Keeping the balance

In a volume of his posthumously published notebooks (Garder Tout en Composant Tout), Henry de Montherlant remarks: ‘Je ne sais pourquoi nous faisons des descriptions, puisque le lecteur ne les lit jamais.’ Well said, but not quite true; there are readers who dote on long descriptive passages. Alain de Botton for instance wrote recently that the best bits of Proust are the descriptions and passages of analysis. Yet for me these are just the parts of A la Recherche which seem stale, while the characters and conversation remain entrancing.

So I find myself on Montherlant’s side. Devoted though I am to the Waverley novels, my eyes tend to glaze on coming upon long paragraphs describing mountain scenery or the dress and armour of a mediaeval knight, and I resort to what Scott himself called ‘the laudable practice of skipping’.

We are in good company. ‘Damn description, it is always disgusting,’ said Byron, though no mean hand at it himself.