The Region Cloud (1925) by Percy Lubbock celebrates its centenary this month. An epigraph gives the source of the title, Shakespeare’s Sonnet xxxiii: ‘But out, alack! He was but one hour mine,/The region cloud have masked him from me now.’ We are prepared, therefore, for a story of transience and loss.
There is a slow, meditative opening in which the protagonist, Austin, notices as he dines in a French café a haughty figure seated in an alcove who is treated with high respect by the patron and the other guests. He finds he cannot help but steal looks at him, though at first these do not seem to be returned. He assumes he must be some aristocrat. The opening sets up an elegant sort of mystery, but is perhaps rather too measured, at times verging on the ponderous.
At length, however, the object of his fascination joins him at his table and discourses to him. It emerges that he is a famous artist, Channon, who is pleased that the protagonist apparently does not know of him, so that they can converse naturally: he takes to him, and calls him his ‘ghostly friend’. The revelation of the stranger’s identity does not quite live up to the mystique built up: we might have looked for something more unusual and elusive. Still, there is a certain curiosity about what happens next, and how their relationship develops.
The scene shifts from France to Bintworth, the artist’s country house estate in England, where Austin becomes part of the menage and negotiates his position via a vis the rest of the household. There is an air of gentility and formality which conveys a certain graceful quality. We observe how he melds into the rather studied, poised ambience of the place. In a sense, he almost becomes a sort of emanation of the great artist, and we seem to be witnessing a very subtle, visionary, type of haunting. In other hands, this might have turned into a tale of emotional or spiritual vampirism, but that is far from Lubbock’s idea.
There are, however, to my view two weaknesses in the book. Firstly, we are not told enough about the artist’s work, so the portrait of him as a great figure lacks depth or detail: we have to take it on trust. Though Channon is the focus of the narrative, his work seems oddly unrealised. Secondly, the novel over-elaborates its narrative. The same point is repeated in variations over several pages without taking matters much further forward. This might be seen to impart a measured, meditative quality to the prose, with a scrupulous care to convey the finest shades of meaning, but it does not make for compelling reading. There is neither strong incident nor even the sense of the ethereal that might be found in, say, a Walter de la Mare story.
The explanation for the novel’s theme and its style is that Lubbock was an earnest disciple of Henry James, indeed for a while his literary secretary and then the editor of his letters. The novel seems to depict their relationship and to convey the great respect he had for James, as well as their mutual attraction. But the author emulates rather too closely his master’s elaborated style, without the concomitant narrative qualities: there is no aspiration towards the elements of mystery and suspense in The Turn of the Screw.
Percy Lubbock had earlier published a somewhat lighter and more engaging novel, Roman Pictures (1923). Here, the narrator is in a reverie in a square in Rome, delighting in the dreamy mood he is in but ready, after his stay of a few weeks in the city, for some new experience. As if conjured up, an old school-friend saunters across the square towards him. He had never been a close friend but always seemed an unusually assured individual, and even now makes the narrator feel somewhat gauche.
The friend has taken lodgings far away from what he calls ‘the English ghetto’, where all the tourists stay. Along with his air of effortless superiority, he also has charm and appeal. Guided by him, the narrator finds himself introduced, as the title suggests, to a fascinating gallery of people, each with vivid personalities. There is almost a sense here of a Ronald Firbank novel, though without quite the oblique wit and satirical zest. This book is more successful as a novel than The Region Cloud, part of the genre of the rather awkward Englishman abroad encountering new aesthetic and bohemian dimensions.
Percy Lubbock’s first editions were always nicely produced, with good quality paper and fine printing, and such touches as paper labels, and they exude discernment and fastidious taste, as does his prose. They do not seem to be greatly pursued today, but may still attract readers of the rare and recondite.
(Mark Valentine)
Image: World of Books.