Vile Bodies

The passengers disembark and each is stopped by a pair of rough customs officers. After a long wait, they search Adam’s luggage. The customs officers don’t seem to recognize the books, which include works by Dante and Aristotle, but they view them with suspicion, especially when they discover Adam’s manuscript. In a back office, the customs chief declares, over Adam’s weak objections, that he will confiscate most of the books and burn Adam’s manuscript immediately. Agatha Runcible is strip-searched. Adam leaves with Mrs. Runcible and a small group of “Bright Young People,” who inform him of a party later that night, to be held by a social climber named Archie Schwert, and complain that since the war, everything has been falling apart.

Once in London, Adam checks into his usual room at Shepheard’s Hotel and then visits a junior director at his publisher’s office, who is busy either censoring or “gingering up” (enlivening) the novels he edits (33). Upon learning that Adam’s manuscript has been burned, the junior director informs the penniless Adam that he’ll have to pay back his fifty-pound advance. Since that is impossible, the junior director draws up a predatory contract committing Adam to 12 more books at a miniscule percentage of the royalties.

Adam calls Nina Blount, whom he has not yet met in person, to inform her that he is broke and cannot marry her after all. She calls him boring and tells him she’ll see him at the party. Adam picks up a paper, which is full of gossip about the English peerage.

Lottie Crump is the proprietor of Shepheard’s Hotel. Both she and the hotel represent an outdated Edwardian style. The parlor is filled with signed photographs of European royalty, and many of the staff and residents are elderly and associated with titled families that have deteriorated. The residents mingle in the parlor and talk about anarchism and democracy as if they were interchangeable phenomena. They drink copious amounts of champagne with Adam and struggle to remember the current Prime Minister’s name. Adam plays a game involving the spatial arrangement of coins with a wealthy, drunk man and walks away with a thousand pounds (worth approximately 70 thousand pounds in 2022). Adam calls Nina Blount to inform her that, due to his new fortune, he can marry her after all.

Agatha Runcible appears to collect Adam for the party and stays to talk to Lottie Crump. A drunken Major convinces Adam to bet his money on a racehorse called Indian Runner and Adam, equally drunk, happily hands over his thousand pounds, so that the Major can place the bet for him. He calls to tell Nina the good news and Nina informs him that Indian Runner is well known to be a terrible racehorse. When Adam returns to the parlor, he finds that the Major is gone, and that moreover, no one there has heard of him.

Agatha tells Lottie about her experience with the customs officers. Offended on Agatha’s behalf, and demanding satisfaction from the highest authority, Lottie calls up to the room of Walter Outrage, the former Prime Minister, even though there is now a new Prime Minister, named John Brown. Soon, the party in Shepheard’s Hotel breaks up.

For his part, Walter Outrage is disappointed that his dinner with the Baroness Yoshiwara, the wife of a Japanese diplomat, has been interrupted. Father Rothschild calls to inform him that Outrage’s dalliance with Yoshiwara could create trouble at the Japanese embassy. Baroness Yoshiwara, meanwhile, finds Outrage’s behavior off-putting. Both anticipated a romantic evening, but they find one another’s social cues confusing.

At Archie Schwert’s party, two English peers named Lord Vanburgh and Simon Balcairn call the gossip columns for their respective papers to report on the party. They complain to each other about seeing the same faces over and over, and then call it a night. Photographers go from room to room taking pictures that are accompanied by loud explosions of flash powder.

Most of the people who were on the ferry appear at the party, including Mrs. Melrose Ape and her entourage of evangelical young women. Jane Brown, the innocent young daughter of the current Prime Minister, is there with a young socialite. She regrets not dressing up as a “savage,” as many of the partygoers have done, following a suggestion on the invitation.

Nina and Adam meet in person for the first time. Neither is sure any longer whether they are engaged. Nina suggests that the two of them go see her father, Colonel Blount, and talk to him about Adam’s money problems. Drunkenly, he falls asleep on her lap.

Later, a dozen dedicated partygoers, including Nina and Adam, go out in search of more fun. They find the lobby at Shepheard’s Hotel closed, and in Judge Skrimp’s hotel room they find a scene of disaster: A young woman has attempted to swing on a chandelier and is now unconscious. Finally, Jane Brown speaks up and says they can all go to her house. There, the partygoers ransack the kitchen and pass out all over the house. Miss Brown is delighted to have the cream of London society in her home.

In the morning, the Prime Minister and his family awake to find people staying in their large house and the kitchen in a riotous state. Many of the revelers are dressed as “savages,” which adds to the confusion. The Prime Minister reads reports in the morning paper of “Midnight Orgies” taking place in his own home. When Agatha Runcible leaves that morning, there is a throng of reporters outside the Prime Minister’s house.