesting years in our young lives but suddenly the ties felt tenuous and I didn't want to let them unravel. Whether she will feel the same who can know. I said please don't feel obliged to reply, and if she doesn't we'll just stick to Christmas cards and carry on regardless.
And then there are the vagaries of public school life for boys in that immediate period after the First World War.
What had gone before seemed to take the shape of the 'unsayable' in A Question of Upbringing, mentioned at a slant, but I sensed it somehow, especially in that scene in the school chapel, and felt it even more keenly when they sang a verse from one of my favourite hymns...
As o'er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.
Whilst all eyes are on the return of Le Bas mine were casting a much wider net, for the place and the atmosphere, to the gentle tones of The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended with a descant provided by a group of boys sitting behind.
I was there.
Just thinking about the number who had died in the Great War, the heroic mantle bestowed on the dead, and quite how that legacy of sorrow impacted on the life of the school and those that would have to follow them, led me to another book on my shelves. Public Schools and the Great War - The Generation Lost by Anthony Seldon and David Walsh offers fascinating insights into an aspect of the war that has been the subject of much debate...
'The Great War is deeply imprinted on the sense of history and identity of every public school, its inescapable presence felt in the many familiar places which commemorate it - memorial chapels and halls, plaques, photographs and statues...'
and this...
'The public schools have not emerged well in the representations of the Great War, the predominant impression being one of callous staff officers who operated a long way behind the lines, and bumbling junior officers.'
Now I think about it, this has almost become the received opinion and this book works hard to reappraise these perceptions, exploring the 'codes of service, courage and loyalty, meriting our respect rather than our derision.' There are a few telling and relevant observations which I connected to A Question of Upbringing, especially this...
'Several headmasters and housemasters were broken by the losses of so many of their young men,'
And that had me wondering about Le Bas, the draconian housemaster...
'He merely seemed to Stringham and myself a dangerous lunatic, to be humoured and out-witted...'
We know little about Le Bas's history but...well maybe I'm investing too much in it. we'll see.
Anthony Seldon and David Walsh go on to explore the impressions of the officers in the Great War shaped by media productions such as Oh! What a Lovely War and the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth, outlining the various portrayals of men 'lacking brains, leadership or courage'. They step in with a timely comparison to Journey's End, the play by R.C.Sherriff written in 1927.
And perhaps this, another observation, holds true for Jenkins' school...
Exhausted and traumatised by over four years of war, the schools returned to a curriculum and way of life that was reassuringly familiar.
And of course Antony Powell is writing in the 1950s, well-removed from those early days, but, broader perspectives aside, I surprised myself (based on previous attempts) and enjoyed honing in on this world through the eyes of a single narrator in A Question of Upbringing. I feel myself well-launched onto the eleven remaining and am really looking forward to Book Two A Buyer's Market.
If anyone else is reading along with A Dance to the Music of Time 2020 please do share your thoughts, and even if you are not reading along but have read this far (thank you) all comments are most welcome.
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