Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
As I admitted here recently, I’m a bit embarrassed to reveal that there are books on Mount TBR that have been there for over 30 years – and Aldous Huxley’s “Crome Yellow” is one of them… I picked up his collection of short stories, Mortal Coils, last month on a whim, and loved it so much that I decided to follow it with CY. I confess I was attracted to CY all those years ago because it’s regarded as such a roman a clef; a thinly veiled portrait of many of the Bloomsbury group, and all set in a house based on Garsington, the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. The narrator, poet Denis Stone, is modelled on Huxley himself; the painter Gombauld on Mark Gertler; Mary Bracegirdle on the artist Dora Carrington; and so on.
CY is still being written about in these terms which in many ways is a shame, because this tends to obscure the book a little and make it hard to read without referencing the apparent source of the characters; and it’s a very good read in its own right.
The book opens with Dennis travelling down to Crome, a typical English country house of the period, to visit the Wimbushes. Priscilla is an eccentric woman, something of a patron of the arts and artists, and rushing from one fad to another – the current passion being for horoscopes and mysticism. Her husband Henry is lost in family history, and enlivens the narrative with a couple of wonderful tales of Crome’s previous inhabitants.
Also staying with them are a motley collection of guests and as soon as Denis arrives it becomes clear that he’s suffering from a passion for Anne, niece of the Wimbushes. However, he’s almost incapable of expressing any feelings in words and stumbles around trying to find the chance to confess his love. Meanwhile, Mary is trying to decide who she should resolve her issues about sex with, trying to decide between Gombauld and Denis as a likely partner. Anne seems somewhat detached from all men and simply wants Denis to be a friend. Then there is the wonderfully-named Mr. Barbecue-Smith, writer of fashionable books who manages to write 1,500 words an hour by going into a kind of trance and getting in touch with his subconscious. Mr. Scogan is a believer in a scientific future, and when the discussion about free love is taking place Huxley puts some remarkably prescient words in his mouth:
An impersonal generation will take the place of Nature’s hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world.”
It’s a way of reproduction to which Huxley would return in “Brave New World”.
“Crome Yellow” is satire at its best, and if it is a glimpse of early Bloomsbury characters, it catches them at the time when Victorian standards were collapsing, with people incapable of really deciding where to go next. Huxley is cruellest to Priscilla, in his physical description of her and also his lambasting of her various crazes; he’s also quite hard on Mary with her desire to resolve the sex question in a clinical manner. However, he can be forgiven because he doesn’t spare himself, giving Denis plenty of insecurities about his writing and his successes (or not!) as a writer and a man. And Huxley’s preoccupation with the process of writing is evident here, as it was in “Mortal Coils”.
Words are man’s first and most grandiose invention. With language, he created a whole new universe; what wonder if he loved words and attributed power to them!
Denis leaves Crome at the end of the book in a flurry, having failed in his love life and also feeling a failure as a writer. “Crome Yellow” was a clever, funny and in some ways touching read (I always find anything involving Carrington desperately moving); and it was more evidence of Huxley’s skill as a writer. Now, if I could only find where I’d put my copy of “Point Counter Point”….
Cathy746books
Jun 29, 2015 @ 10:52:30
I have only read Brave New World but this sounds great!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 29, 2015 @ 11:34:56
His non-sci-fi stuff is excellent – I’m really glad I read it! 🙂
colorpencil2014
Jun 29, 2015 @ 12:17:00
I wonder, if writers like Huxley suffer from the mandatory reading list for high schoolers…from all those writers I only read ‘the book’ and ignored them after that…apparently I have done Huxley wrong! Great book review, xo Johanna
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 29, 2015 @ 13:13:13
I think it’s a great shame that Huxley’s work is so overshadowed by BNW – and I’m certainly going to explore his work further!
icewineanne
Jun 29, 2015 @ 17:14:55
Congrats on reading one of the “oldies” from your pile! This sounds great (unfortunately not one that I own – yet – heh heh).
Never worry about having books kicking around for 30 years. We know that we can never, in our lifetime, read them all, but it’s comforting & oodles of fun to have many options when it comes to the choosing your next great read.
Enjoy!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 30, 2015 @ 11:42:55
It *is* reassuring to know there’s always something to read….
Lori
Jun 29, 2015 @ 19:26:01
This is interesting, as I read this one about a decade ago and the only thing I remembered was that I disliked it and felt I had wasted my time even bothering with it, though perhaps the fact that at the time I didn’t know about the background to the (real) characters, but I have the impression that most of them were rather shallow and not very likeable. Or it could have just been the mood I was in…
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 30, 2015 @ 11:42:39
I think they’re shallow and that’s the point. But the mood can have a lot to do with it!
Kat
Jun 29, 2015 @ 19:43:02
This is one of my favorite Huxleys! You just cannot go wrong with his first novel. So funny, so weird. I’ve read his ’20s and ’30s novels and loved them, because he is bothy hysterically funny and serious. But I must admit I’ve never gone back to Brave New World.
Such a great house party in Crome Yellow!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 30, 2015 @ 11:41:33
It’s a fabulous house party – I love Pricilla Wimbush!
heavenali
Jun 29, 2015 @ 21:00:34
I can’t remember where it was, but some where, sometime ago I heard this book refrenced as being a brilliant novel. It is now quite firmly on my wishlist. I can see however how it would be difficult to read it without thinking about those famous Bloomsbury figures. Still it sounds quite a fascinating read.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 30, 2015 @ 11:40:58
It’s excellent – and I’m so looking forward to reading more Huxley!
shoshibookblog
Jun 30, 2015 @ 09:54:55
I remember reading CY ages ago, I didn’t know what to expect and think I missed the point (it’s definitely due for a re-read). On the other hand, ‘Eyeless in Gaza’ was one of my top reads of 2014, completely different from BNW, and utterly wonderful in it’s own right. Maybe I was finally mature enough to appreciate the more subtle and social, as well as the dystopian Sci-fi, in Huxley’s writing.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jun 30, 2015 @ 11:40:32
I really want to explore more of Huxley’s work – currently trying to resist the temptation to send off for everything in sight….
Simon T
Jul 02, 2015 @ 22:11:31
I read it without any knowledge of the coded references – I will have to re-read with them in mind! And it was so much more up my street than I’d expected, given that I only knew dimly Brave New World (without reading it).
What did you make of the extremely long extracts from books, sermons, etc.?
Vintage are republishing a few of his lesser-known books in the autumn, btw.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jul 03, 2015 @ 09:35:23
It’s a wonderful book and not at all like BNW. I quite liked all the extracts – I like books within books! And that’s great news about the new books in the autumn – I’ll look out for those! 🙂
Liz Dexter
Jul 06, 2015 @ 08:51:05
WHY have I never read this????
kaggsysbookishramblings
Jul 06, 2015 @ 10:33:02
That’s what I asked myself – especially after carting it around for over 30 years!!!
Vintage book buying | heavenali
Jul 12, 2015 @ 09:02:09
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley (1921) | heavenali
Sep 17, 2015 @ 07:03:36