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Inclinations
Miss O'Brookomore became evasive. "I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet." "Because ----" "Professor and Mrs. Cowsend have the rooms next ours..." "Buz! Let them!" "Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon....You never saw such ghosts on their rambles." "Who is Mr. Arbanel?" "He's very blasé." Miss Collins clasped her hands. "I'd give almost anything to be blasé." Young Mabel Collins, naïvely wily-wise before her very tender years, daughter of a dreaded and dull Yorkshire estate, needs experience - needs to get out into the world. At her first soirée, she is introduced to the renowned eccentric biographer Geraldine O'Brookomore, who is just about to start out for Greece on the trail of her latest quarry, the romantic early traveller Catherine "Kitty" Kettler. It is decided that Mabel will be the perfect companion for her trip. Ronald Firbank's wildly accentuated style, brimful of strange exclamations and bursts of hilariously intense conversation, takes us with them as they move around the famous Greek landscape, meeting along the way many English and European expatriates with equally striking preoccupations and "I heard the flowers scream as I picked them!" Mrs. Erso-Ennis was saying as she scattered a shower of blossoms upon the floor. Their whole escapade cannot help but be Across a vivid, a perfectly pirate sea, Salamis showed shimmering in the sun. Miss Arne held out arms towards it. "It's like a happy ending!" she breathed. There will be no such happy ending for their friend, the actress Miss Arne. Salamis' sea will be a witness to....what? An accident? A murder? Mabel, though, has something else on her the dashing Count Pastorelli, disapproved of heartily by Geraldine, has been pursuing her... This, Firbank's second novel, with its hints of the Sapphic and the scandalous, was first published in 1916. The Glasgow Herald's reviewer said "Mr. Ronald Firbank's fiction bears a strong resemblance to the work of the Futurists in painting." He certainly was, in the oddness of his depiction and in his stripping-down of narrative and conversation to their bizarre bare bones, a master of the avant-garde well before his time. This edition includes an extra chapter, written much later in 1925.
First published January 1, 1916
21 people want to read
About the author
Ronald Firbank
45 books57 followersBritish novelist Ronald Firbank was born in London, the son of society lady Harriet Jane Garrett and MP Sir Thomas Firbank. He went to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Catholicism in 1907. In 1909 he left Cambridge, without completing a degree.
Living off his inheritance he travelled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. Ronald Firbank died of lung disease while in Rome.
Living off his inheritance he travelled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. Ronald Firbank died of lung disease while in Rome.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 1, 2017
"There are people, I find, who have no heads," she ruefully remarked. "They've lost them."
After reading Brideshead Revisited last year, I read something about Firbank being one of Waugh's influences, and so picked this one up with high hopes.
To say my hopes were dashed would be . . . . misleading? Somewhere along the way all my hopes were changed into confusion. 98% of the book is dialogue, much more like a play than a novel, but without the necessary formatting to indicate who's speaking. And the 2% that isn't dialogue, while lovely, is comprised of tangents about owls and tone of voice, instead of incorporating vital information like where characters are or what's going on. (At one point, all the characters who had formally been in a carriage are transferred into a boat without any warning or explanation, and the reader is left unaware of this shift until one character talks about finding a place to drop anchor.)
And while I could have maybe adjusted to the form, the fact that someone is killed halfway through and it's never given much attention (was it murder? was it an accident? Does anyone care, beyond the potential for gossip later on?), coupled with the prominent love interest being only fourteen (and I say prominent because aside from her two suitors, everyone else's husbands also seem to be fawning over her; but no one mentions her age? or how bizarre this is? And this is an older book, but it's not THAT old), plus the sprawling cast who wanders in and out at random, I really didn't care for it at all.
After reading Brideshead Revisited last year, I read something about Firbank being one of Waugh's influences, and so picked this one up with high hopes.
To say my hopes were dashed would be . . . . misleading? Somewhere along the way all my hopes were changed into confusion. 98% of the book is dialogue, much more like a play than a novel, but without the necessary formatting to indicate who's speaking. And the 2% that isn't dialogue, while lovely, is comprised of tangents about owls and tone of voice, instead of incorporating vital information like where characters are or what's going on. (At one point, all the characters who had formally been in a carriage are transferred into a boat without any warning or explanation, and the reader is left unaware of this shift until one character talks about finding a place to drop anchor.)
And while I could have maybe adjusted to the form, the fact that someone is killed halfway through and it's never given much attention (was it murder? was it an accident? Does anyone care, beyond the potential for gossip later on?), coupled with the prominent love interest being only fourteen (and I say prominent because aside from her two suitors, everyone else's husbands also seem to be fawning over her; but no one mentions her age? or how bizarre this is? And this is an older book, but it's not THAT old), plus the sprawling cast who wanders in and out at random, I really didn't care for it at all.
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August 1, 2019Ronald Firbank's campy, gossamer-like novels are unlike anyone else's writing. He created a fictional world all his own, though how much time you want to spend there is another question. INCLINATIONS, about a lesbian world-traveler who seduces a younger woman, seems to have more substance than most of his work and is very enjoyable (as well as very short).
February 22, 2021
Firbank is a riot! This book reminds me a bit of Morrissey’s List of the Lost. Of course, that should be no surprise really, since both of them are directly related to Oscar Wilde on the literary family tree. What sets them apart is Inclinations is unalloyed comedy and nearly all dialogue.
What kind of inclinations does this novel concern itself with, you may ask? Well, it’s about a middle-aged writer Miss Geraldine O’Brookmore, known as Gerald, who brings a fourteen year old girl (Miss Mabel Collins) on a trip to the Mediterranean. There’s basically no description of anything or explanation of what’s happening or who is speaking, so you have to be okay with feeling unsure about what’s going on. One of the characters is shot and killed and it was chapters later that I finally understood which one. Plot is not what this book is about. This book is about lines so funny and with such a nice ring to them that I will just give you a small sampling for your enjoyment:
Miss Collins clasped her hands. “I’d give almost anything to be blasé.”
***
“I don’t see Mrs Cowsend, do you?”
“Breakfast was laid for four covers in her room.”
“For four!”
“Or perhaps it was only three.”
***
“She writes curiously in the style of one of my unknown correspondents.”
***
[Talking about a costume ball]:
“Oh, Gerald, you could be a silver-tasselled Portia almost with what you have, and I a Maid of Orleans.”
“You!”
“Don’t be tiresome, darling. It’s not as if we were going in boys’ clothes!”
***
“Once she bought a little calf for some special binding, but let it grow up...and now it’s a cow!”
***
“Gerald has a gold revolver. ‘Honour” she calls it.”
***
“Is your father tall?”
“As we drive I shall give you all his measurements.”
***
“I had a good time in Smyrna,” she drowsily declared.
“Only there?”
“Oh, my dears, I’m weary of streets; so weary!”
***
“I’m told she [Gerald] is a noted Vampire.”
“Who ever said so?”
“Some friend of hers—in Chelsea.”
“What do Vampires do?”
“What don’t they!”
If you find this sort of off-putting, these lines really do make more sense, somewhat more sense, in context. In a chapter that is eight words long (“Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel!”), I’m looking forward to Firbank’s next novel in 1917.
I’m only just now realizing that Firbank is the author that the main character keeps reading in The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. I guess I thought Alan Hollinghurst just made him up. The thing is that his name sounds so made up, just “Fairbanks” with some of the letters taken out. Ugh, I learn everything backward.
What kind of inclinations does this novel concern itself with, you may ask? Well, it’s about a middle-aged writer Miss Geraldine O’Brookmore, known as Gerald, who brings a fourteen year old girl (Miss Mabel Collins) on a trip to the Mediterranean. There’s basically no description of anything or explanation of what’s happening or who is speaking, so you have to be okay with feeling unsure about what’s going on. One of the characters is shot and killed and it was chapters later that I finally understood which one. Plot is not what this book is about. This book is about lines so funny and with such a nice ring to them that I will just give you a small sampling for your enjoyment:
Miss Collins clasped her hands. “I’d give almost anything to be blasé.”
***
“I don’t see Mrs Cowsend, do you?”
“Breakfast was laid for four covers in her room.”
“For four!”
“Or perhaps it was only three.”
***
“She writes curiously in the style of one of my unknown correspondents.”
***
[Talking about a costume ball]:
“Oh, Gerald, you could be a silver-tasselled Portia almost with what you have, and I a Maid of Orleans.”
“You!”
“Don’t be tiresome, darling. It’s not as if we were going in boys’ clothes!”
***
“Once she bought a little calf for some special binding, but let it grow up...and now it’s a cow!”
***
“Gerald has a gold revolver. ‘Honour” she calls it.”
***
“Is your father tall?”
“As we drive I shall give you all his measurements.”
***
“I had a good time in Smyrna,” she drowsily declared.
“Only there?”
“Oh, my dears, I’m weary of streets; so weary!”
***
“I’m told she [Gerald] is a noted Vampire.”
“Who ever said so?”
“Some friend of hers—in Chelsea.”
“What do Vampires do?”
“What don’t they!”
If you find this sort of off-putting, these lines really do make more sense, somewhat more sense, in context. In a chapter that is eight words long (“Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel! Mabel!”), I’m looking forward to Firbank’s next novel in 1917.
I’m only just now realizing that Firbank is the author that the main character keeps reading in The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. I guess I thought Alan Hollinghurst just made him up. The thing is that his name sounds so made up, just “Fairbanks” with some of the letters taken out. Ugh, I learn everything backward.
February 28, 2013
Unlike *Vainglory*, here Firbank provides a basic narrative structure on which to hang his whimsies: two women traveling abroad, one a historian-biographer (with hidden 'Vampiric' motives), and the other an ingénue not fifteen. "I'd give almost anything to be blasé," remarks the girl. Later, "Whatever would the vines do, Gerald, without the olives to hold them up?" (271). Part II is a departure, but good in its own way.
[Read in THE COMPLETE RONALD FIRBANK, Duckworth 1961]
[Read in THE COMPLETE RONALD FIRBANK, Duckworth 1961]
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews