Old Non-Bestseller Review: Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself

Old Non-Bestseller Review: Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself

by Rich Horton

This book was published anonymously in 1924. The actual author was Sir Henry Howarth Bashford (1880-1961), who had a fairly successful career as a doctor -- he was reputedly King George VI's official doctor (in some sense, perhaps only ceremonial) and he published medical articles in the Lancet. He wrote fiction on the side, in a variety of genres: romances, thrillers, regional novels, ghost stories; as well as non-fiction on such subjects as the history of the British Navy and fishing. These books, published under his own name, are now forgotten (and copies are very hard to find.) And his anonymously published novel, which was a sort of cult secret for over 40 years from its publication, now stands as a minor classic of satire; listed among the best comic novels of all time by such an authority as Michael Dirda.

What happened? Augustus Carp, Esq., went through two printings in the UK, and also had an American edition, in 1924, so it wasn't a failure, but that was it until 1966, when Anthony Burgess, a rabid admirer of the book, convinced his publisher to reissue it. It has been reprinted several times by a few publishers since then, including, in 1988, a very nice boxed edition from the Folio Society. I found a used copy of that edition and, knowing nothing of the book, bought it on impulse. The book has an introduction by John Letts and illustrations by David Eccles. (Incidentally, the first edition was also illustrated by "Robin", an illustrator for Punch, whose real name was Marjorie Blood, and who later became a nun, an action that surely would have drawn the utmost condemnation from Augustus Carp.)

The full title of the novel is Augustus Carp, Esq., by Himself, Being the Autobiography of a Very Good Man. The book tells of his life from birth until his marriage. Augustus' father, also named Augustus, is a civil servant, and a prominent member of the congregation of the Church of St. James-the-Less. That is, until he is forced to move his membership successively to the Church of St. James-the-Lesser-Still, then St. James-the-Least-of-All, and finally to St. Nicholas, Newington Butts. The senior Carp is described by his son as "somewhat under the average height ... inclined to corpulence ... possessor of an exceptionally large and well-modelled nose ... massive ears ..." The son evidently inherited these characteristics, as well as his father's name. The choice of name is described in this lovely passage: "I shall name him Augustus," said my father, "after myself." "Or tin?" suggested my mother's mother. "Why not call him tin, after the saint?" "How do you mean, tin?" said my father, "Augus-tin," said Mrs. Emily Smith. But my father shook his head. "No, it shall be tus. Tus is better than tin."

Augustus undergoes a difficult childhood, due to his parents' devotion to various instructive books on the raising of children, and also to the depredations of one of his nanny's children and the other boy's toy cannon. In addition, Augustus has a dodgy digestion, and somehow his eating habits never improve it. He goes to a private school, and somehow his virtuous insistence on reporting the sins of his schoolmates makes him less than popular. He considers becoming a clergyman despite the "financially inadequate" rewards of that position, but unfortunately "to be ordained presupposed an examination, and I had been seriously handicapped in this particular respect by a proven disability, probably hereditary in origin, to demonstrate my culture in so confined a form." So Augustus must find a position, and he does, at a purveyor of religious texts, after blackmailing the owner.

And so the book continues: Augustus and his father are confronted with the horribly successful attempt of another family to donate a lectern to the church, precipitating a failed lawsuit and their move to St. Nicholas. Augustus manages to receive a promotion at work by discovering his supervisor drunk. He joins such associations as the Peckham Branch of the Non-Smoker's League, the Society for the Prevention of Strong Drink Traffic, and the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory Union. He achieves, as a friend puts it, "the full flower of his Southern Metropolitian Xtian manhood." And he makes the courageous attempt to rescue the beautiful actress Miss Moonbeam from her sinful career -- only, alas, to be defeated by the innocent consumption of Portugalade. 

This short novel achieves, in portraying Augustus Carp in his own voice as a person thoroughly unaware of his actual nature -- a profoundly unpleasant man, a perfect "monster of priggishness" as Letts puts it his introduction -- a beautifully balanced satire of religious excess, of a certain kind of masculine insensitivity, of lower middle class British life at a certain period. (And as with all the best satire, the satire of a particular sort of person has a universal applicability.) Bashford's prose is the key -- convolutedly justifying all Augustus' pretensions with always just the right unconciously deflating phrase. Augustus is a complete bore, but the book is not in the least boring, especially at its short length. Extended any longer, it would have overstayed its welcome. At all accounts, Bashford was never this good in his other fiction -- perhaps the comfort of anonymity allowed him free reign to gamble? (Letts suggests that Bashford published the book anonymously in part because he was reacting to some aspects of his childhood, and didn't want to offend his family; or perhaps that he felt such satire unbecoming in a man who had attained some conventional respect in his medical career.) 

I read this book just after reading John Kennedy Toole's comic masterwork A Confederacy of Dunces, and I was struck by some superficial similarities. Both novels are satirical works about a fat man with digestive issues, a man determinedly unaware of how the rest of the world perceives him. Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly seems, somehow, more innocent, and also more intelligent (if just as misguided) as Augustus Carp. But it was curious to read about them back to back.

At any rate, Augustus Carp, Esq., is a very very funny book. I haven't quoted it as widely as I might -- passages such as Augustus' mother finally escaping his orbit; or the whole encounter with Miss Moonbeam, or the descriptions of the tracts Augustus sells at his job, simply need to be read to appreciate. It wholly deserves the reputation it seems to have finally established -- a minor satirical classic of the early 20th Century. Dirda compared it with Cold Comfort Farm, I've suggested A Confederacy of Dunces. I confess I think both those books superior to Augustus Carp (perhaps because on occasion this book seems to punch down just a bit) ... but that said, this book is still fully worth reading.