SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton.

 

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SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton. 

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What a pleasure this is, revisiting Hilton, even if - to begin with - one has forgotten if one read this one amongst the various loved ones by Hilton. It isn't until the revelation to the protagonist that one knows one has, definitely, read this half a century ago, because that sentence is unique :  "I hope I haven't been so damned tactful that you're going to ask me what all this has got to do with you. . . ."".

Perhaps it's obvious to everyone else, but one didn't quite ask until now, and so sees only now what could be said to be a common factor, a key, so to say, that connects very diverse works of Hilton. Apart from a sense of a vast, lofty space of consciousness, it's a point of earthly loss for the protagonist that stands as a key point. 

As normal with Hilton, the reader is all with the men he begins with, without a negative for the missing wife of Boswell, until one turns the page and it's her story; and then one's with her, wondering - when finally Hilton turns to Boswell again - why the inhabitants of their small town found her story not credible. 

It isn't until much later in the story that a succession of revelations, made amongst conversations between relative strangers, begin to give a very different perspective. One then wonders if the work began with sympathy for a character, and thereafter changed, because the author knew someone. 

As one progresses reading, one is continuously amazed at how beautifully Hilton writes, and how imperceptibly gentle his empathy with such diverse characters whom he lets the reader get close to, as not only the Boswell couple but most of everyone else as well. George Boswell with his seemingly solid persona is yet idealistic, naive, and more - Livia with her sharp sensitivity is nevertheless much less empathetic to everyone than George but capable of managing quietly, and so on. 

But it's descriptions of earlier stages of WWII where Hilton excels, even for a reader who's read considerably extensively on the topic, including dozens of holocaust memoirs and the thoroughly exhaustive Shirer. 

As one finishes, though, one wonders if the two main characters represent the opposing forces of WWII, not so much in political sense as in a primal one - George, naive and dedicated to making things better while he thinks well of everyone; Livia, a force that stops at nothing for its own aims?

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"Altogether the scene was typical of many a quietly happy English occasion during those distant years when Englishmen could be quietly happy."

""You were better off than my father, then, because he had a lifetime in it. From the age of ten to the day he died—fifty years, and for half of every year, except on Sundays, he only saw daylight through the mill windows." 

""Ah, terrible—terrible," murmured the Bishop. George chuckled. 

""Maybe, but he didn't feel that way. I don't believe it ever occurred to him. He was quite content all week looking forward to Sunday." 

""When he enjoyed his preaching, no doubt." 

""You bet he did, and he was a dab hand at it too. I've heard him last a couple of hours, without a note, and fluent all the time." 

"The Bishop sighed. "Ah, that's a wonderful thing—to possess the gift of tongues, so that one never has to think for a word—" 

""Maybe that's it," said George. "It's the thinking that spoils it." His eyes twinkled and his voice, as nearly as a voice can, nudged the Bishop in the ribs. "Once I remember my father started off a prayer with 'Oh God, if there be a God'—but he said it in such a grand booming voice that nobody noticed it any more than he had.""

"Winslow, of course, was a much better speaker by any erudite standards. To the acceptable accent of English aristocracy and officialdom he added an air of slightly bored accomplishment that often goes with it, and the chiefly working-class audience gave him respectful attention throughout an address that was considerably above their heads. Had he been of their own class they might have shouted a few ribald interruptions, but they would not do this to a stranger so clearly of rank; indeed their patient silence implied a half-affectionate tolerance for 'one of the nobs' who eccentrically chose to interest himself in Browdley affairs instead of in the far more glamorous ones they imagined must be his own—the sort of tolerance that had evoked an audible exclamation of "Poor little bugger!" from some unknown citizen when, a few years back, a royal prince had passed through the town on an official tour. To Browdley folk, as they looked and listened now, it seemed that Lord Winslow was all the time thinking of something else (as indeed he was), but they did not blame him for it; on the contrary, the cheers when he finished were a friendly concession that he had doubtless done his best and that it was pretty decent of him to have bothered to do anything at all."

" ... George then confessed that during the first six years of his life he was rarely if ever told to do anything without being threatened with what would happen if he didn't or couldn't; and the fact that these threats were mostly empty did not prevent the main effect—which was to give him a first impression of the world as a piece of adult property in which children were trespassers. "Only they weren't prosecuted," he added, with a laugh. "They were mostly just yelled at. . . . D'you know, one of the biggest shocks of my life was after my parents died and I was sent to live with an uncle I'd never met before—to find out then that grown-ups could actually talk to me in a cheerful, casual sort of way, even though I was only a boy!""

" ... One of George's numerous prides was in having the finest personal library in Browdley, and probably he had; it was a genuine collection, anyhow, not an accumulation of sets for the sake of their binding, such as could be seen in the mansions of rich local manufacturers. ... "

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""Why don't you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the time?" 

""Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I'm not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he'd think it over, but he can't think, that's the trouble—he's in a world utterly beyond logic and argument—you can't prove anything to him—he just believes this woman's a sort of martyr-heroine and her husband's an impossible brute and—" 

""How do you know he isn't?" 

"Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. "I didn't know—definitely—until today. But I'm a bit positive at this moment. . . ." And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he stammered unsurely: "I hope I haven't been so damned tactful that you're going to ask me what all this has got to do with you. . . .""

"George's face was haggard as he replied: "I wouldn't call my own knowledge so very reliable—not after this.""

"Then he took Winslow to the train, and only in the final minutes before its departure did they refer to the personal matter again. Winslow muttered, leaning out of a first-class compartment: "I—I must say it, Boswell—I—I really don't know how to thank you for—for taking all this in the way you have. . . ." 

""What other way was there to take it?""

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April 15, 2021 - April 19,  2021.

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