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Persephone readers, you have a new convert. Over the past few weeks I’ve been snatching hours with ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ by RC Sherriff, one of the books Thomas from My Porch sent me for last year’s Persephone Christmas swap. If all the books Persephone publish are as good as this my bank balance is sunk, as each book is ten pounds (worth it, but ruinous).The book opens with a preface from a member of The Royal Society of Abyssinia explaining that it was once hoped that ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ * would reveal how the white man came to be extinct, but unfortunately when examined it was decided that the self-important preoccupations of the author made it almost useless for scientists and historians. However, the reader is told that the manuscript, named after the Englishman who wrote it, provides a detailed personal account of the days just before and following the event known as The Cataclysm.
‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ is a blend of social satire and old fashioned sci-fi that is awkwardly charming and funny, but occasionally alludes to the deep, dark lake of melancholy the narrator constantly hovers above. Edgar Hopkins, the author of the manuscript and the first person narrator of the rest of the book, is a middle aged bachelor, who breeds champion chickens and likes to talk at length about his passion for poultry. He is a man obsessed with niggles, who inflates the importance of the smallest insult or honour to incredible proportions. He is rather petty and although he sometimes realises how ridiculous his behaviour is after the fact, he always finds some way to justify his thoughts to himself. He will probably remind readers of the phrase ‘a bit of a stuffed shirt’ and is a harmless character, though sometimes his thoughts tip over into small, spiteful ideas that have a little too much righteous conviction behind them.
Scientists have discovered that the moon is about to crash into the Earth. As a member of The Lunar Society, Edgar is one of the privileged few who learns of the approaching crisis in advance, at an emergency meeting. His first thoughts on hearing the announcement are of relief, relief that the meeting has not been called to discuss a financially risky new telescope that Edgar has funded. The conflict between Edgar’s continued interest in inconsequential, personal details and the real issue of the fast approaching disaster, which will make everything he worries about irrelevant, is the source of much of the books humour. Sherriff is in part writing a dystopian allegory, where he uses a sci-fi storyline to poke fun at British people who persisted in being concerned with keeping old traditions and class systems in place when a second world war was beginning to look inevitable. When the ridiculous Edgar insists that the local poultry show must go on, or continues to hold onto ideas about the separation of the classes, even though the moon will soon hit the Earth, readers can see how trivial Sherrif considered the standards British people held onto as war approached.
However, Sherriff, who fought in the First World War, still believes in the importance of the British stiff upper lip. Judging from ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ it seems he thought that this quality of stoicism was to be found in the more traditional, isolated villages like Beadle, where Edgar lives, rather than in large, modern cities like London. In the novel, once the general population is made aware that the moon is heading for the Earth people worry, scoff and waste their time, but eventually the inhabitants of Beadle begin working productively on defence shelters and organise amusements designed to keep moral up during the last week before the crash. Class barriers begin to blur, if not to totally disappear and Edgar, a man of some property, relaxes with the village men.
When Edgar visits London to see his aunt and uncle for the last time he finds it a much less productive city. London’s inhabitants do not seem to be keeping useful and cheerful to Edgar, instead they are either violently disruptive, or engaged in pompously demonstrating how brave they are. Edgar finds himself taken to the theatre, which he indicates he finds an extremely strange thing to do in troubled time. The play induces an initial kind of hysteria in the whole audience, but the mood quickly turns gloomy. Edgar cuts his visit short, which prompts his uncle to tell him they had planned a whole weekend of doing exactly what they had always done when he visited, an idea which Edgar finds oppressive. This is Sherriff showing the distinction between a harmful response to disaster (nostalgia and a rigid adherence to the rules of the past) and what he considered a healthy response to crisis (hard work and survival by adaptation).
Such a negative reaction to modern, city life and a tendency to sometimes idealise the traditional, rural life seems surprising from Sherriff. He was involved in The First World War, a conflict which prepared the way for radical social changes in Britain and he seems to use ‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ to show that the world needs to discard old standards that restricted the world. It would seem logical for him to identify strongly with modernity, but he gives the most disordered, hopeless appearance in the days before and after the crash to more modern cities or towns. There are lots of possible reasons for Sherriff making London such a depressing location and I’m not sure which one I favour. Edgar is an extremely changeable, idealistic, maybe even unreliable narrator and perhaps his reaction to London is intended to be over the top, his way of emphasising just how superior Beadle’s (and his) response is to The Cataclysm. Maybe Sherriff was conflicted about modernism, aware that change was necessary, but sure that a retreat into a purer version of tradition would work better than a move forward to a new set of values. Possibly his idealisation of hard work and organised fun stems from his class politics, as much as it does from his observations of what worked on the home front during the First World War. His idea that work and group activities would keep the majority of the population from despair, seems to correspond with industrialist theories that a working man kept employed in any task (no matter the pay, or the monotony of the task) would be happier than a man with more individual leisure on his hands. If you’ve read the book please, please chip in with any ideas if you’d like to.
‘The Hopkins Manuscript’ makes me want to don tweed and tramp the dales, swishing a heavy stick and bellowing ‘Delightful.’ at sparrows and squirrels. The book’s tone will be familiar to readers who have and forgiving. Sherrif makes his narrator unknowingly poke fun at himself, but then balances the laughs that come at his main character’s expense with fond reminders of the man’s humanity and justifiable fears. It’s just the kind of humour I like and I think it highlights why some modern authors who try to emulate old fashioned comedies of hubris fall flat for me. They take the pratfalls too far and fail to be kind to their characters. They’re snide and moralistic rather than intelligent and a little indulgent. Edgar may be rather insufferable, changeable and at times terrible smug, but Sherriff makes sure the reader can also see him as a common human being who reacts to disaster by clinging on to hope and when hope seems to be gone attempting to comport himself with dignity, even if he is not always successful. While I would never say that having lived through The Cataclysm excuses his class prejudice (in fact it makes it worse that he hangs onto such prejudice in the face of an apocalypse) The Cataclysm does allow readers to see different, more complimentary aspects of his personality and wonder again at the ability for human nature to be so contradictory. He forms strong friendships with people who respect him, something that seems impossible at the beginning of the novel, when readers first meet Edgar the poultry bore. He periodically reveals the darkness that creeps up on an average person when they know something bad is coming and these moments of flat, despair or creeping horror are all the more powerful because they arrive in the middle of a very funny book.
It seems like I’m always ending my reviews with ‘But there’s so much more to talk about’ and I’ve got to find a neater way to make sure my posts talk about the book’s full content, because there’s lots more I could mention about this book. I’ll be keeping an eye out for any other reviews, talking about other parts of the book. To close I’ll just quickly mention one last thing that really interested me. The occidental parts of the book, where we learn that the white man has died out and the European world has been colonised by Eastern countries are kind of peripheral, but fascinating. I keep trying to puzzle out Sherriff’s feelings about the British Empire and colonialism and right now I’m inclined to think he opposed it. If anyone knows of a piece of lit-crit out there about this aspect of the book I’d be eager to read it.
* I’m sorry there are no quotes from the book by the way, I put it in with a whole bunch of books for the charity shop after I finished it (operation see floor soon proceeds with limited success), without remembering that I’d need it to write a full post – there are some beautiful turns of phrase in this book (one about an owl hooting was my favourite).
Other Reviews
Exit of Humanity
cardigangirlverity
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