Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis

Last Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to go and spend a bit of time at a National Trust property, enjoying the sunshine and reading a book or two (or three). None of the books I was reading at that juncture felt quite right – and so I scouted round my shelves until I found something that did. And I chose Hunt the Slipper (1937) by Violet Trefusis.

I’ve read a couple of other novels by Trefusis before. I loved Echo, and quite quickly read Broderie Anglaise, which I didn’t much like. Then I came to impasse and waited a few years, clearly. The cover to Hunt the Slipper was enough to persuade me – that, and the fact that it fitted one of my empty years in A Century of Books.

Trefusis’s novel is about privileged, artistic, middle-aged types – experimenting with love and with detachment. At the centre is Nigel Benson, on the cusp of 50, and living with his sister Molly. He has been something of a lothario, but is becoming a little more interested in fine furniture and architecture. Into his life – because she is the new wife of his close friend Sir Anthony Crome – walks a young woman called Caroline. She has little time for manners, airily says what she thinks, doesn’t really understand the mores of his world. And they fall awkwardly, uncertainly in love. In Paris, of course.

Trefusis has a rather assured and engaging tone – quite arch, witty, and the right level of detachment from her characters. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Molly Benson was clipping a small yew with a virtuosity, a flourish that would have put many a professional topiarist to shame. The click-click of her secateurs, monotonous, hypnotic, was sending her brother to sleep, the newspaper on his knees had slithered to the ground, and his head lolled… Molly had hoped this would happen. Poor pet! He gets so little, she thought, meaning sleep. She was glad to contribute to that little. An excellent sleeper herself, she was rather proud of his insomnia. It set him aside as a superior being. Like Nietzsche, he only obtained by violence what was given others freely.

It’s her wonderful writing style that stands out. And particularly the ways that characters observe and misunderstand each other – and how they see a whole scene, including crockery, sideboards, walls, landscapes. They each build their own interpretations of surroundings, and Trefusis convinces us that they are whole people. Often her turns of phrase and small similes are perfect – and this helps elevate the story above the traditional love triangle tropes. I rather liked this excerpt:

“Well, good-bye, my dear,” he said, with a sickly heartiness. “I shall look forward to seeing you in May. Don’t forget my address is the Grand Hotel, Florence.” 

“Good-bye, Nigel. I can never forget all you’ve done for me.” They were like guilty correspondents who imagine that so long as the end of their letters is above-board, nobody will inquire into the rest.”

I certainly preferred the sections of the novel that weren’t about love affairs. It’s something I find rather tedious to read about, and is the reason Broderie Anglaise was a misfire for me – but she is rather more clever about it in this book. We don’t get pages of people pouring their hearts out, or a narrative that expects us to weep when they weep. The characters are no less sincere, but Trefusis knows better than to expect us to buy into it completely.

Incidentally, the title is explained at one point:

He did not suspect that by one of Love’s infallible ricochets she was behaving to him as Melo had behaved to her. Her cruelty was Melo’s legacy; her indifference to him was out of revenge for Melo’s indifference to her. Love had passed from one to the other, furtive, unseizable, like the slipper in ‘Hunt the Slipper’.

I still wish I could read a Trefusis novel where she’s not writing about romantic love – because I think she’s better and more interesting on other topics – but I’ll keep reading whatever she has written. She might mostly be remembered now as a footnote in Bloomsbury love triangles, but I think she deserves more than that.