Four-Part Setting

by Ann Bridge

Fleeing from her failed marriage, Rose Pelham seeks sanctuary in Peking, China, with her cousins, Anastasia and Antony Lydiard. The romantic attentions of Captain Hargreaves are a welcome distraction from her woes, but in the society of Anglicised 1920's Peking, it is hard for such relationships not to draw notice and create scandal. A long trek to the 'Mountain of a Hundred Flowers' offers a chance to escape prying eyes, but Rose's intellectual cousins cannot stop Captain Hargreaves from joining them, along with the most disagreeable Roy Hellier. The trip is fraught with peril, as the 'T'ao-Pings' or 'masterless soldiers' – cut loose from the feudal Chinese armies – are roaming the country, terrorising villagers and leaving turmoil in their wake. Faced with the realities of the dangerous journey, the five become close, and relationships shift and change under the pressure. But back in the reality of society, it is time for Rose to make some very hard choices. Should she push for a divorce, and marry the man she truly loves, at the cost of being socially ostracised? Or should she make amends, and try to recover the lost love of her cold husband? In Four-Part Setting, first published in 1939, Anne Briggs expertly tells a tale of love, loss, and tangled loyalties.

423 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Mid twentieth-century novelist [real name, Mary Anne O'Malley] who began by exploiting the milieu of the British Foreign Office community in Peking, China, where she lived for two years with her diplomat husband. Her novels combine courtship plots with vividly-realised settings and demure social satire.

She went on to write novels which take as the background of their protagonists' emotional lives a serious investigation of modern historical developments (such as the leap by which Turkey progressed from a feudal-style government to become a modern republic in which women enjoyed equality of rights and equality of opportunity).

Ann Bridge also wrote thrillers centred on a female amateur detective, travel books, and family memoirs.

Reviews

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite what I thought were two sub-par Ann Bridge novels I read some time ago, I came back to this one because of just finishing Paul French's story of Wallis Simpson in China, Her Lotus Year. In that account of the future Duchess of Windsor's time in Peking, French called attention to parallels between Wallis and the main character of Four Part Setting, Rose Pelham. Certainly, several similarities exist, but the real value of the novel is just how thoroughly it replicates the sense of expatriate life in Peking during the 1920s. As far as I can determine, this way was how Western expatriates lived in the period between the two World Wars. They attended horse races, dances, parties, walks and took rides along the top of the Tartar Wall. They collected Chinese scrolls, porcelain, lacquerware, and jade. Trips to the western hills and their temples was a routine experience, while the extended camping trip described in Four-Part, which takes a week to travel to the northwest and the Great Wall's ruins that exist there, was less often experienced. Occasionally, they attended the cinema. But most of all they engaged in gossip and rumor-mongering about each other's loves, failures, and lesser traits. And that is where Bridge concentrates her story. The final routine matter is the depiction of the Chinese. Bridge's characters give more attention to the individuality and nature of Chinese flowers than they do Chinese people, who sit on the fringes of her novels, just as they existed on the edge of expat life, serving as little more than servants, means of transportation, baggage handling, and shoppers.

Oh, and the story. Rose leaves her abusive husband, as did Wallis Simpson, runs away to Peking and becomes absorbed in collecting and living comfortably with her wealthy friends, as did Wallis Simpson. Rose has time for at least two love affairs, Wallis may have only had one, and turns out to be a first class flibbertigibbet. Wallis, from French's story, appears more earnest and capable. While taking their extended camping trip, Rose and her friends find themselves surrounded by a warlord's army. The journey and the unease caused by the soldiers brings the real China for once into the protected lives of these well-to-do British expatriates. This is similar to Bridge's Peking Picnic, where a group of spoiled expatriates have their journey to a temple in the western hills disrupted by the appearance bandits who surround the place.

This novel, however, was a better effort than Picnic, I think. And that's simply because the interminable discussions and gossip fit more cohesively into the journey the campers take. Like all interesting quests, it changes them.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, but o dear, of its time - though I suspect that there are other people at that time who were writing books set in The Exotic Far East that were not quite so much that? Also, does the usual Ann Bridge 1930s-era novel thing, though dealt with in a more serious register than in e.g. Illyrian Spring. (There is a lady novelist in one of Angela Thirkell's books that I am convinced is her being snarky about the standard Ann Bridge plot.)