We've had one suggestion so far of who the Quaker character appearing in an Aldous Huxley novel is. Well, not so much the character as the book he/she might appear in. 'Eyeless in Gaza (1936) deals with pacifism,' Kathy Bell tells us. 'It might be a good starting place.' The character has a rather Quakerly habit of addressing people with their first name and surname. But who is it? Any advance on Eyeless in Gaza?

Labels: eyeless, gaza, huxley

Eye spent a perfectly pleasant afternoon over Christmas in an antiquarian bookstore speedreading an early edition of Eyeless in Gaza (the book was rather expensive). We asked readers who the Aldous Huxley character was in the novel who resembled a Quaker. The clue was the way the character addressed another person with full name each time he spoke. We had some help. Eric Ingram wrote to say it was James Miller, an Edinburgh doctor. 'I thought you would be swamped with information', said Eric. Well, no, and it is certainly not clear whether doctor Miller was a Quaker. He appears to have been a pacifist. Lawrence Ambrose wrote in referring to Miller as a 'Quaker-like' character who first appears in chapter XLIX during January 1934. 'But because of the structure of the novel, dodging to and fro in time, he is mentioned in earlier chapters.'
There was a further complication in that the BBC serialised Simon Raven's dramatisation of Eyeless in the 1970s. This has the 'Quaker' connection appearing in the Mexican desert as a Buddhist, persuading the central character Anthony Beavis into pacifism and mysticism.
We are no wiser now but inclined to read more Huxley. Was he a closet Quaker?

Labels: huxley