The Children of the Curative Education Course Book

The first volume of Summer, the second of four trilogies of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Synopsis followed by What I Thought.

In this synopsis, I've used Hilary Spurling's brief overview of the chapters to remind me of the narrative threads in each of them; see Invitation to the Dance.

This segment of the Dance takes place in 1934. The first chapter commences on the New Year. The series’ first person narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, is now in his late twenties, working in the low-grade film industry as a scriptwriter. He’s taken to a party by Chips Lovell at Lovell’s aunt’s place. The aunt is Lady Molly Jeavens, who has graciously bestowed her name (via the handiwork of Powell) to the book. The typical party banter of Powell’s novels here produces among other new revelations of time’s passing the unexpected news that Jenkin’s long-time acquaintance Widmerpool (from school and college) is engaged to be married.

The second chapter involves lunch with Widmerpool, a tea attended by Jenkins at which he is quizzed about Widmerpool by the latter’s soon to be in-laws, and a chance encounter with J.C. Quiggin.Since we had been undergraduates together my friendship with Quiggin, moving up and down at different seasons, could have been plotted like a temperature chart. Sometimes we seemed on fairly good terms, sometimes on fairly bad terms; never with any very concrete reason for these improvements and deteriorations. However, if Quiggin thought it convenient to meet during a ‘bad’ period, he would always take steps to do so, having no false pride in this or any other aspect of his dealings with the world.In this instance, Quiggin indeed does have a reason for meeting with Jenkins, and invites him out to Quiggin’s cottage for a weekend.

Chapter three finds Jenkins having accepted such an invitation and taking a train out from London, where a taxi meets him at the station and conveys him to the “cottage”. Jenkins was hesitant about the get-together, knowing that Quiggin was now living with, perhaps even married to, Mona, the former wife of one of Jenkins best friends from school, whom he had ‘run away’ with. As Jenkins had reflected before accepting the invite, I was unwilling to seem to condone too easily the appropriation of an old friend’s wife; although it had to be admitted that Templar [the old friend] himself had never been over-squeamish about accepting, within his own circle, such changes of partnership. Apart from such scruples, I knew enough of Quiggin to be sure that his cottage would be more than ordinarily uncomfortable. Nothing I had seen of Mona gave cause to reconsider this want of confidence in their combined domestic economy.

During the visit, Quiggin’s patron and landlord, “Erridge”, stops by unannounced. It is decided that the next evening they will have dinner at Erridge’s estate Thrubworth Park, a couple miles through the woods. (Erridge is the Viscount Erridge, also the Earl of Warminster, the eldest of the Tolland clan, an “erratic and high-minded social revolutionary”.) At the dinner two of Erridge’s sisters drop by. The first sight of one of these, Isobel, occasions our narrator to remark, Would it be too explicit, too exaggerated, to say that when I set eyes on Isobel Tolland, I knew at once that I should marry her? Something like that is the truth, certainly nearer the truth than merely to record those vague, inchoate sentiments of interest of which I was so immediately conscious. It was as if I had known her for many years already; enjoyed happiness with her and suffered sadness. I was conscious of that, as of another life, nostalgically remembered. Then, at that moment, to be compelled to go through the paraphernalia of introduction, of ‘getting to know’ one another by means of the normal formalities of social life, seemed hardly worth while. We knew one another already, the future was determinate.

The fourth chapter takes place as Widmerpool’s wedding is approaching, a month or two after the previous. The location, after some initial moving about of the pieces on the playing field, is a pub in Soho. Jenkins finds himself, against many odds, drinking with Jeavons, Lady Molly’s husband, who happened to be in the pub when Jenkins entered by himself. Jeavons supplies Jenkins with several surprising stories of times gone by, involving both Jeavons and others of the characters involved in the Dance.

The final chapter takes places in the fall of 1934, once again at Lady Molly’s. The party has been arranged subsequent to the engagement announcement by Jenkins and Isobel. Fate has twisted for Widmerpool, and during much of the party Jenkins is closeted with General Conyers, who reveals to him his knowledge and psychological analysis of the Widmerpool episode. Widmerpool himself has the last word. You know, Nicholas, it is wise to take good advice about such a thing as marriage. I hope you have done so yourself. I have thought about the subject a good deal, and you are always welcome to my views.

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What I Thought about ...

1. Powell's writing style

If this is the first review you have read of Powell’s Dance, you should take particular care to note the quotes above and below. All of these illustrate one of the two things about these novels that appeals so inordinately to me. That is the superb phrasing and word choice he uses, particularly in the internal narration by Jenkins. The dialogue (of which there is a fair amount) is not so much in this style, which is probably just as well. But for the narrative passages, Powell never uses the same important noun (or verb) twice in the same sentence, and generally not even in the same paragraph. This leads to writing which sparkles with unpredictability, and frequently with a delightfully humorous glow as well.

Here’s one final extended quote, from the party in the last chapter, that illustrates the comedy that occasionally emanates from Powell’s meticulous prose: The guests seemed, in fact, to have been chosen even more at random than usual. Certainly there had been no question either of asking people because they were already friends of Isobel or myself; still less, because Molly wanted either of us specifically to meet them. All that was most nondescript in the Jeavons entourage predominated, together with a few exceptional and reckless examples of individual oddity. I noticed Alfred Tolland… was standing in the corner of the room, wedged behind a table, talking to – of all people – Mark Members, whom I had never before seen at the Jeavonses’, and might be supposed, in principle, beyond Molly’s normal perimeter, wide as that might stretch; or at least essentially alien to most of what it enclosed. To describe the two of them as standing looking at one another, rather than talking, would have been nearer the truth, as each apparently found equal difficulty in contributing anything to a mutual conversation. At the same time the table cut them off from contact with other guests.

2. Time

The other appeal of the Dance is, of course, the magnificent theme of time’s passage, or put another way, of the characters’ (and our own) passage through time. Over and again Jenkins tells us how through a conversation or simply though observing another of the characters playing his role in a given scene, he suddenly becomes aware of something which he never suspected before: either about that character, that character’s relationship to another character, about his own relationship to this or some other character; or even a more general truth about himself (and most of us along with him).

The Dance. That great dance of life, in which we swirl our way across the years, observing and discovering the changing relationships between ourselves, our loved ones, our friends and acquaintances, the ever-changing judgments we make of the fortunes, driving forces, and characters of these people as they approach, recede, disappear, and reappear as they dance - to the music of time.