The progression of time has presented a dim power upon Beerbohm's
apparently light and clever Edwardian parody
Robert McCrum presents the arrangement
Zuleika Dobson is a splendid Edwardian parody on Oxford life by
one of English writing's most sparkling minds that now peruses as something
substantially darker and additionally convincing. Perusers new to Max
Beerbohm's gem, which is subtitled An Oxford Love Story, will locate a
translucent novel had of a postponed touchy accuse that explodes today of
shocking force.
Zuleika, the granddaughter of the superintendent of Judas College,
is a female sleight-of-hand performer, a "prestidigitator", famous
from New York to St Petersburg. She is likewise a femme fatale, a
turn-of-the-century It young lady and a minor big name. This intriguing young
lady of exceptional magnificence lands in Oxford, an advantaged all-male
scholarly society, and instantly pulverizes the understudy body, winding up
first its symbol and after that its adversary. Having become hopelessly
enamored with Zuleika, the students, cheerful to bite the dust for what can
never be theirs, dive altogether into the Isis yelling "Zuleika"
(this, educates Beerbohm, is "articulated Zu-lee-ka not Zu-like-a").
In any case, that isn't the entire story. The Duke of Dorset, a
ludicrously proficient companion – "He was familiar with every advanced dialect,
had an undeniable ability in watercolor, and was accounted, by the individuals
who had the benefit of hearing him, the best beginner piano player on this side
of the Tweed" – and sincerely in reverse brilliant youth, has begun to
look all starry eyed at her, and she with him. Be that as it may, since Zuleika
can't focus on anybody remotely receptive to her charms, she rejects him –
whereupon he, as well, submits suicide, in full Garter formal attire.
This center piece of the novel, described as the dream of Clio,
dream of history, gives the book a test enhance that it soon forsakes for high
drama. When Oxford's students are terminated, Zuleika has couple of
alternatives. The novel closures with her requesting an uncommon prepare –
headed for Cambridge.
Beerbohm was a companion and admirer of Oscar Wilde. The sparkling
mercilessness of this novel is profoundly Wildean in its senses. His commended
line "Demise wipes out all engagements" is unadulterated Wilde, and
Zuleika herself – childish, vain and eccentric – is an anecdotal cousin to
Dorian Gray (No 27 in this arrangement). Beerbohm's content, in fact, gives an
ironical analysis on the tasteful development of the 1890s, and kept on
resounding all through the dull decade following distribution. Its effect on
the early books of Evelyn Waugh, and conceivably the Mayfair stories of PG
Wodehouse, is unmistakable. Potentially, as well, "the Incomparable
Max", as George Bernard Shaw called him, was additionally thinking back to
Vanity Fair (No 14 in this arrangement) and to Becky Sharp, another obstinate
minx-cum-beast.
A few faultfinders have seen that Beerbohm's
humorous dream about the inauspicious butcher of an age of young fellows
spookily prefigures the bloodletting that would soon break out on the fields of
France. That is, I think, to botch the pith of Beerbohm's mind. He was a
farceur, not a diviner. His novel was planned to redirect, not teach. Zuleika
Dobson is the finest, and darkest, sort of parody: as inebriating as champagne,
as addictive as morphine, and as deadly as prussic corrosive. Once in a while
has a minor book by a minor author made such a claim on successors.
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