REX WHISTLER
"Then they were absorbed in their dance."
Illustration for The Last of Uptake by Simon Harcourt-Smith
London: Batsford, 1944, republished Solstice Productions, Ltd. 1967
Copyright Simon Harcourt-Smith

Perhaps I should have mentioned yesterday that The Last of Uptake is the story of the end of a country house; for some reason it didn't seem necessary.  In any case, most of the action involves the aged Lady Tryphena, one of the two remaining occupants of Uptake Hall, taking a tour of the grounds with the estate's head gardener Titmarsh.  There is a heavy mist hanging over everything, a "clinging sea-fog" that smothers the wind, and everything is "suffering a humid dissolution."  A large piece of plaster falls at Lady Tryphena's feet, prompting her to wonder why the place has stood as long as it has.  Yet as a show house people still come to gape, although most go over the hill to look at another property to which the owner has made improvements, having "given it back its castle aspect.  Of the castle style much could be said, when it was a question of a family seat."  By contrast, Uptake has a pagan air.  And loads of follies and curiosities including a grotto, with a row of Sphinxes, a domed shell room, and a number of life-size mechanical automata scattered across the landscape: a woodsman fallen over on his side in a storm but still capable of chopping wood, two dancers in a mirrored pavilion, and an old sage in a cave who might have been lifted off the side of a Spode teapot (see below).

It's funny stuff, written to divert the author's wife during wartime.  But also disquieting, ending as it does, like Rebecca (published in 1938 and so slightly ahead of its time) with [Spoiler Alert!] the survivor(s) watching the flames in the distance engulf the stately home, symbol of the end of an era and a way of life.  One or two Molly Keane (1904 - 1996) novels end the same way as well, and an Elizabeth Bowen one too if I recall correctly, but those houses burn to the ground in Ireland, so not quite the same thing, although symbolically the point is made.  I don't know about you, but personally I enjoy burning down things at the end of a novel. 

War does make it difficult to be funny or ironic, however.  Which I think accounts for the elegaic (some might say sentimental or even turgid) tone of a book like Brideshead Revisited (1945), as opposed to Waugh's more amusing work, and also contributes to the brittle and slightly bitter charm of Harcourt-Smith's tale of Uptake Hall's demise.  The heirs to Uptake are dying like flies in the story or have already been despatched  in terrible ways, off a cliff in Greece, in an ill-famed part of San Francisco after an incident in a gambling house there, but it's hard to find the death of heirs quite so hilarious when reality intrudes and you remember that the illustrator of the story would shortly die in the Normandy Invasion, his illustrations for this book his last work. 

Yesterday Eduardo and I went to meet my friend Nancy in Topanga Canyon for the opening of the new Topanga Library and lunch.  A lovely place, a spirited ceremony, the cub scouts trooping the colors, speeches by people who care about books, a string quartet, a bevy of handsome firemen from the adjacent firehouse.  The rain stopped, the sky was blue, the air was bracing and crisp.  No fires, no sad endings.  A splendid outing in the country.  Inspiring even, that in these difficult economic times, to see a community rise to the occasion for the Public Good.   

The book I'm writing now (Book Three in the series of cautionary tales about life in the city of fallen angels) is set in part in Topanga, and thus part of the visit was for research.  But like war, truly noble acts - the opening of a library, for instance, especially in the presence of so many children - makes being ironic or funny difficult.  Not impossible - the cub scouts who kept bumping Eduardo's chair to run and play tag were amusing, and the one fiddling with the knob of the propane heater (there was a chill in the air) while his weary parent ignored him might have been good for a few laughs had the thing blown up.  But that is probably just me, wanting to end the day with an explosion and things catching on fire. 
 


SPODE teapot (detail), Blue Italian pattern
L to R: romantic pagan ruins, cow, dogs or lambs, man gesturing at fallen woman, old sage in cave, another dog, while in the distance, on the edge of the lake and in view of a castle, four little boys, possibly cub scouts, prepare to engage in mischief and perhaps start a fire.
Collection of the author.