Customer Reviews

At Lady Molly's (Dance to the Music of Time)

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Volume 4 starts with a party at the Jeavons's.

The narrators first romance has broken up as she has gone back to her husband.

We are now in the mid 1930's with Hitler and Russia beginning to feature in the story lines.

There are several new characters introduced here , the main one being Erridge who is associated with Quiggen and the political left.

Others waltz in and out of the story from previous volumes. Widmerpool has a romance.

Not as good as volume three, only because it doesn't seem to me to flow as well but still super enjoyable.

AT LADY MOLLY'S, the fourth in Anthony Powell's 12-volume sequence "A Dance to the Music of Time", is something of a step backwards after the preceding novel THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD. Though we are now in the mid-1930s when Hitler has come to power in Germany and the Soviet Union is flexing its might, Powell's characters focus more inwardly on the foibles of aristocratic dinners.

As the novel opens, narrator Nicholas Jenkins encounters the eponymous Lady Molly, whose home draws an amusing variety of English upper-class socialites. Jenkins comes to know the many Tolland siblings, and while not exactly a roman a clef, the novel has a recognizable basis in Powell's own circle of friends through older brother Erridge, an eccentric Left-leaning peer who has recently lived as a tramp, a character clearly modeled on George Orwell. Widmerpool briefly reveals himself at the beginning of AT LADY'S MOLLY'S as the series' antagonist, but is mostly depicted as a buffoon and the object of other character's derisions. Quiggin appears again, but Powell ascribes him a tumultuous home life instead of continuing to mock the Communists of the era through him.

In THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD, Jenkins wore his heart on his sleeve when describing his youthful love affair with Jean Templer, but in this novel he has reverted to a rather impersonal narrator, only describing the wild events around him without mentioning himself much. Nonetheless, we do get a single paragraph on Jenkins' feelings of love at first sight that is quite memorable, and the concluding events of the novel hint that the now thirty year-old has established a comfortable maturity.

After the third volume in the series, AT LADY MOLLY'S can be somewhat rough-going. THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD had excellent pacing and a refreshing brevity, but here Powell spends the first several tens of pages introducing us to a new cast of characters in a clumsy fashion. No doubt many readers who planned to go the distance and were happy to finish the first "movement" of the sequence got bogged down here and gave up. Still, once you've passed this hurdle, AT LADY MOLLY'S is a lot of fun, and I'm still keen to continue with the "Dance".

AT LADY MOLLY'S, the fourth in Anthony Powell's 12-volume sequence "A Dance to the Music of Time", is something of a step backwards after the preceding novel THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD. Though we are now in the mid-1930s when Hitler has come to power in Germany and the Soviet Union is flexing its might, Powell's characters focus more inwardly on the foibles of aristocratic dinners.

As the novel opens, narrator Nicholas Jenkins encounters the eponymous Lady Molly, whose home draws an amusing variety of English upper-class socialites. Jenkins comes to know the many Tolland siblings, and while not exactly a roman a clef, the novel has a recognizable basis in Powell's own circle of friends through older brother Erridge, an eccentric Left-leaning peer who has recently lived as a tramp, a character clearly modeled on George Orwell. Widmerpool briefly reveals himself at the beginning of AT LADY'S MOLLY'S as the series' antagonist, but is mostly depicted as a buffoon and the object of other character's derisions. Quiggin appears again, but Powell ascribes him a tumultuous home life instead of continuing to mock the Communists of the era through him.

In THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD, Jenkins wore his heart on his sleeve when describing his youthful love affair with Jean Templer, but in this novel he has reverted to a rather impersonal narrator, only describing the wild events around him without mentioning himself much. Nonetheless, we do get a single paragraph on Jenkins' feelings of love at first sight that is quite memorable, and the concluding events of the novel hint that the now thirty year-old has established a comfortable maturity.

After the third volume in the series, AT LADY MOLLY'S can be somewhat rough-going. THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD had excellent pacing and a refreshing brevity, but here Powell spends the first several tens of pages introducing us to a new cast of characters in a clumsy fashion. No doubt many readers who planned to go the distance and were happy to finish the first "movement" of the sequence got bogged down here and gave up. Still, once you've passed this hurdle, AT LADY MOLLY'S is a lot of fun, and I'm still keen to continue with the "Dance".

Nick Jenkins's Uncle Giles says Aylmer Conyers has flair for getting on. Molly Jeavons is noisy. Mrs. Conyers, the general's young wife, shows up at Lady Molly's.

Kenneth Widmerpool also puts in an appearance in the guise of the fiance of Mrs. Conyers's sister Mildred. Nick tells Mrs. Conyers that he knows Widmerpool. Widmerpool invites Nick to lunch with him at his club. (Nick considers Widmerpool scarcely clubbable.) Nick has moved from publishing to a career in films since seeing Widmerpool at an earlier stage in his life.

Asking after Stringham and Templer, Nick observes that Widmerpool is imprisoned with self-preoccupation. Widmerpool still looks lonely and awkward. Mildred, his prospective wife, is the daughter of a peer. It seems that both General Conyers and Nick have read some or all of ORLANDO.

J.G. Quiggin, a classmate, has run away with Peter Templer's wife, Mona. Nick goes to the cottage of Quiggin and Mona. He fears a lack of comfort, knowing that Quiggin, like Widmerpool, is a man of the will.

One of the Tollands, (relatives of Lady Molly), Erridge, lives in an entailed estate and is Quiggin's landlord. Visiting Erridge with Quiggin and Mona, Nick meets his future wife and sister of Erridge, Isobel Tolland.

It is possible to find every sort of person at Lady Molly's. It is Nick's understanding that there is no regular staff. Nick feels that Charles Stringham has never been the same since his stay in Kenya. Lady Molly reports that Stringham drinks too much.

Widmerpool thinks chiefly of money and advancement, but he is honest, Nick concedes. Nick finds him at a nightclub in the company of Lady Molly's husband. Widmerpool is no longer engaged to be married. Jenkins is.

This volume is another turn for the characters of this spritely series to present themselves in a variety of settings and to amuse us. Cross and counter, the conections of everyone to the others are fascinating.

At the end of the first season of Powell's "monumental" novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, I stated that each book was getting better. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy At Lady Molly's very much, and I'm going to try to pin it down. I believe the main reason is that Jenkins reverts back to his observer role, whereas he had finally become much more of an active character in the last book. Herein, everything revolves around Widmerpool's strange engagement to a woman much older than him (and much more eccentric, if more of a "class" with their compatriots than Widmerpool). I am starting to fear that Widmerpool may be the single most important character in the novel, boding ill for my enjoyment.

The problem is that Powell's humor centering around Widmerpool is akin to the humor of Seinfeld. Like the characters of that show, Widmerpool is often sailing amongst the people around him, steadfast in his selfishness, and then has a bowl of sugar unexpectedly dumped on his head. While you do not feel sorry for him--he is, after all, quite a butt in his egotistical way--the manner by which he gets his comeuppance does not put the other characters in all that favorable a light either.

Truth to be told, I was much more interested in Jenkins, newly ensconced in the world of British cinema screenplay writing, and engaged by the end of the book. Unlike his romance with Jean Duport, his wooing of Isobel Tolland occurs entirely offstage, and one wonders at whether it was a thing born of love or of that endlessly ticking biological clock. Stringham and Templar, so important at the beginning of Powell's narrative, are little more than quick asides here.

Now that I'm a third of the way through the Dance, I'm committed to finishing its steps. I only hope that this current turn was simply a miscue on the part of my partner, Mr. Powell, and not a headlong fall into the bandstand.