At Lady Molly's

At Lady Molly's

First edition cover
Author Anthony Powell
Cover artist James Broom-Lynne
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series A Dance to the Music of Time
Publisher Heinemann
Publication date
1957
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 239 pp
Preceded by The Acceptance World
Followed by Casanova's Chinese Restaurant

At Lady Molly's is the fourth volume in Anthony Powell's twelve novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. A first person narrative, it is written in precise yet conversational prose. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1957, At Lady Molly's is set in England of the mid-1930s and is essentially a comedy of manners, but in the background the rise of Hitler and of worldwide Fascism are not ignored. The comedy is character driven and ranges from the situational to the epigrammatic. Many of the scenes are studies in embarrassment with those involving the supremely self-important Widmerpool inducing acute embarrassment in the reader. The driving theme of At Lady Molly's is married life; marriages – as practised or mooted – among the narrator's (Nick Jenkins) acquaintances in bohemian society and the landed classes are pondered. Meanwhile, the career moves of various characters are advanced, checked or put on hold.

The novel presents comparisons and relationships between the generations, which are notably burlesqued in the engagement of Widmerpool and the older Mildred – an event that provides much scope for speculation and salacious gossip.

The portrait of the aristocratic Tolland family, sourced in part from Powell's own in-laws, the Pakenhams, is sharply painted in the manner of a conversation piece, capturing not only the personalities but the dynamics between them.

Plot summary

Of course you hardly ever meet intelligent people there... And you rarely see anyone whom I call really smart. All the same, you may find absolutely anybody at Aunt Molly's.[1]- Chips Lovell

It is 1934 and Nick is working, without great success, as a script writer at a film company. He gets invited by a colleague, Chips Lovell, to a party at the home of Lady Molly Jeavons. There he learns that Widmerpool is to marry the twice widowed, somewhat notorious (somewhat insane according to Nick) Mrs. Mildred Haycock. Nick subsequently has to endure having to lunch with Widmerpool and fending-off questions from Widmerpool's prospective in-laws becomes, for Nick, a motif throughout the novel. Also re-encountered at Lady Molly's gathering is old Alfred Tolland.

A chance meeting by Nick with Quiggin (at a cinema where Man of Aran is showing) leads to a surprising and rather mysterious invitation of a weekend visit to the country. Quiggin and Mona Templer are staying, it transpires, in a cottage loaned to them by Erridge (Lord Warminster, eccentric head of the Tolland family). While there they all visit the Tolland ancestral home, Thrubworth Park, for a frugal but eventful dinner.

Just as the meal is finishing two Tolland sisters, Susan and Isobel, arrive. Some while later Nick meets Lady Molly's husband, Ted Jeavons, in a Soho pub and they visit Umfraville's nightclub. They encounter Widmerpool (suffering another bout with jaundice), Mrs Haycock and Templer.

In Autumn 1934 Jenkins becomes engaged to Isobel. Erridge, wanting to study conditions for himself, goes to China at a time when the Japanese army are undertaking offensive operations. Mona goes with him, ditching Quiggin. Widmerpool's engagement to Mildred Haycock is broken off in farcical and, to most men, crushing circumstances. However, Widmerpool remains undaunted.

Criticism

Tariq Ali, in what is really a defence of Powell and his work, doesn't comment about At Lady Molly's in particular but writes of A Dance to the Music of Time, "By the time he came to write the Dance, Powell's style had become almost antique, baroque – and that lifted the comedy to a much higher level than one finds in the early novels." Powell's early novels are described as witty whereas the "Dance" books are of a higher order because the style "had become much more reflective." Ali also remarked in the same article, "Coincidence plays an important part in the characters' many encounters. Yet, structured as art, the coincidences build up into a greater patterning."[2]

Auberon Waugh took exception to this reflective style complaining of the number of clauses in some of Powell's sentences and attacking the use of "the diffident double-negative" as well as the "'elegant' or dissociative inverted comma." He dismissed A Dance to the Music of Time, At Lady Molly's not excepted, with: "As an early upmarket soap opera, it undoubtedly gave comfort to a number of people, becoming something of a cult during the 1970s in the London community of expatriate Australians. Perhaps it afforded them the illusion of understanding English society, even a vicarious sense of belonging to it. If so, it was one of the cruellest practical jokes ever played by a Welshman." These remarks appeared in a piece by Auberon Waugh in the Sunday Telegraph 27 May 1990, "Judgment on a Major man of letters".[3]

One such expatriate Australians Clive James, has been widely quoted (particularly on the back of any the sequence's British paperback editions) as holding the opinion that "The Dance...was the greatest modern novel in English since (James Joyce's) Ulysses."

Norman Shrapnel, in making a comparative literary point, at the same time attacks the "soap opera" idea, with the judgement: "He [Powell] lacks what Amis and most of the later English humorists have possessed – sentimentality. That would have destroyed the work."[4]—sentimentality being the bedrock of the soap opera genre.

Characters new to the series

Molly again met Cap. Teddy Jeavons at the car show at the Olympia and they later married. Living on, as Lovell surmised, about £100 a year of her own money with Jeavons not bringing in a cent[17] the Jevonses' kept open house at their home at South Kensington, a social no-man's land[18] where one could meet all kinds[19] (excepting working class types unless they were employees). It was at Lady Molly's that Widerpool first met Mildred, Mrs Haycock. Nick Jenkins re-encounters Alfred Tolland and Mark Members there.

Established characters

Quotes

All men are brothers, but, thank God, they aren't all brothers-in-law. – Peter Templer. Pp 160.

Woman may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they will marry anybody.- Peter Templer Pp. 151

There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing. Nick Jenkins. Pp. 29

Don't be so philosophical...I can't bear it. Young woman to Nick. Pp. 83

The Lewis gun may be sounding at the barricades earlier than some of your Laodicean friends think. J.G. Quiggin. Pp. 85

Themes

"What, then, is the central theme of the series? Creativity – the act of production. Of literature, of books, of paintings, of music; that is what most of the central characters are engaged in for the whole of their lives. Moreland composes, Barnby paints, X Trapnel writes, Quiggin, Members and Maclintick criticise and the narrator publishes books and then becomes a writer. What excites the novelist is music and painting, literature and criticism. It's this creativity, together with the comedy of everyday life, that sustains the Dance"[2] Of the characters mentioned above, the narrator (Nick), Members—a poet as well as a critic, Quiggin and Barnby all appear or are quoted in At Lady Molly's.

Marriage, madness, melancholia and gossiping are integral to the effect of the book.

See also

Footnotes

  1. At Lady Molly's Pp.125
  2. 1 2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/26/fiction4
  3. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/peterrobins/5202707/Prowling_the_files_Auberon_Waugh_on_Anthony_Powell/
  4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/mar/30/news.obituaries
  5. At Lady Molly's Pp. 5
  6. At Lady Molly's Pp 5
  7. At Ledy Molly's Pp 5
  8. At Lady Molly's Pp 34
  9. Pp 6
  10. At Lady Molly's Pp 184
  11. 1 2 At Lady Molly's Pp 8
  12. At Lady Molly's Pp 9
  13. At Lady Molly's Pp 173
  14. At Lady Molly's Pp 23
  15. Pp 16
  16. At Lady Molly's p 17
  17. At Lady Molly's Pp 18
  18. Pp 157
  19. At Lady Molly's Pp 59
  20. At Lady Molly's Pp 162
  21. Pp 178
  22. Pp 180
  23. Pp 174
  24. A Buyer's MarketPp 43
  25. Pp 113
  26. Pp 19
  27. 1 2 Pp 167
  28. Pp 148
  29. 1 2 Pp 150
  30. Pp 145
  31. Pp 177
  32. Pp 187

References

External links

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