A Hundred Years Of Saki

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1999 by Adam Frost

So Saki has reason to celebrate his centenary. His has grown into the twentieth century -- or perhaps it has grown into him. His bad taste narratives are now marks of good taste. Certainly there are now an unprecedented number of editions. He is available in both Wordsworth and Penguin [pounds]1 classics. Penguin also publish full-price editions of the Complete Stories and The Chronicles of Clovis. Tobermory and Other Stories is published by Phoenix. Everyman have also produced a selection. The OUP edition of Short Stories and The Unbearable Bassington contains an invaluable introduction by John Carey. Considering the cult nature of his reputation in 1916, it is surely both surprising and significant that he now outsells archetypal 'Edwardians' like Beerbohm, Chesterton and J. M. Barrie.

Indeed there is perhaps only one reason for concern. While critics like Jacqueline Rose and Leonee Ormond have written about J. M. Barrie's legacy, there is nowhere to go for the Saki fan who wants to read about those other Boys Who Never Grew Up, Reginald and Clovis. True, there is a biography. Written by A. J. Langguth in 1981, this gives us invaluable information about the life behind the art. A miserable childhood, brought up by two vicious spinster aunts in a permanently locked-and-shuttered Devon cottage, finds its way into 'Sredni Vashtar' and 'The Lumber Room'. A job in the Burmese Imperial police, an experience repeated by Orwell in the 1920s, is drawn on for the last chapters of The Unbearable Bassington. Five years as a foreign correspondent in Macedonia and St. Petersburg give him the storylines for 'Cross Currents', 'The Name Day' and 'The Yarkand Manner'. A lifetime of closeted, but promiscuous, homosexual activity arguably drives the vengeful, joyous subversiveness of Reginald, Bertie Van Than , Comus, Gabriel-Ernest, Adrian and other protagonists.

Yet biography only allows us to speculate. Academics have always been wary of Saki, perhaps because he is too 'easy' or too funny. His fans have not helped out by saying things like: 'Fewer writers are less profitable to write about' (Christopher Morley). He is not to be ruined by explanation. But it is a shame because a critical work on Saki would fill in many of the gaps in his literary development and complete his rehabilitation. He was never just a humorist, he always, to quote Wilde on (naturally) Wilde: 'Stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of (his) age'. His representation of childhood owes much to his consciousness of the newly emergent Edwardian 'nuclear family' (fewer children, greater supervision) and can be closely compared with Freud's analysis of the psychological pressures on the child. His love of animals owes much to his reading of Darwin and his consequent interest in brief, fatal feuds. His valorization of folklore and paganism (especially Pan worship) and his disdain for org anized morality can be traced to his understanding of Nietzsche. This is without mentioning the complexity of his literary evolution -- how a series of newspaper parodies of Kipling, Wilde, Edward Fitzgerald and Lewis Carroll showed him patiently working through his stylistic influences.