They simply were not worth anyone’s pay anywhere

A longish series of quotes from Hugh Walpole’s novel The Joyful Delaneys. All the main characters might be described as upper middle class with even some fragile links to the aristocracy, but all are unable to earn their keep in a modern meritocracy. A few possessions, inadequate rents or dwindling investments are all they have. There is a somewhat contrived happy ending, but even here we are left with an impression that the future of the world is not theirs.

It left this reader with a feeling that we are going the same way but on a much grander scale. Millions of middle class incompetents with nothing to offer a competitive world unless they find a secure niche under the wing of government patronage. Now their incompetence is valued but the day may come when it is not.

Firstly one the characters, Claude St. John Willoughby, a timid, poor and lonely old gentleman of seventy trying to hang on to the world he once knew in a cheap and shabby Mayfair attic. He goes without food in his forlorn efforts to keep up appearances. 

He drew to the fire the old armchair with the tear in the right arm that always greatly distressed him because he thought that it must distress the chair who had been for so long a good and faithful friend to him.

He said ‘the fire,’ but that was a title by courtesy, for the girl who had lit it an hour and a half ago had used the coal extravagantly, and now, when there were but embers and a piece of vexed-looking charred stick, he did not wish to put on more coal because in that case his allowance for the day would soon be exhausted. So he drew his dressing-gown about him and, smiling at one winking coal as though it were his best friend, stretched out his legs and read his paper…

At length in his blue suit with the dark tie and grey gloves and cane with the ivory head of a dog, and his soft black hat, he was ready to venture…

Although it was half-past three in the afternoon there was still a faint sun-stained fog about. He liked that sun-stained fog almost beyond any other weather that London provided, and it seemed especially kindly and reassuring now, for London had been so very dark of late…

…here is the life of Half Moon Street on any afternoon in the week. ‘On tiptoe for flight,’ you might imitate Mr. Keats by calling it, for it will not remain as it is much longer. There is ghostly scaffolding about the houses and the smoky-dusty-carpet-geranium-smelling-iron-bedstead-basement-toastmaking-damp-washing period is nearly over and ended…

You might fancy that you caught the echo of Sam Weller’s ghostly greeting or the ponderous dogmatism of Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Gamp’s husky endearments, the shrill cry, like a call from the battlements, of King James’ apprentice, the ghostly song of Piers Plowman himself finding this soil still stream-watered. Time marches on, and yet there is no Time here…

The Delaneys were happy, healthy, strong, altogether most excellent people, but not Fred nor Bullock nor Kitty had ever been trained to compete with the present incredibly efficient workers of the world. They simply were not worth anyone’s pay anywhere.

Hugh Walpole - The Joyful Delaneys (1938)


Merry Christmas everyone and many thanks to all who visit this little blog.