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A Handful of Dust and The Unbearable Bassington

In an article for Evelyn Waugh Studies (the newsletter for the Evelyn Waugh Society), Martin Stead suggests that Saki was one influence on Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust:

One other likely influence is the novel The Unbearable Bassington (1912) by Saki (H. H. Munro). The bulk of this work takes place in London, and, like Waugh’s novel, shows up the shallowness of the characters in the fashionable world. Then, at the end, the action shifts abruptly to the jungle, to where the hero, Comus Bassington, has been exiled, and where he dies, hopelessly mourning his former life. Waugh admired Saki, and wrote the 1947 introduction for a reprint of Bassington, although he felt the novel to be less successful than the short stories. Waugh and Saki certainly share a number of points, such as a clipped, pared-down style, some extremely dark humour, and the habit of telling much of their stories in dialogue.

If you haven’t read A Handful of Dust, you should! (I am assuming my readers have read The Unbearable Bassington.)

Source: Evelyn Waugh Studies Vol. 54, No. 2

Link: https://mcusercontent.com/8c668cf57e3f057438f69a6fa/files/df948699-ca27-9b19-6ebc-4c6a84fedc10/Evelyn_Waugh_Studies_54.2.pdf

‘The Miracle-Merchant’: A One-Act Play by Saki

The Internet Archive has a scan of Modern One Act Plays, edited by Wayne Philip (1935), which includes ‘The Miracle-Merchant’, a short play closely based on the short story ‘The Hen’ (in Beasts and Super-Beasts). It takes over the plot and most of the dialogue from the original, though Mrs. Sangrail and Clovis become Mrs. Beauwhistle and her nephew Louis Courcet.

This is a curious piece, whose provenance, according to Brian Gibson, is unknown (Reading Saki, p. 197). It was first printed the year before in One-act plays for stage and study, eighth series; twenty contemporary plays (publisher: S. French, Ltd., 1934).

The notes to the play are not much help. They begin:

This is ‘Saki’s’ dramatic version of his own short story called The Hen, which is the fifth tale in the collection entitled Beasts and Super-Beasts. It is very interesting to compare the two and to observe the skilful [sic] addition of suitable stage movement: much of the dialogue remains unaltered, but the breakfast business, for instance, is added to enliven the scene.

The rest is a potted biography/overview of Munro’s works which leans heavily on Ethel Munro’s biographical sketch of her brother.

Neither of the other main works on Munro (Langguth’s biography and Sandie Byrne’s The Unbearable Saki) have anything to say about it.

Oddly, the play is prefaced by a legal notice beginning: “All performing rights are reserved by the author”, although by this time Munro had been dead for nearly twenty years, so couldn’t have given his permission even if he’d wanted to. On the other hand, in the Acknowledgments thanks are given to “the Literary Executors of the Author, and Messrs. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd.” for permission to reprint. The mention of Munro’s publishers is interesting: had they in some way the rights to the play? Or rights deriving from the fact they published the story on which the play was based? The actual first publication of the play, as mentioned above, was not by The Bodley Head but by Samuel French, the pre-eminent publisher of stage plays (albeit in an anthology). Perhaps if that edition could be tracked down some more information could be gleaned on this offshoot of Munro’s main work as a short-story writer.

Here’s the link: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.34453/page/n189/mode/2up

[Edit 11 Oct. 2024: Brian Gibson kindly tracked down the aforementioned 1934 Samuel French edition. At the start of smaller print regarding any performance of the play and payable royalties, etc. it says: “The Miracle-Merchant is copyright, 1934, by E. M. Munro, and is subject to royalty.” E. M. Munro is, of course, Ethel Munro, Hector’s sister, who was his heir and literary executor. It makes more sense to find her name, although it doesn’t give us any more information on when the play was originally written.]
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“The Identity of the Narrator in Saki’s first Reginald Story”

Prompted by the thought of translating the first Reginald story into Russian, Lora Sirufova has written a short but fascinating article about the identity of the narrator, that unknown “I” who introduced Reginald to the world thus:

I did it—I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops’ garden–party against his will.

https://www.academia.edu/112374550/The_Identity_of_the_Narrator_in_Sakis_first_Reginald_Story

New book! Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories

Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories CoverThis is just a quick post to say that my new book has been published and is now available in both electronic and paper form. Titled Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories, it reprints the original versions of tales that were later changed when collected together in The Chronicles of Clovis (see here for some information on that), and also includes three other stories that haven’t appeared in any collections up to now: ‘Mrs. Pendercoet’s Lost Identity’, ‘The Romance of Business’ and ‘The Optimist’. I have blogged here already about the rediscovery of a couple of these.

The book is published under an Open Access license, which means that you can read it online or download a PDF version for free. I would urge you though, if you can afford it, to buy either the EPUB, the paperback, or the hardback version, and help to support the publishers.

You can find it here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0365

Writer Eley Williams recommends Saki in The Guardian newspaper

My comfort read
Anything by Saki. You have time to read one of his short stories right now. Some are nasty little acts of mischief, some lugubriously camp fancies. There’s satire, folklore, sass and starch. Put this thing aside; go find some Saki.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/12/eley-williams-i-trusted-people-far-less-once-id-finished-that-novel?CMP=share_btn_url

The Carlton Hotel

London, the Carlton Hotel
London, the Carlton Hotel, from Leonard A. Lauder collection of Raphael Tuck & Sons postcards; Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection via archive.org

As featured in ‘Reginald at the Carlton’ (which I ought to post here some time…)

Forthcoming: ‘Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories’

Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories CoverI’m delighted to announce that my edited collection of Saki’s stories will be appearing soon as a real book and in a number of electronic formats, thanks to Open Book Publishers.The book is a follow up to my article on the genesis of The Chronicles of Clovis and contains the original periodical versions of the following stories:
  1. Esmé
  2. Tobermory
  3. Mrs Packletide’s Tiger
  4. The Background
  5. The Jesting of Arlington Stringham
  6. Adrian
  7. The Chaplet
  8. Wratislav
  9. Filboid Studge
  10. Ministers of Grace
It also includes three hitherto uncollected stories:
  1. Mrs Pendercoet’s Lost Identity
  2. The Optimist
  3. The Romance of Business (only recently rediscovered, as revealed on this blog)
I’ve written an introduction, setting the stories in context, and as you’d expect there are plentiful annotations as well. The volume also includes a chronology of Munro’s life, suggestions for further reading, and a list of textual variants for the Chronicles of Clovis stories.At the minute I’m correcting the proofs, and once that’s done publication shouldn’t be too far away. I will of course post the publication date here as soon as I know it.More details can be found here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0365

Saki in Japanese

I’ve been looking into the topic of Saki in translation and recently I got hold of a copy of a selection of the stories in Japanese: サキの思い出: 評伝と短篇. (“The Memories of Saki with his Short Stories”).

Cover of サキの思い出: 評伝と短篇. (“The Memories of Saki with his Short Stories”.) Translated by 花輪涼子, 彩流社, published 2017)
It’s an attractive little hardback, with some of Munro’s own drawings on the cover. These are taken from Ethel Munro’s memoir of her brother (first published in The Square Egg and Other Sketches in 1924). Ethel’s reminiscences actually make up of the bulk of the book (more than half). These remaining pages contain:

 

  1. Rothsay Reynold’s memoir of Munro (originally the introduction to The Toys of Peace)

  2. Sredni Vashtar

  3. The Saint And The Goblin

  4. The Old Town of Pskoff

  5. Karl-Ludwig’s Window

  6. A Jungle Story

  7. Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business

  8. A Young Turkish Catastrophe

  9. The Sex That Doesn’t Shop

  10. The Soul of Laploshka

  11. Judkin Of The Parcels

  12. The Mappined Life

  13. The Image of the Lost Soul

Which I think most Saki aficionados will admit contains some rather strange choices.

For me, there’s only one 24-carat classic there: ‘Sredni Vashtar’. ‘The Mappined Life’ and ‘Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business’ are both good too, but there are (in my opinion) better Clovis stories (for example, ‘The Stampeding of Lady Bastable’, or ‘The Unrest-Cure’, or ‘The Secret Sin Of Septimus Brope’, or…). The others are definitely minor Saki: for example, ‘Judkin Of The Parcels’ and ‘The Image of the Lost Soul’ are both apprentice work, written before Munro really found his vein. Some of them don’t even fit the description of them as “stories”: most noticeably ‘Karl-Ludwig’s Window’, which is a one-act play, but also ‘The Old Town of Pskoff’ and ‘The Sex That Doesn’t Shop’, which are probably best described as pieces of journalism.

And as far as I can see, there’s not a unifying theme (e.g animals) which might have justified putting these tales together in one volume. Perhaps the publishers were aiming at showing as wide a range of Munro’s invention as possible?

Nor is Ethel Munro’s selective biography of her brother essential reading, though I suppose it does the job of a kind of introduction to his work.

All in all, I can’t help feeling that a Japanese reader who bought this would go away at the end with a fairly poor opinion of Munro as a writer.

Bibliography:

Munro, Ethel M., et al. サキの思い出: 評伝と短篇. (“The Memories of Saki with his Short Stories”.) Translated by 花輪涼子, 彩流社, published 2017)