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Random Harvest, by James Hilton.
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Random Harvest remains, somehow, the quintessential romantic tale, of a love that isn't limited to youth and attraction and looks but is deeply human and of soul, enduring and tenacious for years. It remains the quintessential story of memory loss due to shock, and too, it's the quintessential Hilton novel, despite his many other excellent works.
Reading it yet again after another gap of over two decades, it's strange to realise it begins differently from what one remembers, albeit with dark clouds of war gathering, in November 1937.
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" “I’ve been in these rooms before-often. Fellow with the disarming name of Pal had them in my time-‘native of Asia or Africa not of European parentage,’ as the University regulations so tactfully specify. High-caste Hindoo. Mathematician-genius in his own line-wonder what he’s doing now?-probably distilling salt out of sea-water or lying down in front of trains or some other blind-alley behaviour. Used to say he felt algebra emotionally-told me once he couldn’t read through the Binomial Theorem without tears coming into his eyes -the whole concept, he said, was so shatteringly beautiful…"
Apart from colonial racism, there is an extra effort there to literally wipe out India as a nation, a culture ancient and surviving, and all her treasure, and then simultaneously ridiculing it. The description of the mathematical genius might fit others from India, apart from the famous Ramanujan, but surely Hinduism is identified with India, survives not much outside India, and Hilton wasn't so ignorant he thought Africa was close to India?
" ... and one evening Pal and I-sounds sentimental, doesn’t it, Pal and I?-lined up in a queue that stretched half-way round Trinity Great Court to hear a lecture by a fellow named Eddington about some new German fellow named Einstein who had a theory about light bending in the middle-that brought the house down, of course-roars of laughter-just as you heard tonight only more so-good clean undergraduate fun at its best. And behind us on the wall the portrait of Catholic Mary scowled down on this modern audience that scoffed at science no less than at religion. Heretics indeed-and laughing heretics! But my pal Pal didn’t laugh-he was transfixed with a sort of ecstasy about the whole thing."
So he ought to have understood the superior quality of consciousness of Pal, who was his friend, and possibly tried being less of a racist colonial.
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"I’m talking about the QUALITY of the man, not his opportunities."
Says a retired Cambridge professor about Charles Rainier, the male figure central to the story, to Harrison, his secretary, who is the protagonist and is caring about Rainier as several others about him are, too.
This 'quality of the man' is a theme running through most of Hilton stories, whether so mentioned or not, labeled or not, and it reaches its highest peak in Lost Horizon where Conway reaches a high peak of experience and more, but it's felt through his most other works, from an obvious Goodbye, Mr. Chips, to a much less obvious So Well Remembered or Time After Time.
It's not that the men or their qualities, characters, or histories are similar. The best one can describe it a spiritual character not related to religions or observances thereof, but a quest within that may not manifest in life.
In this work it runs parallel to the quest of Rainier for the missing part of his life. And Random Harvest remains the quintessential romantic story because, for once, the man isn't alone spiritually; the consort, felt as a fleeting elusive shadow, is constantly beside him, so to speak, revealed only much later, but known all along.
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A theme recurring through Hilton's works, apart from the town name Browdley that is mentioned in this work too, is that of cotton mills of Lancashire, again encountered here:-
" ... my great-great-grandfather made his pile out of the first steam-driven cotton mills in Lancashire. You may imagine Stourton, therefore, peopled with the ghosts of Negroes and little children.”"
One has to wonder if, that tidbit, it's Hilton's own history. For that matter, notice the names of Rainier homes - Kenmore and Stourton - wonder if that's personal history too, for Hilton. He sets Stourton close to West Berkshire, perhaps in or near Hampshire, but not anywhere near the industrial Stourton in Leeds, the only one of that name in maps; and Kenmore is set a bus ride away from central London, similarly, far from the small village in Perthshire.
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Another familar bit, if one has read Knight Without Armour, where the story is included:-
"“Tell me about the story.”
"“Oh, it was nothing much-just a rather feeble yarn about a Russian soldier returning from the front after the Revolution.”
"“What happened to him?”
"“Nothing exciting. He just roamed about the country trying to find where he lived.”
"“Had he-had he lost his memory?”
"“No, he was just a simple fellow-couldn’t read and write-all he could give was the name of the village and a description of it that might equally have applied to ten thousand other Russian villages. The government officials wouldn’t bother with him, because he couldn’t fill out the proper forms, so he just had to go on wandering vaguely about trying to find the place.”
"“And did he-eventually?”
"“He was run over by a train and carried to a neighbouring village where he died without knowing that it actually was the one he’d been looking for… of course you might have guessed that.”
"“Having read Gogol and Chekhov, I think I might.”
"“I know, it was just an imitation. I haven’t any real originality-only a technique. I suppose Rainier realized that. So I’d better stick to the catalogues.”"
Does it end this way in Knight Without Armour, is difficult to recall, since one is overwhelmed by the main story therein, and too the background of Russian revolution, and, not the least, the landscape itself.
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" ... It rather surprised as well as pleased him to realize that he had been remembered so well; ... "
Therein the genesis of title of So Well Remembered?
" ... He wished he hadn’t told the Liverpool tailor to throw away his original torn and rain-sodden suit; it might have afforded some clue to the mystery. He pondered over it intermittently, but the effort merely tired him and brought nearer to the surface an always submerged sadness, that sense of bewildering, pain-drenched loss. ... "
"Sheldon wrote to him regularly, giving him news of Stourton, but there wasn’t much to relate: Mr. Rainier kept about the same; Sanderstead and Truslove were still quarrelling; while the family chafed more restively, finding Stourton rather dull to do nothing in, and wondering how long they must wait before they could decently decide to return to their respective homes. Not, of course, that they wanted the old man to die, but they clearly felt they shouldn’t have been sent for so soon; on top of which Charles’s return had somehow disturbed their equilibrium, for if there is one thing more mentally upsetting to a family than death, it must be (on account of its rarity) resurrection. All of which Charles either deduced from or read between the lines of Sheldon’s direct reportage of facts-such as that Truslove had had an unsatisfactory interview with Dr. Astley, that Chet’s wife was no longer on speaking terms with Bridget, that Chet had taken to spending most of his time practising shots in the billiard-room, that the local vicar had paid a discreet visit hoping to see Charles, and that the weather was still fine, but the barometer beginning to fall."
" ... He was aware that all the family viewed him with curiosity and some with suspicion, and that intimacy with any of them would probably lead to questions about himself that he could not answer."
"Suddenly he found himself on his feet and addressing them; it was almost as if he heard his own voice, spoken by another person. “I’m sure I thank you all very much, and you too, Truslove. The proposal you’ve outlined is extremely generous-TOO generous, in fact. I’m a person of simple tastes-I need very little to live comfortably on-in fact the small income I already have is ample. So I’m afraid I can’t accept your offer, though I do once again thank you for making it.”"
" ... He really hadn’t any definite inclination, either to have the money or not; but his lack of desire for it himself was certainly not balanced by any particular wish that they should be enriched."
"Charles kept up the refusal; the whole family then began to argue about it, with more vehement generosity now that they felt the issue was already decided; but they made the mistake of keeping it up too long, for Charles suddenly grew tired and exclaimed: “All right then, if you all insist, I’ll agree to take it.”
"Truslove beamed on what he imagined to be his own victory; Chet, after a second’s hesitation, came across the room and shook Charles by the hand. “Fine, old chap… Now we’re all set and Truslove can do the rest.” But the others could only stare in renewed astonishment as they forced deadly smiles into the supervening silence."
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"Many days during that strange, almost somnambulist winter of 1938-1939 ... “These are the last days,” he said to me once. “We are like people in a trance-even those of us who can see the danger ahead can do nothing to avert it-like the dream in which you drive a car towards a precipice and your foot is over the brake but you have no physical power to press down. We should be arming now, if we had sense,-arming day and night and seven days of the week,-for if the Munich pact had any value at all it was not as a promise of peace to come, but as a last-minute chance to prepare for the final struggle. And we are doing NOTHING-caught in the net of self-delusion and self-congratulation. We don’t realize the skill and magnitude of the conspiracy-the attempt to reverse, by lightning strokes, the whole civilized verdict of two thousand years.”"
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"“There’s only one thing more important,” he answered, “and that is, after you’ve done what you set out to do, to feel that it’s been worth doing.”"
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" ... it’s a bad play-a bad play. Why do they always choose it for school use? The pound of flesh-gruesome. The Jewish villain-disgustingly anti-Semitic. ... "
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Beginning of return of memory for Rainier is depicted very differently in the film. They've kept a couple of bits such as the fez related recognition without knowing that its a recognition, or the dialogue about enquiry for the hospital on the hill, but changed other surrounding ones, chiefly his staying on as a gardener until summer, or his connection with the play that triggers his memory. In the film it's been turned to their being in the same town accidentally that brings recognition before he realises it. Mainly it's changed in that his escape from the asylum is immediately followed by Paula taking him away, rather than the months of interim survival and getting better while she nurses him and subsequently visits.
So in the film he's helpless while she brings him to safety up north, while here in the original work he's recovered except for his memory, and needs only respite from being hunted by authorities. And too, here his working with Paula's theatre group has a discovery about his persona involved in that being desirable for them.
" ... I think it was probably because they could all see you were such a gentleman.”"
And skipping this whole thing avoids the complications about his accidentally injuring a railway policeman, without having noticed it, but also then skips the discovery of the paradise village overlooked by the double summit with a pool in between, visible only when one comes to it, that plays a part in the story.
Yet another change from book to film, of course, is the place they married.
"“There’s an office nearly across the street, but for sheer quietness, why don’t you allow me to marry you in my own church? Hardly anyone ever comes to any of the services-it would be the most unnoticed marriage I could possibly imagine…”
"So they were married at St. Clement’s, Vale Street, London, N.W., and as they left the church after the ceremony newsboys were racing down the street offering extra editions-“Peace Treaty Signed at Versailles.” It was June 28, 1919. ... "
Instead, the film replaces the complexity of their married life, after their discovery of the paradise of Beachings Over, in London in frugal circumstances, with an idyllic small cottage with a cherry tree in front, somewhere in country where they've escaped immediately after armistice.
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"“I know that too. There’s something RIGHT about us-about our being together here. And Blampied wants us to stay.”
"“I’d like to stay too. I love that old ugly house.”
"“So do I. And d’you know, I don’t WANT to remember anything now-anything I’ve ever forgotten. It would be so-so unimportant. My life began with you, and my future goes on with you-there’s nothing else, Paula.”
"“Oh, what a lovely thing to tell me! And by the way, HE said he hoped you wouldn’t remember.”
"“Blampied?”
"“Yes. He’s devoted to you.”"
Poignant, knowing he's going next to Liverpool, where an accident brings forth his lost memory, losing memory of interim years and Paula and marriage, instead, for years.
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The end, far more poignant as it was written.
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1975 - May 11, 2021 -
May 14, 2021 - May 17, 2021.
Purchased January 24, 2021.
Kindle Edition, 325 pages
Published October 25th 2018
by Print On Demand
(first published January 1941).
ASIN:- B07K4VXJNN
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