MW) I read this on enotes (by a teacher) about Sredni Vashtar: ‘‘This short, macabre story is chilling in its portrayal of the fiendish young boy.”And it occurred to me that not everyone would ‘get’ Saki. I think those of a delicate disposition might find Lady Carlotta just shocking- rather like the Aunt’s reaction in the Saki tale, The Story teller:”A dissentient opinion came from the Aunt. “A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching”So as a straightforward introduction question, and because you so adore Lady Carlotta, with her revisionist tution ideas, in The Schartz Metterklume Method:What is it about Lady Carlotta that is so appealing?JL) I suppose the irony of these readings above, rests in their application of limited imaginative criteria to the (im)morality of his tale. Is it a sign of ‘delicate disposition’ to hoist earnestness upon a tale like Sredni Vashtar?Surely Saki relishes his revenge narratives, where dominant ideologies are overturned by subversive satire, usually in the hands of an(initially) disempowered figure? Some readers may not ‘get’ Saki as you say, but I do enjoy the surreal ironies of his narratives, precisely because they are so subversive.For me, Saki’s appeal is his transgressive take on ‘what if?’ narratives, with their surreal, absurdist landscapes and strange revelations. Saki is a wonderfully fallen angel of a writer! His morality lies outside the conventional, giving fulfilment to transgressors rather than to the ‘horribly good‘!
Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the struggle. Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being “none of her business.” Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner. It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady.
JL) I adored this story from the very first line! The lack of animation on either platform or train is not a lead in to some studied tale of ennui and rich idleness, nor indeed a trip into nostalgia, mourning a disappearing slice of country life like Edward Thomas’ poem, Adlestrop. Our heroine begins the story as an irrepressible defender of the animal Kingdom, and behaves like an avenging Archangel- although Saki is strategically silent on the exact details of Lady Carlotta’s ‘different complexion on the struggle.” Perhaps the ways of Lady Carlotta were sometimes a little ‘beyond’ even Saki’s surreal pen!That said, the ironic fastidiousness of Lady Carlotta’s chosen artistic endeavour, ‘ the water-colour sketch’ is perfection itself. For the water colour is ironically at odds with Lady Carlotta’s feisty adventurous self, and the disappointed politeness of ‘ It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady’ demonstrates Saki’s perfectly paced ear for a deadpan Wildean apology! How wickedly funny is the verb ‘proceeded’ when dancing in attendance of both a water colour sketch and a rampaging boar pig! Saki converts restraint and manners into dark agents of subterfuge and anarchic conquest! Like Wilde he recognizes the surreal potential of (ostensibly) civilized society. One wonders what else’ is to be feared’ in the rest of the story!MW)Of course, the first thing I had to do was read Adlestrop. Now, although I liked something about that poem, re-reading the Saki immediately after made me laugh at the then seemingly deliberate debunking of that stopped-in-time summer pastoral. Wonderfully, it seemed as if Lady Carlotta was in the same railway station at the same time , but the evocative poetic timelessness of Adlestop was transmuted, now becoming something stagnant and ‘uninteresting.’ with Lady Carlotta bored and deliciously looking for trouble.You write of Lady Carlotta as an ‘avenging angel’ – an apposite description, which ties in with something I became aware of reading these wonderful stories of Saki – how often they are about some form of retribution – ‘wild justice’ is a phrase that came to mind – wild in the concern with the natural world, and wild, excessive or outlandish. I was going to ask you about this, and you’ve already raised it – ‘dominant ideologies are overturned by subversive satire, usually in the hands of an (initially) disempowered figure.’ This combines suggestively with: ‘ Saki converts restraint and manners into dark agents of subterfuge and anarchic conquest!’So this retribution is a form of conquest – a more pagan than Christian justice. This isn’t an eye-for an-eye parity, but is sometimes comically, sometimes frighteningly, ‘anarchic’. – a marvellous gallimaufry of concepts -wild, anarchic justice – oxymoronic, but not.Perhaps we could look at the retribution given to the mother – and educational cant – in The Schartz-Metterklume Method? And I’m still interested in the satisfying pleasure we feel at this unjust, yet perfectly just, justice.(After a good Saki story, we feel that distinctive satiety of the child at the end of The Storyteller: ‘That was the best story ever told.’)
