First published in 1973 (London: Heinemann, New York: Little, Brown).
Over a decade has passed since the events of Books Do Furnish a Room. Characters we have known since A Question of Upbringing (e.g., “Buster” Foxe) have died, as has at least one character we were just introduced to in Books (X. Trapnel). Nicholas Jenkins’s career has progressed to the point that he gets an invitation to the prestigious (if unnamed) international literary conference in Venice around which the events of Chapters 1-3 take place. Though Widmerpool lost his seat in Parliament in the General Election of 1955, his career has progressed as far as most commoners could aspire: to a seat in the House of Lords (a Life Peerage, however, not a hereditary one–not that heirs are ever in the cards for Widmerpool).
The more renown one gains, however, the more visible and vulnerable one becomes as well, and as Nick arrives in Venice and makes or renews acquaintances in Chapter 1, he hears rumors of possible cracks in Widmerpool’s pedestal. The death and last days of the French public intellectual Ferrand-Seneschal seem to have involved Widmerpool (and his wife) in some way (sexual? political? both?). His wife, Pamela, is there in the company of the ambiguously entrepreneurial American, Louis Glober. When Widmerpool shows up unexpectedly during the viewing of the Tiepolo ceiling at the Bragadin palace, Pamela receives him with bared nails and venomous tongue. Even later, at the studio of the ancient painter Tokenhouse, the links between Widmerpool and intrigues in some unnamed Communist eastern bloc country become more evident if no more coherent. Temporary Kings is, among other things, a catalog of Widmerpool’s not-quite-ness: suspected of treason but not quite blatant enough to be charged; married to a beautiful woman but not quite so conventionally to support his aspirations to greater power; titled but not quite a member of the nobility; acknowledged by all as a ferociously hard worker and master of bureaucracies but not quite adept enough to retain his seat and perhaps gain a post in one of the circles around the Cabinet. Indeed, by the time Temporary Kings opens, his decline has already begun.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the Venetian painter whose mural of the legend of Candaules and Gyges everyone has gathered at the Bragadin palace to admire in Chapter Two, worked in the Rococo or Late Baroque style, and Temporary Kings is arguably the most ornate of all the volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time. Indeed, the affairs (of all types) that Nick Jenkins observes and tries to make sense of in the book are, in some cases, so ornate that we poor readers are left disoriented. The sexual practices alone hinted at in the course of its six chapters include voyeurism, sadism, masochism, bisexuality, and necrophilia, never mind the relatively mild matters of homosexuality, infidelity, and frequenting prostitutes. We can sympathize with Nick’s desire to maintain a rigorous separation between the near-chaos of the lives of his friends and acquaintances and the presumed calm and sanity of his home life with Isabel (and their rarely mentioned sons).
Powell considered Temporary Kings “perhaps the best constructed volume in the sequence,” and some readers consider it the best volume overall in A Dance. Certainly Powell’s choreography, especially in the sala of the Bragadin palace of Chapter Two, in which the men and women come and go, talking of Tiepolo, could be used to instruct MFA students in the craft of stage management of fictional characters. And if one pays close attention, it becomes apparent that Powell often employs Russell Gwinnett in the role of auxiliary narrator, where Nick tells us what Gwinnett has told him or simply hands narratorial duties over to Gwinnett.
On the other hand, there’s also an argument that only two characters really matter in Temporary Kings: Widmerpool and Pamela. There is more of a core story in this volume than in any other in the series, and that story is of the breakdown of their relationship, which was never less than an unstable compound in the first case. With few exceptions, the hints regarding sexual practices mentioned above involve one or both of them. If either enters a room, we all begin to wonder what reaction will follow: that it will be combustion of some destructive force is not in doubt. If, as some suggest, Pamela was principally attracted to Widmerpool’s ability to gain power, she is presented with ample evidence that that ability is fading. That she breaks down faster than he should not be a surprise: she runs on a far more volatile and fast-burning fuel. But though he survives for another volume, we will see how her death (recollected rather than seen in Chapter Six) diminishes his already dimming flame.
Temporary Kings opens in the summer of 1958 and continues, with the usual gaps, to the autumn of the following year.
- Chapter 1. Venice, summer of 1958. (As Nicholas Birns points out, the conference Nick attends coincides with the Venice Biennale, which is held in even-numbered years.) Nick, having arrived in Venice for a literary conference, meets several other members of the conference, including a few whom he knows (or knows of), such as Dr. Emily Brightman. He meets the American academic Russell Gwinnett, who informs him he’s working on a biography of X. Trapnel, which stirs Nick to retrace Trapnel’s history after the disastrous break-up night with Pamela at the end of Books Do Furnish a Room. That night, settling into sleep, Nick recalls Daniel Tokenhouse, an old friend of his parents and former member of the art publishing house where he used to work. Tokenhouse has for some years been living and painting in Venice.
- Chapter 2. The following day. Invited by Jackie Bragadin, one of the sponsors of the conference, Nick and numerous other attendees visit the Bragadin palace to see a ceiling painting by Tiepolo depicting the legend of Candaules and Gyges — a sexual encounter we learn may have a parallel in one involving Widmerpool, Pamela, and Ferrand Seneschal in a London hotel a short while earlier. Pamela and the American Louis Glober, guests of Jackie Bragadin, are already there. Widmerpool arrives and there is a scene with Pamela in which accusations and recriminations fly at ferocious speed.
- Chapter 3. The following Sunday. Nick visits Tokenhouse at his studio. The two go to lunch in a cafe on the grounds of the Biennale exhibition, where they meet Louis Glober, Ada Leintwardine, and others. On returning to Tokenhouse’s studio, they are startled by the arrival of Widmerpool, who seems to have some murky business with Tokenhouse involving connections in eastern Europe. That evening, Nick dines with Gwinnett, who tells him he’s been approached by Pamela. The two run into Odo Stevens and his wife in a cafe. Soon after, Pamela comes in and hints at Widmerpool’s likely ruin over the rumors of his treasonous activities.
- Chapter 4. Late summer 1958 to spring 1959. Nick visits “Books Do Furnish a Room” Bagshaw, now living in Primrose Hill. Knowing that Gwinnett is in London on Trapnel research, he suggests him as a possible lodger at Bagshaw’s. Jumping forward to Christmastime, Nick recounts the incident of Pamela being found naked in the hallway outside Gwinnett’s bedroom at Bagshaw’s as conveyed by various observers. Nick attends a luncheon at the Soviet embassy, amidst more rumors of Widmerpool’s impending arrest as a spy.
- Chapter 5. An early summer evening in 1959. A concert of Mozart at Odo Stevens’s home in Regent’s Park. A cast of characters as diverse as in Chapter 2 are met or observed. The redoubtable Mrs. Erdleigh is now with Jimmy Stripling. Moreland is unwell and collapses. As reconstructed by Nick, when the party breaks up, Pamela has a scene with Louis Glober, flares up at Mrs. Erdleigh, and attacks Widmerpool before storming off into the night (“I have the impression she made some parting shot to the effect that none of us would see her again.”)
- Chapter 6. Winter of 1960-61, but describing events a year earlier in retrospect. Nick receives a letter from Gwinnett, now teaching water-skiing in Spain, in which he writes of the death of Pamela and of Louis Glober. Nick’s last conversations with Moreland, in which they consider the Candaules-Gyges story in the context of the Widmerpools. In London, Nick is crossing Westminster Bridge when he observes a procession of antique cars and then bumps into Widmerpool, on his way to the House of Lords. “After what I’ve been through, I think it my duty to show I can rise above personal attack—and, I might add, personal misfortune,” he tells Nick, who has the impression that he’s been invigorated by his recent crises.
When we open the next and last volume, Hearing Secret Harmonies, a gap of nearly as long — nine years — will have passed.