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ANTIC
HAY
TU Y
IN
POST WAR
DISILLUSIONMENT
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he age demanded an image
f
t
accelerated grimace
Something for
the modern stage
Not at
any ra te an Attic grace
EZR POUN
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ANTIC HAY:
A
STUDY
IN
POST WAR
DISILLUSIONMENT
By
JAMES DALTON
MULVIHILL
B A
A Thesis
Submitted to
the
School of Graduate Studies·
in
Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements
for the Degree
Master of
rts
McMaster University
September
978
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STR CT
In Antic Hay Aldous Huxley wanted, as
he
stated, to
depict
the
l i fe
and opinions of the
post-war
generation.
The considerable cr i t ic l and
popular
response el ic i ted by
the newly
published novel
indicates that u x ~ y had indeed
made a
statement
which,
at
the
time,
was
of urgent
importance
to
his contemporaries. Reader reaction varied from virulent
condemnation to an uneasy acknowledgement
of
the
author s
ta lents
to outr ight
acceptance. Signif icantly,
Antic Hay
received i ts most enthusiast ic reception from Huxley s
immediate
contemporaries
the
y oun g members of the post
war
gen eratio n for whom
the
novel
had been
written.
Whatever
i t
was that
at tracted
or repelled Antic HeY s
original
readers was a
quality
inherent in
the
f ict ion i t se l f
which embodied or reflected
a transformation
of
sensib i l i ty
taking place
at
the
time.
If some readers deplored the
surface flippancy and
the
seemingly
irresponsible
brut l i ty
of the
novel,
others
saw
in
these
same
features
a
fundamental
seriousness. Huxley himsel f maintained that
his
intention in
writing Antic Hay was ent irely serious and explained any
possible
confusion
as arising from the novel s incongruous
blend of farce
and tragedy,
fantasy
and realism. And in
fact , his
conviction
that farce could at once mask and yet
effectively
convey
a
sense
of tragedy
const i tutes
the
basic
i i i
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premise of Antic Hay
Set
in
the
London
of the
1920 s
Antic
ay
partakes
of
the decade s mood of pessimism and a ban do ne d h ed on is m.
Always
behind the
reckless gaiety of c a ba r e t
scenes
and
night e xc ur s i ons
behind
the mocking cynicism which animates
the nove l s
d ialo g u e
is a profound sense of d isil lu sio n m e n t.
This
d isil lu sio n m e n t
has
o rig in a te d
in
the
Great
War
which
concentrated
in the
figure
of
yra
Viveash
c a s t s
i t s
shadow
over
the e xi s t e nc e of a l l the nove l s c h a r a c t e r s . The War s
influence on the f i c t i o n a l world of Antic ay is pervasive.
Evoked through a l l u s i o n s and
fragments of personal
memory i t
~ r o v i s the a ppr opr i a t e
c u l t u r a l
perspective from which to
consider the n ov el s events. The cynical r e j e c t i o n of p ast
values
and
b e l i e f s
springs
from a
consciousness of
imminent
c ult ura l d is so lu tio n
which ha s rendered
impotent
the
capacity
fo r
p os itiv e v is io n. The
hopelessness
of such a p l i g h t is
shown by the desperate
attempt
to
escape
a consciousness of
spir i tu l
impotence in a continual round
of
vain d i s t r a c t i o n s .
The
resul t
is only
f u r t h e r
d isil lu sio n m e n t;
the
n o v e l s
final
vision
is
one
of
ut ter
pessimism.
In
Antic
Hay Huxley pungently depicts and examines
the
p l i g h t of his contemporaries. But his
detachment as
a
commentator is
undermined
by a
curious
s u s c e p t i b i l i t y
to the
vi t i t ing
str in
of
sentimentalism and a f f e c t a t i o n c h a ra c te r-
i s t i
of the nove l s f i c t i o n a l world. The outward mask of
cynicism
which
emphatically
announces
the
disappointed
v
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idea l i s t
within is as much
feature
of his own att i tude s
that
of
his
characters .
t
w s
Huxley s
fai lure
to
ful ly
transcend
the
prevailing mood of his ge whi h must h ve
m de
Antic Hay s
evocation
of
the
pos t-war e thos so
compelling
nd
relevent
to
i t s
original readers.
the
s me time,
this
flawed
perspective
--
indispensible to Huxley s
appeal
in
the
1920 s
h s m de Antic y somewh t of period piece ,
fascinating
as
n
account
of
i ts
age,
but
of
l imited
s igni f i -
cance
as
work of ar t
v
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CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
would l ike
to
thank Professor G ishop
for
his
generous contributions of time nd encouragement
vi
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Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter
III
Chapter IV
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
TABLE CONTENTS
vii
Page
4
79
2
6
5
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INTRODU TION
t is a commonplace that Aldous Huxley was a spokes-
man for his
generation,
that
his
works ref lect the opinions
and
feel ings of
his
contemporaries.
He
is
the
most
fasci-
nating
spokesman of a
generation
disi l lusioned by war and
inte l lectual
confusion
everywhere,
wrote
Carl
Van
Doran
in
1925.
Huxley himself implied as much when in a
l e t te r
to
his
fa ther , he stated the
premise
of one of
his
novels:
t
is a book writ ten by a member of what I may call the
war-generation for others
of
his
kind; and
i t
is
intended to ref lect
the l i fe
and opinions of an
age which has
seen
the v io lent d is ruption of
almost
all
the
standards, conventions and values
current in the
previous epoch.
2
The novel in question was
Antic Hay
and i t was written
in
923
jus t
one
year af te r the
publications
of
The Waste Land
and Ulysses. Like the writers
of
those
works,
Huxley was
concerned
with depicting his
age:
the events recorded in
Antic
Hay
take
place
in 922 and are thus vir tual ly contempo
raneous with the composition
of
the
novel.
If Eliot had br i l
l ian t ly
evoked a
prevail ing sense
of urban al ienat ion and
Joyce
had recorded minutely and powerfully the
events
of a
June day
in
Dublin, Huxley f i l led his novel with
topical
refe
rences
to
Lloyd George p.92), Marie Stopes
p.55),
Unamuno
p.16), Schoenburg
p.16),
Picasso p.116),
the
present con-
dit ion of
certain London dis t r ic t s l ike
Paddington
and
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2
Pimlico, and, of course, the Great War But while those
works
of
Eliot
and
Joyce
a re con sid ered
to
be
landmarks
of
modern l i t e ra ture
Antic
Hay
i f read
at a ll now makes a
r el ati ve ly s lig h t
impression on today s
reader.
The topica-
l i ty
of the novel is par t ia l ly to
blame,
as i s undoubtedly
and indeed f inal ly
Huxley s
self-admitted fai l ings as an
ar t i s t .
Yet the assert ion, repeated time n ~ again by
cri -
t ics
and
readers, that
Huxley
was a
major
spokesman
of his
age,
urges
a considerat ion of what made Antic
ay
so per t i
nent
to i ts original readers.
In the preface
to his
study. Aldous
Huxley: Satire
and
Stfucture,
Jerome Meckier
dismisses
the viabi l i ty of
approaching
Huxley on the basis of his in i t i a l p o p u l r t y ~
claiming
that
I t
is of
l i t t l e benefi t
to
base
the case for
him on
his
appeal
to his
original audience of the 1920 s and
30 s .
o point out the immeasurable ways in which any Huxley
novel is a
vir tual
index
to
the
ideas,
trends, and
fads of the years surrounding i t s composition might
make
fascinating
reading but would inevitably
reduce
Huxley
to
l i te rary
history, perhaps
even
sociology.3
Meckier
suggests that
Huxley s main interest
for
us
l ies in the continuing
relevence
of his thought and convic-
t ions.
Indeed,
various a sp ec ts of his work dealing with
science, mysticism,
pacifism,
as well
as
numerous other
concerns,
are certainly
of
interest to any modern reader.
Thus,
a large
portion of
Huxley crit icism deals with these
relevent aspects of
his
work while general surveys of
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3
modern
f i c t i o n
mention
Huxley i f
a t a l l as a minor and
more
or
le ss
d is cre dit ed n o ve li st .
Novels
l i k e Antic
Hay
have
come to be regarded even by
Huxley s
admirers merely
as e a rly i n d i c a t i o n s of
the
w r i t e r s
l a t e r
i n t e l l e c t u a l
development o r a l t e r n a t i v e l y
as the p a r t i c u l a r
brand
of
l i g h t
s a t i r i c a l
f i c t i o n t h a t
Huxley
abandoned for more
experimental
novels
l i k e
Point Counter Point and y l ~ s s in
Gaza and the much l a t e r didactic f i c t i o n of I s l a nd.
s
a
consequence
of such p reo ccu p atio n s
the d istin g u ish in g
c h a ra c te r of
Huxley s
very e a rly f i c t i o n has been la rg e ly
overlooked.
Meckier s contention t h a t a c ons i de r a t i on
of Huxley s
o r i g i n a l
impact
on his contemporaries would be of
merely
so c i-
ological i n t e r e s t assumes t h a t the w r i t e r s appeal
lay in
an
uncanny
a b i l i t y to
portray accurately the a g e s lIideas
t r end s a n d fad s But a s H ux1ey s s t a t e
men
t to
his
fa t her
i n d i c a t e s
the basic premise
of
Antic
Hay
involved a serious
concern
with
profound
s t i r r i n g s
of
c u l t u r a l
unease.
The
IIlife
and opinions of an ag e
which he sought to depict would
in e v ita b ly r e f l e c t
the
a g e s
s u p e r f i c i a l
c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s as
indeed does
the p ic tu re drawn by E l i o t in The Waste
Land.
One reviewer of Antic Hay p e rc e p tiv e ly a s s oc i a t e d
the
two
works:
Mr
Huxley
has the American p o e t s f l a i r for topical
wit
of
a
d i s t i n c t l y metropolitan fla v o u r.
London of
the thea
t r e s and e l e c t r i c b i l l b o a r d s the smart cabarets and dan
cing p la c e s
the parks and the dingy suburbs
is
evoked
with the s k i l l of a sle ig h t-o f-h a n d performer. I t i s
perhaps
a
l i t t l e
higher
on
the
soc ia l sc ale
than
Mr E li o t s c i t y with a l i t t l e more money
to
spend.
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4
But
i ts
point of view is
much the same.
4
Crit ics
have drawn
connections
between
Huxley s
progression
from his early
cynicism to
the
mysticism
of his l ter
f ict ion
and
Elio t ls
similar movement from The Waste Land and liThe
Hollow Men
to
the
Four Quartets.
But
the vast differences
of medium and range which separate the two writers suggest
that what character is t ics they have
in
common are due to the
fact
that
they
were
writing
at
the
same
time
and
under
simi-
l r conditions.
What
is
important
is
that
they dealt
with a
contemporary mood of disil lusionment and uncertainty, although
in different
ways.
In this connection i t is
interest ing to
note an essay
ent i t led Accidie which Huxley published in 1923.
In i t
he
discusses
the
changing
concepts of
accidie,
f i r s t
seen
as
one
of
the deadly s ins ,
then
as a disease, and f inal ly as an
essent ia l ly lyr ical
emotion,
f rui t ful in the inspiration of
much
of the
most
h r terist i
modern
l i t e r t u r e ~ Huxleyls
use
of
the word
c
h r ter is t i
l
here is s ignif icant ,
for i t
implies a part icular status for the ennui
of his
age.
And
indeed,
he
goes
on
to argue
that th is
most
recent
form
of
accidie
is his gener at ion s peculia r inhe rit ance : among
the
contributing
factors
to
this
condition
he includes
the increas-
ing urbanization
of the
n inete en th cen tu ry ,
a resul tant
res t -
lessness
and
need
for new
distract ions
an
d f inal ly ,
to
crown this vast structure
of
fai lures and disi l lusionments ,
the
r e
cam
e
the
War
0
f 1
9
4
He
con c1u
des:
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5
Other epochs have witnessed
disasters
have had to
suffer
disil lusionment;
but
in
no
century
have
the
dis i l lus ion
ments
followed on one another s heels
with
such
uninter
mitted rapidity as in the
twentieth,
for
the
good reason
tha t
in
no
century
has change been so
rapid
and
profound.
The
mal
du siecle was an inevitable
evi l ; indeed, we
can
claim with a cer tain pride that we have a r ight
to our
accidie.
With us
i t is not
a sin or a disease
of the
hypochondries;
i t
is
a
state
of
mind
which fate has
forced upon us.
7
If
there is a
hint
of se lf -sa t isfac t ion in
these l ines,
i t is
a
note
which was
in tune with
the
prevail ing
att i tude
of
the decade. I t
is
such
an
age
of
IIfacile
despairs ,
backyard
Hamlets,
cheap return t ickets to the end
of
the night
that
George
Orwell
cr i t i c izes in his
well-known
essay, Inside
the
Whale
S
Looking back on the
1920 s
in
a
rare mood of re t ro-
spection,
Huxley
himself
states
that
what he cal ls lithe popu-
larizat ion of meaning lessness was a convenient
way
of excus
ing
various
forms
of i r responsible behaviour.
9
But
i f the
older
Huxley
had
long
since abandoned such an at t i tude
writing
to
John Middleton
Murray
in
946
he
was
anxious
to
dissociate himself from the fashionably cynical young writer
of the 1920 slO
his asser t ion
in
9 3 that Antic
ay re-
flected the
p
inions
and
l i fe
of the
post-war generation
must nevertheless be taken at face value. Although Antic
ay
partakes of the mood of faci le despair deplored by Orwell,
i t
is
only within such a context that
the
novel can be pro-
perly understood.
For
Huxley s conviction,
stated
in
Accidie and implied in the l e t te r to his father , that
ennui is a state
of
mind which fate has forced upon us
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6
const i tutes the fundamental at t i tude behind Antic Hay
I t
is
v lith
singular aptness that Cyril
Connolly
calls
Huxley
lithe most
typical
of
a generation,
typical
in
his
promise,
his
e r udi t
ion, his
cyn i ci
and i n
his
pee u1i a r b ran d
0
f
pro
1i
f ie
s te r i i t
y
This
study
does not propose to make a case for Huxley
as
an a r t i s t
To attempt
to
place Huxley
in the
f i r s t rank
of fiction writers is unreal is t ic as he himself
would have
asser ted.
To
argue that he belongs
to a t radit ion dis t inc t
from the mainstream
of
English l i te ra ture
that of Peacock
and
Mallock, for example
is
perhaps more
helpful; but
again
the
steep
decline of Huxley s
popularity in the
1920 s
to
his
re la t ive
obscurity
today
suggests that an
understand-
ing
of
this
writer
demands a consideration of
his
contempora-
neity. s
Raymond
Mortimer wrote in 1923,
IIMr
Huxley s deco-
rations are nothing i f not voguish.
Ephemeral
too? Well,
i t
is
we for
whom
they
are
destined and not our
possib le poste-
t
3
y. I t
is the intention
of this study,
then)
to
examine
Antic Hay with a view to appraising i ts
cogency as
an expres-
sion
of
i t s age.
In Chapter I
the reception of
Antic H
9
by
i ts
original
readers will
be
considered, as will
be
the interact ion of the
novel s
comic and
t ragic elements: both these
concerns
will
be discussed in
regard
to Huxley s
sta te d in te ntio ns
in
writing Antic
Hay
Ess en tia lly , th is
chapter
will attempt
to
establ ish
the proper
context
in
which
to
view
the novel.
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Chapters II and I I I will examine in d e t a i l the pi c t ur e
of
the
post war
epoch
presented
in Antic
Hay
the
former
will
deal
with the mood of
d isil lu sio n m e n t
which informs the novel;
the l t ter will
discuss
the h ed on is tic p ur su its indulged in
by
the novel
c ha r a c t e r s
as they re a c t
to t h i s
is i l lus ion-
ment. Chapter
and
the conclusion will serve
the
purpose
of
examining and
ev alu atin g
Antic
Hay s f i na l statem ent of
pessimism.
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CH PTER I
I can predic t the consequences. Mr
Huxley
will have
shoals
of
imitators . His l icence will provoke clever
young men and clever young women to out-A ldous Aldous.
e
shall
have herds of
l i te ra ry
rats exploring
every
sewer. The
craf t
of le t te rs will be debased and
degraded
until
l i te ra ture
becomes a synonym
for
bad smells and
bad drains.
The
cloacre
of vice will
be
dredged
for
fre sh infam ies.
There will
be a popular cul t of blasphemy and a
prof i table
school
of nameless innuendo. There are few turpitudes
which
cannot
be limned by
the expert
juggler with words.
Literary subtlety
can
adumbrate
moral cancers and lepro
sies
tha t
make
even
the pathologist shudder
in his con
sulting-room. There
is
no l imit to the
resources
of
wordcraft
when i t is prost i tuted to the
abysses
of base
ness.
l
So wrote
James
Douglas in
a
review
of
the
newly publish-
ed
Antic
Hay
in 1923. His was an extreme reaction, but in i ts
virulence i t
i l lus t ra tes the remarkable
impact that
Aldous
Huxley had
on
the l i te rary
world
of the
1920s. Although no
other reviewer
matched Douglas s in tens i ty
the cri t ica l
res-
ponse to
Antic
Hay indicates that
the
book was
of
a controver
sial
nature.
Reviewers noted
what they
described
as the novel s
savagery, i ts blasphemy, i ts
diabolical
cleverness
and
br i l l i -
ance. H Boynton, in
the
Independent,
described
i t as
consti tut ing
a
new
and immensely smart f ic t ion .
Joseph
Wood Krutch called
Huxley the
age s
most accomplished expo
nent of impudent modernity . 3
The novelty
of
Antic Hay was immediately
apparent,
but the
epithets
which
greeted i t
8
clever ,
smart,
impudent
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suggest that the
novel s
innovations were viewed with ambi-
valence. A certain uneasiness
is
evident in even some of
Huxley s more
sympathetic
cr i t ics which manifests
i t se l f
in a tendency to
regard the
cleverness and
the
Ibr i l l ianc2
as products of adolescent precociousness.
Referring
to the
f l ippant humour
of
Antic Hay
Gerald
Gould
wrote,
Mr. Huxley
will have his l i t t l e joke, and i t must be one that , however
inexplicably,
every
schoolboy
shares .4 But Boynton revealed
the antagonism
underlying
his colleagues
uneasiness
when
he complained that Huxley has
the
usual scunner of
his
gene-
ration against
everything
else before or
outside
his genera
t ion .5
Yet while the l i te r ry Mahatmas of
the weekly
reviews
m y have
dist rusted
Antic Hay s cleverness and irreverence,
the book was greeted enthus ias t ica l ly y Huxley s immediate
contemporaries.
From
accounts
given y people who when
young had read Huxley avidly, i t seems
that
Huxley s early
works had a profoundly
l iberat ing influence on
his
generation.
David
Cecil , for example,
remarks on
how in the
formative
period
between
thir teen
and
twenty he
[Huxley] had, as
i t
were, re leased them, had freed their sp i r i t s from
the
con-
ventions of
the
past
and the
inhibi t ing conditions of
the
6
present
age. The
early short s tor ies the poetry
for
i t
was as a poet
that
Huxley f i r s t emerged
and, most
important, the
l ight s t i r ic l
novel, Crome Yellow 1 9 2 1 ~
had
established
Huxley
as
a
figure
of
scandal in the
l i te r ry
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
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1 0
world; the mocking i rreverence
of
these
works set
him up
as
the defini t ive model of
smart,
rebell ious modernity. Antic
Hay however,
while retaining the lethal f r i v o l i t y
which
cha-
racterized Huxley s oth er early writ ings ,
seemed more
provo-
cat ive. Of
his reaction to this novel in par t icular , Angus
\ o i 1son wri
tes:
The
revolutionary
forces that
released
me were
all
and
more than all that I
expected.
I t seemed a revelation
of emancipa tion
and intel lectual
richness.
To be preco
ciously
sophis t icated,
then,
was
indeed
very heaven .
For many
years
Antic Hay
and
Point o u t ~ r
Point
were
my fa i t e s . Sma r t i n
t e l l
e ct ua 1 and a r t i s
t i c
Lon don
was a f t e r all j u s t outside my door.
The inmates
of the
Kensington hotels where I l ived might talk
as they
would,
but in every bus and tube on which I
t ravel led
to and
from school
there were b r i l l i a n t
twisted
Spandrells,
blaspheming Colemans, or
perhaps
even
c
ivi l ized
Mr. Mercaptan
going home to
Crebillon f i l s Sofa. A few
years more and I , too, would be a
Gumbri1.
7
Wilson
r e c a l l s t h a t
at
the
time
(the
1920s),
Crome
Yellow
and
h o ~
Barren Leaves (1925)
were le ss e xc itin g
because the i r
i d y l l i c set t ings did
not
seem immediately
relevant
to his
own l i f e .
8
nd
indeed,
set
against the
background
of
Antic
~
seedy
back-alleys
and
fas t cabarets , Huxley s inso
lent
flippancy
must
have acquired a more
d isqu ie ting char ac te r.
Although
not
so
profound
an
expression
of
disi l lusionment
as
T
he L0 ve Son g 0 f
J .
A1f
red
Pru fro c k II 0 r The
Was
t e L and, the
world-weary sophis t icat ion of Antic Hay expressed
cogently
the contemporary
mood of
d i s s a t i s f a c t i o n
and rest lessness.
In a l e t t e r
written not
long a f t e r the publication of
Antic
Hay
Huxley
responded
to his f a t h e r s expressed disl ike
of the novel,
I
can
I
t
say tha
t I
expected
you woul d
enjoy
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
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the book.
ut on
the other
hand I expected
my contemporaries
would; and so
far as
I know by what people have written to
me
they have .9 Huxley s contention that Antic ay would
undoubtedly appeal to his young
contemporaries
seems to
suggest
that the par t icular character of the
novel
which
disturbed
the
elder
Huxley was, in his son s view, represen-
ta t ive of the younger
generation s
sta te of
mind.
e claimed
that
the
book has a certain novelty being a work in which
a ll the ordinari ly separated categories
t ragic , comic,
fantast ic
rea l i s t ic
are
combined so to say
chemically
into a single
ent i ty
whose
unfamiliar
character makes i t at
f i r s t
sight rather repulsive .lO Huxley maintained that
Antic ay was fundamentally serious, and his comments here
indicate
that
he
was
aware
that
his
intentions
could
be
mis-
construed
because
of this
unfam iliar
character .
The
comic-
fantastic
aspects of A n ~ 9 y are sal ient and could inval i -
date, for
some
readers, the novel s claims to seriousness.
In
this
connection, Mary
Thriplow,
a lady
novel ist depicted
in Those Barren l ~ a e s voices
a
similar complaint:
They
always
seem
to misunderstand
what
one
writes
They l ike my books because they re smart and
unexpected
and rather
paradoxical
and
cynical
and
elegantly
brutal .
They
don t
see how serious i t
all is
They don t see
the tragedy
and
tenderness
underneath. You see
I m
trying something new a chemical compound of
all
categories .
Lightness and tragedy and
loveliness
and
wit
and
fantasy
and realism and irony and
sentimental i ty
all
combined.
l l
s well as
pract ica l ly
quoting
parts of Huxley s l e t t e r
Miss Thriplow
indicates the
ambivalence of at t i tude that a
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
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12
book
of Antic
Hay s
nature
can evince.
s
a
character
named
Cardan y
to
her, i f
you must
complicate the
matter
by
writing
tragedy
in terms
of
farce
you can
only expect confu
sion.,,12 But i f
the farcical surface
renders
equivocal the
author s
in tent ,
the
farce
is
none-the-less
necessary. Antic
Hay s
is
a
special kind of seriousness,
the
resul t of
a com-
bination of
disparate elements
which together form a
single
ent i ty . This resultant combination
of
comic-fantastic and
t rag i - rea l i s t ic
elements
is
intended
as
an embodiment
of
a
par t icular at t i tude
ref lected
in
the
generation
for
whom
Antic ay was writ ten.
This at t i tude might be compared to
the stance
of
del i
berate inconsequence character is t ic of
the
Dandy. Huxley
could not be fa i r ly
termed
a Dandy-writer, as
Max
Beerbohm
or
Ronald
Firbank
could,
although Cyril
Connolly
sees
him
as having gone through a period
of dandyism
in his very early
writ ings. Connolly s defini t ion
of dandyism, however, stresses
style and he in fact argues that Antic Hay , lacking the
irony
and lyricism of Crome Yellow and
the
early short s tor ies is
not
an example of Dandy
l i te ra ture .
13
But while style is
central
to
a
consideration
of l i te rary
dandyism,
i t is
a
pro-
duct of a fundamental at t i tude
namely,
insolence and rebel
l iousness .
Of more interest with regard to Huxley
are
Connolly s
remarks
concerning
the Dandy s
requisi te
affectat ion
of fr ivo
l i ty :
I t is one of the vleaknesses of the Dandy s position
that
the
seriousness on which i t is
based must
at all costs be
concealed .
14
Martin Green
suggests
a
description
of
the
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
22/127
Dandy s position
in this
respect
as a turning
of the
back
h
ld
f
f
· 15
on t
orms 0
serlousness.
The farcical character
of
Antic
ay
ref lects
such
a
stance.
The impropriety and
irreverence, the
apparent
immaturity
and mere precociousness
noted
by many of the novel s reviev Jers manifest
an
at t i tude
seemingly
inimical to
serious
concerns. n anonymous
review-
er
fe l t
that Mr.
Huxley is at leas t having his revenge
upon
his forebear, the biologist ,
and
his
kinsman, Matthew
Arnold,
the apostle
of
law and
order,
sweetness and l i gh t , in art.,,16
However the specia l s er iousnes s of Antic ay is f i n ~ by
the novel s incongruous
surface
fl i ppancy
agai
nst
the hi
gh
seriousness
of an o lder gener ati on . I ts farcical aspects
give
the
novel
an un famil ia r cha rac te r d iff er ing r ad ic al ly
from conventional expressions
of
serious intent ;
but, as
Huxley
maintained,
Antic
ay was intended to
ref lec t
fantast ica l ly , of
course,
but
none the
less
fa i thfu l ly l?
the e ssen tial p lig ht of his generat ion.
ow
closely
do
Huxley s claims
for Antic
ay
relate
to the
novel i t se l f?
In his
study
The Vanishing Hero, Sean
Q Faolain
is
troubled by
what he
feels to be a lack of
since-
r i ty
on
Huxley s
part ;
he
finds that rather
than being accurate
and
fai thful
documentaries,
the early
no /els
are fa i r
car iu . -
8
tures
of
an era . Certainly ca ric atu re is a sal ient
fea-
ture of Huxley s f ict ion in general . Antic
Hay s
characters
have names l ike Gumbril,
Boldero, Dr.
Jol ly ;e tc . The
des-
cr ipt ions
of these characters
have an
ar t i f i c ia l ,
cartoon-
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
23/127
l ike
quali ty: Mr o r t e c u ~ is p i l lar-boxical in
his
appea
rance
and
wears
musical
comedy
trousers
(p.31);
Mr
Alber
marle, the gallery director, is a
round,
smooth
l i t t l e man
with
a head l ike an
egg
(p.39); the
elegant Bruin
Opps is
simply
a
top hat,
a
shi r t front ,
a
long grey
face and a
gli t ter ing monocle (p.5S).
Similarly,
yra
Viveash
and
Rosie Shearwater
are
dol l - l ike vamps Certain descript ions ,
like that
of
r
Bojanus s
natty
appearance
such
a
sense of
pure
and
abstract conic-ness in the sleekly rounded
skir ts
(p.32)
and that of rs
Viveash
and Bruin Opps
standing
among workman at a
coffee
s ta l l
ta l l tubed
hat
and a s i lk-faced overcoat, a cloak of
f l a m e c o l o u ~ e d
s3tin
and in bright , coppery
hair
a great Spanish comb of
carved
tor toi se-shell
(p.
57) evoke
a
peculiarly caricature-
l ike
sense of the novel s cultural milieu.
O Faolain s
remarks,
however,
imply
that these
surfa-
ce distor t ions are reflected in the final world-view presented
in the
novels. This, essent ia l ly is what disturbs
Elizabeth
Bov en
who
observes of
Huxley s f ict ion that
in
a great glare
of
in te l lec tual
hi lar i ty
his
characters
dangle
rather
too
jerki ly; they
are morality characters with
horrif ied
puppet
faces
•
19
The deliberate exaggeration
associated
with
carica
ture
connotes a
necessarily
l imited approach to real i ty:
selected
deta i l s
of an object
are
magn ified while others
are
ignored,
thus
creating an
exaggerated impression
which does
not
accurately
ref lec t
every-day
real i ty If
as
O Faolain
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24/127
15
claims, Antic
Hay s
depiction of the post-war era is a c a r i
cature ,
is the
seriousness
of i t s intent
impaired? In an
essay on Ben
Jonson, Huxley writes:
Humours do
not,
of
course, exist
in actual i ty ;
they
are
true
only
as caricatures are t rue. There
are
times when
we wonder
whether
a
car icature
is
not,
af ter all, t ruer
than a
photograph;
there
are others
when i t seems a
stupid 1ie.
2
Huxley does
not
specify under
what
conditions. the t ruthful
ness
of
caricature
can
be
determined, but the
implication
is
that veracity is
a
question of
context and point of
view.
Thus, even a del iberate distort ion of
rea l i ty
can carry a
truth
of
i t s own.
A frequent
cri t icism
made of
Huxley s
character iza-
tion
is that
i t often appears to be needlessly
insensi t ive
and
cruel.
The
author
gives the impression
that he
hates
and despises
his characters .
He
is without pity
in the
expo-
sure of
their weaknesses
and
the ir
turpi tudes, writes
2
Arnold Bennett. Indeed, Huxley often magnifies
his
charac-
ters
deviations
to the
point
where
they
become monstrous
t ravest ies His apparent bruta l i ty
in
this respect suggests
a
capriciousness
inimical to
serious
moral
concerns.
Such
an at t i tude seems
to
extend to
the
general character of his
writing. For example, he
described
one of his early sho rt
s tor ies as so heart less and cruel
that
you
wd.probably
scream
i f
you read i t The concentrated venom of i t is quite
de1i
cious .22 Hence
the charges
of irresponsible bruta l i ty
Huxley,
however,
does
deal with these charges in his
essay
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
25/127
16
on
Ben
Jonson.
Rejecting the
orgies of quaint
pathos
and
sentimental
comedy to which he believes people have become
accustomed, he
favours the
brutal comedy
of
Jon son's plays:
There is
a
certain hardness
and
brutal i ty about
them
all
due,
of course,
ultimately to the
fact
that
the
cha
racters are not
human but
rather marionettes of wood
and
metal th at collide
and
belabour
one
another, l ike the
ferocious puppets
of the
Punch and
Judy s w ~ without
feeling
the painfulness of the
p r o c e e d i n g s ~
He qualif ies
these
remarks
by
adding that
Jonson's
heart less-
ness is not the
l ight ,
cynical heartlessness of la ter
Resto-
ration
comedy
but
something more ponderous: I t reminds us
of one
of those enormous,painful
jokes which
fate sometimes
plays on humanity.,,24
Comic
exaggeration
in
such
a
context,
then,
has a
cer tain
weightiness. Through the i r very incon-
gruity
the
elements
of farce
and
caricature
pungently
delinea-
te
the underly ing
tragedy of a
s i tuat ion .
The farce of Antic
Hay
operates along the
l ines of
one
of these
huge
painful jokes ; s er ious imp lic ations
exis t
beneath
the novel 's comic surface.
In an
early
poem
ent i t led The Ideal Found
Wanting ,
Huxley
depicts
a
weary
music-hall
performer
who
sick
of
clowning
and owlgl
ass
t r icks , longs to break
through
his prison of stage-props
and
fake scenery to rea l i ty ,
Dark blue and calm
as
music .
Instead, he
finds that the
laugh's turned on
me /I kicked
at card-board,
gaped at red l imelight , jyou
laughed and
cheered my l a tes t knockabout . I t is not
fortuitous
that
Huxley
should
choose
to
express
the
modern
themes
of
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
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1 7
disillusionment
and n ih i l i s t i c
despair in terms of clownish
knockabout. In Harlequin s S tic k, C ha rlie s
Cane,
Dave Madden
suggests that these concerns are deal t with
similarly
in
the
drama of Beckett and the films
of
Godard.
6
And
Martin Green
points out that images
such
as the circus-ring and show-booth
occur frequently in l i t e ra ture and ar t of
the
189 s and early
twentieth
century, and come to exemplify the modern sensi
bi l i ty 27
Green
mentions in
par t icular the
profound
influence
of
the
commediadel l ar te:
The commedia figures had become
prominent in
the a r t of
the
1890 s
in both England and
France.
They had always
been in the music
hal ls
where for
instance Dan
Leoo s
clowning was much admired by dandy-aesthetes
l ike
Max
BeerDohm They became a
popular
success
in
the
early
movies in
the
work of Charlie
Chaplin,
Buster Keaton,
Laurel
and
Hardy,
and the Marx
Rrothers.
They
inspired
modern poetry through Jules
Laforge
and T .5.
Eliot .
And
in
the
1920 s
they
entered
f ic t ion
8
The
painful
consciousness evident
as
the clown
pits
himself against
the cruel machinery
of farce aptly describes
the peculiar ethos of Antic Hay The comic distort ion of the
novel s surface and
the
apparent
insensi t ivi ty
of the
charact-
erizat ion operate in
a context
of farce
and knockabout. And
s igni f icant ly there are frequent
references
to
stages
and
entertainments throughout
the novel.
The most notable, of
course, is the lovely bloody farce
(p.180),
as Coleman cal ls
i t presented at the
cabaret.
I t is
during an
~ n t r c t e
that
Gumbril recal ls the
entertainments
of
his
childhood:
An but i t was a
long
time since he had been to a Christmas
pantomime.
Not
since
Dan
Leno s
days
the
panto-
mime
went on and on, glory af ter glory, under the
shining
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
27/127
arch of the
stage.
Hours and hours; and the
grown-ups
always wanted to
go
away
before
the har1equinade (p.174).
But
the
puppet-shows
of
childish
memory
are
a
far
cry
from
the
more s inis ter
farce in
which Gumbri1 and
his friends play.
There
is a
pronounced
sense
of theatr ical gesture in the
novel which suggests the capers of puppets and
mannikins;
Huxley s characters
are
incessantly gest iculat ing
or
making
exaggerated
expressions. Playing
the
clown
in
Chapter XIV,
Gumbril
hoots with
laughter,
limping
and
leaning
heavily
on
his cane (p.16l). Coleman
laughs
a ferocious r t i f i i l
laugh
(p.51)
and
indulges
in
theatr ical
displays of diabolism.
r Mercaptan sings Offenbach and longs for
another
comic
Napoleon
(p.56).
Confronted
with
Gumbri1
clowning, yra
Viveash
des-
cribes
a
plot
remarkably
similar
to
that
of
a commedia
sce-
nario: The fickle lady, the jealous lover, the s tab, the
~ l £
El
r i v ~ ~ ~ the mere Anglo-saxon black eye all
judged by the house-surgeon at the
Miseri co rd ia curab le in
five
days (p.162). The brutal
slapst ick
of such intr igues
finds i ts way into the spir i ted exchanges amot\9
the
novel s
characters.
Thus, in
the
res taurant
scene
of
Chapter
IV,
Lypiatt makes grandiose gestures while Mr. Mercaptan counters
\ Iith
witty
repartee and laughs his own applause (p.46).
uch
l te r Mrs. Viveash remarks on
how
interest ing these two
are when they
are
put together ,
l ike
bear and mastiff
(p.233).
Indeed,
in Chapter XVIII they actually come to blows
in
Mr.Mercaptan s
boudoir;
a similar incident occurs in Chapter
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28/127
19
XIX
when Mr
Boldero visi ts
Lypiatt and soon finds
himself
being kicked down
a
f l ight of s ta i rs During
the
restaurant
scene, Coleman, l ike Harlequin with
his
st ick constantly
prods Mr Mercaptan in the stomach with a cane.
Coleman's
relat ions
with his mistress,
Zoe,
seem to be based ent irely
on violence
as
she
incessantly
bi tes hits and stabs him
All
these
c ha rac te rs , lik e the
wood and
steel
marionettes
described
by Huxley in his study
of Jonson,
co
l l ide and
belabour each
other l ike
the
ferocious puppets
of the
Punch
and
Judy show . As
a
character
named Spandrell
exclaims in
Point
Counter
'Point (1927),
lIWhat a farce What
knockabout
What an incomparable
idiocy ,,29
And controll ing
this
violent
interaction of inimical at t i tudes and temperaments is Huxley
who seems to hate his characters as much as they hate each
other, for i t is he who has condemned them to the i r intermi-
nable and
fut i le
capers.
However l ike Ben Jonson's b ruta l comedy the
farce
and exaggeration of Antic
Hay
have grave implications for the
world
i t depicts.
Of
the
seemingly
incongruous
elements of
the
commedia Green writes:
The
elegance
and a r t i f i c i a l i ty and unseriousness
of the
commedia
f igures ,
the i r power
to
excite
lyr ic ve l le i t ies
of
melancholy, gaiety, and nostalgia
even while
including
the
most brutal sadism, madness,
and
murder in thei r
action these t ra i t s set them
in
opposition
to all
mora li st ic ' re al ism ', 3
This is similar to Huxley's description of Antic Hay in
which
the
usually
separated categories of tragedy,
comedy
fantasy
8/19/2019 Antic Hay a Study in Post War Disillusionment
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20
and realism are combined into
a
single
ent i ty
which may, as
Huxley
told
his
father ,
appear
strange
and
repulsive
at
f i r s t
sight . But there exis ts a seriousness
beneath the
farce and
car icature,
although
i t is not the conventional seriousness
of moralist ic
rea
l ism' as
Green puts
i t . ~ ~ h i l e the
promi-
s e 0 f
the
novel' s e
pig
rap h i s f u1f i l l ed men 1
ike
satyrs
grazing on the lawns/Shall with their 9oat-feet
dance
the
Antic
Hay
the
brutal
knockabout
is
not
gratuitous.
Considered in
a part icular
context
and from a
certain
point
of
view,
i t underlines a pathetic aspect in these characters '
s i tua t ion .
As she muses
over
her
personal
relat ionships , Myra
Viveash
ref lects :
There
are
music-halls
as
well
as
confidential
boudoirs;
people are adm itted to the tea-party and the t g t e ~ t ~ t e
others ,
on a stage
invisible,
poor things
to th emse lves,
do
the i r l i t t l e
song-and-dance, r o l l ou t their characte
r i s t ic patter and having
provided
you with your entertain
ment
are dism issed with thei r
due
share of
applause
p .79 .
There is a
lack
of free will implici t
in
the
capers
of manni-
klns
and puppets which evokes a
grotesque
pathos. Imprisoned
on
the
stage
at
the
ends
of
thei r s tr ings,
they
must go
through
the i r
routines, act out the
scenario
provided. Thus, when
Gumbril
is coerced
by Mrs.
Viveash to lunch with
her,
instead
of
going
to
Emily in the country, he becomes a
clown:
He was
taking no
responsibi l i ty
for him self. I t was the clown's doing
and
the
clow
n, poor
c
rea
t ur e was
~ Q . ~ com po
s,
not
en t ire 1y
there,
and
couldn't
be
called
to
account
for
his
actions
(pp. 161-162). But
although
Gumbril
has
assumed the
role
of
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portentous
s t i r r ings
of
c u l t u r a l
unease
consciousness
of
which must
su re ly
h ve een
behind
Huxley s claim
t ha t
Antic Hay
w s
serious
book.
t is
due
to t hi s ins is ten t
undertone which will e discussed in de t a i l
in
the following
c h a p te r
t h a t
Antic Hay s
puppet-like
c ha ra c t e rs in their
h o r r i f i e d re a c tio n s to p o i n t l e s s
knockabout
uni ve r s e
ref le t
what the generation of the
1920 s
believed to e
t h e i r
own
p l i g h t .
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CHAPTER II
Look down Conquistador
There on the val ley 's broad
green
f loor ,
There l ies
the
lake;
the
jewelled
ci t ies
gleam;
Chalco and Tlacopan
Await the coming Man.
Look down on Mexico, Conquistador,
Land
of your golden
dream
(p.44).
The
above
poem The Conquistador ,
is
loudly and
tremulously
recited by
Casimir
Lypiatt
in
Chapter
IV. The
exhortation
of i ts
refrain
L
00
k
dow
n
Con qui
s
tad 0
r
expresses, in
ringing, declamatory
tones, the will to
impose
order and significance on
nature,
the
val ley 's
broad green
floor
In his
capacity
as a
conquistador, the coming
Man
obviously
represents the que sting
romantic
ar t i s t However
delivered
with an emotion
that
never seemed
to
vary with
the varying
subject
matter of his poems
(p.44)
and
couched
in
conspicuously
poetical language
the
jewelled ci t ies
gleam
this
composition ref lec ts
the negative side of
romanticism.
Lypiat t 's
poem seems
too ins is tent
ration hollow and contrived.
i t s
inspi-
But more
important
than
the poem i t se l f is the response
which
i t e l ic i t s Lypiatt would go on declaiming
t i l l
his
auditors
were overwhelmed with such a confusion of embarrass-
ment and shame,
tha t the blood
rushed to
thei r
cheeks and
they
dared not meet one another 's
eyes::
(p.44).
he winces
of the
restaurant
patrons
are
not just the
resul t
of
Lypiat t 's
24
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5
ineptitude
as
a poet.
Apart
from being
merely bad,
The
Conquistador
seems
glaringly
out of
place:
in
i t s
transcen
den t vagueness this poem represents
a
buoyant opt imism
which
i t cannot
j u s t i f y
or validate
and
which, in the age depicted
by
Antic
Hay, cannot be countenanced. The
poem s
final l ine
Land
of
your
golden
dream
is
immediately jumped
on
you can t
Not
dream
Asked
why
not,
he
r e p l i e s
Not in this year of grace,
To Lypi
a t t
s exasperated IIBut
by Theodore
Gumbril who objects ,
possibly
say dream
you knovJ .
IIGh because one simply c a n t
nineteen
twenty-two (p.45).
why?lI, Mr. Mercoptan declares , Because i t s altogether too
late
in the
dayll (p.45),
adding in the next paragraph,
Times
have changed
(p.45). Despite these explanations,
however,
Lypiatt
s t i l l
i n s i s t s But
why is
i t
too
late?lI.
Mr.
Mercap
tan can only reply
vaguely,
IIDreams
in
nineteen
hlenty-two
.
and
shrug
his shoulders
(p.45).
The
objections of
Gumbril and
Mercaptan to
liThe Con-
quistador indicate these
characters notions
of what is no
longer acceptable or
meaningful --
what belongs to the past
and,
by
implication,
a
consc iousness o f
l iving
in
a
time
which
is
one,
notably, of t r a n s i t i o n .
The strength
of t h e i r convic
t ions
in this
respect
is
made
emphatically clear by
Gumbril
s
chee r f u1
stu
bb
0
r ne s
s
i n
per sis
t i n g
t hat the
w
0
r d
d
rea
ms
is inadmissable
(p.48).
Indeed,
Gumbril
is able to
point
out
that this term s only significance now l i e s in i t s
Freudian
connotations
while
Mr.
Mercaptan
can
erudi tely
place
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6
i t i n
the
age
of Rostand Cp.48).
But
exactly why
dream
is
inadmissable
in
1922
is
not
so
clear ly
evident .
A
tentat ive explanation exists in
Mr.
Mercaptan s
remark tha t i t s a matter of
l i te rary
tact
(p.48).
Super-
f ic ia l ly
this comment
refers to the
blatantly
romantic
nature
of
Lypia t t s poetry. However
the notion of l i te rary tact
carr ies more profound implications of tone and context.
Considered
in
this
l igh t ,
the
references
to
Freud
and
Rostand
take on his tor ica l and cul tu ra l s igni fic ance . In an
age
in
which
dreams signify sublimated sexual impulses, the lyr ical
associa t ions attached to dream
by a previous
era
must
ine-
vitably be seen i ronical ly . Thus, the very premise
of
The
Conquistador ,
in t r ins ic poetic
merit
aside ,
is
rendered
invalid
by
the
context
in
which
the
poem
has
been set :
the
preoccupation
with
an
Absolute
impl ic i t ly
understood
to exis t
the inf in i te
nothing
T.E. Hulme cal ls i t
l
is vi t ia ted
for the
m
0 r e s
cep
t ic
a 1
de rn
sen sib
i
l i t y, by i ts
b
rea
d
th o
f
vision.
Hence
the
wry
commentary which accompanies
Lypia t t s
reci ta t ion:
The Conquistador, Lypiatt had made i t
clear ,
was
the Art is t ,
and the Vale
of
Mexico on which he looked down
the
towered
ci t ies
of Tlacopan and Chalco,
of Tenochtitlan
and Izta-
palapan, symbolized well , i t was
d i f f i cu l t
to say
precisely what.
The
universe, perhaps?
(p.44).
Wonder
must cease
to be wonder,,;2 besides
indicating
tha t
the term inology
of romanticism
is
inimical
to
the
modern
age,
Hulme s s ta tement implies
tha t the kind of transcendent
vision behind a word l ike
wonder
or
dream
for
that
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matter
is l ikewise unacceptable. Even
Lypiatt
seems
27
to
be
aware
of this
as he
ins is ts , l Oh, I
call
them dreams
I don t mind being thought a fool and old-fashioned
(p.46). To him the
reject ion of
the idealism advocated in
liThe Conquistador
indicates
s pir i tu al p ov er ty .
weak-
ness and pett iness and impotence
(p.46).
e maintains that
nothi
ng
decent
or sol
i d can be
achi
eved
i f
you don t even
bel
i eve i n dec en cy 0 r sol i d i t
(p.
48). A1 tho ugh his 0 wn
attempts in
this direct ion
are admitte dly i l l -conceived, he
has
accurately
described
the
v iew -poin t of
his
contemporaries.
For, the 0 b j ec t ion s r a i
sed
he use 0 f d
rea
m hav e t he i r
source
in
a s ceptic al m is tr us t
the idealism suggested by
that term. Much l a te r in the novel, during a confrontation
with
Lypiat t ,
Mr.
Mercaptan
will
complain:
I merely suggested that you protest too much.
You defeat your own ends; you lose emphasislby trying
to
be over-emphatic. All this
folie
grandeur,
all
this
hankering
af ter
t e r r ib i l ta
i t s
led
so
many
people astray. And, in any case, you
can t
rea l ly- -
expect
me to
find i t
very
sympathetic (p.198).
If the hankering
for
I size and vehemence and
spir i tual
signi-
ficance
(p.39)
sounds
ridiculous
in
Lyp ia t t s
mouth,
i t
is
reduced to
absolute
absurdity
in the
preciously
comic tones
of Mr. Mercaptan.
Indeed,
the
favorite theme
of
Mr. Mercaptanls precious
middle
art ic les
is the pet t iness , the simian l imi ta t ions ,
the insignificance and
the
absurd
pretentiousness
of o ~
soi-disant
Sapiens
(p.45).
This
character
models
himself
af ter
the
exquis i te c iv i l i t i es of eighteenth-century France,
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29
What
do
these
characters opinions
indicate with
respect
to
the ir
conceptton
of
the
modern
age?
In The
Social
Context of Modern
English
Literature , Malcom Bradbury
observes
tha
t:
Through many of
the
accounts of
i t se l f
that , in
thought
and ar t ,
the
modern
age
has given, there has
run
a
strong sense
of
the uniqueness
of
modern
times.
Indeed
often in these accounts there is , whether expl ic i t ly or
i m p l i i t l ~
a basic assumption
that our
age
is not simply
an age of change or t ransi t ion, but, much more u l t i m t e l ~
an
age
of
cris ts
(p.14).
That
Gumbril and Mercaptan
should
ins is t that
the
ageless theme
of man s imaginative conquest of his world,
enunciated
in
The Con qui stad 0 r , i s
no lo
nger val i d in 1922 ce r t a i n1y a r
gues a strong
sense of the uniqueness of
modern times . The
age of Rostand has passed and
along
with i t
the
significance
of
words 1i
ke
dream
and
wonder .
The
new
age
is
the
epoch
of the
iconoclasts ,
Freud,
Darwin and Marx. Old
concepts
and
terms of
reference
are
merc il essly inter rogated
and rejected.
Hen ce Gumb r i 1 s t a il
0
r , Mr. B
0
jan
us, pre di c t s i i nen t rev
0
lution I t l l be Shibboleth a l l ove r again (p.33)
and Gumbril
Sr . s
model
of SLPaul s
cathedral fal ls from
a
table
and
l ies
on
the
f loor
in
disastrous
ruin
as though
shattered
by
some appalling cataclysm . The
old
archi tec t s
subsequent remark that
1
m
afraid
that dome will never be
quite
the same again
(p.29) carr ies overtones
of
i rrevocable
and
radical
t ransformation. I t is within this context of
cultural ferment that man has been defined
by
his
simian
l imitat ions , that the romantic associations of dream have
been undercut
by Freud s
starker , more reductive
concepts.
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30
nd behind the
scepticism
and the
debunking
is Gumbril
J r .
exclamation,
After
youlve
accepted the
war,
swallowed
the
Russian famine . .
Dreams
(p.46). This
statement
at
once evinces the cynicism
of
the
age
and the traumatic histo-
r ical consc iousnes s out of which this cynicism has ar isen.
The dizzying heights from
which
Lypiatt 's
Conquistador
looks
down upon Land
of your
golden dream are
no
longer attainable
as
a
r e s u l t
of
h i s t o r y s
perfidy.
Of the
destruction
wreaked by the Great War the
speaker
of
Hugh l ~ y n Mauberly cries:
Daring
as never before,
wastage
as never before
Young blood and
high
blood
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies
Frankness as never before,
Disil lusion
as
never
told
in the
old days.3
Antic Hay provides brief glimpses of the war1s effects in the
form of legless
soldiers
grinding barrel organs
(p.68)
and
brass bands of unemployed ex-soldiers playing mournfully on
s t r e e t
corners (p.133).
In
Chapter
V Gumbril relates
to
Shearwater
his
eye-opening
encounters
with the bureaucrat ic
dehumanization
of the
war.
But
the
theme
of post-war
d i s i l l u -
sionment
in Antic Hay finds i t s most
v iv id expre ss ion
in the
figure of Myra Viveash. This character i s
as
Peter Bowering
aptly puts i t
the
s p i r i t
of
the
age ,4
and she embodies
mordantly the legacy of d is il lu sionmen t inhe ri ted
by the
post-war
generat ion.
The
land
of
the
golden
dream
which
Lypiatt 's
Conquis-
tador
triumphantly surveys has been
replaced for
Myra
Viveash
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by steppes af ter steppes of
ennui,
hori zon af ter
hori
zon,
for
ever the
same
(p.157).
The
desolate
waste
into
v.Jhich
she
steps in
Chapter XIV
is
in
outward
appearance
a pleasant summer
day, but:
She remembered
suddenly
one shining day
l ike
this in
the
summer of 1917, when she had walked along this same
s t ree t
slowly,
l ike
th is on
the
sunny s ide, with Tony Lamb. All
that
day, that night, i t had been one long good-bye. He
was going back the next morning. Less than a week la te r
he
was dead (p.157).
In The Great War and Modern Memory Paul Fussell notes
that
the
summer preceding the outbreak of war has assumed the
status
of a permanent symbol for anything innocently but irrevocably
los t that i t
embodies the change
from fe l ic i ty to despair ,
from pastoral to anti-pastoral .5 For Myra Viveash that day
in 1917 has assumed
such
a s ignif icance. s this character
says
to
Gumbri1 concerning Lamb s
death,
He was kil led in
1917, jus t about this time of
the
year. I t seems a
long time
ago, don t you think? (p.164). This
statement
indicates
a
sh i f t
of perspective which has
transformed
summer usually
signifying youth and innocence, to a symbol of
death,
a fore
boding of
the
change
from pastoral to ant i -pas tora l . This
transformation
of
at t i tude serves to define the deeper signi-
ficance of
Antic Hay s outwardly idyl l ic spring
set t ing .
The
warm and airy and br i l l
ian
t c1i te t hat Eve 1yn aug h has
seen
as
establ ishing a
l ight pastoral tone
in
the
nove1
6
in
fact
const i tutes
an iro nic a llu sio n to
that
fateful summer
of 1917.
In
this
context, Land
of your
golden dream can
carry
only bi t te r associat ions .
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Musing over the fate
of
the
dead
Tony Lamb Myra
Viveash
r e f l e c t s
Tony
they
had
ki l led , shot
him through
the head.
Even
the bright eyes
had
rot ted, l ike
any
other
car rio
n
(p. 1
).
The los s 0 f her 1a ve r i nform s
the
whole
being
of
this character
and
is behind
the
agonized smile
with which she
faces the
world.
Of the traumatic significance
that the war-dead
had
post-war
f ict ion in general, Martin
Green
writes:
There
was a concentration
of
feeling about and upon these
handsome young
men
in uniform who so often
don1t know
quite what they are doing or what is
happening
to them,
whose soul is in t h e i r Qink
cheeks
and ready smile and
puzzled stubborn frown.?
In Antic Hay the
dismay
and
bit terness
which has arisen from
a
sense
of
betrayal
of having been
duped
is
centred
around
the
uncomprehending nalvete
of
Tony Lamb. This
charac-
t e r s surname carr ies suggestions of innocence
and
s a c r i f i c e .
And in Myra
Viveash s mind, at l e a s t with his c lear
blue
eyes
and
the f a i r
bright hair (p.164) Tony Lamb was led to the
slaughter .
The
lamb-like
innocence associated with
this
figure has
engendered an intense bit terness with
regard
to
his ultimate fate: the moral dicta, promulgated in
the
years
preceding
1914 and
under
which Tony and
most
young
men of his
generation
fought,
can now be
viewed only
with scepticism.
Hence Pound s
ironic
treatment
of
the Horatian
l ine
in
Se1wy Mau be r 1
y:
0i e d some pro
pat r i a
/ non d u1ce I non le t
r l e ~ , 1 1 8
U
\
•
hymn
\ n i r
I n
\ \
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opening
pages
33
Simple i t was, uplif t ing and manly p . l l )
belongs to
a
pre-war
age; in
i t s
present
context i t
is
defiantly
i ronic
and reflects
what
Cyril Connolly
cal ls the
d isbel ief in action and
in
the putting
of
moral slogans into
action
engendered by
the Great
War .9
Signif icantly,
the
thoughtless complacency behind
such
slogans finds i t s
incarnation
in an anonymous martial gentle-
man
(p.158)
who
appears
brief ly
in Chapter
XIV
Pigeon-breasted
and twirl ing
between
his finger and thumb the ends of a
white
mi.litary moustache ,
this
personage
over-hears Myra Viveash s
murmured avowal of
l o s t innocence, never again
(p.158). His
r ich,
port-winey, cigary
voice
(p.158)
echoes
the timbres of
nineteenth-century
cer t i tudes; his reaction to Myra s plight
demonstrates incomprehension
which seems
almost
culpable
in
i t s smugness:
Poor
thing, he
thought,
poor young thing.
Talking to
herself .
Must be off her head. Or perhaps she took
things.
That
was more
l ikely .
Most
of
them
did nowadays. Vicious
young
women Lesbians,
drug
fiends, nymphomaniacs, dipsos
thoroughly
vicious.
He
arrived
at his club
in
an excel lent
temper
(p.158).
In
the
context
of
Myra s sorrowful
reveries
this
old
p a t r i a r c h s
fleeting appearance
str ikes
a note of bit terness
with
regard
to the
i r responsible
s a c r i f i c e of young men l ike Tony Lamb The
intended pathos
of this
episode
is surely
derived
from what
S.
Fraser
character izes
as notions
about
youth and
the
old
men
t ho led
us into the
warl,,;lO
Sean
O Faolain
speaks,
in
such
a
connection,
of the
post-war
generat ion s
elegy
for
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The Good Time Our Fathers Lost
Us .ll
Similar resentment
must
l ie behind the
unflat ter ing
depiction of the
loquacious
old
man,
encountered
on a t rain in Chapter XVII, who
bears
a str iking
resemblance
to Emperor Francis Joseph. In his
t i rade
against what he sees as the country s
decline,
this
character
protests that he is not interested in
causes
(pp.19l-192):
but
from the view-point
of
Myra. Viveash s gene-
ra t ion, he and his contemporaries have been respon sib le for
their present plight .
0 i s i l l us ion. . a s neve r .
told
in the old
days : Pound s
l ine evokes the bi t te r experience
separating
the pre- and
post-war
worlds
in
the modern
consciousness. Waugh recal ls
that
when
he
read
Antic
Ha1 at
the
age of twenty, he
found
Mrs.
Viveash
appallingly
mature .12
Indeed, for this
character
i t
was ten
centuries
ago
(p.175)
that Tony Lamb was ki l led.
Her name roughly, l iving ash epitomizes the emptiness
of her existence since the war. Mrs. Viveash s
sole
commerce
with
the world now is
carried
out from that death bed on which
her res t 1 e s s s p i r i t
for
eve
r n d we a r i 1y ex er
ted
i t s
e lf
(p. 66) .
nd behind the
weariness
of sp i r i t is the consc iousness o f
irrevocably los t
innocence.
The refr in
Never such
innocence
again,
that
Fussell sees as summing up the bi t te r kno\ Jledge
ga ined through the war
13
finds i t s way into Myra Viveash s
mourning for her dead
lover:
Never
again,
never again:
there
had been a time when she
could
make
herself
cry,
simply
by
saying those
two words
once
or
twice,
under
her
breath.
Never
again, never
again.
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5
She
repeated
them,
soft ly
now But
she
fe l t no tears
behind her
eyes. Grief
doesn t ki l l
love
doesn t
ki l l ; but
time ki l l s
everything,
ki l l s
desire , kil ls
sorrow, kil ls
in the
end
the
mind
that feels them;
wrinkles
and softens the body while i t s t i l l l ives
rots i t
l ike
a medlar, kil ls i t
too
at l a s t Never
again,
never again.
Instead
of crying,
she
laughed,
laughed aloud
(pp.157-158).
The
bi t terness
which
has
dried
up
Mrs
Viveash s
eyes,
which has kil led her desire and sorrow, has
created
a
r i f t
between her
and
the
past.
Thus, in
Chapter
XXI she sardoni
ca lly refers Gumbril to a por t ra i t of herself :
Look at me,
she pointed
at
herself ,
an
d me again
She waved
her
hands
towards
the sizzling bri l l iance of
the
por t ra i t
Before
and af ter
Like
the advertise
ments, you know
Every
picture
te l l s
a
story (p.225).
As she complains, Nothing s the same now I feel i t never
will
be,
to which Gumbril adds,
Never
more
(p.164). His
statement, a few l ines la ter
liThe past is
abolished
(p.164) is true in that pris t ine innocence has been los t
forever;
but
the
consc iousness o f that
loss , the resentful
bi t terness
which has
accompanied the d is illu sionment, is s t i l l
very much part of
these
characters sens ib i l i t i e s
In the
face
of thei r pl ight . Emily s si tuat ion stands out in
sharp
re l ie f
as
the mock
case-history
imagined by Gumbril demonstra-
tes: Miss Emily
X born in
1901, was
found to
be
in
a state
of
perfect
innocence and ignorance at the time of the Armistice,
11th November 1918 (p.142). O stensibly , Gumbril is speaking
of Emily s virginal s ta te But
his
allusion to the
Armistice
is
as
pointed a reference to the War s
bi t ter
legacy as the
mention of the year 1922
in connection
with liThe Conquistador
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36
Certainly neither Myra
Viveash
nor any
of
her contemporaries had
retained
thei r
innocence
by
the
time
of the
Armistice.
The
signif icance of the
chasm
separating these
characters
from
pre-war innocence involves
a
radical devaluation of the
past conventions and bel iefs . Mrs. Viveash s murmured never
again,
never
again expresses a sense of
irreparable
damage
which Gumbril Sr. has unconsciously noted
as
he views his shat-
tered
model
of
St. Pau l s .
s
a
character
named Lucy
Tanta-
mount says in
Point
Counter Point, I came out
of
the
chrysalis
during
the
War when the
bottom
had been knocked out
of every-
thing. I don t
see how our
grandchildren
could
possibly knock
i t
out
more
thoroughly
than i t was
knocked
out then
.14
In a previously cited
statement
to his
father ,
Huxley identif ied
the
war s
vi ol en t d is rupti on
of almost
a ll
the
standards,
con-
ventions and values current in the
previous
epoch as the basic
. f t ·H 15
premlse
0
ay. Thus,
the novel s
openi ng pages fi nd
Theodore
Gumbril
scornfully dismissing
the
portentous
boomings
of
Mr. Pelvey in the midst
of
English Gothic all blue and
jaundiced and
bloody
with nineteenth-century glass (p.?) and
indulging
in
frivolous
musings
in the face
of
a
Crucifix
in
the grand manner of eighteen hundred and sixty (p.10).
Standing in front
of
a
spread brass
eagle
the Reverend
Pelvey
can
speak
of God s
existence
with an
enviable cer tainty
p.? .
Ensconced in the trappings
of
nineteenth century complacency,
he evinces the smugness of
the
martial gentleman
of
Chapter
XIV
nd
Gumbril,
wondering
i f
this
old
pedagogue,
foghorning
away
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38
excruciation;
but
he
loved
her
all
the more
because of the
torment
and
because
of the odious
truth., ,16
With
her
dead
white
skin, s c a r l e t mouth and
shiny,
metal-black
hair ,17
Lucy
is
a rather
s i n i s t e r speciman of
modern womanhood;
she
typif ies a
new kind
of creatu re who, as
she
herself points
out,
has
emerged
from
the chrysalis of the war.
Anti
c
Hay s
action
takes place the
Great r has been over for
five
years.
But
the
mood
of
pessimism
born
of the
war
generates,
in the
person
of
Myra
Viveash,
a
negative ambiance
which
pulls at
the
seams of the novel s f ict ional world.
For,
most
of Antic Hal s
male cha ra cte rs a re ,
or
have been
at
one
time,
involved
with this lady. Hence George Woodcock characterizes
Myra
Viveash as
a
Circe figure
18
and Peter Bowering
sees
9
her
as a femme
fatal ell .)
The
pull
whi ch
she
exerts
is
deri
ved
from
the weary
languor of a voice always on
the