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Sylvia & Michael: The Later Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for kindle devices. We have endeavoured to create this version as close to the original artefact as possible. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we believe they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
- GenresFiction
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1919
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21 people want to read
About the author
Compton Mackenzie
211 books84 followersCompton Mackenzie was born into a theatrical family. His father, Edward Compton, was an actor and theatre company manager; his sister, Fay Compton, starred in many of James M. Barrie's plays, including Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. He was educated at St Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford where he obtained a degree in Modern History.
Mackenzie was married three times and aside from his writing also worked as an actor, political activist, and broadcaster. He served with British Intelligence in the Eastern Mediterranean during World War I, later publishing four books on his experiences. Compton Mackenzie was from 1920–1923 Tenant of Herm and Jethou and he shares many similarities to the central character in D.H. Lawrence's short story The Man Who Loved Islands, despite Lawrence saying "the man is no more he than I am." Mackenzie at first asked Secker, who published both authors, not to print the story and it was left out of one collection.
Mackenzie was married three times and aside from his writing also worked as an actor, political activist, and broadcaster. He served with British Intelligence in the Eastern Mediterranean during World War I, later publishing four books on his experiences. Compton Mackenzie was from 1920–1923 Tenant of Herm and Jethou and he shares many similarities to the central character in D.H. Lawrence's short story The Man Who Loved Islands, despite Lawrence saying "the man is no more he than I am." Mackenzie at first asked Secker, who published both authors, not to print the story and it was left out of one collection.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 12, 2021
Aggressively bizarre and dour ending to the series, though I suppose there is something inherently dour in spending years writing a massive coming of age series that ends up wrecking on the shores of World War I in real time. Filled with far too many dramatic monologues about all kinds of topics, mostly related to the war and Sylvia's religious experience, and the Palliser-style joy of a familiar figure from 1000 pages ago showing up in a new role is dampened by the knowledge he could be blown up at any moment.
Worth reading if you've come this far but also as a fascinating primary source of Educated views about the war as it's happening. (In particular there's a theoretical relationship between the Victorians, who Michael Fane hopes are in hell, and the Prussian mind, that Mackenzie does not feel is obscure enough to explain to his readers, but... Well, it's obscure to me.)
Worth reading if you've come this far but also as a fascinating primary source of Educated views about the war as it's happening. (In particular there's a theoretical relationship between the Victorians, who Michael Fane hopes are in hell, and the Prussian mind, that Mackenzie does not feel is obscure enough to explain to his readers, but... Well, it's obscure to me.)
October 13, 2018
This is truly terrible. Huge chunks of infodump about the Balkan problem in the Great War, a tedious rerun of the Lily storyline from the book's predecessor, this time with Concetta, and as for Sylvia - he puts words into her mouth that would be pompous and tedious if coming from an omniscient narrator, and are plain incredible from a woman with no education speaking in her second language. What's probably most infuriating about this end to the Michael Fane saga is that the author kills off his best characters. And I so loved the first half of Sinister Street!
July 13, 2013
Sylvia & Michael
The Later Adventures
of Sylvia Scarlett
by Compton Mackenzie
I can only deplore the auto-backslapping of certain adventure writers that spend the last quarter of a book congratulating themselves on what a grand old tale they have told us. This pompousness kills half the suspense. "Sylvia & Michael" being the fourth, if shortest, volume of Mackenzie's romantic adventures of Michael Fane and Sylvia Scarlett, I'm afraid smugness pervades the whole tome.
Reminiscent of Kipling's "Kim" and Scott's "Heart of Midlothian" in this, and one other respect, the hero and heroine's fates are plotted against huge events that dwarf the sum of all the individuals involved. Sadly, when Mackenzie sat down to write "Youth's Encounter" (vol. 1 of "Sinister Street") he could have only an inkling that the final dénouement of his story would take place in the midst of what would become known as The Great War, and then the First World War. Yet drawing so heavily on his own experience of public school, Oxford university, the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church of England, Music Hall Theatre and the seedier side of Edwardian London, it is little wonder he employs his wartime experience in the Balkans and Eastern Aegean to backdrop and populate the scene of Michael's epiphany.
War, which breaks out while Sylvia is delerious with typhoid in Russia, puts people into uniform; which as Mackenzie tell us on the title page, makes every one look alike; except for the women, I suppose? Notwithstanding this, he claims there are no 'portraits' in the book. Of characters, then, there is the usual mix of vamps and scamps: the good, the bad and the very bad. Concetta makes a reappearance, persued by the evil juggler Zozo. Her fate is still as unfortunate as before and mirrors Lily, of whom there is no more news. There is a friendly Bulgarian bandit, an English Petroleum baron and an accomodating priest. All stereotypes must have their origin in the real world and, rather despite his claim, I imagine Compton Mackenzie was one of those people you would be wary of meeting lest he put you into one of his books.
Though a good deal of action goes on in the background, as it were, most of these adventures are of the soul. We have the predicatable dose of Catholicism - Roman, this time - intruding, somewhat incongruously into Sylvia's story. Not that her reversion to the mother church isn't sufficiently explained away, exhaustively in fact. It's just that I object to a story-teller using his own particular convictions as material in this way. Much better, I thought, was Mackenzie's account (in "Galippolli Memories") of his time on the shrapnel raked beaches of Turkey, when he felt in the hands of God and strangely at peace with his fate. In "Sylvia and Michael" we are asked to believe the couple witness some pretty awful atrocities - the ethnic cleansing of modern parlance - without feeling much more than their own good fortune. Still, I suppose, there may be a deal of the writer's experience talking there. I hope I never live to see for myself what war really is.
Going back to the other point about Kipling and Scott, if I may, there is an English smugness here, an imperious view. All the Serbs, Romanians, Bulgars, Russians, Greeks and what have you appear as so much flotsam on their own shores. There is a pervasive class snobbery, too; and despite the boyish character of liberated Sylvia, sexism. Wherever the plot roams, there is always a common cockney girl, whether pay-to-dancer or guesthouse proprietress, who is salt-of-the-earth.
I wonder at Mackenzie's Englishness. At one point in the book, he appears to criticise Erskine Childers' novel "Riddle of the Sands" for giving away secrets to the Bosch. That's rich! After the war, both of these distinguished writers turned to Celtic nationalism.
The ending of a saga must come as a kind of anti-climax. So much has gone before, the dénouement can hardly be organic. We must leave the world the author has created with at least a tinge of regret. And, perhaps, a slap on our own backs for having read so far.
The Later Adventures
of Sylvia Scarlett
by Compton Mackenzie
I can only deplore the auto-backslapping of certain adventure writers that spend the last quarter of a book congratulating themselves on what a grand old tale they have told us. This pompousness kills half the suspense. "Sylvia & Michael" being the fourth, if shortest, volume of Mackenzie's romantic adventures of Michael Fane and Sylvia Scarlett, I'm afraid smugness pervades the whole tome.
Reminiscent of Kipling's "Kim" and Scott's "Heart of Midlothian" in this, and one other respect, the hero and heroine's fates are plotted against huge events that dwarf the sum of all the individuals involved. Sadly, when Mackenzie sat down to write "Youth's Encounter" (vol. 1 of "Sinister Street") he could have only an inkling that the final dénouement of his story would take place in the midst of what would become known as The Great War, and then the First World War. Yet drawing so heavily on his own experience of public school, Oxford university, the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church of England, Music Hall Theatre and the seedier side of Edwardian London, it is little wonder he employs his wartime experience in the Balkans and Eastern Aegean to backdrop and populate the scene of Michael's epiphany.
War, which breaks out while Sylvia is delerious with typhoid in Russia, puts people into uniform; which as Mackenzie tell us on the title page, makes every one look alike; except for the women, I suppose? Notwithstanding this, he claims there are no 'portraits' in the book. Of characters, then, there is the usual mix of vamps and scamps: the good, the bad and the very bad. Concetta makes a reappearance, persued by the evil juggler Zozo. Her fate is still as unfortunate as before and mirrors Lily, of whom there is no more news. There is a friendly Bulgarian bandit, an English Petroleum baron and an accomodating priest. All stereotypes must have their origin in the real world and, rather despite his claim, I imagine Compton Mackenzie was one of those people you would be wary of meeting lest he put you into one of his books.
Though a good deal of action goes on in the background, as it were, most of these adventures are of the soul. We have the predicatable dose of Catholicism - Roman, this time - intruding, somewhat incongruously into Sylvia's story. Not that her reversion to the mother church isn't sufficiently explained away, exhaustively in fact. It's just that I object to a story-teller using his own particular convictions as material in this way. Much better, I thought, was Mackenzie's account (in "Galippolli Memories") of his time on the shrapnel raked beaches of Turkey, when he felt in the hands of God and strangely at peace with his fate. In "Sylvia and Michael" we are asked to believe the couple witness some pretty awful atrocities - the ethnic cleansing of modern parlance - without feeling much more than their own good fortune. Still, I suppose, there may be a deal of the writer's experience talking there. I hope I never live to see for myself what war really is.
Going back to the other point about Kipling and Scott, if I may, there is an English smugness here, an imperious view. All the Serbs, Romanians, Bulgars, Russians, Greeks and what have you appear as so much flotsam on their own shores. There is a pervasive class snobbery, too; and despite the boyish character of liberated Sylvia, sexism. Wherever the plot roams, there is always a common cockney girl, whether pay-to-dancer or guesthouse proprietress, who is salt-of-the-earth.
I wonder at Mackenzie's Englishness. At one point in the book, he appears to criticise Erskine Childers' novel "Riddle of the Sands" for giving away secrets to the Bosch. That's rich! After the war, both of these distinguished writers turned to Celtic nationalism.
The ending of a saga must come as a kind of anti-climax. So much has gone before, the dénouement can hardly be organic. We must leave the world the author has created with at least a tinge of regret. And, perhaps, a slap on our own backs for having read so far.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews