At Lady Molly’s by Anthony Powell

At Lady Molly’s is the fourth novel of the twelve that comprise Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. It’s also the first section of what Powell calls the “second movement” of the larger work. But all those divisions seem rather arbitrary, more architectural than thematic. The novels don’t exist separately. The same characters reappear, and the interconnected stories trail and merge and fade off from one to the next. Nor do I note any particular difference in tone between the the “first movement” of three novels and this one. If the first movement was sonata allegro I didn’t recognize it, and this is neither scherzo nor adagio. Nor, to use the metaphor from Poussin’s painting of the seasons where the work borrows its name, does there seem to be any difference between spring and summer in this dance to time’s music.

The characters are aging, because we’re told so, but age doesn’t seem to affect them. Things happen to them, but without leaving a mark. We’re now in the mid-1930s. Hitler is name-dropped, and some of the characters wonder what’s happening in Germany, but no one seems appreciably worried or involved. Powell wrote the entire series of novels after the war. At Lady Molly’s came out in 1957.

The novel begins, as did A Buyer’s Market, the second novel in the series, with a long introduction to a new character, again, a friend of the family that the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, knew as a boy. This is General Aylmer Conyers. We also meet his wife Mrs. Conyers, eldest daughter of Lord Vowchurch, and her younger sister, Mildred. The Conyers also have a daughter, Charlotte, who I’ll mention now even though she appears nowhere else in the novel, only because Powell has a habit of introducing characters offhandedly who then become important later on.

As a boy during the first World War, Jenkins met Mildred when she was serving as a nurse. During this opening scene we’re also introduced to a second family, headed by Lord Sleaford, who have offered their home, called Dogdene, as a war hospital, where Mildred is working. All of this information comes very quickly and it’s impossible to know what of it is important. All of it, as it turns out.

After the brief remembered scene from Jenkins’ boyhood we leap to the present day. Jenkins is now working for the British film industry writing treatments for screenplays based on novels and plays. One of his co-workers is Chips Lovell who is the nephew of Alice, the wife of the current Lord Sleaford, Geoffrey. One evening after work, Lovell invites Jenkins to a party given by Molly Jeavons. Molly is also a sort-of aunt to Lovell, because she used to be Molly Sleaford, married to John, Geoffrey’s older brother. After John’s death (Spanish flu in 1919), Molly married Ted Jeavons.

If that isn’t enough, Molly Jeavons is also Jumbo Ardglass’ sister and therefore sister-in-law of Bijou Ardglass, who we also met in A Buyer’s Market at Milly Andriadis’ party. We will also, later, re-meet another character from that novel, the gay pianist/singer Max Pilgrim. (I confess to being thoroughly confused by all these characters and relationships and really longed for someone to post a chart).

But wait, there’s yet an entire other family still to be introduced and sorted out. At the “Old Boy” school party for the house of Le Bas in An Acceptance World, we met a man named Alfred Tolland, uncle to ten children. Chips Lovell is hoping to run into one of Alfred’s nieces, Priscilla Tolland at Molly Jeavon’s party. The other Tolland brothers and sisters are Frederica, George, Robert, Susan, Blanche, Norah, Hugo, Isobel, and Erridge. “Erry”, the oldest, is Lord Warminster. He’s described as an eccentric, lately doing “social research” by living as a tramp, even though he also owns the family manor called Thrubworth.

One more incestuous connection. Molly Jeavons has a sister, Katherine, childless herself, who was married to Alfred Tolland’s brother, the original Lord Warminster, thus making Katherine the step-mother to all the younger Tollands.

With the Tollands introduced by name, now Jenkins has a conversation with Mrs. Conyers, at Lady Molly’s party. Mrs. Conyers get Jenkins up-to-date on her sister, Mildred. Mildred married a man named M’Cracken, killed in the war, then married an Australian businessman named Haycock, who also died. Mildred arrives at the party a little late along with her fiancé, her third husband-to-be, and, surprise! It’s Widmerpool. A name I actually recognized at this point was a huge relief, even though an improbable one.

Chapter two begins with Jenkins having lunch with Widmerpool at his club. They talk of old times and Widmerpool’s anxieties about his upcoming marriage. Then Jenkins has tea at the Conyers’ home. The Conyers quiz Jenkins about Widmerpool and whether he’s “up” to marriage with Mildred, several years his senior. They are joined by Frederica Tolland, now Frederica Budd, and they talk of Uncle Alfred and Erry’s eccentricity. After leaving, Frederica gives Jenkins a lift and then invites him to go with her to visit her sister Norah who is living with Eleanor Walpole-Wilson in a bohemian attic room and what seems like a lesbian relationship. Eleanor talks of her old friend Barbara Goring (who poured sugar on Widmerpool’s head) now married to Johnny Pardoe. A woman named Heather Hopkins comes up from a downstairs apartment to ask for the loan of an egg. There’s more lesbian vibe, and Hopkins announces that she’ll be appearing at a club with Max Pilgrim later. This chapter ends with Jenkins on a date with a girl. He’s waiting in line to go into a movie when the earlier show lets out, and who does he run into but, surprise! J. G. Quiggin.

For chapter three, Jenkins accepts Quiggin’s invitation to come to his house in the country. Mona is there, the model who used to be married to Peter Templer. At the house they are interrupted by Erry Tolland, surprise! It turns out Lord Warminster owns their cottage and Thrubworth is walking distance away. They walk over for dinner the next night. Erry has most of the house closed off and lives like a hermit. Two Tolland sisters, Susan and Isobel join the dinner party, such as it is.

Chapter Four brings another party at Lady Molly’s and another old acquaintance resurrected. This time it’s “Tuffy” also known as Miss Weedon, who we first met as a kind of secretary to Charles Stringham’s mother, Mrs. Foxe. She had originally been his sister’s governess and then just stayed on. Now she serves in a sort-of similar capacity to Lady Molly. From her, Jenkins learns that Charles Stringham still suffers from drinking, but Miss Weedon thinks she can help.

The next episode begins with Jenkins having dinner at a pub and running into Mr. Jeavons. They go from the pub to a private club owned by Dicky Umfraville. Jeavons tells Jenkins a story that when he was in the war he caught the eye of a pretty nurse, Mildred Blaines, at a theater while he was on leave and the two had a quick but memorable affair. Max Pilgrim and Heather Hopkins are the featured show at the club. Then who should come in but, surprise! Widmerpool, Mildred, Peter Templer and a new girl. Jeavons and Mildred dance and she remembers happily that she used to know him. Widmerpool isn’t feeling well and goes home early. Jenkins, Peter, and his girl leave for another club leaving Jeavons and Mildred alone.

There’s a short chapter five that begins with the news, surprise! that Jenkins is engaged to Isobel Tolland. The announcement comes out of the blue. There’s no scene of them courting. But now all that business about the Tolland family makes sense in retrospect. I’m guessing we’ll see a lot more of them in later novels. So Jenkins is at last engaged. Meanwhile, Widmerpool’s engagement is off. Mildred has decided against it. And Quiggin’s affair with Mona, too, is off. Mona has left him for Erry (they met during that strange dinner at Thrubworth) and they are traveling together in the east. There’s yet another party at Lady Molly’s where all this is explained, this time a party to celebrate Jenkins’ and Isobel’s engagement. Mark Members is there, too, I’m guessing just so as not to leave him out of the novel. At the end of the novel Widmerpool walks in to the party all smiles.

For all that plot, it’s also true that almost nothing happens in these books. The height of drama so far has been the car accident at the end of A Question of Upbringing and Barbara Goring pouring sugar over Widmerpool’s head in A Buyer’s Market. Most of the shifting relationships, the adultery, the many marriages every character seems to have had or has are told as gossip by other characters at parties or dinners. We don’t get the actual dramatic scenes of characters falling in love, or breaking up, only the second-hand stories told after the fact. In fact, I don’t find the characters interesting. There’s some vague business a few are involved in but it doesn’t seem important, to them, or to Powell. Jenkins, Members, and Quiggin are involved in literature, but we get no sense of them as writers. No one ever seems to struggle, or strive. They marry without falling in love, or declare they are in love without ever falling. They live by going to parties, getting invited to each other’s homes, having meals, and gossiping about other folks.