I have fond memories of reading Henry James’s The Golden Bowl on the roof.
It’s been a lifelong love affair. I recently reread The Spoils of Poynton, a short, suspenseful exploration of the love of beautiful objects, and the inverse greed that drives ignorant people to buy priceless objects for status. It is in some ways similar to The Golden Bowl, a darker novel in which two charming fortune hunters prey on two wealthy innocent American collectors. The “things” are in the background, except for the golden bowl, but they marry the Americans for riches, luxury – and things!
James wittily explains,
‘Things’ were of course the sum of the world; only, for Mrs. Gareth, the sum of the world was rare French furniture and oriental chine.
In The Spoils of Poynton, “things” are the center of a tussle. The witty, single-minded Mrs. Gareth has devoted her life to acquiring a collection of priceless antique chairs, cabinets, tables, paintings, “brasses that Louis Quinze might have thumbed,” Venetian velvets, cases of enamels” – so many splendid things at Poynton, her lovely home.
The Spoils of Poynton is about good taste, bad taste, and the consequences of incomparable taste. Mrs. Gareth is the incarnation of incomparable taste.
Are things more important than people? Mrs. Gareth thinks so. Most people are fools, in Mrs. Gareth’s view. Take her son, Owen, a sportsman who wanders around in muddy boots and sweaty sports outfits. Mrs. Gareth is horrified when Owen gets engaged to a bouncing nouveau riche girl named Mona. Of course Mona does not care about the collection at Poynton, where she and Owen will live after their marriage. The dilemma is, what to do with the things? Mrs. Gareth would rather die than let Mona have them, but when she piratically hustles all the things to the dower house, Mona throws a fit. She won’t marry Owen unless the things are put back instantly.
Mona is, of course, the villainess, the person with the worst taste and a missing moral compass. Owen is appalled, but does try to get the things back. Mrs. Gareth has a scheme: if only her lovely protegee, Fleda Vetch, who appreciates Poynton and its treasures, could have the things. Mrs. Gareth’s idea, and it isn’t a bad one, is to marry off Fleda to Owen.
One feels the collector’s fever in The Spoils of Poynton. There is a battle for the spoils. Owen doesn’t want them, but Mona does – only because they are valuable and have been removed. Fleda doesn’t want them, but she does adore Owen.
Fleda and Owen know that there is more to life than things. But Fleda has the most mysterious set of sexual ethics I have ever encountered. She loves Owen, but he must check with Mona first to make sure it’s all right, even though Owen says the wedding is of. I try to understand the Victorian complexity of morals, but I cannot say whether Fleda’s behavior is heroic or not, or whether it is Victorian or not, or whether it is realistic or Jamesian. I try not to paste my modern values on fictional characters, but perhaps James is using Fleda to explore an idea. Or were there people like Fleda? I’m sure there is a scholarly essay on Fleda somewhere.
In the end, who will win the Poynton collection? The ending, however, is stranger than I can say.