The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell

This is the third of the twelve novels that comprise Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. He called the twelve “novels” but no one would read one independently of the rest, nor do they make sense as separate works. Each is about novel length but clearly they are twelve segments of a whole. Further, every three of them is grouped into a volume, which Powell called “movements” based on the four seasons, as illustrated in the Poussin painting that gives Powell the name and inspiration of his work. So this “novel” is the final music of the first movement: “spring”.

The two previous novels were divided into four chapters. Here, Powell breaks the pattern and gives us five chapters.

Chapter one begins with our narrator and Powell stand-in, Nicholas Jenkins, meeting his uncle Giles at the hotel where Giles is staying. They are joined by a woman and lover of Giles’ named Myra Erdleigh, a mystic of some kind who reads their fortunes using cards. The end of the chapter has Jenkins visiting Barnby where they talk about the novelist St. John Clarke and the artist, Isbister.

Chapter two finds Jenkins at the restaurant at the Ritz. Jenkins is working for a publishing house that has been hoping to publish a book on Isbister. The book is ready to go except they’re waiting for an Introduction which has been assigned to St. John Clarke. Mark Members, the poet, has been working as a secretary to St. John Clarke, and Jenkins is meeting Members to try and nail down when the long overdue Introduction will finally be delivered. (It’s never clear to me why there isn’t simply a contract and a deadline.) But Members doesn’t show. Instead, Jenkins runs into his old school friend Peter Templer. Jenkins joins Templer for dinner and soon the two of them are joined by Templer’s wife, Mona, who Jenkins met long ago at Mr. Deacon’s birthday party (A Buyer’s Market, novel number two) and Peter’s sister Jean, who Jenkins fell “in love” with in the first novel (A Question of Upbringing). The two women had gone together to see the movie Madchen in Uniform, so we know this is 1931, the year it came out. Jean’s marriage to Bob Duport has fallen apart due to Duport’s infidelity. They have a daughter together named Polly. Jean is staying with her brother while Bob has gone to Europe. The crash of 1929 is sometimes referred to as “the slump” but it doesn’t seem to have had much affect on the fortunes of the characters in this novel.

While the four are chatting, Quiggin arrives looking for Jenkins. He’s there because Members has been ousted as St. John Clarke’s secretary and Quiggin has replaced him. Quiggin attempts a meeting with Jenkins, but Jenkins puts him off. Meanwhile, Lady Ardglass, who Jenkins had spotted earlier, walks by the table and Jean whispers “Bob’s girl” indicating that this is the woman Jean’s husband, Bob Duport has been having an affair with. Quiggin goes off. Peter, Jenkins, Mona, and Jean have dinner. They insist Jenkins come home with them. Jenkins agrees, and then, inexplicably, Jenkins and Jean embrace in the back of the car and begin an affair.

Chapter Three is at the Templer home. Mona has the idea that Quiggin should join them for lunch. She’s taken by his literary reputation and the world he moves in. She finds her businessman husband, Peter, and their life together boring. Mona used to be an artist’s model and is now a model for commercial advertising. Quiggin arrives for lunch, but at the same time Jimmy Stripling arrives (Jimmy, who used to be married to Peter’s older sister Babs) along with, of all people Myra Erdleigh, the mystic from chapter one of this novel. The group plays around with a “planchette” and gets ambiguous messages from the beyond.

Chapter Four opens at an exhibition of Isbister paintings. Isbister has died and now would be the perfect time for the art book to come out, but they’re still waiting for St. John Clarke’s Introduction. Now we hear that St. John Clarke is totally under the spell of communist thought, Quiggin has influenced him, and he wants to write his Introduction from that perspective. Jenkins meets Members in the park and hears his side of the story. While they’re in the park they see a march go by. Sillery is there. St. John Clark is being pushed in a wheelchair by Quiggin and Mona. It’s some sort of communist demonstration. It’s clear Mona has left Peter Templer and taken up with Quiggin. Jenkins makes his way over to the flat where Jean is staying. Their affair has intensified. The two of them go to a club called Foppa’s for dinner. There they run into Barnby and Anne Stepney who he has taken up with after running into her on a train. (Anne Stepney is Peggy Stepney’s sister – their family name is Bridgnorth – who Charles Stringham was previous married to, now divorced and Peggy has married again: a cousin of hers). They meet one more man, Dicky Umfraville, who takes them all over to Milly Andriadis’ house. (Milly Andriadis was a former fling of Charles Stringham, before he married Peggy, and it was she who had rented Jean and Bob Duport’s house where the party in novel number two took place). Milly Andriadis introduces the group to her latest boyfriend, Werner Guggenbuhl.

Chapter Five gives us another scene at the Ritz. There’s an annual party for men who had ever belonged to the house at the school where Jenkins attended in novel number one. Le Bas, the housemaster is there. Jenkins meets Templer as they’re going in. Widmerpool is there. Charles Stringham arrives late and already drunk and proceeds to get drunker. Jenkins is seated next to a man named Tolland from whom he learns that Umfraville has married Anne Stepney. Le Bas makes a speech and then invites the men to make speeches. Widmerpool makes an obscure and long-winded speech. Le Bas has a stroke but recovers. Stringham is so drunk that Jenkins has to walk him home. He and Widmerpool get Charles into bed. The chapter ends with Jenkins making his way over to Jean Templer who has arrived in London on a late train.

The same characters constantly swirl and recombine. There is no secondary plot. Minor characters become major characters. Slight characters unexpectedly reappear. Evelyn Waugh compared the book to an aquarium with the characters moving toward the glass then swimming away one by one, but never fully leaving. Powell does a good job of reminding us who someone is when we’ve encountered them before so it’s all fairly clear. But it seems unnaturally insular. Is there actually a circle of friends where everyone know everyone else so completely and intimately? Small world. Sometimes (for instance, the way Uncle Giles appears in this novel), it feels like those television series with multiple characters and then there’s an episode where the writers don’t really have anything interesting for a character to do but need to give him an appearance just to keep him in the mix, so they invent some marginal and time-filling story.

At the end of the novel Jenkins comes across a sexy postcard and mediates on the nature of love and sums up basically the entire novel with this:

“I had enacted such scenes with Jean: Templer with Mona: now Mona was enacting them with Quiggin: Barnby and Umfraville with Anne Stepney: Stingham with her sister Peggy: Peggy now in the arms of her cousin: Uncle Giles, very probably, with Mrs. Erdleigh: Mrs. Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling: Jimmy Stripling, if it came to that, with Jean: and Duport, too.”

Oh and Quiggin has quit being St. John Clarke’s secretary and Guggenbuhl has taken the job.