Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant by Anthony Powell

This is the fifth of the twelve novels by Anthony Powell collectively titled, A Dance to the Music of Time.

The series centers on the character of Nicholas Jenkins, a stand-in for Powell, making the entire work a fictionalized memoir. Powell wrote the series over many years, beginning after World War II. The series began with Jenkins and three friends: Charles Stringham, Peter Templar, and Kenneth Widmerpool at school together in the early 1920s. This novel takes place in the mid-to-late 1930s. It’s the decade of the Spanish Civil War and Hitler’s rise to power, though those events are included only peripherally. This is, like the previous four, a novel of social relationships, friendship, marriage, divorce, all taking place in scenes at parties, dinners, pubs, and the theater.

Although, over the previous four novels, we’ve already been introduced to dozens of characters and exceedingly complicated family, romantic, and business relationships, this novel begins by introducing yet more characters. The most significant, Hugh Moreland, is introduced in a long flashback, almost as though Powell had been telling a complicated joke and suddenly realized in chapter five that he had forgotten to previously include an important detail.

The flashback takes place at a pub called The Mortimer. Jenkins is there to meet Ralph Barnby, the artist we met in A Buyer’s Market, which is also where this scene properly takes place in time. Jenkins arrives first and comes across Edgar Deacon, the artist-cum-antiques dealer, surrounded by a table of young men. (Mr. Deacon will have his fatal accident at the night club a few weeks later.) The young men with Mr. Deacon are all musicians of one sort or another: Moreland, a composer and conductor; Carolo, a former prodigy on the violin, now struggling to maintain his reputation; Maclintink, a critic and music theorist; and Gossage, another critic. Mr. Deacon is expecting another young man to arrive who has found a small statue that he thinks he can sell to Mr. Deacon to re-sell in his shop. When this man appears it’s yet another new character who will become important later, Norman Chandler. There’s a hint that Mr. Deacon’s interest in Norman Chandler does not merely concern the object d’art, and Norman may return the interest. Norman arrives. Those two go off together. Barnby arrives. Gossage and Carolo excuse themselves. Then Jenkins, Barnby, Moreland, and Maclintick go off together for dinner at the titular Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant.

Powell seems to really enjoy the restaurant name. The name is easily explained. A former Italian restaurant went out of business and a chinese restaurant up the street took over the larger space, kept the decor and amended the sign.

Jenkins and Moreland begin a friendship. From the flashback of their first meeting at The Mortimer followed by dinner at Casanova’s, the novel jumps forward to about a year before the present time. Moreland has fallen in love with an actress named Matilda Wilson. He and Jenkins see her in a play and go backstage after the show. Norman Chandler is also acting in the show. Clearly coded as gay, Chandler is also friends with Max Pilgrim. Backstage, Mrs. Foxe, Charles Stringham’s mother, appears and we see that she and Norman Chandler have made an odd, platonic, but intense friendship. At the end of the chapter, Moreland and Matilda marry, and about a year after that Jenkins and Isobel Tolland marry, and we’re caught up to the present day.

Chapter two begins with a luncheon at the home of Katherine, Lady Warminster. She is the widowed step-mother to the Tolland’s, so the other guests are Tollands and Tolland in-laws including Jenkins. We learn that the eldest Tolland child, Erry, has gone to Spain for the war. No one is sure what he will do there. The author, St. John Clarke, also shows up for lunch. He had himself invited because he wanted to talk to Katherine about Thrubworth, the family manor. While Erry is in Spain, St. John Clarke will be looking after the place (apparently he met Erry through their mutual interest in communist politics) and he might rely on Katherine’s help from time to time.

After lunch there’s a scene at a hospital. Jenkins is there to visit his wife, Isobel, who recently miscarried. He runs into Moreland, who’s wife, Matilda, is having a difficult time expecting the birth of her own child. Widmerpool appears and Jenkins invites him to have lunch. Then Moreland and Jenkins have dinner at the home of Maclintick and his wife, Audrey. Maclintick and Audrey fight. Carolo also lives at the house, as a tenant. Jenkins has his lunch with Widmerpool.

Chapter three gives us the premiere of a new symphony Moreland has composed, and a reception in his honor at Mrs. Foxe’s home. The symphony goes well enough but is not a triumph. Maclintick is at the party with his wife. Charles Stringham shows up, charming, but drunk, having slipped the drying-out cage that Miss Weedon has been keeping him in, in a room at Molly Jeavons’ home. Stringham and Audrey Maclintick hit it off until Miss Weedon appears to take Charles home. Norman Chandler, Gossage, others are there. Matilda, who’s pregnancy ended with her baby’s death, hints that Moreland is having an affair with Priscilla Tolland. Matilda herself, we’re told, had once been married to Carolo, long before she met Moreland, and was Magnus Donner’s lover, too, the rich industrialist who has been hovering in the background through several novels.

Chapter Four begins with the news of St. John Clarke’s death. Erry is back from Spain. Moreland invites Jenkins to have dinner at Maclintick’s again. Audrey has left Maclintick, ran off with Carolo, and Maclintick has lost his job at the paper he wrote for. Maclintick is in bad shape. A few days later he kills himself. The suicide has the effect of Moreland breaking off his affair with Priscilla and recommitting to Matilda. Priscilla, for her part, gets engaged to Chips Lovell. We learn that St. John Clarke has willed his estate to Erry, who will be able to use it to pay off some debts at Thrubworth.

The central character, Jenkins, is involved in literature. Vaguely we hear of him publishing a novel. Quiggin and Mark Members are also authors and literary critics. And we’ve had painters: Barnby, Edgar Deacon. We also have, from the older generation, the noted author St. John Clarke and painter Isbister. This novel gives us musicians for the first time, which is nice. But none of the art, nor the act of creation is granted much attention by Powell. Art is a product some people turn out but with no more consequence than any other product. Art is simply part of the social world these people live in. Moreland’s symphony is judged on whether it’s a “success”, even by Moreland himself, with no mention at all of what it sounds like. And his response to the tepid reception his work receives is only to resolve to write another composition aiming more determinedly for popular acclaim, not to explore more deeply into his musical ideas.

Once again the most dramatic events take place offstage and are reported as gossip. Jenkins learns of Maclintick’s suicide by reading about it in the paper. Moreland’s affair with Priscilla Tolland is known but not shown. Jenkin’s marriage changes nothing in his life, or personality. Isobel is barely there.

At this point, I’m reading not for enjoyment but for a sense of accomplishment. I don’t expect I’ll like the work any better after finishing the next seven(!) novels then I do now, but if I’m ever asked about it I want to be able to say I’ve read the whole thing before I give my opinion.