A house is not a home

In our last post, after waxing ecstatic, if inarticulate, about We Think the World of You, we promised a review of an excellent novel by another gay British author of the mid-twentieth century, one who, like J. R. Ackerley, has sunk into undeserved oblivion. The author is C. H. B. Kitchin, who, if he is remembered at all today, is chiefly remembered for his mystery novels. The most highly regarded of those is Death of my Aunt, a country house locked-room mystery published in the 1920s.

In The Politics of Literary Reputation, John Rodden has persuasively argued that the usual approach used by critics to establish a dead writer's reputation is to concentrate on one of the writer's characteristics to the exclusion of all others. In this way Orwell, who is the subject of Rodden's book, acquired
four posthumous reputations, as saint, rebel, prophet, and common man. Belief in any of these reputations, though, requires a willing suspension of interest in the man himself or in any item of his work which is inconsistent with the reputation.

The literary department's forays into Ackerley biography have persuaded it that J. R. Ackerley's reputation is the product of jealous concentration on his stunning good looks, as a result of which he has acquired a reputation as an egoistic narcissist. The obvious contradictions between this reputation and the known facts of his life are of no importance to the people who have established his reputation.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Kitchin seems not to have been a colourful man. The longest passage of Kitchin biography the literary department was able to find was Francis King's affectionate but brief reminiscence, and the characteristic of Kitchin's of which the literary department retains the best memory as a result of reading this reminiscence is his preference for starting the day by reading the stock exchange listings. Kitchin was wealthy, generous, and considerate, but he did not cut anywhere near the figure Ackerley did.

Consequently, Kitchin's posthumous reputation long ago became extinct. His novels are not quite extinct, but they are almost impossible to find, at least in Toronto. They are not sold by dealers of either new or used books. The erstwhile Toronto Public Library has his mysteries, but the only other work of his in its circulating collection is The Auction Sale.

Luckily, The Auction Sale is a very good book. However, discussing its content is difficult because, just as it was difficult in the previous post to discuss the plot of We Think the World of You without undermining Ackerley's painstaking construction of the novel, it is difficult to discuss Kitchin's book without betraying the epiphany which it is the point of the novel to evoke.

Again we will try to be vague. The Auction Sale was published in 1949, and on the surface appears to be about the changes in everyone's lives as a result of the war. The central figure, Miss Elton, spends a weekend in 1938 attending a sale of the effects of Ashleigh Place, the wealthy country household in which she has
until recently worked as a private secretary. She avoids talking to the people around her because they are caught up in the European news which strongly suggests that war is inevitable. She prefers to dwell on her memories of the genteel and happy life she led at Ashleigh Place.

Superficially, the book appears to be about a subject of great interest to the British literary classes throughout the ages, the replacement of the traditional standards of the genteel classes by more democratic and supposedly heartless ones. Ashleigh Place is a symbol of the genteel life once lived in it, just as the country house has been a symbol of gentility in English literature throughout the last two hundred years.

To Trollope, for example, the family in the country house clearly represented the ideal of British civilization which he thought was being lost in the onslaught of industrial society. For Jane Austen, the family in the country house was the only type of family worth writing about. In genre fiction, the pre-war English literary classes would have had us believe that the murder rate in English country houses was higher than in Chicago in the Twenties. The reason, of course, is that genteel people lived in country houses, so their deaths – representing to the literary, and to their audience, the crushing of one of gentility's fragile flowers – were more important than other deaths. The murder is often, if not usually, performed by an outsider. Since the Second World War English mystery writers have most often set their stories in the homes of the upper middle class, so we can see who really won the class war.

In general, the English upper classes have for centuries believed that country life was superior to urban. According to Renzo Salvadori, the development of upper-class London around leafy parks and squares was an attempt to create rus in urbe. The English upper classes have always had their chief residences in the country, and the country house has therefore become a symbol of what the upper classes considered to be their elegant and cultured existence.

The structure of the novel is all derived from a development of the theme of the value of genteel life. Kitchin develops this theme as obviously as he can. Much like the magician who has a beautiful assistant do something that distracts attention from the dirty work of subterfuge being performed elsewhere on the stage, Kitchin carefully makes every detail of his novel relevant to an analysis of the value of genteel life while at the same time developing his main theme without our really noticing it.

The danger for Kitchin, of course, was that the novel would be taken as merely a discussion of gentility versus democracy. In a country where one's social class may be quickly deduced from a matter as trivial as the disposition of one's handkerchief, people easily assume that if some aspect of social class is a theme of a book, then it must be the principal theme of the book. That certainly was how Lord David Cecil, who wrote the introduction to an edition of 1971, took the book:

For [Kitchin], the ideal life is a life given up to contemplation
and fine feeling, and symbolized by the picture entitled The
Pleasures of Love and Retirement which Miss Elton takes away at
the end as a memento of her stay in Mrs. Durrant's house. House
and garden had been a temple dedicated by Mrs. Durrant to
whatever god may preside over love and retirement. Further, this
temple is set in the context of the period. The story takes place
just before the second world war and we are made aware only too
keenly of how valuable is such a shrine, how the contemplative
life is threatened by the brutality of public events....But
indeed, as Kitchin goes on to suggest, no Hitler is needed to set
such a life in danger. It is always and inevitably threatened by
the nature of things. The world is a risky unstable place in
which it is impossible to maintain for long, a life given up to
contemplation.

And so Trollope, who believed that gentility was a fragile flower that would be destroyed by too rapid a transition to democracy, might have written. However, Lord David has ignored an important detail. The simple fact is that nowhere in the book does Kitchin suggest in any way that the Durrant house is a temple of love and retirement.

For example, the painting of which Lord David writes does not hang in the family rooms, but in the "best spare bedroom." It is an item displayed for honoured guests but not something the family wants to live with. And while the Durrant household is at least making a show of retirement, it is devoid of love.

The Durrant household is in no sense a temple of love and retirement, but The Auction Sale is not a tract, and neither was Kitchin attempting to mock the ideal of the genteel life. Kitchin describes his characters' actions objectively, and extenuating circumstances abound.

Kitchin's assessment of the value of gentility is ultimately irrelevant, since he was in fact not writing about a specific ideal, but about the effects of ideals in general. "I fear those big words which make us so unhappy," Stephen Dedalus said. Kitchin fears those big words which we are told will make us happy.

Love is certainly a big word, a word which inspired a detailed code of conduct in the middle ages. This code still haunts us any time we listen to popular music or watch popular television shows. And of course love is the chief duty of the Christian to God.

Retirement has of course also been considered important for the last couple of millennia. Christ went into the wilderness, holy men lived in caves, and rich widows retired to the contemplative life of the convent. Today we no longer aspire to retirement as a way to attain communion with God, but simply as a respite from the rat race.

Kitchin wrote about a specific ideal, one which in 1949 was considered highly relevant, so that he could write about all ideals. By relating every detail of the book to the theme of the value of gentility he was even able to make his climax out of a highly abstract speech by the vicar's wife, Mrs. Rivett. By the time it arrives, we are so used to taking an academic approach to deciphering the novel that we overlook the utter improbability of anyone delivering herself of such a speech over lunch.

And what does Mrs. Rivett say? She talks about how the Church has botched the idea of immortality. Yes, that's the climax of the novel, and it works.

So, Miss Elton does not overcome discrimination on her way to the top in a traditionally male field, there are no scenes of outlandishly described sexual intercourse, and nouns are not used as adverbs. Nevertheless, the book is interesting and engaging (and, come to think of it, Kitchin's depiction of his women
characters transcends sexual stereotyes, if you insist on that in a book). Kitchin's analysis of his theme is in no sense profound (the literary department couldn't have understood if it had been), but it is intelligent and humane. The Auction Sale is the masterly work of an author who seems to be fundamentally as Francis King described him - generous and considerate. Fifty years later, those characteristics are no longer much admired, but when mixed with a generous helping of intelligence they make a pretty good novel.

A House is not a Home © John FitzGerald, 1998