A Buyer’s Market by Anthony Powell

The second novel of Powell’s twelve novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time.

Like the first novel, A Question of Upbringing, this novel is in four chapters. Many of the same characters appear, although many new characters are also introduced.

The novel begins with a long introduction to a new character, Edgar Deacon, a painter. Mr. Deacon, as Jenkins calls him, is an old friend of the family. Jenkins recalls a story of running into Mr. Deacon at the Louvre when he was in Paris with his parents as a boy. An old-fashioned, and not particularly talented painter, Mr. Deacon now supports himself by running an antique shop in London. Mr. Deacon lives above the shop with a tenant named Barnby, also an artist but of more modern style, who is also a friend of Mr. Deacon’s and by the end of the novel will become Jenkins’ friends as well. A girl named Gypsy Jones, lives at the back of the shop. She’s a kind of general hanger-on acquainted with Mr. Deacon through political work they both engage in on the cause of pacifism.

Other new characters are the Walpole-Wilson family presided over by Sir. Gavin. They have a daughter named Eleanor. Eleanor has a cousin named Barbara Goring. Jenkins has somehow met this family and decided he’s in love with Barbara, though by the time she’s introduced his feelings for her seem to be fading.

The four chapters each feature a party.

In Chapter One, the party begins with a small dinner at the Walpole-Wilson’s followed by a party at the Huntercombe’s. At the dinner, Jenkins is admiring a painting of Mr. Deacon’s hung in an obscure place in the dining room when Widmerpool arrives. Widmerpool is also infatuated with Barbara Goring. Other guests at the dinner include a young woman named Ruth Manasch, and a gentlemen named John Pardoe. The family and guests drive to the Huntercombe’s after dinner. Widmerpool continues his pursuit of Barbara who remains fiercely uncatched. When Widmerpool objects to her behavior, Barbara tells him he needs to be “sweeter”. Playfully, she sprinkles sugar on his head but the top of the bowl comes off and the entire contents fall on him, sticking in the pomade in his hair.

Widmerpool and Jenkins leave the party and walk through the park. At a coffee stall they run into Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones, who have been distributing political literature. Mr. Deacon hints that Gypsy Jones is in need of an abortion without being specific about her condition, and no mention of who the father might be. Soon Charles Stringham joins them, too, all meeting by coincidence. It’s almost comical how Jenkins keeps running into people he knows wherever he goes. Stringham is going to a party and convinces the other four to come as well.

That party is the scene for Chapter Two. The party is thrown at a rented house, which turns out to be owned by Jean Templer, Peter Templer’s sister we met in the first novel, who is now Jean Duport, having married Bob Duport, one of Templer’s friends who was in the car accident also in the first novel. The current tenant, throwing the party, is a Mrs. Andriadis, who seems to be having some sort of affair with Charles Stringham. He calls her Milly. Stringham, for his part, was said to have been engaged to a Peggy Stepney, but that seems to be off for now. The honored guest at the party is Theodoric, the Prince of an unnamed Baltic country, who keeps turning up and will perhaps become important to the story later.

But the real scandal of the party at the Andriadis’ involves Mr. Deacon. One of the guests, named Max Pilgrim, is persuaded to play the piano and sing. The number he sings is a gay-coded novelty song. Sample verse: (p. 118)

“Even the fairies
Say how sweet my hair is;
They mess my mascara and pinch the peroxide.
I know a coward
Would be overpowered,
When they all offer to be orthodox. I’d
Like to be kind, but say: ‘Some other day, dears;
Pansies for thoughts remains still the best way, dears.'”

Max Pilgrim’s showiness offends Mr. Deacon’s sensibilities, which, if we take the hint, we now read as closeted: unmarried, aesthete, antique-dealer. He displays a photo of Walt Whitman on his mantelpiece. We’re even told that the reason Mr. Deacon was spending time in France all those years ago was that he had to leave the country following an incident in a park. Sillery, Jenkin’s house master from the University, is also at the party, and also seems to be part of the gay circle. Powell never says so, in so many words, and none of the other characters remark on it. So the homosexuality is unremarked, but also appears to be unremarkable. The Chapter ends when Mr. Deacon berates Max Pilgrim on the stairs, and Mr. Deacon hoping to make a forceful exit instead makes a fool of himself when the entire stack of political newspapers he was distributing fall from under his arm and fly about the entry way of the house in a breeze coming in from the open door. Jenkins slips away. Returning home very early in the morning he chances upon his Uncle Giles.

The party for Chapter Three begins again with the Walpole-Wilson’s. They’ve invited Jenkins to their country home. And while they’re there they accept an invitation for lunch at the nearby home of Sir Magnus Donners, the industrialist who employs Stringham, and, it turns out, Widmerpool now, too. At lunch, Jenkins is seated next to Jean Duport, nee Templer, whom he doesn’t recognize at first. After lunch, Stringham announces that he is now firmly engaged to Peggy Stepney with the wedding coming soon. (They are married in the opening pages of the next chapter.) Widmerpool arrives at the house on business with Sir Magnus. He confides to Jenkins that he has paid for Gypsy Jones’ abortion, again without Powell being specific about Gypsy’s condition.

The party in Chapter Four is a birthday party for Mr. Deacon, held in his antique shop. But before we get to the party, we’re told that Mr. Deacon will unexpectedly die a few days later. Jenkins recalls the events. The night of the party Mr. Deacon and several of the guests had gone on to a nightclub (we’re told that the nightclub is the sort that will soon be raided — hmm, what kind of club is that?) Mr. Deacon tripped on the stairs, suffered some internal injury and died three or four days later. Earlier, at the birthday party, we meet again Mark Members, the poet, and Quiggin, who Jenkins met at Sillery’s tea party up at University. Quiggin is now a writer and he and Mark are becoming attached, maybe romantically – it isn’t clear. Gypsy Jones confirms that Widmerpool had paid for her abortion, but that concluded their relationship. Now she’s being kept by Howard Craggs, the man who owns the little publishing house, “Vox Populi Press” next door to the antique store.

Jenkins leaves the party before the rest go on to the nightclub. He attends the funeral service at the crematorium. Max Pilgrim sits in the pew behind him. He stops by the antique store to see Barnby, but Barnby is suddenly called away by a chance to meet with Baby Wentworth. Baby Wentworth is another of those characters so far hovering around the edges of the story but continuing to turn up. Previously she was involved in breaking up the first marriage of Stringham’s older sister. Then she was seen companioning Sir. Magnus Donners. Left alone at the antique store, Jenkins is there when Gypsy Jones comes home briefly before going out again to a costume party. She’s dressed in a body suit as Eve, complete with fig leaf. She and Jenkins have sex. The writing is so elliptical I had to read the passage twice to conclude that they had actually done it. The sex is disappointing and leaves them both cold. Jenkins goes on to fulfill a dinner obligation with Widmerpool at the flat he shares with his mother. Janet Walpole-Wilson is there, too. They know each other because the Widmerpool family business is selling fertilizer that’s used on country estates owned by wealthy families like the Walpole-Wilsons. Janet spills the news that Barbara Goring has married John Pardoe, putting a cap on the romantic illusions of both Jenkins and Widmerpool.

The upper-class milieu, the social life, the parties, the fictionalized memoir, the faint whiff of homosexuality, continue to invite comparison to Proust (there’s more than a whiff of homosexuality in Proust). I continue to feel that Powell suffers in the comparison. The largest drawback is in the narrators. Marcel is an interesting character and an active agent in the story. Jenkins is remote and passive. He’s working now at a publishing house but his motivations, or his passions, if he has any, remain unknown. His own story, at least so far, is nearly non-existent. Proust drives obsessively into the psychology of his characters. Powell merely relates their actions. These people meet. This happens. They marry. Mr. Deacon dies. Something else will happen next but little of it seems to bear much consequence. If Proust can be too much sometimes, Powell is far too little. It’s light, and comic, without being a comedy exactly.

Ah well.