The fifth of twelve volumes in Powell’s roman-fleuve entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, this novel continues the first-person point-of-view narration of Nicholas Jenkins, a writer, as he experiences the arts scene in London during 1936–37, meeting musicians, painters, and writers while the threat of war intensifies.

In the overall structure of the series, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant is positioned in the middle of the second of four “movements,” during a period when Nick is working as a screenwriter and becoming better acquainted with his in-laws, the large, eccentric, and aristocratic Tolland family. It immediately follows At Lady Molly’s and precedes The Kindly Ones.

Anthony Powell © National Portrait Gallery, London

In the opening sentences, Nick is observing the bombed ruins of the Mortimer, a pub where he had enjoyed many evenings with Hugh Moreland, a rising young composer. Nick seems to be writing from a period after the Blitz of World War II, but he is thinking back to 1928 or 1929, and the action of much of the novel occurs in 1933 and 1934. As he looks at the ruins, a voice swells up singing a song that he had heard the night he met Moreland there. The song provides a bridge into the flashback and acts as a catalyst unleashing a flood of memories.

After establishing a somewhat nostalgic, even elegiac tone, the story moves to the period of At Lady Molly’s and immediately afterward. Nick is married to Isobel Tolland, sister of Lord Warminster (also known as Erridge), and they socialize with Hugh and Matilda Moreland.

In these early days of married life, the Jenkinses and the Morelands frequently dine at Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, sometimes joined by the Maclinticks. Although Nick and Isobel are happy in their marriage, the Maclinticks have a destructive relationship that not infrequently erupts into violent shouting matches.

Moreland is still establishing his musical reputation; in a key section of the novel, Matilda has persuaded Amy Foxe, the mother of Charles Stringham, to sponsor a reception after the premiere performance of an important composition of Moreland’s. Although Stringham had been one of Nick’s closest friends while they were at school, his marriage had ended in divorce and he had sunk into alcoholism. Unexpectedly, he arrives at Moreland’s reception and shows how low he has fallen in his family’s estimation.

At the party, Moreland’s attentions to Priscilla Tolland arouse Nick’s suspicion that they are having an affair; the Maclinticks quarrel violently. Soon afterward, Nick and Moreland pay Maclintick a call when they learn that his wife, Audrey, has abandoned him for a musician. He lives in near squalor, indifferent to material comforts in his focus on music and music criticism. With Audrey’s departure, even the small graces that had formerly been maintained have disappeared.

Maclintick is unwilling to admit his loss, trying to gloss over Audrey’s absence, but not long after this visit he commits suicide. The shock of this death jolts Moreland out of his pursuit of Priscilla Tolland, and shortly thereafter her engagement to Nick’s fellow screenwriter Chips Lovell is announced. Love and death become strangely intertwined as these relationships develop.

The theme of young marriage and the risks that attend it dominates this novel. Nick does not place his own marriage on display; in fact, readers only learn indirectly that Isobel has a miscarriage, and her husband only rarely relates bits of their conversations. But through Nick’s observation of his family, friends, and acquaintances, readers can see both the humor and the danger that marriage brings. And since desire is not a faucet turned off or contained by marriage, but a permanent subtext for most of human existence, personal relationships are always at risk of becoming more complicated or of flying apart completely.

Bibliography

Joyau, Isabelle. Understanding Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Selig, Robert L. Time and Anthony Powell. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1991.
Spurling, Hillary. Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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