Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell

This is novel number 10 of Anthony Powell’s 12 novel series collectively titled, A Dance to the Music of Time. The novels, all together, tell the story of Nicholas Jenkins, a quasi-stand-in for Powell himself. In the first novel, we meet Jenkins in boarding school in his late teens. Later there’s a flashback to Jenkins’ earlier childhood. We’ve traveled with him through university and career as a writer, both for hire and as a novelist. He’s a little younger than the 20th century (Powell himself was born in 1905) so when war comes he’s in his early thirties. He serves as an officer in Northern Ireland and London in administrative functions without seeing combat. He marries and has a child. The war years consume the third trilogy of novels (numbers seven through nine) which Powell styles as “movements” in the music of his novel. This novel begins the final, fourth movement, and begins shortly after the war ends.

Chapter One, Jenkins goes back to his University on a research project. He’s writing a book on the 17th century English author, Robert Burton, specifically Burton’s major work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. (Burton was associated with Oxford so it’s likely this is the un-named University Jenkins attended and now visits). While there, he stops in at the rooms of his old Don, Sillery, to say hello. Sillery is there, along with a man named Bagshaw. It’s from Bagshaw, Powell gets the title of this novel, which is an epithet for Bagshaw for two possible reasons, neither of which is worth noting here (you can look it up on pages 32-33). Bagshaw is a new character, as far as memory serves. We’re also introduced to an Ada Leintwardine, a young woman serving as Sillery’s secretary assigned to type up Sillery’s diary which he hopes to have published. The main outcome of this chapter is to introduce the main plot of this novel, which is that Bagshaw is working with J. G. Quiggen and Howard Craggs (now married to Gypsy Jones) to start a publishing house, with Bagshaw as Editor of a house literary magazine to be called Fission. Ada will also work for the magazine and we soon learn that Widermerpool, who has been elected a Member of Parliament, will also be on the Board of Directors as well as be a sometime contributor of political essays.

Chapter Two is set at the funeral service of Erry, the elder Tolland, who died unexpectedly. The next younger brother, George, has also died, from war wounds while still in the mid-East. The surviving male Tolland, Hugo, worries their deaths will put him in line of succession for an Earldom he isn’t interested in but fortunately George’s widow gives birth to George’s son a little later.

It seems every character in the novel still living shows up at Erry’s funeral. Mona is there, briefly, avoiding Quiggen (her ex). Pamela Widmerpool (nee Flitton) makes a scene by having a fainting fit in the chapel and then vomiting in an antique vase back at the house. The other Tollands are there: Isobel (Jenkins’ wife), Blanche, Norah, Frederica, plus Uncle Alfred. Only Frederica’s husband, Dicky Umfraville is absent, insisting that he doesn’t like funerals. Widermerpool, Quiggen and Craggs, and Gypsy Jones are there, on business, because Erry had been one of the chief backers of the new publishing project and they want to talk to Frederica, the executor of the will.

In chapter three we learn there is yet another backer of the publishing project we’ve also met earlier, Rosie Manasch. This comes out, and we meet her, when Jenkins is invited to a party at the home of the former Jean Templer, now married to Colonel Flores the South American diplomat.

After the party we’re introduced to another new character who becomes much the protagonist of the rest of this novel. This is X. Trapnel, who wrote a book called Camel Ride to the Tomb. He’s a good writer. A bit of an odd-ball. Always short of cash. He’s brought on to write short pieces for Fission, and is also hoping his next book, Profiles in String, will be published by Quiggen and Craggs.

Jenkins runs into Moreland on the street. Powell tends to throw in this meaningless incidents, I think, just to keep his characters present, as though they were on some sort of contract to appear in every novel. The same with the party at Jean Templer’s earlier.

There’s a party to celebrate the first edition of Fission coming out. We hear that Odo Stevens is writing a book called Sad Majors, about his experience in the war. Plus there’s worry about a book called Sweetskin, by an Alaric Kydd that might get slapped with an obscenity charge. Trapnel notices Pamela Widmerpool at the party.

Chapter Four. Jenkins meets Trapnel at a pub and Trapnel confesses he’s obsessed with Pamela Widmerpool, like every man, and some women, who meet her, unaccountably as far as I can tell, she seems simply impossible to me. Later, Jenkins has lunch with Roddy Cutts, who’s married to one of the Tolland women (I can’t remember which) and is, like Widmerpool as MP. Jenkins mentions that both of their wives are about to give birth, which will be Jenkins’ second though we never hear anything about the current child nor hardly anything about his wife Isobel. On the way out from the lunchroom at the House of Commons they run into Widmerpool who invites both men back to his house because he has a bit of publishing business to talk about with Jenkins and a political matter to raise with Cutts. At the house they hear water running in the tub and assume that Pamela is taking a bath. Then, just as they’re ready to leave there’s a man at the door. The downstairs neighbor has come up to deliver a message from Pamela that she has left Widmerpool. The bath water was a decoy to give her time to slip away. Widmerpool attempts to pretend that she hasn’t left him permanently, but there’s really no doubt.

Back at the publishing house a new edition of Fission has arrived. This one includes a parody piece by X. Trapnel making fun of the political pieces Widmerpool writes. Then Jenkins gets a call from Pamela Widmerpool asking Jenkins to come visit her and Trapnel, confirming that the two of them are together. Jenkins finds them hiding away in a derelict house on the edges of town. Jenkins is ill with something, wrapped in a blanket. Jenkins brings him a book to review for the magazine. The work cheers him up a little. He’s also working on his novel and shows Jenkins the pile of handwritten pages he’s done so far – only the ending still to come, although Pamela disagrees on his vision and wants him to change a lot of it. Then Widmerpool himself shows up, having tracked them down with the aid of a detective. He wants nothing from Trapnel except for Trapnel to know that he knows, and to say that after he returns from a diplomatic trip to Eastern Europe he expects that Pamela of her own accord will return to him. There’s a little drama with Trapnel pulling a hidden sword from a walking stick and threatening Widmerpool, but nothing comes of it.

Chapter Five comes two years later. Jenkins is visiting his old school making arrangements for his son to attend. Then there’s a bit of a catching up of the stories from earlier in the novel. Fission has folded. Alaric Kydd and Sweetskin were found Not Guilty on obscenity charges. Gypsy Jones being offended on political lines by the content of Odo Stevens military memoir Sad Majors, arranged to have both copies of the manuscript “lost” on the way to the publisher. Sillery’s diary, Garnered at Sunset is published. The Trapnel/Pamela Widmerpool story ended like this: Bagshaw had asked Jenkins to meet him at a pub where he had been talking to Trapnel who was upset both that Pamela seemed ready to finally leave him, and that he still couldn’t figure out the ending to his book Profiles in String, mostly because of Pamela’s objections. Jenkins went. He found Trapnel in a bad way. Bagshaw and Jenkins finally got Trapnel out of the pub and started walking him toward home. They passed by a canal and noticed a large mass of paper floating in the water. Trapnel went after it, supposedly just because of the unsettled mood he was in, and discovered that it was the manuscript to his nearly-finished novel; the only copy because he hand wrote it. Pamela had indeed left him and thrown out his work in a place she hoped he would come across on his way back from the pub. It all seems improbable to me, but perhaps that’s why Powell precedes this scene with a conversation at the pub about “naturalism” in fiction.

The Chapter ends with a bit of a coda, at the school. Jenkins takes cover from the rain in the school library and runs into his old headmaster, Le Bas. The catch up on the members of his class. Stringham, dead. Templer, dead. Widmerpool alive and an MP, in fact, Le Bas had met him earlier that day at the school. Jenkins finds Widmerpool outside in the rain. Pamela did return to him, but she’s still the same, still not worth the trouble. They’re at the school because Pamela is having some kind of affair with an older student at the school and she’s having tea with him while Widmerpool waits outside. Bleech. Jenkins’ book on Robert Burton, Borage and Hellebore: A Study, has come out. It turns out that Odo Stevens had a third copy of his manuscript for Sad Majors and gets it published at a different house. Trapnel never writes another book and fades away.