Revisiting
After My Fashion
Twenty-five
years since first reading After My Fashion (in 1980 when it
appeared) the story-line – like all the early stories -- still seems
fairly ludicrous, though oddly rather less so than at first reading. The
book now seems firmly set in its post-WWI period – unlike most other JCP
novels, where the non-specific period signals can be disturbing. In AMF
the social framework has become part of the scenery, and presents less of
a barrier. In its English chapters, the formal marital engagements and
sudden marriages of propriety, the respected Gentry and their faithful
retainers, take their natural place beside the profusion of downland
flowers and birdsong and the "peaceful hay-scented streets" of Selhurst/
Chichester; the hatpins and glimpses of stocking and "Mr"s and ubiquitous
teashops.
The New York
chapters, meanwhile -- 9 out of the 22 -- possibly quite dashing at the
time (in 1920 when the book should have been published), would not have
seemed very dated in 1960. Susan Rands suggests (in her booklet on JCP's
Sussex years) that the reason for the book's non-appearance could have
been that its situations were too close to "home"; but it is also
conceivable that it may have seemed quite daringly "modern". The whole
book is, of course, illuminated by what we now know of JCP's experiences
up to this time: his half-hearted marriage and "respectable" household;
his passion for Frances Gregg, perforce non-possessive, and flirtations
with other female admirers; his closeness to his free-living sister; his
unconventional American friends and Greenwich Village life.
The portrayal
of the main character and focus of the book, Richard Storm, as a man of
talents without conviction, and appetites with no heart, impulsive but
unable to be unselfconscious, comes across as believable, but barely
likeable; arguably rather less likeable than the more obviously eccentric
and neurotic Adrian Sorio in Rodmoor before it, and Rook Ashover in
Ducdame after it. There is obviously a good deal of JCP in Richard
Storm – the JCP of Confessions of Two Brothers, and the New York
chapters make us look at him more realistically than in not-quite-real
1900s south England.. This is perhaps the reason for a reader's unease.
Having, in this craggy character, excised (or over-analysed) most ordinary
gentler feelings, such as JCP himself was obviously capable of -- for his
mother and siblings for a start -- the fictional character is unbalanced.
With hindsight, we miss the compensating affection and commitment which as
we know came to the surface of JCP's real life shortly afterwards (on
meeting Phyllis), and which shines through the diaries (even with
allowance made for the play-acting in these, and for their exaggeration of
the "feminine" in him). Later JCP-like characters – Wolf, Dud (John Crow
never comes alive to this reader) -- are in some way more acceptable;
possibly because they are more odd, or more complex..
Nelly, the
girl-bride in the book, is touching but less convincing. The
generation-wide gap in age between her and Richard is, as usual in Powys
stories, played down, though here it is at least mentioned. She seems to
have one foot – perhaps both feet -- in Victorian convention and yet to
have a mind of her own. She is partly straightforward and plain-speaking,
partly a conventional female "game-player". Perhaps she is uncomfortably
derived in part from Margaret Powys and in part from an imagining of what
her namesake the favourite Powys sister might have been if she had lived.
However, she could be typical of post-war English girls of her kind (the
book has a strong English vs. American theme); and her final retreat into
the protective conventions of the awful Mrs Shotover is perhaps
understandable in one about to give birth. Most of the other characters
seem quite convincingly alive – Canyot the one-armed painter, a
sympathetic dependable figure; Elise, theatrical femme-fatale but
authentically inspired, Catharine the Bohemian girl, even the new-Russian
idealist and the unorthodox butterfly-fancying Vicar. Mrs Shotover is a
caricature County Lady, and probably the closest to real life of them all.
The whole
book is marvellously visual as always with JCP, both of the undisturbed
Sussex scenery, almost too heavily heavenly, and the hellish iron and
steel and grandeur of commercial, youth-driven New York. There are some
memorable set pieces: the paradisal cathedral-close garden, the
lichen-covered village church roof, the painter and the dumb child;
Nelly's "happy valley" picnic (lettuce sandwiches and a bottle of wine --
picnics seem one of the few times Powys people don't drink tea). In
the New World we have Elise's overwhelming dance, and her egomaniacs'
dialogue with the Russian below the Atlantic City boardwalk; the crowds in
Washington Square, New York's rive gauche; palatial Penn Station
(as it was); the new (art deco?) Stuyvesant theatre.
It is the
American central section, unique in JCP's fiction, that carries the book
along, and gives it a reality different from the enclosed world of other
early (and later) books by JCP. The two settings, Sussex and Manhattan,
are perhaps too different to cohere, but reminders of the contrast and of
England, with the dual influences on Richard, are worked into the American
part, and do their best to convey the collision of worlds which in 1920
must have been at its most powerful. More conventional are
studio-discussion themes of Art, Life etc; and there are a fair number of
perhaps over-convenient deaths; but there is enough action and enough
background to carry these contrivances along.
AMF
was scorned by both Llewelyn and Frances, the two critics JCP paid most
heed to, but it's hard not to think he abandoned it too easily.We may feel
that this book was a one-off for JCP; that he was more himself when more
"gothic", in the more self-enclosed settings of Rodmoor and
Ducdame, that it doesn't have the mythical dimension other books do;
and that straying into other novelists' territory was not what he was best
at. But AMF is still an enjoyable, and memorable, book.
KK
The
Powys Review no 8 (1980-81) contains long reviews of After My
Fashion, by Glen Cavaliero,
G.Wilson Knight and other distinguished Powysians.
From The
Powys Society Newsletter, No 58, November 2006
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