William Boyd - Bamboo - Essays and Criticism

1999

Two brief quotations will serve as the best introduction to this unique and extraordinary novel, the finest novel, in my opinion, to have come out of the First World War. The scene takes place in the reserve lines in the Somme valley in northern France during the late summer of 1916. A corporal is dressing-down the men in his section.

“You shut your blasted mouth, see!” said the exasperated Corporal Hamley, stooping as he entered the tent, the lift of his head, with chin thrust forward as he stooped, giving him a more desperately aggressive appearance. “An’ you let me ’ear you talkin’ on parade again with an officer present and you’ll be on the bloody mat quick. See? You miserable beggar, you! A bloody cow like you’s sufficient to demoralize a whole muckin’ Army Corps. Got it? Get those buzzers out, and do some bloody work for a change.”

Nothing too unusual here: standard NCO aggression, an attempt to render the colloquial nature of the speech by dropping the odd consonant, perhaps a hint of a more refined sensibility present in the way Corporal Hamley’s entry into the tent is so precisely described. But now here is the same passage as it was originally written and as it was originally meant to be read.

“You shut your blasted mouth, see!” said the exasperated Corporal Hamley, stooping as he entered the tent, the lift of his head, with chin thrust forward as he stooped, giving him a more desperately aggressive appearance. “An’ you let me ’ear you talkin’ on parade again with an officer present and you’ll be on the bloody mat, quick. See? You miserable bugger you! A bloody cunt like you’s sufficient to demoralise a whole fuckin’ Army Corps. Got it? Get those buzzers out, and do some bloody work, for a change.”

It is remarkable the change wrought by the good old Anglo-Saxon demotic of “bugger,” “cunt” and “fuckin’.” What was familiar, stereotypical, almost parodic, becomes suddenly real — the whole situation charged and violent. And in its wider context — the First World War — a whole new resonance emerges. Those monochrome images we know so well — Tommies puffing on their fags, troops marching through French villages, the lunar landscape of no man’s land — suddenly have a different import. Suddenly, a veil is stripped away. These are real men, real soldiers — and all soldiers swear, vilely, constantly. This is a world where corporals call their men “cunts.”

Her Privates We was not the title chosen for the first, unexpurgated edition of this novel which was privately printed and issued in an impression of some 600 copies, and is what you will read here. Frederic Manning called this version of his book The Middle Parts of Fortune, changing the title for the later, bowdlerized, public version. And, even though we have had the uncensored novel for some three decades now, the book’s fame and reputation have always been associated with the second title. Both titles, in fact, come from Hamlet (Act II, scene 2) when Hamlet indulges in a bit of saucy badinage with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. When Hamlet asks how the “good lads” are, Guildenstern replies: “Happy in that we are not over-happy/On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.”

HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.

HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours.

GUILDENSTERN: Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

I take the allusion in several ways. First, I think Manning acknowledges that the very coarseness of the book is its strongest and most shocking asset. Especially in 1930, when it was published, even the cleaned-up version would have seemed relentlessly profane. Second, it draws attention to the role of luck and blind chance in men’s lives, particularly in a war. And third, it advertises the book’s intellectual seriousness. For although this is a novel about private soldiers, those at the bottom end of the army’s food chain, the authorial brain informing it is rigorously intelligent and clear-eyed. And, as if to ram that point home, every chapter has a Shakespearean epigraph.

Even when the book was first published, credited pseudonymously to one “Private 19022,” it would be apparent to any reader that the central character, Bourne, is different from the ordinary soldiers around him. The tone of voice, the intellectual nature of the book’s reflection and analysis, the sardonic sensibility, all spoke of a different category of author than a mere private soldier. And when the identity of the author was eventually revealed there was even more of a surprise — but more of that later.

Her Privates We has little to do with actual combat — most of its action takes place behind the lines, in reserve or in billets as the battalion trains, does fatigues and waits for its turn in the front-line trenches. Bourne is a thoughtful and ruminative man, taciturn, an almost lugubrious presence — an older man, too, educated, but with no desire to exploit the privileges that this education, and what was then called “breeding,” would have provided for him in the army. He is friendly with the NCOs — happy to go drinking with the sergeants, and, because he can speak French, is used by the men as an interpreter, and provider of services, with the local population.

Here again, despite the classically turned prose of the novel, its modernity emerges. While they wait to go into battle, the men’s interests are focused on food, drink, sex and idleness — probably in that order. Bourne observes all this and bears calm and cool witness. The men tolerate rather than respect their officers, they show no military zeal or patriotic fervour, they have no faith in their leaders and no real interest in the war: “… they were now mere derelicts in a wrecked and dilapidated world, with sore and angry nerves sharpening their tempers, or shutting them up in a morose or sullen humour from which it was difficult to move them.” Time and again Bourne’s observations undermine the stereotype of the First World War and in so doing paint a picture of men at war that is — after decades of mythmaking and romance — both bitterly fresh and timeless.

When Her Privates We was published in 1930 it became an almost immediate success, some 15,000 copies selling in the first three months as newspaper columnists vied with each other trying to guess the identity of “Private 19022.” Manning’s cover was blown relatively quickly. One of the first to guess the true identity of the author was T. E. Lawrence who claimed that within six weeks of the book’s publication he had read it three times.

Lawrence recognized Manning as the author because he was a great admirer of Manning’s book Scenes and Portraits (published in 1909). When Manning’s identity was revealed to the world at large it came as something of a shock. Frederic Manning was a minor figure in Edwardian literary circles, a Greek scholar, a poet, a belle-lettrist, friend of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot — he seemed a million miles away from the foul-mouthed soldiers in his novel, scrounging for booze and bitching about the war.

Manning was in fact an Australian, born in 1882 to a prosperous family in Sydney. His father was mayor of Sydney, later knighted, and his brother became Attorney General. Manning, a neurasthenic young man of perpetually failing health, came to England in 1903 determined to make a career in literature. And his efforts followed the predictable path of those blessed with a modest talent, a private income and low ambition: reviews and poems printed in periodicals, a turgid epic poem called The Vigil of Brunhilde, and then finally the critical success of Scenes and Portraits, a series of imaginative dialogues between historical figures which display a refined and ironic intellectual preciosity but which now read as hopelessly dated. However, in 1909, the réclame of the book finally permitted Manning full access into Edwardian literary circles and it was at this time that he and Ezra Pound became friends.