Issue 73, Spring-Summer 1978
With the publication of Hearing Secret Harmonies, Anthony Powell's long serial novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, will have reached its climax. And to judge from the reception accorded to previous volumes, the applause in the U.S.A. will be as loud, if not louder, than that which greeted the completion of the sequence in Britain. For like his contemporary, Evelyn Waugh, to whom he has often been compared, Powell has successfully bridged the Atlantic despite the uncompromisingly “English” nature of his art.
Beginning with A Question of Upbringing (1951), the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time cover some fifty years in the life of Nick Jenkins, who is, like Powell himself, a well-connected author and man of letters. But the novel is less about Jenkins than the metropolitan circles he inhabits. These circles overlap, so that men of action, socialites and artistic types are thrown together, the usual catalysts being their wives, mistresses or lovers. Observing the way these contradictory social groupings intertwine, and the bizarre human gyrations that result, Jenkins discerns a pattern dictated by the rhythm of life—hence the theme of the novel, which is that its characters, like the four seasons in Poussin's painting, are all engaged in a ritual dance to the music of time.
Anthony Powell was born in 1905, the only child of a regular army officer whose family line dates back to a twelfth century Welsh chieftain. After Eton (where he fagged for Lord David Cecil) and Balliol College, Oxford, he spent nearly ten years in publishing with Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. This was followed by a short period scriptwriting for Warner Brothers and an unsuccessful attempt to find work in Hollywood.
In December, 1939, Powell was commissioned into the Welch (sic) Regiment and served with them in Ulster. Later he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and spent the remainder of the war as liaison officer to various Allied contingents in the UK.
A regular contributor to the literary pages in the thirties, Powell joined the TLS in 1947 and was literary editor of Punch from 1952 until 1958. Always an enthusiast of painting, he has been a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery since 1962.
Although Powell owes his international standing to the Music of Time, in British literary circles he has been a fancied runner ever since making his debut with Afternoon Men (1931). This, together with Venusberg (1932) and From a View to a Death (1933), forms a trio of anarchic social comedies distinguished by their laconic, matter-of-fact language.
Recalling the comparative ease with which he wrote the three early novels, Powell has attributed it to “a sort of lyrical flow,” which had already begun to dry up by the time he reached Agents and Patients (1936). This is certainly less immediate than its predecessors, but still recognizably in the same tradition. The real break comes with What's Become of Waring (1939), which ushers in the distinctive first-person narrative, at once detached and inquisitive, that is the Music of Time's hallmark.
Temperamentally unsuited to writing fiction in wartime, Powell did however manage to devote odd moments during his leaves to researching a biography of the seventeenth-century antiquary and biographer, John Aubrey. The result was John Aubrey and His Friends (1948) and Brief Lives: and other Selected Writings of John Aubrey (1949). By then life was more or less back to normal and Powell regained his appetite for fiction. Two years later his massive retrospective began to unfold.
In 1934 Powell married Lady Violet Packenham. Since 1952 they have lived at The Chantry, a grey limestone mansion in the West Country with its own fairly extensive grounds and a panoramic view of the Mendip Hills. Powell likes to recall that the Victorian novelist, Helen Mathers, devoted a whole chapter to the house in her bestseller, Comin’ Thro’ the Rye. But on the misty December afternoon I called there, a few days before Powell's seventieth birthday, it was difficult to visualize the little girls in bloomers playing cricket on the lawn that Ms. Mathers describes.
A stocky, slightly stooping figure with bushy eyebrows and neatly trimmed white hair, Powell greeted me wearing a maroon sweater and khaki twill slacks that had seen better days. We shook hands beneath The Chantry's Classical portico; and then, as time was limited owing to the infrequency of trains back to London, Powell ushered me straight into the sitting room, the walls of which were filled with books and ancestral portraits. Pride of place in this family gallery belongs to a distinguished relative of Lady Violet's, John Churchill, whose manly features are displayed above the mantelpiece.
On being assured that I didn't mind cats—was actually rather fond of them—Powell picked up Flixie Fum, his pedigreed Burmese, and measured most of his length on the sofa. Throughout the interview, a little over two hours, he only stirred to feed the log fire. From time to time he would smooth his hair with a delicate, two-handed motion; otherwise he made no gestures.
In our correspondence Powell had warned me that while he was quite happy to discuss his writing, he would not talk in great detail about himself “as I need any material of that sort for the memoirs I am writing.” In point of fact the only time he applied this embargo was when I asked him to elaborate on his interest in, and possible experience of, the occult.
At about a quarter to five Lady Violet appeared with the tea. We then gossiped about Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, and others of that ilk until the taxi I had ordered arrived. “Be sure to send me a copy of the mag,” said Powell as we parted.
INTERVIEWER
Can we begin at the beginning. I believe your father's family were of Welsh descent.
POWELL
Yes. They hadn't lived in Wales for about a hundred and fifty years, but they were Welsh. And my father went into the Welch Regiment—but I think quite by chance: I don't think it had anything to do with the family's being Welsh.
INTERVIEWER
Do you feel Welsh yourself?
POWELL
I'm very interested in Welsh life and Welsh history. But I've only paid visits there—I've never lived there. But I am interested in what Wales was like and the sort of people they came from—that sort of thing.
INTERVIEWER
Did the fact that you were an only child affect your development? For instance, did it encourage you to read a lot?
POWELL
I don't think I realized at the time what a strong factor it was that one was an only child. But I have learnt since, because my wife comes from a large family and she is always pointing out that some comment of mine totally derives from an “only child's” point of view. But I don't think it really has anything to do with reading, because her family were always great readers, too. In fact as a child I used to draw a lot—almost more than I read, though of course I read a great deal. That, in a way, was just the same in her family, so that side has nothing to do with it. But there is no doubt that only children do have very much their own point of view. Being an only child makes you less conscious at the start that there will be ferocious competition from others.
INTERVIEWER
I believe you had a fairly peripatetic childhood, too.
POWELL
Yes. We moved round as the army always does: You're always being shunted round to different places. Before the First War we were living in London quite a long time because my father was a territorial adjutant there, and so my earliest memories were really of living in a perfectly peaceful way in London. Then we went to a place near Aldershot just before the war. And of course once the war started one was moving about all the time.
INTERVIEWER
I think Cyril Connolly said in Enemies of Promise that you were one of those who gained most from Eton because of the little you gave. Is this fair?
POWELL
He mentioned several people in that context,* and I don't really see that we gave such a little. I should have thought that we gave just as much as he did, because his efforts were enormously ambitious. But of course I never met him there; he was just that amount older than me. I knew him by sight, and am indeed talking about that in my memoirs. But the point really was . . . there was this small group of people who were very interested in the arts and he was just that much higher up for it to have been a bit of a condescension to have been mixed up with us; but he just might have done it if he'd been a rather different sort of person.
INTERVIEWER
Were you conscious of belonging to a very talented set who were all going to make their mark on the arts?
POWELL
It's very, very difficult to say. You see, you just knew people as your friends with common interests and I don't know that anybody had much idea what that group was going to do. I think that when I got to Oxford a lot of people were pretty sure that Evelyn Waugh was going to do something, but I don't think anybody really knew about any of the others. Of course somebody like Harold Acton was a very famous and flamboyant figure as an undergraduate. But again, I'm trying to sort out all this in my memoirs and to be quite honest about it, it's exceedingly difficult to know what one thinks, oneself, quite often. I mean, I thought that when I finished my first novel—having been extremely disciplined for twenty-five years—I'll just sit back and write a few stories one knew . . . but in point of fact I'm finding it extremely difficult to work out just what I do feel about all sorts of aspects of my life and the people I have known.
INTERVIEWER
It was easier, then, to write a novel than autobiography?
POWELL
No writing is easy—it is merely different. You just have to approach it in an empirical way.
INTERVIEWER
Did you know Orwell at Eton?
POWELL
No. I don't remember meeting him until about 1942, when we became great friends.