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Lumley in John Wain’s “Hurry on Down�

At first, Lumley seems to be a dissatisfied, unromantic character, bearing a grudge against everyone and everything. We simply dismiss him as a weak character, unable to fit in an industrialised society, surrendering himself, very often, to a “complex�.

True, he detested his past and preferred to forget it. True, the “institution� had done him little good. True, he could not stay in a particular profession for long without hating it. He was rather in a flux � not able to understand where he belonged.

But, later on as we acquaint ourselves more with him, we find it wrong to hang him so loose. The problem with him was not merely a search for a place where he could belong. The truth lay beyond it � he actually, could not belong anywhere. He is, in away, stuck inside the “impasse� with which he is so familiar. Even in his haphazard approach to life, he is conscious that his problems admit of no solution. Frankly, there is no problem, as such, which cannot solve itself. But he, peculiarly, loved being “stationary�.

What, then, is obvious is that life wouldn’t be pleasant with Lumley. Neither is it his intention to make life pleasant; he knows it cannot. All that he aims at is to make life tolerable.

The character of Lumley is, in fact, reflected in John Wain’s tragic view of life � that “there are ways of making life tolerable, but none of ridding it of its basic tragic quality.� To continue with Wain, “I think that human life is tragic. No shallow optimism, no easy faith that humanity will be happy when this or that piece of social engineering has been completed, or when we have finished our conquest of Nature ... I care nothing for technology, nothing for science. With all their improvements they can never touch anything but the surface of human life. The same problems face every man, and they always begin again.� The problem which John Wain sets for Lumley is to find his place in the world, in human society; to find contentment and fulfilment within himself; and to find someone with whom he can, as perfectly as possible, share his life. But the answers for Lumley to such problems, and to John Wain, are incomplete.

Life, Lumley’s life, could have begun when he stopped being “an offshoot to the lives of several other people� and earned his own living as a window-cleaner. He, in fact, wanted to “continue in his new life, for he passionately prized it�. But there was something fatal about him. He knew that he could not win against the difficulties.

He found a companion in Mr. Fraulish. He liked Betty, and Ern became a partner in his profession. For a change, regularity had stuck his life, and everything seemed well with him. But he badly needed to change it. He lost Ern and Betty and Froulish, and returned to the Y. M. C. A. hostel.

We have no means of knowing whether the problem with Lumley is “Alienation�. It, atleast, appears to be so, though Wain has not made much mention of it in the “novel�. Lumley, actually, intended to have nothing to do with the life of comfort and approval, for moral and other reasons innate to his nature. But it wasn’t as easy as he had thought it to be; he couldn’t denounce it, totally. Thus, he dresses “once more in the uniform of the class he had renounced, determined to live at the rate of a thousand a year for the next few hours.�

John Wain writes in the novel that Lumley had accomplished one thing; he had cleared the artificial barriers of environment and upbringing. He had achieved “neutrality�. Had he, really?

At the first sight, it appears that he had achieved it, after all. He is rejected by both the class of his origin and the life of the worker. The “bourgeois� desires come to him, particularly when he sees Mr. Roderich and Veronica in the “Grand�. He manages to earn a lot of money as an, “Export delivery driver� and wins Veronica. Then a futile turn takes away all the pleasures from him with which he is so unfamiliar. He joins the hospital, to which he had been admitted, as an orderly. Thereafter, he finds Rosa and leaves her in a peculiar fashion. But, towards the end, he is prosperous and a little puzzled with his “new� position.

Lumley’s talk, in this regard, with Mr. Blearney is parti­cularly significant. From it we can know that Lumley had wanted a steady, ordinary, humdrum life, but couldn’t get admitted into it because it hadn’t got what he wanted. And he had wanted “neutrality.�

Later on, Wain writes that he had found “neutrality� at last. “The running fight between himself and society had ended in a draw; he was no nearer, fundamentally, to any rapproche­ment or understanding with it.�

But, conclusively speaking, Lumley’s problem could not end; they had merely stopped. He had found neutrality but we are sure, even after finishing the novel, that he would be out of it, again drifting ... His fate, and Veronica’s along with his, could not end happily and perfectly without it turning out to be an illusion. And Lumley, tragically, is obsessed with illusions.

Lumley’s character, in truth, is largely influenced by this obsession with illusions. In the social sphere, he is disturbed with the usual social classifications. In the sphere of human relations, he is disturbed with the shortcomings of every type of relationship. In the realm of his own life, he is disturbed with the imperfectibility of it. He, to a certain extent, becomes a parasite on the world he detests.

It would be wrong, however, not to notice any improvement in Lumley’s position as we find him at the start of the novel and as we leave him at the end of it. He had achieved a strange state of reconciliation, which would give him peace-peace which, he knew, would not last for long to make him happy, but peace which would lethim bear life to a success. This state of apparent “neutrality�, even then, was inexplicable to him; he would not understand it and, hence, could not be content with life. We can sum him up best as a “twister� who loved what he abhorred.