Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction 3031557751, 9783031557750

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Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction Andrija Matić

Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction

Andrija Mati´c

Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction

Andrija Mati´c Baruch College, CUNY New York, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-55774-3 ISBN 978-3-031-55775-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: peeterv/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgements

Parts of this book have appeared in my articles on Huxley’s short fiction. The first article titled “‘Gruff Old Scientists’ and ‘Rough Old Scholars’: The Caricature of Intellectualism in Aldous Huxley’s Short Stories” was published in Brno Studies in English (2021), while the second article titled “Knowledge and understanding: Education in Aldous Huxley’s short stories” was published in Short Fiction in Theory & Practice (2023). My essay on religion in Huxley’s short stories—parts of which I have also included in this book—will appear later this year in Aldous Huxley Annual (2024). I would like to thank the reviewers in all these journals for highlighting important aspects of Huxley’s short fiction that I would have overlooked. I am grateful to Professor Bernfried Nugel, who drew my attention to several articles from Aldous Huxley Annual that deepened my understanding of Huxley’s references to mysticism and Christianity. I also want to thank Walailak University for giving me a grant to conduct research on Huxley’s short fiction. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Palgrave Macmillan reviewers, who pointed out to me less known interpretations of Huxley’s short stories and helped me understand his similarities with American modernists.

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Contents

Introduction

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Initiation in Limbo

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Toxic Masculinity, Pseudo-Intellectualism, and “Sexo-Religious Psychology” in Mortal Coils

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Irony, Popular Art, and Progressive Education in Little Mexican

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Nonsense, the Other, and Applied Science in Two or Three Graces

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Religion, Seduction, and Spiritual Education in Brief Candles

103

Uncollected Stories

123

Conclusion

169

References

177

Index

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About the Author

Andrija Mati´c is an adjunct assistant professor at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He is the author of five novels, a collection of short stories, and a study on T. S. Eliot’s complete works. He has also published many articles on Anglo-American literature, especially on modernist poetry and short fiction. Andrija Mati´c has taught at universities in Serbia, Kuwait, Thailand, Turkey, and the USA. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Introduction

Aldous Huxley was one of the most prolific writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Not only was he the author of eleven novels, but he also wrote poetry, travel literature, film scripts, plays, music reviews, and essays on a variety of topics. In addition, he published five collections of short fiction and a dozen stories that appeared in magazines during his lifetime. Despite Huxley’s commitment to short fiction, no scholars have thoroughly analyzed this segment of his literature. There are several reasons for the neglect of his short fiction. Some critics think that Huxley’s stories do not deserve much attention because they are the extensions of his ideas, already expounded in his essays. For example, V. S. Pritchett claims that Huxley’s stories “are not about people and situations; they are talk about people in relation to ideas that appear to have been set up in order to snub them” (Pritchett, 1975, p. 424). His observation is probably built upon David Daiches’ superficial reading of Huxley’s novels. Daiches (1939) saw Huxley as a “frustrated romantic” (p. 202) or a fake novelist “who has never mastered even the elements of form and structure in fiction” (p. 209). To put it simply, in Daiches’ view, Huxley is nothing but an essayist, and if we want to understand his novels and short stories, we should focus on his nonfiction. Perhaps because of such incorrect judgements, rehashed in different forms over the years, Huxley’s short fiction has been sidelined. Moreover, in a recent book titled The British Short Story by Emma Liggins et al. (2011), Huxley’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_1

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short stories were not mentioned a single time, let alone analyzed in terms of their structure, characterization, themes, or style. Aldous Huxley Annual is the only place where this aspect of Huxley’s literature is treated as it deserves. However, despite the efforts of Bernfried Nugel, Jerome Meckier, and especially James Sexton, there is no book that analyzes Huxley’s short fiction in its entirety. Another reason for such a disregard could be the belief that the short story is a miniature novel. Applied to Huxley’s literature, this misconception implies that we should not waste time on his short fiction because his novels will tell us everything we need to know. In the last few decades, however, many scholars explained the specific nature of the short story, that is to say, its autonomy as a genre. Susan Lohafer (1983) underlines several qualities of the short story that make it a distinct literary form. For instance, due to its length, the short story contains “a contracted language” that “binds its reader less closely to the word than a poem does, and more closely to the sentence than a novel does” (p. 50). Aimée Gasston (2021) emphasizes the “ergonomics” of short fiction, together with the “increased frequency of [its] endings” and “activity of interruption” (p. 200), owing to which the readers can reflect on their life more often. Charles E. May (2002) points out the short story’s “intensity” that “comes from a tight dramatic patterning of the incident in such a way that its dramatic tension is exposed and felt” (p. 119). Clare Hanson (1989) underscores the “limited quality” of the story that serves as a frame in which we can “accept a degree of mystery, elision, uncertainty,” which we would not normally do while reading a novel (p. 25). Dominic Head (1992) argues that short stories should not be compared to novels but to other genres such as film; otherwise, we risk promoting the principle “the bigger the better” (p. 4). (In 1992, when Head’s book The Modernist Short Story was published, film might have been the most suitable association, but nowadays TV series such as Black Mirror seem to be the nearest equivalent.) Valerie Shaw (2013), on the other hand, seeks a definition of the short story in visual arts. She believes that the novel offers a “record of linked events” while the story offers a “picture” (p. 12), so a collection of short stories is more akin to “an art exhibition” (p. 16). But even prior to this wave of short fiction scholarship that started a few decades ago, it was clear that the short story should not be treated as inferior to the novel. For instance, Walter Benjamin (2015), as early as in 1936, realized that short fiction should be decoupled from the traditional definitions of narrative. In his view, the short story “has removed

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itself from oral tradition and no longer permits that slow piling one on top of the other of thin, transparent layers which constitutes the most appropriate picture of the way in which the perfect narrative is revealed” (p. 92). Despite all the studies that highlight the short story’s unique characteristics, many scholars still see it as a minor literary genre, which is evident in the number of academic journals, articles, and books dedicated to the art of short fiction. That might explain why Huxley’s short stories have never been given full attention. As regards the short story in the period of modernism, literary research usually sees it as less significant than other art forms. Even though the writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce—the indisputable representatives of modernist canon—regarded short fiction as an important element in their literary expression, studies on their works are almost exclusively centered on their novels. Gasston (2021) finds it astonishing that the short story is frequently “peripheral to the canon” and that it is often “dismembered by modernist scholarship” (p. 3). In her opinion, the biggest example of such marginalization can be found in Bradbury and McFarlane’s Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930, as their book does not include short stories in the overview of modernist poetics. Dominic Head (1992) explains that the modernist short story can be regarded as a subgenre of modernism because it entails “formal dissonance” and “relative autonomy” (p. 33). On the other hand, Emma Liggins et al. (2011) warn that glorifying modernist experimentation as the highest achievement in literature “risks falsifying literary history because it ignores those writers whose works are not deemed ‘experimental’” (p. 122). This statement can explain the position of Aldous Huxley’s short fiction in modernist scholarship. Due to his atypical views on literary experimentation, his pronounced disdain for modernist art, and his reputation as a novelist of ideas, Huxley’s short stories are nowhere to be found in the literature on modernism, not even in the studies that acknowledge the importance of short fiction. Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction aims to show that Huxley shared more characteristics with distinguished modernists than it is usually believed. Most misunderstandings of Huxley’s works result from shallow comparisons between him and other modernist authors, wherein critics are fixated on a set of formal characteristics and exclude other features that do not fit into their understanding of modernism. Such a limited approach overlooks many elements of Huxley’s literature that might not be modernist in the narrow sense of the term. This book emphasizes his similarities

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with other modernist authors, highlighting his unique contribution to modernist short fiction. The analyses of his short stories point out his relation not only to Anglo-American modernists such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Carson McCullers, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and D. H. Lawrence, but also Russian futurists and German and Austrian expressionists. Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction explains that Huxley’s parallels with these authors can be found in his use of myth and fairy tales, intertextual references, attitude to organized Christianity, aesthetics of ugliness, experiments with transrational language, portrayals of dehumanization in the modern metropolis, and many other topics. This book particularly examines Huxley’s humor and irony, the areas he developed more than any other author of modernist short fiction. Since literary works cannot be locked in one period but relate to all previous and subsequent epochs as well, this book explores other features of Huxley’s short stories that stand outside the confines of modernism. The fact that his stories span from 1919 to 1955 compels us to examine them in a broader context. Thus, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction analyzes Huxley’s depictions of consumerism, mainstream education, shallow intellectualism, women’s emancipation, toxic masculinity, and sensational journalism, themes that correspond with both his time and our world, positioning him among the most prophetic authors of the twentieth century. This book also demonstrates that Huxley’s characters are not always embodiments of his ideas, but that some ideas were initiated in the process of characterization, gaining their theoretical formulations much later. Likewise, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction tracks the development of his literary style—from the colorful satirical outbursts in his first collection Limbo to the concise prose in his last short stories. This book shows that Huxley’s short fiction can answer some questions that remain confusing or partially explained in the research on Huxley’s works. For instance, a brief literature review on his stance on religion and mysticism can reveal disagreements on many issues. James R. Baker (1990) assumes that Huxley explored different spiritual experiences in his attempt to find “an acceptable religious faith” (p. 316). June Deery (1996) believes that the interpretations of Huxley’s works are impossible without defining his interest in mysticism (p. 101). For Jerome Meckier (1969), Huxley was “an alleged mystic who [was] always clear and rational” (p. 7). On the other hand, Harry Oldmeadow (2004) claims that Huxley’s perennial philosophy was supposed to be a substitute for a

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universal religion or “a kind of religious Esperanto” (p. 81). Dana W. Sawyer (2021) refutes the idea that Huxley believed in universal religion, asserting that Huxley did not see mystical experience to be “synonymous with the essence of religion” (p. 7). Jake Poller has a similar view on Huxley’s attempt to bring together religious texts from different cultures and epochs. According to Poller (2019), these texts were not meant to indicate a universal religion; Huxley only detected their compatibility in certain areas, which made him assume that “the One with whom these mystics were united or identified was the same” (p. 2). Scholars disagree on Huxley’s attitude to particular faiths as well. Ronald T. Sion (2010) argues that after Brave New World, Huxley chose “a Buddhistic view of life, seeking an ultimate nirvana” (p. 77). Poller (2019) states that Huxley, especially in his novels after World War II, was interested in the religious teachings from Taoism, Tantra, and Buddhism (p. 34). However, John Attarian (2003) reduces Huxley’s Brave New World to a “warning … of life in a world which has fled from God” (p. 9). He believes that Huxley’s main concern is to show that “suffering and mortification are the price of transcendence” (p. 19). There is no consensus on the development of Huxley’s mysticism either. Sion thinks that Huxley’s novels can be divided into those before and those after Brave New World, published in 1932 (p. 77). Deery (1996) points out that mysticism was an integral part of Huxley’s literature from Eyeless in Gaza (1936) to his death (p. 109). Frederick W. Conner (1973) suggests that Huxley criticized mysticism and oriental spirituality until 1925, whereupon he became more inclined toward mysticism (p. 286). Sally A. Paulsell (1995) assumes that Huxley’s interest in different forms of mysticism was constant from his first book of poetry to his last novel (p. 81). Finally, Poller underscores that in the 1920s Huxley was both “attracted and repelled” by mysticism, that his next phase, inspired by D. H. Lawrence, was “life worship” (p. 91), that his mystical transformation took place in 1935 (p. 74), and that in the last decade of his life Huxley embraced “this-worldly forms of mysticism that celebrated the body and the world as manifestations of the godhead” (p. 5). Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction attempts to answer some of these questions. First of all, the book illustrates Huxley’s opinion on organized religion, especially on mainstream Christianity. The stories from 1919 to 1955 show that Huxley’s understanding of religion never changed despite his ideas on God and spirituality after the mid-1930s that sent many scholars on a wild goose chase. As regards Huxley’s views on mysticism,

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the analyses of his short stories indicate that some of his ideas did change over time, whereas others remained the same. This book also explores the shift in Huxley’s descriptions of sexuality and religion that occurred in the 1930s. Finally, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction highlights the connection between the stories from the 1950s and the ideas explicated in The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. This book also clarifies Huxley’s political opinion, which is often misunderstood due to his advocacy of pacifism. Ever since the publication of Huxley’s pamphlet What Are You Going to Do about It? The Case for Constructive Peace (1936), many authors, neglecting his literature from the 1920s, have treated Huxley as a controversial writer out of touch with reality who advocated non-violence against Nazism. The tone was set by Stephen Spender, who accused Huxley of sacrificing “oppressed pacifists and socialists in Italy, Germany, and Austria, on the altar of a dogmatic and correct pacifism,” and C. Day-Lewis, who asked: “Where was Mr. Huxley when the lights went out in Italy, in Germany?” (Murray, 2003, p. 294). Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction paints a different picture. It proves that Huxley was always interested in politics—from Mortal Coils (1922), where he warned against the new political force in Italy called Fascism, to “Time’s Revenges” and “Voices,” the stories from the 1950s in which he referred to a range of global issues such as the Korean War, the coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, and Joseph McCarthy’s persecution of intellectuals and artists in the United States. Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction analyzes all Huxley’s works from Collected Short Stories and most of the stories from “Consider the Lilies ” and Other Short Fiction, republished owing to the efforts of James Sexton, who collected Huxley’s stories that appeared in magazines such as Coterie and The Atlantic. “The Nun’s Tragedy” is the only short story that will not be interpreted in this book, as it is the early manuscript of “Nuns at Luncheon,” which Huxley included in Mortal Coils , his second book of short fiction. Such a wide selection does not imply that all Huxley’s stories are of the same quality. There is no doubt that some of them suffer from rudimentary plot, poor characterization, more telling than showing— flaws that can be found in his novels as well. Nevertheless, I believe that all Huxley’s short stories deserve to be interpreted either because they contain dimensions which have not been previously explored, or because they show Huxley’s relation to other modernist authors, or because they demonstrate his development as a writer, or because they can answer important questions about his literature and philosophy.

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This book does not analyze Huxley’s novellas such Farcical History of Richard Greenow and Two or Three Graces , which were published within the official collections of Huxley’s short stories. The novella is a distinct literary form in both its structure and purpose. As Judith Leibowitz (1974) emphasizes, “the novella’s techniques of selection” (p. 12) are different than in novels and short stories. She adds that while “the short story limits material and the novel extends it,” the novella produces “the double effect of intensity and expansion” (p. 16). Therefore, Huxley’s novellas should be analyzed independently of his short fiction. The secondary literature includes most of Huxley’s nonfiction together with the scholarship on his literature that spans from the early reviews of his short stories (some of them written by Arnold Bennett, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot) to articles in Aldous Huxley Annual and books by the contemporary scholars such as Jake Poller. This book also refers to relevant studies on the short story as an autonomous literary form. Chapter 2 analyzes Limbo (1920), Huxley’s first book of short stories, indicating his early thematic scope, stylistic features, and character types that he will explore in his subsequent works. Chapter 3 focuses on Mortal Coils (1922), especially on the topics such as toxic masculinity, superficial intellectualism, religious fanaticism, and modernist perception of visual arts. Chapter 4, devoted to Little Mexican and Other Stories (1924), explains not only Huxley’s views on progressive education advocated by Maria Montessori and John Dewey, but also Huxley’s early experiments with form, humor, and irony, which bring him closer to modernist short story writers. In Chapter 5, I analyze Two or Three Graces (1926), Huxley’s fourth book of short fiction, especially the complexity of his characterization, the way in which he incorporates myth and fairy tales, and the intertextual relations with modernist short fiction. Chapter 6 examines three stories from Brief Candles (1930), Huxley’s last collection of short fiction, focusing on the themes such as intellectual abuse, religious manipulation, and pseudo-spiritual education. The final chapter is dedicated to Huxley’s uncollected short stories, starting with the first “Imaginary Conversation” (1919) and ending with “Voices” (1955), Huxley’s last short story published in The Atlantic. The interpretations of Huxley’s uncollected short fiction point to constants in Huxley’s literature, depicted in his novels and official collections of short stories, but they also highlight elements we cannot find anywhere else.

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References Attarian, J. (2003). Brave New World and the Flight from God. In H. Bloom (Ed.), Aldous Huxley (pp. 9–24). Chelsea House. Baker, R. S. (1990). Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia. Twayne Publishers. Benjamin, W. (2015). Illuminations. The Bodley Head. Conner, F. W. (1973). “Attention!”: Aldous Huxley’s Epistemological Route to Salvation. The Sewanee Review, 81(2), 282–308. Daiches, D. (1939). The Novel and the Modern World. University of Chicago Press. Deery, J. (1996). Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science. MacMillan Press Ltd. Gasston, A. (2021). Modernist Short Fiction and Things. Palgrave Macmillan. Hanson, C. (1989). “Things Out of Words”: Towards a Poetics of Short Fiction. In C. Hanson (Ed.), Re-reading the Short Story (pp. 22–33). St. Martin’s Press. Head, D. (1992). The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press. Leibowitz, J. (1974). Narrative Purpose in the Novella. Mouton. Liggins, E., et al. (2011). The British Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan. Lohafer, S. (1983). Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Louisiana State University Press. May, C. E. (2002). The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. Routledge. Meckier, J. (1969). Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure. Chatto & Windus. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Oldmeadow, H. (2004). Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Asian Religious Traditions. World Wisdom. Paulsell, S. A. (1995). Color and Light: Huxley’s Pathway to Spiritual Reality. Twentieth Century Literature, 41(1), 81–107. Poller, J. (2019). Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Brill. Pritchett, V. S. (1975). V. S. Pritchett on the Collected Short Stories. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 423–425). Routledge. Sawyer, D. W. (2021). Redressing a Straw Man: Correcting Critical Misunderstandings of Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211024399 Shaw, V. (2013). The Short Story: A Critical Introduction. Routledge. Sion, R. T. (2010). Aldous Huxley and the Search for Meaning: A Study of the Eleven Novels. McFarland.

Initiation in Limbo

When Limbo was published in January 1920, Huxley was considered a young, promising poet and talented contributor to the Athenaeum and Westminster Gazette. He had acquaintances in London’s literary circles, given that he had frequented Garsington Manor where he had met D. H. Lawrence and writers from the Bloomsbury Group. In addition, he regularly visited the Eiffel Tower restaurant and other popular modernist venues where he dined with distinguished artists and intellectuals of that era. His family history played a role in establishing his early reputation as well. As Nicholas Murray (2003) explains, Lady Ottoline Morrell, the patroness of Garsington, introduced Aldous to her other guests not as a young poet or critic but as Thomas Henry Huxley’s grandson (p. 55). Sybille Bedford (1974) underscores that Limbo sold only 1,600 copies, but that young literary enthusiasts recognized a new writer “expressing so essentially the coming post-war mood” (108). The book was published by Chatto & Windus, which would turn out to be Huxley’s life-long publisher. However, Percy Spalding, a partner in Chatto & Windus, was far from impressed in the beginning. In his autobiography, Frank Swinnerton (1936), a novelist and critic who was a reader at Chatto & Windus at the time, explains that Spalding was interested in Aldous’ manuscript primarily because he was T. H. Huxley’s grandson (p. 311). Soon he discovered that Limbo was “appallingly gross, blasphemous, and horrible” (p. 311), and refused to publish it. Not © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_2

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even Spalding’s admiration for T. H. Huxley could help him approve the manuscript. It was only after he and Swinnerton scrutinized every problematic detail and Huxley agreed to make minor revisions that the manuscript was accepted. The first reviews of Limbo were mostly favorable. Michael Sadleir wrote that Huxley was “the most readable of his generation,” predicting that in three decades he would become a prominent English writer (Murray, 2003, p. 119). In an anonymous review for the Times Literary Supplement, Virginia Woolf praised Huxley’s witty satire but reproached him for attacking “easy targets” (p. 119). Limbo was also Huxley’s first book to be acclaimed in the United States. Writing for the New Republic, Herbert S. Gorman characterized Huxley as “one of the finest writers of prose in England today” (Gorman, 1975, p. 45). The analyses in this chapter show that Limbo was Huxley’s initiation into major topics he would develop in his novels and essays: organized religion, the craze for obscure beliefs after World War I, dominant educational models at the beginning of the twentieth century, onedimensional intellectualism, imposed promiscuity and mass consumerism. Moreover, Limbo contains the nuclei of almost all character types in Huxley’s fiction. From “Happily Ever After” to “The Death of Lully,” we find peculiar educators, corrupt clergymen, pseudo-occultists, sexually repressed mystics, disillusioned artists, and intellectuals who suppress their emotions. However, contrary to the common misconception that Huxley’s characters are always embodiments of his ideas, this chapter explains that Huxley’s ideas sometimes evolved from characters in his early short fiction.

Happily Ever After In a 1918 letter to his brother, Julian, Aldous Huxley admitted that he was working on a play which was “more suitable for a long-drawn Henry Jamesian short story” (Huxley, 1969, p. 157). The only part he liked was the depiction of Cobby.1 Although Huxley never finished the play, he transformed it into the short story “Happily Ever After,” which explores several themes that will become the landmarks of his prose. In the first place, the story depicts three outlandish teachers who represent three pedagogical models dominant at the time. Alfred Petherton is an old-school university lecturer who has a passion for evoking obscure

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philosophers and reading gossips in The Times. He finds the same inspiration in Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the forthcoming marriage of Beryl Camberley-Belcher. His name is respectable in academia, for he is the author of “meritorious, if not exactly brilliant, books” such as Plato’s Predecessors or Three Scottish Metaphysicians (Huxley, 1992, p. 15). As befits the man of a sedentary lifestyle, he suffers from poor digestion and heart palpitations, and throughout the whole year, even in June, he has a shawl over his shoulders because he is terrified of drafts. He bombards his daughter, Marjorie, with numerous questions, which at times deal with “personal immortality of the soul” (p. 19), whereas at other times they boil down to inquiries about current celebrities. Petherton, however, does not expect answers. His questions are meant to indicate that a great man should grasp complex metaphysical problems and keep abreast of latest gossips in the high society. It is not a coincidence that Marjorie, raised in such an isolated environment, finds it difficult to communicate with her relatives and acquaintances, let alone understand what a meaningful relationship should be. Petherton’s brother is the Reverend Roger, “a master at one of [the] most glorious public schools” (Huxley, 1992, p. 23). Unlike Alfred, who adheres to conservative pedagogy and newspaper gossips, the Reverend has idiosyncratic views on education. He proposes “plenty of beating” (p. 28) as the most effective teaching method. He believes that beating can work even for students who do not want to learn, for “if you can’t hammer knowledge in at their heads, you can at least beat a little in at their tails” (p. 28). Roger also detests scientists and would never provide them with school accommodation because they cannot keep discipline. On top of that, he has objections to their stance on religion: Some of these men never come to chapel except when they’re on duty. And then, I ask you, what happens when they prepare their boys for Confirmation? Why, I’ve known boys come to me who were supposed to have been prepared by one or other of these men, and, on asking them, I’ve found that they know nothing whatever about the most solemn facts of the Eucharist. … You see how absurd it is to let anyone but the classical men have anything to do with the boys’ lives. (Huxley, 1992, p. 29)

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In his opinion, teachers of any subject, regardless of their knowledge and experience, can be effective only if they accept their inferior position to “the classical men,” that is, the conservative teachers holding the nineteenth-century values. In a way, the Reverend Roger resembles Father Butler form Joyce’s story “An Encounter,” who complains that his students read The Apache Chief instead of good old Roman History (Joyce, 1991, p. 9). However, Roger’s rant against the lack of discipline among scientists and their indifference to school ceremonies has a deeper cause than Father Butler’s disapproval of comic books. It indicates the Reverend’s fear of science, especially its ability to prove that many religious concepts are groundless. That is why he does everything in his power to curb the influence of the scientists at his school. Alfred Petherton and the Reverend Roger are the products of outdated educational models that imply supreme position of teachers regardless of their qualifications and respect for students. The narrator of “Happily Ever After” highlights not only the loopholes in their knowledge but also their self-centered approach that disregards students’ opinion. Alfred never misses the opportunity to ignore his daughter’s indifference to his pseudo-lectures, whereas Roger cares for his students only in relation to the school’s religious observances. Their stance on education is also marked by their reluctance to change. They are not willing to reconsider their pedagogies, let alone adjust to modern tendencies in education. Even though Huxley worked as a full-time teacher for less than two years—that is, from September 1917 to the end of spring term in 19192 — education was always an important topic in his fiction and essays. In “Happily Ever After,” he criticizes obsolete educational practices and their proponents. It is interesting that he elaborates on these issues in Proper Studies (1927), seven years after the publication of Limbo. In his opinion, one-sided lectures are doomed to failure because they are too remote from students’ experience and hard to apply to their own life. He underscores that “too much stress is laid on teaching and too little on active learning” (Huxley, 1927, p. 114). To solve this problem, Huxley suggests games that would train the senses and lessons that would “be wedded in some way to practical life” and “spring from the ordinary experiences of modern man” (p. 105). Regardless of how obsolete or self-evident these statements may seem nowadays, we should put them in the context of the early twentieth century when active learning, promoted by the likes of Maria Montessori and John Dewey,3 was still a novelty, often ridiculed

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or looked down on, and when people like Alfred and Roger Petherton were considered supreme authorities in education. Huxley’s satire in “Happily Ever After” is directed against modern educators as well. Although some authors believe that Jacobsen is “a highly intelligent man who is not made fun of” (Newby, 1957, p. 66), many passages in this story prove otherwise. Peter Jacobsen is Alfred Petherton’s former student, a Norwegian born in Argentina and educated in several countries, who has come all the way from Chicago to spend time with his former mentor. Due to his cosmopolitan education and unrivaled international experience, he looks down on all his interlocutors. The ones who are spared his contempt can hope only for his sympathy. His religious belief is ambiguous: Jacobsen respects the church as an institution, yet he cannot stand the “childish imbecility of its representatives” whose “intellect [is] only a little less limited than that of an Australian aboriginal” (Huxley, 1992, p. 21). His biggest flaw, however, is that he constantly suppresses his emotions. He even boasts about never being “moved by external things” (p. 31). That is why he is surprised when he learns that George has lost his leg in the war: George had lost a leg. There would be no more of that Olympian speed and strength and beauty. Jacobsen conjured up before his memory a vision of the boy running with his great fawn-coloured dog across green expanses of grass. How glorious he had looked, his fine brown hair blowing like fire in the wind of his own speed, his cheeks flushed, his eyes very bright. And how easily he ran, with long, bounding strides, looking down at the dog that jumped and barked at his side! (Huxley, 1992, p. 40)

The artificial sentimentality in this paragraph indicates that Jacobsen’s grief is not genuine. He knows that he should feel something given that his young acquaintance lost his leg, but he cannot handle a pure emotion. Instead, resorting to the clichés such as “Olympian speed,” “hair blowing like fire in the wind,” and the stereotypical image of a boy running with his dog, Jacobsen tries to convince himself that his reactions are proper. The culmination of his delusion is his attempt to rationalize George’s amputation. His ingenious mind ties the boy’s predicament to the differences in tone between the English word stump and its French translation moignon. This unexpected comparison transforms into a dream about “slimy red knobbles, large polyp-like things, growing as he looked at

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them” (Huxley, 1992, p. 40), indicating that he feels nothing but fear and disgust. However, when he learns that Guy has been killed, he succumbs to grief. The external influence he has been trying to avoid finally takes over. As the narrator emphasizes, it has been “steadily encroaching upon him” and now he is “at its mercy” (Huxley, 1992, p. 42). It is the first time that he acknowledges the horrors of the Great War, which he successfully disregarded up to that point. When Marjorie comes to the room, he escapes through the window and walks aimlessly in the garden, trying to cope with his overwhelming emotions. The narrator leaves for the reader to decide whether this turn of events affects Jacobsen to the point of changing his perception of the world or it is just a temporary disturbance that his intellectual shield will eventually shrug off. Whatever the result may be, there is no doubt that Jacobsen is the caricature of a selfconscious intellectual and that he is clearly, despite Newby’s observations, made fun of. Although more progressive than Alfred and Roger Petherton, Jacobsen also embodies the dysfunctional education that Huxley mocks in his essays. In Ends and Means , Huxley (1946a) explains that mainstream education is either too specialist or too intellectual. Having completed the usual educational cycle, specialists lack broader knowledge, whereas intellectuals are deprived of experience. Moreover, Huxley points out that even someone who is generally believed to be the “successful product of our academic education is an unsatisfactory person” (p. 196). Jacobsen is a typical Huxleyan intellectual who, despite his academic performance and international experience, lacks emotional maturity. We should keep in mind that “Happily Ever After” was published more than fifteen years before Ends and Means, which indicates that Huxley’s characters are not always the mouthpieces of ideas shaped in his nonfiction; on the contrary, some of his ideas first appeared in his short stories, gaining their theoretical explanations much later. “Happily Ever After” criticizes organized religion epitomized by the Reverend Roger. He is “sleek and glossy like a well-fed black cob” (Huxley, 1992, p. 26), which implies his privileged position in society. He has a “red neck as thick as his head” and hair “cropped with military closeness” (p. 26), so that he can “set a good example to the boys,” especially the ones with “aesthetic tendencies” (p. 27). All these characteristics refer to the Church of England at the time: its rigidity in

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education, reluctance to change, and opposition to free artistic expression. The Reverend Roger also demonstrates the fear of the then clergy that they might lose their influence in British society. That fear comes to light when Roger denigrates the poor who, in his opinion, have “plenty to eat, plenty of money, and no taxes to pay” (p. 35). That the Reverend is unable to identify, let alone empathize, with anyone outside his caste becomes obvious when he hears that Guy, his niece’s fiancé, died in the war. After Jacobsen reminds him that Guy had a lot of “potentialities,” Roger does not miss the opportunity to mention that he was not on good terms with Guy because he was “too eccentric” and “too clever” (p. 42). What is even worse, the Reverend tries to console his niece with the words from his latest sermon, asking her to be proud of Guy’s death. His behavior could be best described with a line from The Devils of Loudun (1952), where Huxley makes a difference between a mundane egoist and a religious egoist. The former “merely wants what he wants,” whereas the latter, having received religious education, believes that “what he wants is what God wants” (Huxley, 1959, p. 18). Thus, even at such a tragic moment when he is supposed to comfort his niece, the Reverend Roger cannot extinguish his religious egoism. The Reverend Roger’s attitude toward science and art, his obsolete pedagogy and inability to empathize with his niece and the victims of World War I illustrate the Church’s dissociation from modern society, especially from the people who embraced the changes at the beginning of the twentieth century. For Huxley, the Church of England and other Christian churches in Europe produced nothing more than “an affair of rituals, mechanical observances, mass-emotions,” as he described them in Proper Studies (Huxley, 1927, p. 178) or “organized sacramentalism” (Huxley, 2009, p. 270), as he called them in The Perennial Philosophy. He claimed that Christian churches in Europe, despite their differences, lacked the original tenets of Christian belief—the vestiges of which Huxley could find mostly in Christian mysticism—that would never ignore human suffering. The Reverend Roger is the first character in Huxley’s fiction to incorporate negative characteristics of institutional Christianity. Mr. Bodiham in Crome Yellow (1921), “a grey metallic face with iron cheek-bones and a narrow iron brow” (Huxley, 1958b, p. 52), illustrates only one aspect—dark, rigid, inhumane—whereas the Reverend Pelvey from Antic Hay (1923) is merely a voice at the sermon, offering a backdrop to Theodore Gumbril’s ruminations on God and life.

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“Happily Ever After” contains several prototypes that will develop in Huxley’s novels and subsequent short stories. Alfred’s daughter, Marjorie, spends all her time serving her father and entertaining his pseudometaphysical lectures. She has a modest real-life experience and therefore can only have a grotesquely idealistic relationship with her fiancé. That type will evolve into a range of young women—for instance, Melpomene Fugger from “Nuns at Luncheon,” Irene Aldwinkle from Those Barren Leaves , Moira Tarwin from “The Rest Cure,” and Marjorie Carling from Point Counter Point —women who, due to their rigid upbringing, become an easy prey for petty criminals and quasi-intellectuals. On the other hand, Guy Lambourne, Marjorie’s fiancé who dies in World War I, resembles the writers/intellectuals such as Denis Stone from Crome Yellow, Philip Quarles from Point Counter Point and Anthony Beavis from Eyeless in Gaza. He is contemplative, rebellious, and extremely selfconscious, doubting his writing talent and admitting he will always be “second-rate, physically, morally, mentally” (Huxley, 1992, p. 25). Finally, George White, a sensitive and spiritual young man who loses his leg in the war, embodies the type that will take its full shape in John the Savage from Brave New World and Brian Foxe from Eyeless in Gaza. This story has many stylistic features that will be dominant in Huxley’s subsequent works. His recognizable humor and irony are astonishingly developed in “Happily Ever After” if we bear in mind that Limbo was Huxley’s first book of short fiction. For instance, Jacobsen recognizes the importance of the church as “one of the few hopes for humanity” (Huxley, 1992, p. 21). This idea is followed by a casual remark about other reasons for his interest in churches. We also learn that he likes visiting churches as a “student of anthropology,” “Freudian psychologist” and due to “the philosophic amusement of counting the undistributed middles and tabulating historically the exploded fallacies in the parson’s discourse” (p. 21). This paradox indicates his awareness of the social significance of Christianity, but also suggests his contempt for Christian practices, which he never voices in public. Another example of Huxley’s irony is the beginning of Chapter 4, where we find the Reverend Roger “biting the end of his pen and scratching his head” as if he were “in the throes of literary composition” (p. 41). Soon we realize that this demanding intellectual activity results from his attempt to write an obituary for Guy. Not only does this scene put Roger’s teaching skills in doubt—if he struggles to compose a couple of courteous sentences, he

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must be struggling with more difficult tasks such as preparing meaningful lectures for his students—but it magnifies his insecurities, which do not go away even when he should console his grieving niece. The contemplations of many chaste women in Huxley’s novels are announced in this story. Reading Guy’s letter in which he alludes to his sexual desire, Marjorie responds: “I dreamt the other night I was holding you in my arms, and woke up hugging the pillow” (p. 18). Marjorie Petherton is the first of many women in Huxley’s fiction whose personalities will be dominated by sexual repression, although she does not suffer the consequences as Melpomene Fugger from “Nuns at Luncheon” or Marjorie Carling from Point Counter Point (that they are namesakes is not a coincidence). Finally, Guy’s unsuccessful writing attempts resemble similar thoughts in Denis Stone from Crome Yellow and Philip Quarles from Point Counter Point. Thinking about his novel, Guy moves on to explain the purpose of his writing: “What I want to get is something very hard, very external. Intense emotion, but one will somehow have got outside it” (p. 26). His thoughts correspond with the ruminations of many writers in Huxley’s fiction, especially with their self-doubt and inability to express emotions.

Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers In “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” Huxley satirizes modernist art and the craze for the occult and minor religious beliefs at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a story about Emberlin, a peculiar intellectual whose mind is a strange mix of “fantastic speculativeness of the undergraduate” and “wise and antique dons” (Huxley, 1992, p. 48). But Emberlin is far from the black-and-white illustration of a failed scholar who finds relief in occultism. He has many other distinctive qualities: To be allowed to listen to his post-prandial conversation was a privilege indeed. Not only was he himself a consummately good talker, but he had also the power of stimulating others to talk well. He was like some subtle wine, intoxicating just to the Meredithian level of tipsiness. In his company you would find yourself lifted to the sphere of nimble and mercurial conceptions; you would suddenly realize that some miracle had occurred, that you were living no longer in a dull world of jumbled things but somewhere above the hotch-potch in a glassily perfect universe

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of ideas, where all was informed, consistent, symmetrical. (Huxley, 1992, p. 47)

This quotation, apart from demonstrating Huxley’s literary talent, showcases a feature of Huxley’s characterization that we can find in all his satirical works. The narrator provides many clues about Emberlin’s personality, which we cannot fully understand because it is the beginning of the story. Nevertheless, we are put on the right track to interpret Emberlin’s uncanny talents later on. For instance, we learn that he is a good talker, yet his eloquence does not bring a substantial change to our beliefs. The metaphor of “subtle wine” that produces “the Meredithian level of tipsiness” points to an amusing atmosphere that will not turn our world upside down but will enable us to enjoy Emberlin’s idiosyncratic ideas. This excerpt also contains Huxley’s elegant irony. Emberlin’s “nimble and mercurial conceptions” will transpose us to the artificial world in which everything is “informed, consistent, symmetrical.” We might assume that Emberlin’s theories are based on rigorous examinations, comparisons with other similar concepts, and eliminations of discrepancies, which result in a set of perfect ideas that is hard to refute. In the remainder of the story, however, as we are given more information about his strange theoretical framework, such an introduction creates powerful irony. Although a prolific writer, Emberlin refuses to publish his works so as not to succumb to “exhibitionism” (Huxley, 1992, p. 48). He made that mistake only once, in his youth, when he let a collection of his poems see the light of day, but soon he realized the magnitude of his irresponsibility and, before the book could reach a wider audience, gathered all the available copies and burned them. His first great love was alchemy and he achieved “considerable proficiency in the Great Art” (p. 53). Experimenting with mnemonics, he made a syllogizing machine in an attempt to gain universal knowledge prescribed by a Catalan mystic and poet Ramon Llull (1232–1316) or Raymond Lully, as he is known in the Englishspeaking world. However, nothing has influenced Emberlin more than Eupompianism, a school of thought founded by Eupompus, a forgotten Alexandrian painter who used to be famous for making portraits of the rich before he set about discovering the secrets of numbers. Eupompus’ poetics inspired a small group of people who called themselves Philarithmics, celebrating the numerical art and philosophy of their master. In line with his long-lasting spiritual practice, Emberlin has evolved into

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a pious Philarithmic, counting tiles in public lavatories and explaining the “statistics about the speed of light or the rate of growth in fingernails” (p. 54). His whole life revolves around numbers as if “some mental leprosy” (p. 54) has covered his intellect. Unlike “Happily Ever After,” which criticizes institutional Christianity and its reluctance to change, “Eupompus” is a satire against cults and obscure beliefs at the beginning of the twentieth century. Emberlin seems to be a strange mix of Aleister Crowley4 and MacGregor Mathers, “half a lunatic, half knave” and a lonely “ghost-lover” who became “more arrogant being a ghost” (pp. 225–226), as W. B. Yeats (1970) calls Mathers in “All Souls’ Night.” Even though Huxley was open to different schools of thought, he never advocated Emberlin’s “one-pointedness” that results in “more or less total atrophy of all but one side of the mind” (Huxley, 2009, p. 299). From his youth to the end of his spiritual journey, Huxley aimed to unite diverse forms of knowledge and experience—traditional and non-traditional, mainstream and obscure—that would enable him to understand deeper layers of reality. He did not support the limited perception of life that inevitably led to blind alleys. As Peter Firchow (1972) argues, both Emberlin and Eupompus believe that “the analytic intellect” (p. 38) is the only means of discovering the truth. Since they deliberately limit their perception of reality, they become “incapable of seeing other human beings except as numerical objects,” which leads to their “isolation and inhumanity” (p. 38). The idea of one-pointedness that results in obscurity and isolation from other people will become a recurrent theme in Huxley’s fiction. Emberlin is also the literary illustration of what Huxley (1927) calls a “crank” (p. 223). In his opinion, cranks possess “a specific tendency to receive beliefs and endow them with qualities of absoluteness” (p. 223), clinging to extreme ideas so passionately because they secretly doubt their truth. The more problematic a concept, the more personal their reaction, which makes the concept look even more solid. Like Emberlin and his experiments with alchemy, mnemonics and Eupompianism, cranks “ride several hobbies in succession, treating each in turn as an absolute and religious dogma” (p. 223). Guided by this complex mechanism, the controversial ideas are elevated to such a level that they become a new belief. Sometimes, according to Huxley, a person’s subconsciousness stages a “counter-attack” (p. 224), launching a new set of accusations against the initial concept, in which case, as a form of overcompensation, the belief turns into fanaticism. In

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that sense, Emberlin, like many other characters in Huxley’s early short fiction, introduces a theory that Huxley will later develop in his essays. “Eupompus” mocks the urge in many modernist artists and intellectuals to find a substitute for religion. As Pericles Lewis (2010) points out, secularism was a “minority position in England” (p. 39) at the beginning of the twentieth century. Cristanne Miller (2009) states that modernism did not repudiate religion but mostly the hierarchies of “formal religious institutions” (p. 261). Huxley, on the other hand, was among the rare authors of modernist era who thought the world could live without religion. He considered it a system of superficial rituals that was in place not to elevate the soul or deepen the perception of reality but mostly to preserve the privileges of its followers. Dana W. Sawyer (2021) rightly claims that Huxley for the most part despised religion, deeming it “a province of gatekeepers, power grabbers, sycophants, and obscurantists” (p. 6). Of all religious practices, Huxley praised individual mystical insights, which I will explain in the analysis of “The Death of Lully” and the stories from the 1950s. Huxley mocks some forms of modernist art in this story. Eupompus’ works after his numerical illumination are more akin to modernist experimentations than ancient portraits. For instance, one of his jewels is an enormous canvas covered in thirty-three thousand black swans. Another is an “orchard of identical trees set in quincunxes” (Huxley, 1992, p. 52). His most controversial painting describes an amphitheater with multitudes of Cyclopes whose eyes “are fixed, in a terrible and menacing scrutiny, upon a dwarf-like creature cowering pitiably in the arena” (p. 52). George Woodcock (1972) interprets Eupompus’ art as a satire on modernist movements which believed to have “a scientific basis for painting” (p. 72). In his opinion, the representation of the one-eyed Cyclopes who stare at the dwarf, the only one with two eyes, mocks cubists who “abandon the stereoscopic two-eyed vision” in order to obtain the “three dimensional solidity” of an object (p. 73). In “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” Huxley seems to suggest that the art satisfied with the representation of a single number/symbol is not a modernist invention. The only difference is that in the ancient past it was called madness, whereas in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century such a concept is promoted as a supreme artistic style. Indeed, in his early essays, Huxley criticizes cubist obsession with geometry. For instance, in “The New Romanticism,” he writes that cubists have removed from their paintings “everything that might appeal to the individual soul” and

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filled the gap with “solid geometry” (Huxley, 1931, p. 193). Needless to say, modernist painting—even if it displays a black square on white as in Malevich’s famous work—offers much more than plain geometry, as the narrator of this story would probably interpret it. “Eupompus” is Huxley’s first short story to showcase his traditionalist views on painting. In both his fiction and nonfiction, he will frequently satirize modernist art, especially the idea whereby anything new is to be regarded as superior to the old (Antic Hay being a prime example). It should be noted that in the 1950s, after his famous experiments with mescalin, Huxley modified his views on cubist perspective and representation, which I will explain in the analysis of “The Tillotson Banquet” from Mortal Coils . The modern-day Philarithmic and his ancient idol are among the funniest characters in Huxley’s short fiction. Regardless of whether we read about Emberlin’s colorful personality or Eupompus’ dedication to numbers, we cannot help admiring Huxley’s exceptional humor and irony, especially if we remember that he was only twenty-six when Limbo was published. For instance, to show Emberlin’s eloquence, the narrator describes him as a “godlike” man whose words can build “this crystal Eden, where no belly-going snake … might ever enter and disturb its harmonies” (Huxley, 1992, p. 47). This complex image suggests not only Emberlin’s rhetorical acumen and the pseudo-religious basis of his belief but also his crank-like fervor that not even Satan can undermine. The effect is even stronger when we learn what he considers to be the absolute truth. Another example of Huxley’s wit is the source of Eupompus’ biography. It is “a volume of Zuylerius … not the Zuylerius one knows … the familiar John Zuylerius, Junior, but the elder Henricus Zuylerius” (p. 50). People who see John Zuylerius, Junior, as a familiar figure inhabit a realm inaccessible to mere mortals, and their stories have to be more unusual than anything one has heard before. While explaining Eupompus’ reputation as a portrait-painter, Emberlin, referring to the elder Zuylerius, claims that “great courtesans would pay him a month’s earnings” for “a half-length in oils,” that merchants would grant him “the costliest of their outlandish treasures,” and that Ethiopian rulers, having made a grueling journey, would give him “camel-loads of gold and spices” for their miniatures on ivory (pp. 50–51). Here we can enjoy Emberlin’s storytelling, which would convince even diehard skeptics. Again, the humorous effect becomes complete once we realize why the great painter sacrificed his fame.

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The most ironic part of this story is the depiction of what could have been Eupompus’ last painting had he not killed his followers and committed suicide. According to Henricus Zuylerius, Emberlin informs us, the painting was “a representation of Pure Number, or God and the Universe … a picture of the cosmos seen … through a rather Neoplatonic camera obscura” (Huxley, 1992, p. 53). Emberlin believes that the masterpiece was supposed to be “a very adequate rendering in visible form of the conception of the one and the many, with all the intermediate stages of enlightenment between matter and the Fons Deitatis ” (p. 53). Since Eupompus decided to murder his followers rather than finish the painting, we can assume he knew that his ultimate goal to explain the world by numbers could never be achieved and that his sacrifice had been in vain. However, scholars who explore Huxley’s alternative spirituality—and that has to be the most ironic aspect of this painting—might recognize an interesting detail: Eupompus’ unfinished representation of God and universe with “the conception of the one and many” and different “stages of enlightenment between matter and the Fons Deitatis ” resembles Huxley’s idea of the absolute or the divine ground,5 the knowledge of which he will see, more than two decades later, as the “ultimate reason of human existence” (Huxley, 2009, p. 21). Although these two concepts are not the same, the similarities are striking. It seems that Huxley’s idea of the divine ground did not come out of the blue in the mid-1930s, as it is usually believed. “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” indicates that the sketch of that concept had been around at least since 1920.

The Death of Lully Raymond Lully, the Catalan mystic, poet, and missionary featured in “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” as Emberlin’s former paragon, is the protagonist of “The Death of Lully”. We learn about his life from the captain of a Genoese ship, who tells a Spanish nobleman and his mistress that Lully used to be an alchemist, poet, and “a raffish young dog” who was “drinking, drabbing, and dicing” (Huxley, 1992, p. 73), but became a hermit as he learned that the love of his life suffered from breast cancer. Henceforth, according to the captain, the “Illuminated Doctor” was engaged in missionary work in Northern Africa until he was murdered by the infidels.

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Despite Lully’s unsavory reputation among European sailors, the captain sees Lully’s death as Providence. He intends to steal the martyr’s corpse and pay his dues to Christianity. However, when the captain’s crew bring Lully’s body to the ship, he turns out to be alive. Due to his age and condition, he is not likely to survive for more than a day, so the captain is faced with a difficult dilemma: whether to take Lully’s corpse to Spain, where people would venerate him as a patron martyr, or to Genoa, the captain’s hometown where people might refuse Lully’s body because he is not Genoese. Even though Lully’s life portrayed in this story is not always based on facts, his controversial approach to Christianity is closer to historical records. As Joaquín-José Cuéllar Trasorras (2022) explains in his essay on Huxley’s references to Spanish mysticism, the Illuminated Doctor had issues with the Inquisition due to his interpretations of traditional Christian concepts (p. 100). Huxley’s story explores this aspect of Lully’s religious belief. Thus, the narrator contrasts Lully’s understanding of Christianity with the behavior of Christians on the ship. The Spanish nobleman is “proud as sin” and “as jealous as a stag,” treating the sailors like “slaves or dogs” (Huxley, 1992, p. 68). The narrator calls him the “possessor” (p. 68) of his mistress. His jealousy often turns into rage, especially if someone smiles at his property. For him, Christianity is nothing more than the ideology that secures his country’s colonial power. He is not interested in helping people or controlling his emotions, much less in elevating his soul. The Spaniard’s mistress is afraid of his anger and cruelty; yet she cannot resist him because he is a nobleman. She allows him to do whatever he pleases as long as he does not hurt her physically. The captain, on the other hand, intends to steal Lully’s corpse because he wishes to be praised for rescuing the martyr from infidels. He does not care about spiritual dimensions of Christianity. He understands the importance of Christian faith in the social hierarchy of his republic and wants to use Lully’s corpse to his benefit. The contrast between Lully and his fellow-Christians is most striking in his final monologue. As he confesses to the Spaniard that it has been fifty years since he had his last “earthly passion,” Lully explains that people’s souls “fester inwardly,” that man “thirsts” for “swamps of evil” while a “devouring cancer gnaws at his entrails,” and that he has lived for half a century with “fever and cancer” or “acids that burn and corrode” (Huxley, 1992, pp. 76–77). This expressionist account of human condition—which perhaps prompted Nicholas Murray (2003) to

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regret Huxley’s “morbid interest in human decay and debility” (p. 138)— is not something we expect from a Christian martyr on his deathbed. The quoted section of Lully’s monologue contains at least two important ideas: 1) Lully’s fifty-year-long commitment to Christianity started after his last sexual intercourse,6 that is, after he learned that the love of his life had breast cancer, which highlights the connection between repressed sexuality and religious zeal; 2) his search for spiritual enlightenment has led him to detest human body. These two ideas are crucial for our understanding of Huxley’s early views on Christian mysticism. The rest of Lully’s monologue unites alchemy and Christianity. He admits that he has spent most of his time trying to create gold from secondary ingredients. The following paragraph gives us more details on his idea of spiritual awakening: And yet God made all perfect; it is but accident and the evil of will that causes defaults. All metals should be gold, were it not that their elements willed evilly in their desire to combine. And so with men: the burning sulphur of passion, the salt of wisdom, the nimble mercurial soul should come together to make a golden being, incorruptible and rustless. But the elements mingle jarringly, not in a pure harmony of love, and gold is rare, while lead and iron and poisonous brass that leaves a taste as of remorse behind it are everywhere common. (Huxley, 1992, p. 76)

Lully claims that free will is the main cause of human suffering. However, as he states that only the alchemist unity of disharmonic elements can make a harmonious whole, he signals that free will could be a tool of redemption. This seemingly contradictory opinion becomes clearer when Lully explains that one’s will to follow a single path is to blame for any “defaults.” Only if the elements combine with the aim of reaching the total “harmony of love” will the new solution become “incorruptible and rustless.” It is also interesting that Lully, unlike many Christian mystics, considers the mix of passion, wisdom, and soul as the only path to salvation. In his view, passion—provided it is not pursued as a goal but as a part of a bigger unifying force—is not an obstacle to perfection and God’s kingdom. If combined with other elements in pursuit of the divine totality, passion transforms into the necessary ingredient. The only problem is that Lully came to this conclusion too late. Despite all his wisdom, Lully doubts that his life-long endeavor has been worth the struggle and he thanks God for bringing his suffering to

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the end. His alchemist metaphors, controversial lifestyle, and the lack of support by the Church put him in between the institutional Christianity and general public. Moreover, Lully’s discoveries imply that Christianity alone is not enough to transform the human soul. One needs alchemy, too, which signifies other beliefs and practices. This is one of the first indications in Huxley’s fiction—if we exclude the satirical descriptions of Emberlin’s endeavors mentioned in the analysis of “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art By Numbers”—that only a comprehensive philosophy, consisting of various forms of knowledge and spiritual experience, can enable someone to transcend their selfhood and reach other dimensions of reality. As I have stated above, “The Death of Lully” shows Huxley’s early views on Christian mysticism, that is, the practice epitomized by the likes of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, or St. Teresa of Ávila (and, of course, Ramon Llull) whereby one can achieve the union with God through a specific state of mind which entails the annihilation of the self. Even though the experiences and results of the aforementioned mystics were different, each of them aimed to transcend their selfhood and gain “unitive knowledge with the divine Ground” (Huxley, 2009, p. 21). Jake Poller (2019) correctly observes that Huxley was both attracted and repelled by mysticism in his early works (p. 91). I would add that Huxley—who at the time was unable to connect Christian mysticism with similar experiences in oriental cultures—was attracted by genuine efforts of Christian mystics to understand the human condition and repelled by the extreme results that such efforts usually produced. That is to say, he praised Christian mystics for their attempts to transcend their ego and decipher hidden aspects of reality, but criticized their physical austerities and rejection of carnal love. (In the analyses of the stories from the 1950s, I will explain how Huxley reconciled Christian mysticism not only with other faiths but with individual mystical insights which are not related to any religion.) Finally, this short story criticizes onepointedness in religious belief. In his final monologue, Lully regrets not seeing that the North African heathens are the same as his fellow Christians in Europe. He realizes that one needs a more inclusive approach than Christianity to perform a “more difficult alchemy, the transformation of men” (Huxley, 1992, p. 77). The story shows the Freudian connection between religious fanaticism and repressed sexuality, typical of many modernist authors. Having learned that his mistress had cancer, Lully decided never to succumb to

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an “earthly passion” again. He was a “fanatic of puritanism,” as Huxley (1927) calls this type in his essay “The Substitutes for Religion,” a fanatic who “overcompensates a secret prurience” (p. 220). The alchemist paragraph quoted above implies that Lully, on his deathbed, became aware of his main limitation. His striving toward the Absolute did not include passion, that is, carnal love—on the contrary, he did everything in his power to run away from it—which is why his endeavor ended in failure. It should also be noted that in Science, Liberty, and Peace (1946), published almost three decades after this story, Huxley dismissed the idea whereby “spirituality is nothing but wish fulfilment and misdirected sex” (Science, Liberty and Peace 29), which illustrates the change in Huxley’s perception of spirituality that occurred in his later years.

Cynthia In his 1920 review of Limbo, Herbert S. Gorman labeled “Cynthia” (together with “The Bookshop” and “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers”) as a “delicious trifle” (Gorman, H. S. 1975, p. 45). It is a story about Tom Lykeham, an Oxford undergraduate who meets a goddess at the theater and believes he is Apollo. One evening during a walk with the narrator, Lykeham becomes enchanted by the moon. He rushes to the top of the hill so that he can be close to the celestial force. It is then the narrator sees Lykeham kneel in front of a woman as she caresses his hair. Leaving them to enjoy each other, the narrator returns to his dormitory room and, after checking Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary, concludes that Lykeham is not Apollo but a goat-foot Pan. As in “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” the narrator sets the tone at the beginning of the story, which the reader should follow in order to understand the protagonist’s personality and ideas. We first learn that Tom Lykeham is a descendant of an old Anglo-Saxon family and that his name is a derivation of lycam, which means “corpse” in old English. His ancestry and outlandish name contain at least three important allusions: 1) His family background refers to the ancient past with its historical and mythological frameworks; 2) being a corpse, Lykeham the man is only a façade that conceals another person or entity; 3) the ambiguity of his name implies other possible meanings that could reveal his identity. Each of these cryptic allusions plays a role in shaping our expectations. The narrator suggests that Lykeham is not who we think he

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is and that we should look for his identity among the dark forces of the ancient past. To introduce Lykeham’s personality, the narrator chooses the following scene: Through the open window Tom was shouting a deep E flat, with a spread chord of under- and over-tones, while the guitar gibbered shrilly and hysterically in D natural. Lykeham laughed, banged down his guitar on to the sofa with such violence that it gave forth a trembling groan from all its strings, and ran forward to meet me. He slapped me on the shoulder with painful heartiness; his whole face radiated joy and excitement. (Huxley, 1992, p. 57)

On the surface, the first sentence in this paragraph shows that Lykeham’s talent for music is not as remarkable as he believes. It also implies his disregard for harmony and logic, together with his pronounced neurosis, because he does not sing but shouts, and his guitar does not play but “gibber[s] shrilly and hysterically.” His erratic behavior is amplified when he bangs his guitar against the couch, which emphasizes how unpredictable his decisions can be. At the same time, his face is not contorted with rage but reflects “joy and excitement.” The narrator explains that Lykeham’s tastes are “eccentric, his habits deplorable, the range of his information immense” (Huxley, 1992, p. 56). This description could apply to Emberlin as well. However, despite everything the two characters have in common, they do not belong to the same type. Perhaps the biggest difference between them is that Lykeham has an insatiable sexual appetite, whereas the pious Philarithmic spends all his time isolated from other people. A neurotic man with an uncontrollable sexual desire whose name alludes not only to a corpse but to Mount Lykaion in Arcadia7 could not be any other deity but Pan. In her article on D. H. Lawrence’s fascination with Pan, Fiona Richards (2015) points out the “astonishing diversity” of texts in English literature that featured Pan in Lawrence’s time (p. 90). Huxley’s “Cynthia” undoubtedly fits in with the literary climate at the beginning of the twentieth century. If we move beyond the literal interpretation of the story and take into consideration Huxley’s satirical approach in Limbo, we can assume that Lykeham’s obsession with his goddess and especially his belief that he is Apollo ridicule modernist

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infatuation with mythology, which made even mediocre talents believe they could reach Parnassus just by invoking ancient divinities. Apart from demonstrating Huxley’s use of allusions and ambiguities, “Cynthia” displays many characteristics of his short fiction. In his descriptions of Lykeham, the narrator resorts to humor and irony, complementing the tone he set in the beginning. For example, Lykeham admires his physical appearance not because he is handsome and irresistible but because he is at the same time “repulsive” and endowed with “fascinating ugly beauty” (Huxley, 1992, p. 60). His narcissism corresponds with the image the narrator has been creating from the start in order to hint Lykeham’s identity. In addition, when Lykeham attempts to depict his goddess’ unique beauty, he says she is “frozenly virginal” and “virginally passionate” (p. 59). Most of us would not use these oxymorons to describe a person to whom we are attracted. They also imply predatory masculinity, which is yet another allusion to Pan. It is interesting that both Lykeham and the narrator refer to Huxley’s poem “Frascati’s,” published in Leda the same year. As he recalls his encounter with the goddess, Lykeham says that they were sitting “rapturously happy,” to which the narrator adds: “And quietly perspiring palm to palm. I know exactly, so we can pass over that” (Huxley, 1992, p. 58). The last four lines in “Frascati’s” are: … But when the wearied Band Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand. And there we sit in blissful calm, Quietly sweating palm to palm. (Huxley, 1926, p. 38)

R. C. Bald (1950) thinks that Huxley included the last verse into the story because he wanted it to be read by a wider audience (p. 184). Given that both Limbo and Leda were published in 1920, it is hard to imagine that Huxley lost hope for his collection of poems so quickly. For all we know about his style in Limbo, Huxley’s decision to borrow his own verse is motivated by self-irony, which has greater significance than Huxley’s critics usually believe. When writers allude to their own life, the allusion becomes part of the narrative, revealing a hidden character who briefly comes onto the surface to sabotage the plot. Huxley uses this tool in other stories such as “Green Tunnels” and especially in “Over the Telephone,” which I will analyze in the chapter on Huxley’s uncollected short fiction. That he resorts to self-irony in “Cynthia” seems even more plausible if

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we know that the line from “Frascati’s” is recited by the narrator, who is Lykeham’s interlocutor and who can easily be Huxley himself.

The Bookshop “The Bookshop” has a simple plot: A middle-class intellectual visits a slum where he finds a bookshop which has preserved the qualities of the previous epoch, providing a partial escape from the materialistic world. The owner plays a tune on the piano and convinces the narrator to buy a book he does not need. On the way home, the narrator throws the book in the bushes as he does not want to be a slave to things. However, as it is usually the case in Huxley’s short fiction, beneath the surface we can discover many features of his witty style, together with the themes that will be dominant in his later works. This is the first short story in which Huxley’s protagonist steps outside the usual, intellectual, middle-class bubble and dares to explore a slum: It seemed indeed an unlikely place to find a bookshop. All the other commercial enterprises of the street aimed at purveying the barest necessities to the busy squalor of the quarter. In this, the main arterial street, there was a specious glitter and life produced by the swift passage of the traffic. It was almost airy, almost gay. But all around great tracts of slum pullulated dankly. The inhabitants did their shopping in the grand street; they passed, holding gobbets of meat that showed glutinous even through the wrappings of paper; they cheapened linoleum at upholstery doors; women, black-bonneted and black-shawled, went shuffling to their marketing with dilapidated bags of straw plait. (Huxley, 1992, p. 63)

Our first impression while reading this passage is that the narrator is disgusted. As if taken from Dickens’ or Zola’s novels, or poems by German and Austrian expressionists such as Gottfried Benn and Georg Trakl, this description undoubtedly emphasizes filth and misery. In the slum’s main street, brimming with “busy squalor,” men are holding “glutinous” chunks of meat, while women, “black-bonneted and black-shawled,” are carrying their “dilapidated bags.” The neighborhood “pullulates dankly,” as if not inhabited by people but rats. Except for the bookshop owner, no one stands out. Each person is dehumanized by hardship and poverty. We can also feel the distance between the narrator and the slum inhabitants. He describes them as if they were from another country or even from another time. (Eventually the narrator informs us

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that the slum is near Regent’s Park in London.) It is not clear whether he enters the bookstore because he hopes to discover a rare book or because he is afraid of the neighborhood the members of his class never visit. That such a gruesome place has a bookstore which opens the gates to another epoch and illustrates the nature of humanity might seem unexpected. Bearing in mind the narrator’s social status, it would be more appropriate for him to come across the bookshop in Covent Garden or a similar district in London. However, given Huxley’s thoughts about London intellectuals and artists at the time, the bookstore’s location comes as no surprise. In his opinion, most of his contemporaries— artists, intellectuals, scientist, and socialites—committed themselves to a tiny sphere of existence, hiding their dysfunctional personalities. (Crome Yellow and Antic Hay, the novels that satirize London’s intellectual and artistic crème de la crème in the early 1920s, were published within three years after Limbo.) That is why the narrator of “The Bookshop” has to visit a slum to find out the truth about the world’s broken humanity. There people do not have the luxury of pretending to be someone else. Huxley’s faithful readers will also recall “The Monocle,” a story published six years after Limbo, where Gregory discovers his own emptiness during an encounter with a dehumanized person who turns out to be more authentic than all Gregory’s friends and acquaintances.8 “The Bookshop” may not provide the most complex depiction of that idea, but it is certainly the first story where Huxley’s characters learn about themselves and the world after venturing into a less controlled environment. Despite its rudimentary plot and characterization, “The Bookshop” showcases Huxley’s literary talent, which scholars usually overlook or do not emphasize enough. For example, the narrator sees the bookshop as “a brown twilight, redolent with old leather and the smell of that fine subtle dust that clings to the pages of forgotten books, as though preservative of their secrets—like the dry sand of Asian deserts beneath which, still incredibly intact, lie the treasures and the rubbish of a thousand years ago” (Huxley, 1992, p. 64). This complex, synesthetic image— which suggests that the space, behind its modest façade, has captured in time a dying world whose values will be discovered when the hierarchies of treasure and rubbish will not matter anymore—is astonishingly mature for a novice writer. Another powerful metaphor is in the passage where the bookshop owner opens the lid of his square-shaped piano. The narrator sees “the yellow keys” as “the teeth of an ancient horse” (p. 65). The ancient horse, inevitably calling up associations to the Trojan War,

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embodies the untamed force of the past that is about to engulf the bookshop as soon as the owner invokes it with his performance. This image is upgraded a few paragraphs later when the narrator, listening to the owner playing and singing Valse Infernale from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, explains that he does not hear music or words anymore but feels as if “the fatal demons, the phantasms of horror, had made a sudden irruption into this peaceful, abstracted place” (p. 66). The owner’s unusual performance transposes the narrator to the past with all its colorful imagery, far away not only from the impersonal slum but also from his sterile, unimaginative existence. He associates his experience with the demonic power as it shatters his comfort zone and forces him to reevaluate his perception of life. But more important for this analysis is the emergence of ideas that will take center stage in Brave New World and Huxley’s nonfiction. First of all, the narrator and the bookshop owner criticize cheap journalism as “piddling quotidianism” where the “ephemeral overwhelms the permanent, the classical” (Huxley, 1992, p. 63). Huxley was a contributor to many newspapers and saw first-hand that the most superficial articles usually had the biggest impact. In his nonfiction he will constantly disparage this form of journalism. For instance, in his essay on Pascal, he offers a similar explanation of the effect that newspapers and other media have on the general public, the effect that makes “the clerk and the taylorized workman leave their imbecile tasks to spend their leisure under the influence of such opiate distractions” (Huxley, 1958a, p. 353). Likewise, comparing an old book of fashion-plates that glorify home and family life to the modern catalogues featuring beauties “with their heels and their arch of instep, their flattened faces and smile of pouting invitation,” the narrator concludes that he is a “deteriorationist” (Huxley, 1992, p. 64). On the one hand, here we can see Huxley’s conservative side which never embraced modernist tendencies in art and design; on the other hand, this is a protest against imposed promiscuity that will culminate in Brave New World’s orgy-porgies. Having listened to the owner play and sing, the narrator looks through the door and sees the usual hustle and bustle of the slum’s main street. He realizes that people live “under the tyranny of things” (p. 66). Before leaving the bookshop, the narrator describes him and the owner as people “in particular” as opposed to “the whole of humanity in general, all faced with the hideous triumphs of things” (p. 66). These sentences

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convey what Laura Oulanne (2021) calls the “tension between commodities and authentic objects” (p. 10), typical of many modernist texts. She explains that modernist authors, including André Breton, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, were “inspired by … the philosophical and psychoanalytical discussions of materiality and things” (p. 11). Huxley seems to follow the trend in this story. The quoted sentences from “The Bookshop” anticipate Huxley’s criticism of mass consumerism and impersonal life in the modern metropolis, characteristic not only of Brave New World but of his essays from the 1940s and 1950s. For instance, in Science, Liberty and Peace (1946), Huxley claims that “vast numbers of men and women pass their whole lives in hideous cities” being “rootless, propertyless and entirely divorced from the world of nature” (Huxley, 1950, p. 23). This quotation directly applies to the characters in “The Bookshop”. The depiction of the slum in this story is his first attempt to formulate the idea of human degradation in London and other big cities. In Brave New World Revisited (1958), Huxley (1965) has a proposition for anyone who intends to live in a metropolis: “If you wish to avoid the spiritual impoverishment of individuals and whole societies, leave the metropolis and revive the small country community … in which individuals can meet and cooperate as complete persons” (p. 114). While writing “The Bookshop” Huxley did not see the solution to the overpopulation and poverty in vast urban areas, but he detected the problem that would haunt him even forty years later.

Notes 1. Cobby refers to C. O. Bevan, with whom Huxley shared lodgings at Eton and who will become the Reverend Roger in “Happily Ever After”. 2. However, after World War II, Huxley, together with Jiddu Krishnamurti and Rosalind Rajagopal, was the trustee of the Happy Valley School, “a small co-educational, non-sectarian and … nonsegregated high school,” as Sybille Bedford (1974) describes it, adding that the school’s motto was “Aun Aprendo, I Am Still Learning” (p. 516). 3. The influence of the progressive educators such as Maria Montessori and John Dewey is examined in the analysis of “Young Archimedes” in the chapter on Little Mexican and Other Stories .

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4. Jake Poller (2019) claims that Coleman from Antic Hay, Huxley’s second novel, published three years after “Eupompus,” could also be partly based on Aleister Crowley, even though the main source was the composer Philip Heseltine (p. 20). 5. I will elaborate on this concept in the chapter on Huxley’s uncollected stories. 6. Joaquín-José Cuéllar Trasorras (2022) explains that Lully’s decision to become a mystic after his last earthly passion is not based on historical facts but on an anecdote from the sixteenth century (p. 101). 7. Mount Lykaion in Arcadia refers to the legend on Syrinx, the nymph who was seduced by Pan and turned into a river-reed, which the naughty god used to make his flute. 8. See Chapter 5 for a detailed analysis of “The Monocle.”

References Bald, R. C. (1950). Aldous Huxley as a Borrower. College Literature, 11(4), 183–187. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Firchow, P. (1972). Aldous Huxley: Satirist and Novelist. University of Minnesota Press. Gorman, H. S. (1975). Herbert. S. Gorman, Review in New Republic. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 43–45). Routledge. Huxley, A. (1926). Leda. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1927). Proper Studies. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1931). Music at Night and Other Essays. Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc. Huxley, A. (1946a). Ends and Means. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1950). Science, Liberty and Peace. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1958a). Collected Essays. Harper & Brothers Publishers. Huxley, A. (1958b). Crome Yellow. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1959). The Devils of Loudun. Harper & Brothers. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (Grover Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (2009). The Perennial Philosophy. Harper Publishers. Huxley, A. (1965). Brave New World Revisited. Harper & Row. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Dee Inc. Joyce, J. (1991). Dubliners. Dover Publications.

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Lewis, P. (2010). Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. Cambridge University Press. Miller, C. (2009). Religion, History, and Modernism’s Protest Against the “Uncompanionable Drawl // of Certitude.” Religion & Literature, 41(2), 259–269. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Newby, P. H. (1957). A Review of Aldous Huxley’s Collected Short Stories. London Magazine, 4, 65–68. Oulanne, L. (2021). Materiality in Modernist Short Fiction: Lived Things. Routledge. Poller, J. (2019). Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Brill. Richards, F. (2015). The Goat-god in England: A Musical Context for Lawrence’s Fascination with Pan. The D.H. Lawrence Review, 40(1), 90–106. Sawyer, D. W. (2021). Redressing a Straw Man: Correcting Critical Misunderstandings of Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211024399 Swinnerton, F. (1936). An Autobiography. Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc. Trasorras, J. C. (2022). Aldous Huxley’s References to Spanish Mysticism in “The Death of Lully” and The Perennial Philosophy. Aldous Huxley Annual, 22, 95–108. Woodcock, G. (1972). Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley. The Viking Press. Yeats, W. B. (1970). The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. The Macmillan Company.

Toxic Masculinity, Pseudo-Intellectualism, and “Sexo-Religious Psychology” in Mortal Coils

Mortal Coils , Huxley’s second collection of short stories, was published in 1922, six months after his first novel Crome Yellow, which had achieved such a success for a debut-novelist that even F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “I find Huxley, after Beerbohm, the wittiest man now writing in English” (Murray, 2003, p. 133). Mortal Coils had equally glowing reviews. For instance, W. J. Cuppy wrote in the New York Sunday Tribune that the book was “just as deeply serious, purposeful, holy, flaming and passionately true” as Crome Yellow (Cuppy, 1975, p. 75). Some critics, however, did not see any reason why Huxley had become so popular. An unsigned reviewer from The Literary Digest could not understand why a young writer enjoyed so much critical acclaim. The reviewer thought that Huxley’s books were popular only because he was the descendant of Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold, which “blinded” the critics (p. 77). Some members of Huxley’s extended family were put off by Huxley’s cynicism in this book, including his sister-in-law, Juliette, who later claimed: “Every time I read a new book of Aldous’s I had a feeling of apprehension, because he peeled personalities to painful surfaces sometimes” (Murray, 2003, p. 138). This quality or flaw, depending on one’s preferences, would mark the majority of Huxley’s short stories. Scholars usually state that the book’s title comes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that is, from the following lines: “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_3

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/ Must give us pause” (Hamlet 3.1.66–68). However, Huxley may have also alluded to D. H. Lawrence’s story “The Mortal Coil” (1917), which describes similar topics, as we will see in the analysis of “The Gioconda Smile”. The stories in Mortal Coils are more developed than the ones in Limbo. Emboldened by the critical acclaim of Crome Yellow, Huxley is more confident and willing to broaden the scope of his satire and humor. His style is concise and elegant. He further explores the topic of mainstream intellectual education, sketched in “Happily Ever After,” and the relation between sexual repression and religious zeal, touched upon in “The Death of Lully”. He introduces new topics such as toxic masculinity, art snobbery, and a sense of colonial supremacy among English expatriates in Italy. Huxley’s greatest compositional novelty in this collection is the creation of subplots that undermine the perspectives of the narrator and the protagonist. Another new element is Huxley’s use of nature to deepen characters’ thoughts and feelings. Finally, the stories in Mortal Coils enable us to grasp Huxley’s early views on the then political trends that many of his peers misunderstood or failed to detect.

The Gioconda Smile “The Gioconda Smile” was first published in The English Review in 1921. It is probably the most famous of all Huxley’s stories, based on which Zoltan Korda made a 1948 movie A Woman’s Vengeance featuring Charles Boyer, Ann Blyth, and Jessica Tandy. According to Sybille Bedford (1974), the movie producers changed the title as “nobody was supposed to have heard of the Gioconda” (p. 464). The story was inspired by the case of Harold Greenwood, an English solicitor who had been tried and acquitted of poisoning his wife, Mabel (Murray, 2003, p. 132). “The Gioconda Smile” centers on Mr. Hutton, who stands trial for allegedly poisoning his wife. He is the first protagonist in Huxley’s short fiction to epitomize toxic masculinity. This type will later evolve into the likes of Edmund Tilney from “Chawdron” and Maurice Spandrell from Point Counter Point . Educated and good-looking, his fingers wellmanicured, his mustache impeccable, Mr. Hutton calls himself “The Christ of Ladies” (Huxley, 1992, p. 92). Arthur F. Beringause (1964) points out the ironic reversal in this phrase given that John Milton’s nickname was “the Lady of Christ’s College” (p. 4). At this point we cannot see in what way Mr. Hutton relates to Milton. However, as was the case

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in “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” and “Cynthia,” this introductory pun functions as the first clue about how to interpret Mr. Hutton’s character in the remainder of the story. Mr. Hutton is a predator, seducing mostly weak, inexperienced, poor women whom he can keep under control as they stand no chance against him in the society that promotes rigid class divides. His choice of women is predictable: “Maggie, his wife’s maid, and Edith, the girl on the farm, and Mrs. Pringle, and the waitress in London” (Huxley, 1992, p. 106). As soon as he achieves his goal, he gets bored and moves on to another victim. His intention is not only to seduce but to humiliate as well. Janet Spence, who turns out to be responsible for his wife’s death, is a “prig” and an “intellectual snob” (p. 91), her maid is “malignantly, criminally ugly” (p. 91), a servant-girl he meets in Florence epitomizes “an almost perfect stupidity” (p. 113), and his second wife, Doris, another passive woman from a lower class, appears to him equally ignorant and uncivilized. However, facing the prospect of going to jail for a long time, Mr. Hutton, an omnipotent alpha male, dissolves into the image of a helpless boy reciting bedtime prayers in an attempt to dispel fear. Mr. Hutton’s awareness that, despite his education and upbringing, he cannot overcome his fear and sense of emptiness might be a reference to D. H. Lawrence’s story “The Mortal Coil” (1917), published four years before “The Gioconda Smile.” In “The Mortal Coil,” Friedeburg, the protagonist, first verbally abuses his girlfriend, Marta, and then sinks into despair: “He knew he was sufficiently clever, an aristocrat, good-looking, the sensitive superior of most men. The trouble was, that apart from the social fabric he belonged to, he felt himself nothing, a cipher” (Lawrence, 1971, p. 218). This quotation can apply to Mr. Hutton’s pity-party after his wife’s death. Near the end of Lawrence’s story, before Friedeburg finds out that Marta has died from gas poising, he complains about “the misery of the world of men” (p. 235), a feeling shared by Mr. Hutton and most toxic characters in Huxley’s fiction. Huxley knew D. H. Lawrence well and admired him more than any other British author at the time, so the allusion to his story—which not only depicts a similar topic but has almost the same title as Huxley’s collection—seems more than likely. We can also make a parallel between Mr. Hutton and numerous male characters in Hemingway’s works. It is commonplace to see Ernest Hemingway as the embodiment of the macho culture, yet in both his short stories and novels he portrays strong, confident men who break under pressure, revealing all their weaknesses. For instance, his short

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story “In Another Country” describes an Italian major who tries to bully the narrator until he finds out that his wife passed away, whereupon he bursts into tears and admits: “I cannot resign myself” (Hemingway, 1995, p. 272). Likewise, his novels For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises are replete with male characters who struggle to keep the hypermasculine aura they were brought up to project at all cost. Such similarities in modernist authors—regardless of their stylistic and thematic preferences and regardless of the reasons behind their portrayals of the macho culture (there is no doubt that Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway tackled the issue of toxic masculinity in different ways)—are not a coincidence. Most writers in the period of modernism responded to the changes in the perception of gender hierarchy, which is another reminder that modernist poetics should not be limited to stylistic innovations. A broader approach to modernism that recognizes not only the importance of formal experimentation but also the emergence of new themes could enable us to realize that Huxley’s stories were closer to modernist short fiction than it is usually believed. As in his other short stories, Huxley here mocks superficial mainstream education. Mr. Hutton is another intellectual who becomes an unsatisfactory person. First we learn that Hutton, even as an undergraduate, hated “the poor, the weak, the diseased, and deformed” (Huxley, 1992, p. 98). He loves his wife only until she falls sick, whereupon he feels nothing but disgust. After her funeral he realizes that he is “a futile and disgusting being” (p. 104) and sees his past affairs as worthless acts that gave him little pleasure. He decides to change henceforth and “devote his life to some good purpose” (p. 105). But the best project he can think of is titled The Effect of Diseases on Civilization, which tells us that he remains the same toxic person and that his new endeavor is aimed at hiding his inability to grow. Now we can understand the allusion to Milton. Unlike the author of Paradise Lost, Mr. Hutton is incapable of creating a great literary work; he can only come up with a loose project that emphasizes his toxic masculinity even though it is supposed to celebrate his transformation. This type of irony, where the great artistic past strengthens its caricature in the present, will become one of the main components of Huxley’s poetics. But Mr. Hutton is not the only representative of intellectual education in this story. Miss Spence’s perception of what an intellectual should be is even more grotesque. She bombards her guests with quotations from William James, Bergson, Maeterlinck, and other

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philosophers or writers that pop up in her sentences whenever she intends to make an impression. The intellectual education epitomized by Mr. Hutton and Miss Spence does not inspire creativity, nor does it change their perception of the world. It boils down to pretentious phrases that are supposed to conceal their empty, meaningless lives. Their shallow intellectualism does not result in emotional development either; that is to say, it does not help them understand their flaws and empathize with other people. Therefore, Mr. Hutton, despite his brief self-reflection, cannot transcend his ego, nor can he understand the causes of his predicament, whereas Janet Spence, even though she speaks of great philosophers as if she intimately knew them, never outgrows her jealousy. “The Gioconda Smile” demonstrates significant progress in Huxley’s prose. The style is more elegant and economical. The depictions of Janet Spence match the wittiest passages from Crome Yellow, Huxley’s most eloquent literary satire. For instance, the contrast between her forced mysteriousness and banality of her words is introduced by her “small mouth pursed forward by the Gioconda expression into a little snout with a round in the middle as though for whistling,” which resembles a “penholder seen from the front” (Huxley, 1992, p. 92). Her superficial intensity—resulting not from her fierce passion or indomitable spirit but from a mere pose—is evoked by the image of a machine-gun, firing words that “whizzed forth at the narrow barrel of her mouth” (p. 99). On the other hand, Mr. Hutton’s despair after he realizes there is a case against him grows “like some monstruous tropical plant” (p. 115), suggesting not only the unpredictable outcome of the trial but his inability to put this overwhelming feeling under control. The plot of “The Gioconda Smile” is more complex than in any story from Limbo. Even after reading the final page, we are not sure whether we should trust Miss Spence’s confession or adhere to the official interpretation by the police or take into consideration Mrs. Hutton’s possible suicide. There is yet another element in this story that exhibits Huxley’s deeper understanding of composition and short fiction in general. In all his previous stories, the plot is given through the eyes of the narrator or protagonist. What we can assume about other characters is usually irrelevant. It might be a peculiar streak in their personality or the outline of their ideological framework, but nothing that would undermine the main perspective. In “The Gioconda Smile” Huxley hints there is another plot or a “complementary story.” Analyzing this aspect of fiction, Franz

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K. Stanzel (2004) points out that we usually understand the plot based on what we have learned from the narrator/protagonist. Sometimes, however, the reader “supplements the text and fills in the missing parts” (p. 203). Stanzel assumes that if we try to read “The Gioconda Smile” from the perspective of Janet Spence, who is “the second main character,” a parallel plot will come onto the surface (p. 210). This parallel plot or subplot shows Huxley’s ingenuity in “The Gioconda Smile”. Once we have read the ending and learned that Janet Spence is responsible for Mrs. Hutton’s death, we can go back to the beginning and reconsider all her appearances, monologues, allusions, gestures… And a new story will emerge, the one in which Miss Spence receives Mr. Hutton in her house, fails to seduce him, decides to take revenge on him, waits for the right opportunity, puts arsenic in Mrs. Hutton’s coffee, attempts to talk Mr. Hutton into loving her after his wife’s funeral, and, having been rejected again, enjoys the effects of her perfectly crafted ploy. Even her Mona Lisa smile, which in the beginning seemed only a tool that concealed her emptiness, gains new meanings, creating an ironic effect especially after we reread Mr. Hutton’s interpretations of it. Does her first smile mean that she has always planned to set him up? Does her smile after the funeral indicate that she is now in control of Mr. Hutton’s life? We can only wish Huxley had worked more on her motivation for the murder, because unrequited love is rarely the only trigger. We have all been rejected, yet most of us have never developed a killer instinct. One of the moments when Huxley could have reinforced Miss Spence’s motivation is her first conversation with Mr. Hutton. Another one is after the funeral, when she wants to tell him “the story of her life” (p. 110). Instead of focusing on Mr. Hutton’s reactions, the narrator could have hinted that Miss Spence had already dealt with similar men in the past or had a long-lasting, psychopathic streak that eventually turned her into a murderer. Despite her incomplete motivation, this is one of the most elaborate compositional features in Huxley’s entire short fiction. He will employ it in his subsequent stories as well—especially in “Chawdron,” where Maggie Spindell seduces the great industrialist, using Christianity to complement his superstition—although the second main character will never again undermine the protagonist. Huxley’s structural ingenuity in “The Gioconda Smile” is rarely mentioned in the literature. It proves that Huxley experimented with the form, albeit in a different way than major modernists such as Joyce and Woolf. In the subsequent chapters

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of this book, we will find other examples of Huxley’s textual experimentations that contradict the usual mantra whereby his fiction was always conservative and anti-modernist in every aspect. “The Gioconda Smile” is the first story in which Huxley incorporates nature to create irony and deepen his characters. For example, right before Miss Spence puts poison in Mrs. Hutton’s coffee, Mr. Hutton sits with the two of them under a cypress tree, looking across the lawn at the flowers that emanate “metallic brilliance” (Huxley, 1992, p. 100). Enchanted by the scenery and “warm and fragrant air,” he says: “It’s good to be alive” (p. 100). When we read this passage for the first time, the nature seems nothing but an intermezzo before a more striking scene. But as we read it for the second time, having Miss Spence’s role in mind, the scenery becomes ironic, suggesting Mr. Hutton’s delusion that he is in control of his life. Another example of Huxley’s mastery in using nature comes after the funeral. Mr. Hutton, in his own library, having read a book on Milton’s life for hours, glances at the stars, that is, “the holes between them” (p. 104). He looks at the garden flowers which, since it is after midnight, are not metallic anymore but “hueless,” whereupon he focuses on the landscape in the distance, “black and grey under the moon” (p. 104). This complex image has at least two important dimensions. The dark space between the stars and under the moon signifies the darkness of his soul which he finally illuminates and which prompts him to think about changing his life. The darkness also indicates that he is clueless about the cause and possible consequences of his wife’s death. The flowers continue to enchant him, this time without any color so that they can coalesce into the overall atmosphere. The best example of Huxley’s use of nature for ironic purposes is in the passage where Janet Spence tries to seduce Mr. Hutton for the second time. Before she becomes assertive, “the heat and silence [are] oppressive,” a giant cloud is forming in the sky, and we can hear “distant breathing of thunder” (Huxley, 1992, p. 108). We may not understand the meaning of the impending storm at that point, but we can feel something dark is approaching Miss Spence’s estate. During their conversation, Miss Spence becomes more and more agitated. Her sentences are interrupted by peals of thunder, implying her excitement and pent-up desire. Then, as the storm subsides, the thunder, echoing only in Mr. Hutton’s head, refers to his suppressed laughter. The narrator reminds us that the Christ of Ladies still believes everything is under his control. His delusion is even more grotesque now that we know how he has been deceived.

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When Miss Spence tells him the story of her life, which precedes her final attempt to seduce him, Mr. Hutton’s self-confidence transforms into confusion and fear: The lightning was less frequent now, and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! Her face was there, close at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. (Huxley, 1992, p. 110)

The force of nature is compressed in this scene. The thunders die down and we are enveloped in the darkness of Miss Spence’s psychopathic mind. The flashes serve as brief moments of clarity when Mr. Hutton feels her desire. What he does not realize is that Miss Spence decides how his life will proceed from then on. Not even her “pale mask,” which is at the same time “greenish white,” arouses his suspicion. The most ironic scene is when Mr. Hutton leaves Miss Spence’s house and imagines her as a “cloud black bosomed and charged with thunder” and himself as “some absurd little Benjamin Franklin” who “sent up a kite into the heart of the menace” (p. 111). This metaphor, apart from showcasing outstanding talent for a young writer, suggests that Mr. Hutton’s unconscious is trying to warn him not to be so sure that everything will play out as he anticipates. It portrays him as a little boy, helpless against the absolute power of nature.

The Tillotson Banquet Huxley’s satire on modern art, which he has already explored in Limbo and Crome Yellow, has an even sharper edge in Mortal Coils . “The Tillotson Banquet” is a story about Spode, a young man who, in collaboration with Lord Badgery, organizes a banquet to honor Walter Tillotson, a painter who disappeared half a century before. According to George Woodcock (1972), this is “Huxley’s first foray into that metropolitan halfworld where the Bright People of Mayfair meet the Bohemians of Chelsey and Bloomsbury” (p. 92). As in “Happily Ever After,” the story revolves around three peculiar characters, this time not educators but an art critic, art collector, and obscure painter.

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Spode is an ambitious critic who befriends Lord Badgery, hoping that the nobleman will help him climb the social ladder. He works for the World’s Review owing to his young age rather than his meager talent. The narrator introduces him with characteristic Huxleyan irony. Spode is not a snob, which is stressed twice, but he cannot help thinking that having dinner with Lord Badgery is “a definite event in his life” which will bring him “final success, social, material, and literary” (Huxley, 1992, p. 120). Having talked to Lord Badgery about Walter Tillotson, Spode discovers that the painter is still alive at the age of ninety-seven and that he lives in a London slum. They work out a plan to organize a banquet in Tillotson’s honor with the aim of raising funds which would enable the painter to move to a more humane environment. But each of them has an ulterior motive. Spode believes that the rediscovery of the great painter will boost his reputation in London’s art world. Lord Badgery encourages Spode’s idea because it is a rare opportunity for him to invite embittered artists and critics, and enjoy their petty quarrels. One of Huxley’s main objections to pseudo-intellectuals—their deliberate suppression of emotions—is obvious in Spode’s conversation with Tillotson. He is first moved by the old man’s recollections of his master, Benjamin Robert Haydon, whom Tillotson resembles in so many ways that we can assume his character is partly based on Haydon. Then Spode feels ashamed: He saw himself suddenly as a boy with a rattle scaring birds rattling his noisy cleverness, waving his arms in ceaseless and futile activity, never resting in his efforts to scare away the birds that were always trying to settle in his mind. And what birds! wide-winged and beautiful, all those serene thoughts and faiths and emotions that only visit minds that have humbled themselves to quiet. … But this old man, with his hedgehogs and his honest doubts and all the rest of it—his mind was like a field made beautiful by the free coming and going, the unafraid alightings of a multitude of white, bright-winged creatures. (Huxley, 1992, p. 131)

Despite the old man’s senility and endless complaints about his living conditions, Spode feels inferior. He imagines himself as a child “rattling his noisy cleverness” to dispel the thoughts and emotions that come to him whenever he allows his mind to rest. They could help him transcend his infantile yearnings, but he is not mature enough to keep them. Compared to Tillotson’s perception of the world which is “like a field”

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where ideas and feelings circulate without inhibitions, Spode’s life feels like a prison which admits only the ideas that feed his ego. However, as in the case of Mr. Hutton from “The Gioconda Smile,” this is a brief moment of illumination. Soon afterwards Spode convinces himself that no one can change personality and that any attempt to do so would be preposterous. He is another man who is occasionally aware of his limitations but fails to see that such a realization is just the first step in understanding himself and his relationship with other people. At the Café Bomba, where the banquet takes place, Spode is back to his old self, arranging dinner for the audience and taking care of subscriptions. But at least he is able to feel something. Other guests, adorned with Dickensian names such as Mrs. Nobes, Mrs. Cayman, and Mrs. Mandragore, the artistic and intellectual hodge-podge which will get its full shape in Antic Hay and Point Counter Point , consider Tillotson an old clown thanks to whom they can come together and demonstrate their superiority. Only when Tillotson utters a few sane words about an artist’s difficult life do the audience regard him as a human being. Nevertheless, when he continues his disjointed story about Haydon, they heave a sigh of relief and burst into clapping, praising the old man for not becoming more respectable. Lord Badgery comes from a different background. His family survived the Wars of the Roses because they refused to be involved in politics. Instead, they became art patrons. That was the only way for them to stay wealthy throughout all turbulent years in English history. As Jerome Meckier (1973) emphasizes, the names of Huxley’s characters always have an “allusive quality” (p. 268). Thus, Lord Badgery lives in a mansion that resembles a badger’s sett, as it consists of many cavern-like rooms. Each of them is filled with different works of art: paintings, sculptures, and memorabilia from different periods, the jewel of which is the nineteenth-century chamber. Lord Badgery shares another characteristic with the animal to which his last name alludes: He burrows through art history, hoping he will discover an atypical specimen that will not only enrich his collection but promote him as the indisputable king of art sponsors. That is one of the reasons for his interest in Walter Tillotson. The other one is more mundane—Lord Badgery wants Haydon’s disciple to decorate his favorite cavern with frescoes. When he learns that Tillotson is not able to paint due to his age, Badgery uses him in a ploy to gather artists and critics, and relish their petty confrontations.

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Walter Tillotson resembles not only B. R. Haydon but the protagonist of “The Death of Lully” as well. He left England in the 1860s to find inspiration for his religious paintings. He traveled to Jerusalem and Lebanon, and “got stuck” (Huxley, 1992, p. 126) in Turkey for forty years, teaching English and Latin, and occasionally converting people to Christianity. He moved back to London at the beginning of the twentieth century to become a drawing-master at a girls’ school. One day before the banquet, Tillotson gives Spode more details about his disappearance. He left England because Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had changed his faith and because it was “a bad time for religion” (pp. 129– 130). Like Raymond Lully from the previous collection, Tillotson is a mirror reflecting the true motives and personalities of other people. It is in relation to him that we discover Spode’s burning ambition and superficial intellectualism, Badgery’s views on art as a commodity, and snobbery among the guests at the Café Bomba. In that regard, Tillotson resembles the camel from Fitzgerald short story “The Camel’s Back,” published in the same year, where Perry Parkhurst dresses himself and a taxi driver in a camel costume to expose the snobs gathered at the Townsends’ circus ball. Despite his age and senility, despite the squalor of his humble abode in Holloway’s “respectable slum” (p. 126), and despite his obsession with beetles and hedgehogs, Tillotson is more vigorous and authentic than any other character in the story. Lully and Tillotson are Huxley’s first attempts to create a character as the other, which reveals people’s true identities. Still, Huxley will wait for four more years to devote the whole short story to this idea, as we will see in the analysis of “Half-Holiday” from Two or Three Graces . “The Tillotson Banquet” illustrates Huxley’s opinion on modernist art that he will formulate much later in his essays. First of all, this story—like “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” from Limbo—shows Huxley’s criticism of modernist poetics. In his essay “Art and the Obvious,” Huxley (1931) writes that modern artists explore “only a tiny fraction of existence” (p. 26) and limit themselves to “incompleteness, to sterility, to premature decrepitude and death” (p. 29).1 Each of the characters in “The Tillotson Banquet” demonstrates this superficial view on art (which, it should be noted, does not apply to the greatest modernists). For Spode, art is only a tool that could get him into London’s high society. For Lord Badgery, it is nothing but a collection of objects that generate profit and enhance his reputation among art patrons. For other people at the banquet, it is a field where they can

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trade polished insults and practice their pseudo-intellectual tirades. On the other hand, Walter Tillotson, having lived in various epochs and cultures, has a more comprehensive understanding of art, regardless of his comical recollections of the nineteenth century and the disputable quality of his own work. For him, art is a life-long search for expression that involves passion, dedication, and creative imagination. To understand Huxley’s delineation between modern and traditional art concepts in this story, we should also remember what he thought about B. R. Haydon,2 who resembles Tillotson in numerous aspects. In Huxley’s (1947) opinion, Haydon was a “bad and deservedly unsuccessful painter” (p. 256) or “one of these glorious lunatics” (p. 261) who “wasted his life making absurd pictures” (p. 256). But Huxley also emphasizes that Haydon had a “masterful and magnetic personality” (p. 249), admired by the likes of Keats and Wordsworth. It is Tillotson’s charismatic personality, commitment to artistic expression in every sphere of existence, and unshakeable belief in the spiritual power of art that outshine the other characters for whom art is only a means to an end. The story also depicts what Huxley will later call “organized lovelessness.” In The Perennial Philosophy, elaborating on the relation between nature and arts, Huxley (2009) writes that such “lovelessness [is] so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts” and that “lovelessness in regard to art is at the same time a lovelessness in regard to the human beings” (p. 95). The audience at the Café Bomba do not see art as something beautiful and inspiring, something that could enlighten them or bring them closer to other human beings, but merely as a vehicle for conveying their own superiority. “The Tillotson Banquet” is the funniest piece in this collection. The comical portrayals in Crome Yellow that earned Huxley the reputation as the wittiest satirist in Great Britain have been upgraded in this story. For instance, Lord Badgery has “an alarming habit of changing the subject of any conversation that [lasts] for more than two minutes” (Huxley, 1992, p. 121). He interrupts Spode whenever the critic dares to express his opinion. The only time Badgery lets him finish his thought is when Spode talks about Tillotson. (He even allows the young man to interrupt him once.) Another jewel is the telegram Spode sends after learning Tillotson’s whereabouts. It reads: “Found.—Spode” (p. 125). These two words imply not only Spode’s stinginess and wish to be as concise as possible so that he can control the results of his discovery, but also his decision to punish Badgery for his constant intrusions. However, when Spode

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informs his host that Tillotson cannot paint, the lord asks: “What right has Tillotson to go on exiting if he can’t paint?” and adds that painting is Tillotson’s “only justification for occupying a place in the sun,” to which Spode replies: “He doesn’t have much sun in his basement” (p. 127). This hilarious exchange, apart from its self-evident humor, suggests the discrepancy between the aspirations of the two men. Badgery’s overt selfishness and mundane objectives are contrasted with Spode’s hidden desire to score big on the art scene and achieve the reputation he has always dreamed about. We can see other examples of Huxley’s brilliant humor when Tillotson, a ninety-seven-year-old man hoping to restore his vision and paint again, says: “Ah, the future is very rosy” (p. 129), or when he fantasizes about getting a hedgehog to catch beetles, or at the banquet when he collapses at the beginning of his speech. Perhaps the most memorable moment in the story is when Spode arrives in Badgery’s Rolls-Royce to pick up the old man. Tillotson looks “buffoonish” as he stands “by the empty grate, one elbow resting on the mantelpiece, one leg crossed over the other in a jaunty and gentlemanly attitude” (p. 133). He is wearing the shabby suit that belongs to Badgery’s servant, so the sleeves are too long, the trousers too baggy, and the stains “visible even in candlelight” (p. 133). R. H. Super (1991) argues that Tillotson’s demeanor in this scene alludes to Max Beerbohm’s caricature of Matthew Arnold “looking down on that same Aunt Mary as a little girl” (p. 440). Therefore, this complex image of Tillotson waiting to be escorted to the banquet shows both the pretentiousness of Spode’s endeavor and the old man’s notion of Arnoldian decency (not practiced for half a century), and we can anticipate the outcome of the event which, as it turns out, ends without guests. Huxley’s portrayal of Tillotson is an exquisite example of a literary caricature. As Henri Bergson (1911) claims in his famous essay on laughter, “the art of the caricaturist consists in detecting [an] imperceptible tendency” in a character and “in rendering it visible to all eyes by magnifying it,” which evokes “the demon who had been overthrown by the angel” (p. 26). Not only in “The Tillotson Banquet” but in his other humorous stories, Huxley shows that he is a master of literary caricature, which is among his greatest contributions to modernist short fiction.

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Green Tunnels “Green Tunnels” is Huxley’s first short story set in Italy, where he and his first wife, Maria, spent many months during the 1920s. It depicts the life of British expatriates gathered at the summer estate of Mr. Buzzacott, “an inverted alchemist, turning gold into lead” (Huxley, 1992, p. 140),3 as his daughter, Barbara, calls him, alluding to his exceptional ability to make every topic extremely tedious. “Green Tunnels” can also help us understand Huxley’s political opinion and the evolution of his ideas on education that will culminate three decades later in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956). Mr. Buzzacott’s guests are Mrs. and Mr. Topes. She is one of the first characters in Huxley’s fiction to combine colonialism with current right-wing ideologies.4 Wherever she lives, Mrs. Topes’ upperclass background, together with her simple-mindedness, prevents her from embracing the local culture. Thus, she claims that in India she “always made a point of being properly and adequately dressed” (Huxley, 1992, p. 145), in order to distinguish herself from Indian commoners. Among the Italians, who, to her, are natives like Indians, she resorts to the same principle, wearing a proper outfit even on the hottest day of the year. Mrs. Topes’ insistence on her colonial supremacy brings this story closer to the works of E. M. Forster, especially the novel A Passage to India, which, among other topics, describes the inability of British expatriates to embrace a foreign culture due to their rigid notions of intercultural communication. The only person Mrs. Topes admires in Italy is the Marchese Prampolini, the leader of the local Fascists. Moreover, she yearns for a similar movement in England. We should bear in mind that this collection was published in 1922 when Italian Fascists were largely unknown outside Italy. Mrs. Topes also shows us that Huxley understood the inextricable connection between upper classes and right-wing ideologies in the 1920s, which many artists and thinkers at the time failed to notice. Barbara despises her father and his guests. In her eyes, Mr. Buzzacott is “limp and pale, like something long buried from the light” (Huxley, 1992, p. 144). She also detests Mr. Topes’ incessant monologues in which he uses “one” instead of “I,” and his wife’s controlling remarks that make her look like “worked by clockwork” (p. 144). Most of all, Barbara is plagued by abject boredom. Her daily routine boils down to eating, sleeping, swimming, and listening to people like Mr. and Mrs. Topes.

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She cannot think of anything that could dispel the unbearable feeling. To depict the magnitude of her boredom, she imagines a museum “with thousands of glass cases, full of fossils and butterflies and stuffed birds” (p. 146). There is only one human being there, presumably her own body “shut up there alive” (p. 146). Barbara’s ordeal is worse than in all the fossils and stuffed animals, for she is the only one who can experience it. Her vision also emphasizes how she sees her father and his friends. They are like museum exhibits, stuck in the past and incapable of making the slightest change. It is not surprising that she falls in love with the Marchese Prampolini, compared to whom all the people in her inner circle appear lifeless. One day she finds a message drawn in sand: “O Clara d’Ellébeuse” (p. 149). As she believes the marchese has written it, Barbara imagines herself as the marchesa, living in a palace in Rome and enjoying the benefits of Italian nobility, until she realizes that the author of the message is none other than Mr. Topes, for whom the only proper way of expressing his feelings was to evoke a verse from Francis Jammes’ poem. Although different than her father and Mr. and Mrs. Topes, Barbara is disconnected from the local culture as well. This characteristic of British expatriates abroad will be the frequent target of Huxley’s satire. According to Nicholas Murray (2003), Huxley did not like expats in Florence and saw only Norman Douglas on a regular basis (p. 154). Likewise, on his trip to Lahore in 1925, Huxley (1969) described the English people he met on trains and at restaurants as “beyond all words repulsive” or “stupid, uncultured, underbred, the complete and perfect cad” (p. 261). Barbara is separated from anyone other than her father and his friends. Even in such a familiar environment she feels like an outcast. She becomes aware of her position when she looks at herself in the mirror and notices that only certain parts of her body are suntanned, whereas the rest is “silly, effeminate, townish white” (Huxley, 1992, p. 145). Barbara’s interpretation of her semi-tanned body implies that she has never immersed herself in the local culture. Despite her long-term stay in Italy, which under different circumstances would enrich her experience, she remains isolated. She is attracted to the Marchese Prampolini, who is vigorous, confident, and “boiling with life” (p. 144). However, her infatuation, reinforced by the cryptic writing in the sand, is inspired by her wish to escape from the confines of her father’s pseudo-intellectual circle. In that sense, she is the predecessor to Moira Tarwin from “The Rest Cure,” which will be analyzed in the chapter on Brief Candles , Huxley’s last collection of short stories.

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Nowhere in “Green Tunnels” is pseudo-intellectualism as obvious as in Mr. Topes. He is probably the most unfortunate outcome of intellectual education in Huxley’s short fiction. Barbara sees him as “dry and shrivelled” (Huxley, 1992, p. 144), not because of his age but because of the impression he creates, repeatedly evoking dead artists and quoting brutal poetic clichés which he presents to himself as “apt new coinages” (p. 141). His greatest pleasure is sucking his mustache, but he has to resist his urge in front of Mrs. Topes, who dislikes his habit. He appears to be in love with Barbara. When their eyes first meet, he does not see her as a young woman but one of many “Madonnas of Montagne” (p. 141). Moreover, in an attempt to describe his surroundings, he explains to Barbara that the spirits of Michelangelo, Bernini, and Canova have carved the beauty of the mountains, which irritates her so much that she reprimands him for bringing “these dead people into everything” (p. 153). Mr. Topes’ observations suggest his biggest problem: Every time he has the opportunity to feel something, he ruins the moment with a trite reference to a work of art. Sometimes he is oblivious to the reactions of his interlocutors. His need to portray himself as an erudite overshadows his notions of good conduct. In that sense, he resembles Alfred Petherton from “Happily Ever After,” who bombards his daughter, Marjorie, with allusions to Renaissance philosophers and theologists, disregarding that she has never been interested in the subject-matter. But at other times, Mr. Topes knows how pointless his statements are: Mr. Topes sat, polishing his spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. Vague and myopic between their puckered lids, his eyes seemed lost, homeless, unhappy. He was thinking about beauty. There were certain relations between the eyelids and the temples, between the breast and the shoulder; there were certain successions of sounds. But what about them? Ah, that was the problem—that was the problem. And there was youth, there was innocence. But it was all very obscure, and there were so many phrases, so many remembered pictures and melodies; he seemed to get himself entangled among them. (Huxley, 1992, p. 150)

Except for his descriptions of nature, Huxley rarely embellishes his writing with too many adjectives, yet in the passage above he uses five of them to describe Mr. Topes’ eyes: vague, myopic, lost, homeless, and unhappy. At the same time, Mr. Topes is contemplating beauty, which is

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supposed to elevate his spirit. It is in the contrast between the multifaceted object of his perception and the grim, one-sided look in his eyes that we see the difference between understanding and knowledge. As Huxley points out in his essay “Knowledge and Understanding,” to understand something, we must “liberate ourselves from the old” and establish “a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by moment, of our existence” (Huxley, 1956, p. 39). Mr. Topes knows many representations of beauty in painting, literature, and music, but he is unable to make a direct, unmediated contact with it. “Green Tunnels” was published more than thirty years before “Knowledge and Understanding,” which is another reminder that some of Huxley’s most influential ideas first appeared in his short stories. This is not a coincidence. Ideas frequently become formulated after a writer depicts a character or situation. Fiction, regardless of its quality, is always more than the application of ready-made concepts, as it is sometimes believed, especially in relation to Huxley’s works, given that he was a novelist of ideas. The stories such as “Green Tunnels” tell us something about the nature of literature, which involves conscious intentions and subconscious processes, the result of which is always more complex than anticipated, leading to subsequent interpretations and theoretical frameworks. As we could see in the analysis of Mrs. Topes’ character, this story is a compelling proof that Huxley detected the dangers of Fascism right from the start, unlike many other modernist authors (e.g., Ezra Pound and F. T. Marinetti) who did not resist the “appeal” of Mussolini’s militias. The early reputation of Fascism was not linked to xenophobia and atrocities, but to speed, progress, strength, and rejection of the past— the ideals that many artists accepted without knowing what lay behind. In “Green Tunnels” we see that British expatriates are attracted to some of these values, epitomized by the Marchese Prampolini. At that point Huxley could not break down the main causes of Fascism but only to highlight its presence. A few years later, however, he dedicated several essays to the popularity of totalitarian regimes, including Italian Fascism. As Alessandro Maurini (2017) underscores, Huxley was “deeply disappointed by the democratic experience” and saw the “irreparable damage” it caused to European societies, which led to Fascism in Italy (p. 16). Maurini refers to the essay titled “Notes on Liberty” from Music at Night where Huxley explains that after reaching its peak, democracy begins to deteriorate. In Huxley’s opinion, that process occurred in Italy, where

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democratic values “were rapidly ceasing to be positive. Hence, among other reasons, the rise of Fascism” (Huxley, 1931, pp. 113–114). As a matter of fact, this idea was explicated in Proper Studies , four years before Music at Night: The ideal of political democracy, that all men ought to participate in ruling their country, is off the tangent; for the assumption on which it is based is untrue. The abilities of men are demonstrably not equal. The product of men’s efforts to reach this misplaced ideal and of the forces, external and psychological, which act upon them, has been a very uncertain movement which only the most blindly enthusiastic democrats could call progressive. The rise of Fascism and of its equivalents beyond the frontiers of Italy is an eloquent comment on the ideal of political democracy. (Huxley, 1927, p. 263)

Huxley’s focus in these essays is not on democracy as a system in which people choose their representatives at fair elections, but more on two side effects of democracy. The first one refers to democracy as a process which, if not handled properly at its peak, can result in the popularity of the most reactionary parts of society. The second side effect entails a number of ignorant or violent people elected to rule the country, even though they possess neither the qualifications nor the intellect or psychological stability to perform such a monumental task.5 It is interesting that two years before World War II, Huxley links the irresistible charm of totalitarianism to the failure of science. He asserts that “the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality” creates the world without meaning, so people, in need of a substitute, “turn to such doctrines as Nationalism, Fascism and revolutionary Communism” (Huxley, 1946, p. 269). “Green Tunnels” does not give us the reasons for the popularity of Italian Fascism. We only see the first stage in its rise, the appeal of the new political force that, owing to a mishandled democratic process, imposes itself as the only solution. The portrayal of Fascism in this story is similar to the one in Hemingway’s short story “Che Ti Dice La Patria?” where the protagonist, driving with his friend through Italy, witnesses the dominance of the Fascist movement in the late 1920s. (Hemingway also highlights the corruption in the Fascist ranks, given that a Fascist on a bicycle tries to extort money from the protagonist and his companion.)

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Still, “Green Tunnels” is important for us to understand Huxley’s political opinion, especially his ability to identify dangerous political trends that have the power to destroy the whole nations. This story also shows that Huxley, unlike many modernist authors, did not fall for the right-wing demonstration of force in the 1920s. On the contrary, he was among the first writers to warn the world what could happen if the majority of people, like Mr. Buzzacott and his guests, remained indifferent.

Nuns at Luncheon “Nuns at Luncheon” is a story about Sister Agatha, or Melpomene Fugger, which was her name before she became a nun. The reader learns about her life from a casual conversation between the narrator and Miss Penny, a journalist who is staying in Germany after a surgery at a local hospital. She explains that Melpomene used to be a nurse with the Sisters of Charity, but fell in love with a petty criminal, Kuno, who seduced her during his convalescence, convinced her to run away with him, and, while she was sleeping, stole her false teeth. As they found out about her disgrace, the Sisters of Charity organized her symbolic funeral at a local chapel and made her a cleaner at the hospital where Miss Penny was recovering. Miss Penny also provides the details of Melpomene’s early youth. She pins down the causes of her religious fanaticism partly to a protest against her agnostic father and his tyrannical sister, and partly to the trauma of being molested by her Latin teacher. At first Melpomene devoured books such as The Imitation of Christ and The Life of St. Theresa, whereupon she abused her body, eating as little as she could and refusing to see the dentist when she had a toothache. As she ended up in the hospital, Melpomene realized that she did not have to be so extreme. The Sisters of Charity, who nursed her during her recovery, explained that such drastic measures had come from her vanity and that she should have practiced discipline, the only virtue that would bring her to salvation. “Nuns at Luncheon” is another early story in which Huxley explores the Freudian relation between repressed sexuality and religious fervor or “sexo-religious psychology,” as he called it in a 1921 letter to his father (Bedford, 1974, p. 128). What differentiates Melpomene Fugger from the protagonist of “The Death of Lully” is that she is punished for not suppressing her libido. Nevertheless, these two stories demonstrate Huxley’s opposition to religious puritanism, which will turn out to

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be a constant in his writings. From his earliest short stories to his final essays, he criticized the idea that spirituality is opposed to sexual desire or, as Jeffrey Kripal (2006) points out, that “God stands against our own moral maturity, against sexuality, and against the divinization of human nature through the acquisition of knowledge and sensual pleasure” (p. 3). Despite his criticism of imposed promiscuity in “The Bookshop” and later in Brave New World, Huxley never believed that a human being should stop being human to attain higher levels of spirituality. He insisted that people should embrace all aspects of their humanity before they could shift their focus from “I” to the higher planes of reality. For instance, in “To the Puritan All Things Are Impure,” Huxley (1931) states that “to be a first-rate human being, a man must be both a first-rate animal and a firstrate thinker” (p. 159). In The Perennial Philosophy, published a decade later, he writes that all Christian authors, although praising spiritual love as superior to carnal love, think of the latter as “a necessary introduction and an indispensable means” (Huxley, 2009, p. 90). In other words, Melpomene is punished for wanting to be human. Given the context in which she was raised and subsequently educated, her decisions could not have been much different. Melpomene is one of many characters in Huxley’s works whose sexual repression corresponds with religious zeal: Raymond Lully, John the Savage from Brave New World (1932), Brian Foxe from Eyeless in Gazza (1936), and Philippe Trincant from The Devils of Loudun (1952). However, apart from chastising religious puritanism, Melpomene’s tragedy can help us understand the development of Huxley’s stance on the relation between religion and sexuality. Thus, in this story and “The Death of Lully,” Huxley has a simplistic notion of how sexual repression influences religious belief and practice. The more one represses the sexual drive the bigger one’s religious fervor. In his works from the 1930s, Huxley’s views are more complex, allowing sexual repression to lead to positive outcomes, as in the case of Brian Foxe from Eyeless in Gaza. Finally, in The Devils of Loudun, published three decades after “Nuns at Luncheon,” Huxley (1959) makes a distinction between genuine attempts at “upward self-transcendence into the life of spirit” (p. 114), which sometimes can imply abstention from sex, and the downward selftranscendence of Jeanne des Anges, who descends into her “oppressive sexuality” (p. 119). That is to say, sexuality can be an obstacle in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment if it does not lead to the annihilation of one’s ego, which is a prerequisite for attaining the unitive knowledge of the

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divine ground. There is yet another dimension to this topic, which I will explain in the analyses of “Visiting Stranger” and “Time’s Revenges”. Melpomene’s story—the earliest typescript of “Nuns at Luncheon” was titled “The Nun’s Tragedy” (Nugel & Wagner, 2008, p. 1)—reveals another important layer of Huxley’s position on religion and Christian mysticism. Huxley satirizes the belief that physical austerities can lead to spiritual enlightenment. It was because of Melpomene’s poor health, caused by the abuse of her own body, that she ended up in a hospital and subjected herself to the rigorous Sisters of Charity. Although in The Perennial Philosophy Huxley allows for the possibility that some saints mortified their bodies to gain “psychic powers,” he points out that “physical austerities may be dangerous to health” and that they are “a standing temptation to vanity and the competitive spirit of record breaking” (Huxley, 2009, pp. 99–100). If we take “Nuns at Luncheon” into consideration, together with Huxley’s subsequent thoughts on physical austerities in religion, we will realize that he never changed his opinion on this aspect of Christianity and mysticism. To him, mortification of one’s body is “irrelevant to the main issue of life” and even “an obstacle in the way to spiritual advance” (p. 99). Or, as William Propter says in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, “self-sacrifice to any but the highest cause is … simply a projection of the ego” (Huxley, 1962, p. 116). Despite the abundance of studies that highlight this idea in Huxley’s fiction and essays, some scholars have the opposite view. For example, John Attarian (2003), analyzing “a world which has fled from God” in Brave New World, believes that Huxley’s main concern is to show that “suffering and mortification are the price of transcendence” (p. 9). “Nuns at Luncheon” provides compelling evidence that his opinion is incorrect. “Nuns at Luncheon” contains an interesting compositional element that we could not see in Limbo. In parallel with the main story, the narrator and Miss Penny develop a metastory on writing, given that he is a fiction writer and she is a journalist. For instance, having explained the details of Melpomene’s childhood, especially the role of her Latin Professor, Miss Penny says the following: “If I wrote short stories,” she went on reflectively “(but it’s too much bother), I should make this anecdote into a sort of potted life history, beginning with a scene immediately after this disagreeable event in Melpomene’s life. I see the scene so clearly. Poor little Melpel is leaning over the bastions of Grauburg Castle, weeping into the June night and

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the mulberry trees in the garden thirty feet below. She is besieged by the memory of what happened this dreadful afternoon. Professor Engelmann, her father’s old friend, with the magnificent red Assyrian beard ....” (Huxley, 1992, p. 161)

This paragraph showcases Huxley as a more confident storyteller than in Limbo, where he did not experiment with the form. Miss Penny takes the main story out of context, deepening her own character instead. We see her laidback approach to life and its occasional tragedies. Perhaps the best metaphor of her outlook is her pair of earrings that resemble “skeletons hanging in chains” (p. 166). All her anecdotes are meant to amuse her audience, both her readers and lunch companions, regardless of how cruel the stories may be. Miss Penny’s unexpected intrusion into the narrative helps us understand a writer’s attitude to people, whereby everything can be turned into material for a potential story, including a tale about a girl who was emotionally abused by her father and aunt, molested by her Latin teacher, humiliated by the Sisters of Charity, and eventually deceived by a small-time criminal. Whether we like it or not, that sort of emotional detachment is often necessary for anyone who wants to become a writer. Miss Penny even asks her companion to provide his version. Analyzing Joyce’s short story “A Little Cloud,” Dominic Head (1992) claims that its structure “exposes the self-delusion it nominally reinforces” and that it “creates its effects by exaggerating its own techniques, its very fictiveness” (p. 187). Although “Nuns at Luncheon” follows a different structural pattern than “A Little Cloud,” the effect it creates is similar: The story exaggerates its own techniques, reinforcing and undermining the plot at the same time. Miss Penny does not pretend to be innocent in this narrative experiment. On the contrary, she describes both herself and her companion as “two professionals gloating, with an absolute lack of sympathy, over a seduced nun” (Huxley, 1992, p. 166). Because of their indifference to the nun’s tragedy, Maria Schubert (2000) claims that Huxley here uses “grim and cruel irony” (p. 171). But, as Henri Bergson (1911) underscores, one of the key components of laughter is “the absence of feeling,” even when we laugh at someone “who inspires us with pity” (p. 4). In other words, Miss Penny and her interlocutor play with humor as a literary element, testing both its power and their ability to remain emotionless

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despite Melpomene’s tragic life that would affect any other person. Whatever our feelings may be, we cannot deny that the dialogue in this story is more advanced than the one in “Cynthia” from Limbo, where the narrator interrupts Lykeham mostly to fill the space. In “Nuns at Luncheon,” the dialogue is another narrative tool that Huxley uses not only to deepen Miss Penny’s personality but to satirize himself and other writers. This metastory, together with the subplot of “The Gioconda Smile,” demonstrates Huxley’s exceptional literary progress, making Mortal Coils his most refined collection of short stories.

Notes 1. In the mid-1950s, after his famous experiments with mescalin, Huxley modified his ideas on modernist art. On the one hand, he understood the “Cubist’s-eye view” of “the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space” (Huxley, 1960, p. 15). On the other hand, he denounced all artists as “beginners” or “resolute deadenders” who were satisfied “with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner” (p. 22). 2. For Huxley’s opinion on Haydon, see his essay “B. R. Haydon” in The Olive Tree and Other Essays (1936). The book also contains the essay “English Snobbery,” which can apply to many characters from “The Tillotson Banquet”. 3. This metaphor amused Huxley so much that he included it again, more than three decades later, in The Genius and the Goddess , when John Rivers explains: “We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead” (Huxley, 1955, p. 36). 4. Huxley will explore this topic further in Those Barren Leaves , his third novel, published three years after Mortal Coils . 5. The opinion that people, although equal in terms of their rights, do not have equal intellectual capabilities and therefore should not be included in all spheres of a political system corresponds with Huxley’s views on education. In Proper Studies , Huxley (1927) highlights the main fallacy of mass education—“that all minds are alike and can profit by the same system of training,” which results in “pumping the same knowledge by the same methods into radically different minds” (p. 98). This topic will be broadened in his story

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“Young Archimedes,” which I will analyze in the chapter on Little Mexican and Other Stories .

References Attarian, J. (2003). Brave New World and the Flight from God. In H. Bloom (Ed.), Aldous Huxley (pp. 9–24). Chelsea House. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Bergson, H. (1911). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (C. Brereton & F. Rothwell, Trans.). MacMillan. (Original work published 1900). Beringause, A. F. (1964). Debate Between Body and Soul. The CEA Critic, 24(9), 1–4. Cuppy, W. J. (1975). Huxley as a Serious Writer. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 74–76). Routledge. Head, D. (1992). The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press. Hemingway, E. (1995). The Short Stories. Simon & Schuster. Huxley, A. (1927). Proper Studies. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1931). Music at Night and Other Essays. Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc. Huxley, A. (1946). Ends and Means. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1947). The Olive Tree and Other Essays. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1955). The Genius and the Goddess. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1956). Adonis and the Alphabet. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1959). The Devils of Loudun. Harper & Brothers. Huxley, A. (1960). The Doors of Perception and Heaven & Hell. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1962). After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (G. Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Dee Inc. Huxley, A. (2009). The Perennial Philosophy. Harper Publishers. Kripal, J. (2006). The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion. University of Chicago Press. Lawrence, D. H. (1971). The Mortal Coil and Other Stories (K. Sagar, Ed.). Penguin Books. Maurini, A. (2017). Aldous Huxley: The Political Thought of a Man of Letters. Lexington Books. Meckier, J. (1973). Quarles Among the Monkeys: Huxley’s Zoological Novels. The Modern Language Review, 68(2), 268–282. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus.

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Nugel, B., & Wagner, G. (2008). “The Nun’s Tragedy”: An Unknown Story by Aldous Huxley. Aldous Huxley Annual, 8, 1–3. Schubert, M. (2000). The Use of Irony in Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction. In Short Stories Criticism (Vol. 39). Gale Research Inc. Stanzel, F. K. (2004). The “Complementary Story”: Outline of a ReaderOriented Theory of the Novel. Style, 38(2), 203–220. Super, R. H. (1991). Aldous Huxley’s Art of Allusion: The Arnold Connection. English Studies, 72(5), 426–441. Woodcock, G. (1972). Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley. The Viking Press.

Irony, Popular Art, and Progressive Education in Little Mexican

Little Mexican and Other Stories , Huxley’s third book of short fiction, was published in 1924. It came after Antic Hay, which had established his reputation as a talented novelist but also irritated conservative critics such as James Douglas, who asked the readers of the Sunday Times to hold their noses as the novel was “almost Ulyssean in its nauseous horror” (Murray, 2003, p. 158). Little Mexican had mixed reviews as well. A critic from the Times Literary Supplement liked “Hubert and Minnie,” which was “a little masterpiece of suggestion, contrast, shading off,” whereas other stories seemed to him either long or too obvious or “not real” (p. 104). Grant Overton, an American critic and editor, praised the book’s “comedy and irony in various proportions,” emphasizing the “charming narrative” of “Young Archimedes,” which was “austere and tender,” and which presented “a new conception of Aldous Huxley” (Watt, 1975, p. 103). Arnold Bennett, however, did not share his opinion. He criticized Huxley for not finishing the stories properly (p. 106). He also deprecated him and other young writers for not being able to “select” what is important in characterizations (pp. 106–107), which tells us more about his misunderstanding of modernist literary techniques. Huxley himself was pleased with the collection. In a letter to his father, he wrote that there was “some quite good stuff in it” (Huxley, 1969, p. 228). Although the stories in Little Mexican are weaker than in the previous books, they bring new elements to Huxley’s prose and build upon several © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_4

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themes. For instance, Huxley reinforces the degradation of characters by depicting the changes in their living space. He introduces a workingclass character involved in neither arts nor literature, which might seem insignificant to today’s readers, but represents a breakthrough in Huxley’s short fiction given that all his previous characters come from middle and upper classes, or they are poor booksellers and artists. Toxic masculinity has another representative in this collection, a young narcissist without the courage to seduce a woman who adores him. Huxley’s criticism of futile intellectual education has new dimensions, and so does his mockery of popular art and conservative upbringing. Finally, Little Mexican promotes modern ideas on education, for the first time in Huxley’s short fiction, ideas similar to the ones advocated by Maria Montessori and John Dewey, which shows that Huxley’s concepts were in line with the most progressive theories at the time.

Little Mexican As we could see in the analyses of Huxley’s first two books of short fiction, he has already explored the topic of conservative or pseudo-intellectual upbringing, especially in “Happily Ever After,” “Green Tunnels,” and “Nuns at Luncheon”. In each of these stories, it is young women who suffer the consequences of growing up in a controlled environment imposed by their possessive fathers. “Little Mexican,” however, portrays a man as the victim of a similar family arrangement. Count Fabio Tirabassi is a lieutenant from Padua, Italy. In the description of the young count, Huxley uses his recognizable technique of suggesting the protagonist’s characteristics through his physical appearance: His appearance was not typically Italian (but then what is a typical Italian?). He was not, that is to say, blue-jowled, beady-eyed, swarthy, and aquiline. On the contrary, he had pale ginger hair, grey eyes, a snub nose, and a freckled complexion. I knew plenty of young Englishmen who might have been Count Tirabassi’s less vivacious brothers. (Huxley, 1992, p. 173)

Count Fabio Tirabassi is not a typical Italian, as the narrator stresses while introducing him, because his looks do not correspond with the usual stereotypes about Italian men. He has “pale ginger hair, grey eyes,

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a snub nose, and a freckled complexion.” This simple physical description prepares us for later sections of the story where the count reveals his urge to escape the constraints of the patriarchal Italy imposed on him by his father. The count tells the narrator that he adores art and admonishes the locals for not investing more time in their art heritage. But we are not sure about the nature of his art worship, especially because he seems to mock foreigners who inspect the paintings “with a movement of a chicken that drinks” (Huxley, 1992, p. 173). On the one hand, he possesses an outstanding home gallery of frescoes and glorifies artists at every opportunity. On the other hand, he desperately needs a buyer for his collection so that he can start his cheese-making business. Besides, he believes that the narrator is a painter just because he wears a sombrero (which the title refers to). His peculiar notion of what an artist should look like demonstrates either his superficial views on art or an attempt to please the wealthy foreigner and convince him to buy his frescoes. Fabio also complains about not traveling enough. He hints that behind his wish to start his own business is nothing but an urge to become independent. Soon the focus shifts to his father, the old count whose physical appearance suggests several features of his flamboyant personality: The old Count had a red weather-beaten face, with white moustaches bristling gallantly upwards and a white imperial in the grand Risorgimento manner of Victor Emmanuel the Second. Under the white tufty eyebrows, and set in the midst of a webwork of fine wrinkles, the eyes were brown and bright like a robin’s. His long nose looked, somehow, more practically useful than the ordinary human nose, as though made for fine judicial sniffing, for delicate burrowing and probing. … He was dressed all in white linen—for the weather was still very hot—and his wide grey hat was tilted rakishly forward over his left eye. (Huxley, 1992, pp. 174-175)

The first sentence establishes the façade of a gentleman who belongs to the tradition of Italian nobility. However, set between his impeccably trimmed mustache and eyebrows, his eyes “bright like a robin’s” and especially his nose “as though made for fine judicial sniffing, for delicate burrowing and probing” seem to contradict the general aura of a respectable old man whose days are numbered. They are more suitable for a shrewd investigator who can spot a weakness in other people and take advantage of it. To conceal this paradox, the old count is dressed in white, the color of purity and innocence, although his hat is “tilted rakishly

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forward over his left eye,” indicating not only his playful personality but also hidden characteristics no one can understand. The old count Tirabassi, the Italian version of John Bidlake from Point Counter Point , tells the narrator more details about his son. It turns out that Fabio’s military career is under his father’s control. The old count has connections in the ministry owing to which he has seen that Fabio never leaves Padua. We also learn that he has arranged Fabio’s marriage. He coaxed him into proposing to one of his friend’s daughters. It is interesting that the old count emphasizes the religiosity of Fabio’s wife. On first reading we might think that the old count praises his daughter-in-law for her high moral standards, until we realize that her piety is nothing but the docility of a woman whose main function is to keep her man “more effectually rooted” (Huxley, 1992, p. 177), which is something “modern young women brought up outside the Church” (p. 177) can never be forced to do. Here Huxley once again criticizes Christian churches in Europe, that is, their inability to adapt to modern life and acknowledge that their doctrines are frequently used to keep their followers obedient and dependent. What differentiates Fabio Tirabassi from other similar characters in Huxley’s short fiction is that he does not fully understand the cause of his entrapment. Marjorie Petherton from “Happily Ever After” is aware that both her father and uncle prevent her from experiencing real life, so she sees a way out in her engagement with Guy Lambourne. Melpomene Fugger from “Nuns at Luncheon” rebels against her agnostic father by abusing her body and resorting to the lowest levels of Christian mysticism. In the analysis of “The Rest Cure,” the most accomplished story from Brief Candles , we will see that Moira Tarwin tries to escape from her grandfather, Sir Watney Croker, by marrying John Tarwin. Once she realizes that her husband comes from the same stifling environment, she has an affair with Tonino Vasari. Unlike the three women, Fabio Tirabassi never admits that his father is to blame for his predicament. He does not even have a clue that both his marriage and military service have been arranged so that the old count could have steady income and enjoy the company of his colombella. In addition, Fabio’s younger brother, Lucio, has managed to leave for Bulgaria, where he has a bootlace business and a Turkish mistress. In theory, Fabio could do the same—leave the country and escape from his father’s grip. The young count, however, misplaces his frustration whenever he elaborates on his boredom in Padua,

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blaming Italian tradition, family, military duties, everything but his own indecisiveness. “Little Mexican” contains yet another element that we cannot find in Huxley’s previous collections. The narrator highlights Fabio’s material and emotional degradation through multifaceted depictions of his estate. The Tirabassi villa is a prime example of European nobility. The living room with a fireplace, coats of arms, and a Swiss cuckoo clock is filled with furniture that combines Palladian architecture and the Viennese secession. The central hall is brimming with Veronese’s frescoes. The house has a garden with equally important masterpieces “against the background of cypresses and statues and far-away blue mountains” (Huxley, 1992, p. 181). Some rooms have Carpioni’s paintings showcasing “satyrs chasing nymphs” and “a very eccentric rape of mermaids by centaurs” (p. 181). All these decorations have deeper meanings. They indicate the wealth and social status of the Tirabassi family, but they also allude to toxic masculinity in both Fabio and his father, and to the young count’s desire to live independently and embrace different cultures. The Swiss clock, apart from its prestige and elegance, reveals Fabio’s fear of time, or, more precisely, the two aspects of his perception of time: (1) The clock is a reminder of the time Fabio has wasted obeying his father’s wishes; and (2) it signifies the time he still has to make a radical change. Fabio possesses a farm as well, consisting of four buildings, one of which is empty because the young count wants to have his cheese-factory there. The vacant space symbolizes the last chance for Fabio to choose his own path. The narrator returns to the estate in 1921, three years after World War I, and witnesses a different scene. Once a symbol of affluence and style, the villa has deteriorated like the whole country. The stucco walls are “peeling off in scabs” (Huxley, 1992, p. 189) and the garden is covered in weed. The statue of Triton blows “his waterless conch” (p. 191) at the dry fountain. The sculptures representing a “pair of rapes … writhed desperately against the sky” (p. 191). The empty farm building, once reserved for the young count’s cheese-factory, is packed with looms because Fabio, now a prominent Fascist in Padua, has started a weaving business “just in time … for the Communist revolution” (p. 191). The walls with frescoes are riddled with bullet holes. A lady has been shot in the face and a monkey’s tail is damaged. Carpioni’s scenes appear intact but Tiepolo’s fresco depicting Eros and Psyche has suffered the most, its parts destroyed

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with mold, so Eros resembles “the faintest ghost of an ascending Cupid” (p. 193), whereas Psyche is nowhere to be found. Fabio’s dilapidated estate reflects his own aesthetic and spiritual deterioration. His worship of art has degraded to a mere possession of art works, once splendid and illuminating and now doomed to fade away. His cheese-making business, which was supposed to bring him financial independence, has become a useless weaving factory that cannot yield any profit due to the post-war struggles between the peasants and landowners. The estate’s condition also anticipates the political turbulences in Italy after World War I that will culminate into Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship, which will last for two decades and cause immense suffering. This story brings more details about the Fascist movement in Italy than “Green Tunnels” from the previous collection. There Huxley depicts the Marchese Prampolini as vigorous, confident, and full of life, compared to whom Mr. Buzzacott and his guests look weak and uninspiring. At the time Huxley had been in Italy for a short time and could not explain the reasons behind the popularity of Fascism. He could only detect the Fascists’ initial appeal to the upper classes in Europe and all those who yearned for law and order. In “Little Mexican,” however, Huxley portrays the Fascist movement as a faction of Italian conservatives involved in the fight against peasants and communists. He also touches upon the indoctrination of the young count’s children, who run around the house chanting Fascist songs against communists and socialists. By the time “Little Mexican” was published, Huxley had become aware of the inner struggles within Italian society that made the Fascist movement a political option that would soon dominate the country. Another interesting aspect of this story is that we see Fabio’s wife more as part of the declining household than a flesh-and-blood woman. On his first visit, the narrator describes her as “slim” and “three inches taller than her husband” (Huxley, 1992, p. 180), with “dark eyes, vague, lustrous, and melancholy, like the eyes of a gentle animal” (p. 180). She looks at him with “the calm, remote regard of one whose life mostly goes on behind the eyes” (p. 180), which the narrator ascribes to her religious sentiment. Even though she does not talk much, she seems confident and fully in control of the house. At the time she has only one child. However, the countess’ appearance is much different in 1921. Now with six children to look after, she is emaciated, resembling a character from the disappearing frescoes. Her children, singing a Fascist song, are playing among the Veronese’s frescoes, while her husband is yelling at her to keep them

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quiet. Fabio gets exasperated especially by her “religious resignation, her patience, her serenity” (p. 190), a characteristic that, despite all the hardship, she has never lost. She does not control her house anymore and her only option is to withdraw to the inner world “behind the eyes” (p. 180). Her life is the ironic reversal of the story of Psyche, whose image used to decorate the Tirabassi villa and has now disappeared. Instead of having an eternal life with her Eros/Cupid as the myth suggests, the countess has neither love nor respect that Psyche enjoys after going through her ordeal.

Hubert and Minnie Other than D. H. Lawrence, hardly any modernist author has depicted toxic masculinity from so many angles as Aldous Huxley. In the analysis of “The Gioconda Smile,” we could see that Mr. Hutton’s urge to humiliate women comes from his underlying insecurity. “Hubert and Minnie” adds another layer to the topic. Hubert is a twenty-year-old man in love with love, but not the feeling, which he is incapable of experiencing, but love as a concept that, in his opinion, could enable him to join Donne, Shakespeare, and other masters who wrote about the subject. He is also in love with himself. That is why he has his first love-affair with Minnie, who adores him unlike any other woman before. Even though he is not attracted to Minnie, he forces himself into a sort of relationship with her. He considers their affair “extremely important” or “a genuine turning point in his spiritual development” (Huxley, 1992, p. 198), which is not the language one would expect from a young man in love. His forced affection does not last long. Hubert breaks up with Minnie before they establish a deeper relationship. Having arranged to meet her at a mill outside London, Hubert, like a lover from a cheap romance (despite his wish to convey his message with Shakespearean subtlety), tells Minnie that he cannot ask her to make a sacrifice. He understands that his action is neither “handsome” nor “courageous,” and that the voice he has put on to fire his cliché sounds like someone else’s, but he comforts himself that at least Minnie will be “mourning over him” (Huxley, 1992, p. 208). It is then we realize that he seduced Minnie because he wanted to hurt her. We should add that she is eight years older than him. By making an older woman “mourn over him,” Hubert hopes to prove his masculinity, yet his attempt only augments his impotence and a whole array of insecurities.

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Minnie also has a false perception of love. She is enchanted by the feeling, which she rarely connects with sexual pleasure. Mrs. Glamber, Minnie’s confidante and only friend, describes her biggest problem: She is “pathetic in a boring way,” not like “a sick monkey” that could win affection but like a “blotting paper” that absorbs all the life in the room (Huxley, 1992, pp. 201–202). Minnie’s lifelessness does not arouse any feelings and therefore she never gets any sympathy. Though she becomes the victim of Hubert’s pathological narcissism and never realizes why he breaks up with her, Minnie shares his illusion of love. None of them believe that love should go beyond initial thoughts and feelings. None of them understand that romantic love, which both of them aim to attain, can rarely last if not united with sexual desire. Apart from Minnie and Mrs. Glamber, there is another female character in the story. Her name is Phoebe and she is the cousin of Hubert’s friend, Ted. A redhead with “milky skin,” she is an actress who enjoys talking about her colorful love life and ability to drink without “getting buffy” (p. 203). Neither of the guys like her, although they cannot deny her “vitality” (p. 203). (Meticulous Hubert even writes down this noun in his diary.) Phoebe’s vigor contrasts Minnie’s sterility. She is full of life, amusing, boisterous, and, more than anything else, independent, especially when dealing with men. We can also guess why Hubert and Ted are not impressed with her adventurous life. Both of them know they can never control Phoebe, and both of them are scared of her independence. It is a pity that Huxley did not develop this character, for Phoebe could have been a bridge between the inexperienced young women such as Marjorie Petherton and femmes fatales such as Myra Viveash, a more realistic woman Huxley rarely depicted in his fiction. “Hubert and Minnie” is another story where Huxley criticizes mainstream intellectual education. Hubert dwells in the world of abstractions which make him dysfunctional. Only once, in a conversation with Ted Watchett, does he admit that his intellectual fortress might not be sufficient to explain all aspects of life. To Watchett’s remark that reading Dostoyevsky or D. H. Lawrence is enough to experience murder or sex, Hubert admits: “One must have a certain amount of actual nonimaginative experience” (Huxley, 1992, p. 203). However, instead of being faithful to that idea, he satisfies his curiosity by resorting to Shakespeare or Donne or Voltaire whenever he tries to rationalize his inability to act or feel. Hubert’s belief that art and philosophy can be substitutes for life exemplifies the “triumph” of knowledge over understanding, as

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in “Green Tunnels”. Like Mr. Topes contemplating beauty, Hubert fails to “liberate [himself] from the old” and establish “a direct, unmediated contact with the new” (Huxley, 1956, p. 39). Hubert interprets poetry in line with his intellectual paralysis and fails to understand deeper meanings. Because neither Shakespeare nor Donne, whom Hubert likes to quote, glorified abstract, intellectual love at the cost of physical intimacy. On the contrary, both of them knew that true love could only be the unity of carnal and spiritual. “Hubert and Minnie” might not be Huxley’s best work, yet it demonstrates his development as a storyteller. The most striking example of his prose ability is in the last section, when Hubert choses his perfect breakup spot: It was Hubert who arranged that they should stay at the mill. One of his friends had once been there with a reading party, and found the place comfortable, secluded, and admirably quiet. Quiet, that is to say, with the special quietness peculiar to mills. For the silence there was not the silence of night on a mountain; it was a silence made of continuous thunder. At nine o’clock every morning the mill-wheel began to turn, and its roaring never stopped all day. … The thunder became, by reason of its very unintermittence, a perfect silence, wonderfully rich and profound. (Huxley, 1992, p. 204)

A garden behind the mill far away from London seems too much even for a character such as Hubert. However, bearing in mind his pseudoliterary understanding of love, we should not be surprised. After all, the place was recommended to him by a friend who had been there “with a reading party” (Huxley, 1992, p. 204). What makes it even more peculiar is the “continuous thunder” of the mill-wheel. Since it never stops, the noise dominates the place, separating it from the rest of the world. We cannot know what exactly Hubert’s friend told him when suggesting the place—the narrator gives us no more details—but we can assume that the decibels produced by the mill-wheel’s rolling played a key role in Hubert’s decision to invite Minnie to such a strange location. Not only does the thunder create the illusion of a vacuum where Minnie would be at his mercy but it guarantees that no one else hears Hubert’s banal monologue. His clichés appear everything but Shakespearean, so the background noise spares him the embarrassment. This complex scene that involves a quasi-poetic setting, pathetic reasons behind its selection,

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and powerful irony—for the reader knows what the protagonist tries to conceal—shows Huxley’s exceptional wit that made him one of the most influential satirists in the period of modernism.

Fard In “Fard,” which Arnold Bennett saw as “a Chekhov story” (Bennett, 1975, p. 106), Huxley briefly breaks the pattern of resorting to intellectuals or the upper-class socialites as protagonists. He gives center stage to a servant, Sophie. Working on her Madame’s camisoles, she tries to focus despite the quarrel between Madame and Monsieur in the other room, and despite her poor eyesight which produces “a yellowish bright worm” surrounded by “the stars of green and red” (Huxley, 1992, p. 210). Her whole life has been a struggle, and she seems to feel all those years of exhaustion in a single moment. She fantasizes not about having a happy family or enough money to live independently but about resting in a comfortable bed. Even that brief moment of freedom is interrupted by the ringing of Madame’s bell, calling her to prepare for yet another task. Soon the narrator pushes Sophie aside to focus on Madame’s tirades about her failed marriage. Talking to herself, she tries to come up with the best way to punish her husband, Hégésippe, who writes “silly verses” and publishes them “at his expense” (Huxley, 1992, p. 212).1 What makes Madame different from other such characters in Huxley’s short fiction is that she is disgusted with her servant’s fifty-year-old body. She portrays her as a “thin, miserable, old creature, with a yellow face and blue teeth” (p. 212). Sophie reminds her of “those beggar women one sees on a cold morning, standing in the gutter” (p. 212), although she admits that without her servant she would never be able to live independently. Madame does not understand that her disgust is nothing more than misplaced frustration over her own misery. If she could deconstruct her feelings and find out the real causes of her anger, she would cut her dependence on her husband and, more importantly, liberate herself from her tragic ignorance (she has never been to the Louvre even though she has lived in Paris her whole life). But all she can do is instruct her servant to put on make-up and cover the traces of exhaustion. Arnold Bennett uses this scene to show that Huxley “doesn’t finish” but “shirks” or “ceases” (Bennett, 1975, p. 106), instead of focusing on Sophie’s thoughts after Madame reprimands her, which would help him create a

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memorable character. Little can be added to Bennett’s remark. Huxley here missed the opportunity to broaden his characterization. This story seemingly epitomizes what Nicholas Murray (2003) sees as Huxley’s obsession with disgust (pp. 117, 121, 157, and 295) and what Huxley’s sister-in-law, Juliette, found repulsive (p. 137). However, if we consider the disgust in “Fard” not as the author’s own view but the character’s idiosyncrasy—which we would probably do in case of any other writer—we will realize that Madame’s comments reveal frustration with her weakness that keeps her in the prison of her own creation. There is yet another important aspect of Madame’s disgust. While mocking her servant’s yellow teeth and emphasizing “the color of greenish lead” (Huxley, 1992, p. 213) in Sophie’s eyes, Madame exhibits her own fear of aging, that is, the fear of not being able to use her beauty to dominate other people. In that sense, all the criticism of Huxley’s repulsive language and imagery stays on the surface, overlooking deeper components that would justify such depictions. Besides, the emphasis on ugliness instead of beauty was not an exception in modernist literature. Coined in 1853 by Karl Rosenkranz, the “aesthetics of ugliness” was embraced in the second decade of the twentieth century by German and Austrian expressionists such as Gottfried Benn, Georg Trakl, and Georg Heym. If we compare any sentence from Huxley’s fiction to the first collection of Benn’s poetry titled Morgue and Other Poems (Morgue und andere Gedichte, 1912) where the poet explores filth, rotting, and pain in cancer wards—not to mention his poem “Beautiful Youth” (Schöne Jugend) which features a young girl’s corpse in which the doctors find a nest of baby rats—we will realize that Huxley’s so-called obsession with disgust is only the mild version of a characteristic shared by many modernist authors. Huxley’s auditory imagination is probably the most intriguing element in “Fard”. At the beginning of the story, Madame and Monsieur are quarreling, but we learn about their fight indirectly through Sophie’s ears: It was Madame’s voice that she heard most often. Shrill with anger and indignant with tears, it burst out in gusts, in gushes. Monsieur was more self-controlled, and his deeper voice was too softly pitched to penetrate easily the closed doors and to carry along the passage. To Sophie, in her cold little room, the quarrel sounded, most of the time, like a series of monologues by Madame, interrupted by strange and ominous silences. But every now and then Monsieur seemed to lose his temper outright, and then there was no silence between the gusts, but a harsh, deep,

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angry shout. Madame kept up her loud shrillness continuously and without flagging; her voice had, even in anger, a curious, level monotony. But Monsieur spoke now loudly, now softly, with emphases and modulations and sudden outbursts, so that his contributions to the squabble, when they were audible, sounded like a series of separate explosions. Bow, wow, wow-wow-wow, wow—a dog barking rather slowly. (Huxley, 1992, p. 209)

The two voices are like instruments played in counterpoint. Madame’s shrill voice is monotonous, consistently keeping the same pitch. Monsieur’s voice is deep, uneven, “with emphases and modulations and sudden outbursts,” sometimes heard after pauses, while at other times covering them in “separate explosions” that sound more like a dog’s barking than a human speech. The narrator does not depict their squabbling in a realistic manner but asks the reader to reconstruct it based on these musical descriptions. We can assume that Madame, in the first part of their dialogue, makes accusations against Monsieur, which seem familiar to both of them given that the pitch of her voice does not change. In the second part, Monsieur responds with a series of also familiar remarks, as his voice remains “softly pitched” and “self-controlled.” The last segment of their quarrel ends in Monsieur’s explosive outbursts, implying that he loses control and probably says something unusual, something that insults Madame so much, whereupon she decides to leave abruptly for Rome. Huxley’s knowledge of music is well documented in the literature. Even though without formal music education, he played the piano and even taught his son, Matthew, the basics of the instrument (Bedford, 1974, p. 247). As John Aplin (1983) underscores, Huxley was a music critic for the Weekly Westminster Gazette from February 1922 to June 1923 (p. 27). No wonder his novels and short stories are full of references to classical composers.2 Aplin points out that these references usually act as symbols “recurring … in similar contexts and for the same ends” (p. 33). In the introduction to “Fard,” Huxley does not refer to any classical composition but creates his own based on Madame and Monsieur’s voices. The composition is revealed to us through Sophie, who acts as a medium, presenting the voices in their unfiltered versions and leaving them to us for interpretation. Huxley’s experiment with sounds and silence in this story is similar to Carson McCullers’ evocation of voices in “Court in the West Eighties,” where the narrator, instead of describing a fight at two o’clock in the morning, provides the reader only with

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“animal-like” sounds, “high and breathless, between a moan and exclamation” (McCullers, 2017, p. 20). Again, Huxley’s experiment could have been extended to other scenes, which would make Sophie much more than a mirror of Madame’s anger and fear. Nevertheless, his auditory improvisation in “Fard” shows that he did play with the short story’s form, contrary to David Daiches and his followers who believed that Huxley was anti-modernist in every aspect of his fiction.

The Portrait Huxley’s criticism of popular art, especially of the concept whereby art is treated as mere commodity, which he has previously explored in “The Tillotson Banquet,” has a new dimension in “The Portrait”. It is a story about a wealthy businessman who wants to buy a painting for his newly acquired mansion. He does not want anything modern but “real pictures, old pictures, Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds and that sort of thing” (Huxley, 1992, p. 214). His vision of success, which enabled him to acquire his Manor House, is incomplete without a collection of canvasses painted by traditional, widely respected artists. Mr. Bigger, the art dealer, another character with an ironic name, has a painting for him: a portrait of an Italian lady from the eighteenth century. But the Lord of the Manor, as the narrator calls him, wants somebody with an intriguing biography such as Anne Boleyn or Nell Gwyn, a person that would provide his investment with historical relevance and prove lucrative in the future. Experienced in dealing with that sort of customers, Mr. Bigger has a ready-made tale based on his own experience in Venice twenty-five years before, a tale that contains all the clichés of a popular romance—a rich man from a noble family, his wife’s infidelity, smuggled jewelry, and carnival masks. That is why the Lord of the Manor agrees to buy the painting, at the price that is almost thirty times higher than what Mr. Bigger has paid to a local artist for a piece of “sham Old Masters” (p. 224). Mr Bigger’s tale contains an ironic element that we can also find in “Over the Telephone,” Huxley’s short story published a year before “The Portrait”. While adapting his Venetian adventure to the eighteen-century context, Mr. Bigger gives the Lord of the Manor many clues that indicate the improbability of the whole affair. For instance, the nobleman’s name is the fourth Earl Hurtmore, which anticipates the result of the transaction: the customer’s finances will hurt more than they should. Likewise, the tale’s leitmotif is deception. Lady Hurtmore is cheating on her husband

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with a local painter. She also plans to steal her husband’s jewelry so that she and her lover can sell them in Vienna and secure enough money for their future. However, Lord Hurtmore deceives all of them when he shows up at the painter’s studio and takes back his jewels. Not to mention that the plot is set against a backdrop of the famous Carnival in Venice, with black cloaks, masks, and overall mystery. If the Lord of the Manor could detect these red flags, he would probably think twice before buying such an expensive painting. But once he gets his “ancestral” tale, he becomes blind to everything else. Mr. Bigger plays this game with the Lord of the Manor because his tale has several elements that will always be attractive to such men. First of all, Mr. Bigger emphasizes that the Hurtmores are now extinct, suggesting that the painting will be a rarity in the future and therefore of much greater value. Second, it features wealthy ancestors whom the Lord of the Manor does not have and whom he wants to acquire in this transaction. Third, to an ignorant nouveau riche businessman, the clichés of the popular romance will seem like the components of a true story. Finally, the ending is nothing like the one in Ana Karenina or Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Unlike in Tolstoy’s and Lawrence’s protagonists whose infidelity transforms into the rebellion against patriarchal environment or the celebration of female sexuality, Lady Hurtmore’s affair turns out to be a brief period of thoughtlessness, whereupon she goes back to her husband, who has outsmarted her and preserved his dignity. Mr. Bigger knows that such an outcome will cement his interlocutor’s decision to buy the portrait, as it is calculated to feed the ego of a patriarchal man. As in Huxley’s previous collections, “The Portrait” introduces an idea that he will later develop in his essays. Today’s readers might think there is nothing unusual that a wealthy man wants to have a traditional work of art in his mansion. However, this story was published in the mid-twenties dominated by cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism, and other modernist movements. Huxley’s audience at the time must have found Mr. Bigger’s art dealing hilarious. Huxley did not like modernist art, as we could see in the analysis of “The Tillotson Banquet,” but he despised popular art more than anything else. In the essay “Art and the Obvious” published in Music at Night (1931), seven years after “The Portrait,” Huxley describes the thirst for popular art in the following way: “The spread of education, of leisure, of economic well-being has created an unprecedented demand for popular art. As the number of good artists is always strictly limited, it follows that this demand has been in the main supplied by bad artists”

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(Huxley, 1931, p. 24). Hence Mr. Bigger’s decision to collaborate only with semi-talented artists who can forge old masters. “The Portrait” is the most interesting for its humor. For example, when the Lord of the Manor explains why he wants to buy great works of art, he adds: “Of course, we should only need Old Masters downstairs, in the reception-room” (Huxley, 1992, p. 214). His possession of old masters has two main purposes: to impress guests at his dinner parties and confirm his idea of success. For everything else, as he emphasizes later, his daughter’s sketches will suffice. Another example is at the end of the story when the Lord of the Manor asks about the price, his tone “detached, offhand” (p. 223). He might not know much about art history but haggling is his cup of tea. Mr. Bigger, however, has a series of lines ready for such customers. He tells the Lord of the Manor that for “Rembrandt of this size and quality” (p. 223), auctioned on any respectable art market, he would pay three times more. The quality is equally important as the size. He also reminds his customer that he is “making a very good investment. Late Venetians are going up” (p. 223). Again, in 1924, when the story was published, not many art dealers would bet on late Venetians against Cubists and other modernists. These examples, together with the deception ingrained in Mr. Bigger’s storytelling, demonstrate Huxley’s maturity in humor and irony that even his fiercest critics cannot deny.

Young Archimedes The most accomplished work in this collection is “Young Archimedes,” another story that was adapted for film. First Fergus McDonell used Huxley’s work as the basis of his 1950 movie Prelude to Fame with Guy Rolfe, Kathleen Byron, and Kathleen Ryan. Then, in 1979, Gianni Amelio’s movie Il Piccolo Archimede was released, featuring Laura Betti and John Steiner. The story takes place on the outskirts of Florence, where the narrator meets a child prodigy named Guido, his neighbor’s son. The six-year-old boy with a poor, uneducated father and four siblings is not the most likely candidate for a genius, yet the moment the narrator notices Guido play with his son, Robin, he realizes the boy is much more than a typical child. He is “patient, tolerant, and untyrannical” (Huxley, 1992, p. 233), never making fun of his two-and-a-half-years-younger friend. Sometimes he enjoys being alone, “plunged … in the profoundest mediation” (p. 233). In contrast to Mr. Topes from “Green Tunnels,” Guido has large eyes

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“of luminous pale blue-grey color” that light up when he plays with his friend, eyes that are “shaken into brilliant sun-flashing ripples” (p. 234), suggesting the brilliance of his mind. That brilliance comes to light when the boy hears classical music for the first time. He interprets Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor as beautiful, and when the narrator asks him to clarify his expression, Guido hums the phrases played by violins without knowing the name of the instrument. It is interesting how the narrator depicts the child’s reactions to Bach’s music: Guido came to a halt in front of the gramophone and stood there, motionless, listening. His pale blue-grey eyes opened themselves wide; making a little nervous gesture that I had often noticed in him before, he plucked at his lower lip with his thumb and forefinger. He must have taken a deep breath; for I noticed that, after listening for a few seconds, he sharply expired and drew in a fresh gulp of air. For an instant he looked at me— a questioning, astonished, rapturous look—gave a little laugh that ended in a kind of nervous shudder, and turned back towards the source of the incredible sounds. (Huxley, 1992, p. 240)

This paragraph illustrates how a great work of art affects a gifted child who cannot filter his experience. Guido is first startled by the impact of Bach’s Concerto, but his eyes remain wide open, indicating that he is ready to receive the music without inhibitions. The nervous gesture implies that the boy does not understand what he is listening. Still, the confusion does not prevent him from learning. Not only does he intend to continue listening but to understand what baffled him a minute before. His final reaction is the most complex. Although he does not say anything, his “questioning, astonished, rapturous look” suggests the whole range of thoughts and emotions: Having been surprised in the beginning, he grows to embrace the music in the end. What is more, he returns to “the source of the incredible sounds” so that he can explore the music further. The narrator’s son is bored with classical music. While Guido is interested in whatever comes from the gramophone, Robin tries to emulate his older friend, mimicking Guido’s “plucking at his lip” (Huxley, 1992, p. 240) and other gestures. But Robin’s interest is short-lived. Recalling a melody he used to like back home, he tells his father: “I want soldiers. Like in London” (p. 240). In Robin’s reaction, David Deutsch

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(2015) sees a change in British culture whereby “an immature militarism threatens to trample a more mature musical contemplation” (p. 206). While there might be an element of that shift in Robin’s behavior, it is also possible that the narrator intends to distinguish between a child prodigy who can feel the complexities of classical music and an ordinary child whose primary goal is to play games. In the remainder of this analysis, we will see that the narrator wants Guido to preserve both characteristics. Later on we learn that Guido likes neither Strauss, nor Wagner, nor Debussy’s arabesques, and that Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven are his favorites. Each time he hears music, he responds with both emotions and rationality, which is the ability that most Huxley’s characters, especially intellectuals and scientists, do not possess. Sometimes he claps or smiles, while at other times he describes melodies as repetitive or too familiar, or he criticizes them because “the end doesn’t seem to come properly out of the beginning” (Huxley, 1992, p. 242). Guido’s experience of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture is the most striking. Although the boy listens to it several times in a row and is clearly moved, he prefers the Concerto in D Minor because Coriolan is “too big” (p. 243) and he does not understand it. His reactions are emotional and rational at the same time not only because he is a child incapable of compartmentalizing his perception of the world, but because he feels music as a genius in the making. Once Signora Bondi, landlady to both the narrator and Guido’s father, has a piano brought to the house, hoping to enhance Guido’s music skills and eventually profit from his talent, the narrator starts teaching the boy how to play. Having given him “the minimum of preliminary instruction” (Huxley, 1992, p. 244), he lets Guido feel the instrument on his own, as he has already established that Guido does not want to deal with anything he cannot understand. The narrator’s instructions produce exceptional results: He made, in spite of my assertions to Signora Bondi, excellent progress. Every afternoon, while Robin was asleep, he came for his concert and his lesson. He was getting along famously with his reading; his small fingers were acquiring strength and agility. But what to me was more interesting was that he had begun to make up little pieces on his own account. … Most of them, strangely enough, as I thought then, are canons. … When I explained to him the principles of the form he was enchanted. (Huxley, 1992, p. 245)

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Owing to the narrator’s teaching strategy, Guido learns how to read notes and strengthens his fingers. More importantly, he creates his own pieces of music, building on the narrator’s instructions with his own creativity. At the same time, the boy is “enchanted” with the process. He describes it as “Beautiful, beautiful. And so easy” (Huxley, 1992, p. 245). The narrator’s instructions and Guido’s advancement sum up Huxley’s views of progressive education. In Proper Studies , published three years after “Young Archimedes,” Huxley elaborates on the best way to teach a child: Playing, the child is given practice in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling. This training of the senses is of the highest importance. Sensuous impressions are the basis of all mental processes; the more things we have touched, seen, heard, the richer will be our imagination, the more we shall have to think about, and the greater the number of ways in which we shall be able to think. Further, the process of exercising the senses stimulates the whole infantile mind, strengthens it and quickens its growth. (Huxley, 1927, p. 103)

The narrator does exactly what Huxley suggests in Proper Studies . Instead of traditional lectures in the manner of Alfred Petherton from “Happily Ever After,” he combines formal instructions and sensuous training. Therefore, Guido sees his active learning as something beautiful and easy. Analyzing this story, John Aplin (1983) refers to Huxley’s article from the Weekly Westminster Gazette which states that “the gifted child needs no experience to help him to write a beautiful piece of music or solve a difficult problem in mathematics. The spirit works in him freely and independently” (pp. 33–34). Guido exemplifies that type of a gifted child whose creative genius is enough to lead him in the right direction. What he needs is a teacher who will recognize his talent, give him preliminary instruction, and let him develop on his own. The narrator’s teaching technique—which focuses on the child’s interest and allows him to teach himself—corresponds with the educational practices developed by Maria Montessori and John Dewey. Montessori established a child-centered method which encouraged pupils to learn freely and independently. She insisted on abolishing the obsolete prizeand-punishment pedagogy and facilitating children’s liberty. According to her method, “the teacher shall observe whether the child interests himself in the object, how he is interested in it, for how long, etc. … and she

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must take great care not to offend the principles of liberty” (Gutek, 2004, p. 124). Instead of a superficial prize or punishment, the child will seek “the true and only prize which will never belittle or disappoint him— the birth of human power and liberty within that inner life of his from which his activities must spring” (p. 119). Huxley (1927) considered the Montessori method “superior … to the systems of mechanical education” (p. 102) in British schools. He also praised John Dewey, an American philosopher and educational reformer, especially his theories of learning by doing and education as life adjustment. In Democracy and Education, Dewey (1921) writes that “one may learn by doing something which he does not understand” given that “we learn only because after the act is performed we note results which we had not noted before” (p. 91). In My Pedagogic Creed, Dewey (1910) argues that a child learns through adjustment to its environment and that “the only possible adjustment which we can give to the child … is that which arises through putting him in complete possession of all his powers” (p. 7). Huxley portrays similar ideas in “Young Archimedes.” The narrator’s instructions to Guido on how to play the piano resemble Dewey’s concepts, since the boy learns by doing and has the freedom to experiment with his instrument. It should be noted that in later years, after moving to the United States, Huxley (1956) realized that the wrong application of such theories could lead to “doing without learning” and “adjustment to everything but the fact that … ignorance of science and its methods is the surest, shortest road to national disaster” (p. 45). This quote shows that despite his praise for Dewey’s educational reforms, Huxley had reservations about Dewey’s followers, that is, their misinterpretations of his teaching methods. Having taught Guido the basics of music and allowed him to explore the piano on his own, the narrator learns that the boy has talent for mathematics as well. One day he finds him explaining the Pythagorean theorem to Robin. Guido points a burnt stick at stones in the garden to demonstrate his discovery. The boy uses “untechnical terms” based on a “simpler” and “more satisfying method” (Huxley, 1992, p. 246) than Euclid’s. However, when Guido realizes that Robin cannot keep up with him, he switches to playing trains. From then on, the narrator gives Guido mathematical lessons as well, which he calls “hints” as he only makes “suggestions” and leaves “the child himself to work out the ideas in detail” (p. 250). In a similar non-theoretical and non-academic manner, he explains algebra to the boy before they start experimenting with circles. At the same time, aware that games are important for Guido’s growth,

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he lets the child play with his son whenever he pleases. The narrator now knows that Guido is not a Mozart but “a little Archimedes with, like most of his kind, an incidental musical twist” (p. 247). Therefore, before leaving for Switzerland to help his son Robin recover from illness, the narrator gives Guido six books of Euclid, although the boy cannot read yet. “Young Archimedes” does not only explore Huxley’s progressive teaching ideas but the brutality of forced education that can destroy even the greatest talents. While in Switzerland, the narrator receives a letter from Guido urging him to come back. When he does so, he finds out that the boy has committed suicide. It turns out that Signora Bondi had convinced Guido’s father to let the boy stay with her for a couple of months. Hoping to benefit from his musical talent in the long run, she kept him in her house in Florence, forced him to play piano more than he wanted, and took his Euclid books away. Signora Bondi considered learning geometry a waste of time, evoking the Reverend Roger’s remarks on teaching science in British public schools. She did not allow him to have any friends either and even told him that his father had abandoned him. Guido was subjected to superficial education, forced upon children without taking into consideration their personalities, interests, and major talents, education so detrimental that can stifle a genius. In that sense, “Young Archimedes” resembles Carson McCullers’ story “Wunderkind,” where Mister Bilderbach, a piano teacher, unleashes his orthodox pedagogy on his student, Frances, until she cannot play anymore, feeling her bones “hollow” and her heart “gray and limp and shrivelled at the edges like an oyster” (McCullers, 2017, p. 71). Guido’s tragedy is caused by yet another reason. While in Signora’s captivity, with no family and friends to play games with, the boy stopped being a child. Daniel Aureliano Newman (2016) underscores that Huxley is among the intellectuals such as John Dewey, Timothy Leary, Konrad Lorenz, and J. B. S. Haldane “who found hope in the biology of neoteny” (p. 422). “Young Archimedes” seems to suggest that one cannot become a genius without neoteny, that is, without retaining one’s childlike side.

Notes 1. Monsieur Hégésippe could be based on Hégésippe Moreau (1810– 1838), a minor French poet of the Romantic era.

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2. The relation between Huxley’s understanding of music and his characters will also be analyzed in the section on “Young Archimedes.”.

References Aplin, J. (1983). Aldous Huxley and Music in the 1920s. Music & Letters, 64(1/ 2), 25–36. Bennett, A. (1975). On Little Mexican, September 1924. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 106–108). Routledge. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Deutsch, D. (2015). British Literature and Classical Music: Cultural Contexts 1870–1945. Bloomsbury Academic. Dewey, J. (1910). My Pedagogic Creed. A. Flanagan Company. Gutek, G. L. (2004). The Montessori Method. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. Huxley, A. (1956). Adonis and the Alphabet. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Dee Inc. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (G. Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1931). Music at Night and Other Essays. Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc. Huxley, A. (1927). Proper Studies. Chatto & Windus. McCullers, C. (2017). Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings (C. Dews, Ed.). Library of America. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Newman, D. A. (2016). “Education of an Amphibian”: Anachrony, Neoteny, and Bildung in Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza. Twentieth-Century Literature, 62(4), 403–428. Watt, D. (1975). Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage. Routledge.

Nonsense, the Other, and Applied Science in Two or Three Graces

Two or Three Graces (1926), Huxley’s fourth collection of short stories, sold almost 6,000 copies (2,000 in regular and 3,500 in cheap editions), which was not a huge number but, as Sybille Bedford (1974) emphasizes, good enough to “wipe out the deficit” and enable him to work on Point Counter Point , his most ambitious novel (p. 182). As always, some critics lauded the book, such as Joseph Wood Krutch, who wrote that Huxley’s “clear self-possessed sentences are polite and calm, his analyses minute and unexcited,” and highlighted “the seriousness of his mind, his real concern with the world and its ways, which gives to him his strength” (Watt, 1975, p. 141). L. P. Hartley complimented Huxley on making his meanings clear, but he also stated that Huxley was “the victim of his own lucidity” (p. 37). In addition, Hartley pinpointed one of the main features of Huxley’s prose: “It is flat or it is effervescent” (p. 38). This collection incorporates several new themes that are important for our understanding of Huxley’s development as a fiction writer. First of all, Huxley explores the function of the other, a concept that will preoccupy the minds of European philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas a few decades later. Second, his social satire becomes more diverse as Huxley peels off group-imposed identities, the description of which will culminate a couple of years later in Point Counter Point . In that sense, Two or Three Graces can be seen as a testing ground for his most ambitious novel. In this collection, Huxley also criticizes applied science, focusing © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_5

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on the delusion that scientific approach can explain art in its entirety. Finally, Huxley evokes the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear—the author he praised in On the Margin: Notes and Other Essays, his first book of nonfiction—whose limericks prove to be resistant to the oppressive environment of societal hierarchies.

Half-Holiday In Crome Yellow, Huxley’s first novel, there is a story about Sir Hercules,1 read by Henry Wimbush from his “History of Crome.” Hercules is a little person and the former master of Crome, who commits suicide after seeing that his son has made fun of him and his butler, Simon. Five years after the publication of Crome Yellow, Huxley has another story about a marginalized person. It is titled “Half-Holiday” and describes a spring day in the life of Peter Brett, a young man with a speech impediment. Nowadays, this story would be hard to publish, even though it contains deeper layers—like many other works subjected to superficial cultural excommunication—that exonerate Huxley from being insensitive or mean. Peter Brett has been an orphan since he was sixteen years old. Not only does he stutter but he is physically unattractive, wearing cheap boots and shabby, gray suit. He is plagued by chronic loneliness, which is why he often withdraws to his imaginary world. As he walks in Hyde Park or down the streets of London, he envisions situations in which a beautiful woman needs help and he emerges as a savior. A girl who twists her ankle, a young, rich, widowed mother whose child has fallen into the Round Pond, a girl sitting on a bench who confides in him that she is lonely as well—they pop up in his mind’s eye whenever he is overwhelmed with misery. One day his best-case scenario unfolds. Peter saves a bulldog that belongs to two French ladies. Though he expects to be invited to tea, the ladies give him a one-pound note and disappear. Throughout that day, the only person who shows him affection is an intoxicated prostitute, but he gets scared of her and runs away. “Half-Holiday” seems to be yet another example of Huxley’s wicked satire. In the aforementioned review, L. P. Hartley did not understand why a “bitter and unhappy ending” was added to “this delicious bit of comedy” (Hartley, 1975, p. 138). George Woodcock also failed to detect the greater significance of this story. He described it, together with other pieces from this collection, as one of the “rather bitter little studies in

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class humiliation” where “brutality dissolves into sentiment” (Woodcock, 1972, p. 134). However, if we move beyond the literal and consider Peter Brett not just as an orphan with a speech impediment who is plagued by an unfulfilled sexual desire, but as the embodiment of the other, this seemingly simple story will reveal other meanings. To grasp deeper layers of “Half-Holiday,” we should refer to Emmanuel Levinas’ ideas on the relationship between I and the other. In his opinion, one’s subjectivity cannot be realized without understanding the other, especially the other’s pain. “It is this attention to the suffering of the other,” claims Levinas, “that … can be affirmed as the very nexus of human subjectivity, to the point of being raised to the level of supreme ethical principle—the only one it is impossible to question” (Levinas, 1999, p. 94). Peter Brett is the other in relation to whom the characters, regardless of their class and education, fail to establish their full subjectivity. Levinas also asserts that the understanding of the other is “an event that strips consciousness of its initiative, that undoes me and puts me before an Other in a state of guilt … and that leads me to the self, to the accusative that is not preceded by any nominative” (pp. 58–59). It is not just the way the French ladies and the prostitute address Peter Brett but their inability to feel responsible for his suffering that results in their failure to separate themselves from the groups to which they belong. Thus, they never become “a singularity other than that of the individuals who are subsumed under a concept” (p. 26), as Levinas would put it. In the chapters on Limbo and Mortal Coils , we could see that Huxley already used this function in the characterizations of Raymond Lully and Walter Tillotson. In these stories, however, he had bigger ideas in mind— namely, the criticism of religious puritanism and modern perception of art—so this function was secondary. In “Half-Holiday,” Huxley commits the whole character to the idea of the other. Peter Brett thus becomes a mirror that reveals the degree to which the people around him are entrapped in group-imposed identities, which prevents them from establishing their full subjectivity. That is why their refusal to empathize with him is their own defeat. The narrator of “Half-Holiday” appears to reprimand Peter for not seeing his importance and for wanting to degrade himself to superficial concepts of affection and acceptance. Even though he saves the dog, the French ladies barely acknowledge him as a human, much less a young man whose suffering is caused by society’s indifference. The prostitute comes from a different context (physical appearance, background, class,

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education…), but she also fails to transcend her group-imposed identity and embrace him as the other. Peter does not understand, perhaps due to his age and lack of experience, that he possesses at least two characteristics which make him superior to the people around him. The first one is his otherness. The second is his unprecedented imagination, visible not only in his daydreaming but in his perception of language. Due to his stuttering, he has to find creative substitutes for the words he cannot pronounce. As the narrator informs us, “in the discovery of synonyms he had become almost as ingenious as those Anglo-Saxon poets who using alliteration instead of rhyme, were compelled, in their efforts to make … the sea begin with the same letters as its waves or its billows” (Huxley, 1992, pp. 263–264). Throughout the story, we almost hear the narrator telling Peter not to seek approval from people who are incapable of communicating with him as the other. Instead, he should develop the qualities that make him a unique person with unrivaled potential. What differentiates this story from others is Huxley’s unusual depiction of nature in the opening paragraph: It was Saturday afternoon and fine. In the hazy spring sunlight London was beautiful, like a city of the imagination. The lights were golden, the shadows blue and violet. Incorrigibly hopeful, the sooty trees in the Park were breaking into leaf; and the new green was unbelievably fresh and light and aerial, as though the tiny leaves had been cut out of the central emerald stripe of a rainbow. The miracle, to all who walked in the Park that afternoon, was manifest. What had been dead now lived; soot was budding into rainbow green. Yes, it was manifest. And, moreover, those who perceived this thaumaturgical change from death to life were themselves changed. There was something contagious about the vernal miracle. (Huxley, 1992, p. 257)

This description of nature is clearly different than the ones in the previous collections, where Huxley often shows the discrepancy between the beauty of nature and superficial, human-made environment. In “Green Tunnels,” for example, Barbara, swimming in the sea, admires the mountains with their “sharp, bare peaks of limestone, green woodland slopes and grey-green expanses of terraced olive trees,” which make all the villas look “small and smug as the advertisement of a seaside resort” (Huxley, 1992, p. 146). In the opening scene of “Young Archimedes,” the narrator describes the view from his house in Florence with the River Arno, the churches of San Miniato and Santa Croce, the tower of the

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Signoria—the view that sets the context for Guido’s genius and contrasts Signora Bondi’s rigidity. The introductory paragraph of “Half-Holiday” brings nothing similar: “It was Saturday afternoon and fine. In the hazy spring sunlight London was beautiful, like the city of the imagination. The lights were golden, the shadows blue and violent” (p. 257). This scene is different than the depictions of nature in “Green Tunnels” and “Young Archimedes” in both Huxley’s choice of words and sentence structure. The vocabulary is ordinary, whereas the sentences are curt, choppy. Moreover, in the same paragraph we find the phrases such as “incorrigibly hopeful” trees, “manifest” or “vernal” miracle, and “thaumaturgical change,” which imply irony similar to the one T. S. Eliot employs in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service” with “polyphiloprogenitive/the sapient sutlers of the Lord” (Eliot, 1963, p. 47) who are meant to draw the contrast between the ancient views on Christian faith and modern superficiality. The ironic image of Hyde Park in “Half-Holiday” signals that the artificial experience belongs to someone else, not to Peter Brett, in whom the beauty of nature amplifies only misery and loneliness. The fake optimism in the first paragraph may also be the evocation of the famous introduction to Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Bliss”: “What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the comer of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly, by a feeling of bliss?” (Mansfield, 1981, p. 91). Bertha’s overwhelming happiness becomes even bigger in the following few paragraphs when she starts “waiting for something … divine to happen … that she knew must happen … infallibly” (p. 92). In the same way as Bertha will not experience anything divine by the end of the story but only disillusionment with her husband, Peter Brett’s miracle will turn into a bitter disappointment. Huxley knew Katherine Mansfield well and liked her stories, as he admitted in a letter to Allan J. Crane (Huxley, 1969, p. 948), so the parallel between “Half-Holiday” and “Bliss” should not be surprising. This long paragraph has another layer of irony. Having described the miracle in the park, the narrator admits that to some couples it can bring more pain. Even the ones in whom the spring afternoon arouses happiness and love seem to have mixed feelings: Stout men took off their hats, and while the sun kissed their bald heads, made good resolutions—about whisky, about the pretty typist at the office, about early rising. Accosted by spring-intoxicated boys, young girls consented, in the teeth of all their upbringing and their alarm, to go

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for walks. Middle-aged gentlemen, strolling homewards through the Park, suddenly felt their crusted, business-grimy hearts burgeoning, like these trees, with kindness and generosity. They thought of their wives, thought of them with a sudden gush of affection, in spite of twenty years of marriage. (Huxley, 1992, p. 257)

Each of the three groups in the paragraph—the stout men, young girls, and middle-aged gentlemen—vows to make a sea change. But their vows paradoxically reveal a grimmer picture of their current life. For instance, the stout men’s resolutions tell us that they have a drinking problem and that they yearn for their co-workers who are probably out of their league. Moreover, we can sense that their resolutions are artificial, forced upon them by the overall spring craze, and we can assume that the promises will be difficult to keep because they require a genuine transformation. On the other hand, young girls wishing to go for walks, presumably without their parents or chaperons, indirectly point to the stifling family constraints they have to deal with on a daily basis. Finally, the middle-aged gentlemen with their “crusted, business-grimy hearts,” who think of their wives despite twenty years of marriage, hint that there is not much love left after such a long time and that all they can do is embrace what they cannot change anymore. Deconstructed in this way, the descriptions of the spring afternoon in Hyde Park suggest no happiness and joy but darkness and misery. But this interpretation will not emerge on first reading. We can only acknowledge the literal meanings and sense the underlying idea. This is one of the best illustrations of “delayed reactions” (p. 291) which Martin H. Levinson (2018) points out analyzing Huxley’s understanding of general semantics. We could see that Huxley relied on this semantic effect in other short stories (e.g., “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art By Numbers” and “The Gioconda Smile”). This linguistic experiment shows that he was not only interested in depicting ideas but also in exploring deeper dimensions of language, an area that is barely touched upon in the literature on his works. The delayed effect of the beginning partly comes from the nature of short fiction as a unique form. Susan Lohafer (1983) writes that the beginning of the short story—due to the form’s brevity and specific rhythm, and, more importantly, due to the difference between the “sentence meaning” and “story meaning”—always brings a “loss of athomeness” (p. 54). However, to understand other dimensions of the

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paragraph quoted above, we should refer to Wolfgang Kayser’s definition of grotesque. In his opinion, grotesque “consists in the very contrast that ominously permits no reconciliation. To recognize and reveal such a construct of opposites is somewhat diabolic; the order is destroyed and an abyss opened where we thought to rest on firm ground” (Kayser, 1963, p. 59). The opening paragraph of “Half-Holiday” illustrates this aspect of grotesque. Once we become aware that the opposite forces act simultaneously and in the same degree, we will uncover the new meaning, which will put us on the right track to interpret Peter Brett not just as a poor young man with a speech impediment but as the embodiment of the other.

The Monocle In “The Monocle,” Huxley explores various identities that people take on to conceal their intellectual and emotional impotence. The protagonist is Gregory, an heir to a rich boot manufacturer who uses his monocle as a crutch to boost his confidence when he is among socialites, intellectuals, artists, and scientists. The problem is that he does not identify with any of these groups, so each encounter with them seems dull or dreadful. Gregory is too self-conscious to be a socialite and not educated enough to be an intellectual. He possesses meager scientific knowledge and modest literary talent. When it comes to his social status, he usually feels in between two worlds: To wear a monocle in the presence of the poor, the miserable, the analphabetic is too triumphantly pointed a comment on their lot. Moreover, the poor and the analphabetic have a most deplorable habit of laughing derisively at such symbols of superior caste. Gregory was not laughter-proof; he lacked the lordly confidence and unawareness of nature’s monocle-wearers. … It was the same lack of confidence that made him almost as chary of fixing his eyeglass in the presence of the rich. With them, he never felt quite sure that he had a right to his monocle. He felt himself a parvenu to monocularity. (Huxley, 1992, p. 274)

He is too wealthy to be accepted by the poor, and not wealthy enough to be embraced by the affluent. Moreover, despite all his efforts, he still does not know how to deal with either of the classes. With the poor, who constantly mock him, sensing his urge to parade his class superiority,

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Gregory is not “laughter-proof.” The narrator emphasizes that Gregory does not have “lordly confidence and unawareness of nature’s monoclewearers,” implying that his monocle is an artificial tool that cannot produce the desired effect if not combined with other qualities. One needs the attributes of genuine monocle-wearers to brush off the derision in the street. With the rich, on the other hand, he has a different problem. They do not laugh at him, but Gregory feels that he is not worthy of their company. The narrator uses the phrase “parvenu to monocularity” to emphasize that Gregory’s problem in dealing with the affluent is not just the lack of substantial assets. The chasm is far bigger and cannot be fixed with any accessory. To earn the right to monocularity as a social subcategory, one needs wit, callousness and other characteristics that Gregory does not possess. His extreme class consciousness makes him similar to Jim Powell from Fitzgerald’s short story “The Jelly-Bean,” who cannot deal with people of a different social stratum. At a party, Powell sits “with his legs crossed and his arms conservatively folded,” struggling to find the right demeanor as he is “torn between overwhelming self-consciousness and an intense curiosity” about the people around him (Fitzgerald, 1922, p. 9). Unable to bridge the gap between the two classes, Gregory, like Jim Powell, has created a persona to survive small-talks at parties. We can also make a parallel between Gregory and John from Virginia Woolf’s story “Solid Objects.” Gregory’s eagerness to be accepted by London’s high society impedes him in a similar way as ambition destroys John: “If he had not been consumed by ambition and convinced that one day some newly-discovered rubbish heap would reward him, the disappointments he had suffered, let alone the fatigue and derision, would have made him give up the pursuit” (Woolf, 1962, p. 84). Both men are dysfunctional due the absurd goals they imposed on themselves. His monocle is almost an extension to his body, even though it turns out to be of little help because it does not bolster his confidence.2 Before he enters a room, he “inserts” it as if into a machine and “marches in” (Huxley, 1992, p. 271) as if he were to join a battle. In his article on monocles in modernism, Marius Hentea (2013) correctly argues that Gregory’s attention to his monocle and other details, together with the way he marches into the room, serves as a contrast to soldiers’ dressing routine in the Great War (p. 229). The humorous effect becomes complete when we realize what Gregory considers to be his battlefield. He is aware that the monocle is artificial and uses it only under special circumstances. Therefore, it often “dangle[s] at the end of its string … involving

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itself messily” (Huxley, 1992, p. 273) in his food or drinks. Even during the monocle-worthy moments, he sometimes lets his precious accessory fall: for instance, when he thinks about donating money to the London Hospital or when we see him hopelessly drunk, stripped of any tool that can conceal his misery. To illustrate Gregory’s feeling as he approaches the room full of people, the narrator likens his walk to a trudge through a swamp: “Neck-deep, he waded through noise, still holding preciously above the flood his smile” (p. 271). His other movements are equally robotic and predictable. He praises Hermione’s attire just because his successful friend suggested he should always pay a complement to a hostess. And when he realizes that monocle will not make him feel more comfortable, he pours himself whiskey “with dignity, with conscious grace and precision, as though he was acting the part of a man who helps himself to whiskey and soda on the stage” (p. 278). He knows his gestures look unnatural but does not see any other way to feel secure. Other guests have their own emotional and intellectual accessories. As Levinas (1999) would say: “Beings have no identity. Faces are masks. Behind the faces that speak to us we look for the clockwork and microscopic springs of souls” (p. 24). The masks that Paxton, Spiller, and Molly put on are also meant to conceal their personalities, although none of them are as rigid as Gregory. Paxton—who calls Gregory “Polypheme,” alluding to the one-eyed Cyclops from Odyssey—hides behind heavy drinking. Paxton explains that being a drunkard is “a capital profession” (Huxley, 1992, p. 275), which enables him to do whatever he pleases. He even suggests that Gregory “drop the monocle” and become “a boozer” (p. 275). He admits that his alcoholism has the same function as Gregory’s eyeglass but more applications. Spiller’s ready-made identity combines a scientist and a “Victorian celebrity” (p. 279). He is one of many rigid scientific minds in Huxley’s prose, evoking Lord Edward Tantamount from Point Counter Point and Shearwater from Antic Hay, whom Jerome Meckier (1969) describes as part of the human orchestra which has “gone haywire,” an instrument which, “instead of striving for unity … remains by choice separate and alone” (p. 16). Spiller is still not part of that orchestra—his scientific approach does not have the necessary fervor yet—but we can see the foundation of one-pointedness, as Huxley usually calls the fixation on a limited sphere of existence, which will sooner or later push Spiller in that direction. Molly Voles resembles Myra Viveash from Antic Hay and Lucy Tantamount from Point Counter Point in a way that she too has forged an image of a strong,

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promiscuous woman with “calm and bright” eyes and “firm and penetrating regard” (Huxley, 1992, p. 282), an image that ridicules Gregory’s attempt to please her with cheap compliments and forces him to drop his weapon. David Daiches (1939) considers this type of female characters “the bitch motif so common in Huxley” (p. 195). This is a superficial observation in every aspect. Such characters in Huxley’s fiction usually highlight female sexuality together with their intellectual and emotional superiority over weak, self-conscious men, which is a modernist tendency exhibited not only by Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield but D. H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway as well. However, apart from expressing her sexuality and intellect, Molly Voles also embodies the central idea of “The Monocle.” She uses an artificial identity to hide her dysfunctional life, even though she does it with more subtlety than Gregory, Paxton, and Spiller. One of the most interesting elements of this story is the development of Gregory’s breakdown. Having inserted his monocle on the way to the party, Gregory appears to be in control of his thoughts and emotions. We assume that he has performed the ritual many times before and that this occasion will bring nothing out of the ordinary. Soon he realizes that his monocle is not effective. He cannot repel Paxton’s sarcastic remarks or Molly’s piercing gaze, and therefore he resorts to whiskey. At first he feels secure, especially when his friend, Spiller, joins the conversation, but when the two of them leave the party and meet a match-box seller in the street, Gregory’s public persona dissolves, leaving him unprotected and eventually humiliated. That his false sense of security is shattered after the encounter with the match-box seller is not a coincidence. It is the first human without any mask that he encounters that night (if we exclude the prostitutes and passers-by with whom he does not come into contact). Following Gregory’s stream of consciousness, the narrator calls the person neither a man, nor a woman, nor a child, but only a “thing”: Suddenly, from a shadowed doorway a few yards down the street in front of them, there emerged, slowly, tremulously, a thing: a bundle of black tatters that moved on a pair of old squashed boots, that was topped by a broken, dog’s-eared hat. It had a face, clay-coloured and emaciated. It had hands, in one of which it held a little tray with match-boxes. It opened its mouth, from which two or three of the discoloured teeth were missing; it sang, all but inaudibly. (Huxley, 1992, p. 287)

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The narrator does not provide clear attributes of the person Gregory meets in the street. We know it has hands, a face, and a mouth with a couple of missing teeth, that it is wrapped in old clothes, and that it sells match-boxes—in other words, that it is alive—yet we do not know anything about its sex, gender, age, emotions… It is a paradox that even such a person, dehumanized by poverty and society’s indifference, is more human than all the characters in the story who hide beneath artificial identities. This expressionist scene might have inspired T. S. Eliot to write that Huxley, even though he “so accurately and desolately photographed” his disdain for society and himself, has a “powerful strain of sentimentality in his nature,” which can turn him into “an amusingly modern René or Werther” (Eliot, 2015, p. 92). Gregory can have a conversation with his acquaintances despite his insecurities, but he is disarmed in front of the first real person in the street because he can only respond to masks, not to the personalities underneath. Emerging from the shadow at night, the thing offers him match-boxes which will, metaphorically, illuminate his broken humanity. Hence Gregory’s mix of shame and anger that bursts out in the final dialogue with Spiller. That feeling has nothing to do with the negligible amount of money he gives to the match-box seller, much less about Spiller’s tirades on science and art, no matter how callous and annoying they might seem; it is about Gregory’s realization that beneath all the protective layers which help him on the surface lies a selfish, dysfunctional man who has no idea how to escape from his self-imposed predicament. Gregory’s debilitating self-consciousness can be explained from yet another angle. His perception of the world is what Alan Watts calls “ordinary consciousness” taken to the extreme. In The Joyous Cosmology, Alan Watts (1962) explains that when he resorts to his ordinary consciousness, he is “trying to ring [himself] off from this totality” and he is “perpetually on the defensive” (p. 65). Then he asks: But what am I trying to protect? Only very occasionally are my defensive attitudes directly concerned with warding off physical damage or deprivation. For the most part I am defending my defenses: rings around rings around rings around nothing. Guards inside a fortress inside entrenchments inside a radar curtain. The military war is the outward parody of the war of ego versus world: only the guards are safe. (Watts, 1962, p. 65)

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Watts’ self-reflection refers to a common experience wherein we separate ourselves from the totality of the world out of insecurity and fear. In Gregory’s case, it is the pathological version of ordinary consciousness. His defenses are built up against numerous “rings” that do not exist. On top of usual barriers that all sane individuals, due to their ineffective education or upbringing, have to remove in order to establish a genuine connection with the whole, Gregory imposes new obstacles, creating a maze he cannot escape. “The Monocle” is yet another work in Huxley’s oeuvre that criticizes one-dimensional scientific mind. Spiller is typical in his intention to downgrade emotions to mere sensations that shouldn’t be discussed. In his opinion, “it is the only sane and scientific way of treating the facts” (Huxley, 1992, p. 283). He is against “infinite emotions” which can even make someone wish to get married, emotions that Spiller, recalling his brief adventure on a steamer, attributes to the “change of environment, from earth to water, which undermines the usual terrestrial prejudices” (p. 284). What differentiates him from other similar characters is his insistence on explaining art by science. In an attempt to strip art of emotions, which he cannot understand, Spiller claims that “the main function of art is to impart knowledge” (p. 285). Likewise, while Gregory is fighting both his intoxication and the dissolution of his protective tools, Spiller elaborates on Shakespeare, Cézanne, and Giotto, limiting their works to conveyors of knowledge, which sounds even more preposterous given the background against which he explains his ideas. However, it would be wrong to say that Huxley was against scientists or intellectuals in general. He came from a “formidably long-standing intellectual aristocracy” (Murray, 2003, p. 18). T. H. Huxley was his grandfather. His mother was Matthew Arnold’s niece and one of the first women to graduate from Oxford. His brother, Julian, was a distinguished biologist and the first director of UNESCO. His half-brother, Andrew, won the Nobel Prize for physiology. Aldous himself was an erudite and staunch advocate of science, particularly of new theories emerging in the first decades of the twentieth century. Unlike many other modernists, he emphasized the importance of modern physics, biology, and chemistry (Deery, 1996, p. 59). He also lambasted the writers who did not bother to learn even the basics of science or who boasted about their ignorance (p. 17). This seeming paradox is usually explained as Huxley’s youthful rebellion against the intellectual climate in which he grew up. David Bradshaw

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(1996) correctly assumes that Huxley’s “antipathy” for the scientific way of thinking resulted from “his desire as a young man to slough an intellectual inheritance which he found oppressive” (p. 195). But there are other important reasons for Huxley’s satire. First of all, Huxley mocks intellectuals and scientists for suppressing their feelings. Having committed their whole beings to tiny fields of knowledge, people like Spiller are devoid of profound emotions, evoking more famous characters such as Shearwater and Lord Edward Tantamount. Other intellectuals in Huxley’s short fiction such as Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After,” Spode from “The Tillotson Banquet” and Mr. Topes from “Green Tunnels” have occasional emotional outbursts with the potential to bring about change. Their efforts, however, are undermined by either their intellectual sentimentality or inability to transcend their selfhood. Huxley also criticizes intellectuals who do not use their knowledge for any other purpose but to impress their interlocutors. Nicholas Murray (2003) correctly states that Huxley prefers “the contribution of the intellectual to society” over “a speculation that risk becoming self-indulgent” (p. 298). Spiller from “The Monocle” and Mr. Hutton and Miss Spence from “The Gioconda Smile” are perfect illustrations of the self-indulgent type. Some scholars, however, believe that Huxley favored intellectuals in his early works. Frederick W. Conner (1973) claims that Huxley “sided with intellectuals” in his stories and novels until 1925 (p. 286). The characters mentioned above clearly contradict his opinion. Another reason for Huxley’s distrust in the scientific mind is his protest against the misuse of science. In the first place, Huxley emphasizes the dangers of applied science if it is used to secure the privileges of the most powerful sections of society. This idea will culminate in Brave New World and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, but its in-depth theoretical explanation will come in Science, Liberty and Peace, where Huxley (1950) specifies the mechanisms which can enable the elites to increase their power: “By supplying the ruling oligarchy with more effective instruments of coercion and persuasion, applied science has contributed directly to the centralization of power in the hands of the few” (p. 12). He also makes a clear distinction between pure science and applied science. According to him, if “the results of pure science are applied for the purpose of making our system of mass-producing and mass-distributing industry more expensively elaborate and more highly specialized, there can be nothing but ever greater centralization of power in ever fewer hands” (p. 21). Therefore, Spiller’s ideas on applying science to art have

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nothing to do with science per se or modern scientific discoveries, which Huxley understood and advocated for all his life. As William Propter explains in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, science is “good, bad and indifferent, according to how it’s pursued and what it’s used for” (Huxley, 1962, p. 110). Spiller’s delusion that he can cherry-pick elements of science and employ them to describe the essence of art anticipates more problematic contexts for applied science that the western world will witness during and after World War II.

Fairy Godmother In “Fairy Godmother” Huxley adapts a well-known character from Cinderella to the modern world. The fairy godmother is Mrs. Escobar, a strong, controlling woman who pays a visit to Ruth, her former protégé. Mrs. Escobar is accompanied with Ruth’s sister, Susan. Ruth is twentytwo years old and Susan is seventeen, even though Susan looks older due to her more mature clothes, which Ruth cannot afford. We also learn that Ruth’s poverty has to do with her decision to marry young and escape Mrs. Escobar’s iron grip. The narrator introduces Mrs. Escobar with typical Huxleyan irony. She arrives in an “enormous Daimler” which appears “larger than the house itself” (Huxley, 1992, p. 290). Dressed in black with a “touch of red” in her hat and gloves, she is glamorous “like a fashion-plate—fabulously elegant, beyond all reality” (p. 290). The irony of her physical appearance becomes obvious when we compare her grandeur and style to the pettiness she demonstrates in the conversation with Ruth and Susan. The narrator tells us more about her character in the following paragraph: She talked to shop assistants about their sweethearts, smiled at servants as though she wanted to make them her confidants or even her lovers, discussed philosophy with the plumber, gave chocolates to district messenger boys and even, when they were particularly cherubic, maternally kissed them. … Which did not prevent her from flying into rages with the shop assistants who could not provide her immediately with precisely the thing she wanted, from violently abusing the servants when they failed to answer the bell with a sufficient promptitude, from calling the dilatory plumber a thief and a liar, from dismissing the messenger boy who brought a present from the wrong admirer, not only chocholateless and unkissed, but without even a tip. (Huxley, 1992, p. 291)

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This paragraph resembles the opening of “Half-Holiday,” where the reader should interpret, simultaneously, two opposite ideas in the description of a spring afternoon in Hyde Park. In “Fairy Godmother,” the grotesque is created by having in mind Mrs. Escobar’s maternal manner toward shop assistants, servants, and messenger boys, and at the same time her rage when their service does not meet her expectations. The narrator could have focused only on her dark side, but the effect would not be the same. Evoking the opposite qualities of her personality and removing the “firm ground” (p. 59) beneath our feet, as Wolfgang Kayser (1963) would say, the narrator hints that Mrs. Escobar is not a typical matriarch and that we can expect anything from her, including her strange interaction with Ruth’s son. The fairy godmother seems to have everybody under her spell until she meets Ruth’s son, Baby. He looks at her “with large, grave eyes … like the eyes of an angel on the day of judgement” (Huxley, 1992, p. 292). He does not like the present she gave him, nor is he thrilled with the idea that Mrs. Escobar is about to read from Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense. The most interesting element of their encounter is the discrepancy between Mrs. Escobar’s effort to recite Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” and Baby’s reactions. Despite her training in elocution and amateur acting at charity events—her most distinguished role being Tosca at the Hoxton Children’s Hospital—the boy remains unimpressed. For example, when she reads about the owl, the boy hears “nowl” (p. 297). He has no idea what a five-pound note is and mishears guitar for “guit” (p. 297). Likewise, in his interpretation “bong-tree grows” becomes simply “bongtrygroze” (p. 298). In a rare example when Huxley allows himself to be led by the character instead of controlling every aspect of it, the narrator, amused by Mrs. Escobar’s reading, injects parentheticals to show the intensity of her need to enchant the mischievous boy: “But what (pause, Mrs Escobar made a despairing gesture, luminous with rings) shall we do (pause) for the (her voice rose to the question) rring, the rring?” (p. 298). Her last push to win the child over involves all her magical powers, so much so, as the narrator concludes, that one can almost hear “interstellar space, and the mystery of planetary motion, and Don Juan’s serenade, and Juliet’s balcony” (p. 300). The secrets of cosmos, the music of Byronic love, the Shakespearean tragedy—all in one line. Baby does not even bother to comment on her magic but utters a “piercingly loud” (p. 300) cry which makes her reading impossible to hear.

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The fairy godmother cannot spellbind the boy because his mind does not dwell in the realm of societal hierarchies which even his mother, Ruth, has to obey. To Mrs. Escobar’s attempts to put Baby under control he responds with pure creativity and imagination, the areas which cannot be subdued by class supremacy. In Mrs. Escobar’s world, reading to a boy from the position of authority with a touch of amateur acting is enough to produce the desired effect. In Baby’s world, however, the categories such as authority and social order—even his mother’s insistence on listening to the fairy godmother—do not make sense. That Mrs. Escobar reads Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry does not come as a surprise. In his essay on the great author of limericks, published only three years before Two or Three Graces , Huxley (1923) praises Lear not only as a master of nonsense verse or a great poet but as a “profound social philosopher” (p. 169). In his opinion, “nonsense, like poetry, to which it is closely allied, like philosophic speculation, like every product of the imagination, is an assertion of man’s spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppression of circumstance” (p. 167). Mrs. Escobar’s failure to harness the boy’s imagination marks the victory of spiritual freedom, because Lear’s verse does not make sense if treated as a background for someone else’s dominance. That is why Baby cannot understand it, which helps him resist the fairy godmother’s magic. There is yet another aspect of Lear’s verse that goes against Mrs. Escobar. The meanings of words in Lear’s poetry—as is the case with all great poems—cannot be separated from their auditory dimension. As Huxley explains in the same essay, “Lear had the true poet’s feeling for words—words in themselves, precious and melodious, like phrases of music” (p. 168). The music of Lear’s verse is equally important as its rational component. It is almost like the transrational or zaum language that Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, and other Russian futurists saw as a poetic expression that cannot be grasped solely by logic and reason. Mrs. Escobar does not take into consideration the auditory dimension of Lear’s poetry; she reads the poem in her own way, distorting Lear’s music and rhythm, and thus making her reciting impossible for Baby to understand. “Fairy Godmother” is Huxley’s reaction to the popularity of myth and fairy tales in the period of modernism. Unlike Joyce, Woolf, and Eliot, who employ myth and fairy tales on different levels and with more subtlety, Huxley uses the fairy godmother primarily to show the spiritual and artistic destitute of the modern world in comparison with ancient

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times. Analyzing Walter Benjamin’s views on storytelling, Paul MarchRussell (2009) claims that the ability of folktales to retain their meanings recedes in the modern world due to people’s alienation from each other and raw capitalism in modern metropolises. That is why the evocations of folktales in short stories represent “the afterglow of storytelling,” which reminds us of “the melancholic beauty of an art form at it disappears” (p. 26). The fairy godmother might not be the embodiment of melancholic beauty, yet her appearance in Huxley’s story produces the afterglow of all previous contexts tied to her character, mocking the superficiality of consumerism and rapid industrialization in the modern world. In the analysis of “Little Mexican,” we have seen that Huxley refers to Eros and Psyche with a similar goal in mind. It is therefore no wonder that the fairy godmother in the 1920s England is downgraded to a controlling socialite whose magical powers cannot impress even a spoilt child. This story shows that Huxley did experiment with the form, contrary to David Daiches and other critics who thought otherwise,3 focusing on Huxley’s most famous novels. The fiction of “Fairy Godmother” coalesces into a play to show the absurdity of Mrs. Escobar’s attempt to enchant Baby. That Huxley was a conventional novelist who never mastered the formal aspects of fiction is a commonplace that can be refuted by a shallow analysis of his works. For instance, in “Nuns at Luncheon,” there is a metastory on writing, especially on writers’ perception of reality. In Point Counter Point , the entries from Philip Quarles’ diary are inserted into the conventional third-person narrative. In Eyeless in Gaza, the chronological narrative is replaced by the non-linear one. Even The Devils of Loudun is written in the form of a nonfiction novel, which in 1952, when the book was published, was far from a widespread genre. Indeed, compared to the most famous modernists such as Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, Huxley’s prose experiments seem modest. Nevertheless, from time to time, he did try to play with the form, and “Fairy Godmother” is another illustrative example.

Notes 1. For the full text of the story on Sir Hercules, see Crome Yellow, chapter XIII. 2. Huxley here may refer to his own eyeglass, given that he made fun of his “very grandiose” monocle that gives him “a rather Greco-Roman air of rocococity” (Bedford, 1974, p. 74).

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3. An overview of the criticism can be found in Donald Watt’s critical anthology on Aldous Huxley (1975) and in David Daiches’ The Novel and the Modern World (1939).

References Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Bradshaw, D. (1996). The Best of Companions: J. W. N. Sullivan, Aldous Huxley, and the New Physics. The Review of English Studies, 47 (186), 188–206. Conner, F. W. (1973). “Attention!”: Aldous Huxley’s Epistemological Route to Salvation. The Sewanee Review, 81(2), 282–308. Daiches, D. (1939). The Novel and the Modern World. University of Chicago Press. Deery, J. (1996). Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science. Macmillan Press Ltd. Eliot, T. S. (1963). Collected Poems 1909–1962. Harcourt. Eliot, T. S. (2015). The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Volume 3: Literature, Politics, Belief, 1927–1929 (Frances Dickey and Jennifer Formichelli and Ronald Schuchard). The Johns Hopkins University Press and Faber & Faber Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.41952. Fitzgerald, F. S. (1922). Tales of the Jazz Age. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Hartley, L. P. (1975). Review in Saturday Review (London). In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 137–138). Routledge. Hentea, M. (2013). Monocles on Modernity. Modernism/Modernity, 20(2), 213– 237. Huxley, A. (1923). On the Margin: Notes and Essays. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1950). Science, Liberty and Peace. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1962). After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (G. Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Ivan R. Dee, Inc. Huxley’s Elasticity. (1975). In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 104–105). Routledge. Kayser, W. (1963). The Grotesque in Art and Literature (U. Weisstein, Trans.). Indiana University Press (Original work published 1957). Levinas, E. (1999). Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other (M. B. Smith & B. Harshav, Trans.). Athlone Press. Levinson, M. H. (2018). Aldous Huxley and General Semantics. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 75(3–4), 290–298.

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Lohafer, S. (1983). Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Louisiana State University Press. Mansfield, K. (1981). The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield. Penguin Books. March-Russell, P. (2009). The Short Story: An Introduction. Edinburgh University Press. Meckier, J. (1969). Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure. Chatto & Windus. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Watt, D. (Ed.). (1975). Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 106–108). Routledge. Watts, A. W. (1962). The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. New World Library. Woodcock, G. (1972). Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley. The Viking Press. Woolf, V. (1962). A Haunted House and Other Short Stories. The Hogarth Press.

Religion, Seduction, and Spiritual Education in Brief Candles

Brief Candles came out in 1930, two years after Point Counter Point and two years before Brave New World, which was the peak of Huxley’s fiction. It is the last collection published in Huxley’s lifetime, although he continued to write short stories. The title is based on the most quoted passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: …Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing”. (Macbeth 5.5.23–28)

Critics for the most part did not like the book. In a letter to his long-time correspondent, Mrs. Flora Strousse, Huxley (1969) labeled the reviews as “rather snorty and high-souled” coming from the school of criticism that made a point about “being nice and gentlemanly and public-schooly, with a touch of whimsical Dickensism or rather … a smear of Barrieism to relieve the gentlemanly tedium” (pp. 337–338). There were those who praised the book as well. Desmond MacCarthy lauded Huxley’s “fine blend of intellectual curiosity and aesthetic sensibility” (MacCarthy, 1975, p. 182). But even he asserted that Huxley was “the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_6

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most universal … in his references and one of the most limited in focus” (p. 183). Despite the negative criticism of the book, Brief Candles shows Huxley’s progress in many areas of storytelling. Characters in this collection are more developed than in Huxley’s previous books of short fiction. Huxley also expands on the topic of intellectual education and mocks so-called spiritual upbringing. Toxic masculinity becomes more brutal, with powerful men emotionally abusing women to such a degree that they would rather commit suicide than live with them under the same roof. Huxley highlights different aspects of organized religion, especially its susceptibility to manipulation. Another novelty is his greater attention to detail in depicting relationships. He does not “cease” or “shirk” (Bennett, 1975, p. 106) anymore, as Arnold Bennett used to say, but takes time to develop characters’ motivation. Finally, Brief Candles offers more realistic descriptions of British community abroad, wherein expats mingle with locals and learn about their culture—which does not end with architecture and painting but includes, for instance, haggling with wine sellers and shopping at local markets—descriptions that increase the authenticity of experience, making the context for the main themes more elaborate.

Chawdron “Chawdron” is another short story where a character retells someone’s life, explicating a range of ideas along the way. We could see this pattern in “Nuns at Luncheon,” even though the story about Melpomene Fugger contains a metastory of writing, which transforms Miss Penny’s monologues into the elements of a more complex narrative game. “Chawdron” does not possess such a dimension. Despite its compositional flaws, “Chawdron” helps us grasp Huxley’s views on organized religion, as it introduces new elements such as manipulation and seduction based on religious belief. The story also deepens our understanding of Huxley’s stance on intellectual education, which remains one of the most important topics in his short fiction. “Chawdron” describes the life of Benjamin Chawdron, a wealthy industrialist turned pious Christian, but the protagonist is Edmund Tilney, a literary journalist who has ghostwritten Chawdron’s autobiography. He seems to be a strange mixture of Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After” and Mark Rampion and Maurice Spandrell from Point Counter

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Point . He shares Jacobsen’s emotional void, Rampion’s contempt for fake spirituality, and Spandrell’s attitude to women. His monologues are full of condescending remarks. For instance, he pities a woman named Sybil whose first husband was Jewish, while the second one was Mexican Indian. As Claudia Rosenhan (2005) underscores, his statements are meant to indicate the social status of Sybil’s ex-husbands (p. 97). Tilney also emphasizes Maggie Spindell’s “blood-curdling” manner of saying “be-yütiful,” which is “long-drawn-out with the oo sound thinned and refined into German u-modified” (Huxley, 1992, p. 321). In Tilney’s value system, Chawdron has a special place. He despises him because Chawdron is “a large-scale, Napoleonic crook,” “intelligently criminal,” “so drearily uneducated,” “disgustingly without taste,” and “metaphysically and artistically a cretin” (pp. 303–304). But the biggest reason for Tilney’s contempt is Chawdron’s understanding of religion. In Tilney’s opinion, businessmen like Chawdron are the same as other parts of Christian society: For it isn’t only the tough old businessmen who have the hearts of hogwash. It’s also, as you yourself remarked just now, the gruff old scientists, the rough old scholars, the bluff old admirals and bishops, and all the other pillars of Christian society. It’s everybody, in a word, who has made himself too hard in the head or the carapace; everybody who aspires to be nonhuman—whether angel or machine it doesn’t matter. Super-humanity is as bad as sub-humanity, is the same thing finally. Which shows how careful one should be if one’s an intellectual. Even the mildest sort of intellectual. (Huxley, 1992, p. 309)

Tilney believes that scientists, scholars, admirals, bishops, and “the other pillars of Christian society” are similar because all of them aspire to be “non-human” or “super-human.” Tilney here criticizes people who specialize in one area of existence and neglect everything else, which is a common type in Huxley’s short fiction. Being super-human, in Tilney’s interpretation, means glorifying one aspect of life at the cost of all others, an aspect which the representatives of each group consider the most intellectual, spiritual, or ethical. For Tilney, Chawdron is “sub-human” as well. This term refers to a brief period after Chawdron’s retirement when he embraced superficial Christianity. That is why Tilney calls Chawdron a “putrefied angel” or an angel “in pigs’ clothing” (p. 312). In his soliloquies on Chawdron’s sub-human spirituality, Tilney claims that

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the highest ideal of Christian Churches is to become “Academies of Dramatic Art,” where people rehearse “for the part of Jesus or Podsnap or Alexander the Great, or whoever the local favourite may be” (p. 323). In this monologue, Tilney expresses Huxley’s life-long objection to organized religion: that it has succumbed to “ritualistic legalism” which we should reject if we want to see “the Inner Light” (Huxley, 2009, p. 30). The rehearsals Tilney mentions refer to the dogmatism of organized religion, which Huxley deems the greatest obstacle to understanding reality. As Sebastian Barnack explains in the last chapter of Time Must Have a Stop, “the Papists, the Jews, the Moslems … have a working-hypothesis about non-sensuous reality” which is so dogmatic that “most of them discover only what they were taught to believe” (Huxley, 1946b, p. 288). It should be noted that Tilney’s criticism of organized religion does not apply to Christian mystics whose endeavors go beyond dogmatism and ritualistic legalism. Even when Tilney mentions Christian mystics, it is rarely about their practice but more about the people such as Miss Spindell who use mysticism to reinforce their own ulterior motives. “Chawdron” is another story where Huxley ridicules mortification of the flesh as an attempt to imitate Christ and attain salvation. Miss Spindell resembles Melpomene Fugger from “Nuns at Luncheon,” as she believes that mere fasting will help her become more spiritual. She even tells her interlocutors that eating is “unspiritual and gross” (Huxley, 1992, p. 326), so she always looks malnourished and sick. But unlike Melpomene Fugger, who gets away only with stomach ulcer after her exercise in martyrology, Miss Spindell dies. She is also similar to the protagonist of “The Death of Lully”. The reasons behind their decision to abuse their bodies are different, yet both Lully and Miss Spindell cherish the idea that physical austerities can bring them closer to God. In that sense, these three stories epitomize Huxley’s views on this dimension of Christian mysticism, views that did not alter even though he changed his opinion on other aspects of religion and spirituality, which I will explain in the chapter on Huxley’s uncollected short fiction. “Chawdron” highlights an important element of organized religion: its susceptibility to manipulation. Maggie Spindell deceives Chawdron by evoking and sometimes even enacting passages from The New Testament. Due to his misconceptions about spirituality, Chawdron sees his first encounter with her as Providence. At the time she is twenty-five and he is fifty, which is the age, as Tilney explains, “when clergymen first begin to be preoccupied with the underclothing of little schoolgirls in trains”

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(Huxley, 1992, p. 313).1 Whether she is a calculated scammer or she believes in her potential sainthood, Maggie Spindell feeds Chawdron with stories about God and spirituality, occasionally reading from “Spinoza and Plato and some little book on the Christian mystics,” along with “theosophical literature that’s so popular in Garden Suburbs and among retired colonels and ladies of a certain age” (p. 324). Here Huxley seems to mock the approach to spirituality that unites irrelevant aspects of Christianity, philosophy, and occultism, the approach which does not lead to the understanding of different schools of thought, but serves as a platform for gaining control over other people. This element in the characterization of Miss Spindell was effective enough to impress V. S. Pritchett, who admitted that Huxley was “the artist-educator … who finds his stern text in our spiritual bric-à-brac, the illusions and novelties of belief” (Pritchett, 1975, p. 425). The culmination of Miss Spindell’s religious charade is the stigmata episode, which takes place when Chawdron comes home with his foot bandaged due to a painful swelling and when she says she felt a sharp pain in her foot that gave her a red mark “like a scar” (Huxley, 1992, p. 334). It is only her premature death that prevents Miss Spindell from keeping Chawdron enchanted for a long time. Maggie Spindell illustrates a phenomenon that Huxley will later call “religious bovarism.” In The Devils of Loudun, Huxley (1959) claims that a religious bovarist is a “hypocrite who tries to look like a saint in order … to pursue his own unholy ends” (p. 100). This parallel proves that some ideas from Huxley’s essays were first sketched in his short fiction. Miss Spindell’s manipulation reminds us of “The Gioconda Smile,” that is, the complementary story that emerges after we become aware of the entire plot. Once we have realized that she wants to deceive Benjamin Chawdron, we can go back to her first appearance and create our own subplot. The difference between the two stories is in the effect of Miss Spindell’s angle. In “The Gioconda Smile,” Miss Spence’s intent to poison Mr. Hutton’s wife and seduce him afterward undermines the protagonist’s position. A new story emerges, taking control over Mr. Hutton’s perspective, and we question everything, including our previous interpretation of her cryptic smile. In “Chawdron,” however, Miss Spindell only succeeds in creating another perspective, which is never that powerful to jeopardize Tilney’s supreme position. Manipulation and seduction are frequent topics in Huxley’s short fiction, although it is usually a man who seduces an inexperienced and idealistic woman such as Melpomene Fugger from “Nuns at Luncheon”

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or Moira Tarwin from “The Rest Cure”. In “Chawdron,” the seducer is a “sanctified Christian kitten” (Huxley, 1992, p. 322) and her tool is Christianity spiced up with philosophy, Buddhism, and Theosophy. Huxley here shows that all religions are vulnerable to manipulation partly because they consist of influential archetypes that are hard to deconstruct and partly because of their role in society, especially if they are as powerful as Christianity, which for many believers boils down to ritualistic legalism that “does little … to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness” (Huxley, 2009, p. 23). It is the ability to modify consciousness and elevate one’s soul that attracted Huxley to Christian mysticism, not the imitation of martyrs or any local hero. Apart from being a fierce critic of organized religion, Edmund Tilney is another embodiment of toxic masculinity in Huxley’s short fiction. Describing the intricacies of his personality, he claims that he has always been attracted to “bitches” because they are the only women who “make advances he doesn’t know how to make” (Huxley, 1992, p. 310). Tilney’s descriptions of women are beyond derogatory. Charlotte is a “greywhiskered old tigress” (p. 316), Sybil is “poor” because her partners were Jewish, Chinese, and Mexican Indian. She is “so worn and ill and tired, so terribly old” (p. 315) due to her cocaine habit. Maggie Spindell is “little,” “ugly,” and “sickly,” doing “a good deal of pathetic malingering” (p. 316). Unlike Charlotte the tigress, she is a combination of a kitten and tarantula. Tilney’s contempt for independent women comes partly from his inability to control them and partly because they reveal his major weaknesses. Even though he leads his interlocutor to believe that he has seduced many gullible women, it seems to be the other way around: None of them saw Tilney as a permanent choice. In the case of Maggie Spindell, Tilney’s contempt at times transforms into hatred, because she succeeded in manipulating Chawdron using an ingenious tactic which she tailored for the great industrialist. Tilney secretly envies her because she did what he always wanted to do but failed primarily due to his cowardice. It should be added that Tilney has a trait that the majority of similar characters in Huxley’s fiction do not possess. He understands his limitations and is not afraid of admitting them. At times, he even enjoys talking about his failures. Unlike Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After,” he knows that his literary talents are mediocre. He may have written a few decent articles and one good book—Chawdron’s autobiography, which he cannot claim as he has ghostwritten it—but he is well aware that his writing will never secure him a place in the literary pantheon. In one

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of his monologues brimming with self-pity, Tilney explains that he has always been familiar with the idea of life but never felt it in real time: Thanks to the books and the ideas, I never learnt how to deal with real situations, with solid people and things. Personal relationships—I’ve never been able to manage them effectively. Only ideas. With ideas I’m at home. With the idea of personal relationships. For example, people think I’m an excellent psychologist. And I suppose I am. Spectatorially. But I’m a bad experiencer. I’ve lived most of my life posthumously, if you see what I mean; in reflections and conversations after the fact. As though my existence were a novel or a text-book of psychology or a biography, like any of the others on the library shelves. (Huxley, 1992, p. 310)

Tilney describes his life as a chain of “posthumous” reflections. Since he always valued ideas over experience, he could experience only the filtered version of life. His words evoke what Huxley (1937) describes as “consistent intellectualism” which “may be socially valuable” but makes for “individual death” (p. 99). Tilney’s focus on his intellectual side and neglect of everything else makes him not even super-human, but subhuman. In that sense, he is closer to Chawdron than any other character in this story. His sub-humanity might be another reason why he spends so much time uncovering Maggie Spindell’s manipulation and insulting her along the way. On the other hand, Tilney seems to be more eager to talk about his shortcomings than other such characters in Huxley’s fiction. He is another intellectual with the potential to uncover deeper layers of reality, yet he never attains them because of his egoism, toxic masculinity, and self-loathing joy.

The Rest Cure “The Rest Cure” is also a story about manipulation, seduction, and dysfunctional education, but here Huxley demonstrates more maturity than in any other collection before. Zoltan Korda, the director of A Woman’s Vengeance, was interested in adapting “The Rest Cure” for the big screen as well, but the project never materialized, even though Huxley, according to Virginia M. Clark (1987), spent three months working on the script (p. 105). The protagonist is Moira Tarwin, who is sent to Florence so that she can alleviate her anxiety and rethink her failed marriage. She had similar

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upbringing as Marjorie Petherton from “Happily Ever After”. She was raised by her grandfather, Sir Watney Croker, “one of the most eminent physicians of his day” (Huxley, 1992, p. 338). Moira spent her youth surrounded with her grandfather and his friends who liked her childish remarks on high-brow topics such as the Absolute or Britain’s industrial future. The guests at Sir Watney Croker’s dinner parties, which only the most privileged could attend, enjoyed retelling Moira’s frivolous comments, treating her as “hardly more than their mascot” (p. 361). To show the grueling side of Moira’s upbringing and subsequent marriage, the narrator introduces her as a young woman, “only twenty-eight” with “restless and unquietly bright” eyes and “a little girl’s face, with small, delicate features, but worn—prematurely” (p. 337). Her baby face reveals the consequences of chronic emotional abuse. Her eyes suggest not only deep distress but also her inability to escape the rigid pattern imposed on her first by her grandfather and then by his young colleague, John Tarwin, whom Moira married under the delusion that he would give her a better life. Her husband turns out to be the same type of man as her grandfather. He is disrespectful, condescending, a “pet-fancier” (Huxley, 1992, p. 341) who treats his wife as if she were a child and retells her naïve comments in public. He imposes on her knowledge about literature and art, disregarding her indifference. That is why Moira hates Goethe, his favorite poet, and all the topics (nature, love, God) that John Tarwin discusses “furry with feeling” (p. 341). The narrator emphasizes that Moira likes her husband better when he is a research student than when he pretends to be a common man. Her stance appears contrary to what we might conclude given her protest against her grandfather’s circle, until we find out that the research student is the only identity John Tarwin can embrace. Everything else is a pose. Even his sexual desire results from his assumption that frequent love-making is the characteristic of a great man. When he talks about art, Moira knows it is not because of his profound understanding of the subject matter, but because of his opinion that an intellectual should be familiar with major artists. However, the biggest reason for Moira’s contempt is his toxic behavior that at times transforms into verbal abuse: He was less enthusiastic, however, when Moira had been childish at his expense, when her silliness had in any way compromised his dignity or interests. On these occasions he lost his temper, called her a fool, told her

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she ought to be ashamed of herself. After which, controlling himself, he would become grave, paternal, pedagogic. Moira would be made to feel, miserably, that she wasn’t worthy of him. And finally he switched on the smile and made it all up with caresses that left her like a stone. (Huxley, 1992, p. 341)

Moira’s grandfather never crossed the line like John Tarwin, who insults her as soon as she starts dismantling his authority. His power-play is calculated to remind her that she escaped her grandfather’s humiliating environment thanks to his generosity and that he can send her back whenever he pleases. Moira has no reason to feel ungrateful; yet she is “made to feel, miserably, that she [isn’t] worthy of him,” which indicates Tarwin’s plan to keep her under control. John Tarwin seems to be a different kind of intellectual than, for example, Mr. Topes from “Green Tunnels” or Spode from “The Tillotson Banquet”. Not affiliated with any particular institution and not tied to any particular country, he lived all over the world. He is what Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After” could have become had he pursued a career in medicine. Unlike most of Huxley’s reclusive intellectuals and scholars who suppress their emotions, he likes having sex with his wife and talking “in his furriest voice about Love and Beauty and necessity of being like Goethe” (p. 342). Tarwin’s attitude to emotions is similar to what Huxley thought about Conrad Aiken’s poetry: “His emotions are apt to degenerate into a kind of intellectual sentimentality, which expresses itself only too easily in his prodigiously fluent, highly colored verse” (Huxley, 1958a, p. 96). Although Tarwin is not a poet, he fits the profile of an intellectual sentimentalist. He does not see emotions as part of his personality but as a concept that shows the power of his intellect. Thus, during one of their fights, Moira tells him that he knows what he should feel about women but he never really felt anything other than his own superiority. John Tarwin also resembles Gregory from “The Monocle.” Tarwin does not have any tool to reinforce his confidence, yet he resorts to ready-made gestures when he talks to Moira, turning on “the charm and wistfulness like electricity” (Huxley, 1992, p. 337). Despite an array of differences among the intellectuals in Huxley’s fiction, robotic self-consciousness seems to be the characteristic most of them have in common. Like other similar characters in Huxley’s novels and short stories, the unhappy women crippled by conservative intellectualism and unaccustomed to ordinary life, Moira Tarwin is an easy prey. She falls in love

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with Tonino Vasari, the first good-looking man who impresses her with his manners and affection. But here Huxley demonstrates more maturity than in all previous stories. For example, Kuno from “Nuns at Luncheon” is a one-dimensional criminal who seduces Melpomene in order to escape prison. Tonino’s motivation is much more complex. When Moira shows her interest in him, he is everything but a sadistic crook. An inexperienced young man dispatched to Florence from Naples to study tourism and eventually help his father’s business, Tonino daydreams not about Moira but about a “Foreign Lady … an almost fabulous creature, a being of legendary wealth, eccentricity, independence” (Huxley, 1992, p. 344). He sees himself driving a big car and living in a house with servants. His ruminations resemble those of Barbara Buzzacott from “Green Tunnels,” who fantasizes about her noble life with the Marchese Prampolini. This parallel indicates that the narrator of “The Rest Cure” wants to emphasize Tonino’s inexperience. At first Tonino does not intend to have anything beyond a platonic relationship with Moira. Only when his friend, Berto, tells him to take advantage of her, does Tonino start questioning his approach. And when they kiss for the first time and he says that he loves her (which is another sign of his immaturity), he feels “as though there were a hollowness at the centre of his being, a void of desiring tenderness that longed to be filled” (p. 351). It is not only about Moira anymore, but a deeper connection with a woman that makes him feel complete. The storm outside intensifies the scene, suggesting that their connection is more visceral than it may seem. Even a cold-blooded murderer would want to experience such an emotion, let alone a young man who has never been in a serious relationship. The change in his behavior is caused by several factors. First, his friend, Berto, constantly tells him how “women long to be raped” (Huxley, 1992, p. 355) or abused in another way, because for him “love [is] a kind of salacious vengeance on women for the crime of their purity” (p. 355). The second reason is his father’s deteriorating business which needs an urgent cash injection, and Tonino sees a rich foreign lady as his only savior. Third, Tonino meets Luisa Menardi, his friend’s sister who attracts him more than Moira, not only physically but because they share the same background. The prospect of Tonino having a serious relationship with Luisa is more likely than his fantasy world with Moira. Finally, Moira becomes obsessed with him, which makes her less desirable than in the beginning. Her obsession, it needs to be said, does not stem from Tonino’s exceptional love-making skills or her illusion that

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they can get married and live happily ever after. Her manic attachment to Tonino is caused by her fear that by losing him she will have to return to her husband’s abusive environment. She hates the slightest thought of living with John Tarwin again. In other words, Huxley lays out the whole process that precedes Tonino’s decision to break up with Moira, which is a novelty in his short fiction and exemplifies his remarkable prose ability in the period between Point Counter Point and Brave New World. Huxley’s depictions of relationships in this story are also more accomplished than before. For instance, bearing in mind Moira’s upbringing, her decision to marry John Tarwin seems logical. He was good-looking (at any rate compared to Sir Watney Croker’s friends), traveled around the world, and had good reputation. She hoped these small reasons “added together … would be the equivalent of the one big, cogent reason” (Huxley, 1992, p. 340), which is an immature opinion but understandable given her urgent need to liberate herself from her grandfather’s abuse. John Tarwin’s reasons for marrying Moira cannot be disputed either. She was Sir Watney Croker’s passive and obedient granddaughter, a perfect match for a toxic man who cannot deal with free-spirited, independent women. Moira’s decision to start an affair with Tonino is also justified. Tonino has good manners, dresses better than John Tarwin, brings her flowers (which is something her husband never does), helps her navigate Florentine community, shows her the mundane life of kitchen and markets, and acts as an interpreter with decorators and repairmen. Most of all, he is always there for her, which cannot be said for John Tarwin. Tonino’s motivation for a relationship with Moira is understandable, too. In his opinion, she is a rich foreigner who can get him out of financial unpredictability and who can indirectly help him establish his authority among Berto and his other friends. In addition, Moira can offer him if not love, then at least tenderness, which he craves more than anything else, as he is a young, inexperienced man far away from home, working with people who do not share his vision of life. Nowhere in his short fiction does Huxley provide a more detailed picture of relationships, a whole gamut of illusions and disillusionments without which none of them can exist. Huxley criticizes intellectual education in all his books of fiction, so “The Rest Cure” is no exception. As we could see in the previous chapters, Huxley’s main objection is that intellectual education does not provide necessary experience, creating people who suppress their emotions and become dysfunctional in ordinary life. The stories such as “Happily Ever After,” “The Gioconda Smile,” “Hubert and Minnie,”

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and “Chawdron” are the most illustrative examples of this shortcoming. Sometimes Huxley points out the difference between knowledge and understanding, as in “Green Tunnels” and other similar works, the difference for which educators do not prepare their students, preventing them from experiencing art and major ideas that have shaped the world. In “The Rest Cure,” however, Huxley’s criticism goes further. Sir Watney Croker and his friends use their intellectual superiority to abuse Moira. The narrator’s wit and sarcasm—anticipating Humbert Humbert’s shrewd strategy in Nabokov’s Lolita—make us forget that Moira is an orphan, forced to grow up with her grandfather because her parents died when she was five years old. John Tarwin continues Croker’s practice. Part of their abuse comes from their toxic masculinity and sadism. The other part results from their infantility. The narrator explains that Moira’s grandfather is “a baby himself” and that his focus on work “prevented this neglected instinctive part of him from fully growing up” (Huxley, 1992, p. 338). Even as an old man, he has not outgrown his urge to hurt another child. John Tarwin behaves in a similar way when he retells his wife’s silly remarks and gets offended if she does the same to him. His infantility reaches its peak when he tries to convince himself that Moira will never be unfaithful to him. Tarwin’s main argument is that her “native childishness would reinforce her principles” (p. 358). We almost feel sorry for him, owing to Huxley’s complex irony in this sentence. “The Rest Cure” also describes British expatriates in Italy. This theme has new dimensions compared to “Green Tunnels” and Those Barren Leaves . In the first place, having spent several years in Italy, Huxley provides more details about day-to-day life. But the more important change is that the characters finally mingle with the locals. In “Green Tunnels” Mr. Buzzacott and his guests barely communicate with the Italians, except for their brief encounters with Concetta the maid and the Marchese Prampolini. Those Barren Leaves follows a similar arrangement with expats interacting mostly among themselves. “The Rest Cure” breaks the pattern. Thanks to her relationship with Tonino, Moira gets to experience Florentine markets and cuisine as if she were Italian. She watches Tonino haggle with wine sellers and argue with the butcher over the low quality of meat. And she loses “class consciousness” (Huxley, 1992, p. 343), which is another liberating element that attracts her to Tonino’s world. On the other hand, the narrator highlights Tarwin’s typical prejudice against “black-haired young pimps from the slums of Naples” (p. 359). Like Mrs. Topes from “Green Tunnels,” Tarwin never immerses

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himself in the local culture and sees Italians as inferior. He interrogates Tonino about Italian educational system, new penal code, and political situation, “historical and impersonal Italy” (p. 357) about which Tonino does not know much because it is far removed from his everyday life. Whoever has lived outside their home country will recognize this type of expatriates who never even try to acknowledge, let alone understand, the intricacies of the local culture that go much deeper than loose references to history and current politics.

The Claxtons In “The Claxtons” Huxley broadens his criticism of odd teaching models, focusing on layman homeschooling and crude spiritual education. Nicholas Murray (2003) calls this story an “attack on puritan self-righteousness” (p. 238). Herbert Claxton is a former socialist, an anti-clerical follower of oriental religiosity, and a painter who cannot sell a single painting because his art is “too spiritual for most people to understand” (Huxley, 1992, p. 371). He also sees himself “as an apostle of idealism” (p. 373). His trademark is a rucksack, at times filled with cabbage and leeks, which he carries even on London’s fashionable Bond Street. Among his most distinct idiosyncrasies is his attempt to cure constipation by practicing yoga. According to Jake Poller (2019), Huxley here mocks pr¯ aṇ¯ ay¯ ama or controlled yoga breathing (p. 27). The evocation of pr¯ aṇ¯ ay¯ ama in this story could also be Huxley’s criticism of the belief whereby spirituality can always be a substitute for medical treatment, which corresponds with all decisions the Claxtons make on behalf of their children. Herbert’s wife, Martha, despite her beer-brewing lineage, has never been keen on running the lucrative family business. Inspired by William Morris and Tolstoy, among others, she has chosen “the conquest of spirituality” and the “siege and capture of the Highest” (Huxley, 1992, p. 375), always radiating with “a beautiful Christian smile” (p. 374). Due to her superficial knowledge of religion, philosophy, and art, she feels superior to other people. But her attitude to humanity is far from straightforward. As the narrator specifies, she “loved it because she really hated it” (p. 374). Her complicated relationship with people which, paradoxically, unites love and hatred stems from her perverted interpretation of Christian forgiveness. She hates people because they do not understand her sacrifice, yet she feels sorry for them because they cannot reach the heights

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she and her husband have attained in their isolation from the world. Hence her “love” for people, which is nothing more than her superiority complex. To highlight her peculiar feeling, the narrator compares her smile to “the head-lamps of a motor car inadvertently turned on and left to burn, unnecessarily, in the daylight” (p. 374). This metaphor suggests that her smile is artificial (the motor car), unreasonable (inadvertently turned on), useless (unnecessarily left to burn), and misplaced (shining in the daylight). On a deeper level, the metaphor depicts Martha’s whole perception of the world as groundless, preparing us for the grotesque upbringing she and her husband will give their children. It is undeniable that both spouses have some knowledge of art and spirituality, but they are far from experts in any field, let alone in children’s education. Nevertheless, they raise their two children, Paul and Sylvia, in accordance with a unique pedagogical model. Sylvia’s talent for music was revealed to the world when she was two years old and when her parents realized she could sing “Three Blind Mice.” From then on, Martha and Herbert have imposed piano lessons on her, although Sylvia has no interest in playing the instrument. On the contrary, to the horror of her puritan parents, she gets a greater pleasure from stealing bacon at her aunt’s house. Her brother, Paul, is “the future Giotto” (Huxley, 1992, p. 383), not because of his artistic nature, for he has never exhibited one, but because his parents have “decided that he inherited his father’s talents” (p. 383). His festered adenoids have almost made him “an imbecile”; yet Martha and Herbert do not want to seek professional help since they “disbelieve in doctors” (p. 385). They do not believe in boarding-schools either as such institutions, in their opinion, turn children into “worldlings” (p. 382). That is why Sylvia and Paul are educated at home. At the same time, the parents allow children to draw their own conclusions based on limited instructions, which—only on the surface—resemble the Montessori Method that promotes a child’s liberty and John Dewey’s theory on learning by doing.2 The outcome of their pedagogy is contrary to their expectations. Sylvia becomes a miserable amateur pianist, incapable of communicating with other people, whereas Paul ends up killing birds with his homemade catapult. The difference between the teaching methodology from “Young Archimedes” and the one implemented by Martha and Herbert Claxton is that the narrator of “Young Archimedes” first established Guido’s talents and interests, correcting some misunderstandings along the way, and then created a teaching strategy so as to enhance the boy’s development. Martha and

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Herbert have chosen their children’s interests in disregard of their abilities and inclinations: Sylvia has never liked playing the piano, while Paul does not possess artistic talent. Unlike Huxley’s other short stories which criticize universal education and the notion that a single curriculum can be applied to all children regardless of their personalities and interests, “The Claxtons” satirizes alternative educational models which are not based on science but on an arbitrary opinion or belief. Martha and Herbert Claxton have chosen their children’s pathways and imposed on them the religious and artistic mix they created in their contempt for the world. Although Huxley frequently criticized scientists for committing to a limited sphere of existence, although he was against applied science, and although, as Robert S. Baker (1990) points out, he did not embrace the “notions of historical progress or scientific certitude” (p. 2), Huxley never disbelieved in science like Herbert and Martha Claxton. He even criticized his friend D. H. Lawrence for “anti-intellectualism” and “dislike of science” (Bedford, 1974, p. 192). Nowadays the opposition to science—in various fields from education and upbringing to politics, climate, and public health—is cherished all over the world, not only in conservative circles but in liberal ones as well. This unfortunate trend proves that Huxley’s predictions were accurate. “The Claxtons” also criticizes the urge of many modernists to create a substitute for religion. In the analysis of “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” we could see what Huxley thought about “crank” spirituality epitomized by Emberlin the Philarithmic. In “The Claxtons” Huxley mocks layman spirituality whereby one cherry-picks fragments from faiths and philosophies, creating religious blend indiscriminately applied to all spheres of life. Herbert Claxton does not mind being called a crank. Telling his friends that he knows what they think of him, Herbert adds: “And yet, if it hadn’t been for the cranks … what would you be doing?” (Huxley, 1992, p. 374). At first glance, having written about the Claxtons’ version of spirituality, Huxley seems to undermine his own concept, as Martha and Herbert have created their own “philosophy” comprised of Christianity, Oriental religions, painting, and literature. However, instead of embracing the perennial aspects of religion and art which would enhance their perception of reality, they have chosen the most trivial elements to justify their sense of superiority and narrow-minded puritanism.

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There is yet another example in this story where Huxley appears to ironize his own concept. At the beginning of the Great War, Herbert claims conscientious objection. The narrator explains that “while ordinary people believed in the War, fought and worked to win, Herbert and Martha utterly disapproved and, on grounds that were partly Buddhistic, partly Socialist-International, partly Tolstoyan, refused to have anything to do with the accursed thing” (Huxley, 1992, p. 381). In other words, they chose not to take part in World War I due to their pacifism. One does not need to be an expert on Huxley’s literature to know that he was a staunch advocate of pacifism in between the two world wars. His book Ends and Means (1937) and especially the pamphlet titled What Are You Going to Do about It? The Case for Constructive Peace (1936) explicate the idea of pacifism and refute the most common arguments against it. Huxley also edited An Encyclopedia of Pacifism (1937).3 Still, as in the case of the Claxtons’ superficial belief system, their pacifism comes from a wrong premise. Unlike Huxley, who saw pacifism as an ideological framework that would not only, in the long run, reduce violence and lead to more peaceful solutions to political conflicts but enable individuals to elevate their own humanity, the Claxtons use pacifism to show their superiority. “The Claxtons” demonstrates Huxley’s exceptional humor. The beginning of the story is among the funniest openings in the English literature of the 1930s: “In their little house on the common, how beautifully the Claxtons lived, how spiritually! Even the cat was a vegetarian” (Huxley, 1992, p. 371). Although at first sight this sentence seems to indicate Huxley’s mockery of vegetarianism and spirituality, it has a different purpose. As in “Eupompus” and “Half-Holiday,” where introductions put the reader on the right track to interpret the protagonist’s main characteristics later on, the first sentence in “The Claxtons” prepares us for Marta and Herbert’s rigid puritanism which they impose on everyone around them. Another example of Huxley’s wit comes in the section where Aunt Judith discovers that Sylvia has stolen her bacon. In Sylvia’s context, stealing pork amounts to Eve’s tasting the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. As the narrator underscores, “with guilty speed she hurried upstairs with it and hid it under her pillow,” but the “grease stains and a piece of gnawed rind betrayed her” (p. 372). We can imagine a child that snatches a rasher of bacon, hides it in her bed, eats it in secrecy, and, as every first-time criminal, leaves a trace behind that eventually gets her caught, and we can sympathize with her rebellion against

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Marta and Herbert’s fundamentalism. But the scene also makes us laugh when we remember what sparked the biblical allusions. The description of Herbert’s father is also worth mentioning. Mr. Claxton is “a thin, feeble man with a taste for argumentation and pickled onions” in whom “indigestion” and “the chronic consciousness of inferiority ha[ve] made him a revolutionary and a domestic bully” (p. 375). At one point Mr. Claxton predicts his son will become a great man, but a minute later he starts yelling at him and kicks him out of the dining room. Given his upbringing, Herbert could not have grown into a different person. Martha’s weakness for chocolate is another example of Huxley’s multilayered humor. Martha loves her chocolate creams so much that as soon as she brings them home, she not only throws “herself upon the sweets with the same heavy violence as had characterized her first passion for Herbert” but becomes “more than ordinarily strict in her ascetic spirituality” (p. 381). Her love for chocolate mixes her mundane craving, explosive sexual desire, and religious sense of guilt, creating the effect that a simple description of her poor eating habits could never achieve. The wittiest passage in the story has to be the explanation of Sylvia’s transformation during her stay with her uncle and aunt. They allow Sylvia to play with other children, which her parents never do because they want her to grow under their strict control: After a certain number of rather unsuccessful and occasionally painful experiments she learned to play, to behave as an equal among equals. Hitherto she had lived almost exclusively as a chronological inferior among grown-ups, in a state of unceasing rebellion and guerilla warfare. Her life had been one long risorgimento against forgiving Austrians and all too gentle, beautifully smiling Bourbons. With the little Carters from down the road, the little Holmeses from over the way, she was now suddenly required to adapt herself to democracy and parliamentary government. (Huxley, 1992, p. 388)

The narrator depicts her transformation as part of a long historical process from “unceasing rebellion and guerilla warfare” to “democracy and parliamentary government.” At first she is a little savage who fights with every child she comes across, but eventually she sees other children as equal. To stress how long and painful that process has been, the narrator uses the term risorgimento, denoting the nineteenth-century movement in Italy that led to its independence after decades of inner conflicts among

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the supporters of Italy’s unification. In the same way as the Italian groups within risorgimento, Sylvia has to overcome numerous fallacies, illusions, and conflicts between her parents’ teachings and the real world, so that she can gain independence from her family and reject their sense of superiority. Once we link her struggle to such an intricate historical movement, we cannot but laugh at the poor child’s endeavor and at the same time feel sorry for her bizarre upbringing. It is in this type of descriptions— which connect seemingly unconnectable phenomena—that we see the complexity of Huxley’s humor, which is one of his greatest strengths as a fiction writer.

Notes 1. In this sentence, Huxley alludes to sexual abuse based on religious manipulation, especially among Catholic priests, although the allusion is humorous and part of another idea. Huxley’s interest in this theme will culminate in The Devils of Loudun (1952) and “Consider the Lilies” (1954), his penultimate short story which I will analyze in the chapter on Huxley’s uncollected short fiction. 2. A detailed description of the Montessori method and John Dewey’s theories can be found in the chapter on Little Mexican and Other Stories . 3. Huxley’s pacifism, especially on the eve of World War II, sparked a lot of controversies, turning many writers and intellectuals against him. For a more detailed account of the reactions to Huxley’s pacifism in the late 1930s, see Murray (2003), Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual (pp. 291–294).

References Baker, R. S. (1990). Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia. Twayne Publishers. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Bennett, A. (1975). On Little Mexican, September 1924. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 106–108). Routledge. Clark, V. M. (1987). Aldous Huxley and Film. The Scarecrow Press. Huxley, A. (1937). Do What You Will. Watts & Co. Huxley, A. (1946b). Time Must Have a Stop. Chatto & Windus.

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Huxley, A. (1958a). Collected Essays. Harper & Brothers. Huxley, A. (1959). The Devils of Loudun. Harper & Brothers. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (G. Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Ivan R. Dee, Inc. Huxley, A. (2009). The Perennial Philosophy. Harper Publishers. MacCarthy, D. (1975). Desmond MacCarthy on Huxley’s limitations. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 182–185). Routledge. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Poller, J. (2019). Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Brill. Pritchett, V. S. (1975). V. S. Pritchett on the Collected Short Stories. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 423–425). Routledge. Rosenhan, C. (2005). An Attribution in Huxley’s Short Story “Chawdron” Via Lawrence and Ludovici. Notes and Queries, 52(1), 95–97.

Uncollected Stories

As we could see in the previous chapter, Brief Candles was Huxley’s last book of short fiction. However, from 1934 to 1955, Huxley wrote four stories that never appeared in book form. Likewise, at the beginning of his literary career, Huxley published several stories in various magazines, but they were either too weak or the editors, for one reason or another, could not fit them in any collection. In 2010, owing to the efforts of James Sexton, all the uncollected stories were republished in “Consider the Lilies” and Other Short Fiction (2010). This chapter analyzes each of these stories, except for “The Nun’s Tragedy,” which is the early version of “Nuns at Luncheon” from Mortal Coils .

Imaginary Conversations Two stories from “Consider the Lilies” and Other Short Fiction are titled “Imaginary Conversation”. The first one, published in 1919 in the modernist literary magazine Coterie, depicts a dialogue between Ninon de Lenclos (1620–1705), a famous French courtesan and proponent of Epicurean philosophy, and Gaspard IV de Coligny (1620–1649), an aristocrat from the Huguenot family who was her first lover. They are in bed, talking about religion, as Ninon wants her lover to become a Catholic. However, coming from the lineage of distinguished French Protestants,

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he resists all her attempts, even though, according to Ninon’s biographers, he seems to have succumbed to her charms and converted to Catholicism (Huxley, 2010, p. 173). This story indicates Huxley’s early interest not only in religion but seduction and manipulation as well, the themes that will dominate the stories such as “Nuns at Luncheon” and “Chawdron”. The dialogue between Ninon and Coligny is significant because Ninon, in her attempts to convert him, does not bring up any religious arguments, as Miss Spindell does in “Chawdron,” trying to seduce her Nunky Benny. On the contrary, Ninon admits that she has never read the Bible and that her reasons are more mundane than metaphysical. Her main concern is that Coligny (and she as his future wife) might not gain the privileges that the Catholic Church could provide. For instance, she chastises him for being a heretic who could “endanger his soul” not because his sins will lead him to the fires of hell but because it is an “easy thing to believe what is true and be saved” (Huxley, 2010, p. 3). In other words, religion, as she sees it, should not be a matter of higher truth but a practical opinion that could, if nothing else, save people from ruining their families while living among the mortals. When Coligny mentions his grandfather’s brother, a celebrated French Admiral who was assassinated during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, Ninon urges him to stop thinking about the past and start focusing on the future. Likewise, she admonishes him for wanting to be in the company of “these square-toed Geneva republicans” or “nasty, gross, drunken Germans” and “ill-mannered Englishmen” (p. 4), suggesting that Catholicism is the only right faith for a Frenchman. All her thoughts point to the same conclusion: A nobleman like him cannot progress in French society unless he becomes a Catholic. Coligny’s arguments, on the other hand, resemble Huxley’s early protest against organized Christianity. He criticizes the “Jesuit morality” of the Catholic Church which enables its bishops to “swallow elephants, leviathans, and mountains with their pernicious doctrine of Probable Opinions and all their devilish casuistical religious arts” (Huxley, 2010, p. 5). In his opinion, Catholicism is a “false” faith, whereas the Pope is nothing but a “pretender” (p. 4). To support his claims against the Pope’s dominance, Coligny refers to the Donation of Constantine, a decree allegedly issued in the fourth century CE and widely debated in the Middle Ages, whereby Constantine the Great transferred both the spiritual and mundane powers to Pope Sylvester I and, accordingly, to

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all subsequent Popes. The decree was exposed as fabrication by Laurentius Valla (1407–1457), a Renaissance scholar and philosopher, who pointed out that Latin in the bogus document had not been used in the fourth century (“Donation of Constantine”).1 While explaining the origins of Protestantism, Coligny claims that churches at the time were “full of abominable corruptions” and that monks and nuns constantly broke their vows to celibacy (p. 4). He considers Protestantism a rebellion against Christianity rather than a denomination which should prepare its followers for salvation. His tirades against the Catholic Church anticipate The Devils of Loudun (1952), which deals with debauchery and corruption in the seventeenth-century France and confirms that most of Huxley’s literary, religious, and philosophical preoccupations were sketched in his early short fiction. The introduction to this imaginary conversation showcases another dominant characteristic in Huxley’s fiction: Mr. de Coligny’s bed was an heirloom. His father and mother had had it made against their wedding night, and surely the voyage to Cythera was never undertaken in a more splendid galleon—a ship whose hull was of carved and polished walnut wood, embellished by gilding and heraldic panels, whose masts were four twisted pillars all inlaid with ivory, and the sails of yellow damask and the ensigns of stiffly worked brocade. The heaven of the bed was a tapestry representing the story of Leda, and when the yellow curtains were drawn it formed the ceiling of a little scented chamber that was entirely shut off from the outer world. That Flemish Leda embracing a swan whose home was some leaden canal between high houses in Bruges, had seen and heard many secret things in her time. (Huxley, 2010, p. 1)

Coligny has inherited the bed from his parents. It was made for their wedding night, which they spent on a ship sailing to Cythera, the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Not only the design of the bed but also the ship demonstrates that the experience of the newlyweds was to celebrate luxury and love. The hull was covered with “carved and polished walnut wood,” the masts were “inlaid with ivory,” the sails were made of “yellow damask,” and the “ensigns of stiffly worked brocade.” The bed on this extravagant ship had the same purpose: to make Coligny’s parents’ wedding night special and memorable. However, when we read the conversation between Coligny and Ninon, we will realize that the

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story’s opening scene contrasts their religious dispute. The lush wedding atmosphere magnifies Coligny’s incomplete relationship with Ninon. The bed’s ceiling showcases Rubens’ Leda and the Swan. Since Leda was the title of Huxley’s book of poetry published in 1920, we can assume that her seduction by Zeus was an important leitmotif in his early literature. Similar to Huxley’s subsequent short stories based on mythology (e.g., “Little Mexican” and “Fairy Godmother”) where mythical figures contrast the uninspiring present, Leda highlights the discrepancy between her noble love that yielded Helen of Troy and the lovers’ petty conversation on the practical benefits of mainstream religion. The narrator seems to suggest that Ninon and Coligny, talking in an enclosed space of his bed as if “shut off from the outer world” (Huxley, 2010, p. 3), should just look up to realize they could gain much more than what they hope to achieve. But they never do so, and Leda remains “unmoved as ever” (p. 5). There is one more layer to Leda’s significance in this scene. According to the legend, she was seduced by Zeus, the supreme god in Greek mythology. In Huxley’s imaginary conversation, Ninon is the swan and Coligny is Leda, given the outcome of her seduction. The complexity of the opening paragraph, the effect of which is created on at least four levels—the wedding night of Coligny’s parents, the legend of Leda and the Swan/Zeus, Rubens’ interpretation of the legend, and finally Coligny’s conversation with Ninon—anticipates Huxley’s talent for multilayered irony, which will become the landmark of his prose. The second imaginary conversation came out in 1921. It is a sketch from the life of Sir Kenelm and Venetia Digby. In a 1916 letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, as Sexton points out, Huxley hinted that the short story was supposed to be part of a historical romance (Huxley, 2010, p. x). That project never materialized and the story remained outside any official collection of Huxley’s short fiction. The story is based on an entry from John Aubrey’s Brief Lives. According to Aubrey (1982), Sir Kenelm Digby “married that celebrated beauty and courtesan, Mrs Venetia Stanley, whom the Earl of Dorset kept as his concubine, had children by her, and settled on her an annuity of £500 per annum” (p. 102). In the letter mentioned above, Huxley voiced his surprise that a woman such as Venetia Stanley had been seduced by Dorset (Huxley, 2010, p. x). The story depicts one day in May when Sir Kenelm and Venetia receive the Earl of Dorset, who, under an unspecified agreement, has one day per year to visit Venetia. Left alone, Venetia and Dorset engage in a conversation during which he reminds her about

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their past relationship, suggesting they might have the future together. Venetia does not even try to hide her disgust. The story ends with Sir Digby’s medical experiment. He uses the “Powder of Sympathy” (p. 20) to treat the wound on his maid’s finger, but the treatment does not go according to plan, which is an opportunity for Huxley to satirize alternative medicine. As in the previous imaginary conversation, the most interesting element of this story is the beginning. Before we sense Venetia’s dark mood and grasp its causes, before we read about Dorset’s indecent proposal, we see a bunch of withered tulips. The narrator specifies that “some had lost all their petals,” whereas on the other flowers “the coloured leaves still hung precariously, splayed out, blackened at the edges” (Huxley, 2010, p. 17). We learn that they “burn themselves to death in their own fire” (p. 17), but we do not understand how that is possible until Venetia starts thinking about her past. Although she does not reveal much—her memories of Dorset boil down to the “dry and harsh” palms of his hands “as though they were made of lizard’s skin” (Huxley, 2010, p. 18)—we feel a mix of shame, anger, and disgust that overwhelms her during their encounter, a feeling so complex and vehement that can burn flowers. Dorset, having been rejected, tries to alleviate his rage. The whole estate seems to be enveloped in this somber cloud which the plants can sense before humans. Here Huxley plays with the nature of short fiction which, according to Clare Hanson (1989), involves “mystery, elision, uncertainty” (p. 25) that we cannot find in the novel due to its comprehensive structure. And that is the greatest quality of this story, its allusive power to evoke a plethora of thoughts and emotions, to make them realistic without specifying them, which is atypical of Huxley, who is often, as L. P. Hartley puts it, “the victim of his own lucidity” (Hartley, 1975, p. 37). This imaginary conversation mocks alternative medicine, as Sir Kenelm Digby tries to ease the pain in his maid’s finger with a strange concoction he calls the Powder of Sympathy. He collects the maid’s blood into a bowl of water, dips his handkerchief into the solution, and mixes it with the magic powder. Then he takes the handkerchief to the fire and keeps it there until it starts to steam, which is meant to alleviate the girl’s pain. But her pain remains the same. It is only her fear of Sir Kenelm Digby that prevents her from admitting his experiment has not produced the

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desired effect. Sir Digby thus joins the characters such as Emberlin from “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” amateur alchemists and spiritualists that Huxley will satirize in many of his works.

Good and Old-Fashioned “Good and Old-Fashioned” was published in 1922 in the Sphere magazine. Donald Watt rediscovered the story in 1975 and republished it (together with “Under Compulsion”) in Renaissance and Modern Studies. In his introduction, Watt (1975) referred to Huxley’s letter to Clement K. Shorter, editor of the Sphere, where Huxley wrote that he had “a little comic story” (p. 6) for the magazine’s Christmas edition instead of the article he had promised to submit several months before. Huxley was not sure about the story’s quality, which might explain why “Good and Old-Fashioned” was not included in any collection during his lifetime. Written in the dialogue form used, for instance, in “Nuns at Luncheon” and “Chawdron,” the story focuses on the adventures of an elderly Italian gentleman in London during Christmas. He has been invited by a strange English couple—Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, who “adored themselves in quite an absurd and embarrassing fashion” (Huxley, 2010, p. 25)—to celebrate Christmas in their house in Campden Hill. However, the Italian man mistakes Campden Hill for Camden Town, therefore extending his ride in a hansom cab by three and a half hours. When he finally reaches his destination, he finds only Mr. Robinson, who is writing suicide notes because his wife left him. The Italian gentleman convinces him not to kill himself, whereupon Mrs. Robinson returns, “dripping wet, as though she had newly come out of the Thames” (p. 31). In a review on Watt’s article, Meckier (1977) correctly likens this story to Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, calling the protagonist “the Calabrian version of Pickwick” (p. 97). He points to several Dickensian elements (Christmas vittles, humor, late-night adventure in London) that Huxley employs to create the overall effect (p. 97). However, “Good and OldFashioned” refers to The Divine Comedy as well. While waiting for Mr. Robinson to open the front door, the Italian gentleman recites a hundred lines from Inferno, expressing his anger because he spent almost four hours trying to reach his destination on his first Christmas Day in London. He also admits he knows “most of The Divine Comedy by heart” (Huxley, 2010, p. 27). The gentleman emphasizes that prior to

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reaching Mr. Robinson’s house and reciting the verses from Inferno, he “had given up all hope of getting in” (p. 27), which is a clear allusion to the inscription on the Gate of Hell from Canto III. As of that moment, the gentleman acts as a Virgil of sorts, leading Mr. Robinson through the hell of his suicidal thoughts and leaving before his Beatrice comes back home. We can see in many stories (e.g., the first imaginary conversation with the role-reversal between Leda and the swan, or the ironic position of Psyche in “Little Mexican,” or the fairy godmother’s function in contemporary society) that Huxley likes playing with myths and classic art. “Good and Old-Fashioned” is yet another example of this feature in Huxley’s short fiction. It is interesting that Eliot’s The Waste Land, containing the most famous parallel with Dante’s work in Anglo-American modernism, was published in the same year as “Good and Old-Fashioned”. Although it is unlikely that Huxley’s story refers to the evocations of Inferno in The Waste Land, it shows us how Huxley incorporates great literary works in his own fiction, which helps us understand his position within modernism. His intertextual allusions are much closer to James Joyce’s parodic method than T. S. Eliot’s grim parallels. There is an interesting linguistic dimension in “Good and OldFashioned” that we rarely find in Huxley’s works. Everything we learn about the plot is from a person who does not speak the language well. For instance, the Italian man’s English is too formal and old-fashioned, based on reading Dickens and other British authors rather than talking to native speakers. Throughout his monologue, in almost every sentence, we can feel Huxley’s effort to make the language as artificial and outdated as possible. For instance, to apologize for wandering off the subject, the man says: “But I divaricate” (Huxley, 2010, p. 25). He also explains: “I was in London … Not in Dickens; in life” (p. 25). One of his most memorable words is “kebss” (p. 24), which is supposed to denote hansom cabs. From time to time, he cannot remember the word in English or uses Italian to express his thoughts. On the other hand, while elaborating on why he is alone during Christmas, Mr. Robinson does not speak English but “unspeakably comical English-Italian of his” (p. 29). Common logic suggests that both of them filter their stories to adjust to their level of English or Italian proficiency. Once we realize that the narrator hears a Christmas story from an Italian man whose English is not at a native level and who has heard Mr. Robinson’s confession in his “comical EnglishItalian,” we may ask ourselves which segments have been depicted in their entirety and which ones have been embellished to prove the old

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man’s final remark that life is better in his hometown than in London, the inferno of Europe. We can also ask which memories the old man has left out of his story because he could not find the exact words to convey the nuances. This complex linguistic strategy would be demanding even for experienced novelists, let alone for a young writer with only one novel and two short story collections under his belt. Huxley also aims to depict cultural differences between the Italians and English, which he did not fully understand at the time. That is why the portrayal of Italian culture seems more unrealistic than in his later works. For instance, the Italian gentleman knows The Divine Comedy by heart. Although possible in theory, it is unlikely that anyone, even if they knew Dante’s masterpiece by heart, would think of reciting lines from Inferno after trundling in a hansom cab for almost four hours. Not only at the beginning of the twentieth century but nowadays as well, the opinion that all locals are experts on their country’s culture and that major artists are always on their mind would be a telltale sign that a foreigner has not penetrated deeper layers of society. Likewise, the Italian man explains that suicide is common “in the north” because people there, whenever they face an insurmountable problem, think about “soul and metaphysics” (Huxley, 2010, p. 29), whereas the Italian way implies taking life more realistically, which prevents them from considering suicide as the solution. Judging by these lines, one would think that the Italians have eradicated suicide as a concept. However, these passages, regardless of their improbability in real life, are important for us to understand the development Huxley’s depictions of Italian culture. Thus, in 1922, Huxley could offer only superficial descriptions of Italy, which are evident in “Good and Old-Fashioned,” or in “Green Tunnels” where British expatriates, gathered in Mr. Buzzacott’s villa, do not mingle with the local community. In “Little Mexican,” published in 1924, Huxley’s accounts of the Tirabassi family struggles and the early Fascist movement are based on much better understanding of Italian political and societal dynamics. Finally, his later stories such as “The Rest Cure” stress the difference between the mundane Italy of kitchens, markets, and dreams of better life, partially embraced by Moira Tarwin through her lover, and typical prejudices among expatriates, epitomized by John Tarwin, who interrogates Tonino about Italian political situation, educational system, and new penal code, convinced that his guest would know all the answers.

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Over the Telephone “Over the Telephone” (1923) is a story about Walter Traill, a poet struggling with writer’s block and lovesickness. He is obsessed with Hermione Burges, an attractive socialite whom he barely knows. As the narrator specifies, Walter has talked to her only once and has been to her parties twice, each time with a group of people, so he did not have time for a more intimate conversation. Walter daydreams about meeting her at the opera, leaving with her in a cab, going to his stylish apartment, chatting about art, and finally, without proper transition, enjoying sweet love. When he finally plucks up enough courage to call her, Hermione thanks him for the invitation and says she has another commitment. As in many other Huxley’s stories, the protagonist’s main features are suggested at the very beginning: The telephone in Walter Traill’s flat stood on a table by the bed. For one who spent so much of his time in bed, who did, in fact, most of his work there … this was certainly the best place for the telephone to stand. One could do one’s business, he used to explain with that curious avoidance of the first person singular which always characterized his conversation, one could make one’s arrangements for the evening without interrupting the flow of one’s inspiration, which always became congealed in an instant if one had to get up and run about in the cold. (Huxley, 2010, p. 33)

The layout of his room, with the telephone next to his bed, implies his chronic inactivity. He does not move much except when he reaches for cigarettes. Walter also writes in bed. However, the three incurably bad lines he composes after three hours of struggle—“Under the golden-fruited vine / Androgyne with androgyne / Languidly sports” (Huxley, 2010, p. 33)—do not justify the arrangement of the room. While explaining why the telephone has to stand right by the bed, he addresses himself as “one,” six times in a single sentence. Not only does this peculiar habit suggest his emptiness but an alternative identity he employs as a crutch, like Gregory from “The Monocle,” whenever he wants to boost his self-confidence. His use of “one” is particularly grotesque in the last segment of the story, when he tells Hermione “one has been given a box” (p. 38) for Parsifal, clarifying he has chosen that opera because “one remembered what [she] said about Wagner” (p. 39).

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Walter Traill is another dysfunctional male intellectual in Huxley’s fiction. He considers his intellect a powerful social tool and cannot understand why a woman would choose someone else, less educated and refined, to be her partner. In his ruminations on Hermione, Walter says to himself: It was a queer thing, but she had never, so far as he knew, liked anyone who wasn’t perfectly awful, anyone who wasn’t in some way or other a monster … These extraordinary, unfathomable women! That one could be so intelligent and such a fool; that one could be a Renaissance princess, calm and clear-sighted and dangerous, and yet be taken in by any clown or any adventurer who chose to present himself. (Huxley, 2010, pp. 35–36)

This paragraph evokes Huxley’s letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell mentioned in the analysis of the second “Imaginary Conversation,” where he expresses his surprise that Venetia Stanley was seduced by Dorset (Huxley, 2010, p. x). This opinion is typical of male intellectuals in Huxley’s fiction who feel betrayed by women’s choices. For them, education and intellect are powerful tools that work in all contexts and with most people, except with the women to whom they are attracted. They see the likes of Hermione Burges as intelligent and foolish at the same time: intelligent because they are educated and eloquent, but foolish because they are “taken in” by men who are not at their level. It never occurs to them that men can be taken in by women as well. In that sense, Huxley portrays women’s rebellion against patriarchal norms that turn knowledge into a male social weapon. There is yet another dimension to this issue. Impotent men like Walter Traill never take sexuality into consideration. That a woman can be attracted to a man sexually and not intellectually cannot cross their mind. If we analyze all powerful women in Huxley’s fiction—not only Myra Viveash from Antic Hay and Lucy Tantamount from Point Counter Point but less famous characters such as Molly Voles from “The Monocle”—we will realize that their sexuality is their liberating force. Hermione Burges belongs to this group of women who use their sexuality to express their freedom. Even though female characters in Huxley’s fiction are rarely profound as in, for instance, D. H. Lawrence’s novels, we cannot deny that, when it comes to the representation of women, Huxley was among the most progressive writers in modernist era, praising women’s intellectual and sexual liberation.

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James Sexton correctly points out that Hermione is a blend of Mary Hutchinson and Nancy Cunard (Huxley, 2010, p. xi). However, Hermione’s resemblance to Huxley’s friends and lovers does not exhaust all interpretations her character can inspire. In Walter’s imagination, her face resembles “those lovely and dangerous princesses of the Renaissance,” yet it has “almost Oriental, Chinese” features (Huxley, 2010, p. 33). Her mouth is “not so beautiful in itself” but gives her face “perverse beauty” (p. 34) that includes a touch of ugliness as well. These seeming contradictions, which Walter cannot understand, illustrate both her conventual public persona and her uncontrollable side which he foolishly attempts to conquer. Her ambiguities are perhaps best summed up in the following depiction: She has “school-girlish hair” and “the face of an old Pope’s daughter, of a tyrant’s ruthless mistress—subtle and dangerous and calmly, provocatively sensual” (p. 34). That is why Walter sees her as “seventeen in mind and twenty-seven in body” (p. 37). The irony of these lines is in Walter’s failure to understand his own observations, because her physical appearance suggests her multifaceted personality. On the one hand, it shows a conventional socialite who embraces all her interlocutors; on the other, it reveals her intellect and emotions that no one can understand, especially not someone like Walter, who can barely leave his room. This irony also comes to light when he recalls her interpretation of Wagner. She stresses “his richness and his life and his sensuality,” which he considers “extraordinary aberrations of taste” (p. 34). This is another opportunity for Walter to realize that Hermione is interested in ideas and feelings that could deepen her experience of life and allow her to express her sexuality. Instead, he remains paralyzed in his bedroom, clueless about her intentions, and incapable of reaching beyond his phone. To use Wayne C. Booth’s (1974) definition of irony, Hermione’s statements and physical appearance become only a roof concealing a wide range of meanings “that make up a solider structure than the one implied by the original overt statement” (p. 36). If we fail to detect the ironic structure, Walter’s ruminations will be nothing more than the illustration of a dysfunctional man in love with a woman who is out of his league. There are many parallels between “Over the Telephone” and Huxley’s other stories that appeared in the early 1920s. For example, in “Green Tunnels,” published just a year before “Over the Telephone,” Mr. Topes continuously uses “one” when referring to himself. Even Barbara Buzzacott, the young woman to whom he is attracted, asks herself: “Why did the silly old man always say ‘one’ when he meant ‘I’?” (Huxley, 1992,

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p. 147). As noted above, Walter Traill has a similar habit. Apparently, Huxley, who extensively used “one” in correspondence with his friends, relished a bit of self-irony in these stories. Likewise, Walter Trail describes himself as a “sick monkey,” an image he deems “pathetic,” even though it is pleasant to some women he has been with (Huxley, 2010, p. 35). In “Hubert and Minnie,” published the following year within Little Mexican and Other Stories , Mrs. Glamber sees Minnie as “pathetic,” but not like “a sick monkey” that could win affection but like a “blotting paper” that absorbs all the life in the room (Huxley, 1992, pp. 201–202). Sybille Bedford’s famous description of Huxley resembles the way Walter sees himself: “the apartness, the vulnerability, the curious young bird’s unprotectedness that has caught so many women” (Bedford, 1974, p. 233). In that sense, Walter Traill’s sick-monkey look could be yet another case of Huxley’s self-irony. Finally, Traill’s atrocious verses appear to evoke Huxley’s own poetic limitations. Huxley’s fiction is full of passages where he addresses his own issues in writing or life, as we could see in the analysis of “Cynthia,” where Huxley parodies his own poetry. “Cytnhia” also shows that Huxley’s self-disparaging irony has a deeper structural dimension given that Huxley the character sabotages the story’s narrative. That is why “Over the Telephone” should be considered not only a testimony to Huxley’s honesty about his own limitations, but also a reminder about his experiments with self-irony in which he emerges as a character who undermines the plot.

Under Compulsion “Under Compulsion” is another biographical story, published in The Magpie magazine in the summer of 1923. As in the case of “Good and Old-Fashioned,” Donald Watt republished it the 1975 edition of Renaissance and Modern Studies. The story is based on an incident in which Huxley’s sister-in-law, Suzanne Nys, was involved. Allegedly, Suzanne’s suitor shot himself after she had turned him down, whereupon she came to live with the Huxleys. Sybille Bedford (1974) calls this tragic event “a piece of family lore treasured by Aldous” (p. 126). “Under Compulsion” has a similar plot: Paul, a young intellectual with a peculiar scientific mind, tries to take his own life because Pamela, a nineteen-year-old girl he adores, has refused to marry him. The only difference is that after Paul’s suicide attempt, they get married and spend their honeymoon in Florence.

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This story brings a new theme to Huxley’s short fiction—an emotional blackmail by a man. In Huxley’s stories, it is usually weak, dependent women who resort to desperate acts in order to punish or please indifferent men. In “The Gioconda Smile,” for example, Doris threatens to commit suicide in an attempt to show Mr. Hutton how much she loves him. Moira Tarwin from “The Rest Cure” kills herself, as she feels betrayed by Tonino Vasari and does not want to return to her abusive husband. “Under Compulsion” broadens Huxley’s depictions of toxic masculinity. Since Paul is turned down several times, he shoots himself in the head, trying to punish Pamela for not giving in to his threats. This topic was obviously important to Huxley in the early 1920s. In “Good and Old-Fashioned,” published the year before, Mr. Robinson wants to kill himself, but thinks better of it because the Italian gentleman convinces him that suicide is an unmanly thing to do. “Under Compulsion,” however, is the first short story in which a man, having been rejected by a woman, goes a step further and makes an attempt on his own life. Paul’s emotional blackmail is described in two stages. At first we see only Pamela in her room as she recalls her fight with Paul. She remembers their conversation during which Paul drew lines and curves in the gravel, as if using geometry to explain why she had to marry him. His drawings signify his cowardice because he can speak his mind only in a space which resembles his comfort zone. In that sense, he is similar to Hubert from “Hubert and Minnie,” who invites Minnie to the garden outside London so that he can break up with her. Having been turned down several times, Paul tries to bully Pamela into reconsidering her decision: “But I tell you,” he had cried, “I tell you I want you. I must have you. Why should I have my whole existence smashed up because of a wretched little creature like you?” How furiously and unexpectedly he had turned on her! “I—an intelligent man doing useful work in the world—why should I be distracted and ruined and made useless by a child of nineteen, simply because she happens to be cruelly beautiful?” (Huxley, 2010, p. 43)

He emphasizes that he “must” have Pamela. As he realizes that his command is not effective, he resorts to his intellect, claiming that he is “doing useful work in the world,” which implies that Pamela’s existence is useless. His remark also suggests that a woman’s prime function should be to support a man, especially if she is only nineteen years of

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age and does not have enough experience. His rage reveals at least two important aspects of his personality. First, he cannot accept that a young woman rejects him despite all his social advantages. Second, Paul’s rage indicates he cannot control his emotions. It is easier for him to blame Pamela than to admit his inability to cope with his compulsion. Since none of his strategies have produced the desired outcome, he stresses: “I am not going to allow it … You must marry me” (Huxley, 2010, p. 43). Paul’s verbal abuse ends in an open threat. If she does not reconsider her choice, she will face the consequences. But Pamela is undeterred. On the contrary, to his anger she responds with violence—physical or verbal, the narrator does not specify—which surprises him more than anything else. This is another novelty in Huxley’s short fiction: women resorting to violence to protect themselves from abusive men, which is not common even nowadays, let alone in 1923 when the story was published. Paul’s second attempt to convince Pamela to marry him takes place in her house. There, however, his strategy is different. Aware that his threats have no effect whatsoever, he pulls out a pistol and shoots himself. He makes sure he leaves a note behind, blaming Pamela for his death. The narrator prepares the reader for Paul’s suicide attempt. For example, as he waits for her to let him in, he keeps his “eyes cast down, so that you only saw an impassive, averted mask, changelessly sullen and eyeless, unlighted from within” (Huxley, 2010, p. 44). He is good-looking on the surface, but his face is “sullen in expression, strangely clayey and unilluminated” (p. 44). In the previous chapters, we could see that Huxley often used characters’ eyes to suggest their thoughts and feelings. For instance, in “Green Tunnels” Mr. Topes’ vague and myopic eyes while contemplating beauty signify his inability to comprehend the difference between knowledge and understanding. On the other hand, Guido’s eyes in “Young Archimedes” are “of luminous pale blue-grey color” and “shaken into brilliant sun-flashing ripples” (Huxley, 1992, p. 234), implying his brilliant mind. Paul’s eyes in “Under Compulsion” liken him to Mr. Topes, except that he has a dark feature that the renowned antiquarian does not possess. His perception of women is yet another peculiar trait in his character. He sees the curves of Pamela’s face as “convex” and “concave” (Huxley, 2010, p. 45). In his breakdown of her features, one is “a redundant hyperbola; another might be a catenary, in which case its intrinsic equation would be: s = c tan psi…” (p. 45). His mathematical descriptions surpass even Mr. Topes’ evocations of beauty or Walter Traill’s

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ruminations in “Over the Telephone”. It is interesting that while recovering from the shot—broken as he is, he could not even kill himself—Paul pressures Pamela to marry him. When she goes to the room to see him, he says: “I didn’t solve the problem after all … What are we going to do about it?” (p. 48). Finally, we find them on honeymoon in Florence, unhappily married for less than two weeks. Paul’s attempted suicide comes up in every conversation, which prompts Pamela to consider taking her own life in order to escape from her grotesque marriage. “Under Compulsion” is another story with a remarkable beginning that demonstrates Huxley’s prose skill. The atmosphere of Pamela’s room illustrates her feelings in an unusual way: The dim spring evening was darkening. The windows were grey squares of twilight, and within the room all was shadowy-black. Stretching out her hand, she turned on the little light by her bedside; the windows became suddenly blind, reflecting in their blackness the softly lighted room. Stretched along her bed, like Juliet in the tomb, the young girl lay motionless on her back, still and beautiful as death. It was a pure and delicate profile, the nose straight, the forehead ever so slightly domed, the lips closing in a curve that was almost severe in its beauty, the chin round and firm. Her eyes were shut. The little yellow, shaded lamp threw soft rich lights and deep mysterious shadows. All was quiet; the distant muffled noise of traffic served only to intensify the silence. Here, at any rate, there was peace. (Huxley, 2010, p. 41)

The scene is dominated by dark tones. The evening is “darkening,” the windows are “grey squares of twilight,” and the room is “shadowyblack.” The somber atmosphere can be interpreted on two levels. First, the narrator signals that Pamela has found refuge in her room from something grim and intimidating. Second, the shadows of the room suggest the darkness is beyond the obvious. Whatever we perceive after the first reading, there will be something deeper, gloomier, which we will discover later on. We could find this type of introduction in several stories (e.g., “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” and “Half-Holiday”). The narrator does not reveal much; instead, we are put on the right track to follow the plot in the remainder of the story. Pamela is described as “Juliet in the tomb.” Because of the reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy, we are supposed to see Pamela in a broader context than her room. The obvious interpretation would be to link Juliet to love, traditional society, and suicide. But there is another layer to this scene, which will help us

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understand the main feature of Pamela’s character. To deal with Paul’s compulsion, she needs to kill Juliet in her, that is, the traditional image of a young woman at the mercy of her feelings and societal conventions. That is why the narrator, despite the dark atmosphere and reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet, highlights that the room provides peace, not the one coming from the annihilation of the self, but the peace resulting from her determination to make a change. This story contains at least two significant intertextual references. Meckier (1977) underscores the parallels between “Under Compulsion” and D. H. Lawrence’s novels The Rainbow and Women in Love (p. 96). He emphasizes that Huxley here twists a common pattern in Lawrence’s fiction whereby “the summons to the full life comes from a questing female to a complacent male” (96). However, the girl’s name might also evoke Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). Richardson’s protagonist is a fifteen-year-old servant, depicted as the epitome of chastity and virtue, a girl who agrees to marry Mr. B, even though he has abducted her and tried to rape her. As described in the previous chapters, Huxley usually parodies popular works from the past. Richardson’s novel would be no exception. Pamela from “Under Compulsion” is neither timid nor obedient. On the contrary, she refuses to succumb to Paul’s abuse not because she is chaste and virtuous, and not because she uses patriarchal conventions to climb the social ladder, but because she is aware of her intellect and strength. She even resorts to violence to tackle her abuser. Paul is not Mr. B either. Not only does he attempt to take his own life, but he cannot even talk to Pamela without setting up his comfort zone. Seen in the context of Richardson’s novel, “Under Compulsion” highlights a different virtue—Pamela’s rebellion against the societal conventions that undermine women’s intellect and restrict their freedom. It is hard to understand why this story was not included in any collection. In terms of quality, it might not be at the level of “The Gioconda Smile”, but it is still more developed than “Fard” published in Little Mexican and Other Stories a year later. Perhaps Huxley’s editors could not fit the story’s somber atmosphere within any collection dominated by satire and humor. Whatever the reason might have been, Huxley’s books of short fiction lost an innovative and atypical work that could have added a new dimension to Huxley’s portrayal of women’s struggle against toxic masculinity.

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Nine A. M. In “Nine A. M.” (1924), Huxley explores one of his favorite topics—a love triangle. As in the previous two stories, Huxley here relies on autobiographical details. James Sexton emphasizes Huxley’s letters to Mary Hutchinson that correspond with some scenes in the story (Huxley, 2010, p. xiii). Likewise, Ronnie Galt, the protagonist, looks like Huxley, his mistress Marian resembles Mary, and the reminiscences of his school days at Hillside are similar to Huxley’s memories of his preparatory school. But, as always in Huxley’s fiction, there is a range of meanings under the biographical surface. The previous analyses have indicated that Huxley rarely uses physical appearance to show off or merely to help us visualize a character. Such descriptions usually refer to more profound features. We may not grasp them on first reading, but they prepare us for the rest of the story, hinting a context in which everything is eventually resolved. Thus, Ronnie’s appearance reveals much more than the looks of an upper middle-class gentleman: Striding along in his ample fur-lined coat, with his broad black felt hat tilted a little rakishly to the north-east, he looked, in spite of the pallor of his face and the shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes, the picture of high spirits and unruffled elegance. People turned for a moment to look at him as he passed. Very tall, and with a finely-sculptured face that looked (it was one of Marian’s little jokes) as though it had been stolen from the Egyptian Room at the British Museum, Ronnie was a striking and unusual figure. (Huxley, 2010, p. 53)

This paragraph suggests his five essential characteristics. First, according to his “ample fur-lined coat” and “broad black felt hat,” we know more about his social status. Second, his hat is “tilted a little rakishly to the north-east,” which implies there is another aspect of him, different than the one signified by his looks. It is interesting that Huxley uses the same leitmotif in “Little Mexican,” published in 1924 as well. The old count’s hat is “tilted rakishly forward over his left eye” (Huxley, 1992, p. 175). In both stories, the tilted hat has the same purpose: to hint a deeper dimension of the character’s personality that contradicts his physical appearance. Third, Ronnie has a pale face and “shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes.” His countenance highlights his exhaustion, suggesting he might have had a painful experience that left the mark on his body.

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Fourth, despite his exhaustion, he is determined to preserve the image of his “high spirits and unruffled elegance.” We might not understand his contradictory state of mind until we read there is a woman named Marian with whom he has an intimate relationship. Finally, Marian’s view of him tells us something about his work and atypical position in British society. She sees him as a man who could have been “stolen from the Egyptian Room at the British Museum.” This comparison reveals not only his international lifestyle—soon we realize that he has come from a journalistic task in Smyrna (today’s Izmir in Turkey)—but also that he is far from a conventional gentleman. James Sexton points out that Ronnie’s assignment is probably related to the 1922 events that ended the Greco-Turkish War (Huxley, 2010, p. xii). Huxley applies the same technique while portraying Marian. She is “proportioned rather like a boy” and her face radiates “commanding haughtiness” (Huxley, 2010, p. 59). Marian’s masculine features indicate that she is not a typical woman. Once we learn more about her character, we can assume that her seeming masculinity is the image of a lady who had to overcome many social barriers and position herself in the patriarchal society. Likewise, her lips are “tilted downwards” (p. 59), establishing a clear connection with Ronnie and his deeper dimensions that cannot be understood based on his physical appearance. The way she talks gives her face more contradictions, as it is not masculine and stern anymore but shows “vivacity” and “beauty of swiftly changing expressions” (p. 59). In that sense, Marian resembles strong women in Huxley’s fiction, especially Hermione Burges from “Over the Telephone,” who is “an old Pope’s daughter’ and “a tyrant’s ruthless mistress” (p. 34). The description of Marian’s smile, which is “a symbol of Mephistophelean whisker—ridiculous, and at the same time ravishingly lovely” (p. 59), underlines that these inconsistencies are the integral parts of her personality. Given that we see her from Ronnie’s perspective, we can assume that he is attracted to her not only because of her complex, atypical beauty, but also because of her ability to change all her contradictory features without giving the beholder any clue as to which one is real and which one is the mask she puts on in public. It is logical to expect that people with so many similarities attract each other despite the context in which they meet. What makes their love realistic is that both of them know it cannot last unless they change the present circumstances at home or move to another country, which neither

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of them want to do. Marian, despite her love for Ronnie Galt, has feelings for her husband, Jim, who is more akin to Charles Bovary than to Clifford Chatterley or Alexei Karenin.2 She also has a baby with him, which is another bond that cannot be easily broken. Ronnie is aware that a relationship with so many obstacles could end in tragedy. That is why he recalls an article from his newspaper, the Daily Gazette, about two suburban lovers who have committed a murder and are to be executed, an article which turns out to be the omen of what will happen to him and Marian. The more we read about their affair, the more we understand that the intensity of their passion comes from fear that they could easily lose everything they have created. Each of their secret meetings could be the last one. Therefore, we are not surprised when Jim knocks on the door of Ronnie’s room at the Savoy. Ronnie’s anger, which leads him to kill Jim with a poker, results from his cognizance of what one might call cosmic injustice that prevents two people, perfect for each other, from developing their love. This is another story in which Huxley criticizes sensational journalism. Upon his return to London, Ronnie Galt reads the Daily Gazette and concludes it is “too beastly” (Huxley, 2010, p. 54), as it mostly reports on forthcoming executions. Even his own article from Smyrna, depicting important political events that have ended a war, is on the same page with the editorial that praises “the rightness and justness and efficacy and thorough Old-Englishness of capital punishment” (p. 54). Ronnie describes the Daily Gazette’s owner, Hogben, as an ignorant man who detests young people “of education and good breeding” (p. 53). The only reason why he keeps Ronnie employed is because his articles generate profit, articles that require “a little more than average amount of intelligence, tact, and good writing” (p. 53). If we think of today’s media moguls all over the world, we will find they have a lot of similarities with Ronnie Galt’s boss. Huxley was a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines for many years, and knew well how powerful and at the same time damaging the press could be. In the previous chapters, we have seen this is a common topic in Huxley’s short fiction. For instance, Alfred Petherton, apart from reading Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, enjoys the gossip columns from The Times depicting, among else, the marriage of Beryl Camberley-Belcher. In “The Bookshop,” the narrator and the bookshop owner describe sensational journalism as

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“piddling quotidianism” where the “ephemeral overwhelms the permanent, the classical” (Huxley, 1992, p. 63). Even “The Gioconda Smile,” Huxley’s most famous short story, has a section on the newspaper articles that feature Mr. Hutton’s case. In Huxley’s essays, we will find many passages that criticize the cheap press. For instance, in his analysis of Bruegel’s The Way to Calvary, one of the most important paintings by the Flemish master, Huxley compares the crowd eager to see the crucifixion to the modern-day crowd which satisfies their thirst for killing by reading newspaper reports on executions. In his opinion, the role of the “impresarios” who used to sell seats at such events in London’s Tyburn has not changed much. The difference is that they are now newspaper moguls who sell “juicy descriptions … to a prodigiously much larger public” (Huxley, 1958a, p. 143). In his essay on Pascal, Huxley describes newspapers as “opiates” given to “the clerk and the taylorized workman” (p. 353) so that they cannot focus on their miserable life. In other words, Huxley sees modern media as distractions which prevent people from understanding deeper layers of reality and leading a meaningful life. The reading crowd with such a twisted perception of life guarantees political power and financial gains for the ruling elites. In Brave New World, published eight years after “Nine A.M.,” Huxley will show how the abuse of the media in coordination with applied science can shape the entire world.

Visiting Stranger “Visiting Stranger” is a less known story published in 1934. Even though the introduction brings the narrator’s recollections of the civil war in Vienna, the story takes an unexpected turn. The focus shifts to Laurina Magnelli who, having discovered that she is pregnant with her lover’s child, asks her maid to embroider an altar-cloth for St. Anthony of Padua, hoping the saint will come to her rescue. We might think that Laurina is yet another superficial Christian believer until she reveals the altar-cloth to her friend and asks him about a man she met the previous night. Laurina is an atypical woman for many reasons. First of all, her father is Italian, her mother is American, and her grandmother is French, so she speaks all three languages with a slight accent, which makes her sound like a foreigner wherever she goes. Second, she is “a page out of a fashion magazine come to life” (Huxley, 2010, p. 66) who is more likely to be

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seen in Hollywood than in an Italian church. Third, her voice is “embarrassingly loud, outrageously warm and vibrant and sensual” (p. 67). This description differentiates her from other church-goers on several levels. Her loud voice breaks the atmosphere of silent piety, signaling her refusal to be subdued by conventional morality. The narrator augments her dissonant behavior by the adverbs “outrageously” and “embarrassingly.” At the same time, she does not intend to vocalize her otherness, at least not on that occasion. Her rebellious spirit is part of her personality and speaks for itself as though independently of her rational side. Her voice is also “vibrant” and “sensual,” suggesting her unrepressed sexuality despite her being at a church, where she has come to pray to St. Anthony of Padua in the hope that he will relieve her of the unwanted burden. This is a typical Huxleyan ironic reversal bearing in mind St. Anthony’s reputation as the finder of the lost property. Not many Christians pray to him in an attempt to lose what they have found. In other words, she interprets religious conventions in such a way that they fit into her life, not the other way around. For Laurina, religion involves neither death, nor torture, nor cardinal sin, nor a permanent sense of guilt. It is only a tool that enables her to accept the consequences of her controversial decisions and continue with her rich sexual life. “Visiting Stranger” indicates a shift in Huxley’s position on the relation between sexuality and religion. Unlike the protagonists of “The Death of Lully” and “Nuns at Luncheon,” in whom the repressed sexual urge leads to religious fanaticism, Laurina Magnelli is capable of uniting sexual pleasure and religious belief without becoming extreme. This shift anticipates Huxley’s later views on mysticism whereby sexuality and spirituality can coexist. Writing about Laurina Magnelli, the narrator reveals interesting elements of his own personality. Having witnessed the horrors of the civil war in Vienna, he is ashamed because, unlike the people he met during his stay in Austria, he can ignore the suffering and enjoy the exquisite art of Venice and Padua. He also understands that his international adventures, despite their superficial glamor, abide by “the fundamental laws of journalism” whereby newspapers in high demand need to maintain their readership with a constant supply of “lust and blood” (Huxley, 2010, p. 65). No matter how serious his reports may be, his editor will fit them in “his daily record of romances and sodomies and fornications” (p. 66). However, his shame does not last long. As soon as he runs into Laurina Magnelli, he puts aside the felling which has haunted

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him ever since his return—that the world is on the brink of a catastrophe no one can prevent. His obsession with Laurina Magnelli is similar to Walter Traill’s infatuation with Hermione Burges in “Over the Telephone”. Their shallow intellectualism prevents them from distinguishing between seduction and social skills. Thus, it comes as no surprise that in the end the narrator misreads Laurina’s unconventional behavior and kisses her hand, even though she has never shown any interest in him. “Visiting Stranger” contains a compositional detail that we cannot see in Huxley’s other short stories. The narrator first recalls February 1934 when the civil war in Vienna broke out. Then he shifts focus to Laurina’s unusual approach to religion, a topic which seemingly has nothing to do with the beginning. In the opening lines of “Half-Holiday,” Huxley appears to use a similar technique, contrasting the spring afternoon in Hyde Park with the protagonist’s misery. But there we see both the protagonist and other characters in the same space and at the same time. In “Visiting Stranger,” the context is different. Laurina Magnelli is at a church in Padua, wishing to appease the local saint and continue with her adventures, while the beginning refers to the tragic events in Vienna of which she has no knowledge whatsoever. We might think that Huxley had another intention before writing “Visiting Stranger,” and that the unexpected shift illustrates his unsuccessful attempt to preserve the initial idea. As the plot unravels, we become aware of the reasons behind this compositional idiosyncrasy. Upon his arrival in Padua, the narrator visits the Church of the Eremitani, thinking he can blot out the memories of the civil war if he immerses himself in high art. Soon he admits that Mantegna’s frescoes arouse in him the same emotion he had in Austria: In the church of the Eremetani, Mantegna’s creatures were so fiercely stoic, so implacably rational, that the substance of their bodies had turned from weak flesh into polished bronze, and every one of them had become a Man in an Iron Mask. I felt, I confess, a little appalled as well as cheered and strengthened by the spectacle of so uncompromising a human dignity. But, across the way, in the Arena Chapel, consolation was wholly unqualified. The men and women in Giotto’s frescoes achieved the serene height of dignity without any loss of their humanity. There was no metal here, but flesh; flesh raised, so to speak, to a higher power, transmuted into the pure essence of tangible corporeality. (Huxley, 2010, p. 66)

In the narrator’s interpretation, Mantegna’s frescoes embody nothing but cold reason, the outcome of which he saw in Vienna. The characters

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in those frescoes are “fiercely stoic” and “implacably rational.” Instead of inspiring him with beauty and harmony, the men “in an Iron Mask” make him feel “a little appalled” because they offer “the spectacle of so uncompromising a human dignity.” On the other hand, Giotto’s frescoes highlight the unity of rational and sensual. They “achieved the serene height of dignity without any loss of their humanity” because their carnal side is equally important as their spirituality. Giotto’s frescoes epitomize Laurina’s perception of life, too. Not only her dignity but also her religious sentiment unites rationality and sexuality. Such a concept fits into Huxley’s mystical views whereby people cannot achieve self-realization if they rely solely on their rational side and spiritual love. We should remember that in “To the Puritan All Things Are Impure,” Huxley (1931) states that “to be a first-rate human being, a man must be both a first-rate animal and a first-rate thinker” (p. 159). Likewise, in The Perennial Philosophy, referring to the belief of St. Bernard and other Christian mystics, Huxley (2009) emphasizes that for all of them carnal love is “a necessary introduction and an indispensable means” (p. 90). Therefore, Laurina’s approach to life—together with Giotto’s frescoes and other works of art that praise spirituality without the loss of corporeality—stands against the cold rationality that will soon turn the world into an unprecedented carnage. As in “Green Tunnels” and “Little Mexican,” Huxley warns against the emerging militaristic ideology in Europe, which threatens to engulf the entire continent. Having read the beginning of “Visiting Stranger,” we cannot help feeling that the narrator wants us to see the civil war in Vienna not as an ordinary political turmoil but as something that could bring much greater suffering. How else should we interpret the end of the first paragraph that reads: “I felt all the sadness of one who says goodbye forever to a place he has known and loved” (Huxley, 2010, p. 65). To say goodbye forever to the city of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, and Strauss, the city of Klimt and Schiele, the city of Freud and the Vienna Circle, implies that the country which has given so much culture to the world might soon come under the rule of aggressive ignorance, the consequences of which no one can predict. Throughout the story, the narrator contrasts the horrific scenes from Vienna with the art works from Padua and Laurina’s approach to life. We have seen how Giotto’s frescoes resist the cold reason embodied in Mantegna’s works, the feeling that the narrator links to his experience in Vienna. Laurina’s description of herself as “the unhappiest person in the whole world” prompts the narrator to

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think of telling her about a woman whom he found in Vienna “kneeling in the street by the body of her husband” (p. 70). He chooses not to mention the scene without elaborating on his reasons, but we can assume that he does not want to minimize Laurina’s pain because it results from her wish to love, not to hate. The narrator seems to suggest that the world still has time to prevent the catastrophe provided that people embrace the philosophy of life which glorifies sexuality and love as opposed to dry rationality that feeds on power and control. This story, along with “Green Tunnels” and “Little Mexican” (not to mention Huxley’s novel Point Counter Point which, among other ideas, lays bare the dangers of militaristic ideologies represented by Everard Webley), shows how unfair was the wrath Huxley incurred in 1936 because of his pacifist pamphlet What Are You Going to Do about It? The Case for Constructive Peace. Stephen Spender, for instance, accused him of sacrificing “oppressed pacifists and socialists in Italy, Germany, and Austria, on the altar of a dogmatic and correct pacifism,” whereas C. DayLewis asked: “Where was Mr Huxley when the lights went out in Italy, in Germany?” (Murray, 2003, p. 294). Huxley’s entire short fiction from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s indicates that he was never indifferent to the rise of militaristic movements in Europe. On the contrary, he was among the rare authors who warned—as early as in 1922—that these ideological frameworks had the potential not only for manipulation but also for causing unseen suffering and destruction.

Time’s Revenges “Time’s Revenges” was published in Esquire in 1951. The protagonist is Mrs. Anne Peele, a middle-aged woman haunted by memories of her previous partners and resigned to her current predicament. She is reading the Iliad on the balcony of her hotel room, comparing herself to Helen of Troy and one of her lovers to Paris. Her life appears to be the caricature of Homer’s epic because she, unlike Helen, feels powerless and uninspiring to anyone, whereas her Paris turned out to be a crook who seduced her so that he could borrow five hundred dollars. She is first approached by Peter Foss, a young Christian who works for the West-Coast branch of the Birnbaum Foundation and represents dehumanized, materialistic side of organized religion. Then she meets her former husband, Oscar Hackett, a philanthropist and sponsor of the Reunion of the Churches, who happens to be her next-door neighbor at the hotel. As their dialogue is dominated

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by Oscar’s regrets about his infidelities, Mrs. Peele thinks he wants to apologize for ruining seven years of her life, but soon she discovers that Oscar’s words are meant for his second wife, Muriel. Her reminiscences, apart from emphasizing her bad luck with men, reveal important elements of her own personality, that is, her life-long wish that has never been fulfilled. For instance, Oscar Hackett, a “deeply religious” philanthropist, attracted her with his idealism and “crusading zeal,” his dedication in a world where people cared only about “politely killing time” and “making more money” (Huxley, 2010, p. 75). Franz von Dittersdorf, the Paris mentioned above, had a quality she still values despite his ulterior motives. During their relationship, which was more sexual than emotional or intellectual, Franz showed her “the impersonal otherness of her own deepest being” and “the ineffable beatitudes of extinction” (p. 77). With him she was able to escape from her selfhood and feel the presence of something deeper, greater, and impersonal. Finally, Donald Peele, her second husband, gave her nothing more than “Neo-Scholastic intellectualism with an almost infantile vanity” (p. 78). We do not know what she found in him but we can assume it was more his intellectualism than his bedroom skills. Given the dominant characteristics in each of the men, it is clear that she chose them because she believed they could help her attain spiritual awakening. Each of her relationships embodies a different approach to spirituality: religious (Oscar Hackett), sexual (Franz von Dittersdorf), and intellectual (Donald Peele). That her most profound experience was with Franz von Dittersdorf is not a coincidence, as it included both carnal and spiritual dimensions. This is another reminder of the change in Huxley’s views on sexuality and spirituality that occurred in the mid-1930s and that was manifest in “Visiting Stranger”. Still, despite the degrees of her previous semi-enlightenments, Mrs. Peele failed in all her attempts. There are at least three reasons for her failures. First, she never needed another person to deepen her spirituality. Second, the ideas her partners propagated were not genuine. They used their concepts as smokescreens to divert her attention from their egoism. Third, other than during those brief moments with Franz von Dittersdorf, which she strongly felt but did not understand, Mrs. Peele never abandoned her selfhood. That proves to be the biggest obstacle in her spiritual pursuit. She becomes aware of the first two reasons during her reminiscences. The third one is revealed to us after her conversation with Oscar Hackett.

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Even before their encounter, the narrator signals that Mrs. Peele’s perception of the world is out of the ordinary. She knows what she wanted in her relationships and which flaws her lovers tried to conceal. In addition, she understands that Peter Foss is another “crusader” who tries to control her in a strange psychological game which oscillates between religious preaching and sexual tension. Sometimes her thoughts resemble Huxley’s experiments with hallucinogenic drugs. For example, while listening to a conversation between Peter Foss and Muriel, Mrs. Peele imagines “a sonata for a canary and jellied beef” (p. 83). In her mind’s eye, she even becomes a music critic, describing the sonata in the following way: At this point there occurs the celebrated legato passage for unaccompanied beef. With indescribable tenderness the jelly quaveringly yearns for the canary’s money; but the answer is only a coy pizzicato in the treble. Modulating in masterly style from G-minor to C-sharp major, our beef now proclaims its exclusive attachment to the birdie’s soul and suggests the joys of heaven in a series of impressive chords, which are soon repeated, two octaves higher, in the vox canarica… (Huxley, 2010, p. 83)

This paragraph is more akin to a passage from Joyce’s Ulysses than to Huxley’s fiction. There is no doubt that Mrs. Peele’s perception is at its highest point. It enables her not only to understand people but also to decipher the links between language and music. It also boosts her imagination and humor. Everything seems to be connected—voices, thoughts, desires, appearances—so Mrs. Peele can use numerous combinations in her witty descriptions. She needs to make only one step forward to embrace the realm of spirituality she attempted to reach with her past lovers. Mrs. Peele’s modified perception of reality, which is not based on any religious or spiritual training and which has the potential to attain the unitive knowledge of the Absolute, implies that every human being is capable of it, which was Huxley’s position at least since the mid-1930s. As Ronald Lee Zigler (2015) underscores, Huxley thought that the potential for visionary experiences was not “a part of our social or cultural heritage” but that it was “embedded in human nature itself” (p. 17). However, in the conversation with Oscar Hackett, instead of using her lucidity to attain the higher level of spiritual awareness, Mrs. Peele goes backwards, misinterpreting his misery as regret for all the humiliations he subjected her to while they were married. In other words, instead of forgetting about her

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past and seeing her former husband as a small part in a series of events that could lead her to spiritual liberation, she reopens her old wounds and misses the opportunity for a more comprehensive understanding of her existence. Peter Foss is another character who helps us understand Huxley’s mysticism. He is a professional Christian fundraiser, particularly fond of rich middle-aged women whom he deems susceptible to religious indoctrination. Mrs. Peele knows his preachings are shallow, yet she enjoys talking to him, perhaps because he is the only person who pretends to be interested in her thoughts. At first she describes him as a big young man with a “beefy” voice and a laughter that resembles “an enormous filet mignon” (Huxley, 2010, p. 73). As their conversation progresses, he becomes a “virtuous leech,” a “hind-minded and altruistic tapeworm” and “a good salesman, whose line happened to be organized charity rather than vacuum-cleaners” (pp. 76–77). It is clear that she does not trust him, but she allows him to keep her company, occasionally reminding him that his indoctrination will never work on her. Throughout their conversation, Mrs. Peele feels “a kind of radiance, as the center from which a life that was not merely Peter’s communicated with a life that was not merely her own” (Huxley, 2010, p. 80). James Sexton sees Peter as “a potential agent of grace” (p. xv), alluding to the Christian symbolism of his name and Huxley’s views in The Perennial Philosophy. Indeed, in the chapter titled “Grace and Free Will,” Huxley (2009) explains that “spiritual grace originates from the divine Ground of all being, and it is given for the purpose of helping man to achieve his final end, which is to return out of time and selfhood to that Ground” (p. 168). Peter is undoubtedly part of a more significant event that takes place in Mrs. Peele’s life. However, we should not neglect another important aspect of her sudden realization. In The Perennial Philosophy, Huxley also assumes that “sometimes crisis alone, without any preparatory training, is sufficient to make a man forget to be his customary self” (p. 42). That is to say, her despair and inability to change her circumstances have also enabled her to feel the presence of the divine ground. Anne’s thoughts while talking to Oscar later on, especially her self-absorbed interpretation of his misery, tell us that she has failed to understand the meaning of the grace and that the brief mystical revelation was unfulfilled potential. In “Time’s Revenges”, Huxley shows greater maturity than in his stories from the 1920s, especially in depicting minor characters. For

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instance, in Mrs. Peele’s recollections, Oscar Hackett is a rational man who does not care about anyone’s feelings. As he emphasizes, he is a “realist … who always faces the facts” (Huxley, 2010, p. 76). Whatever he does, we are under the impression that he is firmly in control of his emotions and that his intellect is unshakable. But when Mrs. Peele meets him at the hotel decades later, he turns out to be a broken man, his eyes reflecting “an agonizing extremity of hopelessness, a knowledge of irremediable perdition” (p. 86). This description—which resembles lines from James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night —tells us that Oscar Hackett has lost his controlling aura and become a hopeless, miserable man. That his misery is incurable we realize when he recognizes Mrs. Peele and tries to smile at her. His attempt is more akin to a spasmodic twitch than a genuine smile, whereas his eyes refuse to comply, indicating “the lost spirit” which is aware of “nothing but its own perdition” (p. 86). He belongs to the well-known, intellectual type in Huxley’s fiction who is capable of grasping deeper truths but fails to do so because of his inability to transcend his selfhood. His second wife, Muriel, is another example of Huxley’s mature characterization as she goes through two stages of transformation. Mrs. Peele remembers her as a superficial young woman, “as blind as a bat” but “too vain to wear spectacles” (Huxley, 2010, p. 81). Muriel was also “fluffy and twittering, infantile but a bitch” (p. 81). According to Mrs. Peele, Muriel was a woman “with baby laughter” and “with baby eyes” (p. 81), deliberately projecting the image of an underage girl whom men could violate with impunity. Like many other female characters from Huxley’s short fiction (e.g., Madame from “Fard” or Maggie Spindell from “Chawdron”), Muriel had a squeaky voice that never said anything beyond “deliberate silliness” (p. 81). Twenty years later, when she interrupts the conversation between Mrs. Peele and Peter Foss, she seems to be the same infantile person but “raised … to a higher power” (p. 81). Her change appears to be merely physical. Her body is twenty years older and has lost its appeal, yet she has the same personality and the same irritating voice. This is where Huxley shows his mature sense of characterization, because he lets us believe that Muriel has nothing else to offer. Her character fulfilled the obligation to change and we do not expect her to undergo another transformation, to become a sadistic villain at the end of the story. Thus, when she reappears at the balcony, she is far from a middle-aged child. First, visibly intoxicated, she interrupts Oscar Hackett’s moaning. Then, talking to Mrs. Peele, she minimizes his depression and mocks his

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insincere wish to die, before she passes by him “as though he were only a piece of furniture” (p. 91). At this point we realize that Oscar Hackett’s fake remorse is his attempt to justify the humiliating position in which he has found himself. This passage resembles a scene from Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992), where Mimi, a young woman who was abused by her partner (his name is none other than Oscar!), emerges as his sadistic caretaker. It is hard to believe that Polanski did not have “Time’s Revenges” in mind while planning his film about love, humiliation, and revenge. Muriel’s second transformation brings us back to the title of the story. She is a sort of intermediary that time uses to punish Oscar Hackett for his false idealism and toxic, self-centered masculinity. This is, however, not the only revenge in the story, as the title suggests with the plural suffix -s. Time ridicules Muriel’s insistence on staying “fluffy and twittering,” contrasting her aged body with her forced infantility. Time proves Mrs. Peele’s life-long pursuit of spirituality impossible because she is not ready to let go of her past. Time also takes revenge on humanity. In her conversation with Peter Foss, Mrs. Peele mentions the Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, a year before the story was published. Huxley here implies that mankind has not learned a lesson from millions of dead and crippled during World War II, and that it is ready to continue with meaningless enmities on a smaller scale until the conditions become ripe for yet another global disaster. The necessary change cannot happen because there are not enough people who understand that the militaristic mentality cannot be defeated by supporting another conflict.

Consider the Lilies “Consider the Lilies” (1954) is one of Huxley’s most accomplished stories and the best illustration of his mysticism expounded in The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. As in “Time’s Revenges,” the protagonist is a woman haunted by painful memories. However, “Consider the Lilies” contains several elements that we could not see in the previous story, especially because on May 4, 1953, Huxley, in company with an English-Canadian doctor Humphry Osmond, conducted his wellknown experiment with mescalin. Nicholas Murray (2003) calls this event “the most famous English literary drug taking since Thomas De Quincey” (p. 399), referring not only to its importance for Huxley’s writing and thinking but to its influence on the general public.3

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The main character is Bettina Brant, the last descendant of a German aristocratic family. Despite her ancestry, she is a refugee in California, working as a masseuse for Mrs. de Cabassole, a majority shareholder in Krebs Packing Corporation, her family business. Bettina is plagued by the reminiscences of her life in Germany before and during World War II. Her mother drowned, her grandfather was arrested, and her father died in a concentration camp. During the war, she worked in a garment factory even though she was only fifteen years old. In California, despite being far away from her home country, she cannot shake off her childhood traumas, particularly not with Christian values Mrs. de Cabassole wants to impose on her. She dislikes Christianity because during her childhood in Germany, a pedophile named Papa Fischer gave her a copy of The Imitation of Christ and tried to rape her. But that was not the only sexual abuse to which she was subjected. Bettina also recalls, in disgust, “two drunken soldiers in the park” and “those crooked teeth, those bitten fingernails, the thread of spittle on the thick lips…” (Huxley, 2010, p. 94). These memories are the main reason behind her inability to establish a meaningful relationship in the present. Bettina detests her job, although sometimes it gives her a strange sexual pleasure. Massaging Mrs. de Cabassole’s body, Bettina is repulsed and sexually aroused at the same time. Beneath the “contemptuous disgust” she is filled with while rubbing her benefactor’s skin with aromatic oils, she discovers something “rather delicious” (Huxley, 2010, p. 93). The only time she has the same feeling is when she reads a cheap novel in which the protagonist’s love-making is equated to the way “Stradivarius responds with poignant music to the touch of a Master” (p. 93). She is aware that the mix of pleasure and contempt results from her chronic loneliness, which she cannot escape for at least two reasons: (1) The memories of the past suffering do not allow her to experience the present and think about new directions; (2) instead of eliminating her self-loathing, she indulges in it. Like Mrs. Peele from “Time’s Revenges,” Bettina is plagued by despair and hopelessness. That is not a coincidence. As we could see in the analysis of the previous story, Huxley (2009) believed that “crisis alone [was] sufficient to make a man forget to be his customary self” (p. 42). In other words, such a state of mind can help a person escape from the confines of selfhood, which is a prerequisite for discovering deeper layers of reality. It should be said that the two characters are different in many other ways. In the first place, unlike Mrs. Peele, who never transcends

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her selfhood, Bettina has a “daily rite of total self-surrender” (Huxley, 2010, p. 99) to the sun that allows her—albeit for a short time—to forget about her past traumas and present contempt for Mrs. de Cabassole and her husband. There is yet another important characteristic that separates the two women. Bettina is a refugee of war, facing misunderstanding and indifference in her new community where most people cannot fathom the horrors she has gone through. Although she works for a wealthy woman who believes she has “given her a mother’s love” (p. 96), Bettina’s life bears more resemblances with the lives of other immigrants in the United States than she would like to admit. Like Mrs. Peele, Bettina is visited by “the channel of grace,” as Huxley characterizes this type of person in The Perennial Philosophy. In the chapter titled “Suffering,” Huxley (2009) explains that “the selfless and God-filled person can and does act as a channel through which grace is able to pass into the unfortunate being who has made himself impervious to the divine by the habitual craving for intensifications of his own separateness and selfhood” (p. 232). Likewise, in the chapter “Personality, Sanctity, Divine Incarnation,” Huxley calls it “Avatar,” which, contrary to popular belief, does not have to be a religious person but anyone who succeeds in dying to self: Every human being can thus become an Avatar by adoption, but not by his unaided efforts. He must be shown the way, and he must be aided by divine grace. That men and women may be thus instructed and helped, the Godhead assumes the form of an ordinary human being, who has to earn deliverance and enlightenment in the way that is prescribed by the divine Nature of Things—namely, by charity, by a total dying to self and a total, one-pointed awareness. Thus enlightened, the Avatar can reveal the way of enlightenment to others and help them actually to become what they already potentially are. (Huxley, 2009, p. 56)

We should not think the Avatar is sent by a supernatural being to help people in crisis, since Huxley did not believe in any omniscient consciousness. The Avatar’s significance should be viewed from the perspective of someone who, reconstructing the chain of events that preceded their enlightenment, can identify another person’s role in the process. In “Consider the Lilies,” the Avatar’s name is Martin, whom Bettina meets by the pool, which, given her daily practice of self-surrender to the sun, comes as no surprise. He is a desert tour guide and Ph.D. student

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writing a dissertation on Friedrich Hölderlin, German poet and philosopher. As she was sexually abused by multiple men in the past, Bettina is at first “paralyzed with fear” at the sight of Martin’s “pair of trousered legs” (Huxley, 2010, p. 99). Instead of him, she sees “the composite ghost of Papa Fischer and the drunken soldiers” (p. 100). Soon, having witnessed that Martin is everything but a typical man who wants to take advantage of her, Bettina calms down and even opens up about her growing up in the war-torn Germany. He seems to be so in tune with her—not only does he listen to her introspective monologue but speaks German and refuses to talk about Hitler (which had to be extremely unusual in the early 1950s when the memories of World War II were still fresh)—that we see him as the embodiment of a perfect human about to bring her hope. They go for a ride through the desert, where she experiences nature like never before. The hills transcend from “burning orange” to “a cold magenta incandescence” (Huxley, 2010, p. 101). Then magenta “deepen[s] into purple, and the purple decline[s] from carnation to valerian, from valerian to violet,” with violet ending into “royal mourning” and “indigo shadows” (p. 102). There is no doubt that Bettina’s perception is at a higher level. Once she has let go of her past and surrendered to the nature around her, she sees the colors and nuances that would have been impossible to notice without such a change.4 This passage corresponds with the beginning of Huxley’s visions depicted in The Doors of Perception, which was published in the same year as “Consider the Lilies”. There he explains that thirty minutes after taking mescalin, he “became aware of a slow dance of golden lights” and of “red surfaces swelling and expanding” that transformed into a “a complex of grey structures, within which pale blueish spheres kept emerging into intense solidity” (Huxley, 1960, pp. 10–11). Moreover, in Heaven and Hell (1956), an essay published as a sequel to The Doors of Perception, Huxley claims that the most frequent characteristic of all visionary experiences is an increased sensitivity to light and color: What are the common features which this pattern imposes upon our visionary experiences? First and most important is the experience of light. Everything seen by those who visit the mind’s antipodes is brilliantly illuminated and seems to shine from within. All colours are intensified to a pitch far beyond anything seen in the normal state, and at the same time

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the mind’s capacity for recognizing fine distinctions of tone and hue is notably heightened. (Huxley, 1960, p. 77)

It is obvious that Bettina sees reality in a different way. Her sensitivity to the nuances of color and light is the first sign that her perception has become more profound than before. Sally A. Paulsell (1995) links Huxley’s use of color and light in his final works to his first books of poetry and fiction. In her interpretation, these elements prove Huxley’s life-long “explorations into mysticism” (p. 105) as opposed to the belief, supported by many scholars, that Huxley’s conversion took place in the mid-1930s. What makes Bettina’s vision so realistic is the intrusion of her past traumas—for her experience of reality is still within her selfhood—which makes her “filled with a sudden, overpowering anguish” (Huxley, 2010, p. 102). This feeling is so overwhelming that she instinctively reaches for the steering wheel in an attempt to stop the car. At this stage, she is not capable of facing the transformation alone. Hence Martin’s role as an Avatar, who is not supposed to show people the dimensions of reality they can never discover, but to help them “become what they already potentially are,” as we could see in the aforementioned quotation from The Perennial Philosophy. It is interesting to notice that Martin is not aware of his own significance. He realizes that his love for Bettina is a mix of sexual desire, curiosity, and “a passion of pity, a longing to the come to a rescue” (p. 103), but he also feels there is something “supernatural” beyond all these characteristics, something that even he cannot understand. The next stage in her liberating experience also takes place during the ride. Seeing Mexican workers along the road, whose predicament she still considers different than hers, Bettina decides to be free from American consumerism which, in Martin’s interpretation, enslaves immigrants soon after they arrive to the United States. She notices a change in her perception of language: The English noun “free” evokes its German equivalent Frei but also Freude (joy, pleasure). It is hard not to see the similarity to Mrs. Peele’s linguistic reverie in “Time’s Revenges,” where her heightened sensitivity to the music of language signals a modified perception of reality. However, Bettina takes a step further, which Mrs. Peele could not do because of her inability to reject her past. Before we analyze that scene, we should clarify Huxley’s views on the divine ground, the central idea in The Perennial Philosophy:

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The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to “die to self” and so make room, as it were, for God. Out of any given generation of men and women very few will achieve the final end of human existence; but the opportunity for coming to unitive knowledge will, in one way or another, continually be offered until all sentient beings realize Who in fact they are. (Huxley, 2009, p. 21)

The concept of the divine ground or divine reality allowed Huxley to reconcile mystical aspects of different religions and schools of thought. In his opinion, all great mystics of the past, regardless of whether they came from Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, or any other faith, aimed at the annihilation of the self so that they could gain the unitive knowledge of the Absolute.5 This quotation and others from The Perennial Philosophy have created numerous misinterpretations of Huxley’s use of the term “God.” As R. S. Deese (2015) explains, Huxley “did not believe in the anthropomorphic God of history depicted in the scriptures of Abrahamic religions” but used the term to denote “the spiritual ground of being” (p. 132), which can be found in both religious and secular traditions. The last sentence in the above quotation from The Perennial Philosophy is particularly important for the analysis of “Consider the Lilies”. Although Huxley reiterates that only few people in every generation will achieve the unitive knowledge of the divine ground, he emphasizes that the opportunity is constantly provided to all of us regardless of our religious belief. Thus, Bettina Brant, despite all her fears and imperfections, and despite her contempt for organized religion, is exposed to the divine reality. She has a vision in which reality follows “the pattern of her wishes” and “the shade and color of her feelings” (Huxley, 2010, p. 107). She also sees the “enormous moon on the starboard bow” accompanied with “hurrying arpeggios of successive smells” and “simultaneous discordances of lemon blossom and chickens, of pigs and eucalyptus” (p. 107). This synesthetic experience resembles Anthony Beavis’ first major epiphany in Eyeless in Gaza, while he is drinking champagne with his friends. Even more so, the episode evokes a passage from The Doors of Perception where Huxley, summarizing his impression of the wrinkles in his trousers, concludes that should be the only way to perceive reality. Everybody should see “things

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without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves, sufficient in their Suchness, not acting a part, not trying, insanely, to go it alone, in isolation from the Dharma-Body, in Luciferian defiance of the grace of God” (Huxley, 1960, p. 29). At this stage of Huxley’s spiritual development, the unitive knowledge of the divine ground ceased to be just an idea; it evolved into an immediate experience which, thanks to mescalin, enabled him to see what he had previously known only on a theoretical level. As Kulwant Singh Gill (1981) explains, “mescalin gave him a peep into that ‘other world’ about which he had been writing so emphatically for so many years” (p. 606). And once again Huxley showed that mystical knowledge should not be linked only to religious belief. As Poller (2019) correctly underscores, Huxley believed in three types of mystical experience: introvertive, extrovertive, and the combination of the two (p. 128). Sawyer (2021) also points out that Huxley did not believe in one type of mysticism but “a wide range of paranormal and mystical experiences” (p. 7). Bettina’s vision corroborates his opinion, as it stands outside any formal label of mysticism. Bettina’s next mystical experience occurs on the outskirts of Yuma. Despite her misgivings and lack of self-confidence, Martin convinces her to join roller-skaters in a tent. There she becomes aware of the connections among the guests, the music coming from the speakers, the cigarette smoke, the Coca-Cola containers, and the place where all that is happening. Everything seems to be related, coming from the same source. She finally realizes that Mexican immigrants are closer to her than she used to believe. As she watches them skate, life in them appears “much more substantial, much less precarious” (Huxley, 2010, p. 108) than in the guests from northern Europe, her native continent. Moreover, in one Mexican couple, whose faces reflect the “remoteness from everything but this experience of effortless speed, of rhythmic and repeated motions, of steady noise and unremitting music” (p. 109), Bettina sees her own face. And she can finally experience the world as it is. Martin is not her safety net anymore but a companion with whom she can feel “love without desires and responsibilities,” the goal of which is nothing more than “circling side by side forever” (p. 109). She witnesses the beginning of something greater, more powerful and intuitive, and she seems ready to embrace it.6 That final mystical experience occurs in the desert, where they drive after the skating event. The moon is bright, illuminating the primroses which are “wide open to the moon, thirsty for light” and also “emphatic,

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pregnantly significant” (Huxley, 2010, p. 111). Bettina understands that the sight is different than anything she has seen before, even though Martin hints there is a greater spectacle ahead. During their walk, Martin explains the significance of the desert, adding that there “god kills what he creates” so that “life may discover ever newer, stranger ways of persisting, of being even more triumphantly itself” (p. 111). Despite her initial confusion, Bettina appears ready for a new definition of life which implies that the self with all its memories and associations has to die so a deeper existence can be revealed. The revelation comes in the form of desert lilies they soon come across. Martin explains desert lilies blossom only after the rain, sometimes not even for ten years. He stresses they are like “grace” as “they can’t do anything on their own account” (pp. 111–112). This episode is another illustration of Huxley’s concept of the divine grace. The blossoming of the desert lilies symbolizes the experience of any person who, aided by grace, becomes aware of the divine ground. There is yet another dimension to this scene. In The Devils of Loudun, published a couple of years before this story, Huxley refers to the lines from The New Testament where Jesus asks his followers to consider the lilies which neither toil nor spin (Matthew 6:28–29) and which can show them both the purpose and outcome of unconditional faith. In Huxley’s opinion, Christ’s lilies are “in union … with the Order of Things,” representing the totality of nature (Huxley, 1959, p. 81). In other words, if someone wants to gain the unitive knowledge of the Absolute, they need to embrace non-human nature as well. Bettina, however, fails to understand the significance of the lilies. Unlike Anthony Beavis in the last chapter of Eyeless in Gaza, who accepts the unity of everything and commits himself to a lifetime spiritual journey, she is unable to integrate the experience from the desert into her life. As soon as Martin relates the symbolism of the flowers to Bettina’s inner struggle, urging her to reject the past and embrace the present, her old memories flood back. Instead of building up on the knowledge acquired while she was skating in the tent, she switches back to the previous stage when she needed Martin’s help. He tries to make her experience as tactile as possible, asking her to recall not only the image of the lilies but their smell and texture as well. His intention is to show her that the conditional blossoming of the lilies—and, consequently, the meaning of such a process—is as realistic as any other phenomenon in nature. At first Bettina seems capable of fighting Papa Fischer and her other demons, but the last few scenes in the story, especially Bettina’s crying upon her return to Mrs.

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de Cabassole’s home, indicate that she failed to escape from her selfhood and embrace the divine reality. Her lilies will “sit there, two feet underground, patiently waiting” (Huxley, 2010, p. 111) until the appearance of the next grace. Apart from illustrating Huxley’s concept of mysticism, “Consider the Lilies” demonstrates his mature prose as well. Hardly ever do we come across a superfluous word or phrase in this story. It is mostly when Huxley depicts Bettina’s unhindered thoughts and feelings, particularly the changes in her perception of nature, that we see more adjectives and adverbs. For instance, during Bettina’s rite of self-surrender to the sun, the narrator distinguishes between “the sun of the south wind, savage in a burnished sky, stupefying with excess of heat” and “the sun of the western breezes, tempered, as this morning, by a gauze of vapour from the sea, and caressing softly, drugging insensibly into a blessed lethargy compounded of daydreams and mindlessness, of absence and this womblike warmth” (Huxley, 2010, p. 99). The first dimension of the sun is impersonal and uncontrollable, wild in its blistering heat that radiates on the entire planet. The other dimension is related to Bettina. It is the sun that brings her change (western breezes) and peace (blessed lethargy), the sun in which her conscious and subconscious are united (daydreams and mindlessness), but also the sun that suggests escaping from time and selfhood (absence) and evokes the source of life (womb-like warmth). Some sentences, on the other hand, reveal multiple meanings in a condensed metaphor. When Bettina meets Martin for the first time, she is terrified at the sight of his pants lying by the pool. As she feels safer, she tells him about her growing up in Germany, but immediately regrets her candor, afraid that he could use her vulnerability to gain control over her. However, to indicate he is different than other men, Martin decides to “impale a generous cross section of cucumber on the end of his knife and hold it out to her” (p. 101). The verb “impale” refers to Jesus’ crucifixion, while both the knife and cucumber are phallic symbols. The seeming discrepancy implies that Martin sacrifices his sexual desire and urge for dominating. In this strange ritual, the cucumber on his knife becomes a communion which makes Bettina feel safe. It is interesting to notice that Huxley’s satire, humor, and irony are pushed aside in “Consider the Lilies”. From time to time, we can detect Huxley’s youthful sarcasm in the descriptions of Mrs. de Cabassole or the banality of Bettina’s pulp fiction, but these moments are scarce. Huxley’s stylistic shift resembles T. S. Eliot’s transformation from the satire in the

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early poems to the more serious tone of “Ash-Wednesday” and Four Quartets. This change can be explained by Richard Rorty’s distinction between an ironist and a metaphysician. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty (1989) describes the metaphysician as someone who believes in “real essences which it is our duty to discover and which are disposed to assist in their own discovery” as opposed to the ironist who does not believe in finding a “final vocabulary” that would reveal the essence of the world (p. 75). In “Consider the Lilies,” Huxley ceased to be a satirical ironist and became a metaphysician, as he was more keen on presenting his vision of the divine reality than mocking high-class snobs and insecure intellectuals. But this story still contains what D. C. Muecke (1970) calls “metaphysical irony,” as the narrator sees “the whole of mankind as victims of an irony inherent in the human condition” (p. 67). Bettina’s unsuccessful attempts to attain the unitive knowledge of the Absolute because of her inability to escape from her selfhood point to the ironic position of most humans in which, even though the opportunity is constantly offered, “very few will achieve the final end of human existence” (Huxley, 2009, p. 21). That Huxley, despite his transcendental experience, continued to use his recognizable ironic repertoire we will see in the analysis of his last short story.

Voices “Voices” is Huxley’s last short story. It was published in The Atlantic in 1955. Unlike “Consider the Lilies,” which demonstrates Huxley’s mystical insights and has a more serious tone than his early short fiction, this story connects the witty satire of Limbo and other collections from the 1920s with the main concepts from The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception. The protagonist is Pamela Field, an orphan living with Eleanor Marsden, her wealthy aunt. Mrs. Marsden has a get-together with her friends during which they hear voices from someone or something named Kapila. Pamela knows that Kapila is nothing more than the product of her aunt’s superstition, so she takes revenge on her, creating voices Mrs. Marsden interprets as entities from another dimension. Pamela’s ventriloquy, however, goes wrong and her aunt, terrified of the voices, loses her balance on the staircase and falls to her death. Since Alec Pozna, her aunt’s social secretary, knows that Pamela caused Mrs. Marsden’s death, he tries to blackmail her, whereupon she decides to hang herself. Although the

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narrator does not describe Pamela’s suicide, her reaching for the coil of rope amid the cacophony of voices implies she is about to take her own life. Pamela resembles Anne Peele from “Time’s Revenges” and Bettina Brant from “Consider the Lilies” in many ways. Like the two women, Pamela is plagued by dark feelings and painful memories. She is intelligent and imaginative, which seems a burden rather than an advantage, for she directs all her faculties toward herself. Although Pamela’s life before settling down with Mrs. Marsden is not provided in a chronological order, we can reconstruct it based on Pamela’s introspection and her aunt’s recollections. Her father passed away when she was twelve years old, and her mother remarried. Since Pamela’s stepfather cheated on her mother, she witnessed many fights between them, which shaped her understanding of relationships. She studied at the UCLA and was in love with Carl, a young man who ignored her feelings and eventually broke up with her. In an attempt to explain Pamela’s idiosyncratic looks or “deliberate squalor superimposed upon deliberate ugliness” (Huxley, 2010, p. 121), Mrs. Marsden recalls various episodes from her niece’s past. We learn that she ran away from home and was escorted back by a police officer, that she bit a senator’s hand, and that she tried to clarify the meaning of the noun “necrophily” to church workers. Throughout the story, we are aware that Pamela, like Anne Peele and Bettina Brant, cannot break away from her past, which stifles her ability not only to communicate with other people but to recognize the ones who wish her well such as her aunt or Miss Dillon. Pamela, however, possesses at least two characteristics that the protagonists of “Time’s Revenges” and “Consider the Lilies” do not have. In the first place, her unique imagination enables her to perceive the unity of the world without anyone’s help. She interprets the croak of the garden frogs as “an invisible chorus” (Huxley, 2010, p. 119) intruding into her life like any human voice, a chorus that gives her pleasure because she can silence it whenever she pleases. In her view, the guests at her aunt’s house, animals in the garden, statue of Venus on the terrace, and voices in her head are all parts of the same reality. Pamela’s unrivaled imagination can be explained by a couple of passages from The Doors of Perception. First of all, building on the ideas by C. D. Broad, an eminent Cambridge professor and philosopher, Huxley (1960) asserts that “to make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system” and that “what comes

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out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive” (p. 16). In other words, to survive on our hostile planet, we have to filter our impressions of reality and retain only those that benefit us. In Huxley’s opinion, people can see the unfiltered reality if they practice spiritual exercises, take mescalin, or undergo hypnosis. But he adds that some people are “born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve” (p. 17). Pamela belongs to the people with the unique gift to perceive reality in a non-utilitarian fashion, to see “that All is—that all is actually each” (p. 19). James Sexton sees Moira Dillon, an actress and Mrs. Marsden’s friend, as the “agent of grace” (Huxley, 2010, p. xix) that is supposed to help Pamela deepen her spirituality. Given her conversation with Pamela—having asked her about modern poetry and Truman Capote, she suggests Pamela embrace God and avoid “being possessed” (p. 124) by the Devil—it is unlikely her role is the same as Martin’s in “Consider the Lilies”. From Pamela’s first appearance to the last episode with voices taking over her consciousness, we cannot help thinking that Pamela is capable of attaining the divine reality on her own and that she fails to do so because she cannot transcend her fears, hatred, and guilt. There is yet another difference between Pamela and the protagonists of “Time’s Revenges” and “Consider the Lilies”. Pamela clearly suffers from mental illness. Not only the episodes from her life prior to Mrs. Marsden’s get-together but the voices in her head suggest that her pain is more severe than in the other two women. Both Anne Peele and Bettina Brant, despite their failure to understand the divine reality, can continue their life regardless of how meaningless it might seem. Pamela, driven by guilt and her damaged mental health, has a breakdown which leads to her suicide. Again, The Doors of Perception, published just a year before “Voices,” can help us understand Bettina’s state of mind. During his mescalin session, Huxley closes his eyes, expecting to have a more profound experience. To his surprise, everything looks like a “five-and-ten-cent ship” (Huxley, 1960, p. 34). He concludes that “this suffocating interior of a dime-store ship” is his own “personal self” and his “personal contributions to the universe” (p. 34). As someone who can naturally bypass the reducing valve, Pamela considers herself insignificant, trivial, cheap in comparison with the unfiltered reality. She does not understand this is the first stage in the annihilation of her ego, a series of revelations powerful enough to liberate her from dark feelings and painful memories. Moreover, at some point in his mescalin experiment,

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Huxley starts to panic, afraid that he will be crushed “under a pressure of reality greater than a mind” (p. 43). It is then he claims to know how the insane must feel. According to him, the schizophrenic cannot “take refuge from inner and outer reality … in the homemade universe of common sense,” resembling “a man permanently under the influence of mescalin” (p. 44). To such a person, the ultimate reality appears as “the manifestation of human or even cosmic malevolence, calling for the most desperate counter measures” such as “murderous violence … or psychological suicide” (pp. 44–45). This description applies to Pamela’s perception of the world which, due to her unique gift, seems hostile and unforgiving, the world which calls for isolation instead of participation, revenge instead of love and understanding. “Voices” marks Huxley’s return to satirical and humorous characterizations. In the analysis of “Consider the Lilies,” we could see that Huxley’s tone was more serious, given his focus on the ultimate reality, divine grace, and other mystical concepts. In “Voices,” however, the depictions of most characters resemble Huxley’s portrayals from the 1920s, as if he bid farewell to short fiction and decided to perpetuate all his literary strengths in this story. For instance, Eleanor Marsden exudes the same elegance and nobility in the presence of three old friends as when she entertained much larger crowds in Paris. But at the appearance of Kapila, she becomes “the crusader, the mouthpiece of a cause” (Huxley, 2010, p. 129), telling her former lover, Dudley Bull, to pay attention to the psychic encounters in the living room. When Pamela takes revenge on her, producing a series of voices, Mrs. Marsden refuses to acknowledge them so that she can be with Kapila alone. She is also in love with herself, “an Eleanor Marsden idealized and so unutterably precious that the Universe simply couldn’t afford to do without her” (p. 130). Mr. Bull, with his “Shakespearean forehead” (p. 119) and Dickensian name, still adores Mrs. Marsden and relives his failure to win her love when they were young. From time to time, he hopes that Pamela will “take him into her confidence” or “discuss her soul with him” or even “ask his advice about her sex life” (p. 122). His delusions and dysfunctionality remind us of Huxley’s early characters such as Alfred Petherton and Peter Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After” or Mr. Topes from “Green Tunnels”. Moira Dillon, a famed actress and pious Christian, believes she has psychic powers. Having allegedly exorcized a waitress in Alabama—who had an illegitimate child and developed a psychosis because she had to put the baby up for adoption—Moira Dillon established her reputation in that

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domain. She is the older and more superstitious version of Miss Penny from “Nuns at Luncheon”. Huxley even uses the same leitmotif—a pair of “enormous” earrings which “shook and swayed” (p. 120)—to describe Miss Dillon’s demeanor. Finally, Alec Pozna, Mrs. Marsden’s secretary, pretends to be her naïve employee, reading to her from pseudo-spiritual books and obeying her orders, until she dies, when he threatens to report Pamela to the police unless she sleeps with him and gives him part of her inheritance. This story contains one of the wittiest collective descriptions in Huxley’s short fiction. When Pamela reappears in the house, ready to take revenge, she sees her aunt, Mr. Bull and Alec Pozna as “an illustration to a story about Mother’s Day—but Mother’s Day at the Vanderbilts” (p. 134). Once we have read the story and understood the relationships among the three characters, this description becomes even more grotesque. “Voices” provides Huxley’s final view on Christianity and organized religion. If after the publication of The Perennial Philosophy was any doubt over Huxley’s attitude toward religion, his position in this story is unequivocal: a superficial approach to spirituality among Christians and followers of any other faith originates from the same source as superstition. It generates the same “affair of rituals, mechanical observances, mass-emotions” (Huxley, 1927, p. 178). Eleanor Marsden, Moira Dillon, and Alec Pozna do not differentiate between religion and psychic encounters with Kapila. Moreover, Miss Dillon’s exorcism “between two performances of Hay Fever” (Huxley, 2010, p. 126) works only when she exclaims: “In the name of God, come out of her” (p. 126). Like “Chawdron” and the first “Imaginary Conversation,” this story shows that religion is also a great basis for dominance and manipulation. Owing to her strange mix of Christian indoctrination and bogus psychic faculties, Moira Dillon is the undisputed leader of Mrs. Marsden’s inner core. Alec Pozna uses Christianity to conceal his ulterior motives. His reading aloud from Spiritual Something or Other, while Mrs. Marsden is working on her embroidery for Bishop Hicks, seems to be an innocuous ritual that a wealthy hostess practices with her social secretary. After Mrs. Marsden’s death, as Alec Pozna transforms into a ruthless blackmailer, we realize that his casual readings—one of which concludes: “It is by obeying … that we are made free” (p. 136)—suggested his real goals. This story contains allusions to major political events and modern psychotherapy. For instance, Mr. Bull gives Mrs. Marsden’s friends a short lecture on the issues in the Middle East, emphasizing the political crisis

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in Iran. Although he does not go into detail, we can assume Mr. Bull refers to the coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister who was toppled in 1953. After the coup, which was led by the United States and Great Britain, Shah Reza Pahlavi returned to power and ruled until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Mr. Bull mentions the coup in passing before digging into his crab, which implies the indifference of most Westerners who evoke the Middle East over lunch or dinner when they want to appear smart. Since Huxley was well-traveled and well-informed, such remarks must have seemed to him the telltale sign of “bottomless stupidity,” a phrase he once used to describe “professors” at a conference in Paris (Murray, 2003, p. 274). Although focused on her voices and unpleasant memories, Pamela also dabbles in the current political affairs. When Miss Dillon says that Pamela’s choices can lead her to be “possessed,” Pamela asks: “Who by … Russian agents?” (Huxley, 2010, p. 124). There is no doubt that she refers to Joseph McCarthy’s era in the United States when many intellectuals and artists were falsely accused of collaborating with communists. Finally, Huxley touches upon the changes in raising children and psychotherapy. Recalling her childhood and comparing it to Pamela’s, Mrs. Marsden complains about letting children “express their personalities” (p. 122). But, in her interpretation, even that novelty is better than giving to “a psychiatrist twenty-five dollars an hour to find out why [girls like Pamela] can’t behave like ladies” (p. 122). All these references reconfirm Huxley’s life-long interest in political and social affairs. This is one of the most misunderstood dimensions of Huxley’s thinking, probably due to the shallow interpretations of his pacifism epitomized by C. Day-Lewis’ and Stephen Spender’s unfounded accusations in the mid-1930s. As Ronald T. Sion (2010) concludes, Huxley, throughout his entire career, “followed the only course of action for a responsible and conscientious writer by describing truthfully the false attitudes and the foolish actions of his generation” (p. 201). “Voices” continues this trend, demonstrating that even at the height of his spiritual development Huxley did not stop writing about political and social issues on the global stage.

Notes 1. Alfred Petherton mentions Laurentius Valla in “Happily Ever After,” asking his daughter if the Renaissance scholar wrote about the “personal immortality of the soul” (Huxley, 1992, p. 19), which

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indicates that Huxley was interested in this topic at the beginning of his career. For a detailed analysis of “Happily Ever After,” see the chapter on Limbo. Jim also resembles Brian Foxe from Eyeless in Gaza (1936), published more than a decade later. Ronnie sees Jim, his childhood friend, as “a retiring, diffident creature, afraid of other people, mistrustful of his own capacities” (Huxley, 2010, p. 56), and sleeps with his wife, even though he is occasionally overwhelmed with guilt. In Eyeless in Gaza, Anthony Beavis also feels guilty about seducing the fiancée of Brian Foxe, who is his childhood friend and who commits suicide presumably because of Anthony’s betrayal. For instance, Jim Morrison, inspired by Huxley’s visions in The Doors of Perception, named his band—The Doors. This passage also shows the change in Huxley’s understanding of Romantic pantheism. Even though he criticized Wordsworth for his superficial views of nature (see his early essay “Wordsworth in the Tropics”), in “Consider the Lilies” Huxley seems to embrace Wordsworth’s pantheism. More about Huxley’s transformation into “an old and unregenerate Wordsworthian” can be found in R. S. Deese’s book We Are Amphibians (2015). This concept has also caused a lot of misunderstanding among religious scholars. The most striking example is Harry Oldmeadow’s (2004) claim that Huxley intended to find a universal religion or “a kind of religious Esperanto” (p. 81). Dana W. Sawyer (2021) refutes Oldmeadow’s idea, asserting that Huxley did not see mystical experience to be “synonymous with the essence of religion” (p. 7). Sawyer’s opinion is based on his long-standing research on Huxley’s literature and thought, but even a casual reading of The Perennial Philosophy will show that Huxley did not believe in universal religion. On the contrary, as he stressed many times, religion can be an obstacle to knowing the divine ground, especially if it is considered as mere “organized sacramentalism” (Huxley, 2009, p. 270). Besides, Huxley denied his religiosity more than once, as in the following response to a member of the Vedanta Society: “I am not a religious man—in the sense that I am not a believer in metaphysical propositions, nor a worshipper or performer of rituals, and not a joiner of churches” (Murray, 2003, p. 420). In a letter to Reid Gardner, Huxley was even more direct: “I remain an agnostic who aspires to be a gnostic—but a gnostic only on the mystical level,

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a gnostic without symbols, cosmologies or a pantheon” (Huxley, 1969, p. 935). Huxley wrote this letter in 1962, just a year before he died, which confirms he never changed his opinion on organized religion. 6. In The Joyous Cosmology, Alan Watts (1962), elaborating on his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, sees “a dancing present—the unfolding of a pattern which has no specific destination in the future but is simply its own point” (p. 27). Watts praised Huxley’s insights in The Doors of Perception (see the preface to The Joyous Cosmology), so it is possible that his description of “the dancing present” was inspired by Bettina’s circling in the tent.

References Aubrey, J. (1982). In Richard Barber (Ed.), Brief Lives. The Boydel Press. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Booth, W. C. (1974). A Rhetoric of Irony. The University of Chicago Press. Deese, R. S. (2015). We Are Amphibians: Julian and Aldous Huxley on the Future of Our Species. University of California Press. Gill, K. S. (1981). Aldous Huxley: The Quest for Synthetic Sainthood. Modern Fiction Studies, 27 (4), 601–612. Hartley, L. P. (1975). Review in Saturday Review (London). In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 137–138). Routledge. Hanson, C. (1989). “Things Out of Words”: Towards a Poetics of Short Fiction. In C. Hanson (Ed.), Re-reading the Short Story (pp. 22–33). St. Martin’s Press. Huxley, A. (1927). Proper Studies. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1931). Music at Night and Other Essays. Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc. Huxley, A. (1958a). Collected Essays. Harper & Brothers Publishers. Huxley, A. (1958b). Crome Yellow. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1959). The Devils of Loudun. Harper & Brothers. Huxley, A. (1960). The Doors of Perception and Heaven & Hell. Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1969). Letters of Aldous Huxley (G. Smith, Ed.). Chatto & Windus. Huxley, A. (1992). Collected Short Stories. Ivan R. Dee, Inc. Huxley, A. (2009). The Perennial Philosophy. Harper Publishers. Huxley, A. (2010). Consider the Lilies and Other Short Fiction (J. Sexton, Ed.). ELS Editions.

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Meckier, J. (1977). Watt, Donald. Two Unlisted Stories by Aldous Huxley [Review of the article two unlisted stories by Aldous Huxley, by Donald Watt]. Studies in Short Fiction, 14(1), 95–97. Muecke, D. C. (1970). Irony. Methuen. Murray, N. (2003). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Abacus. Oldmeadow, H. (2004). Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Asian Religious Traditions. World Wisdom. Paulsell, S. A. (1995). Color and Light: Huxley’s Pathway to Spiritual Reality. Twentieth Century Literature, 41(1), 81–107. Poller, J. (2019). Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Brill. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, D. W. (2021). Redressing a Straw Man: Correcting Critical Misunderstandings of Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678211024399 Sion, R. T. (2010). Aldous Huxley and the Search for Meaning: A Study of the Eleven Novels. McFarland. Watts, A. W. (1962). The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. New World Library. Watt, D. (1975). Two Unlisted Stories by Aldous Huxley. Renaissance and Modern Studies, 19(1), 5–30. Zigler, R. L. (2015). The Educational Prophecies of Aldous Huxley: The Visionary Legacy of Brave New World, Ape and Essence and Island. Routledge.

Conclusion

All the chapters in this book show that Huxley’s short stories are much more than “people in relation to ideas that appear to have been set up in order to snub them” (Pritchett, 1975, p. 424), as V. S. Pritchett claims. On the contrary, some ideas from Huxley’s essays owe their existence to the characters in his early short fiction. As we could see in the chapter on Limbo, Huxley first depicted Alfred Petherton and the Reverend Roger in “Happily Ever After” and then started evaluating their outdated pedagogical methods. Likewise, Emberlin the Philarithmic from “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” is responsible for Huxley’s theory of cranks, in the same way as Mr. Topes from “Green Tunnels” is responsible for the dichotomy between knowledge and understanding which Huxley explained in Adonis and the Alphabet . Even in the cases where Huxley created characters in order to mock the ideas they represent (as in “Nuns at Luncheon” or “The Claxtons”), his linguistic and structural experiments push the interpretations of these stories beyond the ideological plane. The analyses in this book clarify Huxley’s relation to other modernists. Even though he did not share the same opinion on formal experimentation with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, even though he did not like the cubist understanding of perspective and representation, and even though he was more rational than the majority of modernist authors, Huxley had similarities with them as well. For instance, contrary to popular belief © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0_8

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established by the likes of David Daiches and his followers, Huxley experimented with the form and structure of the short story. In “The Gioconda Smile” and “Chawdron,” Huxley embeds a complementary story that undermines the plot and challenges the protagonist’s perspective. In “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers,” the two “Imaginary Conversations,” and especially in “Half-Holiday,” he plays with the beginning of the story, relying on its structural ambiguity that produces what Susan Lohafer (1983) calls the difference between “sentence meaning” and “story meaning” (p. 54), the ambiguity that creates a delayed effect. In “Fairy Godmother,” Huxley uses parentheticals to show the fairy’s last-ditch effort to spellbind Ruth’s son, therefore letting the main character develop on her own. “Nuns at Luncheon” contains a metastory on writing that at the same time reinforces and undermines the narrative. The opening paragraph of “Fard” has an interesting musical segment in which the quarrel between Madame and Monsieur is depicted as a composition and presented through the servant, Sophie, who acts as a medium. There are other characteristics that Huxley shares with major modernist authors. In the first “Imaginary Conversation,” “Little Mexican” and “Fairy Godmother,” he plays with mythology and fairy tales, contrasting them with the unimaginative present. His method is not as comprehensive as Joyce’s or Eliot’s, but it is still a tool he frequently uses in his short fiction. Huxley’s portrayal of British expatriates in “Green Tunnels” resembles E. M. Forster’s depiction of British colonialism in A Passage to India. Huxley’s stance on organized Christianity in “Happily Ever After,” “The Death of Lully,” “Nuns at Luncheon,” and “Chawdron” is similar to Joyce’s or Pound’s. Huxley also relies on intertextual references, as we could see in “Good and Old-Fashioned,” where he evokes not only Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers but also Dante’s Inferno to portray the modern-day London, or in “Under Compulsion”, where he ironizes D. H. Lawrence’s famous novels and Richardson’s Pamela, or in “HalfHoliday,” where he refers to Katherine Mansfield’s story “Bliss,” or in “Fairy Godmother,” where he uses Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry to depict the fight between social superiority and freedom of imagination. Huxley’s short fiction has numerous parallels with American modernism. In “Fard” Huxley’s experiment with sound and silence is similar to Carson McCullers’ evocation of voices in “Court in the West Eighties,” whereas his depiction of rigid education in “Young Archimedes” bears resemblance to McCullers’ story “Wunderkind.” Huxley’s unrivalled sense of humor in “The Tillotson Banquet” echoes

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in Fitzgerald’s story “The Camel’s Back,” published in the same year. Acute class consciousness is another characteristic that both Huxley and Fitzgerald like to portray, as we could see in the analysis of “The Monocle.” Huxley’s short fiction can be compared to Hemingway’s works as well. In his story “In Another Country” and the novels For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway describes toxic men who crumble under pressure, as Huxley often does in his stories, especially in “The Gioconda Smile”. Likewise, Huxley and Hemingway were among the rare modernist authors who wrote against Italian Fascism as early as in the 1920s. Huxley’s portrayals of everyday Fascism in “Green Tunnels” and “Little Mexican” correspond with Hemingway’s accounts of Fascist dominance and corruption in “Che Ti Dice La Patria?”. Some elements of Huxley’s short fiction bring him closer to other European modernists. For instance, Huxley frequently resorts to the aesthetics of ugliness, which is one of the most distinguished features in German and Austrian expressionists such as Alfred Döblin, Gottfried Benn, Georg Trakl, and Georg Heym. The expressionist imagery in Huxley’s short fiction can be found in “The Bookshop,” “Fard” and “The Monocle.” On the other hand, Huxley’s evocation of Edward Lear in “Fairy Godmother,” stressing that the auditory dimension of Lear’s nonsense poetry is inseparable from its rational component, tells us that Huxley understood the concept of the transrational or zaum language promoted by Russian futurists such as Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. Not to mention that Huxley was the writer of the city, that is to say, he emphasized the dehumanization in the modern metropolis, which was one of the major themes in European modernism. To describe Huxley’s relation to modernism, Peter Firchow (2002) coined the phrase “a reluctant modernist” (p. 4). His witty description— and the most accurate so far—implies that although Huxley did not find common ground with many modernist authors, he was still more modern than the previous generation. The confusion over Huxley’s position within modernism results mostly from the opposing views on the nature of modernist literature. Scholars who reduce modernism solely to formal experimentation will claim that Huxley’s fiction belongs to different poetics. On the other hand, those who consider modernism a collection of diverse texts in which writers responded to various changes (not only artistic or scientific but cultural, educational, social, political…) during the first three or four decades of the twentieth century will see that Huxley shared numerous characteristics with other modernist authors.

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Huxley’s greatest contribution to modernist short fiction is his unique satire, which includes complex humor and irony. “The Claxtons,” “The Tillotson Banquet,” and “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers” are among the funniest stories written in English in the 1920s and 1930s. Scholars tend to overlook the aesthetic dimension of humor, even though it is inherent in artistic expression. As Bergson (1911) points out, “comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art” (p. 20). Huxley’s literary caricature is multilayered and should never be taken at face value. For instance, in “The Tillotson Banquet,” the old painter’s demeanor while waiting to be escorted to the banquet signifies several meanings at the same time: Not only does it highlight the pretentiousness of Spode’s endeavor and Tillotson’s notion of Arnoldian decency but also suggests the outcome of the event. Lykeham’s casual guitar playing in “Cynthia” demonstrates not only his disregard for harmony and logic, but also magnifies his neurosis and fanaticism. In “The Claxtons,” Sylvia’s rebellion unites Italian risorgimento with the self-centeredness of a spoilt child and the catastrophic result of her pseudo-spiritual education. Sometimes Huxley achieves this multifaceted effect with only a couple of words. In “The Tillotson Banquet,” Spode’s cryptic telegram suggests not only his stinginess and wish to control the narrative, but also punishment for Lord Badgery’s constant intrusions. No short story writer in the period of modernism produced so many humorous passages with such a depth and complexity. The examples from this book show that Huxley’s multidimensional humor—his recognizable literary instrument from “Happily Ever After” to “Voices”—cannot be understood if seen as a single meaning but only as the sum of currents and undercurrents that produce a compound effect. Huxley’s irony is equally complex. In some stories he reverses the meanings of well-known myths, religious concepts, and literary works from the past either to contrast them with the uninspiring present or to show a character’s rebellion against traditional morality. In “Little Mexican,” he uses the story of Psyche and Eros/Cupid to illustrate the loveless marriage between Count Fabio Tirabassi and his wife. Laurina Magnelli in “Visiting Stranger” prays to St. Anthony, the finder of the lost property, so that she can lose her unwanted child. Pamela from “Under Compulsion” is everything but the chaste and timid character from Samuel Richardson’s novel to whom her name alludes. Huxley sometimes evokes classic writers to indicate the difference between the artistic

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past and its caricature in the present. Mr. Hutton in “The Gioconda Smile” calls himself the Christ of Ladies, alluding to Milton’s nickname, the Lady of Christ’s College. Unlike the author of Paradise Lost, Mr. Hutton is incapable of creating a great literary work; he can only think about The Effect of Diseases on Civilization, a book that emphasizes his toxic masculinity even though it is supposed to celebrate his transformation. Huxley sometimes exploits structural intricacies of the short story to create irony. In “Half-Holiday” and “Fairy Godmother,” the beginnings cannot be understood unless we account for the tension between the opposite meanings. “Good and Old-Fashioned” contains an interesting linguistic experiment where the protagonist ironizes his Christmas story with his outdated and inaccurate English, which is combined with his host’s broken Italian. On the other hand, in “The Portrait” and “Over the Telephone,” the characters deceive their interlocutors despite giving them sufficient clues about their ulterior motives. In “Consider the Lilies,” Huxley pushes satirical irony aside to use metaphysical irony whereby people rarely gain the unitive knowledge of the divine ground even though the opportunity is constantly offered to them. Finally, Huxley uses details from his own life to relish self-irony (e.g., “Cynthia,” “Green Tunnels” and “Over the Telephone”). Critics usually interpret these passages in a straightforward, biographical context, forgetting that writers, referring to themselves in a literary work, transform into narrators and even characters. As D. C. Muecke (1970) correctly points out, “in self-disparaging irony the ironist also wears a mask, but it is a mask which functions positively as a disguise of a persona” (p. 56). In other words, Huxley’s allusions to his lovers, insecurities, and poetic limitations should be considered as features of a hidden character who occasionally comes onto the surface to sabotage the narrative. The interpretations in this book show that Huxley’s characters are not always crude illustrations of his ideas, as many critics believe. Mr Hutton from “The Gioconda Smile” exhibits a range of emotions, from supreme self-confidence to the sense of utter weakness epitomized by a child reciting bedtime prayers. Moira Tarwin from “The Rest Cure” is not a typical gullible woman at the mercy of an evil man, a woman we can see in many Huxley’s novels and short stories. Her decisions result partly from her urge to escape the patriarchal marriage and partly from her genuine affection for a well-mannered Italian man who introduces her to the local culture. Huxley’s mature characterization can be seen in “Time’s Revenges,” given that most characters, despite the structural

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constraints of short fiction, transform by the end of the story (some of them not only once but twice). Sometimes even the characters created to demonstrate a certain idea have a hidden dimension that makes them more complex and difficult to interpret. In “Half-Holiday,” Peter Brett is not just an orphan whose ordeal satirizes British society and inspires sentimentality. He is the other in relation to whom the characters, regardless of their class and education, fail to establish their full subjectivity. Huxley’s short fiction also demonstrates the development of his ideas. As I have stated above, some of them were first sketched in his stories and later gained their theoretical formulations. Huxley’s short stories illustrate the constants and changes in his views on education and superficial intellectualism, toxic masculinity, religion and mysticism, modern art, consumerism, and sensational journalism. The works such as “Happily Ever After,” “The Rest Cure,” and “The Claxtons” portray the ramifications of educational models—both mainstream and alternative—that are tailored in ignorance of students’ interests and personalities. On the other hand, “Young Archimedes” offers a different, student-centered approach akin to the teachings of Maria Montessori and John Dewey, which proves that Huxley shared progressive concepts with the most distinguished reformers at the time. Huxley’s short stories indicate his contempt for superficial intellectualism, that is to say, for the belief that disregarding emotions and committing to one area of existence can lead to a meaningful life. Based on the depictions of Jacobsen from “Happily Ever After,” Spode from “The Tillotson Banquet,” Mr. Hutton from “The Gioconda Smile,” and John Tarwin from “The Rest Cure,” Huxley seems to be particularly harsh on intellectuals who are capable of grasping deeper layers of reality and who sacrifice their knowledge and intelligence for mundane gains. Huxley’s stories also show that he was among the fiercest critics of toxic masculinity. Most of Huxley’s male characters are pathologically self-conscious, abusing women out of weakness and intellectual impotence. On the other hand, some female characters (Molly Voles from “The Monocle” or Hermione Burges from “Over the Telephone”) are aware of their intellectual and emotional superiority, and resist male dominance. In “Under Compulsion,” Huxley explores emotional blackmail by men and violence used by women as a self-defense mechanism, the topics that were not common among male modernist writers. In addition, Huxley’s stories illustrate his criticism of modernist art (“Eupompus” and “The Tillotson Banquet”), consumerism (“The Bookshop” and “Fairy

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Godmother”), and sensational journalism (“The Bookshop” and “Nine A. M.”). Huxley’s short fiction can explain the development of his views on mysticism and organized religion because they take center stage in his stories, whereas in his novels and nonfiction these ideas are often difficult to interpret within a broader context. One such idea is the relation between sexuality and religious belief. In the early stories such as “The Death of Lully” and “Nuns at Luncheon,” Huxley adheres to the Freudian concept that describes religious fervor as the result of unfulfilled sexual desire. In “Visiting Stranger” (1934), he allows for the possibility that religion and sexual desire can coexist without leading to fanaticism. Finally, in “Time’s Revenges” (1951), Huxley portrays sexuality as a prerequisite to mystical enlightenment, given that Anne Peele’s deepest spiritual experience comes during sexual intercourses with Franz. Huxley’s short stories show at least two constants in Huxley’s views on religion. First, as we could see in the analyses of “The Death of Lully,” “Nuns at Luncheon,” and “Chawdron,” Huxley never supported the form of mysticism that entails mortification of the body. Second, from “Happily Ever After” and the first “Imaginary Conversation” to “Voices,” his last short story, Huxley exhibits his contempt for organized religion. The Reverend Roger’s bizarre pedagogy and disdain for scientists (“Happily Ever After”), Ninon de Lenclos’ opportunistic arguments in favor of French Catholicism (the first “Imaginary Conversation”), Maggie Spindell’s religious manipulation (“Chawdron”), the spiritual education promoted by Martha and Herbert Claxton (“The Claxtons”), the materialistic side of Christianity embodied by Peter Foss and Oscan Hackett (“Time’s Revenges”), and Mrs. Marsden’s mix of Christianity and superstition (“Voices”)—all these ideas point to the same conclusion: Religion leads to ignorance or aims to establish societal power and control for its followers. In that sense, Huxley’s short fiction refutes the opinion that Huxley intended to find a substitute for religion or “a kind of religious Esperanto” (Oldmeadow, 2004, p. 81). Huxley’s short stories clarify Huxley’s political opinion and help us dispel common misconceptions about his pacifism. “Green Tunnels” (1922) and “Little Mexican” (1924) depict the early stages of Italian Fascism, long before many European intellectuals saw its destructive side. In “Visiting Stranger” (1934), Huxley refers to the civil war in Vienna, which announced the dangers of Nazism five years before the beginning of World War II. Huxley’s interest in the world politics continued in the

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post-war period. For instance, in “Time’s Revenges” (1951), he evokes the Korean War, whereas in “Voices” (1955) his characters mention the coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister toppled in 1953, and Joseph McCarthy’s persecution of intellectuals and artists in the United States. All these examples show that Huxley was not only interested in politics throughout his entire career but that he was always among the first writers to highlight the perils of militaristic ideologies, which enabled him to see through the dynamics of influential political movements and, unlike many modernist authors, stand against any form of dictatorship. In that sense, his pacifism, widely criticized from 1936 on, should not be seen as a response to any particular event in history; it should be interpreted as an ultimate goal that all people should have in order to eradicate militaristic mentality.

References Bergson, H. (1911). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (C. Brereton & F. Rothwell, Trans.). Macmillan (Original work published 1900). Firchow, P. (2002). In E. S. Firchow & B. Nugel (Eds.), Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. Lit Verlag. Lohafer, S. (1983). Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Louisiana State University Press. Muecke, D. C. (1970). Irony. Methuen. Oldmeadow, H. (2004). Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Asian Religious Traditions. World Wisdom. Pritchett, V. S. (1975). V. S. Pritchett on the Collected Short Stories. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 423–425). Routledge.

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Aplin, J. (1983). Aldous Huxley and Music in the 1920s. Music & Letters, 64(1– 2), 25–36. Attarian, J. (2003). Brave New World and the Flight from God. In H. Bloom (Ed.), Aldous Huxley (pp. 9–24). Chelsea House. Aubrey, J. (1982). In R. Barber (Ed.), Brief Lives. The Boydel Press. Baker, R. S. (1990). Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia. Twayne Publishers. Bald, R. C. (1950). Aldous Huxley as a Borrower. College Literature, 11(4), 183–187. Bedford, S. (1974). Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Chatto & Windus. Benjamin, W. (2015). Illuminations. The Bodley Head. Bennett, A. (1975). On Little Mexican, September 1924. In D. Watt (Ed.), Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage (pp. 106–108). Routledge. Bergson, H. (1911). Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (C. Brereton & F. Rothwell, Trans.). Macmillan (Original work published 1900). Beringause, A. F. (1964). Debate Between Body and Soul. The CEA Critic, 24(9), 1–4. Booth, W. C. (1974). A Rhetoric of Irony. The University of Chicago Press. Bradshaw, D. (1996). The Best of Companions: J. W. N. Sullivan, Aldous Huxley, and the New Physics. The Review of English Studies, 47 (186), 188–206. Clark, V. M. (1987). Aldous Huxley and Film. The Scarecrow Press. Conner, F. W. (1973). “Attention!”: Aldous Huxley’s Epistemological Route to Salvation. The Sewanee Review, 81(2), 282–308.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0

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Index

A Adonis and the Alphabet , 48, 169 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, 55, 95 Aiken, Conrad, 111 Aldous Huxley’s short stories “Chawdron”, 36, 104, 106, 114, 124, 150, 164, 170, 175 “Consider the Lilies”, 6, 120, 123, 151, 154, 156, 159, 161, 162, 166 “Cynthia”, 26–28, 57, 172, 173 “Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers", 17, 19–22, 26, 33, 37, 45, 117, 118, 128, 137, 169, 170, 172, 174 “Fairy Godmother”, 96, 98, 99, 126, 170, 175 “Fard”, 70–73, 138, 150, 170, 171 “Good and Old-Fashioned”, 128, 129, 173 “Green Tunnels”, 28, 48, 50–53, 62, 66, 69, 87, 95, 111, 114,

130, 136, 146, 163, 169–171, 173, 175 “Half-Holiday”, 45, 84, 85, 87, 89, 137, 170, 173, 174 “Happily Ever After”, 10, 12–14, 16, 64, 104, 110, 111, 163, 169, 170, 172, 175 “Hubert and Minnie”, 67–69 “Imaginary Conversations”, 7, 123, 125–127, 129, 170, 175 “Little Mexican”, 62, 65, 66, 99, 126, 129, 130, 139, 145, 146, 170–172, 175 “Nine A. M.”, 139 “Nuns at Luncheon”, 17, 53, 55, 56, 62, 64, 107, 112, 123, 124, 128, 164, 169, 170, 175 “Over the Telephone”, 73, 131, 133, 134, 137, 144, 173, 174 “The Bookshop”, 26, 29, 30, 32, 54, 174, 175 “The Claxtons”, 115, 117, 118, 169, 172, 174, 175

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 A. Mati´c, Aldous Huxley’s Short Fiction https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55775-0

183

184

INDEX

“The Death of Lully”, 20, 22, 25, 36, 45, 53, 106, 143, 175 “The Gioconda Smile”, 36, 39–41, 88, 95, 138, 170, 171, 173, 174 “The Monocle", 30, 89, 131, 171 “The Portrait”, 73–75, 173 “The Rest Cure”, 104, 108, 109, 112–114, 130, 135, 173 “The Tillotson Banquet”, 21, 42, 45–47, 57, 74, 95, 111, 172, 174 “Time’s Revenges”, 6, 55, 143, 146, 149, 151, 161, 162, 175, 176 “Under Compulsion”, 128, 134–138, 170, 172, 174 “Visiting Stranger”, 55, 142–144, 147, 172, 175 “Voices”, 6, 7, 160, 163–165, 172, 175, 176 “Young Archimedes”, 32, 58, 61, 75, 78–81, 86, 87, 116, 136, 174 Alighieri, Dante, 128–130, 170 An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, 118 Antic Hay, 15, 21, 30, 33, 44, 61, 91, 132 Arnold, Matthew, 35, 47, 94 Aubrey, John, 126 A Woman’s Vengeance, 36 B Bach, Johann Sebastian, 76, 77 Beerbohm, Max, 35 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 77, 145 Benjamin, Walter, 2, 99 Bennett, Arnold, 7, 61, 70, 71 Benn, Gottfried, 29, 71, 171 Bergson, Henri, 38, 47, 56, 172 Bevan, C.O., 32 Boleyn, Anne, 73

Brahms, Johannes, 145 Brave New World, 5, 16, 31, 32, 54, 55, 95, 103, 113, 142 Breton, André, 32 Brief Candles , 7, 49, 64, 103, 104, 123 Bruegel the Elder, Pieter, 142

C Cézanne, Paul, 94 Christianity, 4, 5, 12, 14–16, 19, 23–25, 40, 45, 54, 55, 64, 104–108, 115, 117, 120, 123–125, 142, 145, 146, 149, 152, 156, 163, 164, 170, 175 Cinderella, 96 Coligny, Gaspard IV, 123 Consider the Lilies and Other Short Fiction, 6, 123 Crome Yellow, 15–17, 30, 35, 36, 39, 42, 46, 84, 99 Crowley, Aleister, 19, 33 Cunard, Nancy, 133

D Day-Lewis, Cecil, 6, 146, 165 Debussy, Claude, 77 De Quincey, Thomas, 151 Dewey, John, 7, 12, 32, 62, 78–80, 116, 120, 174 Dickens, Charles, 29, 128, 129, 170 Digby, Kenelm, 126, 127 Digby, Venetia, 126 Döblin, Alfred, 171 Donne, John, 67–69 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 68

E Eckhart, Meister, 25

INDEX

education, 4, 7, 11–15, 36–39, 48, 50, 57, 62, 68, 72, 74, 78–80, 85, 86, 94, 104, 109, 113, 115–117, 132, 141, 172, 174, 175 Eliot, T.S., 4, 7, 87, 93, 98, 129, 159, 170 Ends and Means , 14, 118 expatriates, 36, 48, 49, 51, 104, 114, 130 Eyeless in Gaza, 5, 16, 54, 99, 156, 158, 166 F Fascism and Nazism, 6, 48, 51, 52, 66, 171, 175 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 4, 35, 45, 90, 171 Forster, E.M., 48, 170 Freud, Sigmund, 16, 25, 53, 145, 175

185

Hutchinson, Mary, 133, 139 Huxley, Andrew, 94 Huxley, Julian, 10, 94 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 9, 10, 35, 94 I irony, 4, 7, 16, 18, 21, 22, 28, 36, 38, 40–43, 56, 61, 67, 70, 73, 75, 87, 96, 114, 126, 129, 133, 134, 143, 159, 160, 172 J James, Henry, 10 James, William, 38 Jammes, Francis, 49 John of the Cross, 25 Joyce, James, 3, 4, 12, 40, 56, 98, 99, 129, 148, 169, 170

G Garsington, 9 Gibbon, Edward, 11, 141 Giotto, 94, 116, 144, 145 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 110, 111 Gwyn, Nell, 73

K Kayser, Wolfgang, 89, 97 Keats, John, 46 Khlebnikov, Velimir, 98, 171 Klimt, Gustav, 145 Korda, Zoltan, 36, 109 Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 32 Kruchenykh, Aleksei, 98, 171

H Haydn, Joseph, 145 Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 43–46, 57 Heaven and Hell , 154 Hemingway, Ernest, 4, 37, 38, 52, 92, 171 Heseltine, Philip, 33 Heym, Georg, 71, 171 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 154 humor, 4, 7, 12, 16, 21, 28, 36, 46, 47, 56, 75, 118, 120, 128, 129, 138, 148, 159, 172

L Lawrence, D.H., 4, 5, 9, 27, 36–38, 67, 68, 74, 92, 117, 132, 138, 170 Lear, Edward, 84, 97, 98, 170, 171 Leda, 28 Lemprière, John, 26 Lenclos, Ninon de, 123–126, 175 Levinas, Emmanuel, 83, 85, 91 Limbo, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 16, 21, 27, 28, 30, 36, 39, 42, 45, 55–57, 85, 160, 166, 169

186

INDEX

Little Mexican and Other Stories , 7, 32, 58, 61, 120, 134, 138 Lully, Raymond, 18, 22–26, 33, 45, 54, 85, 106

M Maeterlinck, Maurice, 38 Malevich, Kazimir, 21 Mansfield, Katherine, 4, 87, 92, 170 Mantegna, Andrea, 144, 145 Marinetti, F.T., 51 Mathers, MacGregor, 19 McCarthy, Joseph, 6, 165, 176 McCullers, Carson, 4, 72, 73, 80, 170 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 31 Milton, John, 36, 38, 41, 173 modernist art, 17, 20, 42, 45, 57, 74, 169–171, 174 Montessori, Maria, 7, 12, 32, 62, 78, 79, 116, 120, 174 Morrell, Ottoline, 9, 126, 132 Morrison, Jim, 166 Morris, William, 115 Mortal Coils , 6, 7, 21, 35, 36, 42, 57, 85, 123 Mosaddegh, Mohammad, 6, 165, 176 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 77, 80, 145 Music at Night , 51, 74 mysticism, 4, 5, 15, 22, 23, 25, 55, 64, 106, 108, 143, 149, 151–153, 155–160, 162, 166, 173–175 myth, 4, 7, 28, 67, 98, 126, 170

On the Margin, 84 Osmond, Humphry, 151 P pacifism, 6, 118, 120, 146, 165, 175 Pan, 26, 27, 33 Pascal, Blaise, 31, 142 Point Counter Point , 16, 17, 36, 44, 64, 83, 91, 99, 103, 105, 132, 146 Pound, Ezra, 32, 51, 170 Proper Studies , 12, 15, 52, 57, 78 R religion, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 25, 45, 54, 55, 87, 104–106, 108, 115, 117, 123, 124, 126, 143, 144, 146, 156, 164, 166, 174, 175 Rembrandt, 73, 75 repressed sexuality, 17, 24, 25, 36, 53, 54 Reynolds, Joshua, 73 Richardson, Samuel, 138, 170, 172 Rosenkranz, Karl, 71 Rubens, Peter Paul, 126

N Nabokov, Vladimir, 114

S Schiele, Egon, 145 Schubert, Franz, 56, 145 Science, Liberty and Peace, 26, 32, 95 Shakespeare, William, 35, 67, 68, 94, 103, 137 Spender, Stephen, 6, 146, 165 St. Anthony of Padua, 142, 143, 172 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 25 Stein, Gertrude, 32 Strauss, Johann, 77, 145

O Odyssey, 91

T Teresa of Ávila, 25

INDEX

The Devils of Loudun, 15, 54, 99, 107, 120, 125, 158 The Doors of Perception, 6, 151, 154, 156, 160–162, 166, 167 The Genius and the Goddess , 57 The Olive Tree, 57 The Perennial Philosophy, 6, 15, 46, 54, 55, 145, 149, 151, 153, 155, 156, 160, 164, 166 Thomson, James, 150 Those Barren Leaves , 16, 57, 114 Time Must Have a Stop, 106 Tolstoy, Leo, 74, 115 toxic masculinity, 4, 7, 36–38, 65, 67, 108, 109, 114, 135, 138, 173, 174 Trakl, Georg, 4, 29, 71, 171 Two or Three Graces , 7, 45, 83, 98

187

V Valla, Laurentius, 125, 165 W Wagner, Richard, 55, 77, 131, 133 Watts, Alan, 93, 167 What Are You Going to Do about It? The Case for Constructive Peace, 6, 118, 146 Woolf, Virginia, 3, 4, 7, 10, 40, 90, 92, 98, 99, 169 Wordsworth, William, 46, 166 Y Yeats, W.B., 19 Z Zola, Emile, 29