L. P. HARTLEY (1895–1972), the son of the director of a brickworks, attended Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, before setting out on a career as a literary critic and writer of short stories. In 1944 he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone, the opening volume of Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy. Hartley’s other novels include The Go-Between, which was made into a movie by Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter, and The Hireling.
ANITA BROOKNER was born in London in 1928, and apart from a few postgraduate years in Paris has lived there ever since. She studied art history at the Courtald Institute and subsequently taught there until 1988, when she retired from professional life and devoted herself to writing novels.
EUSTACE AND HILDA
A TRILOGY
L. P. HARTLEY
Introduction by
ANITA BROOKNER
NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
New York
CONTENTS
Biography
Title Page
Introduction
The Shrimp and the Anemone
1. The Shrimp and the Anemone
2. Patching it Up
3. The Geography Lesson
4. The Picnic on the Downs
5. A Lion in the Path
6. The Dancing Class
7. Hare and Hounds
8. A Visitor to Tea
9. Laburnum Lodge
10. When Shall I See You Again?
11. Drawing-Room and Bath-Room
12. The West Window
13. Respice Finem
14. Angels on Horseback
15. One Heart or Two
Hilda’s Letter
The Sixth Heaven
1. Concerto for Two Violins
2. Scherzo for Twelve Matches
3. A Wedding
4. Eustace at Home
5. Lady Godiva of Highcross Hill
6. The Staveleys in Conclave
7. The Shrine of Fantasy
8. Billiard-Fives
9. Hilda’s Hands
10. The Sixth Heaven
11. Down to Earth
Eustace and Hilda
Part One
1. Lady Nelly Expects a Visitor
2. Time’s Winged Chariot
3. The Picnic at Santa Rosa
4. Under False Colours
5. The Feast of the Redeemer
6. A Ritual Bath
7. The Speaking Likeness
8. Losing Ground
9. An Old Friend
10. Departures and Arrivals
11. The Fortuny Dress
12. The Larva
13. The Knight-Errant
14. In the Lists
Part Two
15. Back to Cambo
16. A Meditation About Size
17. The Funny Gentleman
18. A Bicycle Ride
19. The Experiment on the Cliff
20. Eustace and Hilda
Copyright and More Information
INTRODUCTION
THE QUESTION posed by this lucid and haunting novel—in effect three novels in one—is of enduring interest. How does a person of limited capacity deal with the challenge posed by free will? Not that the matter is stated as crudely as this. We meet the protagonists, Eustace and Hilda, as children, whose destiny is inevitably circumscribed by their elders. But in the case of Eustace the agent of repression is nearer to hand. A timid, conscience-stricken boy, further disabled by a weak heart, he is almost entirely dependent on his sister, four years older than himself. Their mother is dead; they live in a small seaside town with their father, their aunt, and their younger sister. But these family members are supernumeraries, whose influence pales beside that of Hilda, the precociously stern, strong-willed guardian intent on saving Eustace from himself. This means curbing his impulses, though these are far from dangerous; it means imparting an understanding of the moral order, of the necessity of accomplishing unpleasant tasks, of disregarding the agreeable in favor of the disagreeable. That way, implies Hilda, lies self-mastery. The impressionable Eustace believes it all too willingly.
In the novel’s first part, The Shrimp and the Anemone, we see the two children growing up against a background of family decorum and rituals at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact the family hardly exists as a unit: the father is jocular, unreliable; the aunt severe and characterless. There is physical freedom of a sort, freedom to play on the beach, to build rock pools, but not to play with other children. The leading image—that of a shrimp half devoured by a sea anemone—is in place in the very first chapter, and it is one which the subtle author has no need to labor. The assault on the shrimp leads inevitably to its demise, but also to that of the anemone, when the children intervene in an effort to save its victim. Eustace feels this loss acutely, but is in no position, as a boy of nine, to ponder the lessons that might be drawn from it.
The children’s static situation changes with the introduction of a third party, Miss Fothergill, an old lady disabled by a stroke and confined to a bath chair. Urged, as always, to do something unpleasant for his own good, Eustace addresses this frightening person and is soon persuaded to visit her in her imposing house, to take tea and to play cards. To his surprise they become friends of a sort; fear is displaced by fascination and familiarity. When the old lady dies she leaves him a legacy which will enable him to discover the world, if he has a mind to do so. News of this legacy brings other characters into prominence, notably the socially superior Staveley family. Eustace, at this young age already sensible to the seductions of class, warms excitedly to the patronage of Dick Staveley, the family heir, though it is the beautiful Hilda who is Dick’s prey, a stratagem of which she is well aware. Eustace, in his disastrous innocence, sees nothing amiss. The question repeats itself: How is he to discern the underlying menace of the worldly? Hilda we can rely on; she has enough conscience for both of them. But Eustace has a weakness for stronger, more exotic characters, as has already been proved by the eagerness with which he succumbed to Miss Fothergill. This inclination is never to leave him.
Hartley does not insist on this point. He makes no direct intervention, evinces neither sympathy nor partiality, but merely displays a tenderness towards his characters which, in the initial chapters, has something of childlike identification about it. Rarely can the hesitations and scruples of an unfledged mind have been so carefully described. Nor can the reader remain unconvinced that what binds the two children is a deep and fundamental love which will outwit all others. This symbiosis has nothing suspect about it: Freud’s name is mentioned, but although it is clear that the children’s formation will influence their adult development there is no emphasis on the dangers that might be involved. As far as the reader is concerned we are merely in the presence of a brother and sister: she is stern and serious; he is timorous but given to unexpected visitations from the wider world. It seems that he might have a career as a writer or an academic, something involving not too great a struggle. But in fact Miss Fothergill’s money will make it easy for him to delay the decision, while the amiable manners which have altogether escaped Hilda’s supervision will ensure some kind of success.
In the novel’s second part, The Sixth Heaven, Hartley picks up his story in the aftermath of World War I. The children have entered their adult lives. Eustace is a languid undergraduate at Oxford, while Hilda devotes her energies to a clinic for crippled children. At this point, Hilda is almost absent from the narrative, though her immanence is unmistakable. Her essence remains that of a mournful ghost, whose moral strength has sapped her physical existence. At home in Willesden, an unfashionable area of London to which the family has moved, Eustace tries out his new sophistication on his aunt, to no avail. Inevitably he looks further afield, rediscovering the Staveley family, wh
ose prestigious relation, Lady Nelly Staveley, takes him in hand. Once again he gravitates in the general direction of wealth and favor, achieving a sense of freedom for which only barely understood impulses have prepared him. His fantasy of a marriage for Hilda with Dick Staveley seems improbable in light of her determined drabness.
Henry James would have appreciated the unhurried pace and the masterly certitude with which L.P. Hartley conducts his novel. Eustace and Hilda are no match for the entrenched class attitudes of the Staveleys when they are unexpectedly asked to spend a weekend at their imposing house, Anchorstone Hall. Even Lady Nelly’s invitation to Eustace to visit her in Venice might be no more than a graceful gesture. We do not know what words are exchanged between Hilda and Dick Staveley, for this novel is essentially chaste. The Edwardian amplitude of the narrative is more than substitute for any crudeness which our more superficial sensibilities have come to expect. And Eustace accepts Lady Nelly’s invitation, a temptation which a wiser head would have resisted. It is to prove fatal, in a sense to everyone involved.
James would also have appreciated the moral delicacy of Eustace’s confused reactions to the teasing which is the normal form of discourse among Lady Nelly and her friends, so very different from the bleak instructions he had been accustomed to in his youth; and he would have admired the detail of Hilda’s sartorial indiscretion when she appears at Dick Staveley’s birthday party in a red dress. George Meredith would have appreciated the incompatibility between Dick and Hilda, separated by far more than caste. Eustace and Hilda are marked out by their blamelessness. Eustace may even have misunderstood the invitation to Venice, for which there may have been more than one motive. Being unschooled in the ways of the world, he outstays his welcome. In this fashion he is able to ignore reports of more delicate matters at home. On receipt of a blotched and incoherent letter from Hilda he responds by sending money and by ordering a Fortuny dress which, in the normal course of events, she would be unlikely to wear.
It is easy to understand Eustace’s febrile anxiety and exaltation as he takes in the glories of Venice, but a discomfort has intruded: he wears the wrong clothes, is late, misunderstands impromptu arrangements. More important, he attempts to appease his conscience with fantasies, with soliloquies that justify his dilatory behavior. He is not unaware that Hilda is in some sort of distress, for there are letters from home which he strives to ignore. It is more important to complete the book he has started, to stay on in Venice at Lady Nelly’s vague behest, than to go home as Hilda begs him to. That he has become separated from her is all too evident, but the author will reunite them in a ritual which will lead to a fateful conclusion. The third part of the trilogy is simply entitled Eustace and Hilda, as if all the other characters have become irrelevant. So close has been their bond that neither is quite able to survive without the other, and the reader accepts this as the only just interpretation.
The three parts of Hartley’s trilogy were originally published separately between 1944 and 1947, and were then published together, as Eustace and Hilda, in 1958. The novel is a product of a time in which literary traditions were still respected. Also respected, or at least acknowledged, were one’s position in society and one’s accordingly humble expectations. For this latter reason Eustace and Hilda are unable to accommodate change, let alone shock. Evenhandedly, but with a touch of wistfulness, the author describes their modest beginnings. The reader, who knows more than the protagonists, understands their various mistakes and misapprehensions. The novel is so expertly written that one hardly notices the skill which informs it. This masterpiece—for it is no less than that—imposes its convictions without underlining them. The reader’s own moral sympathies are brought into review. Yet this same reader does not question the justice of Hartley’s account. Having followed the brother and sister from childhood to their bewilderment when they find themselves out of context, we recognize their fates as unavoidable. One closes the book with a feeling of profound sadness, of regret not only for Eustace and Hilda but for the beautiful literary undertaking that is now ended. Few modern novels impose high standards. This one unquestionably does.
—ANITA BROOKNER
EUSTACE AND HILDA
THE SHRIMP AND THE ANEMONE
I’ve known a hundred kinds of love,
All made the loved one rue.
—EMILY BRONTË
1. THE SHRIMP AND THE ANEMONE
EUSTACE! Eustace!” Hilda’s tones were always urgent; it might not be anything very serious. Eustace bent over the pool. His feet sank in its soggy edge, so he drew back, for he must not get them wet. But he could still see the anemone. Its base was fastened to a boulder, just above the water-line. From the middle of the other end, which was below, something stuck out, quivering. It was a shrimp, Eustace decided, and the anemone was eating it, sucking it in. A tumult arose in Eustace’s breast. His heart bled for the shrimp, he longed to rescue it; but, on the other hand, how could he bear to rob the anemone of its dinner? The anemone was more beautiful than the shrimp, more interesting and much rarer. It was a ‘plumose’ anemone; he recognised it from the picture in his Natural History, and the lovely feathery epithet stroked the fringes of his mind like a caress. If he took the shrimp away, the anemone might never catch another, and die of hunger. But while he debated the unswallowed part of the shrimp grew perceptibly smaller.
Once more, mingled with the cries of the seamews and pitched even higher than theirs, came Hilda’s voice.
“Eustace! Eustace! Come here! The bank’s breaking! It’s your fault! You never mended your side!”
Here was another complication. Ought he not perhaps to go to Hilda and help her build up the bank? It was true he had scamped his side, partly because he was piqued with her for always taking more than her fair share. But then she was a girl and older than he and she did it for his good, as she had often told him, and in order that he might not overstrain himself. He leaned on his wooden spade and, looking doubtfully round, saw Hilda signalling with her iron one. An ancient jealousy invaded his heart. Why should she have an iron spade? He tried to fix his mind on the anemone. The shrimp’s tail was still visible but wriggling more feebly. Horror at its plight began to swamp all other considerations. He made up his mind to release it. But how? If he waded into the water he would get his socks wet, which would be bad enough; if he climbed on to the rock he might fall in and get wet all over, which would be worse. There was only one thing to do.
“Hilda,” he cried, “come here.”
His low soft voice was whirled away by the wind; it could not compete with the elements, as Hilda’s could.
He called again. It was an effort for him to call: he screwed his face up: the cry was unmelodious now that he forced it, more like a squeak than a summons.
But directly she heard him Hilda came, as he knew she would. Eustace put the situation before her, weighing the pros and cons. Which was to be sacrificed, the anemone or the shrimp? Eustace stated the case for each with unflinching impartiality and began to enlarge on the felicity that would attend their after-lives, once this situation was straightened out—forgetting, in his enthusiasm, that the well-being of the one depended on the misfortune of the other. But Hilda cut him short.
“Here, catch hold of my feet,” she said.
She climbed on to the boulder, and flung herself face down on the sea-weedy slope. Eustace followed more slowly, showing respect for the inequalities of the rock. Then he lowered himself, sprawling uncertainly and rather timidly, and grasped his sister’s thin ankles with hands that in spite of his nine years still retained some of the chubbiness of infancy. Once assumed, the position was not uncomfortable. Eustace’s thoughts wandered, while his body automatically accommodated itself to the movements of Hilda, who was wriggling ever nearer to the edge.
“I’ve got it,” said Hilda at last in a stifled voice. There was no elation, only satisfaction in her tone, and Eustace knew that something had gone wrong.
“Let me look!” he cried, a
nd they struggled up from the rock.
The shrimp lay in the palm of Hilda’s hand, a sad, disappointing sight. Its reprieve had come too late; its head was mangled and there was no vibration in its tail. The horrible appearance fascinated Eustace for a moment, then upset him so much that he turned away with trembling lips. But there was worse to come. As a result of Hilda’s forcible interference with its meal the anemone had been partially disembowelled; it could not give up its prey without letting its digestive apparatus go too. Part of its base had come unstuck and was seeking feebly to attach itself to the rock again. Eustace took Hilda’s other hand and together they surveyed the unfortunate issue of their kind offices.
“Hadn’t we better kill them both?” asked Eustace with a quaver in his voice, “since they’re both wounded?”
He spoke euphemistically, for the shrimp was already dead.
But Hilda did not despair so easily.
“Let’s put it in the water,” she suggested. “Perhaps that’ll make it come to.”
A passing ripple lent the shrimp a delusive appearance of life; when the ripple subsided it floated to the surface, sideways up, and lay still.
“Never mind,” said Hilda, “we’ll see if the anemone will eat it now.”
Again they disposed themselves on the rock, and Hilda, with her head downwards and her face growing redder every minute, tried her hardest to induce the anemone to resume its meal. For the sake of achieving this end she did not shrink from the distasteful task of replacing the anemone’s insides where they belonged, but her amateur surgery failed to restore its appetite and it took no interest in the proffered shrimp.
“I wish we’d let them alone,” sobbed Eustace.
“What would have been the good of that?” demanded Hilda, wiping her brother’s eyes. He stood quiescent, his hands hanging down and his face turned upwards, showing no shame at being comforted and offering no resistance, as though he was familiar with the performance and expected it. “We had to do something,” Hilda continued. “We couldn’t let them go on like that.”