Book Review by George S: Buried Alive is a novel based on a premise that is ridiculously unlikely. The novel’s anti-hero is Priam Farll, a celebrated painter who suffers from almost pathological shyness. He is protected from the world by his servant Henry Leek:
and Henry Leek was Priam Farll’s bad habit. While somewhat of a rascal (as his master guessed), Leek was a very perfect valet. Like you and me, he was never shy. He always did the natural thing naturally. He had become, little by little, indispensable to Priam Farll, the sole means of living communication between Priam Farll and the universe of men.
The novel opens when the pair have returned to London after a long period abroad. Henry Leek is sick upstairs in Farll’s Kensington house. The doctor arrives and assumes that the quietly obsequious man who lets him in must be the servant. The sick man, therefore, must be the master. Farll does not disabuse him.He is reluctant to face life’s responsibilities by himself, and therefore hides the truth, even when the invalid dies. He assumes the identity of Henry Leek because of its anonymity- and partly, it is suggested, becausea woman has designs on marrying him, and he cannot face that.
The idea is an ridiculously implausible one, and Bennett seems to be acknowledging this by writing in a more playful style than usual. The situation gives him scope for a lot of farcical developments. The most important comes when Farll discovers a letter addressed to Henry Leek from a lady introduced by a marriage bureau. He meets her, and is impressed by her immense practicality. lLater in the bok she is described as:
the widow of a builder in a small way of business, well known in Putney and also in Wandsworth. This was obviously true. She could have been nothing but the widow of a builder in a small way of business well known in Putney and also in Wandsworth. She was every inch that.
She is Alice Challis, and is a remarkable woman. Once she has decided that the two of them would suit each other, she is tremendously strong, utterly unshockable by the book’s wilder developments, and as utterly dependable as Leek had been.
Priam Farll’s death causes a sensation. Beforehand his had been a name that meant something only in the art world, but he suddenly becomes a national treasure, and he (or rather Henry Leek) is given the privilege of burial in Westminster Abbey. Bennett gets good comedy out of Priam Farll’s nervous witnessing of his own state funeral. Of course, it’s the sevant who is being interred in the Abbey, a fact which will cause national outrage when it comes out.
Complications ensue. Farll and Alice go and live at Putney,
“The room was ugly in a pleasant Putneyish way, with a couple of engravings after B.W. Leader, R.A., a too realistic wall-paper, hot brown furniture with ribbed legs, a carpet with the characteristics of a retired governess who has taken to drink, and a black cloud on the ceiling over the incandescent burners.”
Yet Putney is presented as a sort of paradise – and it’s one where a woman like Alice has no need of servants:
“You did not keep a servant, because servants were so complicated, and because they could do nothing whatever as well as you could do it yourself. You had a charwoman when you felt idle or when you chose to put the house into the back-yard for an airing.”
A long-lost cousin has appeared to inherit Priam Farll’s estate, including the paintings, whose value has rocketed since the artist’s death. he has now become immensely rich, but Priam and Alice couple become short of money, so Farll, who is becoming nostalgic for paint, decides that he will make money by painting again, and selling the pictures. Alice looks at the what he paints and is unimpressed; his pictures are impressionist, without the detailed natruralism that is to her untutored eye the mark of good painting. Still,she humours him. The paintings are sold for ten pounds each to a local dealer, who finds a customer willing to pay fifty pounds each for them. He is a connoisseur who recognises the style, and sells them to a collector as authentic Priam Farlls, for two thousand each.
Farcical complications ensue. The wife and children that Henry Leek long ago deserted turn up, and Priam Farll is threatened with prosecution for bigamy. Alice sees the intruders off, brilliantly.
A more threatening problem emerges happen when the authenticity of the new pictures (which have been passed off as genuine Priam Farlls) is questioned. There is a court case, whose pomposity and self-importance Bennett clearly relishes describing.
This is one of the novels that Arnold Bennett seems to be writing just for the fun of the thing. He enjoys satirising the art world, and gets a lot of comic mileage out of Alice Challis, who protects her man through thick and thin, with complete disregard for truth and honesty.
One thought strikes me. Very often Bennett’s novels have a hero that is not quite a self-portrait, but exaggerates one aspect of Bennett’s own personality. This novel was written just as Bennett was finding real success and a literary reputation. He was a man with a stammer, and sometimes uncertain in public situations. I suspect that this book expresses some of his qualms and ambivalence about fame and becoming a public figure.
The book sold well, and Bennett adapted it into a play The Great Adventure; first produced in London in March 1913, it ran for 674 performances. This was filmed in 1921 with Lionel Barrymore as Priam Farll; a sound version in 1933 was called His Double Life, and starred Roland Young and Lilian Gish.
In 1943 a version called Holy Matrimony starred Monty Woolley and Gracie Fields.
Gracie is just rightas Alice Challis; you can see the whole movie here:
Darling of the Day, a musical based on the book, with songs by Yip Harburg and Jule Styne opened on Broadway in 1968. It starred Vincent Price and Patricia Routledge, and was a resounding flop, despite some pleasant songs. The devastating New York Times review of it can be read here: https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/29/archives/vincent-price-and-patricia-routledge-in-darling-of-the-day.html
Arnold Bennett, by Max Beerbohm