Books Do Furnish a Room, Anthony Powell’s tenth book in his series A Dance to the Music of Time was published in 1971; my copy attests to it being reprinted eight times (in 1981) and the book is still in print. (I read the previous book The Military Philosophers in May 2019).
Like all its predecessors, it’s narrated in the first person by Nick Jenkins; this time he covers the post-Second World War period of austerity. I certainly liked the title – having over thirty shelves crammed with books!
The book title derives from the cognomen Books-do-furnish-a-room Bagshaw given to a journalist of that surname: ‘Bagshaw’s employment at the BBC lasted only a few years. There were plenty of other professional rebels there, not to mention [Communist] Party Members’ (p37). There were two variants on his acquiring the sobriquet: one, while in his cups, he overturned a full bookcase of books on himself and made the observation, ‘Books do furnish a room’; two, he made the observation at the moment of consummating a sexual encounter in the lady’s husband’s book-lined study; she later told someone that she considered the remark lacking in sensibility.
Bagshaw becomes the general editor of the left-leaning magazine Fission; Nick acts as reviews editor and Kenneth Widmerpool, now a Labour MP, joins the team to write about politics and economics. The owner of the magazine is left-wing publisher Quiggin who ‘had lost interest writing. Instead, he now identified himself, body and soul, with his own firm’s publications, increasingly convinced – like not a few publishers – that he had written them all himself’ (p125). Quiggin even considered he had a right to alter the prose of ‘his’ authors without consultation. One author, as well as others, objected – X Trapnel. ‘These differences of opinion might have played a part in causing Quiggin – again like many publishers – to develop a detestation of authors as a tribe’ (p126).
Jenkins observes how the aftermath of the war affected individuals: ‘The war had washed ashore all sorts of wrack of sea, on all sorts of coasts. In due course, as the waves receded, much of this flotsam was to be refloated, a process to continue for several years, while the winds abated. Among the many individual bodies sprawled at intervals on the shingle, quite a lot resisted the receding tide. Some just carried on life where they were on the shore; others – the more determined – crawled inland’ (p140).
Trapnel was self-obsessed, and always seemed to act a part, the roles varying depending on whoever he was dealing with; whether that was Widmerpool or his butterfly wife, Pamela. He was a bit of a fantasist as well. And attractive to women…
Yet again Powell rarely lingers on Nick’s own marriage: ‘Not so very long after that evening, Isobel gave birth to a son’ (p104). He doesn’t even name the boy!
Hitting hard times, Trapnel ends up in a run-down part of the city, living in squalor: ‘… but buildings already tumbledown had now been further reduced by bombing. The neighbourhood looked anything but flourishing’ (p203).
Post-war paper shortages, artistic temperament disagreements, the squalid affair of Trapnel combined to ensure the demise of Fission.
As
ever, the characters keep the pages turning. Two more books left to read in the
sequence.
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