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A Question of Upbringing

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A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell's "A Question of Upbringing" is the first part of his mammoth twelve novel epic "A Dance to the Music of Time". He writes with wit, humour and not a little sarcasm, describing a quintessential Englishness that perhaps was never representative of the society and has, arguably, disappeared. He wrote this first volume in 1951 and, though the book starts with a London scene from that era, the majority of the book deals with the characters' school and university experiences and recalls a time passed.

The main character is Jenkins. I will follow the author's lead and use surnames only for males, surnames plus titles for married, older or otherwise unavailable women, and Christian names for eligible women, whether they be of a certain class or prone to wear flowery dresses while standing next to post boxes in the street. As his friend, Stringham, discovered, even some of the surname plus title women at times can prove highly eligible.

The book's form is both simple and intriguing. It is so effective we almost miss the ingenuity of its construction. There are just four chapters, each in excess of fifty pages and each focused on one particular episode. We have school, a social gathering, a holiday in France and college undergraduate life. Powell's writing has such a lightness of touch that we forget how intensely we are invited to analyse the circumstances of each chapter and how penetratingly we discover the characters' lives. There is considerable innuendo, much gossip and usually piles of money, along with social status and influence wrapped up in every household.

The quintessence of their Englishness, like characters in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, arises out of their apparent inability to question - or perhaps even notice - their privilege. It's a state they inhabit without either reflection or gratitude, so much taken for granted that it lies beyond doubt, its achievement apparently assumed, not expected. School means one of the better "public" schools. Going "up to university" assumes Oxbridge as a right, though Powell tinges this with the perennial blight of the English upper classes, intellectual paucity, by having several of his keen entrants "decide" not to complete a degree. One assumes that many of the others will take thirds before assuming their company chairs or ministerial portfolios. The army figures large in family histories, always at officer class, of course, and so does the City, where one can always become "something". Even Americans, however, can be described as having "millionaire pedigree" on both sides, an economic status that presumably compensates for what is otherwise a palpable lack of breeding. When family members do not assume expected and assumed heights, they are referred to in hushed tones, the words "black sheep" perhaps not politically or at least socially correct even then.

But if this really was a quintessence of Englishness, it was a pretty rare ingredient. Maybe one or two per cent of the population went to the right school. Only about five or six per cent attended higher education of any sort, let alone a university one "went up to". Neither Sandhurst nor corporate board rooms were populated by the masses. (They still aren't!) And so this was a quintessence of separateness, of rarefied heights in an extended class system and, certainly by the 1950s, some of these peaks had been scaled by other aspirants, using new climbing techniques eschewed by the incumbents of years.

And so "A Question of Upbringing" reveals its duality. It's a tale that celebrates a time lost, a nostalgic peek into a remembered adolescence where a hand placed apparently carelessly and always momentarily upon that of a member of the opposite sex remained a daring highpoint of teenage years.

Nostalgia is always tinged with loss, however. Early in the book, Powell describes the school thus: "Silted-up residues of the years smouldered interruptedly - and not without melancholy - in the maroon brickwork of these medieval closes: beyond the cobbles and archways of which (in a more northerly direction) memory also brooded, no less enigmatic and inconsolable, among water-meadows and avenues of trees: the sombre demands of the past becoming at times almost suffocating in their insistence."

And how about this for a presumption of affluence: "It was a rather gloomy double-fronted façade in a small street near Berkeley Square: the pillars of the entrance flanked on either side with hollow cones for the linkmen to extinguish their torches." And we notice we are in a different age when Powell has his lads pick up two girls off the street to joy-ride in a new Vauxhall. Without a suggestion of tongue-in-cheek or indeed relish he can write that: "The girls could not have made more noise if they had been having their throats cut."

When I first read Anthony Powell, I could not get past my ingrained hatred of this class and its power-assuming, wealth-inheriting inhabitants. It was a country that was not mine. I come to it now a little wiser and a little richer myself, richer in experience at least, and now I can appreciate the irony that my previous naivety ignored. I now look forward with some relish to the next eleven episodes. "A Dance to the Music of Time" is certainly a masterpiece to be revisited.

With A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING, published in 1950, the English novelist Anthony Powell began his ambitious 12-volume series "A Dance to the Music of Time", which follows the narrator and his social circle from the early 1920s until the early 1970s. As the novel opens an old man named Nicholas Jenkins reflects on Poussin's famous painting where four figures representing the Seasons dance to a lyre played by the personification of Time. A human life, muses Jenkins, is such a dance, with partners disappearing only to reappear at later times.

Encouraged by this metaphor, Jenkins' reminisces begin with his school days in the early 1920s. Studying at an unnamed institution, probably Eton, Jenkins introduces his roommates Stringham, a melancholy soul from an aristocratic family, and Templer, scion of a businessman and a bit of a rebel. These three young men form a tight band and laugh at Widmerpool, a buffonish boy always on the margins of their society, but ambitious and intent on making a name for himself. The plot of A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING is rather simple, as Jenkins proceeds from school life to a summer abroad to learn French, and then into the university. Though the paths of all four main characters diverge after school, Jenkins meets up with his peers again at odd moments, until a rather dramatic separation marks the close of this first volume of the series.

"A Dance to the Music of Time" has been compared to Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" in its first-person narration and ambitious scope. To a degree, the comparison is fair. However, Jenkins is nowhere near as introspective as Proust's narrator. Although Jenkins often talks about how the events he recounts impacted his life, sometimes he seems to almost step out of the frame and dispassionately depict the events happening around him. Also, Powell adds a great deal of humour, although much of this is deadpan to an almost Edward Gorey degree and will not appeal to everyone.

In fact, the aristocratic concerns of this series will put off a lot of readers. Powell has sometimes been attacked as a snob simply because he finds the lives of England's upper class to be a worthwhile setting for his series. But the decline of this world *is* an epic process and has within it a great deal of dramatic potential, even if we find these people's privilege odious. This decidedly middle class American reader enjoyed A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING very much. Jenkins' look back at his formative years has spurred me to consider my own. The novel is quite realistic in many ways (indeed, in later volumes there's an element of roman a clef about it). Powell's characters are universal archetypes -- we all know a Widmerpool or a Templer -- but they are never two-dimensional and have a convincing dimension to them.

All twelve volumes of "A Dance to the Music of Time" have been reissued by University of Chicago Press in four handsome trade paperbacks. If you think you're going to go the distance, that's a better investment than older editions of the individual volumes.

first in 12 series that some people compare to Proust. This is one of the best in the series and sets the whole tapestry up. Highly recommended, you will get hooked and read them all!

After all the outstanding reviews of Powell's work, I decided to see what I was missing. Well, after reading the first installment of this 12-volume epic, I'm left with two questions:

1. How did this man ever get this first novelette published?
2. Why should anyone care to read beyond it?

I encountered perhaps one quiet moment of smiling in this dull novel where nothing ever happens, and a lot of the world-weariness of the English upper classes, where the smallest details of home, dress, speech, gesture, action (not that there's much of it) are judged wanting by one or another of the characters. It's always about class and prejudice. Sigh. The author provides no reason for the reader to care about any of his characters.

The introductory paragraphs promise great things, with a solemn nod to the muses, and occasional epic tags occur with libations and ritual movements, but it's all a tidy bag of nothing. Rather like Graham Greene, but without the nastiness. Henry James does this kind of thing well while engaging the interest and emotions of his reader; Powell could have learned from him.

The next time I want to read about the English upper classes leading lives of silent desperation cloaked in ennui, I shall turn to P.G. Wodehouse, God bless him.

I had never heard of Powell, or his twelve book symphony, until a discussion about the mechanics of the Alexandria Digital Library brought him to light. Although the recommender hadn't listed Powell as something I'd care for, one of the participants in the discussion who knew of First Impressions, thought it might be something up my alley. Based on this first book, I'm afraid that the machine wins.

A Question of Upbringing introduces you to the main characters of Powell's magnum opus: the narrator, Jenkins, who one never really gets a handle on because he spends more time describing the others than ever going on about himself; Templar, the womanizer and lay-about; Stringham, privileged and haughty; and Widmerpool, the odd man out, with drive and ambition, but no class. One meets them at boarding school and follows them through college in this first volume, but what happens is never as important as what one thinks is happening. As a narrator, Jenkins is obtuse to the point of frustration, never quite describing the situation, but using plenty of words to not do so. Every time I thought something was going to get interesting, the novel would shift to some other scene.

The blurb writers compare Powell to Proust, but I can safely say that A Question of Upbringing is much more interesting than The Remembrance of Things Past. A "comic masterpiece," though? Not in this first volume. The book I have has the next two in the sequence, and I will likely go ahead and give them a try, but based on the first soiree, I must dance to some other fiddler.

This is not a stand-alone novel. It is more like a long first chapter and leaves one hanging at the end. The characters are entertaining and the narrative is slightly humorous. Very intricate prose style, you need to take a little time with it. Set in England in the 1920's among the fairly well-to-do. That kind of setting always plays well in Citrus Heights.

I have read many of the twelve volumes a couple of times, and each reading leads to new treasures. Powell is a superb writer with a compassionate but realistic view of upper class England in the years from 1930 to 1960. You can start with any of the 12 but it is better to start with the first book. Prepare yourself for a literary feast!

When you've finished A Question of Upbringing, you've hardly started A Dance to the Music of Time, which is good news - there's a lot more literary nourishment ahead.

A Dance to the Music of Time is an account of the life of the fictional Nicholas Jenkins, written by Jenkins himself, in the first person. A Question of Upbringing describes Eton, which Jenkins attends, and introduces his schoolfellows Templar, Stringham and Widmerpool. Le Bas, a schoolmaster, makes several comic appearances. The story moves on to Oxford, where Jenkins completes his formal education and encounters Sillery, a don, who is also a comic figure.

A Dance to the Music of Time is a literary masterpiece which contains much comedy, although mild sadness and unhappiness run through the story. Nicholas has a profound appreciation of the arts, especially painting, and he often thinks about particular works of art. He tends to describe his life, and analyse it, in a highly artistic and literary way. Anthony Powell is able to convey the essence of paintings using words only, something he achieves again and again throughout A Dance to the Music of Time, in a great display of literary genius. The story also contains a certain amount of superstition, a few of the characters being highly superstitious. A long, long way after A Question of Upbringing, when Jenkins is in his thirties and the Second World War is raging, a wild night in the London Blitz is described, and Mrs Erdleigh analyses what is happening in highly superstitious terms, calling it a "demonic night." In Jenkins' young boyhood (not described in A Question of Upbringing, which covers somewhat later years), in a happy, innocent, now unreachable, pre-First World War existence in the English countryside, a cult leader is described, he and his followers running through the fields dressed in robes, behaving eccentrically but harmlessly. Right at the end of A Dance to the Music of Time, in the final book Hearing Secret Harmonies, when we seem to have reached the 1970's, another, younger, cult leader is described, but this man is much more sinister and disturbing, twisting his followers' minds.

Throughout his life, Jenkins observes other people with interest, not interfering with them much, and not apparently saying much to them, but being interesting enough to stimulate them into speaking to him, often at length. Jenkins' profession is literary writing, although we learn little about this work. Jenkins gets married and has children, but we do not hear much about his family. A Dance to the Music of Time concentrates on Jenkins' friends and acquaintances, who are often not encountered for years, then reappear, still the same souls but older and in different circumstances, with different things to talk about and an older Jenkins to talk to. The finest character description is of Stringham, likeable and effervescent, but on a downward path.

When you finish A Dance to the Music of Time, you have a huge amount of literary material to think about. For some reason, the first thing that comes into my head is a description of the extremely dimmed lighting in a wartime railway carriage at night; the light bulbs are described as being like "phosphorescent molluscs."

If you love literature, then A Dance to the Music of Time is compulsory.

In 1921 Widmerpool formed a concrete picture in Nick Jenkins's mind. He always seems alone. He never places in the events for which he trains vigorously. His footwear squeaks.

Nick's Uncle Giles visits when Nick is with Charles Stringham. Uncle Giles believes that all material advancement in life is a result of influence.

Jenkins's other particular friend at school during the instant time period is Peter Templer. Stringham, having completed his studies, is to join his father in Kenya for the next nine or ten months. Nick finds himself left alone at the school after Peter Templer leaves a term early at the urging of a master. Stringham sends Nick pictures of people he has encountered in Kenya. Jenkins decides that he is in love with Templer's sister Jean.

When Nick goes to France to board with a family with whom his family has connections, he runs into Widmerpool. Widmerpool has dedicated himself to learning French, it seems. He is not the oddity at the French establishment that he had been at school. Widmerpool is to be articled to a firm of solicitors.

The former classmates reunite at a party given by Sir Magnus Donners, someone in the government during the war. Both Stringham and Templer decide not to go to university and, so, in the end it is Nick who remains in pursuit of a degree. He thinks that perhaps he wants to write and has, in fact, nearly finished a novel.

This is the first of a multi-volume series. It gets things off to a very good start.