Saki (1) (1870–1916)

The masterful style and tone are straight out of Evelyn Waugh: sententious, humorous, plot and characters briskly delineated, all amidst a privileged milieu of languid, one might say lordly (Augustan) reserve. For English readers, the pleasure in this setting and flavour surely includes the comfort zone of a fanciful idyll of class and breeding: manners and status, refinement without effort. A tale un-befitting of the times, but an understandable temptation. Waugh
himself contributes an introduction to the edition I read, and his analysis of Saki’s strengths and limitations is fitting and may colour one’s reading. (Or one may sense pre-echoes of the risible extras showing up two decades later in Waugh’s comic world: Saki’s Ada Spelvexit, for example, surely sounds like a Maltravers associate?) As that introduction recognises, there are stylistic gems on every page of “Bassington”. Saki cannot resist a wry and pithy paradox (the “intensely English look… one seldom sees out of Normandy” (p82), the outdoor scene “alive with…alert stagnation” (p87))
and is not above manoeuvring the plot or description to work in one of his bon mots (“The poor have us always with them” (p77)) or Wilde-like epigrams (“The art… of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit further”(p32)). But this sparkling style and wit also mean the work lacks emotion. It’s cheerfully amoral, it leans towards the heartless and hollow; the dialogue can be stiff and staged. And with such a satirical approach, one challenge is how to avoid merely sneering, being nasty? I’m not sure if there is any good answer to that, but certainly this book lacks one. In that light, this reader preferred getting through the book in small doses. Given also that Saki here is sometimes inclined to dabble rather than to deepen (in chapter 9, halfway through, he is still introducing new character stock), one may see the justification in his eventual focus on short stories rather than novels like “Bassington.” He is of course, and again Waugh’s introduction has primed us here, the acknowledged master of that shorter form.… (mer)

I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.
(page 8)

Even the Hooligan was probably invented in China centuries before we thought of him.
(page 18)

He classified the Princess with that distinct type of woman that looks as if it habitually went out to feed hens in the rain.
(page 35)

If there is any truth in the theory of transmigration, this particular mouse must certainly have been in a former state a member of the Alpine Club.
(page 82)

And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French? No, thank you. I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.
(page 122)

One cannot discount the unpleasant things of this world merely by looking the other way.
(page 124)

“Who are those depressed-looking young women who have just gone by?” asked the Baroness; “they have the air of people who have bowed to destiny and are not quite sure whether the salute will be returned.”
(page 150)

“The trouble is,” said Clovis to his aunt, “all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other; that is way they become so perfunctory and artificial. At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encourage by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one else had failed you at the last moment; if you are supping at a restaurant at New Year’s Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands and sing “For Auld Land Syne” with strangers whom you have never seen before and never want to see again. But no licence is allowed in the opposite direction.”
(pages 278-9)

Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again.
(page 347)

… (mer)