L. P. Hartley, CBE,the English author of The Go-Between (and many other novels and short stories) published his penultimate novel The Harness Room in 1971. Hartley was homosexual but this novel was the only one in which he explored a same-sex relationship.
The Harness Room was republished this year in a paperback by Valancourt Books of Richmond, Virginia with a new introduction by Gregory Wood.
E.M. Forster's Maurice was about to be published posthumously. Hartley worried that what he Calle this "homosexual novel" might upset his friends, some of whom were homosexuals, and "injure my private image".
Fergus Macready is 17, the only son of hot-tempered retired Colonel Alistair Macready who had served in a Scottish regiment. Although the colonel knows his bookish son would not be suited to a military career, he sends him to a private school that specialises in preparing boys to enter Sandhurst the elite army officer training institution. His ambition is for Ferguss to follow in the footsteps of several military forefathers.
Th latest school report is that Fergus "lacks aggressive spirit".
The lonely 45 year-old colonel decides, 12 years after the death of the mother Fergus strongly resembles, to marry Sonia Verriden who is 22 years old.
He arranges that while they are abroad on their honeymoon for a month, his manly chauffeur, Fred Carrington, 28, give Fergus some physical training and boxing sessions to bring out wha the believes is the innate male fighting spirit. Fergus hopes to win a scholarship for Oxford. In a varied career, Fred was a sergeant in the Guard for a while. As a soldier, ee boxed and played rugby.
Fergus, who has no friends, is left at home at the out-of-the way former manor farm with two live-in housemaids. The chauffeur lives in the former harness room above the garage. Fergus admires Fred. Bored by his books, he meets him in the harness room for PT and boxing and they become close. He does develop.
I found eading the briskly told short novel (143 pages) quite suspenseful. Assuming the setting is the late 1960s or beginning of the 1970s, Fergus is under the British age of consent at the time. The maids gossip.
Tensions develop when the colonel and Sonia return. Her behaviour with Fergus is demonstratively affectionate.
Although The Harness Room and Maurice both focus on how class and gender issues affect homosexual (and heterosexual) relationships, the ending of The Harness Room was unexpected and very different from Maurice.
What I liked about The Harness Room is that Fergus and Fred are both untroubled in themselves by their sexuality.
