The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott

First published in 1940

“The lower classes have a way of making one ashamed of one’s sex,” Alex tells her friend Alwyn, although the people who should be ashamed in The Pilgram Hawk are those who have been born to money. Alwyn Tower is vaguely embarrassed or vaguely bored or just vague as he narrates an afternoon spent visiting Alexandra Henry in her impressive home near Paris. Like Alwyn, Alex is an American. The afternoon is marked by an unexpected visit from Larry and Madeleine Cullen, a wealthy couple from Ireland.

Larry would prefer to be drinking at home, which is why Madeleine makes him travel. Madeleine is accompanied by a hawk she acquired while trotting the globe. She named the hawk Lucy. Larry detests Lucy. Larry might also detest Madeleine, although he sees her (through an alcoholic haze) as the object of his devotion, albeit an object he threatens to leave, and who threatens to leave him, during the afternoon’s course. During a moment when the women have gone off together, Larry delivers a self-indulgent lecture on love that manages to be both naïve and jaded.

Lucy is the most likable character. She wears a hood and is kept on a leash, but now and then protests captivity until Madeleine hangs the poor hawk upside down, an indignity Lucy suffers until she becomes exhausted and resumes her subjugated status. Lucy makes clear that she will never be owned, unlike Madeleine (who depends on Larry to support her frivolous lifestyle) and Larry (who would probably have no one if not for Madeleine’s willingness to tolerate him). The Cullens’ relationship has left them just as frustrated as Lucy and for similar reasons. Like all trained raptors, Lucy is trading the security of a satisfied appetite for freedom. Lucy might, at any moment, make a different choice. So it is with the Cullens.

In keeping with the themes of privilege and class, Alex has two servants (Eva and Jean) who are less stuffy than Alex and her guests. The Cullens brought along their chauffeur, a man named Ricketts who is driving them to Hungary. Ricketts provokes Jean by flirting with Eva. Larry believes the chauffeur might have behaved improperly with Madeleine but good drivers are hard to find.

The novel takes place in the 1920s, after the dust of the First World War has settled but before the Great Depression has unsettled those who are less fortunate than Alex and Alwyn. Although he is the narrator, we learn little about Alwyn beyond his occupation as a writer, nor would we be wise to believe anything he reveals. Alex is a novelist who tells the story from memory. Writers embellish and tell the truth as they see it, if at all. As Alwyn describes the Cullens throughout the afternoon, he revises his impressions of them as a writer might revise a story. Alex confesses his unreliability when he realizes that he has been reading his own meaning into events others might understand quite differently. He doubts his own judgment, a confession that invites the reader to doubt the subtle details of his narrative as well as his conclusions.

The story is subdued in tone; Alwyn’s voice is imperturbable. Larry drinks his way through the afternoon, providing a moment of tension as he approaches Lucy with nefarious intent. Another tense moment involves a confrontation in the kitchen between the servants and chauffeur. A third occurs when a gun appears. Alex and Alwyn have different perspectives on the intended use of the gun.

Glenway Wescott’s prose is elegant and precise. This is a novel of hidden power, its apparent simplicity masking its depth. The novel has drifted off the radar of most readers, but it deserves to be remembered.

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