Moreland, like myself, was then in his early twenties. He was formed physically in a 'musical' mould, classical in type, with a massive, Beethoven-shaped head, high forehead, temples swelling outwards, eyes and nose somehow bunched together in a way to make him glare at times like a High Court judge about to pass sentence. On the other hand, his short, dark, curly hair recalled a dissipated cherub, a less aggressive, more intellectual version of Folly in Bronzino's picture, rubicund and mischievous, as he threatens with a fusillade of rose petals the embrace of Venus and Cupid; while Time in the background, whiskered like the Emperor Franz-Josef, looms behind a blue curtain as if evasively vacating the bathroom.
--Nick Jenkins describing his friend Hugh Moreland in Casanova's Chinese Restaurant by Anthony Powell (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
This fifth of twelve volumes in Dance to the Music of Time takes place mostly in the thirties, with a look backward to the late twenties, when Moreland and Jenkins had first met. The thirties were important years in many of the characters -- Morland, Jenkins, Maclintick and their various spouses, friends and lovers -- younger characters are getting married, middle-aged ones are getting divorced, older ones are dying. Parties, lunches and dinners are going on non-stop; some people love them and others hate them. Composers, painters and writers are creating new works as modernism is reaching its peak. The major subjects are the abdication of Edward VIII and the Spanish Civil War, with most people on one side or the other. There is a strong undercurrent of the approaching war in Europe, which is compared to a Ghost Railway, "moving at last with dreadful, ever increasing momentum towards a shape that lay across the line."
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