The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell

The Military Philosophers completes the third “movement” of Anthony Powell’s twelve-novel series titled A Dance to the Music of Time. This movement, novels 7, 8 and 9 in the series, cover the years of World War II. Powell published this novel in 1968.

Nicholas Jenkins, our narrator, protagonist, and stand-in for Powell in this quasi-memoir, is working in London. He had failed to get an assignment working under Finn with the French refugee government (his language skills weren’t good enough) but later found a similar position working with the Polish refugees, still under Finn and working beside David Pennistone. He doesn’t speak Polish, either, but that’s not so necessary here.

In Chapter one an incident of Polish refugees coming out of Russia through Iran has to be dealt with. Pennistone is unavailable so Jenkins represents his office at a meeting with the Cabinet Offices. Widmerpool is the officer in charge. Sunny Farebrother, Peter Templer and Magnus Donners are also in the meeting. Jenkins talks to Templer after the meeting. This is followed by an episode with a Kafka-esque character named Blackhead, an unaccountably powerful bureaucrat hold-up in the attic of the building. Next, Jenkins is tasked with retrieving a report from the Polish embassy and we meet a woman named Pamela Flitton, working as a driver. Jenkins knows Flitton, from long ago. She’s the daughter of Charles Stringham’s older sister, Flavia Wisebite, from a previous husband. Pamela Flitton becomes a major character in the novel, utterly beguiling to men, she sleeps with nearly all of them, while also being erratic, aggressive, and impossible.

In chapter two we learn that Peter Templer has temporarily taken up with Pamela Flitton. General Conyers has died, leaving Miss Weedon a widow. Pamela Flitton is also involved with Norah Tolland. Jenkins moves over from working with Pennistone and the Poles to working with the Belgians and the Czechs. There’s some business about Sunny Farebrother, working in the secret intelligence corps and a man named Syzmanski who causes trouble but can also be useful. Pamela Flitton also mentions the name Syzmanksi to Jenkins. But Jenkins himself is too removed from that side of operations to be clear about what’s going on; thus the reader is left somewhat in the dark, too. At a performance of Smetna’s The Battered Bride, Widmerpool meets Pamela Flitton and is taken with her as all the male characters are.

Chapter three gets a time stamp “One day, weeks after the Allied Forces had landed in Normandy” (p. 113). There’s a party. Pamela Flitton is there, now with Odo Stevens. Mrs. Erdleigh the mystic is at the party and reads Pamela’s palm prophesizing a troubled future.

Chapter four tracks Jenkins and others on a trip from London to the continent. Jenkins, who’s been reading Proust is delighted to discover that he’s spent a night in Cabourg, the French city that’s the model for Proust’s Balbec. (It’s clear that Powell wants to be thought of as the English Proust, but the association does him no favors.) Later, crossing the border from Belgium into the Netherlands near the front, Jenkins catches up with his old regiment. He speaks with Idwal Kedwards and gets caught up with the news of Rowland Gwatkin (invalided out of the army and working as a branch bank manager). He meets with Duport as well. Duport shares that Peter Templer is probably dead, though officially only missing. It seems the Syzmanski affair has blown up in Cairo. Pamela Flitton and Odo Stevens are involved, too. But Duport knows nothing determinate.

Chapter five begins, “During the period between the Potsdam Conference and the dropping of the first atomic bomb” (p. 196) The war is winding down. Jenkins learns from the newspaper that Widmerpool has gotten engaged to Pamela Flitton. At an embassy party he runs into them both. Pamela is as impossible as ever. We also learn that Sunny Farebrother is engaged to the widow Conyers, Miss Weedon, or “Tuffy” as some call her. Jenkins runs into Matilda, too, married to Magnus Donners, who has floated behind the scenes throughout the novel; he’s a cabinet member, now. She asks Jenkins about Moreland. Pamela, furious at Widmerpool because he made dinner plans that don’t include her angrily accuses Widmerpool in Jenkins’ hearing of “murdering” Peter Templer. Apparently, Widmerpool is mixed up in all this, too. In Cairo, Templer’s group fell out of favor and Widmerpool persuaded his group to abandon him there. It’s confirmed, too, that Charles Stringham is dead. The news comes via a group of refugees rescued in the Pacific who had been in a POW camp in Japan with him. Widmerpool is thus indirectly responsible for both of his former schoolmates’ deaths. There’s a “thanksgiving” service at St. Pauls to mark the end of the war. Jenkins is in charge of wrangling all the allied groups he’s been working with; Finn does the same for the neutral countries. They are a seat short on the neutrals side and Jenkins has a spare so he gives the empty spot to a Colonel Flores from Buenos Aires. After the service, Jenkins meets Colonel Flores’ wife and discovers she is Jean Templer.

Jenkins’ war is entirely bureaucratic and decidedly dull. The major events of the war are mentioned only in passing, or not at all. We hear nothing of the holocaust or Jewish refugees. Pearl Harbor and the atom bomb are mentioned but otherwise nothing is said of U.S. involvement. The many, many characters continue to swirl and reconnect in endless permutations, often unlikely to reason or counter to personality. Throughout the novel, we learn about character’s various fates because someone else talks about them, to Jenkins, usually at a party, which serves to keep the drama of the story offstage and tamped down. Everything is secondhand, and emotionally flat, and gossipy. Characters divorce, remarry, die, or, in Widmerpool’s case, behave atrociously and betray their friends, and except for relating the facts there are no consequences and the characters just move on. The dance continues.