The Taverner Novels

by Mary Butts

Originally published in 1928 and 1932

This edition published in 2018 by McPherson and Company

With her work largely forgotten or overlooked for 90 years, it is time we shift our gaze to Butts. Almost immediately in The Taverner Novels, Butts establishes an off-kilter feeling. She begins by describing the setting/landscape, and after a few pages you no longer trust the trees, the wind, or the ocean. There is something strange at work, as a group of people (brother and sister (Scylla and Felix), friends (Clarence, Boris, Ross), lovers (Picus), and an outsider (Carston)) gather together in this remote house in rural England, but the eeriness is balanced by beauty, and this pendulum is what drives the author’s style (e.g., “Like open fir-cones dipped in fire and cream, the thunder-clouds were piling up the sky. Mounting the hills, a wing of them rising out of the sea. Inshore, a breath of wind clashed the pine needles.” (37)).

It takes getting used to. It is not immediate or easily consumable, which, as one might imagine, means that it found a good home with me. You have to sink into Butts’ prose, have to want to dive into the world that she insistently defines on every page. I think you will want to do this because there is enough intrigue and interest both narrative and conceptual to properly bait the hook. 

The first book, Armed with Madness, centers around an outsider, an American named Carston, coming to the house to join this Bohemian group for reasons vague and hinted at but basically because he needs some time away from the world. Shortly thereafter, as we witness the ways in which his presence upends some of the group dynamic, one of the characters, Felix (well both Felix and Ross), finds a cup inside of a dried-up well. Right away, it is speculated that this could be the Holy Grail (the justifications for which are thin but exist and I’ll leave it to the book for you to discover).

Through the absurdity and intrigue that surround such an object, even through pure conjecture and desire, the characters start viewing one another in different ways. Has this American intruder been sent to steal the Grail, or what happens when he is blamed for taking it (“It would be her turn next for Picus to insult, as he had played a pointless joke on a foreign guest. A number of unpleasant emotions followed that thought, chiefly disturbed sexual vanity which sets the earth by the ears. Life was ice-bright, and disagreeable as flint. It was a maudlin dream. Chance couplings, little minds setting to partners. Victory of ants over the sphinx in flesh: over birds.” (66))?  Should the group hold onto the object for its inherent, assumed powers to use in their hinted-at rituals? Is it really possible that someone like Felix? could find it accidentally? What are we to make of the references to its sexual power or of the extreme sexual tension between all members of the house? As an outsider to the action, states “The story as I see it,” said the second old man, “is true Sanc-Grail. The cup may have been an ash-tray in a Cairo club. But it seems to me that you are having something like a ritual.” (124) Of course, the answers to these questions drive the story to its climax. But more than the narrative, the vague middle ground allows space for your mind to go wild trying to piece together associations, which, in turn, makes you read more closely, focus more on the stark-yet-detailed descriptions of the sights and sounds, or lack thereof. 

The second book, Death of Felicity Taverner, focuses on the death of Scylla-et-al’s cousin, Felicity. Mysterious circumstances surround her death, as you might imagine, and many suspect her widowed husband, Kralin. So the group focuses on Kralin, assuming all kinds of things about him and what he may have done. He then returns to the area and makes it clear that he has no intention of being intimidated by Scylla and her family, and, in fact, he plans to buy the land around them and develop it, destroying the world that they have created for themselves, that world, free from outside influence, allowing for “Sober theories or experiments, delirious irresponsibilities, grotesque, monstrous, idealistic or savagely realistic things – anything is possible to persons whose isolation and liberty have freed themselves from common inhibitions.” (264) Of course, things escalate, slowly ratcheting up. Like Henry James, Butts is very good at building tension, and I looked forward to finding out what would happen next, as this second book asks us to consider  “How far would the death of one young woman bring them? Five people at least glancing over “the most fearful depths of the spirit.” nor likely to be let off at that.” (176) 

Throughout both books, there is a general feeling of unease and that something sinister is lurking just beneath the surface. This is one of my favorite feelings/things that a book can provide, the idea that there actually is more to existence, that there is something beyond this life, and maybe it doesn’t, in fact, care about us, or, as stated “This only I see clearly. Either this is a curiously coincidental hash, or we are taking part in events, only part of which are happening on the earth we see.” (125). More than any of the narrative stuff, though, the way Butts is able to frame interesting conceptual ideas is what makes reading her worthwhile, asking us to consider the nature of power, where it comes from, who is able to hold it, how it exists within a group dynamic, how each person exists as a metaphorical representation of various animals and elements, the way the group-mind works together to achieve its will, the way people are made to exist and grapple with a place that is soon to be plowed over by the modern world, and on and on, all within her very strange and hyper-specific style, one that brings to mind a painter with a single bristle creating lush scenes for an obscure, illuminated manuscript, so crafted and strange, a style of writing that edges into the occult and mystical unlike much else that I’ve yet read. 

Heavy Lit rating: Recommended