Crome Yellow [Paperback]

Although best remembered for his "Brave New World", Huxley first established himself in literary circles with his 1921 novel, "Crome Yellow". This is Huxley, if not quite the outcast, certainly the detached commentator, able to sit back and observe his society in action.

Huxley would always be something of an outsider - though born into a wealthy family in 1894, his life would be disrupted, first by the death of his mother when he was 14, then by illness, when he was 16, which left him blind for over a year and seriously limited his eyesight for the rest of his life. The illness had enduring effects - Huxley did not serve in the First World War, so was distanced from the survivors of his generation who made it back. The illness also prevented him from entering a career in pure science.

"Crome Yellow" is a charmingly cruel dissection of a society attempting to recover from the 1914-18 war, a war which had swept away the social fabric of Europe. Crome is a large country house which attracts the English upper classes and pseudo intelligentsia. We follow the experiences of young Denis Stone, a would be poet, as he watches the other guests.

"Crome Yellow" is a comedy, a satire of class and the pretensions and lotus eating assumptions of a class which is losing its role and its function and growing increasingly out of touch with the modern world. It presents amusing portraits and enjoyable anecdotes about life in a country house. Stylistically, however, it is dated, and the reader may find many of its references and allusions are obtuse. An interesting rather than a captivating read.

At first glance, quite an unassuming plot - take a big country house, fill it with 20's socialites, and make a novel out of it. But Huxley provides more than enough intrigue to keep the pages turning. A most agreeable first novel, and Huxley is extraordinarily insightful; he was only in his mid-twenties when this work was conceived (contains the "bottle-breeding" idea which later resurfaces in "Brave New World").

Read "Antic Hay" next, for a more heady, urban mix of 20's culture, ideas and passion.

Crome Yellow is holiday reading rather than heavyweight Huxley; it is his debut novel written in his twenties, set in the twenties and is funny, witty and clever.Aspiring novelist and poet Denis journeys on a slow stopping train to stay with a group of guests at Crome Yellow, a country seat somewhere midway between E.M.Forster and P. G. Wodehouse in character. The substance of the novel consists in the ironic conversations and interactions between a very mixed group of guests. His hosts are aristocratic inheritors of an ancient estate, Henry Wimbush and his wife Priscilla. He runs the estate and bores people with its long history, which involves such characters as the tragic dwarf Sir Hercules who commits suicide after giving rise to progeny of a more usual size; Sir Ferdinando who ate seven dozen oysters in one day and three spiritual sisters who pretend not to eat at all. Priscilla used to gamble on horses and lose but now she uses her interest in astrology to cast the horoscopes of the runners and has begun to win. She aspires to do the same for entire football teams. Amongst the younger guests is the enigmatic Jenny who apparently hears things when she wants to. She also keeps a "little red book" (Private-not to be opened!) in which Denis finds devastatingly accurate caricatures and cartoons of the group,including himself.There is the glamorous Wimbush niece Anne, who Dennis falls for but who doesn't fall for him although she does admire him in his white flannels.She is a little ambiguous in her deployment of affection. The dashing socialite Ivor (bright yellow car with green leather upholstery) is in with a chance. He plays the piano a little, paints and sings a little, romances Anne a little but ends up with the plainer Mary. She reads Havelock Ellis and takes such things seriously. But for Ivor "...'women are wonderfully the same; shapes vary a little, that's all....in Spain ...one can't pass them on the stairs.....In England they're tubular. But their sentiments are always the same'" Anne also admires the dark Provencal painter Gombault. Much to the disgust of Denis, Gombault paints her portrait, dances and swims with her. "...'do you think' asked Denis hesitatingly, 'that that Gombault.?'.....'I'm sure of it' Mary answered decisively..."
The older guests give Denis unwanted advice about everything. Scogan the intellectual, looking like an extinct saurian, tells him how not to write a first novel and knows all there is about Art, Literature, History and Philosophy. The light novelist and journalist Barbeque-Smith, admired and read by Priscilla advises Denis to do what he does when writing: meditate, go into a trance, then come out of it to find that all he has to say is now plain. Mr Bodiham the Rector lives literally and metaphorically in "..a brown gloom.." He longs to be a charismatic evangelical preacher but cannot rise above his usual convoluted, dull sermons. The contrast between Bodiham's esoteric biblical exegesis with reference to the second comming and diatribes from Scogan, who always has adequate rational reasons for what he thinks, is very sharp.
The long established Bank Holiday Charity Fair provides a bucolic climax to the novel. Everyone takes part in it. Denis offers to sell copies of his poems (which do not sell). Deaf Jenny plays the drums in the village band. Saurian Scogan metamorphoses into the fortune teller Madame Sesostris. To the admiration of Denis Mary ably organises the children's races whilst Henry, wearing his bowler hat runs all the field events.
A subtitle of the book might be: 'The Continuing Education of Denis'. He fails to get the girl, but he makes a real friend of one; he catches a glimpse of himself as others might see him and he departs a wiser man.
A delightful, worldly, cynical yet joyful book.