The Gods, Sir Hugh, Mr.Perrin and Other Worlds

Why, good Sir Hugh, did you change the ending of Mr.Perrin and Mr.Traill for the American edition called The Gods and Mr.Perrin? I discovered this when I bought the 1939 Penguin yesterday. Right up to the last section the story remains the same even what I took to be a mistake in the American text referring to the little china man is there. I thought this must be the classic yellow and red porcelain mandarin 'di-di' which with dogs, girls in swings and shepherd lasses populated all available nooks, niches and shelves. I still hold to my original reading, there's something not quite right about 'little china man' which 'little Chinaman' corrects. That's a small or even a little point but to change the fate of Perrin alienates. I had suspended my disbelief in a certain direction even though the uplift factor was high and unreal. The original has a similar charity but with a different outcome. A reader is disinclined to make an emotional investment in inconsistent characterisation even though in his life he meets with startling alterations in habitual behaviour. In fiction we are determinists. Roll the dice and get an ending out of several offered, sealed naturally, but having done so please don't look at the alternates. Alea jacta est, les joux sont faites.

So what did you think of your ending? !

Mr.Perrin and Mr.Traill by Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole's (1884 – 1941) Mr.Perrin and Mr.Traill was published when he was just 27 (1911) and it must have incorporated some of the experiences he had as a master at Epsom College and at the several schools which he attended as a pupil. The novel is an astonishing achievement and does not belie the regard in which he was held by such judges as James, Woolf, Bennett and Conrad. O.K. So he networked assiduously and made himself useful but drawing a recommendation from Virginia Woolf who looked down the vista of her nose at practically everyone is not to be slighted.

Central to the story is the skewed, twisted and bitter consciousness of Vincent Perrin mathematics master, a Cambridge graduate who came to Moffat's 20 years previously as a temporary device, as did all the masters, and stayed and stayed and became the embodiment of all the sarcastic teachers you have ever known and loathed. He is a bachelor with his own room in the college and eating common meals in the refectory. It is mutton three times a week, hearty fat mutton. You can feel it as a skim on your teeth perhaps to be displaced by tapioca pudding. Perrin's only emotional tie is to his old mother to whom he writes every week. He is often at variance with the other members of the staff being a spy for the headmaster, the odious cleric Moy-Thompson.

It was about half-past nine when Perrin, looking up at the sound of the opening door, saw Traill standing there. Traill filled the doorway, and Perrin knew at once that there was going to be a disturbance. He had had disturbances before, a good many of them, and always it had brought to him a sense of pathos that he, with an old mother (he always saw her as a crumpled but vehement background), should have always to be fighting people—he, so unoffending if they would let him alone. However, if anyone (especially Traill) wished to fight him, he would do his best.

Traill is the new master and recent Cambridge graduate, rugger blue, hero to the boys, devastating swerve and all that and the lover, at a distance, of the young Isabel Desart also connected with the school. His early view of the school which he regards as a stop gap:

The Rev. Moy-Thompson, the head master— a venerable-looking clergyman, with a long grizzled beard and bony fingers—sat at the end of the table in an impatient way, as though he were longing for an excuse to fly into a temper. For the others, Traill only noticed one or two; Perrin, Dormer, and Clifton were there, of course. There was a large stout man with a heavy moustache and a sharp voice like a creaking door; a clergyman, thin and rather haggard, with a white wall of a collar much too big for him; an agitated little Frenchman, who seemed to expect that at any moment he might be the victim of a practical joke; a thin, bony little man with a wiry moustache and a biting, cynical speech that seemed to goad Moy-Thompson to fury; a nervous and bald-headed man, whose hand continually brushed his moustache and whose manner was exceedingly deprecating. There were others, but these struck Traill's eyes as they roved about.

Perrin's fantasy of marriage to Isabel Desart who is unaware of his existence and who is attracted to the uncomplicated Traill is the setting for a convincing depiction of a descent into madness. Even the ornament on his mantelpiece begins to take notice:

The little red and yellow chinaman on the mantelpiece, Perrin saw, had been watching the conversation with great curiosity, and Perrin felt that he was a little disappointed now when matters promised to finish comfortably. Perrin himself was only too ready for peace. These quarrels always brought on headaches, and, in his heart, he longed eagerly, hungrily, for a friend. He already was beginning to feel again that he liked young Traill very much.

Other divisions of Perrin emerge possibly watched over by Mother. There is a man in a box trying to get out but the lid is being sat upon by a skeleton, there is Perrin 2 – The Evil One – there is a simulacrum of Traill always watching him from beside the door, not that he sees him there precisely as he slips out when one tries to see him, soundlessly. Worst of all the Chinaman leaves his perch on the mantelpiece:

Perrin sat back in his chair; the room was going round and round, and he had a confused idea that people were running races. He pressed his hands to his head; the little chinaman leapt, screaming, off the mantelpiece and ran at him, kicking up his fat little legs; and with the breeze from under the door, a pile of French exercises fluttered, blew like sails in the wind, and then slid, scattering, to the floor.

And thoughts:

Perrin was quite clear in his own mind now that he hated Traill very much indeed, but he could not be very definitely sure of any reasons. There had been something once about an umbrella, and there was something else about Miss Desart, and there was even something about Garden Minimus; but none of these things were fixed very resolutely in his mind, and his thoughts slipped about like goldfish in a pond.

It's quite sustained until the unravelling of the shabby cardigan that is Perrin comes to the consideration of methods of slaughter. Here is the lair of Moy-Thompson:

And so he went to see Moy-Thompson. You can, if the simile is not too terribly old, imagine Moy-Thompson as a spider and his study as his web; it was certainly dusty enough, with faded busts of Romans and Greeks on the top shelves of the book-cases, and gloomy photographs of gloomy places on the walls. The two men seemed to suit the place well enough, and its depression really brightened Mr. Perrin up. But it must be remarked once more that it was not from any anticipation of doing Traill damage that he embraced and cuddled his little piece of news so eagerly, but only because it helped his sense of importance. He was already wishing that he had told Garden Minimus to write his Euclid thirty times instead of fifteen, so cheered and inspired did he feel.

This classic deserves to escape the doom of detention.

The Gods and Mr.Perrin by Hugh Walpole

In Britain it had the title Mr.Perrin and Mr.Traill, in America it was called The Gods and Mr. Perrin(from Internet Archive). Who can plumb the mind of the marketing man but in the former a business relation is implied perhaps. If you called a man Babbitt for instance it was because you went to school with him or or belonged to the same fraternal society, the Masons,that sort of thing. In Britain of the early 20th.century that title means you are looking in and what you seeing as you read is the hell that is a minor public school in Cornwall. Hugh Walpole or Sir Hugh Walpole possibly not Sir Hugh, the idea of a people's knight had not caught on at that time though here my reading of the British mind falters in the fog of nuance. There are things which must remain opaque, high holy things. Yes.

This was Walpole's first success and with it he entered into the rising star category along with Compton Mackenzie and Somerset Maugham (D.H.Lawrence distant but gaining). A schoolboy who is bullied by both the masters and the other boys in the book is called Somerset Walpole which brings the common acquaintance with that hell to the fore. More anon but if you are down town and rooting in the barrows and find it under any style or title, buy it.

The Captives by Hugh Walpole

This book, published in 1920, is dedicated to Arnold Bennett whose reputation amongst the literati was damaged by the negative attentions of Virginia Woolf. Birds of a winged feather it seems.

The epigraph is by William James:

"I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response which any of us may make to the religious appeal. God Himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part I do not know what the sweat and blood and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithlessness, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and fears ..."

(from The Will to Believe)

If God’s power waxes and wanes according to the strivings of pilgrims here below much of the faith that is adhered to by the characters of this novel does not encourage him. That may be to the advantage of this man:

Death leapt upon the Rev. Charles Cardinal, Rector of St. Dreots in South Glebeshire, at the moment that he bent down towards the second long drawer of his washhand-stand; he bent down to find a clean collar. It is in its way a symbol of his whole life, that death claimed him before he could find one.

At one moment his mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was stricken with a wild surmise, a terror that even at that instant he would persuade himself was exaggerated. He saw before his clouding eyes a black pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a hand towards the shabby black box that, true to all miserly convention, occupied the space beneath his bed. Time was not allowed him. He might take with him into the darkness neither money nor clean clothing.

He had been told on many occasions about his heart, that he must not excite nor strain it. He allowed that to pass as he allowed many other things because his imagination was fixed upon one ambition, and one alone. He had made, upon this last and fatal occasion, haste to find his collar because the bell had begun its Evensong clatter and he did not wish to-night to be late. The bell continued to ring and he lay his broad widespread length upon the floor. He was a large and dirty man.

There are many excellent passages in this novel which draw on the ecclesiastical insider knowledge of Walpole whose father finished his career in the Church of England as Bishop of Edinburgh. It has that attitude towards the Nonconformist chapel folk which the Established Church fostered. They disdained the whiff of tent. When Walpole considers the Church of England and the life of the vicarage a similar antipathy is expressed.

However between the ‘good bits’ there are narrative stretches when you long to give the authorial victrola a vigorous wind. Maggie Cardinal is the daughter of the late vicar of St.Dreot’s who goes to live with her aunts Ann and Elizabeth in London. They are prominent members of a Methodist Sect whose ‘prophet’ is Mr. Warlock. Their house is round the corner from the chapel:

They turned out of their own street into a thin, grey one in which the puddles sprang and danced against isolated milk-cans and a desolate pillar-box. The little bell was now loud and strident, and when they passed into a passage which led into a square, rather grimy yard, Maggie saw that they had arrived. Before her was a hideous building, the colour of beef badly cooked, with grey stone streaks in it here and there and thin, narrow windows of grey glass with stiff, iron divisions between the glass. The porch to the door was of the ugliest grey stone with "The Lord Cometh" in big black letters across the top of it. Just inside the door was a muddy red mat, and near the mat stood a gentleman in a faded frock-coat and brown boots, an official apparently.

It is a complex novel, ambitious in scope written from the point of view of Maggie Cardinal and it reflects the reticence of that era. The theme of captivity and liberation from theology is well sketched in many set pieces which relieve the occasional narrative drag.

To balance the picture of the ugly clear-light chapel Walpole, a man of refined artistic sense who amassed a wonderful collection of modern art which he left to the public, introduces us to the new and gaudy Anglican Church:

Early on that first afternoon she was taken to see the Church. For a desperate moment her spirits failed her as she stood at the end of the Lane and looked. This was a Church of the newest red brick, and every seat was of the most shining wood. The East End window was flaming purple, with a crimson Christ ascending and yellow and blue disciples amazed together on the ground. Paul stood flushed with pride and pleasure, his hand through Maggie's arm.

"That's a Partright window," he said with that inflection that Maggie was already beginning to think of as "his public voice."

"I'm afraid, Paul dear," said Maggie, "I'm very ignorant."

"Don't know Partright? Oh, he's the great man of the last thirty years—did the great East window of St. Martin's, Pontefract. We had a job to get him I can tell you. Just look at that purple."

The Killer and the Slain by Hugh Walpole

It needs also a cynical humour; although Roy laughed so much I never thought he had a very quick sense of humour, and I am quite sure that he was incapable of cynicism.

This is Maugham’s verdict on Kear/Walpole and it seems borne out in the novels. The situations he describes are bizarre but he foregoes the humorous possibilities that might lighten the story and make it flow better. Of course the grotesque, baldly related, has its own grim comedy and the restricted length of The Killer and the Slain brings out the irony of juxtaposition. He is not allowed the luxury of length that might dissipate the effects. Those are many.

First of all the dedication:
THIS MACABRE IS DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY AND HUMBLE ADMIRATION TO THE GREAT AUTHOR OF THE TURN OF THE SCREW.

That is a significant nod as they share the theme of spiritual oppression and possession.
jolly corner

The novel is related in the form of narrative statements by the protagonist John Ozias Talbot now 36 years of age. He begins with an account of his schooling and his first encounter with his bete noir who at first seems a saviour. John Talbot as a shy and timid schoolboy is taken up by Jimmy Turnstall who is popular and burly enough to prevent the other being bullied. It becomes very clear that he guards him only to have exclusive tormenting rights.

He was always laughing, joking, calling out, on the move. As a small boy (he was the same age as myself, born in the same month) he was friendly to all the world. I suppose, to use modern rather cheap terms, you would say he was an extrovert. I was an introvert. But there was more in it than that. He used his breeziness and heartiness to cover his secret designs. Even then, at ten years of age, he was plotting how he could use everybody and everything to his own advantage. He was helped, of course, by the fact that he never had any morals whatever.

He begins to oppress Talbot and it is his chief amusement to claim a special affinity with him even though Talbot loathes him. ‘Jacko’ is the contemptuous name Tunstall gives him:

‘You know, Jacko, I DO like you, although you’re such a goup. I think you really like me too, although you’re a bit afraid of me. I like that as well.’

‘I hate you! I hate you!’ I cried, breaking away from him.

In time Tunstall moves away to London and Talbot remains in the seaside town of Seaborne in the county of Glebeshire running the antique shop established by his deceased father and writing novels. At the date of the First Narrative, 1936, he has had 3 published, the last of which The Gossip-monger is a success. He has married by this time, a beautiful if cold woman called Eve who takes over the antique business running it successfully and allowing him to focus on his writing. Then Turnstall turns up. He is now a well known portrait painter and has taken a house where he intends to stay for part of the year. When they inevitably meet Talbot makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with him:

Then he said: ‘Don’t you want to know what’s been happening to me all this time?’
‘I don’t particularly care.’
‘That IS a rude thing to say. All the same I’ll tell you. I’m quite a successful painter. Hadn’t you heard? Especially with portraits. I paint people as they’d like to be. That’s the thing. That’s what you ought to do. What’s the use of writing these books that nobody wants to read? Simply wasting your time. I’ve made quite a bit of money, and, like a wise man, I married a woman with money.

This is the beginning of a pervasive occupation of the weaker man’s mind and spirit. The title of the book is an indication of where this leads but there is a Mr. Hyde twist to it that does not require a special potion. Is Talbot’s transformation a psychotic delusion or the absorption by an incubus?

There are excellently realised minor characters. Cheeseman aka The Rat a loathsome blackmailer is fascinatingly repellant.

I heard all this from Basil Cheeseman, a friend of his, and about Cheeseman, known to myself and some others as ‘The Rat’, I must say a word or two. Physically he resembled a rat, for he was a little man with very prominent white sharp upper teeth. He had reddish-brown hair and restless whisky-coloured eyes. When he smiled his teeth jutted out over his lower lip. He was, and is, an evil little man; a journalist by profession who had settled down in a ramshackle cottage near Seaborne and there indulged in shabby orgies with girls from London or visitors to the resort. He made a living by picking up paragraphs and sending them to London and the provincial papers. He had, and has, as malicious and dirty-minded a soul as exists in the world to-day. He was the very man for Tunstall. He was more evil, I don’t doubt, than Tunstall and yet I did not hate him half as much. He had no power over me. I thought of him possibly as a kind of emanation from Tunstall. When Tunstall couldn’t come to me himself he sent the Rat instead, and I can see him now with a faint shiny stubble on his cheeks, his projecting teeth and false grin, his restless cat-like eyes. ‘He’s come back and he’s going to stay,’ the Rat said, eyeing me curiously. His malicious curiosity knew no limit. He had long ago discovered my hatred and fear of Tunstall, but what was Tunstall’s hold over me? I did not look as though I had any vices. And, farther than that, why did Tunstall bother about me at all? What was my attraction for Tunstall?

This is an excellent novel and should be on a list of the neglected classics of the macabre.

What of the retort to Maugham that I mentioned previously?
witch's hat
One of the novels Talbot had published was called The Gridiron that Rose the well known novelist had liked although the public did not concur.

The Gridiron, into which I put so much good work—a novel, I am still convinced, with something unique in it, something that has never been done before and will never be done again—appeared and was dead as soon as born. And yet not quite so! For it roused the interest of certain critics, and Rose, the famous novelist, wrote me an enthusiastic letter concerning it. Now I consider Rose’s novels very poor indeed—old-fashioned, romantic, platitudinous— but he IS a very well known writer and when he reviews a novel he helps, undoubtedly, its popularity. I have often enough inveighed against the practice of one novelist reviewing another novelist and have especially criticised Rose in this connection, but after he had said some fine quotable words about The Gridiron in The Message I felt rather differently about him. His letter to me was kind and enthusiastic, if patronising, and when I next saw the picture of his high and shining forehead in a newspaper I felt, I must confess, quite friendly towards it.
……………

There was in The Gossip-monger a certain dry humour and irony and it happened that the public fancied in one of the figures of my story a caricature of Rose himself. This helped its sale, and Rose was very magnanimous, alluding, humorously, in his review to the caricature as though he had enjoyed it; as a matter of fact I heard afterwards from a friend of his that it hurt him very much. It was Rose’s great ambition in life, I think, to be considered a noble character without being thought at the same time a prig—no easy ambition

Somerset Maugham dips his nib in the witch's hat

When penmanship was taught via the medium of steel nibs and ceramic ink wells like witches hats set into the oak desks bound each to their seats with cast iron brackets, the boy behind if wanting to annoy would jab your arse with a pen. I have been from time to time been discussing such literary jabs given by Hemingway to Ford and Anderson. I believe that the more famous writer can affect the reputation of the other. It has the effect of a scorn barrier which our admiration for the jabber creates about the jabee. I felt that about Ford and also I must admit about George Moore who quarrelled with W.B . Yeats.

Somerset Maugham similarly had barefaced innocent sport with Hugh Walpole in his novel Cakes and Ale and it is said ruined the man’s reputation in the process. Seeing as I had never heard of Walpole my ignorance could be accounted for by this pasquinade which turned a successful writer into a footnote. The parsimonious explanation is merely ignorance. Alroy dit Roy Kear is the assiduous networker, a type which anyone with the slightest acquaintance with literary circles will recognise. There may and probably should be many more such characters in fiction, Lady Carbury in Trollope’s The Way we are Now is one. However it is only those established authors who feel their reputation is secure dip their nib in the witches hat.

The portrait of Roy Kear is etched with acid on the elegant burnished copper of Maugham’s prose.

I had watched with admiration his rise in the world of letters. His career might well have served as a model for any young man entering upon the pursuit of literature. I could think of no one among my contemporaries who had achieved so considerable a position on so little talent. This, like the wise man’s daily dose of Bemax, might have gone into a heaped-up tablespoon. He was perfectly aware of it, and it must have seemed to him sometimes little short of a miracle that he had been able with it to compose already some thirty books. I cannot but think that he saw the white light of revelation when first he read that Charles Dickens in an after-dinner speech had stated that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains. He pondered the saying. If that was all, he must have told himself, he could be a genius like the rest; and when the excited reviewer of a lady’s paper, writing a notice of one of his works, used the word (and of late the critics have been doing it with agreeable frequency) he must have sighed with the satisfaction of one who after long hours of toil has completed a cross-word puzzle.

That is the beginning of so many ink laden jabs that a tattoo is drawn on the Knight’s posterior. Cakes and Ale was published in 1930 and only in 1942 in the posthumous The Killer and the Slain does Walpole reply. Of that curious work of macabre genius more anon.

Addendum 7/9/13: Selena Hastings has a post about the Kear/Walpole slag:alroy maugham