First published in 1975/1976 (London: Heinemann, New York: Little, Brown).
We come to the last volume of A Dance to the Music of Time almost exactly 50 years after its first publication. Reviews of Hearing Secret Harmonies began appearing in U.K. papers in mid-September, and almost universally they were both laudatory and rueful. Powell’s work was by now accepted as one of the great achievements of 20th century English fiction, but those who’d grown accustomed to seeing a new chapter appear every two years or so for the last 25 years were saddened by the thought that 1977 could promise no similar gift.
To some extent, Powell wrote Hearing Secret Harmonies in a valedictory spirit. Those who could remember first encountering Widmerpool in the first pages of A Question of Upbringing, emerging “stiffly, almost majestically” out of the mist on his Sunday run had the satisfaction of seeing him disappear, again on a run, into the mist, moments before dropping dead. Other characters given due farewells include Jean Templer Duport Flores, Bob Duport, Edgar Deacon and St. John Clarke (in the form of revivals), the disgraced Bithel from The Valley of Bones, and Jimmy Stripling (a perennial if marginal player). The second generation of dancers—Fiona Cutts, the Quiggan twins, Polly Duport—fill in some of the gaps left by losses in the first, though more like members of the chorus line. What lines Powell gives them are few and none emerges with any real definition. Even the appearances of the most charismatic figure of the younger generation, Scorpio Murtlock, are mostly conveyed second-hand after Nick’s first encounter at his home in the country. One gets the impression that Powell had no appetite to follow their progress any further than the end of this volume.
For those who’ve long awaited Widmerpool’s come-uppance, Powell delivers with near-sadistic relish in Hearing Secret Harmonies. Having dodged charges of treason for his mysterious collusion with an unnamed Warsaw Bloc government in Temporary Kings, Widmerpool here is a man progressively losing his bearings and status—all the while claiming it’s all by design. Raised to the position of university chancellor, he is ridiculed by being splashed with paint by the Quiggan twins. He then arrives at the presentation of the Sir Magnus Donners Prize to Russell Gwinnett with the twins in tow, appearing to take some morbid pride in having been cuckolded by a man worthy of a prize-winning biography (X. Trapnel). He attempts to upstage Gwinnett’s acceptance speech with a strange bridge-burning rant—perhaps hoping to score points with the twins, only to find himself pranked along with everyone else when they detonate a stink bomb.
His final descent, into the cult of Scorpio Murtlock, is a caricature of the Christian concept of self-abnegation. Where a Christian ascetic strives to sublimate self-interest through the denial of bodily needs and service to others, Widmerpool approaches it like a competitive sport. He seems to crave Murtlock’s praise for the fervor of his self-humiliation. “I’m leading now!” he shouts with glee as he reaches the front of the pack just before his disappearance and death. But in his last encounter with Nick, it’s clear that Widmerpool recognizes he’s playing a game whose rules remain a mystery: “If the universe is to be subjected to his will, a man must develop his female nature as well as the male—without lessening his own masculinity—I knew nothing of that… but Akworth…long misunderstood …should make amends…as with Bith…though not…not….”
It’s fitting and not a little symbolic that stubby Kenneth Widmerpool, the son of the maker of artificial manure, the desperate striver willing to take a ripe banana in the face and a pot of sugar on his head in quest of acceptance, chooses to use his meeting with Sir Bertram Akworth, an old adversary (but also idol) from the City to declare his turning away from all his previous pursuits. It would be hard to find a man more utterly oblivious to his gesture: “Even had they been familiar with it, the complexity of Widmerpool’s declared attitude towards social revolt, ritual sex, mystical repentance, was likely to be lost on them, as it was lost, collectively and separately, on Sir Bertram Akworth himself.” Yet he stands no higher in his new world, either. When he informs Murtlock that he plans to leave the cult, he receives a curt, contemptuous reply: “No.”
It’s a sign of Powell’s deep-seated respect for even his nastiest character that we learn of Widmerpool’s demise second-hand, from Bithel, in London in search of drink and a bit of comfort. The humiliation in from of Sir Bertram Akworth was penance enough. And from a man singularly incapable of appreciating art in any form, Bithel managed to rescue a work undoubtedly worth far more than Widmerpool could ever have imagined: the Modigliani sketch that had made its way from Stringham to Pamela Flitton and, through Bithel, to someone singularly capable of recognizing its value: the art dealer Barnabas Henderson. And with that, we take leave from A Dance, piped off with the words of Robert Burton’s An Anatomy of Melancholy about the relentless flood of “new news…of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged…” and so on for many lines. To which Powell offers a reminder that man’s dances are always much briefer than nature’s: “Even the formal measure of the Seasons seemed suspended in the wintry silence.”
Hearing Secret Harmonies is not the longest volume in A Dance, but (setting aside the flashbacks in several earlier volumes) it spans the longest period of time and is the most complexly structured, at seven chapters:
- Chapter 1. Spring 1968.
- Nick and Isobel Jenkins are surprised by the arrival of a horse-drawn caravan with their niece Fiona Cutts and a small group led by a charismatic young man named Scorpio Murtlock. Murtlock is said to have somewhat messianic powers (or aspirations) and is fascinated by the Devil’s Fingers, a nearby rock formation said to have been associated with pagan rituals.
- Chapter 2. Summer 1968.
- Nick hears of the revival of Trelawneyism (the faith of Doctor Trelawney, last encountered in The Kindly Ones)—as well as of interest in the works of St. John Clarke via a television miniseries. Now chancellor of some redbrick university, Widmerpool is splattered with paint by the Quiggans’ twin daughters at a ceremony. Matilda Donners shows Nick the photos of the Seven Deadly Sins tableaux taken at Stourwater in A Buyer’s Market. From Sunny Farebrother, Nick hears of a commotion at Jimmy Stripling’s recent funeral involving Murtlock.
- Nick hears of the revival of Trelawneyism (the faith of Doctor Trelawney, last encountered in The Kindly Ones)—as well as of interest in the works of St. John Clarke via a television miniseries. Now chancellor of some redbrick university, Widmerpool is splattered with paint by the Quiggans’ twin daughters at a ceremony. Matilda Donners shows Nick the photos of the Seven Deadly Sins tableaux taken at Stourwater in A Buyer’s Market. From Sunny Farebrother, Nick hears of a commotion at Jimmy Stripling’s recent funeral involving Murtlock.
- Chapter 3. Autumn 1968/Winter 1969.
- Attending the presentation of the inaugural Sir Magnus Donners Prize to Russell Gwinnett for Death’s Head Swordsman, his biography of X. Trapnel, Nick is startled by the arrival of Widmerpool with the Quiggan girls in tow. He steals the spotlight from Gwinnett with a rather incoherent speech disavowing his previous beliefs, only to be interrupted by the explosion of a stink bomb tossed by the girls.
- Attending the presentation of the inaugural Sir Magnus Donners Prize to Russell Gwinnett for Death’s Head Swordsman, his biography of X. Trapnel, Nick is startled by the arrival of Widmerpool with the Quiggan girls in tow. He steals the spotlight from Gwinnett with a rather incoherent speech disavowing his previous beliefs, only to be interrupted by the explosion of a stink bomb tossed by the girls.
- Chapter 4. Summer 1969.
- At a Royal Academy banquet, Nick runs into Mark Members, who brings him up to date on J. G. Quiggan. He also meets Canon Fenneau, who fills him in on Scorpio Murtlock’s upbringing and rise to the status of would-be cult leader.
- At a Royal Academy banquet, Nick runs into Mark Members, who brings him up to date on J. G. Quiggan. He also meets Canon Fenneau, who fills him in on Scorpio Murtlock’s upbringing and rise to the status of would-be cult leader.
- Chapter 5. December 1969 to June 1970.
- Nick hears of Widmerpool’s attempt to compete with Murtlock for leadership, but after the Devil’s Fingers become the subject of conservationist concerns, there seems to have been a midnight bacchanale involving Murtlock and Widmerpool at which Widmerpool was humiliated (and not for the last time).
- Nick hears of Widmerpool’s attempt to compete with Murtlock for leadership, but after the Devil’s Fingers become the subject of conservationist concerns, there seems to have been a midnight bacchanale involving Murtlock and Widmerpool at which Widmerpool was humiliated (and not for the last time).
- Chapter 6. April 1971.
- Nick and Isobel attend the wedding at Stourwater of their nephew Sebastian Cutts, to Clare Akworth, the grand-daughter of Sir Bertram Akworth, a noted financier. There is a reunion with Flavia Wisebite (Pamela Flitton’s mother, now hanging tenuously onto sanity), followed by the arrival of Russell Gwinnett and Fiona Cutts, newly married. Suddenly, Widmerpool arrives in ragged, humble garb, leading a pack of Murtlock’s followers. He seizes the opportunity to attempt to recant the beliefs that propelled his rise through the City and government before a bewildered Sir Bertram. Scorpio Murtlock arrives, takes control, and leads the cult members away, asserting his dominance over Widmerpool.
- Nick and Isobel attend the wedding at Stourwater of their nephew Sebastian Cutts, to Clare Akworth, the grand-daughter of Sir Bertram Akworth, a noted financier. There is a reunion with Flavia Wisebite (Pamela Flitton’s mother, now hanging tenuously onto sanity), followed by the arrival of Russell Gwinnett and Fiona Cutts, newly married. Suddenly, Widmerpool arrives in ragged, humble garb, leading a pack of Murtlock’s followers. He seizes the opportunity to attempt to recant the beliefs that propelled his rise through the City and government before a bewildered Sir Bertram. Scorpio Murtlock arrives, takes control, and leads the cult members away, asserting his dominance over Widmerpool.
- Chapter 7. Autumn 1971.
- This chapter is almost entirely a flashback triggered by Nick’s glimpse of a headline as he rekindles a bonfire on his estate: “EDWARDIAN SYMBOLIST SEASCAPE VOTARIES.” It reminds him of the exhibition of Edgar Deacon’s paintings at Barnabas Henderson’s gallery, his encounter with Bob Duport, Jean (etc.) Flores, and Polly Duport, and his conversation with Bithel. It is from Bithel that he learns of Widmerpool’s death and sees Bithel turn the Modigliani drawing over to Henderson. From this, he returns to the present and his farewell quote from Robert Burton.
And with this, we come to the end of A Dance to the Music of Time.