Enemies of Promise
Encyclopedia
Enemies of Promise is a critical and autobiographical work written by Cyril Connolly
and first published in 1938.
It comprises three parts, the first dedicated to Connolly's observations about literature and the literary world of his time, the second a listing of adverse elements that affect the ability to be a good writer and the last an account of Connolly's early life. The overarching theme of the book is the search for an explanation of why Connolly, though widely recognized as a leading man of letters and a highly distinguished critic, failed to produce a major work of literature.
His examples of exponents of the Mandarin style include Lytton Strachey
, Virginia Woolf
, Marcel Proust
, Aldous Huxley
and James Joyce
, the dominant literary character of the 1920s. Examples of vernacular or realist exponents include Ernest Hemingway
, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Isherwood
and George Orwell
, the dominant force in the 1930s.
by George Crabbe
, poet and naturalist, which describe the weeds which choke the rye. He uses this as an analogy for the factors that can stifle a writer's creativity. The blue Bugloss
represents journalism, particularly when pursued out of economic necessity. Thistle
s represent politics, particularly relevant in the left-wing literary atmosphere of the 1930s. Poppies are used to cover all forms of escapism, and it is in this chapter that Connolly dwells on the tyranny of "promise" as the burden of expectation. Charlock is representation of sex, with the most problematic aspects being on the one hand homosexuality, and on the other the tares of domesticity. Finally the Slimy Mallow
s represent success, the most insidious enemy of literature. Connolly then explores what positive advice can be given on how to produce a work of literature that lasts ten years. Working through all the forms he identifies those for which there is a future.
at eighteen. Most of the material relates to his life at Eton, with two preceding chapters. He comments
In "The Branching Ogham
" Connolly describes his early life as a single child living variously with his army father in South Africa, his aunt at Clontarf Castle
in Ireland and with his grandmother in England. His grandmother spoilt him and at his early school he notes he was popular "for I had embarked on the career which was to occupy me for the next ten years of trying to be funny." As a child in Ireland he had a sympathy for the romantic vision of Irish nationalism but was unable to live the part.
"White Samnite
" is his recollection of his schooldays at St Wulfric's
where the ethos of "character" (integrity and a sense of duty) went hand in hand with romanticism in literature. He absorbed the "purple patch" approach to literature but rejected "character" inspired in different ways by Cecil Beaton
and George Orwell
. He wrote "year by year, the air, the discipline, the teaching, the association with other boys and the driving will of Flip took effect on me" - he became a popular wit and achieved a scholarship to Eton.
Connolly's first two years at Eton he recalls as the "Dark Ages", where he was subjected to arbitrary beatings and bullying which affected his nerves and he got a bad report. He eventually established a friendship with one of his tormentors Godfrey Meynell
- a boy of an identical background but who instead followed a military career and won a posthumous Victoria Cross
on the North West Frontier. Another senior with whom he established rapport was Roger Mynors
. "I was now fifteen, dirty, inky, miserable, untidy, a bad fag, a coward at games, lazy at work, unpopular with my masters and superiors, anxious to curry favour and yet to bully whom I dared."
"Renaissance" marks a settled period for Connolly at the end of his second year establishing his popularity and friendship with others with a shared interest in literature - Dadie Rylands
among others. It includes the start of a semi-romantic brother substitute friendship with "Nigel". The chapter digresses into extensive details of school personalities, politics and intrigues, an insight into the world of Eton. "The art of getting on at school depends on a mixture of enthusiasm with moral cowardice and social sense." The chapter concludes with Connolly's "first trip abroad" to Paris and a mortifying experience when he was lured into a brothel.
The "Background of the Lilies" refers to the pre-Raphaelite culture in vogue at Eton and discusses the contributions to Connolly's development of five key teachers, including Hugh Macnaughten, "an ogre for the purple patch", who personified the romantic pre-Raphaelite tradition and the ruling philosophy of Platonism, and headmaster Cyril Alington
, a worldly teacher with the cult of light verse such as Winthrop Mackworth Praed
and Eton's own J. K. Stephen. Connolly's criticism is expressed as "For the culture of the lilies, rooted in the past, divorced from reality, and dependent on a dead foreign tongue, was by nature sterile..... The arts at Eton were under a blight." Headlam, the history teacher "whose sober intellectual background ... offered a gleam of mental health" impressed him and encouraged his concentration on history. The chapter ends with "By the time I left Eton I knew by heart something of the literature of five civilizations" and Connolly gives review of each.
"Glittering Prizes" describes how Connolly wins the Rosebery History Prize, which enhances his reputation and brings him closer Oppidans and aristocratic members of Pop like Alec Dunglass
and Anthony Knebworth. He spends a Christmas holiday with mother at Murren
. Indulging in intense study - reading late by candlelight - he goes for a history scholarship to Balliol
. He wins the scholarship and by careful politics manages to have himself elected to Pop "because he was amusing". The chapter concludes with a holiday in France with a friend, after a brief visit to St Wulfrics. After an embarrassing incident at the Folies Bergère the couple head to the south of France and the Spanish border, to return so penniless that Connolly spends a night in the kip at St Martin-in-the-Fields
.
"Vale" describes Connolly's comfortable last term with the scholarship in the bag and all the privileges of Pop, but demonstrates a feeling of ennui - "all my own attempts to write were doomed to failure. I didn't see how one could write well in English and my Greek and Latin were still not good enough.... College politics were now less exciting, for we were not in opposition but in office.... I hated history by now, it stank of success, and buried myself in the classics." He made a friendship with Brian Howard, but moral cowardice and academic outlook debarred him from making friends with Harold Acton
, Oliver Messel
, Robert Byron
, Henry Green
and Anthony Powell
. He rounds up with conclusions on his education noting that as he was unable to write in any living language when he left Eton, he was already on the way to becoming a critic. His ambition was to be a poet, but he could not succeed. He complains that he was left with a fear of hubris - the revenge of a Jealous God which would counter the satisfaction of achievement, and a distrust of competition. "Never compete .... only in that way could the sin of Worldliness be combated, the Splendid Failure be prepared which was the ultimate 'gesture....I could not imagine a moment when I should not be receiving marks for something..... Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over .... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption."
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...
and first published in 1938.
It comprises three parts, the first dedicated to Connolly's observations about literature and the literary world of his time, the second a listing of adverse elements that affect the ability to be a good writer and the last an account of Connolly's early life. The overarching theme of the book is the search for an explanation of why Connolly, though widely recognized as a leading man of letters and a highly distinguished critic, failed to produce a major work of literature.
Part 1 "Predicament"
This part consists of an erudite discussion of literary styles, with Connolly posing the question of what the following ten years would bring in the world of literature and what sort of writing would last. He summarises the two main styles as follows.- "We have seen that there are two styles which it is convenient to describe as the realist, or vernacular, the style of rebels, journalists, common-sense addicts, and unromantic observers of human destiny - and the Mandarin, the artificial style of men of letters or of those in authority who make letters their spare time occupation"
His examples of exponents of the Mandarin style include Lytton Strachey
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, the dominant literary character of the 1920s. Examples of vernacular or realist exponents include Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
and George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, the dominant force in the 1930s.
Part 2 "The Charlock's Shade"
Connolly quotes a few lines of The VillageThe Village (poem)
The Village is one of the best known poems by the Englishman, George Crabbe, published in 1783. The poem contrasts the traditional representation of the rural idyll in Augustan poetry with the realities of village life....
by George Crabbe
George Crabbe
George Crabbe was an English poet and naturalist.-Biography:He was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a tax collector, and developed his love of poetry as a child. In 1768, he was apprenticed to a local doctor, who taught him little, and in 1771 he changed masters and moved to Woodbridge...
, poet and naturalist, which describe the weeds which choke the rye. He uses this as an analogy for the factors that can stifle a writer's creativity. The blue Bugloss
Bugloss
Bugloss is a name used for several plants in the borage family :*Barrelier's bugloss *Bugloss or small bugloss *Bugloss fiddleneck...
represents journalism, particularly when pursued out of economic necessity. Thistle
Thistle
Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles often occur all over the plant – on surfaces such as those of the stem and flat parts of leaves. These are an adaptation that protects the...
s represent politics, particularly relevant in the left-wing literary atmosphere of the 1930s. Poppies are used to cover all forms of escapism, and it is in this chapter that Connolly dwells on the tyranny of "promise" as the burden of expectation. Charlock is representation of sex, with the most problematic aspects being on the one hand homosexuality, and on the other the tares of domesticity. Finally the Slimy Mallow
Malva
Malva is a genus of about 25–30 species of herbaceous annual, biennial, and perennial plants in the family Malvaceae , one of several closely related genera in the family to bear the common English name mallow. The genus is widespread throughout the temperate, subtropical and tropical regions of...
s represent success, the most insidious enemy of literature. Connolly then explores what positive advice can be given on how to produce a work of literature that lasts ten years. Working through all the forms he identifies those for which there is a future.
Part 3 "A Georgian Boyhood"
The last part is an autobiographical outline of his life until he left EtonEton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
at eighteen. Most of the material relates to his life at Eton, with two preceding chapters. He comments
- "Somewhere in the facts I have recorded lurk the causes of that sloth by which I have been disabled, somewhere lies the sin whose guilt is at my door, increased by compound interest faster than promise, and through them run those romantic ideas and fallacies, those errors of judgement against which the validity of my criticism must be measured."
In "The Branching Ogham
Ogham
Ogham is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the Old Irish language, and occasionally the Brythonic language. Ogham is sometimes called the "Celtic Tree Alphabet", based on a High Medieval Bríatharogam tradition ascribing names of trees to the individual letters.There are roughly...
" Connolly describes his early life as a single child living variously with his army father in South Africa, his aunt at Clontarf Castle
Clontarf Castle
Clontarf Castle is a much-modernised castle, dating to 1837, in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland, an area famous as a key location of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. There has been a castle on the site since 1172...
in Ireland and with his grandmother in England. His grandmother spoilt him and at his early school he notes he was popular "for I had embarked on the career which was to occupy me for the next ten years of trying to be funny." As a child in Ireland he had a sympathy for the romantic vision of Irish nationalism but was unable to live the part.
"White Samnite
Samnium
Samnium is a Latin exonym for a region of south or south and central Italy in Roman times. The name survives in Italian today, but today's territory comprising it is only a small portion of what it once was. The populations of Samnium were called Samnites by the Romans...
" is his recollection of his schooldays at St Wulfric's
St Cyprian's School
St Cyprian's School was an English preparatory school for boys, which operated in the early 20th century in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Like other preparatory schools, its purpose was to train pupils to do well enough in the examinations to gain admission to leading public schools, and to provide an...
where the ethos of "character" (integrity and a sense of duty) went hand in hand with romanticism in literature. He absorbed the "purple patch" approach to literature but rejected "character" inspired in different ways by Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
and George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
. He wrote "year by year, the air, the discipline, the teaching, the association with other boys and the driving will of Flip took effect on me" - he became a popular wit and achieved a scholarship to Eton.
Connolly's first two years at Eton he recalls as the "Dark Ages", where he was subjected to arbitrary beatings and bullying which affected his nerves and he got a bad report. He eventually established a friendship with one of his tormentors Godfrey Meynell
Godfrey Meynell
Godfrey Meynell VC MC was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.-Background:...
- a boy of an identical background but who instead followed a military career and won a posthumous Victoria Cross
Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories....
on the North West Frontier. Another senior with whom he established rapport was Roger Mynors
Roger Mynors
Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was a British academic and classical scholar.Mynors was educated at Summer Fields School, Oxford and won a scholarship to Eton. He was Newcastle Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. At Eton and Balliol, he was a friend of Cyril Connolly. He was Hertford and...
. "I was now fifteen, dirty, inky, miserable, untidy, a bad fag, a coward at games, lazy at work, unpopular with my masters and superiors, anxious to curry favour and yet to bully whom I dared."
"Renaissance" marks a settled period for Connolly at the end of his second year establishing his popularity and friendship with others with a shared interest in literature - Dadie Rylands
Dadie Rylands
George Humphrey Wolferstan Rylands CH CBE , known as Dadie Rylands, was a British literary scholar and theatre director. Educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, he was a Fellow of King's from 1927 until his death.As well as being one of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars, he...
among others. It includes the start of a semi-romantic brother substitute friendship with "Nigel". The chapter digresses into extensive details of school personalities, politics and intrigues, an insight into the world of Eton. "The art of getting on at school depends on a mixture of enthusiasm with moral cowardice and social sense." The chapter concludes with Connolly's "first trip abroad" to Paris and a mortifying experience when he was lured into a brothel.
The "Background of the Lilies" refers to the pre-Raphaelite culture in vogue at Eton and discusses the contributions to Connolly's development of five key teachers, including Hugh Macnaughten, "an ogre for the purple patch", who personified the romantic pre-Raphaelite tradition and the ruling philosophy of Platonism, and headmaster Cyril Alington
Cyril Alington
Cyril Argentine Alington was an English educationalist, scholar, cleric, and prolific author. He was the headmaster of both Shrewsbury School and Eton College. He also served as chaplain to King George V and as Dean of Durham....
, a worldly teacher with the cult of light verse such as Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Winthrop Mackworth Praed was an English politician and poet.-Early life:He was born in London. The family name of Praed was derived from the marriage of the poet's great-grandfather to a Cornish heiress. Winthrop's father, William Mackworth Praed, was a serjeant-at-law. His mother belonged to the...
and Eton's own J. K. Stephen. Connolly's criticism is expressed as "For the culture of the lilies, rooted in the past, divorced from reality, and dependent on a dead foreign tongue, was by nature sterile..... The arts at Eton were under a blight." Headlam, the history teacher "whose sober intellectual background ... offered a gleam of mental health" impressed him and encouraged his concentration on history. The chapter ends with "By the time I left Eton I knew by heart something of the literature of five civilizations" and Connolly gives review of each.
"Glittering Prizes" describes how Connolly wins the Rosebery History Prize, which enhances his reputation and brings him closer Oppidans and aristocratic members of Pop like Alec Dunglass
Alec Douglas-Home
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel, KT, PC , known as The Earl of Home from 1951 to 1963 and as Sir Alec Douglas-Home from 1963 to 1974, was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from October 1963 to October 1964.He is the last...
and Anthony Knebworth. He spends a Christmas holiday with mother at Murren
Murren
Murren may refer to:*Mürren, village in Switzerland*Zürcher Murren, Swiss bread roll*James Murren, president of MGM Mirage, Las Vegas*Heather Murren, member of U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission...
. Indulging in intense study - reading late by candlelight - he goes for a history scholarship to Balliol
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
. He wins the scholarship and by careful politics manages to have himself elected to Pop "because he was amusing". The chapter concludes with a holiday in France with a friend, after a brief visit to St Wulfrics. After an embarrassing incident at the Folies Bergère the couple head to the south of France and the Spanish border, to return so penniless that Connolly spends a night in the kip at St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
.
"Vale" describes Connolly's comfortable last term with the scholarship in the bag and all the privileges of Pop, but demonstrates a feeling of ennui - "all my own attempts to write were doomed to failure. I didn't see how one could write well in English and my Greek and Latin were still not good enough.... College politics were now less exciting, for we were not in opposition but in office.... I hated history by now, it stank of success, and buried myself in the classics." He made a friendship with Brian Howard, but moral cowardice and academic outlook debarred him from making friends with Harold Acton
Harold Acton
Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton CBE was a British writer, scholar and dilettante perhaps most famous for being wrongly believed to have inspired the character of "Anthony Blanche" in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited...
, Oliver Messel
Oliver Messel
Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century....
, Robert Byron
Robert Byron
Robert Byron was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian....
, Henry Green
Henry Green
Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...
and Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....
. He rounds up with conclusions on his education noting that as he was unable to write in any living language when he left Eton, he was already on the way to becoming a critic. His ambition was to be a poet, but he could not succeed. He complains that he was left with a fear of hubris - the revenge of a Jealous God which would counter the satisfaction of achievement, and a distrust of competition. "Never compete .... only in that way could the sin of Worldliness be combated, the Splendid Failure be prepared which was the ultimate 'gesture....I could not imagine a moment when I should not be receiving marks for something..... Early laurels weigh like lead and of many of the boys whom I knew at Eton, I can say that their lives are over .... Once again romanticism with its death wish is to blame, for it lays an emphasis on childhood, on a fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doctrine of future redemption."
Quotes
- "There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall."
- "All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others."
- "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once."
- "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising."
- "Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual."