Orpheus in Mayfair, and Other Stories and Sketches — Context and Discussion

From Bayswater to the Riverbank: Shifting Settings

The excerpts span three distinct locales: London's Bayswater, a Russian river, and a classical Mediterranean yard. In the title story, the setting is urban and domestic—apartments, concert agencies, charity matinees. The language is precise and unadorned, focusing on the gap between Margaritis's artistic hopes and his actual engagements. The second excerpt, from "Russalka," moves to a forest and riverbank in Russia. Here the prose becomes sensory and eerie: the sky is "as grey as the water," and a woman with "large and green and sad" eyes appears dressed in reeds. The third excerpt, from "The Old Woman," places a spinner by the sea in December, with "myrtle boughs" and "brown hills of the coast." Each setting carries its own mood—practical, supernatural, or pastoral—and Baring adapts his style accordingly.

Characters Caught Between Worlds

Margaritis is a professional musician who writes poetry in Romaic and composes tunes, yet earns his living through language lessons. He is caught between his heritage and his adopted country, between artistic ambition and financial need. Petrushka, in "Russalka," is a factory worker who has adopted a "new scepticism" from his peers, yet he cannot resist the pull of the river and the Russalka—a water spirit from folklore. His wife Tatiana senses danger and begs him not to go, but he dismisses her fears as "foolishness." The old woman in the third excerpt is unnamed, spinning by a fire, with no context given for her story. These characters are defined by their positions on thresholds: cultural, rational, or supernatural.

The Supernatural as a Test of Belief

In "Russalka," Petrushka sees a woman with "gleaming teeth" and "glazed" eyes who vanishes into the air. He tells himself, "There is no such thing; only women believe in such things." Yet his subsequent actions—returning to the river, ignoring Tatiana's pleas—suggest that his rationalism is fragile. The story does not confirm whether the Russalka is real or a hallucination; it simply shows Petrushka's behavior and its fatal outcome. The title story, by contrast, contains no overt supernatural element, but Margaritis's quest to revive ancient Greek song has a quasi-mythic quality. Baring seems interested in how characters negotiate belief—in folklore, in art, in their own perceptions—and how those beliefs shape their fates.

Economy and Implication in Baring's Prose

Baring often conveys information through understatement. Margaritis's poverty is shown through specific details: he gives "music lessons during the day, and in the evening lessons in Greek." The narrator does not dwell on his hardship; the facts speak for themselves. In "Russalka," Tatiana's intuition is described simply: "her intuition told her, firstly, that this was not true, and, secondly, that it was not well for Petrushka to go." The repetition of "firstly" and "secondly" mimics logical reasoning applied to an irrational fear. When Petrushka drowns, the narration is stark: "They found his body in the shallow water." Baring avoids melodrama, letting the events carry their own weight. This restraint extends to dialogue, which is sparse and functional.

These excerpts suggest that Baring's collection rewards attention to shifts in register and setting. The stories are not linked by characters or plot, but by recurring concerns: the gap between aspiration and reality, the persistence of folklore in modern life, and the quiet consequences of small decisions. Readers may find it useful to note how each story establishes its world in the first few paragraphs, and how Baring signals whether the narrative will lean toward irony, tragedy, or fable.

I keep thinking about the Greek musician in that Bayswater story, how his old songs felt utterly foreign beside the damp London pavements. It reminded me of reading A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story — Text and Context, where the canyon’s particular light seems to ignore the people passing through it. Both books left me with that odd ache of belonging nowhere quite fully.