Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell

This is the eleventh novel of the series, twelve in all, that comprise Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. Powell further divides his work into four trilogies he calls “movements: so this is the mid-point of the fourth and final movement.

So far the novels have taken place nearly entirely in London and the English countryside: school and university, country homes and estates. The first of the war years took place at military training facilities in Northern Ireland and the end of the war brought the main character, Jenkins, over to France and Belgium, briefly, post-combat. There’s also an earlier scene when Jenkins as a young man spent a summer at a country resort in France.

This novel begins as far away from England as we’ve yet gone: Venice. We are several years after the last novel, which told the story of the rise and fall of the post-war literary magazine, Fission, along with the rise and fall of one of the magazine contributors, the author, X. Trapnel. This novel begins several years later, maybe 1958? Jenkins is attending a literary conference in Venice that happens to be in conjunction with the Biennale.

We’re introduced to several new characters who come on stage before the familiar characters from previous novels return. Also attending the conference and having dinner at the hotel with Jenkins, is Dr. Emily Brightman, an older professor. A little later a former student of hers, an American named Russell Gwinnett stops by and joins their table. Russell is preparing to write a biography of Trapnel and he seeks out Jenkins as someone who knew Trapnel. We’re also introduced to the name, but not the person, of a French literary personage named Ferrand-Seneschal, who recently died in a London hotel room under mysterious circumstances that involve Pamela and eventually Kenneth Widmerpool. Jenkins learns the news from a newspaper.

Discussing Trapnel, Jenkins and Gwinnett share the story of Trapnel’s death, which occurred shortly after the end of the previous novel, five or six years before the beginning of this. Trapnel died at the end of a blow-out evening at one of his favorite pubs having unexpectedly come into a largish sum of money. Interestingly, this is one of the few stories in all of A Dance to the Music of Time that Jenkins relays secondhand, rather than observing directly. Two other stories of this type appear later in this novel.

Gwinnett reveals that he has come into possession of an item extraordinarily helpful to his prospect of writing a biography of Trapnel: Trapnel’s Commonplace Book, which I understand to be kind of a notebook where Trapnel recorded his ideas. Discussing Trapnel further the name Pamela Widmerpool comes up. Gwinnett wants to meet her and it’s revealed he may soon have a chance as she’s also in Venice. We also learn, by way of catching up with our former characters, that Widmerpool has lost his seat in the House of Commons, but has been granted a peerage, and is now a member of the House of Lords.

The next day, a field trip for the conference attendees has been arranged to visit a local palazzo that has a Tiepolo painting on the ceiling of one of the rooms. The first chapter ends with Jenkins in his hotel room about to turn in for the night and thinking about a man he knows who lives in Venice that he plans to visit. The man, an old soldier friend of his father named Dan Tokenhouse later went into publishing art book, and Jenkins had worked under him early in his career.

Chapter two is the scene at the palazzo with the Tiepolo. Pamela Widmerpool is staying there as a guest, along with a new character named Louis Glober. Glober is a wealthy American, described as a playboy. He is or has been, variously, a race car driver and a movie producer, maybe a rancher, an art collector, and at one time a prospective partner in publishing art books back when Jenkins was working with Dan Tokenhouse. Jenkins recounts a story of a dinner he was invited to by Glober all those years ago at Glober’s hotel. Hugh Moreland was there, too. I notice, by the way, that neither Glober nor Tokenhouse were mentioned back when Jenkins was actually working at the art book publishers. I suppose this is the sort of continuity problem that inevitably arises when you write a long series of novels over a long period of time.

Glober and Pamela seems to be having an affair. When Gwinnett arrives he’s also taken with Pamela and she with him, but on Russell’s side it might only be because he wants to interview her for his Trapnel biography.

The Tiepolo becomes very important. The subject is a myth about a king, Canduales, who is proud of the beauty of his queen, but as she’s a queen no one except the king is allowed to see her naked, so he’s unable to share his good fortune. A peasant, Gyges, does some good service for the king, and the king, in order to reward him (but also for his own purposes), allows Gyges to hide in the bedroom when the king is with his queen and thus to see her naked. Gyges sees her, but she sees him, too. The queen later tells Gyges that to resolve the offense he must either kill himself, or, alternately, he could kill the king and she would marry him, either way leaving only one person alive who had seen her naked. Gyges chooses the later, obviously, thus the king is undone by his pride and exploitation of his wife.

Dr. Brightman explains all this in detail. Pamela Widmerpool is especially excited about the story. Ada Leintwardine is here, too, attending the conference. She’s an old friend of Pamela’s. It comes out that Glober is hoping to make a movie and is considering Pamela for the roll. For the story, Pamela is hoping to offer Trapnel’s final novel, which only she had read before she destroyed it.

Then Widmerpool shows up, accompanied by the woman formerly known as Baby Wentworth, now married to an Italian count, Clarini. Widmerpool wants to pull Pamela away, upset about the story of Ferrand-Seneschal’s death. Pamela stubbornly refuses, of course. He also quizzes Jenkins about a man named Dr. Belkin who Widmerpool thinks might be attending the conference. He needs to communicate with him and perhaps receive a package. Jenkins has never heard of a Dr. Belkin.

Chapter three. Jenkins visits his old boss and friend of his father, Dan Tokenhouse. He lives in a small apartment on the side of Venice away from the tourists, and near the site of the Biennale. Tokenhouse is an amateur artist himself. He makes primitive-looking paintings illustrating scenes of social injustice from a communist perspective. After viewing the paintings they talk a walk to visit the Biennale, which is described disappointingly briefly. They run into Glober visiting the exhibition with Ada Leintwardine. The four of them have lunch. Ada, who is married to JG Quiggen, is still connected to the publishing business and she hopes to get Glober off the idea of doing a movie on Trapnel and instead do a movie from a St. John Clarke novel, who her husband’s firm still publishes.

After lunch the four go back to Tokenhouse’s apartment. Glober buys a painting for his collection. Widmerpool shows up. It appears that Tokenhouse is also wrapped up in the business with Dr. Belkin and packages that need to be delivered but can’t go through the regular mail.

Back at his hotel at the end of the day, Jenkins gets a call from Russell Gwinnett asking to meet him. Over dinner and a drink, Gwinnett tells a story of meeting Pamela clandestinely and she coming on to him aggressively. They run into Rosie Manash and her husband Odo Stevens just finishing a Greek Island cruise and stopping in Venice. Pamela shows up and causes a scene. Gwinnett reveals to Pamela that he has possession of Trapnel’s Commonplace Book and that it includes a outline of the final novel, so Pamela isn’t the only one with access to that story. As they say goodnight, Gwinnett gives the book to Jenkins for safe-keeping.

Chapter four we are back in England. Gwinnett also arranges to interview Bagshaw, the former editor of Fission magazine, and ends up staying at Bagshaw’s place outside of London, with Bagshaw’s wife and children and his father. Pamela causes a scene here, too, tracking down where Gwinnett is staying and showing up unexpectedly, then appearing one night naked in a hallway and disturbing the household. This is the second of the three stories in this novel that Jenkins hears only secondhand.

Meanwhile, stories of the death of the frenchman, Ferrand-Seneschal, and the mysterious spy-seeming, Communist stuff in Venice continue to unspool slowly in the background.

Jenkins attends a reunion of folks from the war. He knows hardly anybody. But he does by chance run into someone he knew that also knew Charles Brightman, and was actually taken prisoner of war with Brightman. I thought for a minute we were going to be told that Stringham was actually still alive, but no, his death is confirmed. Then Jenkins runs into Sunny Farebrother at the reunion and gets more information about the increasingly sticky situation Widmerpool has gotten himself into.

The bit with Ferrand-Seneschal was a sexual scandal. Widmerpool was hiding behind a curtain in order to watch the Frenchman have sex with Pamela, a la the Tiepolo painting of Canduales and Gyges. The spy scandal I could never completely figure out, but apparently Widmerpool had written a letter complimentary to some communist government that would have been damaging to him if released in London, so they had been blackmailing him into delivering certain state information. It had all blown up and looked bad for Widmerpool, but nothing too damaging career-wise came of it for him, although a major embarrassment to his pride and reputation.

Chapter Five there’s musical party and a fundraiser hosted by Odo and Rosie Stevens at their place. They’ve set up a stage in the backyard and arranged for a performance of Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rather ambitious if you ask me. Everyone is there: Glober, Pamela, Widmerpool. Also Hugh Moreland, who helped with the musical production. Even Carolo shows up as a last minute substitute for a sick second violinist. Madame Erdleigh the psychic is there. Polly Duport is there as Glober’s date. She’s Jean Templer’s daughter from her second husband, and has now become an actress. Glober has decided to make his film on a St. John Clark story and has chosen Polly for the role rather than Pamela. At the end of the evening Hugh Moreland is taken ill and has to be put to bed, then arrangements made to take him to the hospital.

And then there’s the third of the three secondhand stories in this novel. Strange that I can’t remember a single other one in the previous ten novels and there are three in this one. At the end of the party there’s some mix up about the cars and people needing rides so there’s quite a crowd of exhausted, irritated people standing outside in the dark. Pamela causes another scene. She shares a secret about Glober’s sex habits in an attempt to embarrass and goad Polly Duport, who she assumes is sleeping with Glober. Then she spills the beans about the voyeuristic scene that ended with the death of Ferrand-Seneschal in order to embarrass Widmerpool. Glober ends up hitting Widmerpool.

Chapter six is a bit of a postscript. It’s a year or so later. Jenkins receives a letter from Gwinnett from Spain. He’s given up writing the Trapnel biography, for now. It seems Pamela, following the scene on the sidewalk tracked Gwinnett down at his hotel and killed herself with an overdose in his presence. The implication is that she did it as sort of a morbid sacrifice/gift to Gwinnett who was fascinated by a gothic connection between love and death. He may have even had sex with her as she was dying, or after. Glober is also dead, killed in a car accident. The movie never gets made. Hugh Moreland dies, too, after a longish scene at the hospital with Jenkins and he talking over all of this and comparing it all to the Tiepolo painting. Widmerpool, the Canduales figure, they suppose, survives, but much diminished, for one novel still to come.