Strange and Marvellous: A Rambling on Camilla Macaulay in The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut novel The Secret History is one of my favourites of all time. I’ve read it three times! I started reading the book at the end of January in 2021 after seeing overwhelmingly positive reviews about it online. Admittedly, I had been sceptical before reading because I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to the hype, but it absolutely did. It’s one of the novels that left a lasting impression on me. Rereading it is always such a delight because I pick up of things that I escaped my notice on previous reads, and I step away from it with newfound appreciation. A character who stood out to me while reading is, as the title suggests, Camilla Macaulay. She’s such an interesting character. I’m going to try and divide this post into three sections: 1. Who is Camilla Macaulay, 2. Her relationships with Henry and Charles, 3. Her role in the bacchanal and Bunny’s murder.

I think this is obvious, but there are spoilers ahead so read at your own discretion.

1. Who is  Camilla Macaulay?

Camilla, in my opinion, is the most mysterious character in the novel – even more so than Henry. As the novel is told from the perspective of Richard Papen, we know so little of her for two main reasons. The first being that Richard was intentionally excluded from many events in group, the bacchanal being the main example, so there’s so much he doesn’t know. The second reason is that Richard romanticised her so much because of his feelings towards her, that his perception was distorted. He even admits at the start that the reason why he wanted to join Hampden’s Greek class is because he was attracted to the aesthetic of the students. He really wasn’t lying when he said he has a ‘morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.’ (p.5) So even if he hadn’t been excluded from certain events, the image we were given of Camilla would still not be accurate. The first time Richard sees Camilla is in the library of Hampden College where she is studying with her brother Charles and Bunny. He’s immediately struck by her beauty, writing:

‘She, I thought, was very beautiful, in an unsettling almost medieval way, which would not be apparent to the casual observer.’ (p.24)

Most of the time when Richard talks about Camilla, he focuses on her appearance, whereas with the male characters, we know about both their appearances and dispositions - or rather the dispositions they chose to reveal to Richard. For example, we know what Henry looks like from Richard’s detailed description at the beginning:

‘quite large, well over six feet – was dark haired, with a square jaw and coarse, pale skin. He might have been handsome had his features been less set, or his eyes, behind the glasses, less expressionless and blank. He wore dark English suits and carried an umbrella (a bizarre sight in Hampden).’ (p.17)

but we also know more about Henry than just his appearance. We know that he’s incredibly intelligent, the most intelligent of the group. He’s a polyglot who can speak eight languages. ‘A linguistic genius’ Richard tells us, who ‘published a translation of Anacreon, with commentary, when he was only eighteen.’ (p.19) He also starts translating Milton’s Paradise Lost into Latin, simply because he can. Richard also tells much more about the other male members of the group; Charles Macaulay, Francis Abernathy, and Bunny Corcoran than just their appearances.

Camilla being the only girl in the group has always interested me. It is no secret that Julian Morrow cherry picks his students and was reluctant to accept Richard. He has a suspiciously close relationship with his students, particularly Henry, but because Richard joined later, we don’t know the others got into the class. Did Julian only take Camilla on because of her brother? I do not say this to diminish her intelligence, (her intelligence is clear throughout, even if isn’t something Richard focuses on as much as her appearance), but Julian always seemed far more interested in his male students, so it’s something I have wondered. I often wonder how she managed to cope being the only girl in the group, she doesn’t even have female friends outside of the group. There are only two other female students who appear multiple times in the book: Marion, Bunny’s girlfriend, and Judy Poovey, one of Richard’s housemates at college. Not only is Camilla not friends with these girls, but she actively dislikes them, and the feeling is mutual. There is a moment, during Richard and Bunny’s lunch when they discuss Camilla. During this brief discussion, Bunny places Camilla in opposition to his girlfriend: ‘I mean’ she’s [Marion] is a real girl. Long hair, got a little meat on her bones, isn’t afraid to wear a dress. I like that. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t care much for the brainy ones. Take Camilla, she’s fun, a good guy and all—’ (p.61) Here, Richard cuts Bunny off and defends Camilla by stating ‘Oh come on, she’s really pretty.’ Bunny agrees that Camilla is pretty:

‘Lovely girl. I’ve always said so. Looks just like a statue of Diana in my father’s club. All she lacks is a mother’s firm hand, but still, for my money, she’s what you call a bramble rose, as opposed to your hybrid tea. Doesn’t take the pains she ought, you know. And run’s around half the time in her brother’s sloppy old clothes, which maybe some girls could get away with — well I don’t think any girls can really get away with it, but she certainly can’t. Looks too much like her brother.’

Bunny, who is characterised by misogyny, takes issue with Camilla because she does not conform to conventional femininity in the way that his girlfriend apparently does. Richard often describes Camilla’s physique as masculine, and we know that she has ‘a boyish haircut’ (p.234), but she does often wear dresses. When Richard first sees her in the library she’s wearing a dress, when she cuts her foot in the lake she’s wearing a white dress, she wears a dress to Bunny’s funeral, and a skirt suit the day before.

Richard confesses that he romanticises Camilla just before she cuts her foot in the lake during a weekend trip to Francis’ country house, saying:

‘She was living reverie for me: the mere sight of her sparked an almost infinite rage of fantasy, from Greek to Gothic, from vulgar to divine.’ (p.107)

While I do find the phrase ‘living reverie’ beautiful, the whole quote shows that Richard is attracted to the idea of Camilla, the version he has embellished in his mind, rather than who she actually is. He furthers his romanticisation of Camilla in what is one of my favourite passages:

‘Being the only female in what was basically a boys’ club, must have been difficult for her. Miraculously, she didn’t compensate by becoming hard or quarrelsome. She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth, and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze. But strange and marvellous as she was, a wisp of silk in a forest of black wool, she was not the fragile creature one would have her seem. In many ways she was as cool and competent as Henry; tough minded, and solitary in her habits, and in many ways as aloof. Out in the country it was not uncommon to find she has slipped away, alone, out to the lake or down in the cellar where I once found her sitting in the big, marooned sleigh, reading. Things would have been terribly strange and unbalanced without her. She was the Queen who finished out the suit of dark Jacks, dark King, and Joker.’ (p.252)

Although I dislike Richard, I adore this passage so much that I simply had to include it in its entirety. Strip away the context, and it is beautiful, especially the ‘wisp of silk in a forest of black wool’ line. This passage is most insight we get into her character. Richard calling the group ‘basically a boys’ club’ says a lot about its dynamic because a boys’ club’ is a male dominated space that excludes and/or mistreats women. Perhaps this is why Camilla would often slip away on her own, she needed respite from the pressures of being the only girl, or woman, being twenty years old, in a group of men. It must also be remembered that this book is set when Donna Tartt was at college, during the early 1980s, when casual misogyny was more accepted / normalised than it is now. Bunny was never subtle with his misogyny, and after finding out what really happened during the bacchanal, takes great pleasure in humiliating and terrorising Camilla ‘simply because she was a girl – and in many ways she was his most vulnerable target.’ (p.251) While Richard hints that Camilla did at times struggle with being the only girl in the group, a struggle that I think was inevitable, he does suggest that she has a degree of power by calling her ‘the Queen’. The placement of this passage the novel is incredibly funny because it is said after Henry tells Richard about the bacchanal. Richard knows that Camilla played an essential role in the death of an innocent man, yet he still describes her as a ‘slight, lovely girl’ who eats chocolates in bed, and uses hyacinth scented hair products. Although he does describe her as ‘boyish’ numerous times throughout, in this passage, he paints her as a sort of delicate feminine ideal, even though he knows she was an accomplice in an innocent man’s death. His feelings for her have distorted his perception of her so extremely that he can look at as a delicate girl despite the horrors of the bacchanal.

So, who is Camilla Macaulay? The answer to that question is something we will never truly know. We know what she looks like. We know she’s pretty, as even Bunny admits this, we know how she dresses and what her aesthetic is like. She wears a ‘jet earrings, patent-leather shoes, a natty, closely cut black velvet suit.’ (p.444) at the Corcoran’s house, has short hair and her and Charles often wear white, which is intentionally ironic, as is Richard’s comparison of them to ‘a couple of Flemish angels’ (p.18) To Richard, Camilla unattainable, an almost angel like figure, the complete opposite of the vulgar Judy Poovey. (I think Judy’s a great character, she is just the antithesis of Camilla) We’ll never know who she really was because Richard didn’t truly know her either.

2. Camilla’s relationships with Henry and Charles:

Camilla’s relationship with Henry is one of the things I find most intriguing about the novel because it is subtly hinted at throughout. Her relationship with Henry cannot be discussed without analysing the perverse, incestuous relationship she has with her brother. I think I speak for all of us when I say I was absolutely disgusted at *that* part of The Secret History when Charles says to Camilla: ‘how about a kiss for your jailbird brother?’ Despite the disgust I felt, unfortunately I saw it coming. Right at the beginning Richard tells us he initially assumed that Charles and Camilla were ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ which to me, sounded the first alarm bell. When it comes to the relationship she had with Charles, I have always felt deep sympathy for Camilla because it felt one-sided and often non-consensual, especially towards the end when Charles becomes physically abusive. Initially, Charles seemed like such a kind character who is protective of his sister, but as the novel progresses, it is clear his protectiveness is actually possessiveness and jealousy. For example, when Richard shows up at the twins’ apartment in the middle of the night just after Bunny has told Richard about the bacchanal, they try and get hold of Henry, but to no avail. Camilla then phones Henry using a secret code, and as if by magic, he answers instantly. After the phone call, Charles’ jealousy becomes obvious:

‘“What are you looking at?” She said crossly to Charles.

“Code, eh?”

“What about it?”

“You never told me about it.”

“It’s stupid. I never thought to.”

“What do you and Henry need a secret code for?”

“It’s not a secret?”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Charles, don’t be such a baby.”’ (p.279)

This passage stuck out to me, and I often think of because as Charles asks: why do Camilla and Henry need a secret code? Towards the end of the novel when Charles has started physically abusing Camilla, Richard asks her how long the abuse has been going on for – but she doesn’t say. Perhaps it has been going on for longer than we think and that’s why she and Henry have a secret code. It could be possible that Henry caught on to what was going on between the twins’ (Francis does tell Richard that Bunny apparently told Henry about walking in on the twins once, but we don’t know when this incident happened) and created a phone code for Camilla to use for protection. Of course, I could be reading too much into this, but Charles’ jealousy may suggest otherwise. It also begs the question: how long had Henry and Camilla been seeing each other? Their relationship becomes public in the group towards the end, (and when it does, Charles nearly loses his mind) but how long had it been going on in secret? We don’t know because we only know as much as Richard chooses to tell us. From Charles’ jealousy, we can infer that they chose to keep the relationship private for Camilla’s sake.

Their incestuous relationship is hinted at much clearer later on when Charles comes home drunk and is displeased to find Richard alone with Camilla:

‘ “Milly, my girl” I heard him call. “Where are you honey?”

“Oh, dear,” said Camilla. Out loud, she said: “We’re in here, Charles.”

“Camilla,” he said, leaning against the door frame, “Camilla,” and then he saw me.

“You,” he said, not too politely. “What are you doing here?”’ (p.405)

Now I didn’t grow up with brothers, but I’m fairly confident that this isn’t a normal way for a brother to address his sister. Even during my first read, this short scene confirmed that something wasn’t quite right, and I hoped my feelings were incorrect, even though I knew they weren’t.

I’ve seen comments online about Camilla and Henry’s relationship being random and out of nowhere, but I disagree. Like I’ve said, it was subtly hinted at, and given the nature of her relationship with Charles, it had to be clandestine. The aforementioned scene when Camilla cuts her foot is one I think of more than I care to admit, and it’s all because of Henry. Richard describes how he

 ‘Deftly whisked her up as if she were made of straw, one arm under her head and the other beneath her knees. […]

“Henry, put me down. I’m bleeding all over you.” He didn’t pay any attention to her. […]

“Henry, I wish you would put me down. I’m too heavy for you.”

He smiled at her. There was a slight chip in one of his front teeth I’d never noticed before; it gave his smile a very engaging quality. “You’re light as a feather,” he said.’ (p.108)

This scene is probably the most affectionate we ever see Henry. He’s often cold and serious, yet he doesn’t hesitate to pick Camilla up, and beams at her while doing so. He picks her up on instinct, and she’s almost embarrassed. Perhaps she’s being coy because from the way their physiques are described, she’s definitely not too heavy for him, or perhaps she’s genuinely surprised that he’s being affectionate in front of the others. I believe this scene occurs post bacchanal, which occurred around November, but Richard is still unaware of it. Bunny wasn’t murdered until the end of April, so it seems safe to assume that a romantic relationship between Henry and Camilla has been going on for quite some time, how much time exactly, is something we’ll never know. (Put us out of our misery, Miss Tartt!) There is subtle romantic tension between the two throughout, Richard tells us of Henry that Camilla was the one ‘he seemed fondest of, Camilla he bent over attentively when she spoke, Camilla who was most often the recipient of his infrequent smiles.’ (p.157) Another moment of romantic tension between is when:

‘Camilla tried to light a cigarette, but one match and then another went out. Henry took the box from her and struck one up himself; it flared up high and strong and she leaned close to it, one hand cupped around the flame, the other resting upon his wrist.’ (p.348)

I love this moment because it’s so simple, and emphasises their connection. Neither of them speak to each other, but the tension is palpable. There is also symbolism in the flames. Camilla’s flame keeps going out, whereas Henry’s is ‘high and strong’, reflecting how is the strongest of the group. It is also important to remember that Charles is not present during this moment because he has gone to college with Cloke to break into Bunny’s dorm room before the police show up.

In the wake of Bunny’s funeral, the relationship between Charles and Camilla becomes overtly fragmented. At the end of the funeral, Richard spotted them ‘arguing in the yard’ (p.477), but he does not know why. Given the grisly circumstances of Bunny’s funeral, it only natural that tensions were high and arguments ensued. It is then, possible that the twins were arguing out of stress, but later on, Francis reveals something interesting to Richard. He tells Richard that Charles may have seen something between Henry and Camilla at the funeral. If this is the case, then it may account for their arguing. This is on top of Cloke Rayburn telling Richard that during his stay at the twins’ apartment prior to the funeral, he would hear Camilla ‘whispering’ on the phone’ at ‘two or three in the morning.’ (p.450) If I had to guess, I would say that the person Camilla speaks to is Henry. We know it is not Richard, it seems unlikely to be Francis, and she does not seem to have any friends beyond the group, so Henry seems the most likely option - especially when you consider their secret phone code. Camilla has to call him in the middle of the night and whisper to prevent Charles from hearing.

For a fleeting moment post funeral, the atmosphere among the group seems to improve. During one of the Sunday dinners at the twins’ apartment, Richard recalls how:

‘Henry was excellent spirits. Relaxed, sitting in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was alert, well rested, quick with a laugh or a clever reply. Camilla looked enchanting. She wore a narrow sleeveless dress, salmon-coloured which exposed a pair of pretty collarbones and the sweet, frail vertebrae at the base of her neck – lovely kneecaps, lovely ankles, lovely bare, strong muscled legs. The dress exaggerated her spareness of body, her unconscious and slightly masculine grace of posture; I loved her. […] She and Charles seemed to have made up.’ (p.495)

Unfortunately, this seemingly placid atmosphere is soon demolished. The mirror in the twins’ living room is shattered, and Charles tells the story of how it supposedly broke during that very Sunday dinner. He claims that he broke it accidentally while cleaning, to which Henry replies: ‘What I don’t understand is, how you got it back up without the glass falling out.’ (p.495) Later that night, Richard discovers how the mirror really broke:

‘I was standing on the hearth, […] when I happened to look down into the fireplace. […] I saw silver sparkles, bright-needled splinters from the broken mirror, mixed with large, unmistakable shards of a gold-rimmed highball glass, the twin one in my own hand. […] Someone had thrown this one, with pretty good aim, from across the room, hard enough to break it to pieces and to shatter the looking-glass behind my head.’ (p.496)

So, Charles lied about how the mirror broke, which is quite an innocuous thing to lie about. At this point in the story, Charles is venturing further and further down the avenue of alcoholism as the guilt of the murders eats away at him, and his stress is compounded by the not so clandestine relationship between Henry and Camilla. Therefore, it can be assumed that Charles threw the glass at Camilla in a fit of rage, but she dodged, so it hit the mirror instead - or maybe Charles did aim for the mirror. Either way, he lied about the mirror and Camilla does not contradict his story, probably because Charles has threatened her into silence.

Two nights after the Sunday dinner, Henry phones Richard to tell him that Charles has been arrested for drunk-driving while driving his car, and he wants Richard to try and bail him out. He explains that he cannot go himself because he and Charles quarreled the previous night. I think it is likely that they argued about Camilla and the mirror. I imagine that Henry also noticed the shattered glass in the fireplace as Richard did, and put two and two together - of maybe Camilla told him herself with their secret phone code as it clear that Henry did not believe Charles’ story.

Richard collects Charles from the police station on Henry’s request the following morning, and when they return to the twins’ apartment, the true relationship between the twins is revealed. Charles approaches his sister and says ‘how about a kiss for your jailbird brother?’ (p.511). When he says this, Camilla:

‘turned halfway, as if to touch her lips to his cheek, but he slid a palm down her back and tipped her face up to his and kissed her full on the mouth – not a brotherly kiss, but a long, slow, greedy kiss; messy and voluptuous. His bathrobe fell slightly open, […] his fingertips just inside the edge of her thin polka-dot shirt and trembling over the warm skin there.’ (pp. 511-512)

Richard is ‘astounded’, understandably so, but Camilla ‘didn’t flinch, didn’t move. […] She pulled her chair close to the table and reached for the sugar bowl as if nothing had happened. […] She bought the cup up and took a sip. It was only then I remembered: Camilla didn’t like sugar in her coffee, she drank it unsweetened, with milk.’ (p.512) Camilla adding sugar to her coffee, something she never does, shows that she’s embarrassed and/or disoriented by the kiss. Not knowing what to say, she has attempted to busy her hands, but is so flustered she puts sugar in her coffee. Charles on the other hand, is completely composed and offers to make scrambled eggs. I know that I’m painting Camilla as a victim here, and some may argue that Camilla isn’t flustered here because the relationship is non-consensual, but rather because she’s embarrassed that Richard now knows the true nature of their relationship. I suppose if I were voluntarily sleeping with a relative, I would take pains to keep it a secret as well. However, the reason why I’m inclined to paint Camilla as a victim in her relationship with Charles, is because of how one sided it seems.

Later that day, Richard visits Francis and boldly asks him whether or not he thinks the twins sleep together. To this he simply replies: ‘Yes, I think they sometimes do.’ (p.513) which leads to the two of them discussing the twins’ incestuous relationship. Francis seems unfazed by it, saying: ‘Not that I think it's so terrible either – from a moral standpoint that is – but it’s not the casual, good-natured thing that one might hope. It runs a lot more deep and nasty. Last fall, around the time when that farmer fellow…’ Richard asks what he means and he replies: ‘After that night it was obvious to everyone. Not that wasn’t before. It’s just that Charles was so much worse than anyone had expected. I…’ (p.514) Francis does not elaborate, so we do not know what exactly he means, but his allusion to the bacchanal suggests that something nasty happened between the twins that night. As we know, bacchanals are ‘fundamentally sex rituals, aren’t they?’ (p.187) so whatever happened would’ve been most unpleasant. Also, notice how he says that Charles was worse than they all expected, not Camilla. It is details such as these which lead me to believe that their relationship was not entirely consensual, if at all. Francis also tells Richard: ‘they’re very jealous [the twins] of each other. He much more than she.’ Which has always interested me because we do not see Camilla exhibit jealously towards Charles in the way we so clearly do with him. Francis claims that the twins take pleasure in leading people on. Francis is led on by Charles, who he sleeps with on occasion, and he tells Richard that Camilla leads on both him and Henry. What interests me about Francis’ claim that Camilla leads Richard and Henry on, is that there seems to be little evidence of this. I feel it’s important for me to explain that I am not in any way trying to place Camilla on a pedestal. She is not entirely innocent herself because, after all, she is responsible for the deaths of two people, but I have always felt sympathy for her regarding her relationship with Charles. Francis tells Richard that Camilla would ‘behave a lot more like Charles if she were allowed to; he’s so possessive though, keeps her reeled in pretty tight. Can you imagine a worse situation? He watches her like a hawk.’ (p.516) This explicitly addresses the power imbalance in their relationship. Charles sleeps with Francis but loses his mind at the mere thought of Camilla being with Henry. Perhaps this is why Camilla does not seem to have friends outside of the group: her brother will not let her. By keeping her ‘reeled in’ he can watch her ‘like a hawk’ and monitor who she spends time with. Francis recounts a time when he and Camilla shared a kiss because of a note in a fortune cookie reading ‘expect a gift from the man of your dreams’. When Charles saw this, he ‘barrelled out of nowhere and grabbed me by the back of the neck. Bunny had to pull him off. Charles had the sense to say he’d been joking, but I knew he wasn’t, he hurt me.’ (p.517) He reacts with violence because of the ownership he feels he has over his sister. Henry didn’t witness this because he had apparently walked off, I wish he hadn’t because I would love to have known his reaction!

Things further escalate when that Thursday night, Cloke tells Richard that yesterday, he went to visit the twins and discovered that Camilla had moved out of the apartment. This is the day after the infamous kitchen kiss. So, a lot has happened in a few days, and I have endeavoured to pay meticulous attention to the timeline. To recap, on Sunday the group had their usual dinner at the twins’ apartment, all seemed well but of course it was not, on Tuesday night Charles was arrested, on Wednesday morning he came home which is when the kiss happened, and by end of the following day, Thursday, Richard has discovered from Cloke that Camilla moved out of the apartment with the help of Henry the day before, so the Wednesday Charles came home. I hope this is making sense. On Thursday night, Richard attends Thirsty Thursday, and when he gets back to his dorm, he does not wake until ‘six the next evening’ (p.525), so Friday. Francis visits Richard and they discuss Henry and Camilla. Henry is paying for Camilla to stay at the Albemarle hotel, which according to Francis, costs $200 per night. This is the day that Francis tells Richard that he thinks that ‘Camilla and Henry have been slipping around with each other for quite some time’ (p.529) and that Charles may have caught them together at Bunny’s funeral. Richard asks Francis whether or not Henry and Camilla are sleeping together, to which Francis replies: ‘if he’s not, he’s certainly done everything he can to convince Charles that he is.’ (p.530) After Francis leaves, Richard falls asleep again, and when he awakens at 4am, he realises he had ‘slept for nearly twenty-four hours.’ (p.530) By this point, it must be Saturday morning. Richard goes for a walk and finds Charles, who has passed out. He takes Charles back to his room and then goes to sleep himself. He wakes ‘around ten. It was Saturday.’ Charles sleeps at Richard’s again that night, and the next day, Sunday, Richard takes him to the ER. On Monday, Richard and Francis visit Charles in hospital. He asks them if they have spoken to Camilla: ‘What does she have to say for herself?’ and adds: ‘I hope you told her I said to go to hell.’ (p.544) How charming!

When Richard returns to his dorm, Camilla is there, and she shows him what Charles has done to her, and tells her that she is ‘afraid’ of him:

‘She held up a piece of the light hair near her temples. Underneath was a scabbed spot, about the size of a quarter, where someone had pulled a handful of hair out by the roots. […] She pushed up the sleeve of her sweater. The wrist was swollen and a bit discoloured, but what horrified me was the tiny, evil burn on the underside of her forearm: a cigarette burn gouged deep and ugly in the flesh.’ (p.546)

Richard is entirely devoid of sympathy for Camilla. Because he is in love with her, he resents her for turning to Henry for protection. He even goes as far as telling us that he wanted to ‘seize Camilla by her bruised wrist, twist her arm behind her back until she cried out, throw her on my bed: strangle her, rape her, I don’t know what.’ (p.546) In this moment, he is nearly as a bad as Charles because he too feels a sense of ownership over Camilla. Charles’ attack of Camilla must have occurred when Richard returned to his dorm after the infamous kitchen kiss, as Camilla moved out the following day. Did Camilla call Charles out for kissing her in front of Richard? Or did Charles confront her about Henry? Regardless, this horrific physical abuse seems to have been the final straw.

The ambiguity around whether or not Henry and Camilla are actually romantically involved, is clarified when Richard visits Henry’s apartment on Tuesday. Richard asks if Camilla is there, and Henry replies: ‘No, she was sleeping when I left, and I didn’t want to wake her.’ (p.555) This ‘intimacy’ of his rely startles Richard, who then mentally compares them to ‘Pluto and Persephone’ - the King and Queen of the Underworld. I do wonder whether or not Camilla told Henry about Richard’s inexplicable anger towards her for moving out. Camilla having been asleep when Henry left the hotel implies that he has spent the night. Also, later on when Richard sees Camilla’s hotel room, he notices it has ‘only one bed, bed clothes tangled at the foot.’ (p.569) The one bed and image of the ‘tangled’ bed sheets confirms that yes, they are romantically involved, and clearly have been for a while.

Another moment of Henry and Camilla’s relationship which springs to mind, is more towards the beginning when Richard and Charles bring an old greyhound called Frost to the country house. According to Richard, ‘it loved Camilla. Henry quoted long passages about Emma Bovary and her greyhound: “Sa pensée, sans but d’abord, vagabondait au hazard, comme sa levrette des cercles dans la campange.” (p.94) This is a reference to Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel Madame Bovary. In the novel, Emma Bovary is married to Charles Bovary, but she commits adultery with two men, and one of the affairs takes place in a hotel. When reading Madame Bovary, this detail reminded me of Henry and Camilla as their relationship towards the end is contained in the secrecy of a hotel room, away from Charles.

Discord between Henry and Charles pervades as Charles’ drinking continues, and tensions officially boil over in the final chapter when Henry shoots himself. Before Charles’ arrival to the hotel, Richard finds Camilla and Henry eating together in her room: ‘lamb chops, bottle of burgundy, a yellow rose in a bud vase.’ (p.600) There are so many moments of their relationship that are not made privy to, because of course Richard is not made privy to them. It seems that Camilla was living in the Albemarle for a good week, - imagine all of the interactions she and Henry had. The lines just before Henry’s suicide are vital for analysing their relationship:

‘“Come here,” he said.

She looked at him in horror. So did Francis and I.

He beckoned to her with his gun arm. “Come here,” he said. “Quick.”

Camilla took a step away from him. Her gaze was terrified. “No, Henry,” she said, “don’t…”

To my surprise, he smiled at her. “You think I’d hurt you? Come here.”

She went to him. He kissed her between the eyes, then whispered something – what, I’ve always wondered – in her ear.

[…] Henry kissed Camilla again. “I love you,” he said. Then he said out loud: “Come in.”

[…] He put the pistol to his temple and fired, twice.’ (p.605)

I’m not being dramatic when I say I would pay Donna Tartt any amount of money to know what he whispered to her! It keeps me up at night! There is so much tenderness from Henry here, from his smile, his reassurance that he would never hurt her, the kisses, and of course the “I love you.” The question is, did he mean it? Did he really love her, or did he simply want a dramatic, romantic ending like so many of the ancient texts he read? Did he simply want to paint himself as a heroic figure? I like to think he did love her, he certainly seemed to care for her deeply, and Francis did tell Richard that Henry ‘used to be crazy about her; for all I know he still is. (p.516) Henry is not one for showing his emotions so I wonder what he did that indicated to Francis that was ‘crazy’ about Camilla. There is also the question of, was this the first time that he told her that he loves her? We shall never know! :(

 Camilla’s fear of him here is interesting. I do not think it is necessarily indicative of her affection for him, but rather a natural response given how erratic he can be, and the abuse she’s experienced from her brother. Camilla certainly seems to love him, because in the epilogue she rejects Richard’s marriage proposal on the basis that she still loves Henry, eight years after his death. Why did Henry shoot himself? Did he do it for Camilla? Did he think it was the only way out for the rest of them? After all, he is the most responsible for what happened given he was the one who actually planned Bunny’s murder and pushed him into the ravine. He must have planned his suicide because his mother tells Richard that Henry left him his BMW. I wonder how early on he planned to take his own life. Something that I found upsetting when reading, and still find upsetting, is that Camilla did not attend Henry’s funeral because she returned to Virginia with Charles instead. Why, Camilla? Why?!

In the epilogue, Camilla reveals that she and Charles aren’t in contact anymore, adding ‘it’s broken my Nana’s heart.’ (p.621) Notice how she says her Nana is heartbroken and not her. Is this because she is secretly pleased to no longer be in contact with Charles but feels guilty about this because he’s still her brother? She doesn’t express any personal sadness about not being in contact with him, and I cannot say I blame her. The novel ends with Camilla and Richard parting ways after she rejects his marriage proposal at a train station. She goes back to Virginia where she is friendless, stuck looking after her dependent grandmother, and her heart still weeps for the deceased Henry.

3. The Bacchanal and Bunny’s Murder.

I will attempt to keep this final section short and sweet because this post is much longer than I expected it to be! My future posts won’t be this long, I can just go on and on about The Secret History. Camilla’s relationship with Henry has made me wonder how much of a role she played in the bacchanal and Bunny’s murder. Henry is undoubtedly the mastermind behind the two events, but what about Camilla? Richard describes Camilla as ‘calm as a Madonna.’ (p.402) while watching Bunny fall to his death. I know Bunny tormented her in his last few months, but her reaction to him falling to his death is still alarmingly calm.

When Richard asks Camilla what really happened during the bacchanal, she answers in a very matter of fact way. She describes the supernatural aspects such as seeing Dionysus, but then she abruptly says she remembers ‘that dead man. Lying on the ground. His stomach was torn open, and steam was coming out of it.’ She then strangely says that the reason why they’re struggling so much after Bunny’s murder is because ‘it’s terrible to leave a body unburied. That farmer they found straightaway; you know. But you remember poor Palinurus in the Aeneid? He lingered around and haunted them for the longest time. I’m afraid none of us are going to have a good night’s sleep until Bunny is in the ground.’ (pp.403-404) Richard tells her that’s ridiculous, but she simply laughs. Her response is startlingly relaxed, and incredibly Henry-like: calm, pragmatic, explained in relation to a Classic text.

At Bunny’s funeral, Richard tells us that Camilla climbed down the ravine with Henry to check that Bunny was dead:

 ‘He pulled back the eyelids with his thumb, leaning close, careful not to touch the eyeglasses which were skewed on the top of Bunny’s head. […] Camilla’s wristwatch had a second hand. We saw them silently conferring. Climbing up the hill after her, bracing his knee with his palm, he’d wiped his hands on his trousers and answered our clamorous whispers – dead? Is he -?- with the brief personal nod of a doctor…’ (p.473)

This detail stuck out to me because why did Camilla go down with him? Did Henry ask her? Did she offer because the others were too afraid? Richard annoyingly doesn’t tell us.

Henry tells Richard about the bacchanal, and Francis chimes a little. Henry claims they were separated from Camilla for a while. When he actually killed the farmer, only Francis and Charles were with him. They found Camilla later on ‘sitting quietly on the bank of a stream with her feet in the water, her robe perfectly white, and no blood anywhere except for her hair.’ (p.189) Richard asks how this happened but Henry says he doesn’t know. I find this hard to believe because he seems to remember most of the night, more than the others. Only the farmer died as a result of the bacchanal so the blood in Camilla’s hair must have been from him. Is Henry lying to protect her? Of course he could be telling the truth. Maybe he really doesn’t know, but the situation it too strange.

Richard does say that Henry ‘had become angry when the twins were voicing moral objections at the idea of killing Bunny.’ which he justifies by calling it ‘a redistribution of matter.’ (p.339) So clearly Camilla wasn’t completely on board with the idea and went along with it because there wasn’t another option. Just before the infamous kitchen kiss, Richard notices there’s still malted milk in the fridge (only Bunny drank it). He tells Camilla she should get rid of it, and she tells him Bunny’s scarf is still in the closet too. She explains she hasn’t disposed of it in hope ‘one day I’ll open the closet door and it'll be gone.’ (p.511) While she doesn’t exactly express guilt, it does show that she’s struggling with what she’s done in some way, which is the most emotion she expresses regarding his death.

Conclusion:

Well, who knew it was possible for me to ramble about one character from The Secret History for 6,000 words! I really can go on and on about this book. The characters and plot are just so fascinating. I have a couple more post ideas for The Secret History, but I will try to make sure that they are not as long as this one. Although this is a long post, I hope it was interesting to read. I realise that the structure is not the best, but this is not intended to be a critical essay, for I write enough of those for university, but rather my ramblings on a character who has always fascinated me. I almost feel a sense of catharsis now I have released some of my thoughts on this complex book.

Thank you for reading <3.

Works Referenced:

Tartt, Donna, The Secret History (London: Penguin, 1993)