James Hilton's Lost Horizon

Published in 1933 - note date. 

We had the film at school, and everybody remembers what happens to Lo-Tsen. Terrifying moment. But it was a long time since I'd read the book. 

Spoilers alert! Four random Westerners are escaping from an oriental trouble spot on the last plane out. A bluff American (Barnard), a young diplomat (Mallinson), an older diplomat and former army man and explorer (Conway), and a middle-aged woman missionary (Miss Brinkwell). Their plane goes off-course over the Himalayas and eventually crashes, and the pilot dies. Soon a party of Tibetans rescues them and leads them down a perilous route into a beautiful valley, Shangri-La, that's not on any maps.

The story is relayed by Conway, who is first heard of ill with fever in a Chinese hospital.

They stay in the monastery, but meet only one of the personnel, Chang, who gives wonderfully obscure answers to all their questions. Moderation in all things, he says, and the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Yes, of course they can leave with the next party of porters bringing necessities from the far-off outside world. In a month, or six, or a year.

Conway is affected by the beauty and calm of the place, and his shell shock (PTSD) from World War One begins to be soothed. In a distant manner, he falls in love with the only other female inhabitant, the teenage Lo-Tsen. Barnham makes the best of it, Miss Brinkwell sees new souls to save - but Mallinson chafes against the boredom. 

Conway is summoned to meet the head Lama. The old man tells him a long story – how the place was discovered by a French missionary, Father Perrault, in the 18th century. How he built the lamasery and became its head. How a local herb plus the atmosphere of the place gave him an incredibly long life. How the whole place is funded by a bottomless gold mine.

"But you understand, don't you," he explains, "That anybody who finds his way here cannot be allowed to leave."

Conway learns more about the lamasery, and meets more of its ageless inhabitants who, with centuries before them, are conducting in-depth scholarship in the library. The monastery is founded on Christian lines, though we see no ceremonies and hear no sermons. The library, collected over hundreds of years, preserves Western civilisation. Lo-Tsen arrived in the late 19th cent, on the way to get married. But she has forgotten such desires, and "is happy". "All that fades in five years," says Chang.

"A great conflagration threatens to destroy Europe," says the head Lama. "But we shall then emerge and re-educate its people about its intellectual heritage."

"You never died, did you, Father Perrault!" says Conway.

"I want you to be my successor," replies Father P.

But then the porters arrive, and Mallinson grabs Conway, saying that if they don't leave now they'll be trapped for ever with "these boring Tibetans"! Mallinson, too, is in love with Lo-Tsen, and they want to escape and lead a normal life. Barnham - on the run from the police - says he'll stay and run the mining operation more efficiently. Miss Brinkwell wants to remain with her potential converts.

So the three set out to meet the porters. It is assumed they make it back to China. We switch back to the gentlemen reconstructing the events. Conway has disappeared again. No mention is made of Mallinson. We're told that Conway was delivered to the hospital by an old, old Chinese woman who soon died herself. 

And all we remember of the book and the films is the happy valley where humans can live for ever. Successive films (one is a musical) distorted the story and dropped the patronising Sunday School tone. The book convinced me that Utopias are hell.

Margery Allingham's Black Plumes

Black Plumes is a standalone novel, without Mr Campion. It has been extensively reviewed by Clothes in Books, who luxuriates in the mourning garments and points out that the policeman's accent is an "excrescence". I hadn't read it for years, but I remembered who had dunnit and why and how. 

In one way it is a mish-mash of some favourite Allingham tropes. The old-established family firm running a gentlemanly business: here an art gallery, in Flowers for the Judge a publisher. The very old lady who was a force to be reckoned with in the 1880s and is still living in the Victorian era (Police at the Funeral). The Old Dark House that contains surprises (Police at the Funeral). There's a fake engagement (The Fashion in Shrouds). There are old retainers who have no education but a lot of common sense. There's a butler who is there merely to show a man going to pieces. There's a loyal secretary who has grown old with the firm. There's a central character who acts "woman in agony because she thinks her boyfriend dunnit". Here there is too much fear stabbing people's diaphragms and the like. Tell, don't show.

The central character is Frances, the youngest Ivory in the dynasty. She stands around on dark landings, while the drama happens offstage, or is told in retrospect (with lots of "had been"). Her brother in law is found dead in a cupboard, and his elaborate funeral follows, plumes and all. The old lady, Gabrielle, insists on deep mourning and proper obsequies, and "Frances began to recognise for the first time the awe-inspiring common sense behind the absurdities of that great social code of the day before yesterday." The Victorians were the Boomers of their day.

Frances notes that her pseudo-fiançé is very good looking and works out, depressingly, that many other people must have thought the same.

Her half-sister-in-law Phillida is an odd character. She hardly ever speaks, but we are told that she is "greyhound like" (thin) and has "smooth, red" hair. She is a hypochondriac who spends much of her time in a lace negligée, sobbing on a "day-bed". She is very worried by her husband's odd behaviour. We don't have much time to study him as he is soon the body in question. Various other gruesome things happen, there's another death, and Phillida retires to bed to mumble deliriously, and that is the last we see of her.

Various characters warn each other not to "get hysterical" – this seems to mean showing, or feeling, emotion in any way. Meanwhile Phillida is acting as a role model in case they want to "break down".  ("My good girl, you can't hang about this ghastly house day in and day out. It's unhealthy. It'll get on your nerves. You'll get hysterical." Later: "Don't go all ethereal over it." Phillida herself "was nervy anyway and underoccupied and it turned into a neurosis. She's a mass of hysteria now.")

David Field, the pseudo-fiançé, is almost the only one to produce Allingham's usual humour. "A deep feeling of no enthusiasm for both of them descended upon me." In another lighter moment, a police station is said to be "neatly decorated in government green".

Everybody seems to think they understand the human mind perfectly, but Allingham points out that "More fantastic beliefs are held by the layman about insanity than about anything else in the civilised world. Frances was no alienist. She had been brought up to believe in the shibboleths." This is the author speaking, not any of her characters.

This paragraph has stayed with me all my life: Frances's mother "used to sit and listen to the intolerable pain of her last illness. 'You can get above it if you do... Listen to it and it's not yours. It's a thing by itself.'" I'm not sure this method works. This also touches a nerve: "The entire gathering was aware of that tingling sensation in the soles of the feet which comes just before the worst is told."

This mystery has slid rather out of sight, perhaps because of the use of the N word by a couple of the servants. It couldn't really be edited out, as it is one of the hinges of the plot. One thing that has long puzzled me: how do those aged retainers carry on scrubbing floors and carrying heavy trays?

More Allingham here, and links to the rest.