From Henry Hilliard and Pete Bruno h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com
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Noblesse Oblige
Book 5 Outer Darkness
Chapter 19
Postscript II
A Note From the Author
Thank you to all the readers who have made the commitment to the journey that was Noblesse Oblige and I hope it has been a weekly treat for you. My special thanks go to those readers who were kind enough to email their comments. I had heard of "trolls" who get their jollies from writing terrible things to authors and celebrities (I am perhaps at a stretch the former and certainly not the latter) and I can only suppose that Noblesse Oblige readers were a superior caste, for I did not receive a single negative comment, although one correspondent was adamant that Martin should not have been addressed as "your lordship" and was annoyed beyond exasperation by what he saw as my gauche error, but it was far too late to correct this even if I had agreed.
Perhaps this essay might fulfill my fantasy of one day Noblesse Oblige being required reading on the Literature curriculum of some educational institution -- perhaps one of those Baptist football-obsessed "colleges" (usually in Texas) that figure so greatly in genre fiction and that this essay might come to be regarded as sort of helpful "Cliff's Notes" by some hard-pressed freshmen "jock" sitting at his computer in a sweltering dorm room wearing just a pair of "plaid" boxers.
STYLE & CONSTRUCTION
Noblesse Oblige was my first (and probably only) attempt at a novel. From the very first chapter I had an ending in mind -- although what came between these two required invention -- and because the story had a sort of "arc", I felt this made it more than a mere soap opera. However, I will confess to writing being in the "feuilleton" style, meaning that events happen, often with comic affect, and chapters are self-contained instalments to suit the weekly format. I often thought of that great writer, Charles Dickens, whose works were published thus, although I hesitate to couple his name with mine. The simple arc of the story is the chronological detailing of the boys' lives between 1909 and 1940 and it was easy to thread this with little adventures and the events of the time and, at the same time, hopefully drawing out the character of the protagonists.
I was determined to resit the temptation to keep the thing going and push it on to a "second generation" or create "spin-off" stories as I was on occasion urged to do. Knowing when to stop -- when to leave the party-- is a valuable instinct and one that the writers and producers of film and television series too seldom possess to the detriment of their art.
The story is deliberately told in the third person in a detached style and this has allowed the narrator to comment on the actions of Martin and Stephen -- often with dry humour-- and obviously also to describe events and settings when the boys were not present. Once the writer embarks on the first or third person he is hamstrung and there is no change possible. Of course, this essay is written in the first person but that is because I have stepped out of the role of narrator and I am writing to you personally.
Reading other people's stuff, I am often impressed with the ideas that lay behind the writing, but less impressed with the expression of those ideas. Some excuse themselves because English is not their fist language and I applaud the bravery of their attempt. Many have been too influenced by film and television and this does not always translate to the printed word. They might write, "Knock, knock! I opened the door to my dorm room." Clearly the writer should have described the noise rather than made it into some sort of dialogue. There are other instances too which I attribute to the dominance of film and video on people's thinking. Of course I am guilty of adding images and music clips to the written word, if your story site allows you to see them. This was suggested to me by Pete Bruno as an advantage to the choice of the digital format and I quite took to it. I hope it added to, rather than detracted from, the writing.
I endeavoured to be careful not to fall into the trap of commenting on past events through hindsight nor making inane comparisons between "then" and "now". All events were "now" to Martin and Stephen. The distance between the narrator and the action, I hope, was compensated for by the intimacy when telling how Martin or Stephen felt about things -- for example there is a paragraph from Book 5 where Martin is standing on a hilltop looking over the peaceful English countryside. War is looming and Martin is full of emotion. Stephen walks up and puts his arm around him. I hope that a depth of feeling was conveyed, even though neither Martin nor Stephen was voicing their thoughts directly. Writing in the first person does produce instant intimacy, but it tends to sound childish ("What I did on my summer vacation") and stymies plot development. I do not like stories where the narrator changes, chiefly because the authors have not been skilful enough to give the characters separate "voices" or sometimes even distinguishable points of view and so the reader is forced to conclude that it is essentially the author's voice all the time.
Every author probably has different writing techniques. I usually started each chapter with an idea that may have developed in my head while I was out walking or even driving in the country. Sometimes I just had to sit down in front of a blank page and commence to write to see what developed. Occasionally I would write the end or the middle before the beginning, but generally I just wrote through. A chapter name would usually come after it was finished (the earliest chapters had no names until Pete suggested it) and I hope that most chapters had linking ideas. For example, the last chapter in Book IV was called "The Millionth Chance", taken from Lord Thompson's famous appraisal of the safety of the airship R101. This phrase echoed Cordell Hull's earlier optimism on the chances of US stocks falling. The financial scandals associated with Hull and Charles Hatry (both of which Martin narrowly escaped) are also to be noted by readers. The image of a slightly out-of-control party on board the doomed dirigible was a not very subtle metaphor for the decade of the 1920s -- or at least one aspect of it.
On a larger scale, Book IV is entitled, "The Hall of Mirrors" and this image is reflected (pardon the pun) in three instances. The first is when Martin attends the Versailles Peace Conference (the signing of which was in the famous Hall) and where he is greatly disturbed by its shortcomings -- the duality of truth and deceit as in the reflections in mirrors; it was all "smoke and mirrors". Later in the 'twenties there is a tourist excursion to the Hall of Mirrors where the boys admire themselves and each other in the reflections and the reader is given a fulsome description of the two protagonists as young men in their prime. Thirdly, there was the comical, but disturbing, "Hall of Mirrors" at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.
This chapter also describes the "Big Wheel" ride where Stephen and Martin help each other to climb to the stable centre while everyone else is spinning wildly -- an idea I think stolen from La Roulette Humaine in Luna Park in Paris and referenced by Evelyn Waugh.
The title itself, Noblesse Oblige, was borrowed from Nancy Mitford's 1954 book on language, but literally means that rank imposes obligations. I think that Martin's life showed this axiom to be true and from time to time this phrase was employed to mean just that.
Only very occasionally did a chapter have to be abandoned and, like most authors, I hated to waste ideas. I went back in time with a couple of "special" chapters, such as the Christmas one set in 1914 when the Belgian refugee gives birth at a snow-bound Croome (and I doubt Dorset gets such falls in reality) and the one where The Plunger (ever stylish) starts an Eighteenth Century "faro" club at his school. A third one concerned Stephen before he met Martin and developed from juicy ideas referred to in passing in the main novel.
LANGUAGE
Even as the narrator, I tried to use only words and phrases that were current at the time and avoid the more obvious language of today which would have intruded on the past. This, of course, also applied to the dialogue. Therefore, all the psychological language, pop phrases and African-American idioms of today had to be cut out. The "machine gun" or "wisecrack" humour of the United States was little known in Britain before the advent of television -- it was perhaps the great contribution of Jewish-American writers and comedians. On the other hand, risqué humour and double-entendre were part of British humour at a time when public taste in small town United States was much more prudish.
Coarse, modern sex words, including "cum", "gay", "butt plug" and "69-ing", for example, could not be used in the past and substitutes had to be found or invented. Other phrases such as, "Should we have the electric light connected?" and "Bike Jockey's strap," are intentionally clumsy to convey a sense of past usage. I think I can tell when it doesn't sound right in both terms of language and the attitudes behind it. I probably failed in absolute terms, but I think I succeeded sufficiently at least to give a flavour of the language of those times.
The other art, it seemed to me, was in having enough dialogue for interest, but also having sufficient narrative to move things along. It is not necessary to repeatedly describe every moment of every day (as some novice writers seem bent on doing) and "Martin strolled into the Red Drawing Room" gives quite enough information for what may follow. Of course, at other times a lengthy description can set the scene or make a comedy. Here I think of the long first two paragraphs of Book 5 Chapter 16 describing Madame Thibideaux's journey to Stephen's flat. It is built up, only to be deflated by what she encounters on the other side of the door and this is when the dialogue starts.
Fowler deplores the rule of "elegant variation" which supposedly makes writing more interesting if prominent words are not repeated too close to each other. However, I disagree. "Martin squirmed with delight as he felt Stephen's distended penis through the blue silk of the boxing trunks and feverishly untied the cord to free the pugilist's member." The use of synonyms and two or three adjectives and one adverb (this last seemingly disappearing from American usage) not only makes the sentence a pleasure to read, but paints a quick sketch and has a slightly arch quality to the comedy -- that is, we can see the humour even if they can't. Imagine how much duller this sentence would sound if the pronouns were removed and "boxing" and "penis" were dully repeated.
I found writing and editing particularly exciting and could write a chapter in a week at my peak, but editing is a different matter entirely and literally takes years. I was often reminded of the story of when Oscar Wilde was the weekend guest at a house party. Oscar had been in his room all day when the others returned from a day's hunting or whatever. One of the party said: "What have you been doing all day, Oscar?" "This morning I put in a comma," replied Wilde. "Is that all you've done?" they cried, incredulously. "No, this afternoon I took it out." And that's how I've spent a great deal of editing time and I am very fond of commas, I must confess.
The help and encouragement of Pete Bruno was especially important and I found that I was writing for him and if I made him cry or laugh, I knew I hadn't wasted my week. Recently, Lucie has been a good editor of the German language and Roman was greatly helpful in correcting all the foreign words and phrases, which were put in, I further confess, to show off as was the stylistic want of writers of the past. There was the unstated assumption that educated readers would also have some facility in French and other languages, just as it was arrogantly assumed that all readers would be familiar with such things as Lord's [Cricket Ground] and Hatchard's [Bookshop]. Similarly, but more down-market, the author took it for granted that the reader knew of Child's [Restaurants] and the Roseland [Ballroom] when the boys were in New York. It was part of the fun in writing in a period style.
Pete was adamant that American readers would not cope with foreign phrases or with anything that wasn't completely explained as they were used to having everything simplified and commodified for easy consumption and would not do any "work" when reading for entertainment. Is this true? I increasingly began to think of Pamela Travers and Walt Disney. Maybe she was correct and that the Disneyfacation of history, literature and even the news has had a bad affect on American culture. Of course, in a sense, it has become world culture.
CHARACTERS
It is true what authors say: the characters do begin to have a life of their own and come to almost write their own dialogue. I thought it important that the characters should be distinct from one another and made them so by larding each with personal idiosyncrasies as the story progressed. Martin, for example, is blithe and happy and is often airily dismissive of misfortune as befits an aristocrat -- for example when not knowing Chaucer's first name or appearing stupid in front of Stephen. In the first lines we see that he is a lonely and empty boy, searching for love and Noblesse Oblige is really the story of him finding that love.
Martin, we learn, has suffered a rather unhappy childhood, losing first his mother when he was about 12, then his brother whom he loved. His father, we read, is rather stern and cold, all but abandoning Martin at his terrible school at the tender age of nine. Such upbringings were not unusual in that class. Winston Churchill had such a boyhood, with his parents never once making the short journey to Harrow to visit him in his homesickness.
What my American readers often failed to grasp is that everything in Britain is about class. Martin's school is a prime example, for it is primitive, cold, insanitary and little concerned with actual education. Yet it has prestige that money can't buy (at least not at first) and thus it is reluctant to admit The Plunger with his pushy American mother and her wealth "distastefully brewed" from beer. Another boy is tolerated, poor though he is, simply because he is descended, we are told, from the kings of Mercia. Therefore, in the story, we see that The Plunger's mother's attempts to make the school more modern and comfortable, with the gift (or bribe) of the "shower baths" and new sports pavilion, are resisted by the snobbish school hierarchy and indeed Fayette her "country" home near Dorking (and Dorking is not the proper country) is sneered at because it is more like a luxury hotel than the ancestral seat of a noble family. Comfort and convenience are not the concomitants of class that they are in the United States and, indeed, are slightly despised.
Another aspect of social class is that Martin's social circle all know each other through the bonds of family and school and success in business meant little, unlike in the United States. In the episode where Martin must go on a mission to Stockholm, his imprimatur that "Biffo" Bewley-Vance-Bewley is "sound" is based solely on the fact "that he was in my house at School".
Having said this, it also must be noted that Croome is modernised under the guidance of Stephen, which is an adjustment that will see it survive the twentieth century. While the aristocracy has its foundation in landed wealth, Martin makes sure that this is backed up with income from Daniel Sachs' investments. Thus the class system is not so rigid that it will refuse to admit all outsiders (a point that Martin tries to make to German aristocrats in the 1930s) and it certainly makes use of them as in the case of Daniel Sachs. This was seen under King Edward VI who ennobled men like Sir Ernest Cassel and his reign saw a general loosening of Victorian social mores. We see that Sir Gordon Craith (The brewer-politician father of The Plunger) at last gets a peerage and, almost unnoticed, the manufacturer of Soothing Salve rises to become Lord Spong and is described as a "political heavyweight". Britain's class system is subtle in its flexibility.
Despite Martin representing the past, it is through Martin's eyes that we see much of the story and Martin is much more like "us" than the impossibly wonderful Stephen, despite his elevated birth that otherwise might make him remote from our own lives. Martin remains a very human figure and suffers many of the petty humiliations we all do, especially when trying to be dignified and something like his father. For example, his speech on the occasion of the electric light at Croome is flawed and the electric doors at the new library refuse to open -- both examples of the problematic modern world. In Cannes he gets drunk and is raped by rough sailors and his slide into drunkenness is something that we all can relate to (well, perhaps not, but you know what I mean). Martin can be jealous and pompous but is touched by love. He is terribly upset when Stephen betrays him with Miss Orchard-Baird and is filled with remorse when he gets drunk and lashes out at Stephen only then to think he is dead on the beach. Yet generally Martin doesn't hold a grudge for terribly long and merely shrugs when faced with circumstances he can't change, such as when he finds Stephen has made Erna pregnant as well. This is exemplified in another running joke: When Martin is in pain and he is confronted with the news that Stephen will not "pull out", he shrugs (as best he can) and breezily tells Stephen he'd "best get on with it then". This exchange is oft repeated, on one occasion with the roles reversed and on another with Stephen digging into Martin's wound to extract a piece of shrapnel.
As an aristocrat, Martin is little troubled by mundane conventions, such as road rules (driving his car and the village bus) and to some extent simply expects others around him (like the Vicar) to agree with him and for his servants to accept his sleeping with Stephen with no apologies. You will have notice that he calls the butler "Chilvers" whist Stephen always says, "Mr Chilvers" -- the subtle distinction between them. Martin, of course, does not know when Bank Holiday is because his class do not hold down mundane jobs. Martin has little experience with the discomforts of travel and his title and his wealth smooth away obstacles, except when he is trumped by the King of Portugal's arrangements -- a running gag. Stephen even wonders at one point if it is good for Martin to always be so cosseted.
Of course in other ways Martin subscribes to the conservative conventions of his class and time. He worries about wearing one of those new and informal "dinner jackets" (as opposed to tails) and was prepared to dismiss a pregnant housemaid in Chapter 5 of Book III. Yet he is unconventional enough to love popular music and riding his bicycle in the village. That he comes into his title as a youth must have had an influence on his conduct.
Martin is politically conservative and this is shown in an early chapter where he argues bitterly with Stephen but holds his own. Just as his father was affronted by the first curbing of the power of the House of Lords in 1909 under Lloyd George's Liberals, bringing with it the first instances of social welfare, Martin is faced by the sudden rise of the Labour Party under Ramsay Macdonald in the 1920s. Indeed Martin ends up as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords like his father and grandfather, but he is also young enough to know that he must be realistic and move with the times and he does try to be a good lord of the manor by making social improvements on his estate, from his dutiful visits to the Infirmary to the provision of a school and kindergarten. He is well aware of how the estate had been neglected in the past. In a wider sphere he sets up two charitable trusts that we know of. Of course this is paternalism and Martin gives little thought to what his tenants may actually desire for themselves.
Martin's occasional little essays on the Poole family history which later form the basis for the mural in the new George V Dining Room reveals to us a litany of discreditable acts -- the cruel Sir Aylard Poole, traitors, turncoats, slavers and reactionaries. Similarly Martin's school's history is littered with reminders of violence during the Catholic Riots and looting during the Opium Wars.
Miss Foxton is introduced to show the path that some upper middle class intellectuals took -- she is a feminist and becomes a socialist borough councillor and it is only the accident of her class that brings her into contact with Martin. The visit to the mining town, "West Tipton" during the General Strike (Book IV Chapter 18) brings Martin face-to-face with the realities of the time and place after he and Stephen find themselves quarrelling and on opposite sides during the Strike. All Martin can do is save one individual or one family, just as he has done throughout the novel such as with the sailors from the Invergordon Mutiny (Book V Chapter 8) and the Irish Guard and his young wife in Chapter 6 of Book II.
As the decades roll on, Martin is almost compelled to become a socialist when faced with the problems of the welfare of those on his estate, which were neglected under his father and grandfather as was a common agricultural policy under successive free trade governments. They were not good years to be a farmer. He finds that he has to navigate modern day bureaucracy, which seems hostile to his class and kind. The realities of party politics in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s were quite muddy, with Conservatives initiating quite a few social programs and the Labour governments of Ramsay Macdonald not being quite so radical as their opponents had initially feared. Both sides were pretty hopeless when confronted with the Depression. However Martin's hatred of the austerity governments of post-War Britain (in the Epilogue) makes him veer back to Toryism and it is in this period that Labour launched its final assault on the old landed aristocracy with considerable venom.
One odd aspect of Martin's character is his psychic sensitiveness on occasions. The first of these (if we discount Martin's turning into the wood on the day he met Stephen) takes place a couple of years prior to the Great War when Martin has a sudden vision of trench warfare while at the boxing tent at the Agricultural Fair. I cried when I wrote it. Martin, however, quickly forgets about it and is certainly unconscious of any power on his part. Later, when he is in a German beer garden, he is strangely chilled when the locals sing their anthem and he suddenly announces that he wants to go home. Much later, the Expressionist landscape at Berlin's Luna Park has a similar affect: "a dark glimpse into the German psyche". Finally there is Martin's wish to have a baby with Steven which comes true, perhaps as the result of Martin rubbing Stephen's balls like Aladdin's lamp.
Stephen's personality is the more complex. He is the intelligent working class boy made good and also the incarnation of our sexual longings. Stephen doesn't have to act, despite his masquerade as Martin's social equal -- although he never lies about this, save for his initial ruse about coming from Western Australia. Stephen only has to be. Like a character from Thomas Hardy, he is perfectly natural and at ease with himself and his sexuality as he is with country life. We continually see him mending bird's wings and delivering puppies and even babies. He represents the "fertile" in more ways than one. By way of contrast, the Poole lineage is degenerate and sterile -- neither son fathers offspring. The fact that Stephen is uncircumcised also places him as "natural" in contrast to Martin's circumcised member. One early reader took exception to Martin's condition, saying that it was not done at that time. My research shows that children born from the middle 1890s onwards were increasingly "done", but upon reflection I suspect that the aristocracy and the working class were less likely to be circumcised than the prudish and health-conscious middle class. However the writing, like the operation itself, could not be undone.
Stephen's innate moral strength and courage see him achieve success despite his humble origins. Like Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, we see many noble acts, such as his standing up to bullies and protecting the weak at school. Donald Selby-Keam is ostracised as a swot and a teacher's pet, but Stephen saves him and the other boys, because of Stephen's moral leadership, instantly accept Donald. This intervention is recognised by Donald's father who sincerely praises Stephen.
Stephen's good manners are "natural" we are told and merely polished under Martin's influence. Where this might seem insufficient in the sorts social situations into which Stephen is propelled, we also read that Stephen is often either silent or "smiling radiantly". This, with his physical attributes, is apparently sufficient to oil the wheels of social intercourse. Some readers urged me to ennoble Stephen -- or at least give him a knighthood. Yet this is not how I saw him; he was different to Martin with his inherited honours and Stephen's achievements are ones that he earned himself, such as his university degree and his Military Cross (and bar). Stephen might be said to represents the Twentieth Century - the self-made man- whereas Martin represents the lingering feudal world of noblesse oblige.
Stephen's other attribute is his intelligence. He is much better educated than Martin and Noblesse Oblige paints a humorously withering picture of educational standards at Martin's ancient (but unnamed) school. Stephen is interested in reading and is up-to-date with current authors and this serves him well in social situations, but also we see that Stephen frequently falls back on talking about cricket, which, with his good looks, is apparently quite sufficient to win the hearts of those around him -- despite the famously boring nature of the sport, which sends Martin to sleep in one chapter. He excels as a scholarship boy at school and he has a practical and inventive mind. We even see him toying with "chaos theory" when he is working for the Army Supply.
Stephen at time feels like he is a fish out of water in that he has no official position in Martin's household, except that of a "kept man", however the reality is that he is the driving force behind modernizing and potentially saving Croome and he is the one to whom all defer -- "What would Mr Stephen do?" Martin has, by descent, the elevated position in society, but relies largely on Stephen to carry out the duties that have fallen to him. Stephen initially feels no such expectations placed upon him, but later he is both surprised and disturbed to learn that others look up to him for leadership and guidance, both in the "Sans-culottes" ("without pants" -- a French Revolutionary term for the poor) and at Croome. While Stephen's roots are still rural, he is a modernizing force; Martin remains conflicted by his feudal origins and the realities of the twentieth century.
Stephen is a strange combination of modesty and arrogance. He is self-effacing in his heroics, yet unselfconsciously assumes that others would always like to see him naked -- which they do. His role as "the village stud" is perhaps a mocking reflection of Martin's role as the village lord. Stephen has his idiosyncrasies, such as his passion for organization and for drawing up lists and rules that must be adhered to -- the most important of these being the Potsdam Agreement about how the "gay marriage" is to be conducted. The too obvious jokes here being that an agreement of the same name was used for Post-War Japan and The Gay Divorce (and later film, The Gay Divorcee) was a play with tunes by Cole Porter, presumably with the word "gay" in its original meaning.
Further to Stephen's character is that he prefers to be naked and hates underwear -- a running gag-- and that he is fond of leather straps and other sex toys and is not adverse to a bit of pain. I presumed that such things existed even in the 1920s and certainly the "Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators" are quite real. There is a touch of sexual dominance and authoritarianism about Stephen. The hyper-masculinity and dominance of Stephen and the worshipful submissiveness of Martin is the sexual dance of the story. Stephen usually, but by no means always, has his own way. In fact, Martin can be quite demanding that Stephen perform until he is fully satisfied. Martin sometimes assumes the role of "the top". However even in this, Martin comes to realize, it is his duty to pleasure Stephen more so than himself and that indeed Stephen is "a deity that demands to be worshipped".
Part of Martin's character is that he is quite frank and little worried by middle class proprieties. He wants to be "fucked", he says, "not made love to" as some "lady novelist" might write. Despite all common sense dictating caution, Martin will usually give in to the suggestion of risky sex. He is of course rich and quickly gives in to the temptation of buying costly motorcars and other toys. In other morally contentious matters he borrows Scarlet's advice and "will think about that tomorrow."
The other conflict within Stephen is that his love for Martin is dangerously combined with his strong sex-drive, which is further complicated (to Martin's consternation) by his bi-sexuality -- to use a modern word. Stephen certainly had feelings for the (mostly) straight Christopher and, oddly, for the psychologically disturbed Clarence. Elsie the barmaid would like to have his child, just like Martin. Martin is realistic and so deeply in love with Stephen that he is forgiven numerous times for his transgressions. Stephen, for his part, sees as fundamental to his role in the relationship, or to the honouring of his love for Martin, his ability to satisfy Martin sexually. Of course the reader sees that he is also satisfying himself at the same time -- and promising an exhausted Martin that he will "try harder" in the next round (and he is a boxer, we must remember). Stephen's physicality and sexual prowess are made much of, yet there are no images of him illustrating the text and the exact size of Stephen's famous penis is also never given, so Stephen remains very much a creation in the mind of the reader. Stephen is a fantasy of the ideal man, the great lover, and any reality would dispel that magic.
As with television series Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, we also follow something of the lives of the servants. While Chilvers remains a caricature of the grand butler and is rather closed to us, Carlo and his cousin, William Glassbottom, are fleshed-out with adventures of their own. Carlo is the more cunning and cheeky of the two, while "Glass" desires to become a butler in the mould of Mr Chilvers. Glass is the more lonely as we see in the chapter where he is taken in by Kenny Sage in Book V Chapter 2. In the same chapter Carlo is confronted with his almost forgotten past in Liverpool and I might say that Pete Bruno though that this chapter was most affecting.
It is the loyalty of the servants, including Lily Beck, who make it possible for Stephen and Martin to live together. In real life I wondered if this was realistic, however there must have been such examples from the time if we consider many of the well-known gay couples. People were often wilfully blind to what we would now see immediately as gay relationships and the upper classes in particular were treated with a reverence that they are not accorded today. It was Chilvers who first covered for Martin sleeping with Stephen in that first Easter and he continued to do so for the rest of his life, perhaps thinking of his own sexual leanings. It helped, of course, that Stephen was so universally loved, even as a boy, and I did suggest that Martin paid his servants, particularly Carlo, more than the usual going rate. However blackmail and police action remained an ever-present danger throughout the novel and servants would be likely gossips.
The first series of Downton Abbey had aired when I started writing Noblesse Oblige and, of course, it was an inspiration to an extent and prompted Pete Bruno to suggest the genre to me. However, I never watched beyond series two and I was astounded to learn that there a character called "Lord Branksome" was introduced in a later series. All I can suggest is that the writers must have had the same A.A. Illustrated Road Guide to England and Wales"(1958) that I have and open at the same map of Dorset that I used. More of an influence was Upstairs, Downstairs and it gave me the idea of introducing the Duke of Kent. This series confirmed my intention not to go beyond the Second World War.
Friedrich von Oetinngen-Taxis (a name composited from several unrelated but noble German families) might bear a physical resemblance of his cousin, Martin, in that he is blond (which I regret not spelling with an "e" throughout), but readers will have noticed that he is more ruthless and devious than the soft-hearted Martin. It is probably Friedrich who betrayed Mata to the Nazis and he joins the Party to secure his own ends, boasting of his fine motorcar new apartment and mahogany desk, and jettisoning his former friends in the process. I had been reading Christopher Isherwood, but we all know the type, I think.
HISTORY & SEXUALITY
I did agonize over the historical accuracy, although I allowed myself some liberties. My twin motivations were to imagine how people at the time saw contemporary events about them and also to assume some things, like love and sex, were not so different from our own times. Therefore, we see that Martin is stupefied by cubist art and is thrilled by an aeroplane flight to Paris. Then there are the false dawns: airship travel was not going to be the way of the future.
I began with the conviction that the repertoire of Martin and Stephen's sexual activities in the past would not be so different from those of couples today, but of course they were coloured up for the titillation of loyal readers. It was quite easy, obviously, to read contemporary erotic novels and to look at porn videos for inspiration. Readers would be gravely mistaken if they thought that any of these activities were a reflection on the private life of the author!
The secret journal and photographs of the English architect, Monty Glover (who would have been an almost exact contemporary of Martin and Stephen) who had a life-long working class lover (as well as plenty of rough trade encounters) is evidence of what sexual practices were at a time when such things were hidden from the police and wider society. Perhaps even more so, the touching love letters of Ralph Hall to Glover show that gay love was not so different to straight love, even in the past. The Epilogue suggests that the crackdown on homosexuality in the early 1950s was more severe that it had been in the 1920s and 30s and there is some evidence that in Britain it was prompted by the weight of American attitudes at a time when America was at the height of its power and was leaning heavily on Britain. The recorded lives of gay and bi-sexual celebrities from the period, such as Beverely Nichols, Noel Coward and Colin MacInnes who sometimes appear at Stephen's literary luncheons, were also instructive on how gay lives were led amid straight society. Incidentally, The Plunger's manservant "Gertie" Haines was named in honour of "lavender" Hollywood actor-turned interior decorator, William Haines, who overcame the injustices of his place and time.
Another thing I was determined not to do was to have every "straight" character in the story, turn out to be a closet homosexual, (for example every player on the college football team in that genre of fiction) as it stretches credulity and tends to reflect rather pathetically on how the author would like the world to be. I'm not sure that I succeeded in Noblesse Oblige. The same rule should apply to the attractiveness of the characters -- it rather spoils stories if every character in the men's dormitory at our unnamed college is equally handsome and equally well-endowed. I did want it to appear that Martin's intimate circle might be composed of gay men, but they were existing within a much wider sea of hetro-normative society. Stephen was the darkly handsome "alpha male" and Martin was the blonde "twink" -- to use the unattractive terminology of today. Donald, for example, was meant to be less than attractive as he is short, pale and scrawny -- although he made up for these shortcomings with his skills in pleasuring others. The Plunger was a "ginger" and we are never quite certain if Stephen's blandishments to him are tongue-in-cheek or not.
At Martin's school homosexual activity was rife, but I tried to suggest that this may not have extended beyond school years for most boys. However, The Plunger and Custard were gay into adult life -- with Custard repeatedly in trouble with the police until he is forced to flee to Corfu. At Stephen's school only Donald is actually gay, although the other boys may enjoy sex play with Stephen -- as does Stephen's landlady, Mrs Leybourne.
In the United States, Bunny and Dwight were a gay couple as were the real-life Joe Lyndecker and Charles Beach. Other figures, both real and imaginary, such as Ernest Hemmingway (to spitefully exaggerate the careful findings of Nancy R. Chomley and Robert Scholes in "Hemmingway's Genders" (1994)) and Mr Chilvers were also probably gay, but not "out" and were purposely left unexplained. Quite often the gay sex was with sailors and others who were casual pick-ups and the participants might have only been gay-for-pay (to use a modern term). Pick-up haunts like Leicester Square, the Everard Baths, Lady Austin's and the Dreyfus Cafe were real places, as was the Dil Pickle Club. Prince George, the Duke of Kent, was indeed led astray by the older and more abandoned American heiress, Kiki Preston, and he was widely said to be bisexual, but I still felt bad about my fictitious depiction of him and this should be taken as such and offers no reflection on a brave man in real life. I am less forgiving of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Sir Robert Vansitaart and British Intelligence were utterly convinced that Wallis was a spy according to Charles Higham's sensational 1988 book.
CHALLENGES & PLOT DEVELOPMENT
In the construction of the story, from quite early on, I wanted three challenges to Martin's position. The first was the attempt by the parson, Mr Carter, to prove that Martin and Stephen were sleeping together with the unwitting evidence of a young footman. This is thwarted by the death of the minister on the Titanic, also allowing Martin to build his school.
The second is the legitimacy of Martin's title through the complexities of his great- great-grandfather's marriage in Portugal at the time of the Peninsular War. I must say that this series of chapters took a good deal of plotting, but it also suggested a solution to the riddle of how Stephen's father came to be in Branksome-le-Bourne. It seems likely that Stephen's father had learned of his claim to the title and that he had come to exert pressure on Lord Branksome, Martin's father, but he died before this could be accomplished. Martin's brother did try to say something about his great-great grandfather's marriage on his deathbed, perhaps having been told something by his father. The alteration and erasure on the marriage document in Cintra was not an attempt to legitimise an illegitimate marriage (as one may have suspected) but to discredit a legitimate one! The fact that Stephen is part Portuguese and of aristocratic descent (and indeed possibly the true Marquess of Branksome) adds further lustre to our hero, but the fact that he made little of it and remained his own man, is also very much in character.
The third challenge is that by a thwarted (and ungrateful) Mildred Polk-Stewart who wants the title to devolve to her son-in-law, Martin's cousin, Philip Rous-Poole. Like Mr Carter, she aims to use Martin's homosexuality against him and enlists the support of Mrs Simpson to gain the ear of the King. However events overtake her. That Martin's son Will marries her granddaughter in the Epilogue is a further irony.
Another plot development that had been considered right from the beginning was that of Martin producing an heir to carry on the title and inherit the estate and his fortune. That it was Stephen who fathered the child (and indeed two) came as much of a shock to me as it did to you, but it tied in nicely with earlier references to Stephen fathering children. I had always planned to kill-off Martin's wife so that both the boys would raise Martin's son and heir, however I never realised how painful it would be to kill Mata, whom I had grown to love, nor how awful I was being to poor Erna Obermann whose character traits, I confess, are based on someone I knew.
ART
It was perhaps a cliché, but in Noblesse Oblige the upper class is depicted as being largely philistine. Martin is of course accustomed to being surrounded by venerable works of art, presumably collected by his ancestors on their "grand tours" and he is airily dismissive of it, if indeed he thinks about it at all. We rely on the narrator's voice to inform us of what we are looking at.
Martin is fond of his brother's paintings and of the portrait by Boldini of his mother, but this is more from sentiment than from appreciation. We are frequently told of damage being done to paintings and statues during revelries and Stephen's dartboard, he blandly mentions in passing, is hung next to a Zoffany. The Caxton first edition of Chaucer means little to Martin and we find that he has been using it under the wobbly leg of the library table. Indeed it is instructive to take note of Martin's lowbrow taste in literature -- the romantic novels Georgette Heyer and Elinor Glynn being mentioned-- and this can be contrasted with Stephen's sterner stuff. This extends to his record collection, which, I confess, reflects the author's lowbrow taste too.
It is an oddity that Martin expresses a desire to read Philosophy at University and he mentions that his, as yet, uninformed mind might actually be an advantage to taking the notoriously difficult subject. The War interrupts his studies and he does not return to it, his heart being in Croome and country life, and so the reader is left to ponder, "what if...."
The philistinism of the upper class is further revealed at Martin's school: the portrait of The Plunger by John Singer Sargent is considered too swanking by the boys (and masters) and it is eventually destroyed with no action being taken against the culprits. It is The Plunger (who is not a real aristocrat) who becomes the artist and it is middle class Teddy Loew and his father who are genuine connoisseurs.
Martin's interests (besides his stamp collection) revolve around rural pursuits such as gardening, hunting and riding. At one point The Plunger attempts to copy these, if only for the chance to dress up. Martin attends the opera and concerts in London more out of social duty and Stephen is equally bored. The music hall, in Edwardian times, tended to cut across class lines and private balls were a feature of Edwardian life which were, to some extent, replaced by dancing in hotels and nightclubs after the First World War, and I tried to reflect this in the story.
The Plunger as an aesthete and practicing artist is introduced partly to expose Martin to the shock of modern art and indeed modern art is crudely satirized with a philistinism drawn largely from my old copies Punch. Another shock, and one that Pete Bruno thought was boring, was when Martin is taken by Miss Foxton to Silverend in Essex. Here Martin sees for the first time avant-garde workers' housing, along the lines of Le Corbusier's "machines for living in." His response is generally hostile (as most of the British public were in 1929) but he suddenly thinks that a modern design would suit his proposed library. All people in this period had to come to terms with modernism in one form or another. I confess that it was one of the events (along with the party on the airship) that I put in to amuse myself.
The less attractive side of modernism and town planning is shown in the late 1930s when Martin is confronted with the blunt proposal to compulsory acquire much of the Estate for "Pendleton New Town", where some flats, we are told, would have "a balcony and room for a pot plant." Fortunately Martin escapes this dystopia, but after the Second World War he does lose the greater part of Croome to a dreary housing estate and his tenants are allowed to buy their freeholds. It is the waste of good agricultural land and the ruination of the countryside by the new motorways that becomes a cause with Martin the MP in later life.
We see The Plunger evolve from an eccentric schoolboy-aesthete (perhaps a compensation for his isolated upbringing spent in the hotels and watering places of Europe) into a genuinely fine artist in mid-life and his creation of a home in the "cottage orne" is told without satire.
LOCATIONS
A considerable amount of research went into Book III "The Bells of Hell..." which deals with the First World War. Chapter 5, where the narrative takes place as the household shelters in the cellar of Branksome House, is based on a description of such a household given to me years ago by an old lady who lived in London during the air raids of the First War. In an indulgence, I based the incident in Chapter 3 where the Australian soldiers were mucking around in the restaurant on a story my grandfather told me, while some of Stephen's heroic exploits were taken from the biography of another relative of mine who was a crazily brave war photographer and yet carried no gun -- "the bravest man in the AIF" said General Sir John Monash. More importantly to me, I hope that I conveyed the horror of that war in Book III.
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As levity from this, Chapters 7-12 are given over to the whistlestop tour of the United States. Beverley Nichols made just such a trip and that gave me the idea. I wanted to put this in for my American readers and to show them something of their own country at that time. The hysteria which gripped Cleveland and the anti-war sentiment in Milwaukie were two extremes that I based on fact. One reader from St Louis had not heard of the terrible race riots that tore the city apart in 1917. Randolph Bourne wrote about the affect that the War had on Progressive thinkers and Julian Street's Abroad at Home (1914) was a useful contemporary travel guide. You might guess that Chicago is a favourite city.
RACE
I hope that the depiction of African-Americans was a fair one. Of course they were called "negroes" or a lot worse then, but Martin and Stephen don't exhibit any particular racial prejudice and indeed Martin is already well disposed to Black culture through his love of jazz music. It would be accurate to expect that the boys would have only come across African-Americans in the position of servants and railway porters, and it is the injustice to the sleeping car attendant, Moses LeRoy, that allows him to become the factotum to Bunny and Dwight. The remarkable career of Julian Abele who was the "coloured" Philadelphia architect is referenced. Then there are the three jolly sailors in New Orleans: While their accents were caricatured (and the accents so far South are unique), they were given distinct personalities and Darnell was shown to be highly intelligent despite the menial duties he was assigned in the segregated Army of those times. Darnell's surprising other life as a gambler and bookmaker was prompted by a real example I knew of in North Carolina. We learn in the Postscript that Martin is outraged at the treatment of Paul Robeson and welcomes new Caribbean immigrants to Britain. Mrs Weintraub, was perhaps more baldly comic, as an African woman who desires nothing more than to be a respectable suburban matron. The butt of joke was meant to be suburbia, rather than African ladies.
The treatment of white Americans was rather more acerbic. Senator Buckweet is the first American we meet (if we discount The Plunger's mother) and he is rather loud and bluff, but there is no harm in him. "Bunny" Wilbur is more complex, with a fight going on within him between wanting to be a "bohemian" and a Chicago businessman. In the late 1920s Martin and Stephen are quite confronted by Bunny's vehement defence of his manic drive for success, and this precedes his personal crisis and crash, which parallels that of the world economy. Some of Bunny's words are taken directly from the unpublished The Magic of America by Marion Mahony Griffin, who incidentally also contributed to the dialogue of one of The Plunger's occultist party guests. While Martin and Stephen don't understand "The Promise of American Life", neither do Bunny and Dwight really understands Martin's world (and are not really curious), with Bunny suggesting that the roads should be straightened and that The Feathers should be turned into a franchise.
Americans are further satarised in the persons of Pearl and Zeralda, the tarts who meet Martin and Stephen in New York in 1927 in Chapter 21 of Book IV. Of course they owe a great deal to Antia Loos, although I confess that the name "Zeralda" was borrowed from an American girl in an Enid Blyton school story -- the same school, incidentally, where the Sachs girls attend. Out of their lipsticked mouths comes a glossary of American usage I hate: "Drug" (for "dragged"), "Dove" (for "dived") and I would have put in "kneeled" (for knelt) and "shook my head yes" (it should be "nodded" for "yes" and "shaken" for "no" -- and I can hear the rattle!) if I could have worked these into the dialogue. On the other hand "Poil" is given a marvellously sharp line when she suggests that Zeralda might like to journey across the room to sit on Stephen's lap "if you want to broaden yourself by travel." Another is when Pearl asks, ingenuously, "What war?" and then, "Who won?"
Despite what Martin thinks of America (giving voice to it when crossing the desert in Mr Gould's luxurious train -- the wrong Jay Gould, I've discovered), he is excited to return to the United States over the years and his affection for Bunny and Dwight is genuine. With war looming in 1939, Martin sees at first hand the strength of the United States -- a potential ally against fascism. This is exemplified by three events: The World's Fair, the Savoy Ballroom swing "battle" between Benny Goodman and Chick Webb (please forgive a slight alteration made to the date of this event), and the personal meeting with FDR on the eve of the Royal Visit. However Martin's optimism of 1939 was premature and is undone in 1940 with the unexpected shock of the fall of France. During the chaotic flight from Paris, Martin feels that the whole of civilization as he understood it -- the whole world of his adult life -- was collapsing about him and that Britain was suddenly alone in a hostile or indifferent world. Victory was hard to imagine then and when it did come, Martin's world, as we see in the Epilogue, was changed far beyond what could ever have been imagined just a few years earlier.
I was surprised at how many Jewish characters populated the novel and perhaps this reflected the position of this group on the fringes (but outside) the British upper classes --as we see in the novels of Anthony Trollope. Daniel Sachs has trouble getting his daughters into a posh school and Erna experiences the prejudices great and petty in Nazi Germany, which enrages Martin and Stephen and, of course, readers can see this in the light of what we now know about the Holocaust.
The natural corollary to Stephen's engineering interest in concrete that bought him into contact with the brilliant engineer-citizen-soldier, General Sir John Monash--another Jew initially on the fringe of the establishment-- is that he should follow Monash to Australia to take up a position, in the process breaking Martin's heart. This is explained by Stephen's post-traumatic stress following the horrors of The First World War and the Passchendaele campaign. Martin's decision in Book IV Chapter 2 to go to Australia to retrieve Stephen was another excuse for a travelogue. The description of the small town of Rushworth was an invention as I'd never been there. Subsequently I found I had been pretty accurate, except that the railway station, main street and pub were reversed to how I saw them in my mind's eye!
Then there was the visit to Venice in Book IV Chapter 17, which was an excuse for a lot more description. Perhaps this whole chapter was created just as a vehicle for my favourite joke with the punch line, "Nevertheless she will sing".
Martin and Stephen's other home is Antibes. When they first went there it was little more than a fishing village and artists' retreat, but by the 1930s it had become a fashionable resort and by the 1950s it was the playground for the "jet set". Therefore, it was quite difficult to maintain the static simplicity of the early years that Stephen so appreciated and that so suited his character. Of course, the location was an excuse to introduce real-life personalities such as Winston Churchill, Picasso, Gerald Murphy and the like. The life in Provence at that time is well described in the novels of Lady Fortesque who has a passing resemblance to Mrs Chadwick. One reader corrected my description of the stone houses of Antibes as being "white" and in later chapters I changed the description to a more accurate "coffee-coloured". I have never been there.
NAMES
Selecting the names for characters in a story is as fraught as selecting babies' names. Quite often I would write the character as "A", "B", "C" etc until I had made up my mind and had an image of them in my head. Pete Bruno and I selected the names "Martin" and "Stephen" for personal reasons and then many of the names, you might notice, were drawn from the passenger list of the Titanic. "Craigth" was a misspelling that stuck and some of you may remember it is pronounced "Krate" -- I wanted it to sound Scottish. "Tennant" was originally to be "Tarrent", but I went back and changed it so that Margot Asquith (née Tennant) would have a conversational connection with Christopher. Tadrew was another stupid invention on my part -- I wanted it to sound Cornish, but should have used a real name. Molsom was selected before I needed it to come from a Portuguese name and I apologise to any Portuguese nationals for "Molsomo". I found a list of Occitan names and selected "Helias" and "Joni". "[Carlo] Siffridi" was named for the Italian porn star, who himself took the name from Alain Delon's gangster in the 1970 film, "Borsolino", which itself takes its name from a brand of hat.
Martin and Stephen quickly develop endearing nicknames for each other. "Mala" was probably not a good translation for "cheeks" -- and certainly not for buttocks-- and it also means "bad". "Genis" might have been better, but it was too late. Sorry Latin scholars! "Derby" was for Derbyshire with its "black pits" (coal mines)-- a reference to Stephen's attractive underarms. The story developed before I realised that I could have invented better names but, as with babies, they grew into them. Archibald Craigth's nickname, "The Plunger", is well explained and several of Martin's school friends are named after desserts, as Stephen observed. When the boys produce a pudding for the Churchills and the Asquiths at Antibes, you may notice that the French name would translate to "Spotted Dick" -- which my American readers may care to Google.
Then there was the running gag of upper class names that have peculiar pronunciations: Featherstonhaugh ("Fanshaw"), Brougham ("Broom"), etc. There were a couple of paybacks for school bullies, but I will draw a veil over these. When writing, I kept a sheaf of notes with correct names and even family trees so I would get the continuity right.
I must emphasise, at this point, that the fictional Poole family seat, "Croome" is completely unconnected with the utterly innocent and charming "Croome Court" in Worcestershire of which I was ignorant. I had originally wanted "Coombe" -- the name of Evelyn Waugh's country house and Dame Nellie Melba's "cottage". I conflated it with Aldous Huxley's "Crome". The town of Poole, with its suburban locality, Branksome Park, are of course places in Dorset, as I said. "Poole" was also the name of Dr Jeykll's manservant.
COMEDY
I often found myself laughing at certain turns of phrase that I just seemed to shake out of my sleeve, and I hope you will forgive me if I mention three: When Martin is recovering from some ailment he wonders if he should engage in sex with Stephen. He remarks that "it wouldn't hurt" but the narrator comments, "that this wasn't strictly true, either." Then when Martin is at his stamp albums: "Carlo picked up Australia." In the Epilogue, young Will asks Stephen "how many times a night he can do it," and "Stephen swaggered and named a well-known positive integer." Well, I laughed at any rate. I don't know what makes writing funny; I guess it's like Art.
NOT COMEDY
Because we are looking back, the whole world of Martin and Stephen is suffused with a sort of sadness because it is doomed -- doomed by the turn of history. The First World War falls as a body blow on the aristocracy and the great country house; the Second finishes it off altogether. The same could apply to the position of Britain and her Empire in the word order as we see in the chapter called "The Gold Standard".
The descriptions of the First World War were meant to be taken seriously, as was the description of the depressed mining town, West Tipton, in 1927. Martin and Stephen are both wounded in the War -- Stephen several times -- and there is a touching scene where Martin finds Stephen in a dressing station in a serious condition and where Stephen's first thoughts are still for the other wounded men about him. There were real tears and in the background could be heard men singing that very bleak song which gives Book III its title. It made Pete Bruno cry --and me too. Then in the particularly bloody chapter 13 was Martin's complicity in the murder of Dr Chalmers who had been ruthlessly executing deserters, which was a very real aspect of this period of the War. Like us, Martin is conflicted by what he had done and in his "avuncular deprivation" of Captain Billson.
On a personal level, Chapters 1 and 2 of Book IV where Stephen leaves Martin to live in Australia, were meant to be seen as a low point in Martin's life. I found that I had to hurry to bring Stephen home; I'd planned to exile him for a bit longer. The week of Martin's serious illness in the early 'thirties in Chapter 1 of Book V was meant to represent those very real crises in people's lives in the days before antibiotics.
I'm not so sure how successful I have been writing the "thriller" chapters, such as where Count Osmochescue pursues the boys across the Baltic in 1913 and, finally, across the Pyrenees in 1940. A third instance was the flight from Berlin in 1935, accompanied by the shooting of a rather "cardboard" evil Nazi and the marriage to Princess Mata. I think I'd been reading Alan Furst who does such things so much better. However, I enjoyed writing it and still enjoy re-reading it.
However, Noblesse Oblige was always meant to be a love story and the history, comedy, drama and even the sex, I hope, were all subordinate to the power of love on two lives, different to our own, but also similar.
Henry. H. Hilliard.
Thank you for reading, for the last time. If you have any comments or questions, Pete and I would really love to hear from you. Just send them to h.h.hilliard@hotmail.com and please put NOB Nifty in the subject line.