The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki (1924)

The advent of this last volume of hitherto uncollected works, pulled together by the author's sister, must have been exciting news for devotees of Saki. I wonder whether the advance notices contained the information that not only would it include some of his last short prose pieces, and two short plays, but as well the nearest thing there was to a major work yet to be published, his very fine three-act play The Watched Pot. The short prose pieces are variable in their wit, but always entertaining. The short plays only allow scope for minor elaboration, but still amuse. The real star of these proceedings is the big play. It is set in a Somersetshire country house with a young gentleman at its head who is extremely eligible. However, Trevor is under the thumb of a fabulously domineering mother. Hortensia, likened by Saki to a 'permeating dust-storm', is running the estate in all but name. She is fiercely Victorian, not to be messed with, and has an iron in every fire. She is a huge supporter of Trevor's uncle Ludovic, who lives with them and is interested in getting into parliament. He isn't prepared to venture it under current circumstances, given that Hortensia, as family matriarch, would attempt to control the whole proceeding. His only hope is that Trevor will marry, meaning that his new wife would be installed in the house, relegating Hortensia to the dower house and relative obscurity. The action of the play takes place over a few days' stay by a group of young women, all of whom, in one way or another, would love that position. There is a fine counter-twist at the end, and along the way the wit sparkles as all of these threads of plot wind round and round one another, with strong personalities, hidden enmities and sneaking strategies all attempting to fox and outdo one another. By way of potential casting, one thing is almost certain - Eileen Atkins would make a superb Hortensia, though it would be unfamiliar to see her defeated in the end. Also included in this volume is a long memoir of her brother by Saki's sister Ethel, which is revealing of their shared, rather wrangled history. They were sent to aunts in Barnstaple when their mother died and their father went back to India. These aunts were huge personalities and often at loggerheads - I strongly suspect the elder one of being the model for Hortensia. The tension and lunacy which this vying between them produced, on top of their Victorian bans on certain freedoms, and their truly comic oddness of character, go a long way toward explaining both Saki's depictions of ogres and dominators and his frustration-induced wit in undermining them. This finale of a magnificent career, published 8 years after the demise of its author, firmly attests his genius.

Commonplace Book

'"Ancestors will happen in the best-intentioned families. Every social sin or failing is excused nowadays under the plea of an artistic temperament or a Sicilian grandmother. As poor Lady Cloutsham once told me, as soon as her children found out that a Hungarian lady of blameless moral character had married into the family somewhere in the reign of the Georges, they considered themselves absolved from any further attempt to distinguish between good and evil - except by way of expressing a general preference for the latter. When her youngest boy was at Winchester he made such unblushing use of the Hungarian strain in his blood that he was known as the Blue Danube. "That," said Lady Cloutsham, "is what comes of letting young children read Debrett and Darwin.""'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Flannelled Fool by TC Worsley (1967)

This is a plainly written early autobiography, remarkable for its discussion of homosexuality in the context of British public schools, both as a student and a teacher. Worsley's father was an extraordinary man, an athlete and womaniser who was one of those never-quite-satisfied types, always pushing for more, or for something different. The astonishing thing, given this personality profile, is that his early life was spent, on the whole most successfully, in the church! His charm is the probable reason; he was seen as an asset for reasons other than those of belief. The effect on his children, and particularly the author, of this testy, niggled, distant person was pretty numbing. Then the inevitable explosion of boredom and wrongdoing occurred and all the family's lives were turned upside down. He left, disgraced in the church, and was not much seen by them again. Worsley also recounts his time at school, echoing his father in terms of athletic prowess, and very slowly, with painful innocence and childishness, discovering his true nature of preferring males sexually. Though the substance of this material is not new, it is still fascinating and welcomely plainly put. He moves on to Cambridge, and thence to a junior mastership at a public school. There he causes a stir among the more traditional types by advocating modern types of tutorship, teaching and house-mastering. Supported by the more liberal members of staff and bolstered by a head who is sufficiently diplomatic to work around all the combatants' foibles, he achieves headway in some issues alongside some notable defeats. This part of the text highlights a minor issue for me, which is one of the suspicion of re-creation of events in re-ordered form to serve the purposes of drama. Thus two masters who are fighting catch one another at the same time trotting up to the head's office to blab, and both do a peculiar choreographed little curlicue and head off sheepishly in different directions. In another instance, the head returns a copy of a disputed Lawrence novel to Worsley on a silver salver with a pithy note attached. All too artfully convenient for my liking - he openly admits to the wish to alter events to make a more dramatically appealing narrative at another point. Otherwise, though, there is an admirable self-critical candour in this book. He's quite happy to admit to feeling profound interest in some of the better-looking or more seemingly needy young men at the school. Some of this will be a little difficult to read for some, but I think most of what he says has a refreshing honesty about it which can only help to make clear how filaments of emotion and longing can reverberate in these hothouse circumstances. So,with its portrait of the young post-war generation discovering the modern in their dislocated world, of the developing consciousness of left-wing politics that was prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s, this narrative also openly depicts taboo subjects with engaging simplicity.

Commonplace Book

'...Then I perceived that all such weakenings are the result of self-pity, the wish to be understood by a world which is interested intensely in a million things but not at all in understanding the bruised hearts of you and me.'

from Despoiling Venus (first part) by Jack Lindsay

Commonplace Book

'"I might break Sparrowby's neck."

"No one could have any reasonable objection to that course; Sparrowby is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...Government by democracy means government of the mentally unfit by the mentally mediocre..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...He comes into the category of those who are born to command."

"Possibly. His trouble so far is that he hasn't been able to find anyone who was born to obey him..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"Personally I am a pagan. Christians waste too much time in professing to be miserable sinners, which generally results in their being merely miserable and leaving some of the best sins undone..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot(Act III), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"You ought to marry."

"You think that would improve matters?"

"It would elevate you. Suffering is a great purifier."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act II), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"...We usually set out on these affairs with the intention of devoting a certain amount of patient effort in making the natives reasonably glad at the introduction of mission work; then we find ourselves involved in a much bigger effort to make them reasonably sorry for having killed the missionaries."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'"I've lost my mother."

"Do I understand you to mean that your mother is dead?"

"Oh, nothing so hackneyed. I don't think my mother will ever die as long as she can get credit. She was a Whortleford, you know, and the Whortleford's never waste anything..."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki

Commonplace Book

'...One can never repeat too often to oneself that it is one's most simple-hearted impulses which are likely to get one a bad name.'

from Despoiling Venus by Jack Lindsay (first part)

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)

The main concerns here are repetition and romance. By repetition I mean that some of the central relationships go through tests over and over again; same motivation, same result, nothing learnt. By romance I mean that tendency toward blushing inaccuracy - events often occur at the height of possibility: Paris squares are so littered with dead that they are impassable (even though a remnant escape from within them, a soldiery invade them to counter), blood flows in rivers, corpses are piled up, injuries so sickeningly significant etc etc in such a way that one would swear, if Hugo were being attentive to actuality, there could be no more action. Yet somehow, an impassable square is traversed, the invaders don't get blood-soaked trouser-cuffs, and the horrifically injured resurrect magnificently and fight on very effectually. Now, I'm not saying that some tendency of this kind isn't par for the course in adventuresome nineteenth century fiction; it's just that Hugo takes it to a completely new level, and it does get a bit tiresome nearing the end. The repetition is also patience-testing. Quite how many experiences of brick-wall-hitting confrontation Claude Frollo would have needed to finally understand that Esmeralda didn't want him, given that he had stayed alive, is anyone's guess. I guess it's a mercy for him, and us, that he dies. I certainly don't think I could have abided yet another puzzled, insight-lacking attempt to convince her. I won't retail a great deal about the plot, but I think it's worthwhile to comment on what seems to be one of Hugo's main concerns - what Paris was like in the late fifteenth century. I'm guessing that this is a part of this book which would get a lot of negative attention; we get a lot on architecture, layout, social systems within those, which is unapologetically essayesque in construction, and which I didn't mind on the whole. The colour is phenomenal and the action is dramatic; both are over-egged. A reasonably enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating, hyperbolic panorama.

Commonplace Book

'"Hortensia under existing circumstances is like a permeating dust-storm, which you can't possibly get away from or pretend that it's not there. Living with a comparatively modest establishment at the dower-house, she would be merely like Town in August or the bite of a camel - a painful experience which may be avoided with a little ordinary prudence."'

from a play entitled The Watched Pot (Act I), in The Square Egg and other sketches by Saki