Creative Writing Tuition Bolton Manchester: Saki’s Clovis on Parental Responsibilities- Artful Irony!

Saki unnervingly captures the eager boastfulness of a proud parent below. Indeed the energy devoted to parent-pride seems practically pathological, yet curiously familiar too. However Saki at his best, is always more than just a witty observer exploring uneasy social  interaction. 

 

Here,  Saki also manages to ensnare the boastful Marion Eggelby within a rather surreal net of her own making, for Marion likens her son Eric to ‘that famous picture of the youthful David-I forget who it’s by, but it’s very well known.” Such a (desperate)attempted  likeness plunges her conversation with Clovis into territory both surreal and sexually ambivalent. The whole ‘event’  takes place due to the  lack of receptiveness on Clovis’ part, which  has precipitated her vocalisation of this strangely hyperbolic likeness.  Marion’s disingenuousness about the ‘picture’ of ‘David’ heightens the surreal effect. For the ‘picture’ is of course really a sculpture,  and the artist Marion has forgotten, is Michelangelo!  Marion’s ‘Eric’ has supplanted Michelangelo’s greatest work- but at some wickedly euphemistic cost perhaps! 

 

 

Such mistakes discredit Marion(certainly in the eyes of the aesthete, Clovis) and also throw into the conversation more than a little undercurrrent of homoeroticism , as the (naked)sculpure of  David represents Michelangelo’s perfect interpretation of masculine beauty. The longer Marion proceeds with her boasts about Eric, the more Clovis(and the reader) enjoy the loaded double entendres about ‘bridge’ and the most distracting figure of Eric!

 

Clovis’ s sexual proclivities clearly escape the narrow attentions of Marion Eggleby, and the  reader enjoys the surreal mismatch between Marion’s ‘Eric’ and Michelangelo’s ‘David’ especially entwined together in a game of bridge! Little wonder that the teasing Clovis pronounces ‘youthful’ Eric/David across the bridge table ‘simply maddening’ in his allure! Playing ‘Bridge’ we sense,  may represent some romantic activity far beyond the experience of Marion Eggleby. 

 

 

 Truly wicked in its comedy!

 

 

Marion Eggelby sat talking to Clovis on the only subject that she ever willingly talked about – her offspring and their varied perfections and accomplishments. Clovis was not in what could be called a receptive mood; the younger generation of Eggelby, depicted in the glowing improbable colours of parent impressionism, aroused in him no enthusiasm. Mrs. Eggelby, on the other hand, was furnished with enthusiasm enough for two.

“You would like Eric,” she said, argumentatively rather than hopefully. Clovis had intimated very unmistakably that he was unlikely to care extravagantly for either Amy or Willie. “Yes, I feel sure you would like Eric. Every one takes to him at once. You know, he always reminds me of that famous picture of the youthful David – I forget who it’s by, but it’s very well known.”

“That would be sufficient to set me against him, if I saw much of him,” said Clovis. “Just imagine at auction bridge, for instance, when one was trying to concentrate one’s mind on what one’s partner’s original declaration had been, and to remember what suits one’s opponents had originally discarded, what it would be like to have some one persistently reminding one of a picture of the youthful David. It would be simply maddening. If Eric did that I should detest him.”

“Eric doesn’t play bridge,” said Mrs. Eggelby with dignity.