Source of book: Borrowed from the library
I’ll confess. The main reason I read this book is that the opening line is one of the most iconic ever written.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
I mean, I have used that line myself more than once. So I really did need to read the book.
Leslie Poles Hartley is yet another in the long line of (mostly male) authors who were problematic in their personal lives. Hartley was almost certainly gay, but repressed it into self loathing, homophobia in his writing, and a bitter misanthropy and reactionary political philosophy. By the end of his life as a lonely alcoholic, he was as well known for his belief that the end of a rigid class system was responsible for all the ills of the world, and indeed the entire bloody 20th Century.
In a striking parallel to some of the worst people of our own time, he believed that compassion and empathy were the source of evil in the world, and that strict and brutal justice and moral lecturing were needed to fix the ills of society.
Ironically, his writing is often better than he was, full of grey areas, moral ambiguity, and complicated characters. I find it amusing that he complained that his readers “misidentified” who the villains were, instead identifying with and preferring the characters he saw as the most in the wrong.
I have noted writers like Tolstoy and Kerouac who seemed so good at identifying their own demons, yet powerless to overcome them. Hartley is perhaps the opposite: he fails to identify his own better angels, yet is powerless to keep them from influencing his work - and for the better.
Young Leo Colston is a 12 year old boy, born and raised middle class (although his father’s untimely death has left the family in somewhat straitened circumstances.) After a very sheltered childhood at his father’s behest, his mother puts him in a boarding school, where he has a variety of experiences, including one where he is bullied, but puts a curse on the bullies, after which they are injured falling off a roof. This leads his classmates to believe he has magical powers.
One of them, Marcus Maudley, invites him to stay with him for the summer, at a grand house, Brandham Hall, which the family is leasing from Viscount Trimmingham.
The summer turns out to be eventful, in a not-at-all-pleasant way, and the trauma ends up affecting Leo for a lifetime.
The Viscount, Hugh, is betrothed to marry Marcus’ sister Marian. She is unhappy about this, as she actually loves a local tenant farmer, Ted Burgess. But, well, class distinctions and all. Hugh is a pretty decent guy, but there is no chemistry. Plus, he has a bad facial wound from the Boer War, which renders him rather unattractive.
Leo is incredibly naive. As in, I’m not sure I was ever that naive, and I was pretty sheltered. Because of his lack of experience and general people-pleasing personality, Leo is easily enlisted by Ted and Marian to serve as a “go-between” - a messenger to deliver their letters to each other. Leo doesn’t realize until he is already in too deep that Ted and Marian are lovers, and having trysts in the outbuilding of Brandham Hall.
By the time he realizes this, he is already under incredible psychological pressure from Ted, and even more so from Marian, to keep on with what he is doing.
From this point on, my post will have spoilers, so if you don’t want those, perhaps go read the book, then come back to this page and read on.
Leo’s first attempt to get out of his pickle is to write his mother and ask to come home. She refuses, assuming that he is just having a homesick moment. (Particularly since he had been quite happy just a day before.)
This failing, he brews up a “spell,” using the ingredients of a deadly nightshade plant growing by the outbuilding, which he has come to associate with some combination of Ted, Marian, and perhaps sexuality itself. (Which he calls “spooning,” and tries throughout the book to get someone to explain to him. As I said, really naive.)
Along with this, he passes along a wrong time for their next tryst, so that Ted and Marian are caught, in flagrante delicto, creating a huge scandal, and a breakdown for both Marian’s mother and Leo himself. Oh, and Ted goes home and kills himself.
There is a framing story, which is one reason for the famous quote. A much older Leo (who sure seems a lot like the author) comes across his journal from that summer, and re-reads it, comparing it to his faulty memories of the time.
As a result of this, he decides to go back and try to find out what became of everyone. I’ll discuss that a bit later in this post.
The book has some very strong parts to it. The set piece of the cricket match is about as perfectly written as possible. It is really the high point of Leo’s summer, and yet the time when the first shades of catastrophe begin to glimmer around the edges. The scene at the beginning where the older Leo rediscovers the diary is brilliantly written as well.
Throughout, the descriptions, the atmosphere, the languid pace - all of these make for an enjoyable reading experience.
I found Leo’s naivety to be borderline implausible, although, I guess the author did base it on his own childhood, so maybe the past just is that much of a foreign country.
In fact, it is fascinating what the author did in fact use for this book from his own life. He chose the year 1900 because of a heatwave that year that he remembered. He was only age four, so not an exact parallel, but still. The deadly nightshade plant by an outbuilding is also an early memory, and that impression forms a central symbol of the book.
This is also not the only book by Hartley that has a child’s future destroyed by some traumatic event from which he never recovers. He hinted that something took place in his own life at that time that did so for him, but no specifics are known, and there is not evidence of an externally traumatic event such as that described in the book. This is one reason for speculation that it was his own discovery of his sexuality that served as the trauma.
Whatever the case, it is somewhat odd that in this book, this one event - seeing sex happen, being blamed for what other people created, and so on - would entirely ruin Leo’s life, that he would never psychologically recover, would never form a bond with another human again. That seems rather extreme. One would think an adult Leo would gain some perspective.
Which is yet another bit of evidence that Hartley’s own trauma wasn’t some external event, but his own internal battle.
Leo’s own internal drama may give some insight. Now, to be clear, I have zero desire to go back to my middle school days. They were tough. But at least I was a cisgender, heterosexual little boy, and whatever the difficulties of puberty and a budding sexuality were, my desires were both clear and socially acceptable.
Leo seems drawn to three characters, but for different reasons. He most of all wants Marian to like him. He sees her as beautiful, but the way he describes this, it seems more that he is drawn to what her beauty does for her and other people. She moves through life with a certain confidence and ease because of that beauty. It is less clear that he feels anything sexual for her.
In contrast, when Leo first sees Ted, with his shirt off swimming, the description definitely seems far more sensual. To me, Leo’s response goes beyond the “I want to be a man like him” feeling, even if Leo himself has no way of understanding this.
Finally, Leo idolizes Hugh. Which is also kind of complicated. Hugh is a decent enough guy, and he is kind to Leo. But Leo’s response seems as much - or more - to Hugh’s position in life. He is the first real-life aristocrat Leo has ever met, and Hugh plays the part with all the grace and condescension (in the positive sense) that one could hope for. He is the very model of an admirable English lord, particularly in the eyes of Leo.
When Leo sees Marian and Ted having sex, his idols crumble. It really is just his worship of Hugh that remains until the end - a symbol perhaps of Hartley’s lifelong worship of class distinctions. Just like Leo connects his disillusionment with Marian and Ted with the disappointment of the promising 20th Century, which rapidly devolved into two world wars and the crumbling of the British Empire.
Before I get to the ending, I did want to mention my favorite lines. The opening, obviously, quoted above. I also liked this one, from the introduction written years after the book was published, in which Hartley addresses the charges of “nostalgia” in the book.
People who have this feeling about the past aren’t necessarily comparing it to the present, to the disadvantage of the present. It has nothing to do with that, or not much. It is a desire for certain kinds of emotion which can no longer be experienced by the writer: not necessarily pleasant emotions. It is possible that a self-made millionaire may think with nostalgia of the days when he was poor.
I think this really gets to the heart of a certain kind of nostalgia. Leo never gets over his loss of innocence, of the end of his childhood. The MAGA movement is very much about this as well. It is a reaction against the demands of our age, when we are being forced to reckon with the consequences of centuries of white supremacy, of the oppression of women, and of destruction of the environment, to name a few. Oh, to be “innocent” once more, driving those classic cars, listening to early rock and roll, and truly believing the United States was blameless.
Hartley also mentions the difficulty in the 1950s of writing about the present. It was a time of radical change, and he felt that anything contemporary in setting would be outdated by the time it was published. Whether or not he was right about that can be debated, but I do think he was on to something about the way the past gives a certain illusion.
[I]n writing of the present the novelist believed he was also writing of the future. He had the benefit of that illusion - the illusion of stability so helpful to fiction. Now he cannot have it: the scene is changing as he writes.
Hartley is also perceptive about human nature. He captures the most poignant trauma of adolescence: the fear of being mocked.
I don’t think I was unduly sensitive; in my experience most people mind being laughed at more than anything else. What causes wars, what makes them drag on so interminably, but the fear of losing face?
Also good are the various discussions of the childhood code of honor. Which has always been in existence, even as the rules change.
In class and out I had often passed round notes at school. If they were sealed I should not have dreamed of reading them; if they were open I often read them - indeed, it was usually the intention of the sender that one should, for they were meant to raise a laugh. If they were unsealed, one could read them; sealed, one couldn’t: it was as simple as that.
I also want to quote a bit from the very oblique conversation between Leo and Ted. Leo is trying to worm information about sex out of Ted, who is hesitant.
“If you spoon with someone, does it mean you are going to marry them?” I asked.
“Yes, generally.”
“Could you spoon with someone without marrying them?” I pursued.
“Do you mean me?” he said. “Could I?”
“Well, you or anyone.” I felt I was being very crafty.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
I reflected upon this.
“Could you marry someone without spooning with them first?”
“You could, but-” he stopped.
“But what?” I demanded.
He shrugged his shoulders. “It wouldn’t be a very lover-like thing to do.”
Life is a bit more complicated, isn’t it? Leo’s naivety shows here, and also when he finally realizes that Marian has been using him.
She wasn’t superior in the sense of being patronizing; she took a great interest in people, and never spoke to any of us as if he or she was someone else. But she had her own angle on us, and it was generally a slightly disconcerting one: she saw us not as we saw ourselves or as other people saw us.
While Marian isn’t truly sociopathic - although I think Hartley viewed her that way - she does show some traits of viewing people as resources to be exploited at times. Although, as Leo realizes looking back, she was actually kind to him before she even thought of using him as a messenger. This is why, I think, readers tended to find Marian sympathetic. And also why many disliked the ending, complaining that Marian seemed changed in character at the end.
I also found Leo’s description of his mother’s approach to his emotions to be fascinating. Perhaps a good bit true of my own relationship with my mother.
My mother believed in the logic of the emotions; she did not think they should be tested, still less regulated, by the lessons of experience. If I had been nice to her ten times running and nasty to her the eleventh, it would upset her just as much as if ten times hadn’t existed.
I’ll also just briefly mention the reference to Punch magazine, which managed to stay in existence nearly 160 years, which is pretty incredible for any publication.
And now, about the ending. Definite spoilers here.
When Leo goes back in his 60s to find out what happened to everyone, he makes some interesting discoveries. Hugh died a mere decade after Leo met him, although we never find out definitively how. He did go on to marry Marian, and had a son - the 10th Viscount. However, the 10th Viscount and his wife were killed in World War Two.
Leo then sees a young man who looks strikingly like Ted Burgess, and, upon talking to him, discovers that he is the 11th Viscount. Marian is still living, although her memory is going a bit.
The conversation with Marian is interesting. In a way, she has turned into her mother: viciously classist about her daughter-in-law, and all too proud of being a Viscountess.
But she also wishes she could reconcile with her grandson, who is bitter against her for the affair that produced his father. While Hugh was content to look the other way and marry her, and the 10th Viscount seemingly didn’t ask about his heritage, the 11th Viscount hates that everyone knows he is the descendant of a bastard, and thus, biologically not entitled to his title. (Although legally, he is descended from Hugh - there is a whole body of law about that, actually…)
I think the ending lines, from Marian, though, are intriguing. She still sees her affair with Ted as a most beautiful thing, a perfect expression of true love, even if it couldn’t be.
Her main regret is that Ted wasn’t able to be patient. He should have just let things blow over. She would have married Hugh, of course - her parents would have forced her in any case - and Hugh was willing to have her, even though he knew everything. Perhaps after a while, they could even resume a relationship in secret. Taking a lover after marrying for family connections is nothing new. Aristocratic morality is and always has been just a bit different from middle class morality. If only Ted could have seen that.
In the end, Marian insists that her grandson should have no embarrassment whatsoever about his origins.
“Tell him there’s no spell or curse except an unloving heart.”
Is Marian right? Hartley clearly didn’t think so - he considered Marian to be the true villain of the book. It is odd that he missed the plain fact that the book itself seems to portray the hypocrisy of a class-based society as the villain - the same class-based society Hartley worshiped.
I’m no fan of sneaking around, personally. But I also know that the reason Marian snuck around was because of the social proscription on her preferred partnership. In the end, unfortunately, Ted paid the main price - the lower classes usually do in these cases - although Marian isn’t wrong that he seriously overreacted.
While it is not at all the case for me, I have wondered how I would feel if I discovered that I was the child of a passionate affair by my mom. Would it have become the focus of my difficult relationship with my mother, a reason to blame her as a deflection from the real issues? Maybe. But also, ironically, I feel my mother was the parent who treated me like the bastard stepchild, never able to measure up to my sister, the “legitimate” one. (To be clear, my siblings and I are the biological descendants of both of my parents, and I have no reason to believe either of them have ever cheated.)
For the 11th Viscount to hold a grudge, in any case, seems based completely on the artificial distinctions of class. I am reminded of a great scene in Terry Pratchett’s delightful book, Wyrd Sisters. It is all about royalty, and has the usual tropes: the assassination of the rightful king and the usurpation of the throne, the missing heir saved from murder, and surprises about parentage.
But with a twist. The jester is indeed the half-brother of the rightful prince. But BOTH of them were fathered by the previous jester, not the previous king.
And so it goes…
The Go-Between is definitely a classic for a reason, and the disconnect between what the author intended it to mean and how readers have experienced it makes it all the more fascinating.
I’ll mention here David Foster Wallace’s excellent essay, “Greatly Exaggerated,” which did more to help me understand deconstructionism and the idea of the author as related to meaning than anything else I have read. The Go-Between is definitely an argument in favor of a text having meaning beyond the intention of its author.
Anyway, it is an enjoyable book, if imperfect book. And definitely one that makes for a fascinating discussion.
***
One legal postscript to this book, because I am a lawyer:
Literary sorts will undoubtedly note some common elements between The Go-Between and other novels that in many cases drew book bans. The cross-class romance is at the core of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and there is a solid argument that the fact that The Go-Between managed to get published led in a few short years to Lady Chatterley’s Lover being at the center of the court cases that lifted the bans on that book. I will also note that E. M. Forster was a witness in favor of the book at trial, and that his posthumously published book, Maurice, also involved a cross-class sexual affair, in that case a gay one, which was doubly scandalous at the time.
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