From Shangri-La to Manderley: The delights of idling

Poussin, paths that cross, and advice on how to live comfortably without hard work

In A Question of Upbringing, the first of his superb 12 volume series A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell outlines the driving force of the work. His narrator Nick Jenkins is watching snow falling on a coal brazier around which workmen are huddled to keep warm and is reminded of Poussin’s 17th century painting, pictured above.

These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.

I find this a compelling explanation of how we connect with other people over time, or as Patti Smith put it, paths that cross will cross again. One of the people in my own awkward dance is the fine Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler magazine and the chap behind the whole Idler enterprise. I’ve known him for a couple of decades during which our paths gently intertwined until about half a dozen years ago when he asked me to write regular columns for the Idler magazine about sheds, snooker, and Idler heros. It’s been, and continues to be, a real pleasure, and I thought those of you who are unaccountably not subscribers to the magazine, might enjoy a couple of recent pieces which have been about fictional rather than ‘in real life’ idling champions.

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It’s May 1931. The ever-efficient 37-year-old British consul Hugh Conway has organised a plane for the last minute evacuation of a handful of white residents wanting to escape a dangerous revolution in Baskul, Afghanistan. Their destination is India, but once up in the air the pilot unaccountably veers hugely off course, escorting Conway and the three other passengers into a remarkable adventure…

Writer James Hilton (1900 – 1954) wrote more than two dozen novels and screenplays, winning an Oscar for the 1942 Mrs Minniver. But his fame today rests largely on two bestsellers, Goodbye, Mr Chips (1934) and Lost Horizon (1933). The latter focuses on the discovery by Conway and his fellow kidnappees of Shangri-La, a remote lamasery high up in the mountains in Tibet, which – don’t worry, no spoilers - appears to have discovered the secret to living a good life.

When we first meet Conway he’s basically had enough. After winning a DSO in the war, he’s spent a couple of years as a don in Oxford and now a decade in the consular service. Regarded as a brilliant but mercurial chap, despite his nickname ‘Glory’ he’s never been significantly ambitious – “He preferred the less formal and more picturesque jobs that were on offer” is how Hilton describes him - and now he’s rather world weary and burnt out.

At Shangri-La he finds a Utopian community, a civilisation in all senses of the word, run along guidelines of Aristotelian restraint. As one of its more important residents Chang puts it: “Our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excess of all kinds - even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.”

This is the essence of life in Shangri-La, the Buddhist concept of the spiritual kingdom of Shambhala made flesh. Chang goes on to explain that people who live in the lamasery and the valley below (known as the Valley of the Blue Moon) are moderately sober, moderately chaste, moderately honest, and moderately heretical. He even tells one of the passengers from the plane who heartily endorses the lamasery’s pick ‘n mix approach to religion that the community is only moderately certain they’ve got the mixture right.

Conway – Hilton’s composite of mountaineer George Mallory and soldier-philospher Sir Francis Younghusband - is very much attracted to the setup in Shangri-La. Another revealing moment occurs when he makes a throwaway comment to Chang about ‘slackers’ back in his homeland, a term with which his new friend is unfamiliar.

“’Slacker,’” explained Conway, “is a slang word meaning a lazy fellow, a good-for-nothing. I wasn’t, of course, using it seriously.”

Chang bowed his thanks for the information. He took a keen interest in languages and liked to weigh a new word philosophically. “It is significant,” he said after a pause, “that the English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand, should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world at present, and might it not be better if more people were slackers?”

“I'm inclined to agree with you,” Conway answered with solemn amusement.

It’s by no means an entirely sedate lifestyle, but the pace is certainly much calmer than that of the international empire-building beyond the mountains of which Conway is sick, what he describes as “a reek of dissolution”. At Shangri-La he discovers not only a truly beautiful landscape, but also the chance for a contemplative existence (as well as a very Aristotelian kind of love) and a sense of purpose he feels has been missing all his life.

Lost Horizon sold millions of copies to readers disillusioned with the chaotic way the world had turned pre- and post-war, and was one of the most popular 20^th century novels, promoted as the first mass-market paperback in the US. Its success is all the more remarkable in that Hilton had never travelled to the Himalayas or Tibet before writing the novel – Baskul, where the real action begins, is a location he invented - although he did spend plenty of time in the British Museum library reading up on the region’s geography, customs, and religion.

After publication, Conway transferred successfully to celluloid in an excellent 1937 Frank Capra film starring Ronald Colman as the slightly renamed ‘Robert’, and a moderately strange 1973 musical with Peter Finch (again pointlessly changed, to ‘Richard’) with music by Burt Bacharach. Among numerous radio versions is a good BBC one with Derek Jacobi which is available on the YouTube.

Though the book is perhaps a little sentimental, it’s hard not to envy Conway and the engaging new lifestyle he stumbles upon and relishes. “Its atmosphere soothed while its mystery stimulated,” he remarks, halfway through the book, “and the total sensation was agreeable.”

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There’s a fine line between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Annakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, Gollum and Smeagol. So it is with idling. There are many fine idlers but, yes, there is another side to the coin, there are some who have gone over to the dark side. Richard Linklater’s marvellous 1993 film Dazed and Confused offers two ways that idling can take a young chap, contrasting the grim viciousness of Ben Affleck’s O’Bannion with Matthew McConaughey’s affable slacker Wooderson.

Take Andy Capp, one of the most popular international cartoon creations, a chap who prefers to avoid work for the pleasures of the pub and the snooker hall, enjoys plenty of tea and snoozing, and generally cocks a snook at authority. Indeed, his creator Reg Smythe regarded him affectionately as a bit of a rough diamond. Less delightful is his propensity to get into fights during football matches, cheating at cards, and avoiding his round at the bar. And totally indefensible were his early displays of domestic violence, now thankfully no longer a part of the strip.

A more suave, yet still despicable, idler anti-hero is Jack Favell. He is Rebecca’s cousin in Daphne du Maurier’s murder mystery novel of the same name. In fact – mild spoiler alert – he is rather more than her cousin. Initially, he doesn’t seem such a bad sort, suffering from a rather unrequited passion for his childhood sweetheart, but it becomes clear that actually he is more of a hustler than a harmless idler, unscrupulous, devious, drunken, misogynistic (cf Andy Capp) and indeed criminal.

This becomes clear when – major spoiler alert – he decides to blackmail Rebecca’s widower Maxim de Winter over her death. In the book, he puts together a theory that Maxim has shot her but rather than try and avenge her death, he tries to monetise it.  Here’s what he says:

“Now, Max, I’ve laid all my cards on the table. Why can’t we come to some agreement? I’m not a rich man. I’m too fond of gambling for that. But what gets me down is never having any capital to fall back upon. Now if I had a settlement of two or three thousand a year for life I could jog along comfortably, and I’d never trouble you again. I swear before God I would not.”

In the book, Favell is pretty direct and his plan lacks detail, but the classic 1940 film version directed by Alfred Hitchcock really fills him out his character. This is also helped by a bravura performance in the role from George Sanders, bringing a mixture of his Addison DeWitt and Shere Khan vibes to suave Favell up a bit.

So in the screenplay, Favell begins by telling Max that he’s rather fed up in his job as a car salesman, then gets all Swiss Toni with a rather suggestive description of what he’s found to be the exasperating difference between driving and owning an expensive car.

Finally he gets down to brass tacks. “I've often wondered what it would be like to retire to the country,” he muses, “have a nice little place with a few acres of shooting. I’ve never figured out what it would cost a year, but I'd like to talk about it with you.” And he concludes with the perfect line: “I'd like to have your advice on how to live comfortably without hard work.”

Favell, then, absolutely has the right goals in life, but like Andy Capp he’s been badly distracted from the righteous path towards achieving them. Be careful out there, idlers.