Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion by V. S. Naipaul

First published: 1963

Type of work: Comic realism

Time of work: The 1950’s or early 1960’s

Locale: London

Principal Characters:

• Richard Stone, the protagonist, a minor corporation employee on the verge of retirement
• Margaret Springer Stone, the widow whom he marries early in the novel
• Tony Tomlinson, his best friend
• Grace Tomlinson, Tony’s wife and later his happy widow
• Miss Millington, Stone’s elderly maid
• Bill Whymper, a public relations officer at the corporation where Stone works

The Novel

The action of Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion covers a two-year period shortly before Richard Stone’s retirement from the Excal Corporation, where he has a minor position as librarian. During this period, Stone blooms. A confirmed bachelor and a creature of habit, he takes a wife, the fiftyish widow Margaret Springer, whom he meets at the home of his friends Tony and Grace Tomlinson and who attracts him with her bold, joking manner. Later, Stone has the single original idea of his life. Troubled by the idea of the long, woman-dominated days he foresees in his own retirement, he conceives an Excal project which will send retired employees to visit other retired employees, to the general benefit of morale.

When his proposal is enthusiastically accepted by the Excal Corporation head, Stone for the first time becomes an important person in his company. He gets a large raise, a new department, an ever-increasing staff, and even his picture in the company paper. Brainstorming, Stone and the public relations officer who is assigned to the project, Bill Whymper, arrive at the title for the retired volunteers, the “Knights Companion.” Even though Whymper terminates his brief friendship with Stone, and even though he patronizes and insults Stone while burdening him with the administrative details of the project, Stone is happy in his meaningful activity. After his picture, taken at the Christmas Round Table dinner, appears in the newspapers, Stone and his wife find themselves the stars of the Tomlinsons’ dinner. Even when Margaret leaves with the other ladies, Stone leads the conversation, for once not dependent upon her. As V. S. Naipaul says, “It was an evening of pure delight. He would look back and see that it marked the climax of his life.”

Unfortunately, the bliss does not last. After Tony Tomlinson’s sudden death, Stone observes Grace Tomlinson’s new sparkle, as well as her new intimacy with Margaret, and realizes that although they pretend to mold their lives around those of men, women can manage quite well without them. He also realizes that Whymper’s office maneuvers are succeeding, that the Knights Companion project can now manage without Stone, and that his retirement is rapidly approaching. Needing affection, Stone strikes up a friendship with the neighbors’ potent black tomcat, which he had once loathed and feared. When the cat is killed because its owners are tired of it, Stone, who no longer feels important either at home or at the office, identifies his own situation with that of the betrayed and discarded cat.

At the end of the novel, Stone, disillusioned, has decided that man is gifted only with the power to destroy. Then, in a repetition of the incident with which the book began, he sees another black cat, an intruder in his house, but this time he responds with love, not loathing, with hope, rather than despair, and with the knowledge that he can never devote his own life to destruction.

The Characters

Because Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is concerned with Richard Stone’s self-discovery, Naipaul reveals events and characters as Stone sees them. A sensitive and thoughtful man, Stone is generally the observer, not the observed, in office groups or in the periodic parties at the Tomlinsons. Yet in his imagination flourish the most grotesque fancies, all of which involve startling the very people who think him so colorless.

It is her ability to dramatize him which draws Stone to the lively Margaret. After the initial adjustments of their marriage, Margaret’s capacity to mold herself to his nature and to draw the elderly maid, Miss Millington, into a similar role, so that both women seem to exist only when “the Master” is present, further gratifies Stone. With his new confidence, Stone pursues success, and with success comes greater confidence. On the “evening of pure delight,” Stone seems to have realized his earlier fantasies, such as that in which he flies, to the wonderment of all who see him.

As he observes Margaret, who in some ways represents generic Woman, Stone alternates between delight and distaste. The world first intrudes upon his illusions when he sees her false teeth in the bathroom on their wedding night. Soon he discovers that she has discarded the wit which won him, that it is only a “party” mask. On reflection, however, he admits that continual archness might have been exhausting, that the quieter Margaret is more restful. When he comes home, Stone enjoys the master-servant illusion, yet he regrets his lost privacy. When Margaret is away, Stone misses her. When she forms alliances with his sister, Bill Whymper, and Grace Tomlinson, Stone feels alienated and betrayed. When he precipitates a quarrel, Stone feels both satisfied and miserable. One might ask what he wants; he truly does not know. Embarking upon the seas of matrimony late in his life, Stone is ill-equipped to weather the storms which originate primarily in his own sensitivities. Fortunately, Margaret is not so sensitive. Playing her role as wife, she reacts to his moods only as her role dictates, without lasting griefs or grievances. Her success with Stone is evident in the last sentence of the book. Having routed despair, Stone goes to his study, “perhaps to do a little work until Margaret arrived.” Although his great Excal venture no longer needs him, he can find some interest in life because he owns, or is owned by, a woman.

As Stone contemplates the peculiar power of women, he notices the frightening alliances between them. When he marries, Margaret and Miss Millington form a closer relationship than he ever had with the old servant, a relationship seemingly based on their desire to please him. Later, Margaret becomes friendly with his sister, and when Grace Tomlinson becomes an extravagant, happy widow, Stone feels alone and apprehensive. “Sometimes,” Naipaul writes, “it occurred to Mr. Stone that he was surrounded by women . . . and that these women all lived in a world of dead or absent men.” From the longtime bachelor’s bewilderment about women come some of the highly comic passages in the novel. Except for Margaret, however, the female characters are less interesting on their own than they are as the objects of Stone’s perceptions.

Bill Whymper, on the other hand, is a fully realized character, an amoral opportunist destined to defeat the less aggressive Stone. His actions combine craft and whim. During the brief period of friendship with Stone, Whymper reveals details about his life which a Machiavellian character would never entrust to a potential rival. Despite his obvious loneliness, Whymper casually abandons the friendship, turning on Stone, stealing credit from him, seducing his niece, even leading the office pack in ridicule of him. Although Stone is too decent to use the weapons at hand upon Whymper, who moves on to a new job on the basis of his Knights Companion venture, it is obvious that the strangely vulnerable, temperamental Whymper will one day meet his match.

Critical Context

Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is the only Naipaul novel set in London and, except for The Mimic Men, published four years later (1967), the last that is primarily comic. In tone, it is far more optimistic than Naipaul’s later works, such as In a Free State (1971), winner of the Booker Prize.

This novel also differs from Naipaul’s other works in that, although the central character is alienated from society, he does not suffer a confusion of identity because of his racial and national background. In the early novels, Naipaul drew upon his own background as an Indian living in Trinidad; in The Mimic Men, the Caribbean-Indian confusion was augmented by the protagonist’s exposure to England. Beginning with In a Free State, Naipaul has presented seemingly insoluble problems of alienation, whether of Third World people in Western cities, of whites in developing Africa, or of Indians in the Third World, and of the breakdown of society and the triumph of violence after the withdrawal of the imperialists.

Bibliography

Allen, Walter. Review in The New York Review of Books. II (March 19, 1964), p. 21.

Hamner, Robert D., ed. Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul, 1977.

McSweeney, Kerry. Four Contemporary Novelists: Angus Wilson, Brian Moore, John Fowles, V. S. Naipaul, 1983.

The New Yorker. Review. XL (March 7, 1964), p. 181.

Theroux, Paul. V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work, 1972.

White, Landeg. V. S. Naipaul: A Critical Introduction, 1975.