H. H. Munro (1870–1916)

The masterful style and tone are straight out of Evelyn Waugh: sententious, humorous, plot and characters briskly delineated, all amidst a privileged milieu of languid, one might say lordly (Augustan) reserve. For English readers, the pleasure in this setting and flavour surely includes the comfort zone of a fanciful idyll of class and breeding: manners and status, refinement without effort. A tale un-befitting of the times, but an understandable temptation. Waugh
himself contributes an introduction to the edition I read, and his analysis of Saki’s strengths and limitations is fitting and may colour one’s reading. (Or one may sense pre-echoes of the risible extras showing up two decades later in Waugh’s comic world: Saki’s Ada Spelvexit, for example, surely sounds like a Maltravers associate?) As that introduction recognises, there are stylistic gems on every page of “Bassington”. Saki cannot resist a wry and pithy paradox (the “intensely English look… one seldom sees out of Normandy” (p82), the outdoor scene “alive with…alert stagnation” (p87))
and is not above manoeuvring the plot or description to work in one of his bon mots (“The poor have us always with them” (p77)) or Wilde-like epigrams (“The art… of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit further”(p32)). But this sparkling style and wit also mean the work lacks emotion. It’s cheerfully amoral, it leans towards the heartless and hollow; the dialogue can be stiff and staged. And with such a satirical approach, one challenge is how to avoid merely sneering, being nasty? I’m not sure if there is any good answer to that, but certainly this book lacks one. In that light, this reader preferred getting through the book in small doses. Given also that Saki here is sometimes inclined to dabble rather than to deepen (in chapter 9, halfway through, he is still introducing new character stock), one may see the justification in his eventual focus on short stories rather than novels like “Bassington.” He is of course, and again Waugh’s introduction has primed us here, the acknowledged master of that shorter form.… (altro)