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The Paul Berna Challenge – A Truckload of Rice (1968)

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In which we return to Puisay, its wise head of Police, Commissioner Sinet, and its most popular family, the Thiriets, whom we met in both The Clue of the Black Cat and The Mule on the Motorway. How can a goldfish in a bowl provide a clue to the identity of the thief who has stolen the money raised by Geoffrey and Lucien Verdier to buy a truckload of rice for people suffering famine in India? If anyone can work it out, it’s Commissioner Sinet; but never underestimate the importance of Bobby Thiriet to help clinch an investigation.

A Truckload of Rice was first published in 1968 by G. P. Rouge et Or under its original French title Le Commissaire Sinet et le mystère des poissons rouges, which translates literally as Commissioner Sinet and the mystery of the goldfish, with illustrations by Prudence Seward, a watercolourist and etcher born in London in 1926, and believed to be still alive today. As “A Truckload of Rice”, the book was first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in 1968, and translated, as usual, by John Buchanan-Brown. My own copy of the book is the first edition. There are a few copies currently on sale online if you want to buy one!

This is the third and final book in the sequence of novels set in the fictional Parisian suburb of Puisay, following on from the excellent The Clue of the Black Cat and The Mule on the Motorway. Once again the end of the previous book sets the scene for the next book, with the story that shops in Puisay are giving away a free goldfish to every customer. The Clue of the Black Cat remains, in my humble opinion, Berna’s masterpiece, but A Truckload of Rice comes close with an entertaining and unpredictable plot about the theft of the sum of fifteen hundred francs that has been raised by the people of Puisay to go to famine relief in Chandrapur, in India.

Unlike the last book, Berna doesn’t furnish us with a map to locate the various areas of Puisay, but we do know from the rounds made by the tramp Thank-You-Kindly, that Puisay is near Orly, Choisy-le-Roi, Louvigny-Triage, Athis-Mons, Massy-Palaiseau, Antony and Sceaux, all of which are real locations. However, unlike the previous book, the locations in this book only play a relatively minor part; it isn’t necessary for us to have any idea of where the places are in relation to each other. Also, unlike most of Berna’s books, there’s no sense of gang membership. The young journalists who work on the Puisay Students’ News are only briefly mentioned, and we only hear of two of Geoffrey and Lucien’s schoolfriends. This book is much more in the tradition of Magpie Corner and The Mystery of the Cross-Eyed Man, in that there are no more than one or two central young characters with whom Berna’s readership can easily identify.

And once again, it’s a very male-centred story, with very few female characters, all of whom are peripheral except perhaps for Catherine Verdier, Geoffrey and Lucien’s mother. The only girls that appear in the story are a brief mention of Gisèle and Caroline, who both attend the private Institution Garnier and whose only interaction with the story involves them giggling at some very minor flirtatious behaviour from Geoffrey. There’s also a couple of short conversations with Belle, Bobby Thiriet’s sister, but she plays no active part in the story at all.

Commissioner Sinet is still in charge at the local police station, assisted by Monsieur Malin, who appeared in The Mule on the Motorway and Inspector Valentin, a bright officer, but whose abilities and attitudes are occasionally found wanting. Lagneau, Geoffrey’s teacher, is unimpressed with Valentin’s attitude towards the theft: “the pickpocket on the 196 is nothing more than an unenterprising sneak thief. And he didn’t get away with all that much when he robbed the boy.” Lagneau replies: “Geoffrey […] reckons the cost, not in the paper francs in the envelope but in what they meant – the food snatched from the mouths of people dying from hunger […] Self-interest still hasn’t got its hold on those boys and girls and they’re far more giving than we are. The fact that a million and a half human beings suffer from hunger as if it were a disease, that ten thousand people die from this cause every single day of the week, has struck home far deeper with them than with their elders.”

Sinet remains very predisposed to approaches from the local children – much more than from the adults, in fact. There’s a moment when Sinet must pretend that Geoffrey and Lucien are his sons, to make their appearance less obvious when they’re out investigating. Sinet has a fatherly feeling towards the boys as he walks with them down the Voie du Renard. He loves to be associated with the youngsters. “Grown-ups bored him. They always wanted a logical answer […] Whatever their age, children would follow for preference a clue which the police would consider outside the range of their investigations.” I’m sure Berna’s characterisation of Sinet encouraged children everywhere to have greater trust in the police.

In the previous book, the distinction between the haves and have-nots in the town was less because the Thiriets had moved from the Rue Mirandole to the Belloy Estate; a move from poverty to gracious living. With Bobby hobnobbing around the stables and mixing with much more gentrified folk, the bad old days seemed a thing of the past. In this book, the Verdiers are firmly rooted in the Rue Mirandole and it’s clear that money is a problem. When it becomes necessary for Mme Verdier to find fifteen hundred francs unexpectedly out of nowhere, it’s not going to be easy. Nevertheless, Catherine Verdier is upbeat about the prospect, as the most important thing is the honour of the family: “It won’t kill us! We’ll just have to do without one of two luxuries: the holidays will have to be shorter and we’ll have to go to the country and not to the seaside; less pocket-money for you, and fewer treats; you’ll have to wear your old clothes until they are threadbare and I shall have to put off buying a new bed for Lucien.”

There are always individual moments in Berna’s writing which stand out for their impact, or humour, or simply because they combine eloquence with simplicity. A good example of this is in a brief description of Geoffrey, who is a robust, enthusiastic boy who throws himself into everything. There’s a delightfully subtle description of this robustness, when Catherine and Lucien are waiting for Geoffrey to arrive at the flat. “Then there was a half-hearted tinkle of the bell. The two looked at one another and raised their eyebrows: it could not be Geoffrey, for he generally sounded a carillon.”

What comes across most strongly from the story is the sense of urgency to raise money for people who are less well off than themselves; even those with few assets of their own show generosity towards the Chandrapur famine. It’s almost as though the Indians, thousands of miles away, are personal friends of the Puisay people; the drive to raise as much money as possible is a matter of unmitigated honour to them. As a result, there’s no competitiveness between the various teams of fund-raisers; there doesn’t need to be, as they’re purely motivated by the thought of raising as much money as possible: “There was no question of beating anyone else’s record. The money which they had collected up and down the streets went to swell a common fund, provided mainly by the generosity of ordinary people. As each emptied his tin upon the classroom table, he or she had the feeling of adding a little bit more to the lifegiving supplies promised to the starving inhabitants of Chandrapur.”

There’s only one instance of rejection of this kind reaction. Outdated language warning alert: This is spoken by the tramp Thank-You-Kindly, who turns on the boys when they try to get him to donate: “Things have come to a pretty pass when the working-man has the bread taken out of his mouth to feed a bunch of wogs!” Berna also doesn’t shy away from emphasising the full honour of dying from starvation, with a clinically brutal description of the process that seems out of place in a children’s book: “First of all the stomach swells up and then the skin gradually becomes drier and drier until it begins to crack. If malnutrition is not halted at this stage, the hair goes grey in a matter of days and then starts to fall out in handfuls; the eyes go dim and glassy; the person’s mind begins to wander, and then he collapses through sheer physical weakness. He may lie for a time oblivious of his surroundings, but not for long. He soon finds himself trapped in a nightmare. Scarcely aware of the daylight, he takes one, two, three steps even, only to collapse in the blazing sunshine of the street.”

Finally, it’s curious that Berna describes the exotic fish as a guariba – as that is actually the proper name for the brown howler monkey, native to Brazil!

Here’s my chapter by chapter synopsis of the book. If you haven’t read the book yet and don’t want to see any spoilers, here’s where you have to stop reading!

 

Chapter One – The Goldfish. Commissioner Sinet arrives at his desk to discover a goldfish in a bowl. The bowl is small but the goldfish is even smaller. He’s not impressed and demands to know who thought it was funny to leave it there. But Madame Michon, the charwoman, explains that she has given it to him, as it was a free gift with some shopping she did earlier with police funds. It’s a promotional stunt, and about twenty local shops are giving these goldfish away. She assumes that M. Brault, who has opened a new pet-shop, is behind the scheme; everyone who wants to buy fish food, or a larger bowl, or a companion fish, will go to him!

Meanwhile a flag-day is being arranged. The head of the Freedom from Hunger office, and indeed mayor of Puisay, M. Filleul, is on the phone to Sinet to remind him it will take place tomorrow and there’ll be a number of young helpers from the local schools on the streets, rattling tins and encouraging donations for their cause: A Truckload of Rice for Chandrapur. They’ve already raised thirty-five thousand francs through the generosity of local businesses and wealthy individuals. But they’re hoping for at least the same amount to be raised by these young people from the Institution Garnier and the Saint-Maur school.

Doctor and Mrs Kasterin have brought an elderly gentleman to Puisay, Durga Chandar, from his native Rajputana to emphasise the poverty plight that they are trying to address with their fund raising. M. Loetzen, the charity organiser, had suggested that Puisay should be twinned with Chandrapur, to give an extra spur to the effort; an idea that the Town Council agreed unanimously. The different areas of the town are to be divided up between different collectors; there should be no problem in the rich areas like the Avenue de Paris, but there might be some resistance in the poorer areas, like the Rue Mirandole or the Rue Général-Thuboeuf. But M. Lagneau of the boys’ school is convinced his hard-working collectors will do well. They have already worked out their targets: number one on their list is the tax collector in the Rue Mirandole!

Chapter Two – The Flag-Day. Geoffrey and Lucien Verdier can’t wait for the day to come; Geoffrey was out of bed at 7am making hot chocolate for his brother, his mother and himself. They plan to spend the whole day selling flags, so they need a good breakfast. Their mother, Catherine, is proud of her boys and is the first to donate; just five francs, but it deserves a flag. Inspired, Geoffrey and Lucien decide to donate that fortnight’s pocket money to the cause; giving their time alone somehow seems insufficient, when children are starving in India. Even Mme Hubert, the building’s caretaker, is happy to make a donation – having already been forewarned that she should by Mme Verdier.

As previously decided, their first port of call was to be the tax collector’s office. They go up the stairs to the main office where M. Chalus, the tax collector, is loudly complaining to those local citizens who were behind with their payments. Geoffrey is firm with M. Chalus, but Chalus is adamant; he will not give any money to the fund. Eventually though, they shame him into donating, on the understanding that the boys would tell everyone else how generous M. Chalus had been. They had hoped he might donate fifty francs, but he surprises them with a donation of one hundred francs. “They went downstairs with heads held high and in quick succession fleeced the Chief Clerk, the cashier and his underlings with a briskness that cheered the discontented citizens queuing at the counter.”

Chapter Three – Thank You Kindly. Thank-You-Kindly, the tramp, so called because he always uses that phrase to wheedle money out of unsuspecting passersby, is targeting the streets of Puisay for people to give him a few francs. He spots the rich and posh Mme Aubineau, whose dog he likes to flatter in order to get her to give him some money. She gives him a franc, just to get rid of him. Geoffrey and Lucien spot him and are outraged that he should be targeting the same people as them, but for a much lesser cause – he only drinks his money away. They bound up to him and shame him into giving them Mme Aubineau’s franc. Then they advise him to leave town, because with two hundred or so collectors on the go, he’s not going to secure any cash from his begging. Naturally they then turn their attention to Mme Aubineau herself, who flat out refuses to donate at first. It takes a combination of Geoffrey telling her exactly what happens when you die of starvation, and recounting the generosity of M. Chalus, to get her to part with ten francs.

It’s only 9.30 am but they already have a tin full of cash and not many flags left over, so the boys head to the school where teachers M. Lagneau and Mlle Collet are working hard, managing the counting of money and the distribution of flags. Geoffrey and Lucien have collected three hundred francs so far; the other collectors, Gisèle and Caroline, Big Bob and Prosper, have brought in about the same amount. Lagneau’s suggestion of sandwiches and lemonade is replaced by a very welcome celebratory steak and chips, and at 2.00pm the collectors all go out again to continue their good work.

Chapter Four – The Blind Man Shows His Hand. Towards the end of their round, Geoffrey and Lucien pay a call on M. Léonard’s grocery store on the Boulevard de Rungis. He’s happy to donate and gives them a fifty franc note. Geoffrey gives him all the details about how the collection is being handled and tells him about M. Loetzen, Doctor Kasterin and Durga Chandar. Meanwhile, Lucien is intrigued by the row of goldfish bowls in M. Léonard’s shop. The storekeeper offers him one, but Lucien declines as it simply wouldn’t be practical to try to pin flags on lapels whilst holding a goldfish bowl.

Back at the count, the boys are just twenty centimes short of one thousand five hundred francs – an extraordinarily successful day. It’s agreed that Geoffrey will accompany M. Lagneau back to M. Léonard’s in the hope that he will exchange all the small change for big notes. The grocer is happy to oblige and gives them three five hundred franc notes in exchange for their cash. Geoffrey chooses a goldfish to give to Lucien, but decides not to take it at that moment, saying he will come back for it. Instead, Geoffrey has the honour of taking the money to the Town Hall, and giving it Mme Filleul. Lagneau tells Geoffrey which bus to take, and then walks on to the Belloy Estate.

The bus is very full. Just before he’s due to get off, a blind man asks Geoffrey’s help to get off and walk with him a little of the way. Geoffrey of course is as helpful as he can be. Eventually the man walks off once he knows where he is. However – Geoffrey discovers that his jacket has been slit open with a razor and the money has been stolen. All that effort and generosity wasted; what a disaster – and will people believe him?

Chapter Five – A Costly Sense of Humour.  Lucien is buzzing with excitement when he gets home and can tell his mother all about their day’s adventures. But when Geoffrey appears, he confesses that he had been standing outside their apartment for the last five minutes: “I heard you laughing and I didn’t dare ring.” Geoffrey tells them both about the theft of the money, the damage to his new jacket and that it was the apparently blind man who did it. Geoffrey goes on to say that he feels he can’t tell anyone, because they’ll all think he stole it.

Catherine takes control of the situation by deciding that they’ll have to pay the fifteen hundred francs out of their own pocket. It will mean borrowing from the neighbours, asking her employer for an advance on her salary and cutting their expenses generally. “In the meantime, we’ll just have to tighten our belts… like the Indians in Chandrapur.” Geoffrey is relieved that she isn’t cross with him and believes him. Lucien is furious but understands.

Geoffrey takes the borrowed money – fifteen one hundred franc notes – to the Town Hall and hands it to the disagreeable and unfriendly clerks, who take his envelope and dismiss him without thanks. Thinking back on the day’s events, Geoffrey feels wretched. ““I shan’t ever get involved in working for charity again.”” But when Lagneau witnesses the envelope of cash being opened, he realises that something has happened – it’s a different envelope, and there are fifteen notes rather than three. Concerned, he decides to visit the Verdiers. He arrives as they are just settling down for dinner and can tell instantly that Geoffrey has a frightened look on his face. He explains that he saw the envelope and the bank notes had changed: “the only possible explanation which occurred to me on the way here is as melodramatic as you could wish and the look on your face isn’t exactly encouraging… Own up, now, you lost the envelope, didn’t you?” Geoffrey tells him what happened and shows him his ripped jacket. Lagneau tells him he should have come straight to him and it could all have been settled easily – but having done what they have done, it will be very difficult to return the money to the Verdiers? Catherine emphasises that she doesn’t want her children to be under suspicion. Lagneau understands – but is appalled at the personal sacrifice the family has had to make.

Chapter Six – The Man on the Bus.  Lagneau wastes no time in coming to see Commissioner Sinet with Geoffrey. With great efficiency, Sinet’s backroom staff have all the facts about the numbers of blind people in Puisay. When they eliminate all the obviously inappropriate suspects, they quickly decide the culprit must be M. Rougier, “a disabled soldier […] Very respectable gentleman.” When they pay him a visit, it is Rougier himself who answers the door; and Geoffrey is in no doubt that he was the man whom he helped off the bus. Sinet questions him further; and it emerges that there was a fat man standing next to both Rougier and Geoffrey, who rudely bustled past Rougier – and with his limited vision Rougier could identify the fat man also had a white stick. One more clue: Rougier felt that the man had a cardboard flag in his buttonhole.

Geoffrey realises only a few people could possibly have witnessed Lagneau giving him the sealed envelope and is determined to pursue his own investigations into who it might have been. But Sinet quickly discovers that there were at least fifty people in the street who could have seen the money being handed over. He’s determined to get to the bottom of the crime.

Chapter Seven – A Drop of the Right Stuff. Next day Sinet decides to follow up on the evidence so far and identifies the only blind man in the area who is fat. However, this is a dead end, as this M. Mancheron is also bed-ridden and completely incapable of committing the crime. Meanwhile, at school, life goes on as normal for Geoffrey and Lucien. Lagneau is convinced Geoffrey is completely innocent but appreciates that his mother did exactly the right thing. Geoffrey tells Lagneau that there was something suspicious that happened the day before – but he can’t quite put his finger on it. M. Léonard, too, is perplexed;  he notices another five hundred franc note in his till, but he was certain he had given them all to Geoffrey and Lagneau the day before. Why was there another note in the till? It even has a memorable serial number: 12345.

Léonard goes to the Welfare Offices, where he meets Lagneau. He explains the curious situation regarding the notes. Lagneau has a solution: someone has since returned to the shop and used it to pay for their goods, or to exchange it for smaller notes. Together they seek out Sinet. They decide to return to the shop to question Mme Léonard. She remembers someone about 7.00 pm, coming in to buy a bottle of brandy and used the five hundred franc note to pay for it. She remembers him being “cheery, fat, with a hat pulled down over his face and dark glasses. He looked rather like a clown in mufti.”

Geoffrey and Lucien are also at the shop. Geoffrey says they have come to collect the goldfish that M. Léonard had put aside for Lucien. However, Mme Léonard apologises and explains that it has been given to someone else – the man who paid for his brandy with the five hundred franc note. “Geoffrey laid his right hand on Lucien’s shoulder. “And the two of us, “ he said to the amusement of all, “are going to follow the clue of the goldfish.””

Chapter Eight – The Clue of the Guariba.  Geoffrey and Lucien pay a call at the exotic fish store recently opened by M. Brault. He tells them that a few of the free fish he gave away were more than just mere goldfish; and Geoffrey’s description of the fish he chose for Lucien leads Brault to deduce it is a guariba. Its water mustn’t drop below 22 degrees Celsius and it lives on green water weeds and plants with tender leaves. Clearly, all Geoffrey and Lucien need to do to find the money is find the guariba!

Meanwhile, one of Sinet’s men has tracked down a man who was shamming blindness, and is conning people into buying his door-to-door wares. He knows he’s not really blind, as the officer saw him get into a car and drive off. His name is Alfred Peignon; but as soon as Sinet sees him, he realises it’s not the same man who bought the brandy – his description is completely different. However, Sinet continues to question him and discovers that Peignon knows another sham blind man; a man who parked a car, a grey DS with a white roof, put on dark glasses a hat and took out his white stick, and got the same bus that Geoffrey and Rougier did. Sinet insists that Geoffrey takes a look at Peignon to find out if he saw him on the bus – but Geoffrey doesn’t recognise him.

Lucien explains the whole story about the guariba to Sinet. They are, in fact, looking for nine guaribas, not ten; as Sinet himself also has one swimming about on his desk. And Geoffrey drops a bombshell to the extent that he just has a slight suspicion that the truckload of rice bound for Chandrapur won’t reach its destination. Lagneau is annoyed at the accusation, but Geoffrey can’t explain why he feels it.

Chapter Nine – The Trap is Set. It’s Saturday, and business is brisk at M. Brault’s exotic fish store. Sinet – alongside Geoffrey and Lucien – wants a list of all those people who have made themselves known to him as being lucky winners of a guariba. One is Madame Deuzy, and we know she’ll have nothing to do with the crime, as she was so helpful in the cases of the Black Cat and the Mule. Another is the esteemed M. de Saint-Véran, a local VIP well known to Sinet as a bank director and business executive. Yet another is Mme Aubineau, from whom the boys struggled to obtain a donation of ten francs; she wouldn’t be seen dead on a bus. Then there was M. Samson, from Voie du Renard, “a district with a bad name […] A big, middle-aged man. Drove a 2 CV” and he paid with a five hundred franc note.

Sinet and the boys arrive at Voie du Renard, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, just like a father taking his sons out for a walk. Stopping outside M. Samson’s house, they engage him in conversation, mentioning that M. Brault had said M. Samson was an expert in tropical fish and that the boy had just taken possession of a guariba. Samson takes them to see his aquarium; he has already bought a companion guariba for his free one. Sinet establishes that the second fish cost fifty francs, but Lucien gives the game away that they are investigating a theft and Samson recognises that Sinet is the Commissioner of Police. On further questioning, Samson reveals that the five hundred franc note he used to buy the fish with was given to him as part of his retirement pension. He also discloses that he is  a retired police officer, and he and Sinet reconcile over their mutual professions. Back at the station, Sinet’s men have got the numbers of all the grey DS’s with white roofs in Puisay – there are ten of them, just like the guaribas.

Chapter Ten – Bobby Takes a Hand. Inspector Valentin explains that the owners of these cars are very unlikely to be involved in the case, as they are all respectable, employed people. One of them is M. de Saint-Véran, but Sinet finds it impossible to believe he can be wrapped up in this crime. Another is notable local doctor, Doctor Lavalette. There’s a M. Milard, a butcher who makes ten thousand francs a day from his shop, so he’s unlikely to need the money; another belongs to the wealthiest chemist in town and the sixth to Mlle Amandine, who runs the new fashion shop in Belloy. Then there’s M. Potter, whose car has no wheels, and M. Gourel, a disabled ex-serviceman. The other two belong to M. Filleul, the mayor and Doctor Kasterin of the Freedom from Hunger campaign!

Back at M. Brault’s shop, the seventh guariba-owner emerges as a young lady comes in announcing she’s going to keep her free fish. Sinet sends Valentin to trail her once she has left the shop; he finds out that she lives with her mother on the Belloy Estate and was given the fish by the man that runs the leather shop in the arcade. Annoyed by his approach, either the young lady or the mother gave him a good smack around the face. Later an elderly couple returned their guariba saying it was impossible for them to look after. But then another man appeared, looking for a companion to his guariba; he instantly arouses the suspicion of Sinet and Lagneau. He does not leave a name, and they decide to follow him. This leaves Lucien alone, observing another boy around his own age in the shop; he was from the lycée and wore one of the charity flags. It turns out that the boy owns the tenth and final guariba. He’s come in to buy a cheap aquarium, he can’t afford anything better. His name: Bobby Thiriet.

Meanwhile, Sinet and Lagneau are still following the owner of guariba number nine. He turns on them and demands to know why they are following him. Refusing to help them, he refers them to the caretaker and slams the door on them. The caretaker names him as M. Vibert, an architect. His car is in a scrapyard as he hasn’t driven since his wife became semi-paralysed in a car crash. He confirms that Vibert has fifty or so fish in his aquarium.

Back at M. Brault’s shop Sinet is delighted to discover that Bobby Thiriet owns the final guariba and that Lucien has gone off following him. “Bobby will lead us straight to your thief, simply by getting a confession out of that goldfish everyone around us has been laughing at for the last couple of days.”

Chapter Eleven – The Accusing Goldfish. Bobby knows Lucien is following him and eventually confronts him about it. After they realise that they both know the poverty stricken area in which Lucien lives, and where Bobby lived, the ice is broken between them. Lucien wants to see Bobby’s goldfish – and Bobby doesn’t understand Lucien’s interest. But he’s curious now, especially since it was the clue of the black cat that had stimulated Bobby’s attention a few months back. He invites Lucien in to see it, but Bobby’s sister Belle has bad news: the cat has upturned the glass bowl, and eaten the fish. Lucien explains his interest and Bobby is fascinated. “Your goldfish could convict a man, at least in a rather roundabout way. It’s a terrific story! I’ll tell Charlie Baron about it! He’s chief editor of the Puisay Students’ News. We’ll run it as a 25-part serial.” Lucien’s story reminds Bobby and Belle of how their own family had been tricked out of money.

Lucien finds out that it was Colonel Brousse, the owner of the Saint-Just Riding Club, and who has offered shelter to Quicksilver in The Mule on the Motorway, who gave him the fish. Bobby is keen to confront him about it. They leave for the Riding Club, just before Sinet arrives at their flat and Belle tells him they have gone to see Brousse. Sinet instantly follows and arrives just in time to see Bobby and Lucien ask the colonel about where he got the goldfish. He explains that it was given to him by his son, Joel. In turn, he had been given it by a fat man in a grey DS with a white roof. Joel says that they had seen him before – “Wednesday evening at Doctor Kasterin’s lecture… he was sitting on the platform, next to that old Indian with the beard.”

He was describing Monsieur Loetzen.

Chapter Twelve – In the Bag. Geoffrey had suspected something was wrong all along but couldn’t say anything for definite. He recollects something about M. Loetzen in conversation with M. Lagneau: “On the evening of the flag-day, when you’d finished adding up the takings. His enthusiasm was just as insincere as congratulations. You don’t thank boys of fifteen by patting them on the cheek. Bob and his mate Prosper were just as embarrassed as I was. I’ve thought pretty hard about that little scene.” Sinet has deduced that Loetzen is “just a sneak-thief after easy money.” But what about the Kasterins and Durga Chandar? Could they be implicated in the crime too?

It turns out that Loetzen has been using the Kasterins’ car ever since the appeal opened. After further questioning, Geoffrey agrees that he did recognise the blind man – it was when they met Rougier without his glasses on, and he remembered how different the two men looked. “I was appalled when I realised he reminded me of Monsieur Loetzen. You see I couldn’t imagine that a crook could be as treacherous as that or prepared to rob such a respectable charity as the appeal.”

Sinet confronts M. Filleul with these suspicions. He confirms that it was Loetzen who “put himself forward for the job [of publicising the appeal] saying it was in line with what he did for the Red Cross.” He also advises that Loetzen had asked “for two large cheques to be made out in favour of the firms who are to supply the aid.” Sinet tells him to delay the cheques at all costs. He advises the boys to go home, have a good sleep, and return to the Town Hall in the morning. “But this was not enough to appease Geoffrey’s thirst for revenge. What is more, the good Commissioner was wrong to overlook the fifteen hundred francs replaced by Catherine Verdier.” Sinet gives Lucien his guariba, as though it were a consolation prize.

Geoffrey leaves Lucien halfway home; determined to get his revenge, he decides to catch a 196 bus in the hope of trapping the thief. And there on the bus is Loetzen, with dark glasses and white stick, sitting behind the conductor. Geoffrey doesn’t know how he’s going to catch him but catch him he will. He watches a woman laden with parcels stand next to him, with her handbag dangling right in front of Loetzen’s view. Temptation beyond endurance for Loetzen; and it’s at the very moment when Loetzen has his hand in her handbag that Geoffrey grips his hand to drag him off the bus and straight to the police station.

Chapter Thirteen – Durga Chandar. Sinet reveals to Loetzen that it was Peignon who confirmed his involvement. The cut-throat razor, that Loetzen used to cut through jackets or handbags, lay on the table – full of excuses, Loetzen dismisses it as his bunion remover. Mme Léonard appears and confirms he was the man who bought the brandy and used the five hundred franc note; then Joel Brousse appears and confirms he was the man who gave him the goldfish. Geoffrey demands the return of his mother’s fifteen hundred francs; then Lucien demands eighty francs to mend Geoffrey’s jacket. On return of the cash, they let the felon leave the police station – but outside he walks into a trap, as two officers are there to take him to the police headquarters on a couple of dozen more charges.

The next day Geoffrey and Lucien head off to the Town Hall. Loetzen’s place on the Committee has been taken by M. Chalus, the tax inspector. The ceremony was dull with endless speeches, and the old Indian, Durga Chandar, seemed unimpressed by it all. There was the usual chatter; Brousse offers Geoffrey the chance to ride Quicksilver at the stables for nothing and Mme Kasterin has reserved a place for Mme Verdier with her sons at the banquet. But no one was talking to Durga Chandar – except Lucien, who realised what the problem was. In all the debate about Indian famine, no one had remembered to offer the old man anything to eat! It only took the offer of some chocolate to melt the ice.

To sum up; A beautifully written and constructed book that brings all the goodness and charity (literally) out of its main characters and stresses the importance of honesty and decency. The story is told briskly, taking place only over a matter of four days or so. It’s also a very successful children’s whodunit! Sadly, this would be the last time we would meet the Thiriet or the Verdier families. If you’ve read the book – or are re-reading it now, I’d love to know what you think about it, so please add a comment below. Next up in the Paul Berna Challenge is a completely different scenario, with no associations with any of his previous works, L’Épave de la Bérénice, translated into English as The Secret of the Missing Boat. I look forward to re-reading it and sharing my thoughts about it in a few weeks.

The Points of View Challenge – The Prison – Bernard Malamud

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Bernard Malamud (1914 – 1986)

American novelist and short story writer, best known for his novels The Natural and The Fixer.

The Prison was first published in Commentary magazine in September 1950 and then in the collection The Magic Barrel in 1958.

Available to read online here.

This is the third of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “A point of view, naturally, is both a physical vantage point and a personal way of perceiving events, What we mean by “single character point of view” is that the author takes us only where a certain character goes and permits to know only what that character is thinking and feeling.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Prison

#Tommy Castelli is in prison; a prison of his own making and in accord with his environment. At least, that’s what it feels like, every day having to work in the candy shop that his father-in-law paid for to keep him on the straight and narrow. He runs it with his wife Rosa; they don’t love each other but they muddle through. Tommy had a bad start in life, holding up a liquor store; he escaped justice but allowed himself to be bought into the marriage and running the store – sixteen hours a day of sheer boredom and frustration. He even consented to becoming Tommy, whilst his real name is Tony.

Recently a young girl has started coming into the store and buying tissue paper for her mother, who apparently encourages other children to make toys and dolls out of it. One day he realises that whilst his back is turned, she steals two candy bars. His initial reaction is to challenge her, but he also feels sorry for her, seeing something of himself in her behaviour. It also reminds him of his Uncle Dom, who is in prison, and whom he misses. Still, he can’t let her keep on stealing from him, so he devises various plans of catching her out, making her realise that he knows what she’s doing, and encouraging her to stop before the habit gets out of hand. But nothing he does seems to prevent her regular thefts.

It’s not until Rosa catches her thieving that things escalate quickly. She grabs the girl and shakes her within an inch of her life; identifying more with the girl than his wife, Tommy slaps Rosa across the face until he draws blood. The girl’s mother arrives, and when she discovers what her daughter has been doing, she too administers corporal punishment on the girl. But in a moment of total defiance, the girl still finds time to poke her tongue out at Tommy as her mother manhandles her away.

This claustrophobic, depressing yet simple little tale takes the notion of imprisonment and applies it both to the reality of what Tommy escaped in his youth, but it has been replaced by a virtual prison; and what could become the future for the girl if she doesn’t change her ways. There’s an overwhelming sense of regret in the story; regret for the “dreams and schemes” he never achieved, regret for the loss of freedom, regret that he married the “plain and lank” Rosa, regret that the girl’s future could become the same as his, even regret that he changed his name. There’s also regret that Tommy didn’t prevent the girl from stealing in the first place, as his virtuous attempts to shame her into decency are thrown back in his face.

It’s tightly, darkly written; a sparse combination of sentences that make for one of the shortest stories in this collection. It paints a severe picture of down-at-heel life amongst the poorest in society and how crime and violence are an inevitable consequence of the poverty. “Time rotted in him, and all he could think of the whole morning, was going to sleep in the afternoon.” The story does not offer any possibility that life will change for the better; as such, it comes across as a negative, pessimistic piece.

The next story in the anthology is the fourth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Stone Boy by Gina Berriault.

The Points of View Challenge – Horses – One Dash – Stephen Crane

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Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900)

American poet, novelist, and short story writer, best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Horses – One Dash, written in 1895, first published in a newspaper in 1896 and then in the collection The Open Boat and Other Stories in 1898. Also known as One Dash – Horses or simply Horses.

Available to read online here.

This is the second of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Some authors comment openly on the characters and the action, perhaps even correcting the perspective of the characters; others make their point only through selection, arrangement, and phrasing.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

Horses – One Dash

 

Richardson, a New Yorker, and his servant, José, ride their horses through the mesquite-strewn hills of Mexico. Needing somewhere to shelter for the night, José arranges for them to stay at a house in a remote village. All is peaceful until the noise of rowdy, drunken men outside the house wakes them in the middle of the night. It quickly becomes clear the men plan to break in, steal their goods and doubtless murder them in the process. Both men are terrified, but Richardson maintains an outward show of calm. Fortunately the men are diverted by the arrival of a group of women, and they turn their attention to singing, dancing, drinking and fraternising with the women.

The next morning Richardson and José make their escape. José is keen to rush ahead as quickly as possible, but Richardson holds back, much to his servant’s fury and frustration. They can see figures on the horizon behind them, and they know they are being pursued by the men from the night before. Fortunately, José heads down a hill to discover a group of rurales, a Mexican army cavalry corps policing the plain; José convinces them that Richardson is an influential and rich American, so the rurales are determined to protect him. When the marauding men start hurtling down the hill in pursuit of Richardson, the last thing they expect is to be met by the cavalry.

This fascinating little tale recounts the activities of maybe no more than twelve hours, but which have a profound effect on everyone involved; Richardson and José, the marauders, the rurales, even their horses. Crane makes it clear that, despite his outward show of calm, Richardson is wholly scared by the men and the danger in which he finds himself; whilst José never conceals that fact. The reader can never predict how the story will resolve itself; and its sudden ending emphasises its lack of sentimentality or indeed any future interest in the two main characters.

Crane’s writing style is fluid and full; each sentence holds your attention with its unexpected observations and delicious descriptions. Even from the very start, Crane loves to concentrate on colour and sensuousness. For example, the first paragraph includes references to crimson, blue and green, painting, and the notion of sun-shot water, a memorable description of what one sees when sun beats down on a river. He emphasises the blackness of the blanket and of José’s horse, a lemon-coloured patch of sky, red spears of fire, the greenness of the fat Mexican’s face. This all paints a very vivid picture for the reader’s imagination. Elsewhere he shows his mastery of alliteration; consider the use of d, f, w, and s in this sentence: “José rolled and shuddered in his saddle, persistently disturbing the stride of the black horse, fretting and worrying him until the white foam flew and the great shoulders shone like satin from the sweat.”

This is an excellent example of the type of narration described in the introduction by Moffett and McElheny, where the narrator comments on the action and the characters. Crane breaks away from his narration to address the reader directly: “My friend, take my advice, and never be executed by a hangman who doesn’t talk the English language”; or “the man who said that spurs jingled was insane”, a good example of Crane’s occasionally unexpected flashes of humour in a deadly situation. Others are “José’s moans and cries amounted to a university course in theology” and “if toboggans half-way down a hill should suddenly make up their minds to turn round and go back, there would be an effect something like that produced by the drunken horsemen.”

And, of course, Crane asks the most direct question about his main character, a question posed via the thoughts of his horse, and which is never truly resolved: “At the approach of their menacing company, why did not this American cry out and turn pale, or run, or pray them mercy? The animal merely sat still, and stared, and waited for them to begin. Well, evidently he was a great fighter! Or perhaps he was an idiot? Indeed, this was an embarrassing situation, for who was going forward to discover whether he was a great fighter or an idiot?”

A gripping narrative and exquisite use of language; Horses – One Dash is one of the highlights of the Points of View collection.

The next story in the anthology is the third to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, The Prison by Bernard Malamud.

The Points of View Challenge – Patricia, Edith and Arnold – Dylan Thomas

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Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 – 1953)

Welsh poet and writer of short stories and screenplays.

Patricia, Edith and Arnold, first published in the collection Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog in 1940.

Available to read online here.

This is the first of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. From their introduction: “The authors of the next stories do not refer to themselves or tell us how they know what they know. But, of course, there is no narrative without a narrator. True, he does not identify himself, but the materials, the way they are put together, and the choice of words are all his.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Patricia, Edith and Arnold

 

Our narrator is fully preoccupied with the playing and games of a young boy, backing his invisible engine into the coal hole, saluting a fireman, being King of the Castle; whereas the boy is occupied with the secret conversations between Patricia, who is looking after him, and Edith, the maid who lives next door. They’re both anxiously planning about how to meet Arnold. Arnold is a young man who has been stringing them both along, seeing Edith on Fridays and Patricia on Wednesdays, writing them both love letters without having any idea that they knew of each other’s existence.

They take the boy to the park – it’s snowing and he’s excited to make a snowman. He’s also quietly curious about meeting Arnold. And while the two women confront the man about his duplicity, the boy runs around teasing, playing and calling out names. Much to Edith’s remorse, Patricia forces Arnold to confirm that it’s she whom he really likes. But when the boy later realises he has left his cap behind, he quietly discovers Arnold reading Edith’s letters, turning them over in his hands; he doesn’t see the boy, and the boy doesn’t tell Patricia what he saw.

This is a subtle, introverted little tale, where the substance of what actually goes on is related to the reader at a tangent to the boy’s games. He doesn’t fully appreciate the truth behind the meeting between Arnold and the two women, and he doesn’t understand why it appears to have such a profound effect on them. It’s just one of those little moments in childhood when you get swept up in an adult activity that you know is important and significant, without having the experience or insight to grasp it fully.

Delicately written and occasionally deliberately obscure, it’s a curious, satisfying read about a domestic, romantic crisis seen through the opaque understanding of the boy. Perhaps it’s even more curious that Dylan chose to not to have the boy narrate the story himself; the presence of the unnamed narrator adds a further dimension of distancing from the nub of the action.

The next story in the anthology is the second to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, Horses – One Dash by Stephen Crane.

The Points of View Challenge – Johnny Bear – John Steinbeck

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John Ernst Steinbeck (1902 – 1968)

American novelist, and writer of short stories, non-fiction and film screenplays.

Johnny Bear, first published in the collection The Long Valley in 1938.

Available to read online here – and you can hear John Steinbeck reading it here.

This is the fourth and last story in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. From their introduction: “Memoir, or observer narration, is the hinge between autobiography and biography, first-person and third-person narration. In it we can see clearly the channels of information and the personal ties which disappear from the text when the narrator no longer identifies himself.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Johnny Bear

 

Our unnamed narrator has arrived in the Californian village of Loma to work on constructing a ditch through a swamp, reclaiming the land for planting crops. He’s not local, so rents a room at Mrs Ratz’ house, and the only social activity there is in the evenings is to go drinking whisky at the Buffalo Bar, run by a lugubrious but charismatic man known as Fat Carl. The narrator has met a local girl, Mae Romero, but it’s just at the friendship stage. He has also befriended Alex Hartnell, who owns one of the local farms. One night in the bar, Johnny Bear walks in. He is a big, clumsy, unkempt man; the locals think of him as a half-wit. But he has a skill; he can remember and recite overheard conversations with pinpoint accuracy of both the words and voice – he has a remarkable ability to imitate. His trick is to come into the bar and ask someone to buy him a whisky, and the more he drinks, the more he recites these conversations. On their first meeting, he recites the conversation our narrator had previously had with Mae, much to the former’s embarrassment and the amusement of his friend Alex.

Obviously, Johnny Bear deliberately spies on people to hear what they are saying. On another occasion he relays a conversation between Miss Emalin and Miss Amy, the Hawkins sisters, known as the local aristocracy. Alex is upset at this; these sisters represent everything that’s good about Loma and feels they should be treated with respect. As their conversations become more wildly known, it becomes apparent that Amy’s mental health is deteriorating badly. One day the news permeates through that she has taken her own life. Johnny Bear comes into the bar and starts to reveal the final conversations she had with both Emalin and the doctor; and in attempt to protect the memory of Amy from scandal, Alex lands Johnny Bear a punch that stops him in his tracks, which escalates to a full brawl also involving Fat Carl and the narrator. In the end, we discover the vital fact that Johnny Bear was about to reveal, but Alex thinks the other people in the bar won’t have heard it.

It’s an engrossing read, with well-developed characters and a richly imagined environment so that the whole story rings true. Alex is motivated by his wish to preserve the dignity and reputation of two respectable women, whose integrity contributes so much to the good standing of the community. If it means having to descend to physical violence against an oaf who knows no better, then sobeit. In addition, it offends Alex’s values because Emalin and Amy were always kind and generous towards Johnny Bear, giving him food and clothes. But Johnny Bear doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to distinguish between repeatable conversations and unrepeatable ones. If they result in him being bought a whisky, then he’ll do it.

Alex’s actions also highlight a social unbalance, however, in that it’s unacceptable to treat these women in the way that Johnny Bear does, but having him mimicking the narrator’s private conversation, who is working class, a stranger, and without a good name to uphold, is fair game. Johnny Bear is a typical Steinbeck creation, very much in the mould of Lennie from Of Mice and Men; his gift is to speak the truth indiscriminately, whether everyone else wants to hear it or not.

I learned a new word – fumadiddle! Fat Carl is said to be not a fan of them. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s a variant of flumadiddle, a mid-19th century name for a dish made from stale bread, pork fat, molasses, and spices, baked in the oven. This came to mean nonsense, humbug, something trivial or ridiculous.

The next story in the anthology is the first of eight classified by Moffett and McElheny as biography, or anonymous narration – single character point of view, Patricia Edith and Arnold by Dylan Thomas.

The Points of View Challenge – The Tryst – Ivan Turgenev

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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818 – 1883)

Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright and translator.

The Tryst, first published in Contemporary Magazine (Совреме́нник) in 1850, then in the collection Hunter’s Notes (Записки охотника) in 1852.

Available to read online here – please note, this is a different translation from that published in the Points of View volume.

This is the third of four stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. From their introduction: “The stories selected for this group demonstrate some of the different relationships a narrator may have to events and main characters; these relationships determine how he gains information. He may be a confidant of the protagonists; he may be merely an eye-witness to their actions; he may be a member of some group or community in which they’re generally known, in which case he behaves like the chorus in Greek drama.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Tryst

 

Our unnamed narrator finds himself resting in a birch grove in autumn. All around him are the beautiful, sensuous sights and sounds of nature at its most perfect; verdant, lush, almost over-ripe in its sheer stunning presence. He drifts off to sleep and wakes up later and spies a peasant girl sitting in this lavish environment – but she is crying, and her delicate white skin stands out against the green grove. The narrator remains hidden, but eventually, another figure enters the scene – an arrogant, posturing young man, whose “face, rosy, fresh, brazen, belonged to that category of faces which, insofar as I have been able to observe, almost always move men to indignation and, regrettably, are very often found pleasing by women.”

The girl, Akulina, is relieved to see the boy, Victor Alexandrych, but he brusquely tells her he will be leaving tomorrow with his master. Stunned into sadness, Akulina begs him to stay but he callously shows no interest in her feelings and tells her to stop talking nonsense. She gives him a garland of cornflowers, but he shows no interest in them. Desperate to hear a kind word from him, he disdains every opportunity to soothe her sorrow. He patronises her for her lack of education, says she cannot possibly imagine what life is like in glamorous Petersburg, says it’s impossible for them to marry and eventually shrugs his shoulders and walks off in silence, leaving the cornflowers behind. A chill comes over the birch grove; the leaves now seem dry and lifeless, and nature’s colours have turned grey. The narrator starts to approach Akulina but she runs off. His final comment on the incident: “I came home; but for a long time the image of poor Akulina would not leave my mind, and her cornflowers, withered long since, are still treasured by me…”

The incident that Turgenev describes is simple enough. A meeting between two young people, she is clearly in love, and he is only in love with himself. He never has any intention of behaving honourably to the girl and she is just left to rue her unhappy affections. But we see it all through the eyes of the narrator, and he is biased from the start – finding Akulina fetching and pure, and “very far from bad-looking”. Victor Alexandrych, on the other hand, “did not create a pleasing impression on me. He was, judging by all the signs, the spoiled valet of some young, rich seigneur.” And whilst there’s no doubt that the boy mistreats the girl in this tryst, you must wonder if the narrator has an ulterior motive in framing the story in the way he does.

Turgenev gives us a superb contrast between the description of nature at its most fecund before the meeting, and then dry and lifeless afterwards – which clearly symbolises the optimism and positivity about their relationship before the meeting, and how it is dead and buried after she has been so badly let down. I also like how he suggests that the narrator has been so affected by what he saw that even today, some time after the event, he still treasures the memory of Akulina. “Treasure” is a strong word!

Brief, thoughtful, and packed with gorgeous descriptions, this is a juicy nugget of the short story genre, that suggests just as much (if not more) than it actually says. Not exactly enjoyable, but certainly memorable and I really admire Turgenev’s construction and use of language.

The next story in the anthology is the fourth and final classified by Moffett and McElheny as memoir, or observer narration, Johnny Bear by John Steinbeck.

The Points of View Challenge – Mademoiselle Pearl – Guy de Maupassant

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Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850 – 1893)

French writer, best known for his short stories.

Mademoiselle Pearl, first published in Le Figaro literary supplement, 16th January 1886, then in the collection La Petite Roque.

Available to read online here – please note, this is a different translation from that published in the Points of View volume.

This is the second of four stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. From their introduction: “Three of the stories that follow bear the name of the third person, not the narrator of the story. Although all four feature someone other than the narrator, the autobiographical element is still necessarily strong. In fact, the essence of these stories may be in the resonance between the narrator and his subject: something happens in the protagonist that resounds in the narrator.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

Mademoiselle Pearl

 

Our narrator, Gaston, recollects a time when he visited his old friends the Chantal family to celebrate Epiphany. Chantal had been a friend of Gaston’s father, and he has known the family for decades; Chantal, his wife Christine, and their two daughters Louise and Pauline. Making up the household is Mademoiselle Pearl, who acts as a housekeeper, but is considered a close member of the family. A traditional game takes place at Epiphany, where someone at the table will discover a lucky bean in the Twelfth Night Cake. This year it is Gaston who finds the bean. Whoever finds the bean is King for the night and must choose his Queen. Gaston considers the awkwardness of choosing between any of the female members of the Chantal family and so chooses Mlle Pearl – who is hugely embarrassed at the honour.

Gaston realises in an instant just how attractive Mlle Pearl really is, even though she dresses like an old maid. After dinner, over cigars and billiards, Gaston asks Chantal how Mlle Pearl fits in to the family – is she a relative? Surprised that Gaston doesn’t know the background, he tells him the story of how one snowy night a six-week old child was discovered left outside their house – clearly loved and cared for, and with a large sum of money in the baby carriage for anyone who took care of her. The Chantals brought her into the family and raised her as their own. But Mme Chantal was keen to delineate between her own children and a foundling, so Pearl became the housekeeper – and was grateful to be given that role.

Gaston can tell from Chantal’s tone that it was always Pearl whom he loved, and not Charlotte. He confronts him with that recognition and Chantal sobs emotional tears at the thought of the love he was never able to have. Later, Gaston also confronts Pearl to discover if she felt the same way; her actions tell him that she did: “She slipped from her chair to the floor and sank slowly, softly, across it, like a falling scarf.”

Reflecting on his actions, Gaston concludes that he did the right thing. “I walked away with great strides, sick at heart and my mind full of remorse and regret. And at the same time I was almost happy; it seemed to me that I had done a praiseworthy action.”

This is a gentle story, packed with a formal elegance, but which delivers a kick and a twist right at the end. Written with gorgeous delicacy but also unexpectedly funny at times, Maupassant has a lovely feel for the pace of the writing, allowing himself time to go into considerable detail – not fully necessary for our understanding of the story – just because he wants to paint his splendid verbal pictures. An example of this is the long narration of how the baby was found outside the house, which could have been explained in an instant rather than taking up a good quarter of the entire short story.

There are some beautiful and thought-provoking observations; I love how he attributes shapes to thoughts – “Why do I always think that Mme Chantal’s thoughts are square? […] There are other people whose thoughts always seem to me round and rolling like circles […] Other persons have pointed thoughts… But this is somewhat irrelevant.” Maupassant has a very refined way of expressing some of the seedier side of life; in describing the “new quarter” of Paris, on the other side of the Seine, he describes “quarters inhabited by a strange noisy people, with the shakiest notions of honesty, who spent their days in dissipation, their nights feasting, and threw money out of the windows”.

It’s also entertaining to see how Gaston subtly disapproves of the Chantals’ cossetted lifestyle: “the father himself is a charming man, very cultured, very frank, very friendly, but desirous of nothing so much as repose, quiet and tranquillity, and mainly instrumental in mummifying his family into mere symbols of his will, living and having their being in a stagnant peacefulness.” His is a gloved hand, that conceals plenty of barbs. Perhaps it is no surprise that he confronts Chantal and Pearl with such open criticism.

The reader may well ask themselves if Gaston’s actions are justified. Yes, he has revealed to Chantal and Pearl their own truths; on the downside he has shattered the peace of their existence, which no doubt will have repercussions throughout the entire family. Personally I find Gaston’s self-justification rather pig-headed and pompous; he needs to exonerate himself so asks us to agree with him. But do we? All in all, a superb little tale.

The next story in the anthology is the third of four classified by Moffett and McElheny as memoir, or observer narration, The Tryst by Ivan Turgenev.

The George Orwell Challenge – The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

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The origins of The Road to Wigan Pier are not entirely clear, but it seems that in January 1936 Orwell’s publisher Victor Gollancz commissioned him to research and write about the unemployment, poverty and housing conditions in the north of England. On 31 January that year, Orwell’s diary shows that he travelled up from Coventry, slowly either walking or taking buses up to Manchester, then staying in Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield; returning to London on 30 March. His experiences, the people he meets on the way, the owners of the houses in which he stayed, and his time spent down the mines all contributed to the first part of The Road to Wigan Pier, a powerful, poignant, detailed examination of the life of working class people both in and out of work in those towns. It remains an extraordinarily vivid account of distressed, exhausted, hopeless lives and cannot fail to have an impact on anyone who reads it.

By contrast, Orwell devotes the second part of the book to an attempt to come to terms with his own feelings about injustice and oppression, why socialism must be the answer to society’s problems, but also why it is unlikely ever to be achieved in Britain. Playing devil’s advocate, he explores the “spiritual recoil” felt by those who, by all accounts, ought to support socialism but don’t, placing much of the blame on socialists themselves.

Whilst being impressed and absorbed by what Orwell had written in part one of the book, Gollancz was alarmed at the content of the second part, feeling it would alienate, and indeed infuriate, the Left Book Club readers, the very people whom Gollancz hoped would buy the book. With Orwell refusing to allow Gollancz to publish part one without part two, Gollancz decided to publish, but with a foreword written by himself, trying to placate the readers’ reactions he feared. Praising the first part of the book was easy; Gollancz writes “for myself, it is a long time since I have read so living a book, or one so full of a burning indignation against poverty and oppression.” I’ll come on to what he has to say about the second part of the book later.

The original edition also included 32 illustrations, primarily photographs of Welsh coal miners, and the slums in the East End of London. Orwell did not take the photographs and did not select them for publication; it is likely, though not certain, that they were chosen by Orwell’s friend, the architect of Portmeirion in North Wales, Clough Williams-Ellis. But the source of the photographs is unknown. Today, the illustrations form a helpful, if alarming, accompaniment to Orwell’s text. Whilst the pictures of the rundown, inadequate housing are truly awful, those featuring people are the most memorable. There’s a rather pitiful picture of ten or more men searching in slag-heaps for little pieces of coal; another with a family crammed into one tiny bedroom; and a third where a miner is taking his bath, assisted by his wife. All the photos are fascinating in many ways, but what is impressive is the admirable sense of indomitable spirit that won’t stop these people from living their lives as best they can.

Part One is broken down into seven distinct chapters. Chapter One concentrates on his time spent living in a cheap lodging house, talking about the other residents and the owners of the property. In Chapter Two he explores the life and work of those down coal mines, the working conditions and their day to day existence. In Chapter Three, he looks at the wider issues of miners – their health, their wages, and so on. Chapter Four is concerned with the housing situation in the north, chapter Five deals with unemployment, and chapter Six with food and malnutrition. The first part ends with Chapter Seven, comparing aspects of the north and the south and concluding that the north is full of ugliness.

Flowing, authoritative and immensely readable, Part One is Orwell at his documentary best. Without any hint of an introduction or warming his readers up for the details ahead, the first page dives straight in with a sensuous description of waking up in a lodging house, the assault on the ears made by “the clumping of the mill-girls’ clogs down the cobbled street”, observing the “heavy glass chandelier on which the dust was so thick that it was like fur”, the discomfort of “one of those old-fashioned horsehair armchairs which you slide off when you try to sit on them.” Within minutes of starting to read, you can see, hear, feel all those things that greet Orwell when he wakes up every morning.

Of course, it reminds one of Down and Out in Paris and London, and emphasises so much of the human side of poverty and the miserable existence the people led. As in that book, Orwell pulls out so many fascinating observations that stick in the mind of the reader, even if they are mere asides to the main body of his descriptions. I was fascinated by the bathing etiquette of the miners; eating their meal before taking a bath, washing methodically the top half of their bodies in the same sequence, then their wife will wash their back with a flannel. Lack of easy access to baths for many miners leads Orwell to conclude that “probably a large majority of miners are completely black from the waist down for at least six days a week.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Orwell mentions the prevalence of superstition amongst miners given the inherent dangers in the work. “Apparently the old superstition that it is bad luck to see a woman before going to work on the morning shift is not quite extinct.” As a result, a miner working in the morning is likely to get his own breakfast, whereas working later in the day or in the evening, his wife would wait up to give him a meal. “In the old days,” says Orwell, “a miner who happened to meet a woman in the early morning would often turn back and do no work that day.”

Orwell envies them their toughness, their iron-like appearance, and almost romanticises their strength: “it is only when you see miners down the mine and naked that you realise what splendid men they are. Most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an ounce of waste flesh anywhere.” Commentators have queried this apparent emphasis on the homo-erotic; it’s an interesting observation considering that elsewhere in this book and in others, Orwell is quick to condemn anyone he suspects of being “a nancy boy”.

Orwell returns to this theme later, when he considers what he describes as “the physical degeneracy of modern England”. In part two of the book he will examine at length the consequences of having hard manual work performed by machines; here he notes that the average man in England today is likely to have “puny limbs, sickly faces” and that “a man over six feet high is usually skin and bone and not much else.” “Where are the monstrous men with chests like barrels and moustaches like the wings of eagles who strode across my childhood’s gaze twenty or thirty years ago? Buried, I suppose, in the Flanders mud. In their place there are these pale-faced boys who have been picked for their height and consequently look like hop-poles in overcoats.”

There’s a lot of information about miners’ pay, with estimates that the average miner earned around £115 a year in 1934, despite the newspapers and the like overstating it at more like £150 a year. Even so, this is a poor wage; £115 in 1934 is the equivalent of less than £6000 today. Even if a miner can earn enough to pay rent for a house, Orwell states that there are some cumbersome restrictions on Corporation Housing. Every garden must have the same kind of hedge. You cannot keep poultry or pigeons – and Orwell points out that “Yorkshire miners are fond of keeping homer pigeons; they keep them in the back yard and take them out and race them on Sundays.”

Other observations he makes include the prevalence of “home-made bicycles” – that’s something you would never see today; “bicycles made of rusty parts picked off refuse tips, without saddles, without chains and almost always without tyres”. Clearly a sign of poverty, these bikes are ridden by the men who try to scrape a living or heat their home by scavenging for pieces of coal from the slag heaps at the mines. Orwell is frequently quick to be judgmental of people, and he describes this as “immense and systematic thieving of coal by the unemployed. I call it thieving because technically it is that, though it does no harm to anybody.” The men sling bags across these home-made bikes, “containing perhaps half a hundredweight of coal, fruit of half a day’s searching.” Orwell tells us that “in Wigan the competition among unemployed people for the waste coal has become so fierce that it had led to an extraordinary custom called ‘scrambling for the coal’, which is well worth seeing. Indeed I rather wonder that it has never been filmed.” There is something slightly distasteful about Orwell watching this desperate attempt by families to mitigate against their poverty as a kind of spectator sport.

It’s also interesting to compare Orwell’s time with today, in connection with the places that he visited during his two months in the industrial north. He says the ugliest place he visited was Sheffield; in fact he says it “could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World.” There’s no doubt that, aesthetically, the city had suffered from the destruction caused by industry and its detritus. But this is a million miles away from the Sheffield that I have known, on-and-off, over the last forty years; today, the modernisation of the city centre has made it one of the most desirable places to live in the country. Similarly Wigan; although I don’t know Wigan personally, it’s fascinating to discover that the Wigan Local History and Heritage Society despair at Orwell’s book. I quote from their website: “The book has done untold damage to the town since its publication in 1937 and that harm will continue because of books’ longevity. He claimed to like the people of Wigan, God knows what he would have written if he hadn’t. The book will hang like an albatross round Wigan’s neck for decades if not centuries to come.”

Let’s take a moment to consider some of the references in the first part of The Road to Wigan Pier. First of all – what is that pier? Wigan is inland, so how could it even have a pier? Its origins go back a long way. The first section of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal was completed in 1777, and one of the early buildings remaining from that time is the Grade II Listed terminal warehouse at the end of the canal (Number One Wigan Pier). A pier head was built in 1822 and it was served by a 3.5 mile road that linked it to a number of collieries. So in fact Wigan Pier was a vital component of the distribution of coal from the town to Liverpool, Leeds and beyond. It had something of an ironic reputation, as it associated the traditional idea of a pier (seaside, holidays, relaxation) with the coal mining industry, and was cited in popular songs and jokes over many decades. By the time Orwell reached Wigan he was disappointed to discover that Wigan Pier had been demolished in 1929. Since then, of course, the canal is now only used for recreational purposes, and “Wigan Pier” has gone through many reincarnations, including being a museum and heritage centre, a night club, and the home of the Wigan Pier Theatre Company. Currently closed, there are plans afoot to build housing and other leisure facilities at the site.

There are many references in the first part of the book to the Means Test. Today, whilst we understand the concept of means-testing in general, I for one was not aware that there was something simply called The Means Test during the 1930s. Introduced in 1931 and withdrawn in 1941, in simple terms, if the income of a household in which an unemployed claimant lived was considered “adequate” – whatever “adequate” is (or was) – then the dole was stopped. Orwell points out the deficiencies of this system and how it unfairly discriminated against old-age pensioners, frequently driving them out of their homes. This Means Test was very strictly enforced, frequently ad absurdam. Here are two of Orwell’s instances of the ridiculousness of the enforcement:

“One man I knew, for instance, was seen feeding his neighbour’s chickens while the neighbour was away. It was reported to the authorities that he ‘had a job feeding chickens’ and he had great difficulty refuting this. The favourite joke in Wigan was about a man who was refused relief on the ground that he ‘had a job carting firewood’. He had been seen, it was said, carting firewood at night. He had to explain that he was not carting firewood but doing a moonlight flit. The ‘firewood’ was his furniture.”

Orwell is frequently guilty of talking jargon and quoting acronyms that may have been fully understood at the time but that, 90 or so years later, are unlikely to be recognised. He talks of the PAC; this was the Public Assistance Committee. At roughly the same time as the Means Test, the responsibility for poor relief was passed on from central government to local councils, and the local PAC would have been the people in charge of administering this onerous task. Similarly, the NUWM, whom Orwell praises for doing “the best work for the unemployed”, was the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, an organisation set up in 1921 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which fought the Means Test and organised protest marches. It suspended activity at the outbreak of the Second World War, and never resumed its work, finally being dissolved in 1946.

There are a number of people to whom Orwell refers, but who are not household names today. In his chapter about nutrition, Orwell discusses the various opinions as to the number of undernourished people in Britain, stating “Sir John Orr puts it at twenty millions.” Born in 1880, Orr was at first a teacher, then a leading nutritionist, who became the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1949. Major C H Douglas, to whom Orwell refers in connection with the inability of some collieries being able to sell all the coal of which they are capable of producing, was an engineer and a pioneer of social credit economic reform, born in Manchester in 1879. And the Italian Primo Carnera, whom Orwell mentions in connection with the pretensions of short Englishmen to physical prowess, was Boxing Heavyweight Champion of the World in 1933 and 1934.

It’s always a delight to immerse oneself in Orwell’s glorious use of language, and there are plenty of opportunities for his inimitable style to shine through. He has a wonderful attention to detail, revealed in the first few pages where he describes the kitchen table where everyone in the Brooker household ate. “I never saw this table completely uncovered, but I saw its various wrappings at different times. At the bottom there was a layer of old newspapers stained by Worcester Sauce; above that a sheet of sticky white oil-cloth; above that a green serge cloth; above that a coarse linen cloth, never changed and seldom taken off. Generally the crumbs from breakfast were still on the table at supper. I used to get to know individual crumbs by sight and watch their progress up and down the table from day to day.” I love the idea that he almost struck up a relationship with individual crumbs.

In the same way that Orwell (and more importantly Gollancz) escaped libel in Burmese Days because of Orwell’s chatty recollections of real life people that he met, he continues to relate to us individual incidents during his time in the northern towns that would almost certainly be recognised by anyone there at the time or who also knew those people. He goes into great detail about the other people who live with the Brookers – I’m fairly sure he invented that surname but not 100% certain – and he doesn’t hold back from the criticisms and the judgments. Of Mrs Brooker’s habits, he gives us a good insight into just how revolting she was: “She had a habit of constantly wiping her mouth on one of her blankets. Towards the end of my stay she took to tearing off strips of newspaper for this purpose, and in the morning the floor was littered with crumpled-up balls of slimy paper which lay there for hours.” Perhaps my favourite description in the entire book is of Mr Brooker, where Orwell says “he was one of those people who can chew their grievances like a cud.”

But he has a very important point to make about the Brookers. “It is no use saying people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world. You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilisation that produced them. For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us.” You sense that this will become the starting point for his writing in the second part of the book.

He’s a real master of the simile; his description of the coal mining procedure includes “the process of getting it out is like scooping the central layer from a Neapolitan ice”. He refers to the blue lining that can appear on miner’s skin due to the all-pervasive coal dust: “some of the older men have their foreheads veined like Roquefort cheeses from this cause”. Of the houses in Wigan that have slipped and slid due to mining work underneath, he says “sometimes the front wall bellies outward till it looks as though the house were seven months gone in pregnancy.” And I love how he can turn on a well-used phrase and smash it to smithereens: “row upon row of little red houses, all much liker than two peas (where did that expression come from? Peas have great individuality)”. By constantly playing games with the language like that, he keeps his descriptions and ideas fresh and lively, even when describing some of the darkest and dreariest aspects of life.

He’s perhaps at his cheekiest when he takes the opportunity to rebut the words of a nameless critic. “I am told,” he says, “that it is bad form for a writer to quote his own reviews, but I want here to contradict a reviewer in the Manchester Guardian who says apropos of one of my books: ‘Set down in Wigan or Whitechapel Mr Orwell would still exercise an unerring power of closing his vision to all that is good in order to proceed with his wholehearted vilification of humanity.’ Wrong. Mr Orwell was ‘set down’ in Wigan for quite a while and it did not inspire him with any wish to vilify humanity.” You can’t pin Orwell down and make him conform to any structure he chooses to ignore.

Before having a look at the more difficult Part Two of The Road to Wigan Pier, let’s go back to Gollancz’s urgently written placatory foreword. Having praised part one to the heavens, he describes the second part as “highly provocative”, picking up one particular theme which Orwell emphasises. Gollancz states “I have in mind in particular a lengthy passage in which Mr Orwell embroiders the theme that, in the opinion of the middle class in general, the working class smells! I believe myself that Mr Orwell is exaggerating violently…” Gollancz sets himself against Orwell’s suggestion that socialists are cranks; specifically concerning that word, he continues that “it appears to mean anyone holding opinions not held by the majority – for instance, any feminist, pacifist, vegetarian or advocate of birth control”.

This particular bugbear of Orwell’s perplexes Gollancz: “there is no more ‘commonsensical’ work than that which is being done at the present time by the birth control clinics up and down the country – and common sense, as I understand I, is the antithesis of crankiness.” He recognises that Orwell’s writing shows a “conflict of two compulsions” throughout part two of the book, and concludes that “Mr Orwell does not once define what he means by Socialism; nor does he explain how the oppressors oppress, nor even what he understands by the words ‘liberty’ and ‘justice’.”

Orwell himself was in Spain at the time of publication, fighting in the Spanish Civil War and gathering material that would come to fruition, first with his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans, and later and more significantly with his book Homage to Catalonia. He had no idea that Gollancz had published The Road to Wigan Pier with this foreword; on 9th May 1937, Orwell wrote to Gollancz thanking him politely for the foreword, saying that he could have answered some of Gollancz’s criticisms if only he had known about them.

However, one thing is true, especially to today’s reader; this is a much harder and rather less rewarding read than the first part of the book. Whilst there is no doubt that his sense of injustice and his hatred of oppression can be found in almost every paragraph, his polemic against so much of British society at the time reduces his writing spark. You rarely get those flashes of observational brilliance; instead he gets tied up with being judgmental and critical. He says he plays devil’s advocate in an attempt to understand why people think Socialism is not the answer, when Orwell clearly believes that it is. What is the source of the spiritual recoil that kills its progress before it has even started?

It seems to me that Orwell has four main problems that he needs to get his head around. The question of class; of “machine worship”; socialists themselves; and the alienating language they use. Class is perhaps the hardest to grapple with, because the English class system was, is and always will be an intractable mess. Orwell always found it hard to identify himself in the class system, being brought up lower-middle-class but gaining a scholarship to Eton; working in the Indian police force, yet spending so much time down and out and writing about it. He feels to me like the character in Jarvis Cocker’s Pulp’s brilliant song Common People – he wants to know what it feels like to be one of the common people, to have no money and nothing to do, but at the same time knowing that he could pick up the telephone “when you’re laid in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall, if you called your dad he could stop it all”.

All middle class people have dormant prejudice, says Orwell, “but at the same time everyone claims that he, in some mysterious way, is exempt from it.” That alone makes it virtually impossible for the class system to end. And of course, there is his outrageously bold statement, that upset Gollancz so much, that “lower classes smell”. Orwell thinks there is no getting over this problem – one, because it is a feeling so ingrained in the minds of the middle classes, and two, because he believes it to be true. “Race hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot. You can have an affection for a murderer or a sodomite, but you cannot have an affection for a man whose breath stinks – habitually stinks, I mean.” There’s a lot to unpack there, and it’s up to the individual reader to sort the wheat from the chaff. But with such a firmly held view, there’s no room for negotiation.

On the question of “machine worship” – in other words, the blind tendency towards mechanisation of all craft-type trades and labour, in order to make life easier for ourselves, or to reduce labour costs – Orwell contemplates whether there still is a place in the world for physical strength, when it is no longer needed. It is, to be fair, a fascinating examination of the whole idea of “progress” which today we all readily accept as if there were no alternative.

Orwell’s problem with socialists themselves is a very personal attack; reminiscent of Groucho Marx’s insistence that he wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would admit him, it’s a half-comedic, half-deadly serious examination of those people who call themselves socialists and therefore put everyone else off from being like them. As he says, “as with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” But his list of qualities that make a typical Socialist is totally ridiculous. In addition to the feminist, pacifist, vegetarian or advocate of birth control, quoted by Gollancz, he includes “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack”.

He tells a story of travelling in a bus in Letchworth “when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got onto it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple […] The man next to me […] glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured, “Socialists”.” It’s an extraordinarily judgmental, cruel and unreasonable description; consider the pejorative use of the words and phrases dreadful, chubby, obscenely, pistachio-coloured, huge bottoms and even hatless; all hyper-critical, and all on pure surmise. However, it’s an incredibly vivid piece of writing and not one you forget in a hurry. There’s no good reason to equate these people’s appearances with socialism; it’s probably an early example of media manipulation that’s designed to make us think badly about such people. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that he elsewhere uses the term “bare-arse savage” and claims that “Orientals can be very provoking.”

As for the language typically used by socialists, I can completely accept that constantly referring to people as comrades would get very tedious. Orwell tells an excellent anecdote about the Marxist attitude towards literature. Following some articles in a literary column that frequently invoked Shakespeare, “an incensed reader wrote to say, ‘Dear Comrade, we don’t want to hear about these bourgeois writers like Shakespeare. Can’t you give us something a bit more proletarian?’ etc etc. The editor’s reply was simple. ‘If you will turn to the index of Marx’s Capital,’ he wrote, ‘you will find that Shakespeare is mentioned several times.’ And please notice this was enough to silence the objector. Once Shakespeare had received the benediction of Marx, he became respectable. That is the mentality that drives ordinary sensible people away from the Socialist movement.”

Let’s look at a few more of those references that Orwell mentions in the second part of the book, mainly people in the public eye at the time whose names are now forgotten. He refers to a time “when a miner was thought of as a fiend incarnate and old ladies looked under their beds every night lest Robert Smillie should be concealed there.” Robert Smillie was the leader of the miners, a militant socialist who lived from 1857 to 1940. He can be considered like an early 20th century version of Arthur Scargill. Beachcomber, whose articles Orwell refers to in the Daily Express, was a nom-de-plume used by more than one journalist, but primarily was J B Morton, who wrote under that name from 1924 to 1975. John Beevers (1911 – 1975) wrote the book World Without Faith, and was critical of the machine-worship that so upset Orwell. The other interesting reference that was new to me concerned the Duke of York’s Summer Camps – which were precisely as they sound, an initiative by the future King George VI to unite children from all backgrounds working together to build their characters. An early version of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, I suppose.

Orwell is remarkably prescient in some of the things he writes about, and some of the changes to the world that he predicts. He talks of the vast numbers of people who are employed, but are not on a living wage. That’s the same today. He describes the methods employed by some people to stay warm cheaply (by not being at home), like going to the pictures for twopence and staying there all afternoon. With the rise in fuel prices, people face the same problem today. There are the problems of budgeting for a household when your income is so small. There are even discussions about the idea of “levelling up” – I thought that was a purely 21st century concept; and predictions about the horrors of war to come.

Orwell’s conclusion to the book includes this observation: “In the next few years we shall either get that effective Socialist party that we need, or we shall not get it. If we do not get it, then Fascism is coming; probably a slimy Anglicised form of Fascism, with cultured policeman instead of Nazi gorillas and the lion and the unicorn instead of the swastika.” You can still see it coming – if it isn’t already here.

There’s a lot more that could be discussed about this book, but I have already written way too many words!I’d absolutely recommend it, although primarily for the first part, with its vivid documentary approach to poverty and housing. The second part is largely stodgy and a tough read – but don’t let me stop you from reading it!

Next in my George Orwell Challenge will be his essay that appeared in the New English Weekly in two parts in 1937 – Spilling the Spanish Beans. I’ll look forward to reading it and writing about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, thanks for reading my thoughts about Wigan Pier!

The Points of View Challenge – The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic, best known for his poetry and short stories.

The Fall of the House of Usher, first published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1839

Available to read online here

This is the first of four stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Memoir, or Observer Narration. Here’s how their introduction starts: “The following technique imitates first-hand reporting. The authors of these stories have neither told them in the third person nor had the main character tell them; instead they have used an observer or subordinate character as narrator. Observing is itself sometimes a profound experience, and to want to tell someone else’s story is to be involved in it.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

The Fall of the House of Usher

 

Our unnamed narrator is heading for The House of Usher – home to his boyhood friend Roderick Usher, who has written to him, asking him to visit. Roderick is obviously suffering from physical and mental torment and wants his old friend to give him some companionship and improve his mood. But as the narrator approaches the house, it appears as a picture of gloom and darkness in the distance. His suspicions are confirmed as he is shown through dingy corridors to Roderick’s room.

Our narrator is shocked at how much Roderick has changed – he has become cadaverous and anxious, and overwhelmed by a sense of fear. But he finds solace in his pictures and his music, which the narrator encourages and helps. He briefly meets Roderick’s sister Madeline, his only other companion in the house. Madeline suffers from catalepsy and falls into trances, and is extremely ill.

Some time later, Roderick informs the narrator that Madeline has died, and together the two men carry her body into the House’s family tomb. Our narrator notices that Madeline still has a fresh colour to her skin, but that is a common feature after death. One night there is a fearful storm which wakes both men; Roderick is filled with terror, and the narrator tries to placate him by diverting his attention by reading to him from his much loved books. At the moment in the tale where the narrative describes the slaying of a dragon, who emits hideous death cries, similar noises are heard inside the house.

Usher confesses that he has buried Madeline whilst she was still alive. She has broken free from the tomb and falls through the bedroom door with a final agonised death cry, which in turn causes mortal terror for Roderick. The story ends with the narrator fleeing for his life, as he looks back on the House which crumbles under the force of the storm. The House of Usher has irredeemably fallen.

This story has a well-deserved reputation for being a master example of a Gothic horror tale. Many analyses have been written, pointing out the symbolism of the House as a decaying body – the fissure in the structure of the building is like a human scar, and the windows are likened to eyes. Themes of mental and physical illness permeate the story, and its apocalyptic ending is Biblical in proportion. The narrator, in his anonymity, remains an outsider in the tale, which fortunately allows him to escape uninjured, although whether he will ever get over the mental turmoil caused by his experience is debatable.

Poe’s writing is exceptionally formal, and with incredible attention to detail. Whilst there is very little in the way of genuine action in this story, he concentrates on the sense of fear generated by everything the narrator sees and hears. So, despite the lack of action, the reader’s attention is still gripped throughout – more than 180 years since it was first published. At the end, you realise there are a number of questions that remain unanswered, including the nature of Roderick’s illness, and the nature of Roderick and Madeline’s relationship. Has Madeline really been alive in the tomb all this time, or is this a visitation by her ghostly spirit to take revenge on Roderick?

The next story in the anthology is the second of four classified by Moffett and McElheny as memoir, or observer narration, the well-known Mademoiselle Pearl by Guy de Maupassant.

The Points of View Challenge – Bad Characters – Jean Stafford

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Jean Stafford (1915 – 1979)

American novelist and short-story writer, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford.

Bad Characters, first published in the New Yorker Magazine, December 4th 1954

Sadly I can’t find a copy of it free to read online.

This is the last of four stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Detached Autobiography. Here’s how their introduction sums up this story: “The amount of focus on people other than the narrator varies in these stories, but always there is some […] “Bad Characters” is about the narrator’s friend as much as about herself, so closely are we asked to associate them.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

 

Bad Characters

 

Emily Vanderpool has very few friends – Muff the cat shows her the most affection. Bullied and teased, she has a strange idiosyncrasy, whereby she gets a kind of panic attack, and needs to be on her own. Life is drab until she meets Lottie Jump. Lottie is different from the other kids; she has charisma, she has attitude, and she seems happy to share her time with Emily. Emily’s first experience with her was seeing her steal a chocolate cake; this is shocking to Emily, who had been brought up to know the difference between right and wrong. But it’s also strangely exciting: “I was deeply impressed by this bold, sassy girl from Oklahoma and greatly admired the poise with which she aired her prejudices.”

Lottie is prepared to be friends with Emily, on the understanding that she is prepared to do her fair share of stealing. The demand is a hammer blow to Emily’s conscience: “I was thrilled to death and shocked to pieces […] I was torn between agitation […] and excitement over the daring invitation to misconduct myself in so perilous a way.” She also turns a blind eye to the fact that Lottie has stolen Emily’s mother’s perfume flask from her drawer and doesn’t tell her the truth when she assumes she has mislaid it somewhere.

On Saturday, the two girls go into town and spend time in Woolworths. Lottie suggests Emily undertakes some distraction techniques with the shop staff, whilst she shoplifts a number of items and secretes them under her enormous hat. All goes well at first, until Emily has one of her panic attack moments whilst she is engaging with a sales clerk. She makes a cruel remark to Lottie, who at that moment is palming a string of pearls under her hat. The assistant sees it; cries out “Floorwalker! Mr Bellamy! I’ve caught a thief!” And with that, the game is up. But it backfires on Emily, as the experienced Lottie simply plays deaf and dumb and passes the blame back on to Emily, who is unprepared to defend herself. It’s a hard lesson for Emily – and she never sees Lottie again.

It’s a beautifully written little story; the characterisations of Lottie and Emily are very well drawn and you really feel you know them well. There’s some delightful use of language; Emily’s father is friends with the local Judge, and she describes his appearance as “a giant in intimidating haberdashery”. It also builds pace nicely, as you get closer and closer to the Saturday “shopping” day; the anticipation of what’s about to happen gets quite exciting.

Of course, it’s a thoroughly moral story, reflecting Emily’s falling for the glamour of the villain, with the allure of the forbidden activity. It’s inevitable that the wrongdoer will get off scot-free, and the more innocent of the two will take all the blame. One of the longer stories in this volume, the reader can comfortably lose themselves in its gradual progress, and appreciate the characterisations and developments. A thoroughly entertaining read.

The next story in the anthology is the first of four classified by Moffett and McElheny as memoir, or observer narration, the well-known The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.