Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

An English country house full of people you wouldn’t like

English author Aldous Huxley is best known to American readers as the writer of the science fiction novel Brave New World, but, much like H. G. Wells, he also wrote plenty of non-sci-fi works about contemporary British society, as well as philosophical nonfiction. (I would imagine British readers are more familiar with the totality of his career.) Huxley had published one or two volumes of short stories before releasing his debut novel, Crome Yellow, in 1921.

Crome is the name of an English country estate and the village adjacent to it. Denis Stone, a poet, takes the train from London to spend a few summer weeks with his friends Priscilla and Henry Wimbush, the owners of Crome. The Wimbushes are hosting six, sometimes seven, houseguests, including their niece Anne, whom Denis is in love with, so far unrequited. The guests are roughly half male, half female. There is some minor suspense about who might end up with whom, romantically, but mostly the book is just about the conversations between these people. Huxley uses his characters to satirize different aspects of British culture at the time. Denis, for example, offers the opportunity for Huxley to criticize literature, while a painter named Gombauld allows for discussions about art. Mr. Scogan expresses political and philosophical views that sympathize with the more fascistic aspirations of Huxley’s Brave New World dystopia. The female characters are mostly on hand to examine the roles of women in Britain and modern versus traditional ideas of marriage and sexuality.

For the reader arriving a century late to the party, it’s often difficult to ascertain which portions of the novel are supposed to be humorous and satirical and which aren’t. (Again, the British reader probably has the upper hand in this regard.) For example, a long story is told involving little people. Is that story supposed to be funny simply because they’re little? A preacher gives a sermon about World War I and the evil Germans. Is that supposed to be funny? There are also quite a few passages of poetry in the book. Is this supposed to be humorously bad poetry? Or good poetry with humorous content? Literati who habitually read poetry in the 1920s could tell you, but I can’t. Denis is the most obvious source of humor because he’s portrayed as a sad-sack loser, unlucky in love and literature.

I find English literature of this time period a bit tiresome because of its attitudes towards class. Prior to World War II at least, English society (or so its literature would have you believe) was divided into two segments: those who work for a living, and those who don’t. Very few English writers concerned themselves with the former category, while almost everyone wrote about the latter. In Crome Yellow, Huxley is making fun of the idle rich—their intellectual pretensions, their frivolous lives, their narcissistic eccentricities, their cluelessness towards the lower classes. Even so, Huxley chose to write about these annoying leisure-class dilettantes, and readers are forced to spend their time with them. Huxley still doesn’t think the lower classes are worth writing about. No doubt there would have been servants at Crome waiting on these houseguests, but they’re never mentioned. When the Wimbushes and their guests visit the nearby village, they regard the townsfolk with paternalistic condescension.

There is really no one to like in this book. Still, it’s more interesting than your average English country house comedy of manners. I appreciate that Huxley tried to do something different here. This isn’t stodgy Victorian lit, nor is it the overt artsiness of a James Joyce novel. Although the satire was aimed at readers of a hundred years ago, enough of the book will still prove mildly amusing to a 21st century audience.