The sharp sparkle of Saki

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 16

The sharp sparkle of Saki

Salri; 4 Ljf e o f Hector Hugh Munro, with six short stories. By A. J. Langguth. Oxford, 1982. 317 pp. Notes, index. $13.75 (paperback). The Unbearable Bassington. By Saki. Illustrated by Osbert Lancaster. Oxford, 1982. 146 pp. $8.50 (paperback). (Reviewed by Joan Curry) H. H. Munro retired behind the pseudonym “Saki” while he lived, and after his death his sister Ethel did her best to ensure that he remained a secret, private individual by destroying his personal papers. This biography by A. J. Langguth has therefore been written with very little help from primary sources. “Saki” rarely speaks directly for him- self. Hector Hugh Munro was a sickly child who was not expected to survive to adulthood. Considered to be too delicate to endure formal schooling, he was left at home to the wilful and sometimes vicious care of a pair of disagreeable aunts, Augusta and Charlotte Munro. Luckily for the Munro children, the aunts turned much of their ill-temper on each other and Hector survived both the domestic turbulence and his own frail constitution.

He grew up to become a highspirited young man addicted to practical jokes. At first these pranks were direct in their execution and immediate in their consequences; once

a request for an early call written by a hotel guest and pinned to her bedroom door was changed by the young Hector into a suicide note, reinforced by the explosion of a paper bag to galvanise hotel staff and guests to urgent activity. When Hector began to write satirical sketches and short stories, however, he learnt to use his talent for creative diversions to revenge himself on those who hurt or offended him. In his fiction he set up his aunts, especially Augusta, in a variety of roles and knocked them down again, sometimes with small humiliations, but occasionally with more sinister results. He pointed out human failings and exercised his wit and ingenuity to ridicule people who exhibited them. His characters usually got what they deserved and tended to look somewhat foolish in the process. Saki has been criticised for a streak of malevolence which shows through the fun and froth of his work. Certainly some of his characters suffer unpleasant experiences and in spite of the gaiety of his stories there is often a sinister undertone. A reviewer in the “Spectator” noted that Saki “had great gifts—wit, mordant irony and a remarkable command of ludicrous metaphor—but an intermittent vein of freakish inhumanity belied his best nature and disconcerted the plain person.” The biography has two weaknesses

apart from the paucity of source material about the subject. There are notes at the back of the book, but no indications in the text to alert the reader to the references. Second, there is no bibliography and anyone interested in pursuing a study of the works of “Saki” must look elsewhere for details of what he wrote, although a start can be made with the six short stories included in the volume.

“The Unbearable Bassington” is the story of “one of those untameable young lords of misrule that frolic and chafe themselves through nursery and preparatory and public-school days with the utmost allowance of storm and dust and dislocation and the least possible amount of collar-work, and come somehow with a laugh through a series of catastrophes that has reduced everyone else concerned to tears of Cassandra-like forebodings.” So “Saki” described Comus Bassington, who is undoubtedly a sulky pain in the neck. His mother is a selfish, self-centred old woman and her wishes collide with her son’s capriciousness so that they effectively destroy each other in a tale that illustrates Saki’s skill. He describes a group of largely unpleasant people and their vindictive little plots and counter-plots, but in doing so has created a work that is wittily .composed and full of ironical insights.