We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
‘It is necessary finally’, he said, ‘to think what life is all about’.
‘Exactly’, Mr Bhoolabhoy said, suddenly having a vision of Mrs Bhoolabhoy who – at this very moment – would be checking Management 's accounts. (SO 128)
The information about Sarah's marriage to Perron is quite incidental to Staying On, Scott's next and last novel. He was not trying to wind up the plot of the Quartet here, nor was he simply indulging his penchant for recycling names or having one or two figures from an earlier novel put in brief reappearances. Rather, Staying On represents the ‘going back’ which William Conway in The Birds of Paradise sees as a kind of duty, a duty to confirm the past which has been recreated in the mind, and to validate what was found in it. Staying On is a splendid achievement in its own right, and was immediately recognized as such; but, especially in view of Scott's early training, it can also be seen as a final audit. It is one in which the novelist succeeds in producing both acceptance and a degree of closure.
In the Raj Quartet, the Smalleys are just what they sound – small figures who almost disappear in a vast canvas. Scott puts them on a par with his ubiquitous Smith's Hotels when he introduces them in The Towers of Silence: ‘Most stations had their Smalleys … slight bores but very useful’ (51–2). Indeed, the nondescript and childless army couple, Major (later Colonel) ‘Tusker’ Smalley and his not quite pukka wife Lucy, do live in rooms in a Smith's Hotel in Pankot, during the whole period covered by the Quartet.
When Scott takes them up again in Staying On, nothing has changed for the better. Tusker has moved from Pankot to a company job in Bombay and back again to Smith's, with his ineffectually protesting wife in tow, the only differences to their living arrangements being that they now have a yearly tenancy of the hotel's annexe, otherwise known as The Lodge, and that the whole place, overshadowed by the new and majestic Shiraz right opposite, is shabbier and more run down than ever.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
