‘The Shrimp and the Anemone’ by L. P. Hartley

Eustace and Hilda by L. P. Hartley is a single-volume edition of three novels: The Shrimp and the Anemone (pub. 1944), The Sixth Heaven (1946) and Eustace and Hilda (1947). This collection also includes and additional forty page story called Hilda’s Letter which, as far as I can ascertain, was first published in this collected edition in 1958. My copy is a Faber and Faber edition published in 1979 with a cover showing the two young actors from a BBC adaption of the whole trilogy. As far as I can tell this edition is out of print in the U.K. but there is an attractive looking U.S. edition (NYRB) available. The single volume edition of The Shrimp and the Anemone may also still be relatively easy to obtain.

The Shrimp and the Anemone begins with Eustace and Hilda playing on a Norfolk beach; Eustace is a rather sickly (he has a weak heart) ten-year old boy, who is afraid of almost everything, whilst Hilda, his fourteen year-old sister, is completely different—she has almost taken over the role of their mother who died whilst giving birth to their younger sister, Barbara. Hilda is more sure of herself and used to being in control. She also likes bossing Eustace about and sometimes takes a sort of sadistic pleasure in watching him squirm. However there is a strong bond between the two siblings and they both love each other very much. The book begins with Eustace calling his sister over to a rockpool, in which Eustace can see a sea anemone in the process of eating a shrimp. Eustace, who is concerned for the shrimp, convinces his sister to try to save it. She manages to pull the shrimp away from the anemone but not in time to save the shrimp and also results in disembowelling the anemone, thereby saving neither. The sensitive Eustace sobs whilst Hilda is less concerned. As the novel proceeds we can see that the two children’s relationship is similar to that of the shrimp and the anemone with Eustace as the shrimp and Hilda as the anemone. Eustace often feels subservient to his sister, as if he has no will of his own. When he does exert his will he feels guilty and becomes sick. In the novel a couple of events occur which result in Eustace and Hilda being separated and both experience this separation as painful and like a death.

L. P. Hartley portrays the children brilliantly, both their manners of speech and their thought processes. Although the concentration is on Eustace we also get to see things occasionally from Hilda’s point of view. Eustace is meek and is overly concerned with pleasing others. He is also scared of trying anything new. Eustace has been told that if he meets Miss Fothergill, an elderly wheelchair-bound rheumatic lady who is often to be seen on the footpaths near the beach, then he must speak to her but Eustace is utterly scared of her. Here’s a bit of dialogue between Eustace and Hilda as Hilda spots Miss Fothergill approaching on a footpath.

Someone was walking alongside it [the cliff edge], perhaps two people. But Hilda had better eyes than he and cried at once, “There’s Miss Fothergill and her companion.”
   “Oh!” cried Eustace; “let’s turn back.”
   But the light of battle was in Hilda’s eye.
   “Why should we turn back? It’s just the opportunity we’ve been looking for.”
   “Perhaps you have,” said Eustace. “I haven’t.”
   He had already turned away from the approaching bath-chair and was tugging at Hilda’s hand.
   “The Bible says, ‘Sick and in prison and I visited you’,” Hilda quoted with considerable effect. “You’ve always been naughty about this, Eustace: it’s the chief failing I’ve never been able to cure you of.”
   “But she’s so ugly,” protested Eustace.
   “What difference does that make?”
   “And she frightens me.”
   “A big boy like you!”
   “Her face is all crooked.”
   “You haven’t seen it—you always run away.”
   “And her hands are all black.”
   “Silly, that’s only her gloves.”
   “Yes, but they aren’t proper hands, that’s why she wears gloves. Annie told me.”
   Annie was the Cherrington’s daily ‘help’.

Eustace’s protestations continue whilst Hilda makes sure he doesn’t escape. Eustace ends up talking to Miss Fothergill and then, as he gets more bold, pushing her in her bath-chair. Although some of his fear has abated it returns when Miss Fothergill asks Eustace and Hilda to tea. This fear of visiting Miss Fothergill grows over the next few days, especially when Hilda reveals that she won’t be accompanying him so he’ll have to go on his own. Meanwhile Eustace is asked by Nancy, a girl he is besotted with, to go on a paper-chase on the day of the tea invitation. Uncharacteristically he exerts his own will, disobeys his parents, and goes on the paper-chase with Nancy—but he pays the price as he gets caught in a thunderstorm, falls ill, and is in bed for weeks. Eustace eventually has tea with Miss Fothergill and once he gets to know her, and gets used to her ‘deformities’, he becomes a regular visitor.

That afternoon marked more than one change in Eustace’s attitude towards life. Physical ugliness ceased to repel him and conversely physical beauty lost some of its appeal.

There is not much of a plot to The Shrimp and the Anemone, instead it is an exquisitely executed character study of the two children—how they interact with each other, with other children, with adults and how they change over time. There is however an event that happens which changes the course of their lives and as I will reveal details of this event below, you may wish to skip to the last two paragraph if you are planning to read this book. During one of Eustace’s visits Miss Fothergill dies and later it is revealed that she bequeathed a large sum of money to Eustace which will enable him to attend a public school and then university. Eustace is not told of this but he soon notices that his father and aunt, and others, have begun to treat him differently. The differences are subtle, but they now show him more respect, ask his views and defer to his wishes on occasions. His father makes plans for Eustace to attend a good school but when Eustace is told by a local coach-driver that he will soon be ‘going away’ he assumes, because of his weak heart, that he is about to die. Over the following days he becomes morose and listless and talks to Hilda of writing his will. Whilst playing on the beach Eustace tries to tell Hilda of his fears and when she realises what he means she explodes in anger and fear. She feels that he’s trying to escape from them. Part of Hilda’s identity is in taking care of Eustace and she feels threatened and rejected with his talk of dying.

“How dare you talk like that? I see how it is—you want to go away—you want to leave us! You tried before, the time of the paper-chase, but you had to come back. You had to come back from Miss Fothergill too. You think you’ll be with someone who loves you more than we do—that’s why you talk about dying! But I won’t allow it! I’ll stop you! I’ll see you don’t slip away!”

It is a highly charged scene which is then quickly defused when some friends arrive congratulating Eustace on his inheritance and praising him for his foresight in getting to know Miss Fothergill. Left alone again, Eustace and Hilda discuss the money without really understanding the importance of it and then run back home care-free.

I originally read The Shrimp and the Anemone for the 1944 Club last year but didn’t have time to write anything about it—Harriet Devine and Simon (Stuck in a Book) did post reviews though. It is an astonishingly good book and I’m impressed with Hartley’s lucid writing style and sensitive portrayal of all the characters in it. The children’s dialogue, their thoughts and fears is amazingly realistic. I had originally planned to continue with the other volumes shortly after but have only got round to doing so now—I decided to re-read The Shrimp and the Anemone before the other volumes and feel that it’s a book that I could re-read many more times. I am currently on the last volume, Eustace and Hilda, and hope to post reviews of the other two volumes as well.

My beaten-up, well-worn, well-read, secondhand copy is a joy to read and hold; its heft is reassuring and the clear white (o.k. they’re yellowing very slightly) pages make it even more enjoyable to read—these things shouldn’t make a difference, but they do.

‘Guignol’s Band’ by Céline (1944 Club)

Readers, friends, less than friends, enemies, Critics! Here I am at it again with Book I of Guignol! Don’t judge me too soon! Wait awhile for what’s to follow! Book II! Book III! it all clears up! develops, straightens out! As is, 3/4 of it’s missing! Is that a way to do things? It had to be printed fast because with things as they are you don’t know who’s living or dead!

So begins Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s third ‘proper’ novel, published in 1943 if you believe the blurb on the back of the book, but according to Frédéric Vitoux (Céline: A Biography, 1992) (and Wikipedia) was actually published in March 1944. Guignol’s Band is vintage Céline, but it’s fair to say that he’s a problematic writer. I don’t want to go in to too much detail but a few facts about the writer should be known before proceeding. First of all he wrote two ground-breaking works before the Second World War, Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit) in 1932 and Death on the Installment Plan or Death on Credit (Mort à crédit) in 1936. Following a visit to the Soviet Union he published a pamphlet in 1936, Mea Culpa, attacking communism. Over the next few years he published three more book-length pamphlets that were extremely anti-Semitic — see here for my review of one of them. Although he wasn’t one for joining groups or parties his anti-Semitism and anti-communism meant that he collaborated, to some extent, with the Nazi occupiers. He was at least seen by others as a collaborator and so only months after the publication of Guignol’s Band and with the advancement of the Allied powers, fearing for his life, he tried to escape to Denmark with his wife Lucette and their cat Bébert; this period is covered in the trilogy Castle to Castle, North and Rigodoon. He made it to Denmark, was tried in France, in absentia, of collaboration and was allowed to return in 1951. He died in 1961.

As the first sentences quoted above indicate Guignol’s Band is only the first part of a longer work; the sequel, London Bridge: Guignol’s Band II, was published posthumously in 1964. As with most of his later works Céline takes a while to get going; the book begins with a preface, some disjointed scenes (some brilliant, some not so good) and then slowly some form of narrative develops. Céline developed his own idiosyncratic style, with the three dots and loads of exclamation marks, that annoys some readers but pleases others. I’m, of course, one of the latter and feel his style is perfect for what he’s trying to achieve; Céline excels in character studies as well as chaotic and hallucinatory scenes told in an impressionistic style. It’s sometimes exhausting reading Céline as the staccato narrative pulls us along at a breakneck speed—but we get the sense that we’re going nowhere and really just circling around. Céline amusingly pokes fun at his own style now and then:

I’m doddering around like an old bumblebee, I’m all tangled up in the air, Ah sees it, I ain’t tellin’ things in the right order, what about it! You’ll excuse me somewhat, kidding about my memories, digressing from rhyme to reason, jabbering away about my friends instead of showing you around!…Let’s go! and let’s keep going!…Let me show you around nicely…straying neither right nor left!…

My aged copy of Guignol’s Band which I bought new in the early ’90s. It looks so old but I love it.

Guignol’s Band takes place in London during the First World War where it centres on the London underworld, populated by many shady characters such as pimps, prostitutes, drug-dealers, dodgy cops, charlatans, deserters etc. We are introduced to Cascade, a pimp who is, rather reluctantly, taking on the girls of other pimps who are going to war. Ferdinand, the protagonist of the novel and Céline’s alter-ego, turns up to stay with Cascade. It’s revealed later in the novel that Cascade Farcy is an uncle of Raoul, someone with whom Ferdinand had made friends whilst convalescing from their war injuries; they had intended to visit London together but Raoul was court-martialled and executed for his self-inflicted wounds. Cascade, however, urged Ferdinand to come anyway.

Ferdinand encounters many strange characters and gets tugged along by events—he’s rarely the instigator of any action, he mostly just reacts to the actions of others. There are some amusingly scurrilous episodes such as a fight between two of Cascade’s prostitutes resulting in one of them, Joconde, being stabbed in the buttocks by the other one, Angèle. They then have to get Joconde to a hospital without drawing any attention to themselves. Luckily Cascade knows a doctor, Clodovitz, who will help them out without asking questions. Later on in the novel there is another brilliant fight scene between two other characters, Claben, a pawnbroker, and Borokrom, a piano player. As with the fight between Joconde and Angèle it’s too long to quote in full but here’s a quote from the beginning of the squabble. Claben, the old guy, and Borokrom are in a room above the ground floor shop.

   “You’re already drunk, Borokrom!” the old guy answers…”You’ve been drinking like a hole!”
They’re at one another now…
“Like a hole?”…Ah! that’s the limit!…”Tell me, what kind of hole? What kind of hole? Ass-hole, is that it?”
It’s too outrageous!…Boro gets up! He wants to hear that to his face…what the old guy’s insinuating! he’s going downstairs…shit! He stumbles…he staggers…He gets to the stairs…His shirt hanging out like a smock, his belly sagging…He’s reeling again…Boom!…he tumbles, upsets…rolls down…crashes into the shop…A mess…Right into the whole works…Right into the crockery…The pyramid of fruit dishes…plates! Thunder!…A cataract!…The old boy’s choking with fury…The client in front of the counter yelps…she’s bleating with horror…She wants to run away…she can’t!…Everything falls all over her!…The old guy tries to help her, to pull her out! he yanks at her, by the shoes…he takes a firm stand…ho! hip! hup!…the whole works tumbles down again!…

The fight only ends with the arrival of Claben’s maid, Delphine, who prevents Borokrom from bashing his brains out. Borokrom retreats to the room upstairs and plays ‘The Merry Widow Waltz’ upon request from Claben, who is addicted to music. If this all sounds chaotic and confusing then you will need to prepare yourself for another episode later on, another bust-up, after Delphine comes home with some ‘strange’ cigarettes. It is even more bizarre and results in the death of one of the characters. Ferdinand escapes but is framed by the others for the murder. He evades the police and encounters an even odder character, called Sosthène, a charlatan; he’s French but when Ferdinand first encounters him he is dressed as a Chinaman; one of his job descriptions on his business card is Explorer of Occult Hearths. Still, he is ready to employ Ferdinand who is just thankful to be off the streets.

The book ends in medias res but it continues with the second volume, London Bridge (Le Pont de Londres) which was published in 1964 but not translated into English until 1995. I had read Guignol’s Band at least twice before but still enjoyed it as much this time around. I have only read London Bridge once so I am considering reading this again soon. It’s about twice as long as Part I and continues Ferdinand’s adventures through the dirty streets of war-time London.

This was read as part of Karen’s and Simon’s The 1944 Club.