Robertson Davies has been there before us.

I had to let go of a post that I typed comparing Helen Rittlemeyer to Robertson Davies when I looked up some books of interviews with Davies and found that he considers himself a disciple of Jung. I had thought of him as a heterodox Christian with Jungian influences, but it turns out that he saw himself as the real Jungian deal, and not much of a doctrinal Christian at all. So the comparison I had in mind fell apart. But I don't want to just let the quotes go away. These two are from The Lyre of Orpheus, the third book in the Cornish Trilogy. (I'm telling myself that when I re-read all of Davies, I'm going to make a quote book and organize it by topic.)

The first passage reminded me of Helen's “politics of manners.” It's a scene where Anglican scholar-priest Simon Darcourt is comforting his friend Arthur, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him:

“The cuckoo in the nest is often the best friend. Powell loves you, as a friend may very well love you. I love you, Arthur, though I don't make a song and dance about it.”

“That kind of love. You have to because you're a priest. Like God, it's your métier.”

“You don't know anything about priests. I know we are supposed to love mankind indiscriminately, but I don't. That's why I gave up practical priesthood and became a professor. My faith charges me to love my neighbor but I can't and won't fake it, in the greasy way professional lovers-of-mankind do—the professionally charitable, the newspaper sob-sisters, the politicians. I'm not Christ, Arthur, and I can't love like Him, so I settle for courtesy, consideration, decent manners, and whatever I can do for the people I really do love. And you are one of those. I can't help you by weeping with you, though I respect your tears. The best I can do is bring a clear head and an open eye to your trouble.”

The second one reminded me of the way Helen compares her traditionalism to theatrical illusion. Davies does not give us precisely the same idea, but there's a slight connection. This is from a scene where Darcourt is speaking to the Maria, the wife that may have cheated:

“Arthur said that it had always troubled him in the old plays when somebody puts on a cloak and hat and is accepted by the others as somebody he isn't. Disguise is impossible, he said. You recognize people by their walk, the way they hold their heads, by a thousand things that we aren't aware of. How do you disguise your back, he said; none of us can see our backs, but everybody else does, and when you see somebody from the back you may know them much more readily than if you see them face to face. Do you remember what Powell said?”

“Something about people wishing to be deceived?”

“Yes. That you will the deception, just as you will your own deception when you watch a conjuror. He said that he had once taken part in a show put on in an asylum for the insane, where a very clever conjuror worked like a dog, and didn't get any applause whatever. Why? Because the insane were not his partners in his deceits. For them a rabbit might just as well come out of an empty hat as not. But the sane, the doctors and nurses, who were living and watching in the same world of assumptions as the conjuror, were delighted. And it was just the same with disguise. On the stage, people accepted somebody in a very transparent disguise because the real deception was brought about by their own will. Show Lancelot and Guenevere a witch, and they accept her as a witch because their situation makes a witch much more acceptable than Morgan Le Fay in a ragged cloak.”

“Yes, I remember. I thought it was a rather thin argument at the time.”

“But don't you remember what he said afterward? We are deceived because we will our own deception. It is somehow necessary to us. It is an aspect of fate.”

“I think I remember. Powell does talk a lot of fascinating Celtic moonshine, doesn't he?”