IN reissuing Julian Mitchell’s debut novel as a ‘Find’,
Faber and Faber have brought something wonderful back to the English
literary canon. Written in 1961, when Mitchell was 26, Imaginary
Toys has been out of print for far too long. Its partly
autobiographical, partly fictional premise is not a plot as such, but
more a series of Proustian stream-of-consciousness musings by its
four main characters. Their journal-like introspective narratives
reflect not only their own personal doubts and insecurities, but also
skilfully mirror the greater sentiments and concerns, social and
political, of their era.
Their milieu, 1950s Oxford, was one where class still
mattered and where coming from a working class background or a
wealthy one made all the difference between being a gentleman or an
‘ordinary’ man. The former, by his very status, automatically had
a world of opportunities at his feet while the latter, even if he was
of similar or higher intelligence, had to battle for every inch of
his intellectually equal’s recognition. Even then he still fell
short, simply because he did not have the ‘manner’ – that is,
the bearing and confidence – of a gentleman.
Jack, a coalminer’s son, is the first in his family to
go to university. He is in love with Elaine who struggles with her
middle-class background and her Catholicism which forbids them to
sleep together. Jack tries hard to understand the outlandish laws of
her religion, but jealousy and his own insecurities always get in the
way. Eventually, they come to realise that it is Elaine’s faith
which has been blighting their happiness. They have been ‘acting’
the people they think they ought to be instead of being themselves.
Charles, the son of a wealthy lawyer, has an expensive
sports car and is in love with the beautiful but cold-hearted
Margaret. He tries to buy her love by acting as her chauffeur, always
at her beck and call when she needs a lift and offering a series of
romantic gestures which she crassly rejects. The confidence that
comes as a ‘given’ to someone with his background gradually
crumbles when, firstly, he fails in love and, later, when he
comprehends that through his upper-class background he projects an
unconscious arrogance to those less secure in their personal standing
than himself.
Nicholas, a fellow student and a socialist, is gay. He
writes at length about his various infatuations with other homosexual
men. Often reciting whole conversations in an effort to clarify his
feelings in his own mind, he ponders the different kinds of love: gay
versus straight, platonic feelings towards someone of the same sex,
against deep desire for the same. Nicholas symbolises the social
conscience of his time. On the one hand he is the hidden ‘curse’
within society; the inadmissible ‘affliction’ which people would
prefer did not exist and try to ignore before attempting to eradicate
it through punitive laws and policies.
The literary influences of Mitchell’s early career are
obvious. Firstly, those of Marcel Proust (1871-1922), in the novel’s
long, almost out-of-control paragraphs with barely any punctuation
which reveal the characters’ deepest emotions and moments of
intense self-doubt. Secondly, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead
Revisited (1945) about class, religion and university life
(albeit during the 1920s) seems to ghost the book’s pages. However,
the author’s first exploration into prose fiction does not only
look back into literary history in search of inspiration; it also
acts as a significant stepping-stone towards his later achievements.
In Imaginary Toys the reader can clearly detect the creative
seeds of what is arguably Mitchell’s best-known work, his play
Another Country (1981), based loosely on the life story of the
Cambridge spy Guy Burgess. (Mitchell also wrote the award-winning
screenplay when it was turned into a film three years later.)
The themes which occupy the thoughts, anxieties and
complex emotional conundrums of the four main characters – class,
social inequality, gay love, socialist politics and the struggle with
religious conviction – are typical for the period and setting and
mean that Imaginary Toys fills an important place in the
post-war English novel. It is a delight to see it in print once more.
02/07/2013
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