GLR September-October 2023

A 1953 Novel about ‘Inverts’ and Social Class ARTMEMO

M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ A back to his first novel, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (1992), reissued in 2017. In the new introduction, Bartlett acknowledges his debt to “ two of my favourite collector ’ s items in the pre-history of British gay fic tion, Rodney Garland ’ s The Heart in Exile (1953) and the screenplay for the film Vic tim (1961). ” I ’ d seen the film (Dirk Bogarde suffers, fabulously), but didn ’ t know the novel, and wondered what a seventy-year old novel might have to say to me. Fortu nately, the always valiant Valancourt Books reissued it in 2014, with a splendid intro duction by none other than Bartlett himself. Rodney Garland was the pseudonym for Adam Martin de Hegedus, born in Hungary in 1906. He moved to London in 1939, where he wrote several books . The Heart in Exile was his only success, going through multiple printings in Britain and the U.S. It received respectable if predictably conde scending reviews. According to TheOb server : “ Its detached picture of barren tragic love and desire can arouse no disgust but only a deep pity coupled with a new under standing. ” It is assumed that his death in 1958 was a suicide. Garland structures the novel as a mystery, narrated by Tony Page, a gay psychiatrist, who learns that an early love, Julian, a bar rister, has committed suicide. He discovers in Julian ’ s apartment a photo of a young man he describes as “ post-war working class, ” and he devotes himself to solving the mystery of the suicide by finding the man in the photo. Some of the chapters slowly nudge the plot forward, but the real point of the novel consists in the chapters of Tony ’ s conversa tions with gay men who knew Julian. As they discuss Julian, they also discuss homo sexuality, and Tony uses his authority as a psychiatrist to analyze and explain the na ture of “ the invert, ” his preferred term, and of “ the underground ” that the inverts in habit. We get disquisitions, forcefully deliv ered but of dubious merit, on “ the queer pub ” as opposed to “ the queer club, ” which is “ improper without being naughty, ” on why “ inversion has increased everywhere in the last twenty years, ” onhow “ the biggest enemy of the invert is the feminine man who becomes a homo-Puritan, ” onhow “ the homo is more inclined to use sex as a means of escape from the adversity of life than a normal person, who is likely instead to es S A SUPERFAN of Neil Bartlett — I ’ ve raved about four of his works in these pages — I recently went

cape into something else: religion, drink, or sport and so on. ” But it ’ s not just homosexuality in general that they explore. Prodded by Julian ’ swork ing-class mystery man, Tony has a particu lar focus. The men he talks with are all middle- or even upper-class: a stock broker, a member of Parliament, a playwright, a Lord. And, as one says: “ We don ’ t like peo ple like ourselves. We don ’ t want anybody who shares our standards. I mean educated, middle-class and so on. In fact, we want the very opposite. We want the primitive, the uneducated, the tough. ” So the real mystery isn ’ t why Julian killed himself. The explanation, when it comes, isn ’ t particularly interesting. The other, deeper mystery is why inverts are at tracted to working-class men and, even more mysteriously, why working-class men sometimes reciprocate. The first has a sim ple answer: inverts like such men because they ’ re virile and “ sometimes just because they ’ re dirty. Dirt may act as a symbol of physical reality from which the middle class invert is divorced. ” As for why working-class men respond, Tony has plenty of theories. He notes that “ The war had made most members of the underground profiteers in an emotional bargain basement, ” because vulnerable young men far from home became avail able. He adds: “ My private guess on Freudian lines is that they have fewer anal fears than the upper classes. ” There ’ s a lot about working-class solidarity between “ mates ” and about “ that primitive type of man which, like our ancestors, made no rigid distinction between the sexes, but fol lowed his instincts of lust and affection. ” When we actually hear from a working class man, he simply says: “ if a working man likes someone, he ’ d do anything for him, wouldn ’ t he? ” Tony firmly believes that the working classman ’ s normality must be protected, even if he responds to an invert ’ s attention. He admonishes such a man: “ You ’ re a nor mal person who ’ s been infected. You must get it out of your system. Being queer ’ s no good for you. ” It is his credo: “ The only moral scruple in my emotional life was against corrupting someone who was nor mal, especially if he were young. ... I felt I had no right to provide the decisive push to wards an anchorage which made life on the whole more miserable than the so-called normal attitude. ” Tony also turns his attention, and his contempt, to the inverts who populate the space between his own class and the work

ing class. One of the most interesting, and off-putting, aspects of the novel is this re lentless obsession with class. Tony pigeon holes everyone by class. At a party, “ one could pick out the boys from the lesser resi dential suburbs ... who were ashamed of the semi-detached, the fumed oak, the thwarted aspirations. ” In a bar, he recognizes a man he knew in the past: “ The upper part of his face grinned, but the lower, with the weak chin and the peevish, shopgirl lips, be trayed the fear, the uneasiness, the many re buffs against which education at a cheap public school was inadequate armour, and eight hundred a year no compensation. ” The man is introduced for the sole purpose of being thus witheringly dismissed. Al most every description of person or place consigns its object to a particular, and infe rior, social class. The language is admirably precise, intelligent, and vigorous, but al ways nasty. There ’ s no joy in it, no redeem ing queeniness. Garland does craft a happy ending for the heart-exiled psychiatrist. This isn ’ t a spoiler. It ’ s obvious from the moment on the third page when we see Terry, his housemate, “ in his dark blue singlet, busy peeling pota toes. ” Terry, Tony tells us, likes housework and “ in that respect he was decidedly femi nine, but attractively and touchingly so — not a bit like those tragic parodies of women: the little, tripping pansies with high-pitched voices, whom I understood, but detested all the same. ” The doctor lands the working-class boyfriend, butch and do mestic, that Julian couldn ’ t. It isn ’ t believ able in the least. So, seventy years later, is there a reason to read this odd novel narrated by an un pleasant man? Bartlett thinks so. And, even though everything I ’ ve said has been nega tive, I would also recommend the experi ence, precisely because of the narrator. I doubt that there ’ s much distance between author and narrator here: there ’ s no ironic undercutting of the unpleasantness, not even any awareness of how unpleasant he is. The result is that Garland, behind his pseudo nym, makes himself more naked than he re alizes. He stands completely exposed for our examination, in his pomposity, his snob bishness, his dubious explanations and theo ries, his profound unhappiness. It is instructive, and oddly moving, to see what an intelligent gay man in 1953 made of his world and his place in it, even if he gets so much of it so wrong. Michael Schwartz is an associate editor for this magazine.

TheG & LR

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