Black Swan Green: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Jason goes to the local vicarage because he received a letter from them for Eliot Bolivar, his poetry pen name. He goes inside and asks an old man if he’s the vicar, but the man says he is more like a butler to the vicar. The butler takes Jason through the vicarage to a solarium, where an old woman sits. She has a voice that reminds Jason of a peacock, and she tells Jason her name is Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, or just Madame Crommelynck. She says that Jason is slightly younger than she expected. She explains that she isn’t a vicar—the house used to belong to a vicar, but many former vicarages have been sold across England.

Jason is confused, since his poems get printed in the real parish magazine, but Madame Crommelynck explains that she takes them to the actual vicar. She offers some criticism of the poems he’s sent in so far and asks him about the symbolism in them, including one that she thinks relates to the Falklands War. She tells him that he’s wrong to believe that a poem has to be beautiful to be good. Jason argues in defense of beauty, but Madame Crommelynck thinks it’s more important for Jason to write what he thinks.

Jason asks if Madame Crommelynck is a poet. She says no but that when she was younger, Robert Graves wrote a poem about her and William Carlos Williams wanted to elope with her. She asks Jason to look at her and tell her whether he sees beauty. He says “yes” to be polite, but she calls him a liar, saying that human beauty fades with age. She tells him to leave but to come back next Saturday at three o’clock so that she can give more criticism of his poems.

Jason can’t tell his mum and dad about Madame Crommelynck because he doesn’t want to admit that he is Eliot Bolivar. He checks out The Old Man and the Sea from the library because Madame Crommelynck recommended it. He goes back on Saturday for his next meeting with Madame Crommelynck, and music is playing in the vicarage on a record. Madame Crommelynck is confused by his sweater, which is for Liverpool Football Club but has an ad for the electronics firm Hitachi on it. She wonders why he has to pay an organization to be their advertisement instead of the other way around. She asks Jason about his real name (since she knows him as Eliot). Jason gives his name, which he’s never liked, but Madame Crommelynck prefers it over Eliot Bolivar for a poet.

Madame Crommelynck asks if anyone else knows about Jason’s poems, and he admits that no one does. She asks if he even keeps them secret from his “lover,” but Jason says he doesn’t have any sort of lover. Eventually, Madame Crommelynck gets him to admit that he likes Dawn Madden, but she already has a boyfriend. Jason says that if he wrote a poem for Dawn, people would just laugh, but Madame Crommelynck says that real poetry contains truth, and because the truth isn’t popular, poetry isn’t either.

Madame Crommelynck tells Jason that she thinks his best poem is called “Hangman,” which seems to be about a speech impediment. Madame Crommelynck suggests that the one who should really “hang” is Eliot Bolivar, and he should publish poetry in his own name instead.

Jason asks about the music that was playing when he came in, and Madame Crommelynck says that it was the sextet of Robert Frobisher, who worked as an amanuensis (assistant to a composer) for her father, Vyvyan Ayrs. Jason says he has looked up and read the encyclopedia entry for Vyvyan Ayrs, but Madame Crommelynck says that history has already mostly forgotten her father. She talks about how much of her homeland in Belgium is unrecognizable since World War II.

Madame Crommelynck shows Jason an old picture of Robert Frobisher, who helped Vyvyan Ayrs finish his final masterpiece. Madame Crommelynck used to be jealous of how Robert had her father’s approval. But Robert struggled with mental health and killed himself in a hotel bathroom shortly after finishing his sextet. Madame Crommelynck says it’s impossible to buy Robert’s sextet, so this may be Jason’s only time hearing it. She offers to turn over the LP and let him hear the other side.

Madame Crommelynck starts asking Jason about writers he likes and is disappointed when he only lists sci-fi and fantasy examples instead of European classics. She gives him Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier and tells him to translate the first chapter from French before their next meeting.

Jason’s school breaks for the summer. It’s a very rainy day, and Ross Wilcox shoves Jason into a puddle, causing Dawn and others to laugh. He goes back to Madame Crommelynck’s having done his French work in secret because he’s afraid of how people would make fun of him even more if they knew he was learning a “girly” language like French.

When Jason knocks on the vicarage door, this time the butler doesn’t answer. Instead, it’s a man who induces himself as Francis Bendincks, the vicar. He invites Jason inside but is confused about why he’s come to visit Madame Crommelynck. Inside, the vicar’s wife, Gwendolin Bendincks, explains that the reason Madame Crommelynck left is because she and her husband have been extradited due to being part of some financial scam. Jason learns that Madame Crommelynck’s “butler” was in fact her husband, Grigoire. Jason pictures the Crommelyncks in a foreign jail cell, and how they probably aren’t thinking of him. He feels that his poems are terrible and that he was stupid for trying to make them better.