Told by an Idiot by Rose Macaulay

First published: 1923

Type of work: Historical and family chronicle

Time of work: From 1879 to the early 1920’s

Locale: London

Principal Characters:

• Aubrey Garden, a liberal clergyman
• Mrs. Garden, his wife
• Victoria Garden, the eldest of their four daughters, who marries Charles Carrington
• Rome Garden, their second daughter, who is in love with Francis Jayne
• Stanley Garden, their third daughter, a voluntary worker for social causes, who marries and divorces Denman Croft
• Maurice Garden, the older of their two sons, a radical journalist who marries and divorces Amy Wilbur
• Imogen Carrington, Victoria’s youngest daughter, a poet and novelist
• Francis Jayne, a writer in love with Rome

The Novel

Opening in 1879, Told by an Idiot spans four decades in the lives of the members of an intellectual upper-middle-class family: Aubrey Garden, his wife, their four daughters and two sons, and, as the years pass, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The family saga is intertwined with lightly satirical chronicle of the major historical events and the political, cultural, and social changes of the decades, which also define the four sections of the book under the titles “Victorian,” “Fin-de-Siecle,” “Edwardian,” an “Georgian.”

Mr. Garden is a liberal clergyman whose obsessive quest for the truth takes him through a dozen or more variations of the Christian religion. Mr. Garden, serene, patient, but quietly ironic, follows him loyally through most of his conversions but eventually puts her foot down. “In future,” she says,” shall stay at home.”

When Mrs. Garden dies of cancer in 1903, her husband abandons a temporary flirtation with Christian Science in favor of spiritualism, which help him through his grief, but before his own death in 1914, he has conclude that the only acceptable truth is a combination of all religions.

Mr. Garden has named his children after the symbols of the religion he was espousing at the time of each one’s birth. Rome, his second daughter (named “less for the city than for the Church”), is the coolest and most sophisticated of the family, watching life from the sidelines with wry amused ment. The single love affair in her life is with Francis Jayne, an urbane and witty essayist who is estranged from his Russian wife, Olga. The high minded, nonsexual but very loving relationship between Rome and Jayne is put in jeopardy by the unexpected arrival, from Moscow, of Olga, her mother, and the two Jayne children.

A confrontation of comic melodrama between husband and wife convinces Rome that the marriage is over, and Jayne invites her to go to Italy with him. After a night of tortured self-questioning, Rome is about to reph when Jayne is stabbed to death. The assassin is Olga’s cousin, an anarchist recently arrived from Russia. Rome, hiding her grief behind a mask of amused cynicism, develops into a much-sought-after dinner guest, renowned for her wit and her penchant for gambling.

Stanley (named “less for the explorer than for the Dean”), takes after her father in her enthusiastic search for the truth. Her changing allegiances however, are not to religions but to political and social causes. Her marriage to Denman Croft ends in divorce, for she cannot accept his easygoing affair with other women, although parting with him is anguish for her. She bring up their two children, Billy and Molly, to be liberal freethinkers and is disappointed when Billy refuses to take up politics but trains as a veterinary surgeon, while Molly becomes an actress and exhibits something of her father’s philandering nature.

Maurice, the Gardens’ eldest son and a radical since childhood, grows up to become the editor of a left-wing journal which gains first notoriety and later respect for its pungent and well-argued attacks on practically every thing. Maurice’s marriage to Amy Wilbur ends, like Stanley’s, in divorce Unlike his sister, however, his considers himself well rid of his spouse, whom he has long regarded as spiteful and trivial. Maurice, too, is disappointed in his children, especially in Roger, who becomes a writer of the self-satisfied bland type of fiction he has consistently attacked.

The three other Garden children lead more conventional lives. Una, born country-lover, marries a farmer and brings up a large family in bucolic happiness. Irving, the cheeriest of the family, conservative by nature and in politics, prospers in business, marries a titled woman, and lives in style and comfort. Victoria, pretty, vivacious and fun-loving, marries successfully, had five children and enjoys a lively social life. Phyllis, her eldest offspring, set tles down to a conventional marriage. Nancy becomes an artist, and Hugh government cartographer. Tony, her younger son, is killed in World War I.

Victoria’s youngest daughter, Imogen, is a strange, disoriented child who becomes a poet and novelist and in the final stages of the book accompanied Hugh on a mapmaking expedition to the South Sea Islands, searching for happiness which she fears will always elude her.

As this very intricate novel comes to a close, Rome, now sixty-four and aware that she will soon die of cancer, ruminates on life as she has observed it: a story, “told by an idiot, and not a very nice one at that, but an idiot with gleams of finesse.”

The Characters

The family is dominated by the kindly, eager figure of Mr. Garden and his perpetual quest for the true faith. His influence over his children can be understood not only through their symbolic names but also through the liberal religious base from which they all develop—some, such as Victoria, a conformists, others, such as Stanley, Maurice, and Rome, in various forms of dissent.

Stanley is an idealist. Whether working for the poor of East London, the, suffragette movement, or, in the Georgian period, the League of Nation Union, she throws her whole soul into everything she does, including marrying Denman. It is because of her need for total commitment that she cannot cope with a philandering husband yet suffers deeply when they part.

Maurice is the arch-dissenter, too tetchy and intolerant to share his life with anybody, least of all with the small-minded Amy. Yet the consistent and intelligence of his uncompromising political stance earns for him increasing respect.

Rome is perhaps the cleverest—and the least fulfilled—of all the Gardens. Although there are as many viewpoints as there are characters in the book, her attitude of wry passivity toward life is dominant and parallels the voice of the author herself, whose own opinions are expressed directly in the many witty passages of commentary.

The novel’s most intriguing character (although not fully realized) is Victoria’s daughter Imogen, whose individualism is first made apparent during vivid, on-the-spot account of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee procession watche from grandstand seats by several members of the family. As a child, Imoge lives in a dreamworld, constantly making up stories in her head in which she figures as a hero, usually a sailor, who, after some failure of nerve, over comes his weaknesses and is hailed as a hero. Passionately fond of ships, she travels alone to Portsmouth to watch King Edward VII launch the celebrated battleship Dreadnought in another graphic account of a ceremonial occasion.

During the war, she becomes engaged to a naval officer. His death does not greatly grieve her; she was in love with the navy rather than with the man. As she grows older, the sailor dream is replaced by a vision of traveling, to distant lands to report on exciting events. Yet when she finally sails to the South Seas, she knows in her heart that the exoticism of travel will not change the muddle in the center of her being.

Between them, the Gardens’ numerous children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren encompass most of the professional, social, and moral options open to young people in a liberal, literary family in the period the book encompasses. One of the most ingenious aspects of the novel is the way in which their developing opinions, ideas, and patterns of living are made to correspond to the major public controversies and social developments in each of the decades.

The author’s narration of historical events and her essaylike surveys of the times are so high-spirited and entertaining that they sometimes dwarf the characters. The gentle fun which she pokes at them also occasionally puts them at a distance. They are, nevertheless, not merely there to illustrate her points. Their strong, disparate, and clearly defined personalities come through in affectionately human terms.

Critical Context

Told by an Idiot was written in Macaulay’s most fertile period; she published virtually a book a year during the 1920’s, many of them best-seller Her earlier novels tend to be gloomy and despondent, with personal failure as a dominant theme. It was with Potterism (1920) that she first found his true voice: a gently teasing, satirical style which, coupled with her astounding wit and erudition, made her one of the most popular authors of her day.

As in most of her novels, there are many identifiable autobiographic; elements in Told by an Idiot. Macaulay was born into a religious family, and the novel, written soon after she had become an agnostic (she later returned to the Church), reflects her own agony of religious doubt. Like Rome, she had a single romantic attachment in her life: to a priest-turned-writer who was already married.

Some critics have posited a close identification between the author and Rome, but the portrait drawn of her by Constance Babington-Smith in his biography Rose Macaulay (1972) could lead to the surmise that while Rome represents her voice and aspects of her life, Stanley symbolizes her ideal and Imogen reflects the doubts and ambiguities in her personality. Many of the characters were inspired by real-life acquaintances of the period. In Letters to a Friend (1961), Macaulay explains that Mr. Garden was based very sketchily on Tom Arnold, brother of the author Matthew Arnold and father of the novelist Mrs. Humphrey Ward, who “spent his life migrating from one church or no church to another and back again.” Well-known figures from the real life of the times also wander in and out of the story.

Bibliography

Babington-Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay, 1972.

Macaulay, Rose. Letters to a Friend, 1961.