Christmas at the Club: Keep it Quiet by Richard Hull

Keep it Quiet by Richard Hull

 

published 1935

 

[From the chapter A Really Merry Christmas]

Of all the miserable things to do, the most miserable is to spend Christmas Day in a Club. In the first place anyone who does so is obviously a depressing person without family, without even anyone who wants him. At the very best he will be somebody whose arrangements have broken down at the last moment, and who is suffering from all the irritation consequent on such an event.

The very tables in the smoking-room proclaimed the desolation. There were no papers. One copy of yesterday’s times with the crossword partly and inaccurately filled in was to be found lying about disconsolately, suggesting that the would-be solver had either happily left and joined his family, or had in despair stabbed himself in the billiards-room with the half-butt, the latter event seeming the more probable.

 

comments: Richard Hull comes right in the middle of the Golden Age of detective fiction, and was an excellent example of a certain kind of Englishman writing these books to entertain – they aren’t to be taken too seriously, and won’t grab your emotions but they are well-worked out, often with some quirk. His best-known example is Murder of My Aunt, his first book – this one came a year later.

I liked it because of its setting in The Whitehall Club. I am always fascinated by the concept of the gentleman’s club – a place where upmarket chaps went to hide from their families, most of the premises based within a small posh area of central London. Famously the clubs were quiet, discreet, had wonderful staff, and served solid nursery food. You could read the paper in peace, and have a gentle chat about the cricket only if you wanted to. (‘He had not joined the Whitehall to talk to strangers’) There would be a library for snoozing in.

This is the first line: ‘In a way it was all Benson’s fault; or perhaps it was Mrs Benson’s.’ That’s ironic because after this there are no female characters at all – this is an all-male club, and the next woman to play any role whatsoever is someone who writes a letter in the closing pages, but doesn’t otherwise appear.

My goodness it is a dreary place, this club, and the men (over-privileged, entitled and rich) lead awful lives. They have everything the world and money could offer, and this is how they choose to live... There is an endless round of choosing sherry for the club, looking closely at the club regulations and by-laws, stealing library books, complaining to the chef, worriting about the lift. 99% of the action of the book takes place withing its four walls.

Someone dies, and there is a slight question-mark to begin with, but it is Kept Quiet, as in the title. But then the blackmailing begins. The blackmailer is obviously a club member who is going to use his knowledge to make changes in the running of the club. (I think this is meant as satire.) There is a lot about fish on the menu, and different ways of serving whiting. (Cf Alice in Wonderland, and a reference I did not at all understand when I was a child:

[Whitings] “have their tails in their mouths—and they’re all over crumbs.”)

The story rattles along, it is an easy read, even though everyone in it is quite without redeeming features. The chapters have names like ‘curled or filleted?’ (that’s the whiting), ‘A quiet rubber’, ‘the literary Sherlock’, ‘once more the sherry’.

I feel that there was a not-fair-play aspect to the book, concerning someone’s thoughts about the events, and that this is odd as the book seems quite carefully planned.

It is not exactly a festive Christmas-y contribution, but the whole chapter is very specific and convincing about what it would be like to be there for the key period, in to Boxing Day.

With thanks to Aubrey Nye Hamilton – I read about this book on her blog Happiness is a Book. She found this splendid cover illo – it makes the book look far more exciting and action-filled than it actually is, and would be a spoiler except for the fact that it is impossible to distinguish any characters from any of the others. And they are all male, it’s not as if you are ruling people out on the basis of this picture.

I blogged on another of Richard Hull’s books here: The Reprint Wars: Excellent Intentions (clothesinbooks.blogspot.com)

Karel Čapek, a prominent Czech author who wrote about, and coined the term, robots, drew the top picture after a visit to England..

Second picture is an illo for a Jules Verne novel, and dates from 1899, so considerably earlier, but very much gives the feeling of the club in the book. By George Roux.