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Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark contains an odd poem embedded in the middle of p. 47. Some googleing turned up nothing—nothing for key phrases, nothing for longer snippets—leading me to believe that the poem is the completely original work of Jean Rhys. If so, it’s placed there in the text for some intrinsic purpose, one I’d like to examine more closely.

The first thing I notice is the equation of people and horses—perhaps horses to flee bleak London and race in the meadows of the country, or perhaps a reference to the idea that sometimes horses are “more expensive than people” (46). We could write off “old men wail unnoticed” to the author of the poem’s regret that his work will most likely never be heeded, or even read, but I would rather point you back to (25) where we read “someone went past in the street, singing. Bawling:

Bread, bread, bread,
Standard bread,
A little bit er Standard bread,
Pom, pom,”

Those words rang in Anna’s head—the poor in the street crying for bread. Old men praying to a harsh God? We’re not told if the poor in the street are old or young, but it seems like these two passages describe the same poverty and desperation on London’s streets.

However, I will write off the stinking butcher’s shop, and worse, the fish store. They are obviously reflections of the same thought—that London is a vile and stinking hole—only without any subtlety. If we wondered about what the old men were wailing about, now we have some idea—their city is a Pit. However, we have a plea for something in line 6. Cool, white arms—we know that Anna may fit that description since she wishes she were black at one point in the narrative, and is attractive to men. London needs an angel of redemption—is Anna Morgan good enough? Perhaps, but she is poor and so far from rich. And, according to her, “nothing can change [her status]. For ever and for ever turning and nothing, nothing can change it” (43). Without money, there’s little that can be done: she’ll be forced to stay in vile London.

Read my notes

Curious if the poem in chapter V of Voyage in the Dark was allusive to other works, I google for some key terms. Surprisingly, I found none of them, leading me to believe that the following is original, created solely for the book, and unadapted:

‘Horse faces, faces like horses,
And grey streets, where old men wail unnoticed
Prayers to an ignoble God.’
There the butcher’s shop stinks to the leaden sky;
There the fish shop stinks differently, but worse.

[…]

‘But where are they -
The cool arms, white as alabaster?’

[…]

Loathsome London, vile and stinking hole …’

Oxyrhynchus Papyri decoded, 20% more Greek works to come!

There’s a really odd moment near the end of Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, where you can’t decide whether to choke and spit out whatever you’re drinking and exclaim “What!??” or just laugh and continue reading. It’s when Adam sells “his share” in Nina to cover his tab at Lottie’s. It’s ironic that the whole of the book he’s been trying to scrape together enough money to comfortably marry her and then sells her off to cover a debt. It’s like the cancellation of two debts—one to Lottie, one to her. In one fell swoop, he no longer needs to “pay up” to anyone!

The context of the scene is unusual. Ginger is reluctant to buy a girl—“it’s not decent”, he says (279). Then, he quickly changes his tone. The next sentence reads, “Besides, a hundred pounds is the deuce of a lot” (279). And, he goes on about the cost of getting married, buying a couple of Irish polo ponies, and getting them over to England! His moral scruples are easily overcome: he’s really just worried about the expenditure. So, getting Adam out of the way for 78 pounds seems like a good deal to him. He actually only gets Adam to promise that “[he]’ll try,” but it’s enough for Ginger (280). From this, we can deduce that from Ginger’s point of view, the relationship between Adam and Nina is completely airtight and strong. His only way in is to accept the offer.

Adam, on the other hand, is having his revenge, paying off all his debts, and still keeping Nina to himself. Compare Nina’s speech where she says she’ll marry Ginger with this one, Adam notifying her of her sale:

“I’m engaged to be married”
“Who to?”
“I hardly think I can tell you… Ginger.”
“Well?”
“I don’t ever want to see you again”
(260)

“My dear, I sold you”
“Darling … who to?”
“Ginger. You fetched …”
“Well?”
“And now I never am going to see you again”
(281)

When Nina notifies him of her engagement to Ginger, he declares a paradigm for the future—I never want to see you again. Then, when he sells her to Ginger, the transaction is complete from both sides. Nina chooses Ginger, Adam sells her to Ginger. And then, he never has to see her again. The parallelism in their speech makes it clear that poor Ginger is really just the intermediate in some outbreak of frustration between the two, the vehicle they use to convey painful messages back and forth.

As the first part of the book revolves around the gossip column’s perspective of parties and the London social scene, much of the interpersonal interaction in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies occurs through minor grievances passed back and forth among the well-to-do. These are then twisted, exaggerated, and wrung through the gossip columnists and fed to the general public, often to disastrous effect. The upper-class, we might imagine, conduct themselves with grace and carefully studied manners—especially the English. So, it was a surprise to discover such petty immaturity and ill will among them.

The mildly-disagreeably behavior starts with Mrs. Ape’s divine recovery of her money from the bar steward on the channel crossing. That a missionary holds a collection after singing doesn’t seem out of place, but mentioning “her own five shillings which she got back from the bar-steward” does (20). She’s supposed to be offering salvation—orthogonal to monetary issues—but she still has to get her measly five shillings back. It speaks to pettiness of Ape’s soul that she keeps careful track of such a small amount.

Lottie’s parlour is an epicenter of posh grievances. When she meets Adam, she greets him with the following exchange:

“Well, you are a stranger. […] You’ll find a lot of your friends here.” She led Adam into the parlour, where they found several men, none of whom Adam had ever seen before (43).

Strangely, she places him into an unfriendly environment while claiming it is homely and comforting. The misunderstanding between Mr. Outrage and Baroness Yoshiwara is another example: “But, you never knew with Orientals” … “It was so hard to know what these Occidentals wanted.” It’s a trivial misunderstanding, a scheduling grievance between the two, but it entirely classifies their relationship so far!

I could go on, about how Balcairn stole Vanburgh’s story, just not the part he was allowed to borrow, or Adam and Nina’s argument over the color of his hair (67), or the fall of the government over … scandal (100): the number of trivial grievances passed back and forth is limitless. What is important, I think, is to recognize that what we would consider relational faux pas are a potent means of communication and relationship in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies.