Robert Graves and Local Colour in "The Viscountess"

Introduction: Robert Graves and His Literary Career

Robert Graves (1895–1985) was an English novelist, poet, and translator who produced nearly 140 works, some of which stirred considerable controversy among his readers. One of his most audacious books, Goodbye to All That, republished in 1957, cost him several friendships due to its frank treatment of people he knew personally (Robert Graves Trust).

Graves's works include translations of Greek mythology as well as historical novels such as King Jesus, I, Claudius, and The Golden Fleece. His memoirs, particularly his accounts of the First World War, have served as historical records of major world events and earned him legendary status as an English writer. For his distinctively styled prose, Graves won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for I, Claudius and Claudius the God in 1934 — his most commercially successful works (Liukkonen).

In 1961 Graves became Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a position he held until 1966. Among his other works was a translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1967), co-published with Ali Shah. Because this translation followed the celebrated version by Edward FitzGerald, readers accused Graves of tampering with the magic of his predecessor's passages. These charges came from readers who were devoted to FitzGerald's work and could not accept Graves's characteristic clarity and vividness of style. He was further charged by L. P. Elwell-Sutton with having worked from a forged manuscript — one which Ali Shah and his brother had claimed had been in their family for nearly eight centuries. These accusations dealt a severe blow to his reputation (Miller).

According to the Poetry Foundation:

"The story of Graves's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam served to exemplify the stir he was capable of making when he brought his own theories about history to his writing. First, critics and scholars questioned the veracity of his text. Graves had worked from an annotated version of the poem given him by Ali-Shah, a Persian poet; although Ali-Shah alleged that the manuscript had been in his family for 800 years, L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an Orientalist at Edinburgh University, decried it as a 'clumsy forgery.' Next came the inevitable comparisons with Edward FitzGerald's standard translation, published in 1859. FitzGerald's depiction of romanticised Victorian bliss is epitomised by the much-quoted lines, 'A Book of Verse underneath the Bough / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou.' Graves's translation, on the other hand, reads: 'Should our day's portion be one mancel loaf, / a haunch of mutton and a gourd of wine.' A Time critic defended FitzGerald's translation by quoting FitzGerald himself: 'A translation must live with a transfusion of one's own worse life if he can't retain the original's better. Better a live sparrow than a stuffed eagle.'" (Robert Graves — Biography)

Graves continued to write despite these allegations. Throughout the 1960s until his death he corresponded frequently with Terence Alan Patrick Seán — better known as Spike Milligan (Games) — a writer, poet, and comedian nearly twenty years his junior (1918–2002). Their letters have been collected and published in book form as Dear Robert, Dear Spike (Steven).

Graves was also celebrated as a war poet. In 1985 he was recognised as one of sixteen Great War poets honoured on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, commemorating their contribution to the narration of the war (Robert Graves Trust).

His Complete Short Stories was published in 1978 in Middlesex, England. The collection — and in particular the story "The Viscountess and the Short-Haired Girl" — depicts local colour by providing an insightful rendition of the cultures of Spain and England. These accounts draw on Graves's own life: he spent a significant portion of it in Majorca, Spain, which he left in 1936 for the United States when the Spanish Civil War broke out. He later returned with his new wife, Beryl Hodge.

Presentation of the Short Story and Local Colour

The short story is presented as a narrative within a story — the author telling his tale through the voice of another, weaving a plot of lies and treachery. Even though Spaniards are widely regarded as loyal, the tale also depicts them as opportunists who are capable of deceiving their wives without moral guilt, treating such deception as a form of entertainment.

The story is presented in a straightforward manner, with a clear narrative that moves through a complicated chain of events involving tricks familiar to lawyers and detectives — and yet sniffed out and seized upon by apparent simpletons.

Notably, the story begins after the incident has already concluded and shows all the men in essentially the same position as when they started. This may reflect one of the lessons Graves seeks to convey implicitly: no matter how cunning a man may be, his avarice and deceit cannot truly lift him out of poverty (Graves).

Local colour in this short story is conveyed not so much through individual characters as through setting and plot. The story, narrated as an account given by Master Toni, is set in Majorca and London. The manner in which each character speaks and thinks is carefully aligned with the particular culture that character belongs to (Witalec). Local colour implies how local cultural values, norms, and traditions are presented in a narrative. In this case it is rendered through the way people obtain and eat their food, through the geographic character of the landscape, and through the way characters manage their personal affairs. Local colour here resides in the settings and in how characters interact, rather than in any single individual's personality (Campbell).

Synopsis of 'The Viscountess and the Short-Haired Girl'

The story is vivid in its depiction of local colour, to the point where the plot appears to recede into the background deliberately while ethnic and cultural settings take centre stage. Considering that Graves spent a major part of his life in Majorca, it is remarkable that he was able to view that culture through an outsider's eye. The characters he portrays are all morally compromised in some way, yet the nuances embedded in their heavily coloured dialogues present Spaniards and the British in their respective stereotypical roles.

The characters in the story are Master Toni, PP Jones, the Viscountess, Mr. Charles Estrutt, Damian, Sentia, and the Dark-Haired Girl. The story is written as a narration by Don Roberto of a tale told to him by Toni, which is why, from Toni's perspective, he appears as the protagonist — a street-smart man who helped his friends make a fortune. From how the story opens, in the present tense after events have concluded, it is clear that Toni agreed to act as a false witness for the Viscountess in her case against the dark-haired girl, intending to use the money to buy a new car. The epilogue, however, reveals that Toni still owns the same car he started with.

The plot begins with Master Toni being approached by Estrutt and Jones — detective and lawyer, respectively, acting for the Viscountess — and asked to testify that they had seen the short-haired girl in their area together with a Bulgarian artist. The girl, they claimed, was the Viscountess's daughter, who had been kidnapped by the Bulgarian. Toni, Damian, and Sentia were asked to travel to London to testify that the girl had been mistreated. This version of events was fed to the men by the detective, who wanted to appeal to their religious morals in order to persuade them to testify.

As the plot unfolds, however, the detective — aboard the ship to England — reveals to Toni and Damian that he had lied: the dark-haired girl is not the Viscountess's daughter but her lover's wife. The Viscountess needs to prove the girl an adulteress in court so that her lover, a fox-hunting officer, can divorce his wife and marry the Viscountess instead. Sentia is kept ignorant of this truth, as he is still an innocent man uncorrupted by worldly affairs.

The three men and the detective take full advantage of the Viscountess, who is willing to pay any amount to win the case and marry her lover. She agrees to pay them more upon reaching London and arranges their excursions and accommodation. All the while, she believes that the Spanish men are devout Catholics who do not know the real purpose of the case. Ironically, both parties know the truth but each pretends otherwise in order to deceive the other.

The entire effort to gather evidence of the short-haired girl's adultery ultimately proves unnecessary. The case is decided by one of the girl's own careless remarks: she describes the man she slept with as an "ancient man," and the judge immediately grants the divorce without waiting to hear Toni and the others testify. The story thus ends in a way that appears inconclusive — the men's journey has served no useful purpose — yet it is precisely this structure that gives the narrative its power as a depiction of local colour in Majorca and England.

Conclusion

Robert Graves wrote this story as a means to identify both the differences and the similarities between English and Spanish cultures. Being an English writer who spent much of his life in Majorca, he brings a distinctive double perspective to the narrative.

It is possible that his objective was to identify himself within the story — to use Toni and the detective as projections of different facets of his own personality in order to construct a fictional version of his personal experience. Toni's role as the narrator who describes his friends' adventures recalls Graves's own situation when he wrote Goodbye to All That, a book that cost him several friendships because it revealed aspects of their lives that they had not wished to make public.

This kind of story, though without an explicit moral, is a rich depiction of what local culture actually looks like. This is one of literature's most important functions: writers use fictitious characters and settings to record the realities of a culture and to express the fine details that can only truly be learned by living them. The various twists and surprises in the plot serve to keep the reader engaged rather than offering a straightforward account of everyday Majorcan and British life.

The connection between the detective and aspects of the writer's own personality may also be seen in the fact that Graves himself had more than one wife, just as the detective maintains multiple households. The portrayal of the detective could also be read as a satirical attack on the Metropolitan Police Force — an institution that, in Graves's view, acted with the impunity of pharaohs, able to keep multiple wives while simultaneously fleecing its clients.

The purpose of embedding a biographical account within a fictional story was how Graves fulfilled his aim of making literature a vehicle for cultural information — information that readers would find engaging and relatable. The tale of deceit and manipulation points to a cultural universal: corruption and dishonesty as inherent elements of human nature. Despite their different settings, the characters are driven by the same basic instincts — greed, curiosity, and the need for love — that transcend cultural boundaries and define the human condition across all backgrounds.

Greed is depicted in Toni's demand for more money in exchange for doing nothing further; curiosity is reflected in the Viscountess's impulse to approach the dark-haired girl and ask what she intends to do next; and the need for love is the premise of the entire story — a wealthy woman willing to use every means at her disposal to marry a man of lesser financial standing than herself.

"The Viscountess and the Short-Haired Girl" is an entertaining read that, within its fictional plot, provides real and valuable detail for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Majorcan life and local colour. This is the enduring beauty of literature: it brings culture alive, keeps it fresh in the reader's mind, and manages to be both entertaining and enlightening at the same time.