Mrs. Bennett's 'Jane Shore; or, The Goldsmith's Wife' n.d.

John Lofts first edition? - n.d.

My copy is undated, although it must be after 1842 as Mrs Bennett is described as the authoress of 'The Cottage Girl', published in that year. As is my wont, I looked up the Database of Victorian Fiction - At the Circulating Library - for any information about Mrs. Bennett. Born Mary E. Saunders in 1813, in Exeter, she was the sister of the novelist John Saunders.  Early on, she wrote low-grade fiction, such as The Jew's Daughter (1839). In the 1850s, she married printer and publisher John Bennett. This suggests Jane Shore was published after that date. Another copy has an owner's inscription dated 1853. Mary died in 1899. Many of her publications cannot be traced (in fact, Jane Shore is not on the Database). 

Although only one volume, it felt very much like a three-decker - the 362 pages were in smallish font and had narrow margins. However, I plodded on, taking several days to get to the end. The novel begins in September 1468, at the house of Mr. Winstead, a mercer living in Cheapside. The mercer is honest and upright, but his wife is forever scheming to use her daughter as a passport to wealth and fame. There are four men vying for his beautiful 15 year-old Jane's attention. There is a graceful personage in a masquing dress...talking promiscuously to the ladies present; there is a ridiculous little tailor, the butt of the city; the third is none other than the gallant, winningly noble Lord William Hastings; finally, a well-dressed citizen, standing apart from the rest, eyeing the beauteous object of his honest love with jealous looks, Matthew Shore, of Lombard-street, a worthy man and a prosperous goldsmith.

The tale slowly evolves: Jane marries Shore; Hastings withdraws - not his love (or lust?) - in favour of the masked man, who turns out to be King Edward IV! We follow the vicissitudes not only of Matthew Shore, who loses his wife to the monarch (who sets Jane up in some splendour at Tottenham Court Mansion) -  but also of Edward himself, who has to flee abroad from the Lancastrian/Earl of Warwick fracas of 1470-1. Jane is portrayed as someone with a genuine conscience over her betrayal of her husband but who also reveres the king. She uses her 'power' to save Clarence (albeit temporarily) and is a good mistress to her servants.

Mrs Bennett has definite opinions about the real-life characters.

Edward is ruled by his carnality but neither does Hastings come out of the story well. He  plots against Matthew Shore, is ruthless, ambitious and a womaniser, called a snake by some. The Duke of Clarence is simply shifty, but his wife genuinely befriends Jane.

Matthew Shore's vengeful cousin (she wants to marry him herself and schemes against Jane) Cecily, is one of the bête noires of the tale. She inveigles a Welsh cove, Owen Lewellyn, to spread scandal and rumour about Jane and others. Both meet a deserved end: she, bound to a mast, drowning in the Channel; he struck down and buried in a London back garden.

There is 'Welsh' sub-plot, based around Abergavenny castle, involving Owen's sister Nesta. Lollardy rears its head, with a friar coming to Wales, selling in secret written Welsh copies of the blessed Scriptures, prepared by learned and enlightened men of the English universities, holders of the pure faith which Wickliffe taught. Nesta, her parents and her boyfriend Leolin, a skilful harper, all subscribe to Wycliffite views. Jane's crippled sister Isabel, also had an interdicted Lollard Testament which is passed on to Jane at the latter's death. The author, surely, gives way to her own feeling and opinions in this paragraph:

We who have had the Scriptures with us all our days - who have it daily read in our own tongue in the churches - and find it in every home a familiar household companion - can little estimate the intense curiosity and the ardent eagerness with which the first translations were perused in England. All honour to Wickliffe! the "Morning Star of the Reformation"...Never - never - may we forget what we owe to the first English champion of unshackled Christianity!

Richard, Duke of Gloucester and later King, is presented as Sir Thomas More's (he is directly quoted more than once) and William Shakespeare's caricature. At Tewkesbury, he buried his dagger in the bold heart of the youth (Prince Edward). The author has Hastings immediately saying to Edward IV, I will avow that my lord duke I like not - he is crafty, and there is some hidden design brooding in his breast...He is the murderer of Henry VI and, probably of Clarence: succeeding ages have laid the odium of the barbarous deed on his brother Gloster. Chapter XLVII is simply headed The measures taken by the Duke of Gloster to supplant his nephews. He creeps silently and noiselessly toward his prey like the cunning serpent... The last chapters, which includes Hastings' execution, are simply based on More's account. Richard exhibits a shrunken and distorted arm, which all knew had been so from his birth and blames the witch Shore for this.

As unpleasant as Richard, is his sidekick Catesby - who turns traitor to his erstwhile master Hastings - I am necessary to the Duke of Goster, and will make myself, more so; and when he is on the throne, as he shall be... Catesby has a crime-stained bosom...

On the other hand, the Bishop of Ely was an excellent old man, learned charitable, and of blameless life. Try telling that to a Richard III Society supporter!

There are brief accounts of the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, but the author is far more interested in the interchange between the characters. The novel, although generally following actual events and with a surfeit of real historical personages, is not a reliable History. There are too many examples of a disregard, even falsification, of facts - he has Richmond slay Richard at Bosworth, for instance.. 

Two minor asides. Did Englishmen wear wigs in the late 15th century? Certainly, Jane's father Mr. Winstead appears to have done. Secondly, were there black servants in those days in London? Cassandra, who crops up several times as Jane's closest aide and confidant, is an African.

Thomas Featherstone's 'Legends of Leicester, in the Olden Time 1838

 

Whittaker & Co. first edition - 1838

The Author - who had already published 'Midsummer Days in Italy' - sets out his design in an Advertisement at the beginning of the book: The plan of weaving fiction with history, whence legendary lore derives its chiefest charm, has been adhered to in the following pages...the main incidents have been collected from the best authorities.

The result is a slight tale of just fifty-eight pages, followed by eight more of 'Notes'. The account of the Battle of Bosworrh is book-ended by a nondescript story of 18-20 year-old, Luke Babington, who wends his way through Charnwood Forest from Ashby (is that his home?) to Loughborough and then to Leicester, entering the latter over the North bridge which connects the Ashby road with the town. He continues along the Friars Causeway until he comes to a substantial stone built house, large and lofty, and its tall steep roofs and narrow gables were adorned with a variety of fantastic ornament. Here live Sir Reginald Babington, his daughters Mabel and Florence, cousins to young Luke. The former is a young lively-looking girl, her elder sister a taller and more graceful looking damsel... Luke appears to favour Florence but she dismisses him, telling him there is another who loves you - doats [sic] on you. Abashed, Luke returns to the doting Mabel!

Then, suddenly in Chapter III, we are in the realms of factual history. Tudor is at Lichfield. Richard, displaying that tact, promptitude, and intrepidity, for which he was so especially famous, marches from Nottingham to Leicester where Luke joins others to march with the king to Bosworth. Like most others of this period, the author places the battlefield on the western slopes of Ambion Hill. The Stanleys are shown up for their treachery. Richard dies a courageous death: his intrepid spirit, notwithstanding the terrifying odds, still sought, through the thickest of his foes, the contender for his crown; and plunging recklessly forward, madly contending against a whole army, was brutally hacked to pieces by the Earl's followers; who, whilst he was expiring on the ground, plunged their swords and daggers into his body...thus perished Richard the third, than whom a braver warrior and more politic king, perhaps, never existed. Prompted by ambition, his ruling passion, his Machiavelian [sic] subtlety led him through a terrible career of crime, to achieve and maintain his title to the crown. Thus his character, though it presents nothing absolutely despicable, will ever be contemplated with terror and abhorrence.

Chapter IV is entitled 'The Sequel', commencing with a brief quotation from Byron: My native Land, - good night! Florence finds her loved one, Launcelot Lamprey, dead on the battlefield and promptly expires herself over his body! Not long after Sir Reginald, Mabel and Luke are found in an airy villa on the Bristol coast, where they are watching a gallant vessel seen coquetting with the tiny waves, which sparkled gaily in the beams of the rising sun. Hmm. They successfully embark on the boat and sail away  - whence, we will never know.

The 'Notes' interestingly comment on Sir Thomas More - an early historian who has produced a character of Richard the third, which probably guided many future writers, but which, there is every reason to believe, is as false throughout, as it is frightful and ridiculous. The author then continues with a long quotation from William Hutton's 'Bosworth Field' and a less well-known one from John Stockdale Hardy of Leicester, in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1837. Both extracts are well worth reading.

Featherstone rather spoils his adherence to 'facts', when he states that, after the Dissolution of Religious Houses, the monument to Richard at Grey Friars was destroyed, and the stone coffin which contained his remains was dug up and converted into a drinking-trough for cattle, at an inn in the Town. False. At least he didn't have Richard's bones thrown into the Soar!

'Peter Leicester's' 'Bosworth Field; or, The Fate of a Plantagenet. An Historical Tale'. 1835

Smith, Elder & Co. 2nd edition - 1837

The novel was published anonymously in 1835 by J. Cochrane & Company. The first edition is presently online, priced at £650 - way above my pocket! On the title page, it mentions that the author had written Arthur of Britany [sic], also A Historical Tale, published in 1833. The Database of Victorian Fiction 1837-1901 - At the Circulating Library - simply says Novelist and poet. This author cannot be traced. Birth and death dates unknown. However, the database gives a name: Peter Leicester, which is also written in pencil on the title pages of my three volumes.

The first volume charts the story of a fifteen year-old (or is he aged twenty?) apparent orphan, who goes by the name of Alwyde and who lives almost in seclusion on the edge of Wychwood Forest.. Mystery surrounds his background, but his bearing suggests he comes from noble stock. He saves a beautiful young lady not once, but twice: first, from drowning, after being swept downstream from a ford; and secondly, by warning her of a gang of ruffians who are out to capture her. She is able to return to the nearby St. Mildred's Abbey. Alwyde gets caught up in the maelstrom of political events of 1485, attaching himself to an odd trio - Rouge Espoir, Reginald Bray and Daypenny, a garrulous 'musician'.  Rouge Espoir soon realises the lady is none other than Lady Elizabeth of York (the late King Edward IV's eldest daughter) and he tells her of his mission - from Henry Tudor to offer his hand in marriage to cement the two 'Roses' of York and Lancaster. The proud daughter of Edward IV makes it clear that the crown is hers, not Tudors - if, therefore, Richmond seeks to win her hand, let him first win the crown...Espoir also engages Alwyde, now assuming the more noble name of De Laissé, to travel to London, contact Lord Stanley and the Queen Dowager Elizabeth, who is in Sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with her three youngest daughters. Alwyde is successful on both counts and gains the queen's blessing for the Tudor-Elizabeth match. Stanley then sends Alwyde, with his son Edward, towards Wales to prepare for Tudor's invasion. They call a halt at Bohun Pleasance - the beauty of Hereford - where not only does Alwyde again meet up with his adored lady, who he now finds out is Elizabeth, but also converses with an old woman who convinces him that he was born there! 

Although we apparently never meet Richard III in the first volume, his ominous presence hovers over all the participants. He is the Black Legend of the Tudor propaganda: the remorseless cruelty of the tyrant whom wrong and murder had placed upon the throne (p.60); Alwyde learnt, also, of the tyrant's butcheries - his remorseless cruelty - his horrible hypocrisy (p.243). Richard has murdered the two princes and looks to marry his niece. But both Elizabeths hate him and Stanley is clearly plotting to go over to Tudor.

Much of Volume II is, frankly, padding. There is a section devoted to the drowning of a 'witch' that hardly advances the tale and the section with a group of outcasts in a wood palls. What it does do is unmask Rouge Espoir (the clue is in the name) as Henry Tudor and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the villain at the start of Volume I - who attempts to capture the Lady Elizabeth - is none other than King Richard III. All the adjectives and epithets levelled against the stranger now make sense! fixed, stern insensibility...unrestrained tempest of passion that rioted within him...malignant scowl of disdain...flinty heart was so dead to feeling that he understood not what pity meant...the only God I acknowledge is my ambition - the one, only director of my actions, my will. Well, at least we know where we are with him.

The character of Sir Hippo de Grypps - the idiotic 'tutor' of Alwyde, has worn very thin by the end of the second volume. He is no Malvolio or Shakespearean or Scottian 'clown'. Rather he is an irritant for this reader at least. The other irritating aspect lies in the silly names given to 'bit' characters (one is minded of Dickens, Trollope  and Scott): Gregory Shufflebottom the Beadle and the robbers  Zacky Blood-sucker, Tom-the Devil, Nick-o-the Blazes, Gaffer Tweak'em and Jem Gripe-all simply grate with the reader, even if the author smugly thought their nomenclature amusing.

By the start of Volume III, Richmond/Tudor has arrived at Milford Haven; Richard is at Nottingham, then at Leicester. More travails are in store for Alwyde. Sent to Sherif [sic] Hutton to give a message to Elizabeth, he is once again imprisoned. He fails to see the Princess, but has counsel with Edward Stanley's estranged squeeze, Anne Harrington. He is then bustled off south to Richard III's tent on the eve of Bosworth. Here he is confronted with the dreadful knowledge that he is the king's son (I guessed that at the beginning of Volume I) - the son of a murderer, of an unnatural monster whom all men hated - whom all men ought to hate.. He is allowed to cross over to Tudor's camp (so unlikely; mind you, Richard has already bamboozled Queen Dowager Elizabeth in the same tent, which was factually impossible!) to explain to Henry why he has to fight on the King's side.  Alwyde also hears from the king that the latter loved his mother, one Edith Austen, the only child of a wealthy merchant. Amazingly, she is the very wretch whom Alwyde saw drowned as a mad witch in Volume I! So, now it all makes sense! Alwyde tells no-one who he actually is, although he leaves a scroll to be passed on to Princess Elizabeth explaining this. Once the reader has half-swallowed these totally improbable 'facts', the actual battle can begin. The author follows his named source, William Hutton, in placing the conflict on the slopes of Ambion Hill, now discredited. Richard, of course, is killed, but Alwyde, although seen fighting near his father, disappears. 

Henry is now king; Elizabeth goes to London (with her tragic cousin, the simple Earl of Warwick) and marries the Tudor. Edward Stanley, after a misplaced first marriage - luckily his wife dies! - marries a forgiving Anne Harrington and goes on to become Lord Mont-Eagle. Where is Alwyde? On the very last page, Elizabeth and the reader find out.

Elizabeth, during one of her journeys to the coast, halted at a retired, peaceful-looking village...she directed her steps towards the small, neat church...a small, recent tomb had quickly arrested her attention...she instantly drew near to it - gazed eagerly on its simple inscription, and a tear fell on it from her trembling cheek, as she read the name, which it alone bore, of "RICHARD PLANTAGENET". So, it was Richard of Eastwell yet again. This time, though, he had not survived into the 1550s, as Elizabeth was to die in February 1503. And here we have followed his career before Bosworth, unlike Heseltine and others who concentrate on his life after the battle.

The third volume continues the unrelenting attack on the tyrant Richard III - he whose hands were, so deeply, dyed in kindred blood...the loathed, the guilty murderer, stained by a thousand crimes... The king confesses to his son his catalogue of murders: Edward, whom I slew at Tewkesbury...Henry, that first sacrifice of my secret cruelty...Clarence, whose death, by a lying fraud, I procured...Rivers, Hastings, and the whole array of more public murders...by my command, smothered her brothers in the Tower...there is, however, one later deed not known - not even suspected - my murdered queen. All for the sake of compelling ambition. This Richard is the fiend of Shakespeare (without the black humour) and Thomas More. Henry Tudor, on the other hand, possessed the wisdom of a far more advanced age, the thought and prudence of an older experience, to assist him in the conduct of the strife; was brave and courageous to dare and possible efforts... One would not recommend Leicester's novel to members of the Richard III Society.

Inevitably, given that the two princes had been murdered, Perkin Warbeck (though unnamed) is dismissed as a false and crafty imposter.

Agnes Strickland's 'Historical Tales of Illustrious Children' 1833

 

N. Hailes first edition - 1833

This small volume of Historical Tales was published in the series of Juvenile Books by N. Hailes of 168, Piccadilly. I also have the American version, published by Munroe and Francis of Boston and New York. Strickland's Preface clearly states its purpose: it is the object of the present work to offer to the Young a series of moral and instructive tales, each founded on some striking authentic fact in the annals of their own country in which royal or distinguished children were engaged... There are seven stories: Guthred, the Widow's Slave, set in King Alfred's time; The Royal Chase of Wareham, telling the story of King Edward 'the Martyr'; Sons of the Conqueror, relating to William Rufus; Wolsey Bridge - the Boy Batchelor, concentrating on the youth of the later Cardinal Wolsey; The Judgement of Sir Thomas More; Lady Lucy's Petition, set in the reign of William III; and, the reason I purchased the book, The Royal Brothers. 

This is the story of the Two Princes in the Tower - Edward V and his younger brother, Richard of York. It is simply told - after all, it was written for juvenile readers - and sticks closely to the 'traditional' version promulgated by More, Shakespeare and others. It is, in effect, the 'Tudor' gospel writ large. The focus is on the youthful Edward V (the singular beauty of his person being less worthy of observation than the noble and ingenuous expression of his countenance, which indicated habits of reflection and intellectual graces beyond his age), from his time in Ludlow castle, through the traumatic meeting with his uncle Gloucester and his henchman Buckingham; (by now, the young king is too well aware he was only a gilded puppet, played off by the hands of his guileful kinsman to suit his own ends, and to give colour to his secret plans of treason); to the brief sojourn at the Bishop of Ely's base in London; and on to the Tower of London. There he, and his little spaniel dog Fido (!) are joined by his more spritely younger brother. It ends with the two boys being murdered in their bed.

As one might expect, the Duke of Gloucester is, from the first, a man of guile, whose crooked policy rendered him extremely eager to get the person of the young king into his possession.

Morton is the good bishop of Ely; uncle Rivers a man betrayed at Northampton; Lord Hastings betrayed at the Tower (the boys watch his execution from their window); Catesby and Lovel, Gloucester's wicked coadjutors in nameless deeds of guilt; and the bad James Tirrel taking over at the Tower from the troubled Sir Robert Brackenbury.

Edward V is pious and sweet, his uncle a wicked murderer (probably of his brother Clarence and Henry VI) - simply white and black. One can imaged the juveniles of the 1830s being read this piteous tale by their nannies, Sunday School teachers or mothers, weeping at the very end, when the murderous work of one irrecoverable moment converted  into the sleep of death, and dismissed the pure spirit of those royal brothers to the enjoyment of that heavenly kingdom, for which the perilous, and to them fatal distinctions of earthly greatness, had been cheaply exchanged. How many listeners slept without their pillows that night? Didacticism rules okay.

One wonders what Richard III Society members would make of this. Surely, they would simply turn to Philippa Langley's recently published book, which 'proves' the two princes escaped their dangerous bed - possibly to reappear as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.

William Heseltine's 'The Last of the Plantagenets' 1829

 

Smith, Elder and Co. 2nd edition - 1829

This is the first of some forty or so Historical Novels on Richard III I am pledged to read over the next six months - a daunting task! In fact, Heseltine's work appeared pretty daunting in itself, being 408 pages of densely packed text with not an illustration in sight. I needn't have worried, as I found the novel more than interesting. It is the story of Richard Plantagenet, who is brought up in the monastery of St. Mary, Ely. On the evening prior to the Battle of Bosworth, he is brought to Richard III's tent, where the king tells him that he is his father, and that his mother Matilda, the king's betrothed, had died shortly after his birth. The king intends to name him his heir, but counsels him, if Tudor is victorious, to go into hiding and keep his identity secret. The boy is wounded whilst watching the battle, but is rescued by the Jew Rabbi Israel who, with his wife, nurses him back to health. A variety of adventures follow, often being supported by loyal Yorkists. Eventually, he becomes a builder for Thomas Moyle at Eastwell in Kent. He reveals his identity to Moyle, who builds him a cottage on his estate. He was buried in Eastwell church.' 

There is a very favourable portrait of Richard III - his face...was marked with much serious anxiety...his step and demeanour were full of pomp and royalty; who has nothing but contempt for Tudor and his force - this drove of famished clowns, the scum of France, and the very refuse of its gaols and 'spital houses. I found the 'interlude' of the Jewish couple, Israel and Naomi, sat rather uneasily within the rest of the narrative, but it was very favourable to them. Warbeck is dismissed as fictitious; Francis Lovel escapes the Battle of Stoke and is helped by young Richard to his home at Minster Lovel, where he dies in the famous underground chamber. Richard's travels take him to Brittany, then to Margaret of Burgundy's court (she thinks he looks suspiciously like his father!) and back to England - to Walsingham Abbey as a religious recluse for seven years. Earlier, in London, Richard had first come across Lady Bridget (or Bride as he afterwards always refers to her) Plantagenet, the youngest daughter of Edward IV. She becomes the love of his life - so beauteous was her hair of paly gold, so mild were her eyes of clear blue, and such a heavenly bright look had she of innocence and devotion, while her stature was fair and erect, and much beyond her years. However, she was destined for the veil. He saves her not once, but twice, first from a collapsing scaffold and then from a fire outbreak; and is also at her deathbed (she is now a Lady Prioress) in Dartford Priory where, as Brother Ricardus, he not only listens to her confession but it is made plain to him that she has always returned his love. When the tyrant Henry VIII embarks on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Richard luckily has a second skill - bricklaying. Thus he is able to work, firstly at Walsingham and finally at Eastwell. One comfort in his declining years is a copy of Wycliffe's New Testament, which Prioress Bride had given him - leading to a spiritual liberation.

However, his final writing is rather depressing: I have ever stood alone in the crowd of those with whom at divers times I consorted, and have never ceased to feel myself as a link severed from the great chain of living men; since but few have mourned with me in my sorrows, and joys have I had none to share with any; and albeit I have suffered much from the cruelty of man, never have I been soothed by the tender cares of woman. There was only Lady Bride, and she was dead. Well, before too long he can be happy when he joins her in the hereafter.

Heseltine's novel was based on Hull's Richard Plantagenet (I am lucky to have a copy), published by J. Bell in 1774. This narrative poem of 81 four-line stanzas (Heseltine calls it a well-known legendary tale in plaintive ballad-measure) was dedicated to David Garrick to whom we owe a livelier idea of Richard the Third, than either Historian or Painter ever gave. 

Heseltine's work, in turn, gave birth to a novel by Richard Hodgetts - Richard IV, Plantagenet (1888), whilst Caroline M. Keteltas published a 56 page Drama in Three Acts in 1830 founded on the romance of that name by William Heseltine of Turret House, South Lambeth, London.

Sarah Hawkswood's 'Too Good to Hang' 2023

 

Allison & Busby first paperback edition - 2023

This is Sarah Hawkswood's eleventh 'Medieval Mystery' involving the tenacious trio Hugh Bradecote, Serjeant Catchpole and Underserjeant Walkelin and the series has settled into a pleasant, readable, if unintellectual, groove. I finished it in two sittings by a roaring fire and was able to get up several times for liquid refreshment before easily picking up the flow of the story. Hawkswood is one of three authors whom I regularly pre-order in paperback - the others being Scott Mariani (two novels a year) and Susanna Gregory (now down to just the Thomas Chaloner series and only one outing every two years). They all, in their different ways, give me the light reading which leavens the more serious biographies, histories and 19th century (mainly Scottish) novels that consume much of my reading and thinking time. Unfortunately, C.J. Sansom's last book in the excellent Matthew Shardlake series was in 2018, with no successor seemingly on the way. The only other 'modern' series I subscribe to is Nicola Upson's 'Josephine Tey' outings. Ten have been published since An Expert in Murder (2008) and the eleventh book, Shot with Crimson, should be on its way to me shortly.

Back to medieval Worcestershire. The intrepid trio travel to the hamlet of Ripple to investigate the murder of one of the local priests, Father Edmund, and the subsequent hanging of a ploughboy, Thorgar. It soon becomes clear that the priest was a lecherous seeker after young girls and generally a nasty piece  of work. Moreover, Thorgar appears to be one of the last persons one would have thought capable of murder. In fact, he was hoping to be accepted into the abbey of Tewkesbury as a novice. There are the usual array of possible culprits, but suspicion increasingly turns to Selewine, the hamlet's Reeve. Does this prove to be correct, or is this another blind alley? All will be revealed, after 286 pages.

The author has now successfully established the characters of Bradecote, Catchpole and Walkelin and, in particular, has allowed the latter to 'develop'. He is now married to his long-time Welsh sweetheart, Eluned, and much of his waking thoughts are devoted to trying to get back to Worcester and the nuptial bed. Bishop Simon of Worcester and William de Beauchamp, Sheriff of Worcester, make fleeting appearances, but Hawkswood is best when describing the peasants and their bovine, repetitive lives in Ripple. They do feel like real people and certainly no caricatures. The book starts and ends

Spring, everyone agreed, had come a little early this year, and the plough-team had made very good progress in the Great Field. Easter would be late in April, and it was thought that nearly all the spring sowing would be complete by Holy Week...

The Ripple folk did not move or speak, as they watched the three riders, with Wilf the Worrier (going to be hanged for killing and then burying his wife in the garden) trailing behind, head towards the Old Road, and only when they were lost to sight did Tofi call them to take up their bags of seed and their tools, and head to the field.

Scott Mariani's 'The Tudor Deception' 2023

HarperNorth first paperback edition - 2023

Well, Scott Mariani has certainly sprung a couple of surprises. First, he has taken Ben Hope back to 2005, before all the other stories in the series. The first, The Alchemist's Secret, started in September 2007 and had his housekeeper Winnie looking after his isolated cottage on the Galway shore. The second, The Domesday Prophesy, commenced in June 2008, still with an Irish homestead. It is only later that year, in The Heretics Treasure -  that Hope has set up his training base at Le Val near Valognes, Normandy.

Secondly, although the storyline is set in his usually fast paced modern times - 2005 - it concerns a mystery that goes right back to 1483! Yes, it involves Richard III and the Missing Princes. I finished the novel yesterday morning and that same evening sat down to watch the Channel 4 documentary, The Princes in the Tower: The New Evidence. Philippa Langley and Judge Robert Rinder, travel to Ireland, France, the Netherlands as well as London and, thanks to the help of other historical sleuths, unearth at least three documents which certainly casts doubt on the official story of a wicked avuncular murder. Well, I have ordered her book, which thanks to Amazon Prime, should arrive today, so I can read in greater and more measured detail their arguments. The three documents uncovered abroad, involving 'Richard, duke of York', the Emperor Maximilian I and the Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, certainly look 'kosher' as Rinder opines, but they merely seems authentic for the period. To prove it was Edward's second son who was really involved is another matter. Were Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck actually Edward V and his younger brother, rather than two Pretenders? I am sure the debate has not ended.

As for Mariani's novel? In his Author's Note at the end, he makes it clear which side of the fence he is on, citing for further reading Matthew Lewis' The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, Annette Carson's The Maligned King, and John Ashdown-Hill's The Mythology of the Princes in the Tower - hardly unbiased source material. Moreover, he gives the Internet links to the Richard III Society and The Missing Princes Project. I should be pleased, being a long-standing member of the Society (in fact I have just notched up half a century), but as an historian in search of the truth, I would wish for some counter arguments to be available. 

The novel starts with its usual Hope gusto - a young lady, niece to his housekeeper Winnie, is blown up in his car. She had hopes of being a  professional ballet dancer. Unlikely now, as the right leg below the knee had to be amputated. Ben was not going to lie down: a resolve that had hardened like forged steel inside his heart. That he was going to devote himself, from this moment onwards, to figuring out who had hurt Aurora. That he was going to track them down. He was going to find them. He was going to punish them. And then he was going to send them all to hell.   Of course, it should have been him in the car. One week earlier, Hope had met Professor Hugh Mortimer in a Dublin hotel, listened to a seemingly cock-and-bull story about a mystery stretching back to 1483 and walked out on him. Now, he wished he hadn't, as Mortimer had subsequently drowned in his private lake the following day. It is quickly apparent his death was not suicide but 'suspicious'.  

This means travelling to Professor Mortimer's home outside York; meeting the latter's wimpy younger brother Lance; hearing an unlikely tale that the Professor thought he was a direct descendant of Perkin Warbeck, one of the two 'Pretenders' to the throne after Richard III's death at Bosworth.  He meets up with Tony Kitson, Chairman of the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III Society, who fills him in on the background to the 1483-1499 saga, which includes the 'fact' that Perkin and Lady Catherine Huntly - married under the auspices of King James of Scotland -  had a son, one Richard Perkins. From thence came, eventually, the late Professor Mortimer. Kitson is murdered by the same dark-haired, bespectacled man plus other thugs, as he tries to flee his burning cottage with Hope. The quest then leads Hope to Liechtenstein and the island of Sark and, finally, the Borders near Berwick.  

The denouement is complicated not only by having to deal with the man who caused Aurora to lose a leg, the Prof to be drowned and Kitson to be killed - Lord Jasper Lockwood, but also a Saudi Prince Hassan Bin Ibrahim Al Sharif and his thuggish entourage. Being Hope, he escapes from an underground chamber, puts over a dozen baddies out of their misery, and rides off with £4 million to hand over to Aurora for her projected Ballet School. The story is not one of Mariani's best, but it's another interesting 'take' on the mystery of the Ricardian princes and there is enough blood and guts to keep the thriller readers happy.                                                                                                        

Caroline Young's 'Roman Holiday. The Secret Life of Hollywood in Rome 2018

 

The History Press first edition - 2018

Having recently watched Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in that delightful 'Roman Holiday', the cover on this book caught my eye and I purchased it via a remainder online firm.

The author heads each chapter with the single Christian name of the actress (they are all actresses apart from chapters 2 and 18, which are headed Tennessee [Williams] and Richard [Burton]).  I had heard of all of them apart from Anna Magnani, Italy's most enigmatic movie star, providing hope and inspiration through her strong, heartfelt performances at the tail end of the war. In fact, the whole period between 1945 and 1960 seemed to be an attempt at a joyous, almost dreamlike, escape from the horrors of the second great and awful conflict of the first half of the 20th century. Rather like the hedonistic days in the London and Paris after the Great War, the goings-on in the famous Via Veneto were focused on live for the day, with lashings of booze, drugs, tobacco and sex, supported by an almost unimaginable effulgence of wealth. Authors such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal mixed with the actors and directors

The actresses seem to appear on the pages, and in Rome, on a never-ending conveyor belt. I warmed to a few and recoiled from others. The gamine, fresh-faced Hepburn would still be at the top of my tree, notwithstanding her questionable taste in men - the wooden, controlling Mel Ferrer, the playboy Andrea Dotti. There is something about the earthy Anna Magnani - who was named as Best International Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 - which attracted rather than repelled me. A regular sight on the Via Veneto, speeding along in her green Fiat station wagon, hopping into the bars dressed casually in black slacks, with uncombed hair and accompanied by her white poodle, Pipo, and black German Shepherd, Micia. Ingrid Bergman's life-changing decision to leave her husband for Roberto Rossellini, led her to Rome and Italy. One of Hollywood's biggest stars, she was considered a natural, wholesome actress and a devoted wife and mother. That image came crashing down when she departed Hollywood for Rossellini, another control freak. She became the Scarlet Woman.

A young Italian, Sofia Scicolone, whose mother Romilda regularly took to the Cinecittà gates looking for work as an extra in the movies, finally got the part of a Christian slave girl for one day's filming in Quo Vadis in 1950.  Her name was changed to Sofia Lazzaro, as it was thought to be more exotic. Gracing cover pages of magazines, coming second in the Miss Italy competition in 1950, she caught the eye of the producer Carlo Ponti. From then on her career was assured and she also became the 'wife' of Ponti. By now, she had changed her name yet again - to Sophia Loren. Later chapters tell the stories of Ava Gardner (1966 The Bible, In the Beginning), Anita Ekberg (1960 La Dolce Vita), Brigitte Bardot (1956 Helen of Troy)  and Jane Fonda (1967 Barbarella). Perhaps the most famous couple were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and the most [in]famous movie being Cleopatra (1963). The film's production resembled something like a huge thousand-man circus coming to town...there were 90 Americans, 350 Italians and 16 Britons hired on the crew... Burton exuded confidence, personality and sex appeal. Yet, behind this glamour lay an alcoholic, whose drinking became prodigious. Taylor was not that far behind. The best assessment of their tempestuous time together can be summed up as they deserved each other. In some ways, I found them the least attractive of a pretty unattractive bunch.

Apart from Gregory Peck, it is the men who come across as bounders, as hangers-on, as control freaks and, often, less talented than their partners. One has to give Benito Mussolini credit for introducing the first Venice Film Festival in 1932 and opening Cinecittà (cinema city) in 1937. The early films - Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City(1945), Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948) - were followed by Joseph Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960)

Caroline Young is very good at describing the fast-moving, over-the-top luxury times, centred on Rome in the two decades after the War. Her grammar occasionally jars and there are one or two typos which should have been spotted by a more careful editor or proof reader. Her Prologue gives a good summary of Rome in the 1950s, from the point of view of the movie industry and its stars:

So here you would find Ingrid Bergman, under self-imposed exile after coming to Rome for love; Audrey Hepburn, who represented joyful holidays in the city in the early 1950s; Ava Gardner, whose tempestuous love life and appreciation of the nightlife always served for a good photo; Elizabeth Taylor, the queen of Hollywood excess and jet-set lifestyle; and Anita Ekberg, the face and body of la dolce vita. Sophia Loren was the home-grown star who captivated Hollywood and who represented the struggles and dream of young girls who survived the Second World War and lived through Rome's 1950s recovery, and Anna Magnani, the icon of Italian neorealism and one of the most admired, revered women in the country.

All now gone (well, not quite)

DEATHS:

September 1973 - Anna Magnani

August 1982 - Ingrid Bergman

[August 1984 - Richard Burton]

January 1990 - Ava Gardner

January 1993 - Audrey Hepburn

March 2011 - Elizabeth Taylor

January 2015 - Anita Ekberg

Sophia Loren is still alive at the grand age of 89.

I am not sure why Gina Lollobrigida (July 1927 - January 2023) - dubbed 'the most beautiful woman in the world', who died aged 95, was not mentioned in the book. Still alive in 2018, when the book was published, perhaps she forbade her inclusion?

Walter Scott's 'Waverley' 1814

 

Archibald Constable third edition - 1814

At last, I can truly say I have read every volume of Walter Scott's 'Waverley' novels, which stretched from 1814 to 1832. The saying that 'the first shall be last' is proven correct, as reading Waverley brings to an end my marathon journey, which began in January 2020 with Guy Mannering. I read them in chronological order. Why leave Waverley to the end? simply - cost. I now have every single (or triple!) Scott novel in first edition, a few in the original publishers' boards. However, Waverley was the one out of reach of my pocket. I have just looked up the price of first editions on the Internet: there are six copies and they range from £8,251 down to £3,553. I had to settle for a fine third edition, which cost me £206 (including postage).

The novel was probably started in 1808 (Scott gives conflicting versions of the date). He had completed seven chapters but, on showing it to a few friends who unanimously condemned it, he put it aside. When he finally returned to it, he wrote the last two volumes in three weeks. Why had Scott waited so long? Possibly due to the comparatively low prestige of the novel at that time and partly that verse was still regarded the natural medium for narrative. Waverley was a conspicuous success. One reader wrote,

no work that has appeared in my time made such an instant and universal impression...The unexpected newness of the thing, the profusion of original characters, the Scotch language, Scotch men and women, the simplicity of the writing, and the graphic force of the descriptions, all struck us with an electric shock of delight... There was no surprise in its appeal to a reading public becoming bored with Gothic terrors.

The story of the young Edward Waverley, neglected by an ambitious, political father and brought up by a rich, elderly uncle with Jacobite leanings, is that of one drawn to romance through his reading. Although Waverley joins a government regiment in Scotland, he and the novel only really come alive with his visit to his uncle's friend, the Baron of Bradwardine. The latter runs his estate of Tully-Veolan at the foot of the Highlands as a feudal lord, even keeping a Shakespearean fool, Davie Gellatly. Romance follows romance, when Waverley visits the nearby clan Mac-Ivor at Glennaquoich and is dominated by the energy of the patriarchal Fergus and his sister Flora, both fanatically wedded to the Jacobite cause. Bonny Prince Charlie has landed and Fergus, the Baron and others sweep Waverley into the Rebellion.  Waverley knows in his heart the cause is hopeless, but the personal charm of the Prince, the dominating Fergus, his love for Flora, all propel him into the ranks of the Jacobite invasion of England. At Prestonpans he saves the life of an English officer and ensures his paroled release to his sick wife back in England. Luckily, the officer Colonel Talbot is able to return the favour and gains Waverley a pardon. Fergus is executed at Carlisle, Flora enters a French convent, and Waverley marries Rose Bradwardine to live happily ever after. His future was  was accurately prophesied by Flora: a quiet circle of domestic happiness, lettered indolence, and elegant enjoyment of Waverley-Honour, his uncle's estate.

Waverley has all the positive aspects of a Scott novel - character drawing, landscape depiction - with much of the later negative traits kept to a minimum. Two things which personally irritated me throughout the Waverley series, scarcely intrude. Firstly, the placing of (often trite) extracts from others' works, prose or poetic, at the beginning of a chapter, pleasingly does not occur until Chapter XVII (p. 266) of the 3rd Volume - there it is from Shakespeare. This continues until Chapter XXIII. I have felt that often a gobbet from an 'Old Song' or 'Old Tale', have actually been Scott's own material. Secondly, the 'phantom' or 'spirit' of another world only appears to Fergus as the Bodach Glas. The early 19th century is now 200 years gone and the early 21st has very little time for such nonsense, although it is worrying to see Halloween taking over from Guy Fawkes Night these days. I suppose I could add a third positive point - Waverley is blessedly free from the regular infusion of Scott's verse which can so break up the narrative flow in the author's later novels.

Waverley was criticised for its overlong and slow-moving start - the period before Waverley leaves for his regiment. In J.G. Lockhart's Memoirs of Scott, he quotes his father-in-law's claim that he had left the story to flag in the first volume on purpose...to avoid the  usual error of novel writers, whose first volume is usually the best. Scott argued in Waverley that the course of Narrative has the earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the characters rather by narrative, than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things, which it would be abusing your patience to narrate at length.

In his Preface to the Third Edition, the author rebuts the accusation that his portrayal of Callum Beg (Fergus' rapscallion servant) bore hardily upon the Highlanders' national character. Nothing could be further from his wish or intention. The character of Callum Beg is that of a spirit naturally turned to daring evil, and determined, by the circumstances of his situation, to a particular species of mischief. 

It is perhaps apt to read, on the penultimate page of the last volume, his praise of Elizabeth Hamilton's Glenburnie (her genius is highly creditable to her country), another work roundly criticised for its portrayal of Highland life and people. 

Clare Pettitt's 'Dr Livingstone, I presume? 2007

 

Profile Books first edition - 2007

The meeting, in late 1871, between Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. David Livingstone in what is now Tanzania, in East Africa, is one of the most famous in history. An episode of the TV soap ER is called Dr Carter, I presume? and an episode of Star Trek is entitled Dr Bashir, I presume? Clare Pettitt's book, although rather repetitive on occasions, due to the way she has subdivided it, enables the reader to get a pretty good idea of the characters, warts and all, of the two main protagonists and the forbidding Dark Continent. She is correct in arguing that it was Stanley who ensured Livingstone would be remembered as more than just yet another European explorer. And explorer, rather than missionary, he was.

The book is very much of its time - the early 21st century. One written just fifteen years later would be different again - the past few years have thrown a wholly negative pall over the deeds and very term Empire. The British version seems to have borne the brunt of the hostility as well, notwithstanding worse behaviour from King Leopold of Belgium and other European powers in the same period and the malign, often more skilfully concealed, 'empires' of the USA/China/Russia of today. Behind the very genuine abhorrence felt about many things that occurred under British suzerainty, one feels the economic imperative of Reparations has jostled to the fore.

By the time Stanley 'found' him, Livingstone had spent most of his adult life in Africa. He made several celebrated journeys across the continent, from coast to coast, and up the Zambezi river. He became obsessed with finding the source of the Nile. He was responsible for setting up the Universities' Mission, which sent graduates as missionaries to Africa and which was disastrous, leading so many to their early deaths. Livingstone's rather callous treatment of his wife Mary (daughter of another missionary, Robert Moffatt) is highlighted by the author: he impregnated her constantly...joked about her as 'the Irish Manufactory'...and then dragged her across African deserts... it is arguable, in fact, that many of Livingstone's 'heroic' characteristics - his near-obsessive drive and an optimism that degenerated into self-deceit - eventually drove his long-suffering wife to alcoholic despair (she had to be given large doses of opium to keep her quiet at night and she died of malaria on the banks of the Zambezi in April 1862), and his firstborn son to desperation and an early death in the American Civil War.

H. M. Stanley (1841 - 1904)

Stanley had been born into poverty in North Wales, growing up in a Workhouse then emigrating as a teenager to America. A variety of jobs led to him becoming a reporter in the Civil War. He was employed by James Bennett of the New York Herald and covered the Abyssinian Campaign of 1862. Later, (with G.A. Henty) he reported on the Ashanti campaign on the Gold Coast in 1873. He attended Livingstone's funeral in 1874; crossed the African continent and discovered the source of the river Congo (1874-7); then worked for King Leopold in the 'Belgian' Congo, which thoroughly besmirched his future reputation. He married, in 1890, and settled in England. He toured America, Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s; became an M.P. for the Liberal Unionists in 1895; visited South Africa in 1897; supported the Boer War; attacked Gladstone's 'peace at any price' foreign policies; was knighted by the Tory government in 1899; and died in London in 1904. 

Perhaps the most moving section, entitled 'Faithful to the End', deals with the behaviour of Livingstone's African servants, Wainwright, Susi, Manua Sera and Chuma. They had their master's innards buried under a tree and ensured his well-packed body was transported to Bagamoyo on the East African coast. Susi and Chuma were not invited to the London funeral in Westminster Abbey, but they both visited England - as did Jacob Wainwright - and had their photographs taken, both in African 'costume' and western dress.

David Livingstone (1813 - 1873)

Livingstone's story can also be seen as the story of the growing influence of the press (helped by the newly sunk transatlantic cable) in the second half of the 19th century, and the emergence of a modern notion of celebrity. His portrait circulated widely, his lectures drew huge crowds and his publications sold well. When his mummified body was returned to England, his funeral was a national public event of a kind that had not been seen in London since that of the duke of Wellington in 1852. A funeral bust was completed and set up on the front of the newly opened Foreign and Colonial Office building. What is interesting is that while Livingstone could be seen as an establishment figure and a servant of empire, he could also be claimed as a radical and a hero of the people, and in this double-jointedness we can discern the making of his future life as a remarkably pliable and adaptable icon.

Hector Macneill's 'The Scottish Adventurers' 1812

 

William Blackwood 2nd edition - 1812

I think this is the first novel I have read where there are no chapters to punctuate the text. It means there are 579 pages of uninterrupted  prose. I don't think it affected one's reading adversely, apart from not quite knowing when to break off to do something else. The other major issue is that the whole of Volume I and up to page 37 in Volume II is a straightforward tale of two young Edinburgh born Scotsmen, making their way in the British navy and, later, successfully in India. Then, suddenly, the story concentrates on a totally different family - over 90 pages on what the author calls an 'anecdote'. Only on page 128 does the focus return to the original two  men.

My copy is the second edition, published in the same year as the first, just a few months later. The 'Advertisement' in the former states that it is an 'improved Edition' and it contains a letter from the author to a Mrs ---, dated Edinburgh, April, 1812. In fact, it is a very useful letter, as it contains an explanation of the very purpose of the novel.

...the chief object is to illustrate the improprieties and absurdities of our MODERN EDUCATION in this part of the kingdom, by introducing, as often as possible, anecdotes, private histories, and remarks, applicable and explanatory of these improprieties. Among a number of others, which might be easily pointed out, what has struck me as the most glaring, is the teaching all descriptions of boys Latin, and all girls without any exception whatever Music. 

Thus, the main story of Tom Drysdale, the son of a shoemaker, and Andrew Cochrane, the son of a tailor rams home the consequences or effects of the first; and the minor, inserted, tale of Arabella Timbertone and her family illustrates the second. After a brief rendition of the two boys' education in Edinburgh, where Andrew is sent to the Hie School to study, above all, Latin and Tom is apprenticed to a cabinet maker/joiner, the author's didactic approach hits top gear. Tom's father cannot help thinking, that such parts of education [the Classics] belong not to tradesmen's sons, I am determined to give mine useful instruction, and no more. Both their histories seemingly take a turn for the worse when, only on page 34, they are pressganged into the British Navy.

In his Dedication to John Campbell at the start of Volume I, Macneill refers to his own early life in the British Navy, apologising for the occasional, but necessary and characteristic, swearing attached to such a life. Whereas Tom takes to the seafaring life quite easily and soon proves the worth of his practical skills, Andrew is 'all at sea'. His Latin companion, Horace, is valueless and it is only his friend's sustained support that at last gets him into a useful job in the ship's secretariat. Both young men do well in India, Andrew being the fortunate, but rather convoluted, beneficiary from the death of a young widow. Tom marries his own true love, Susan, and also gains considerable wealth from a grateful family after he rescued a mother and her two children  from a shipwreck.

Tom and Susan move to Edinburgh and this gives the author not only an excuse to narrate the 'anecdote' about Arabella Timbertone (the name gives the game away) and her disastrous foray into Music, a skill she has absolutely no aptitude for, but also to decry the mores of that city. Edinburgh's elite are fashionable and showy - this folly pervaded, less or more, almost every description of the inhabitants. Susan looked in vain for a renewal of those happy social hours she formerly enjoyed in the dock-yard of Portsmouth...she even perceived, that the simplicity of her own manners and conversation ...often produced a sneer of ridicule and a look of contempt...Fortuitously, Tom is able to purchase a small holding in the countryside: It was now that the important branches of his early instruction came usefully and smiling to his aid. His geometrical and mathematical knowledge enabled him, not only to lay out his pleasure-ground with judgement and correctness, but to construct his house and offices  with convenience and taste. No wonder he was delighted to welcome his old, by now widowed, father to live with them. Andrew returns from India, fabulously wealthy, marries a slightly stuck-up woman (referred to by the author as Mrs Cochran, compared with just Susan) and also comes north to Scotland. Of course, following Hector Macneill's didactic plan, both Cochrans come to realise the Drysdales have found the right Eden and settle down nearby themselves. Moreover, their daughter Harriet later marries a Captain Mitchell, the earlier beneficiary of influential support from Andrew. All's well with the Drysdale/Cochran world.

Macneill has to give a final, didactic flourish:

...instead of blindly adhering to established Custom, and Fashionable Example [i.e studying Latin and Music at all costs], "THE WAY TO RISE", and succeed in life, is to give an education suitable to Station and Circumstances, and, as far as these will admit, conformable to the natural capacity and genius of the child. If only the various UK governments since, particularly, 1997 had adhered to this obvious dictum. 

Benjamin Chapman - 1st USA edition - 1812

The author, Hector Macneill (1746-1818) also had a fascinating life. Son of a poor army captain, he got a job as a clerk at the age of fourteen. He was sent to the West Indies and served as an assistant secretary from 1780 to 1786. Returning to Scotland, he wrote various political pamphlets, two novels and several poems. He is best known for his Songs. He died in Edinburgh in 1818.

William Golding's 'The Spire' 1964

 

Faber and Faber first edition - 1964

Reading Golding's novel brought home to me why I was right to choose History rather than English to study for my university degree. Whilst I feel I am a competent enough researcher, analyst and non-fiction writer, I think the creativity and literary imagination needed to appreciate such works as Golding's is simply not there, or hardly there. By and large, I like straightforward narrative, not unduly encumbered with nuance, irony or philosophy. To be blunt, I struggled with The Spire - I found Dean Jocelin, the central (almost only character of any weight) simply boring. Towards the end of the book, Brother Anselm complains to Jocelin that You've lain on us like a blight. Empathy oozed from me.

I am not keen on stream-of-consciousness writing (I hated Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse at 'A' Level), and the novel reeks of this. The story is a simple one: Dean Jocelin, directs the construction of a 404-foot-high spire (slightly based on Salisbury), funded by his aunt Lady Alison, a wealthy mistress of the late king (it is not clear which century it is set in - there is mention of a steel girdle to go around the lower reaches of the spire). The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support such a spire and Jocelin is regularly warned not to proceed by not only other clergy but by the master builder, Roger Mason. The latter is forced to continue with the project because Jocelin has made it impossible for him to work elsewhere (Malmesbury Abbey is mentioned). Jocelin's obsession deepens with the progression of the novel. But so does a pain in his spine (he regards this as an angel alternately comforting or punishing him). His obsession means that he neglects his duties as Dean, fails to pray and ignores those who most need him. Meanwhile, the four main tower pillars begin  to 'sing'. Shades of John Meade Falkner's Minster in his The Nebuly Coat, where 'the arch never sleeps'.

Jocelin also lusts after Goody Pangall, the wife of the crippled and impotent cathedral servant, Pangall. He is distrought when he realises Goody is having an affair with Roger Mason. Pangall disappears (a pagan sacrifice buried in the base earth of the tower?) Goody dies in childbirth (Roger's); Roger descends into alcoholism. Jocelin dies of consumption, only after being told by his aunt that he was appointed, not through his merits, but by her sexual influence. One paragraph in the novel stood out for me as a sign of fine writing. It comes from the sick Jocelin being visited by his aunt:

He opened his eyes in the perfume while she was still busy about him. He examined her face from only a few inches away; and now he saw how carefully preserved and tended it was. The smooth skin was netted down by lines too fine to be seen from further off. It was a compromise between too much fat and too little, as could be seen by the deeper lines defended from becoming wrinkles at the corner of each eye and in the bland forehead. It was a face that must defend itself by dancing from expression to expression, let it should be still, and sag. Only the eyes, the little mouth, the nose, held out - bastions so strong they need not be defended.... 

I suppose I find another person's obsession of little interest. Jocelin's destroyed others' lives. He expired. Did the spire fall? Probably, but we will never know. AND I never want to see the word crossways again - I lost count in the novel!

*****************************

As an after thought, I looked at a few Reviews on Amazon UK.

One, headed simply A Dud, had this to say:

The irony of the book is the result of its enquiry into obsession. Those of others are at best inexplicable but more usually just plain boring. The Spire, I'm afraid to say as a Golding fan, is a bore. 

Jane Porter's 'The Scottish Chiefs' 1810

 

George Virtue Illustrated edition - 1840

Although I have purchased the five-volume first edition of The Scottish Chiefs (1810), I have decided to read the 'Revised, Corrected and Illustrated' edition of 1840. I have never read a five-volume novel before (and, if I am entirely honest, I cheated and read the later, two-volume illustrated version). My first edition is getting minor repairs from my invaluable book binder friend. I quote a synopsis of Jane Porter's tour de force: Rooted in political controversy, gender warfare, violence and revolution, Jane Porter's 'The Scottish Chiefs' is the epic story of William Wallace's struggle for Scottish independence from English rule. It took me three weeks to read, although there were several times I left it to pursue other things. There is a long (pp. 12-51) Recollective Preface to the 1840 Illustrated edition which, I must admit, I quickly skipped through, where Porter expands on her motives for writing the novel. But it is the very first sentence of the Preface to the First Edition that sums up its raison d'être: To paint the portrait of one of the most complete heroes that ever filled the page of history, may be bold, though I hope not a vain, design... it is a copy of such excellence, will be merit in the eyes of those who so love virtue, as to venerate its shade. The Wallace in these pages is a veritable Saint; every action proclaims his generosity of soul, his simple goodness. He is a Hentyesque 19th century Scottish public schoolboy. 

I have nothing but admiration for Porter (1776-1850), who was born in England but grew up in Edinburgh. Walter Scott, apparently, was a regular visitor to the family. It would come as no surprise to find out that not only had Scott read The Scottish Chiefs, but was strongly influenced by it. The story unfolds and gathers pace after the cruel death of Wallace's wife at the hands of the English Governor of Lanark. Wallace, forever distraught with his loss, spends the next 42/3rd volumes, seeking revenge on the English.  He soon kills Heselrigge, the Governor, and spends the next few years on a mixture of factual and fictitious exploits. Knowing next to nothing about this period of History, I was not alert as to which was which. The author certainly made up two major events: the Battle of Bannockburn did not involve Edward I, but his son Edward II; and Wallace was definitely hanged and dismembered after his capture and 'trial' in London, whereas Porter has his body swapped, with another's being cut up, and secretly returned for burial in Scotland.

The novel's strength lies not so much in its [in]fidelity to historical facts, but in the large cast of fascinating characters. There are the died-in-the-wool baddies - Lord William Soulis; the treacherous Scottish lords such as Buchan, Athol and Monteith; the faithful followers of Wallace - Lord Mar, Lord Andrew Murray, the rumbustious Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, Scrymgeour, (the fictitious?) Edwin Ruthven and Robert Bruce. The main  bête noir is Edward I of England, supported by a double-dealing Lord Aymer de Valence (Earl of Pembroke) but looked on in askance by the Earl de Warenne, the Lord Warden of Scotland, and the Earl of Montgomery, who admires Wallace and is ashamed of his king. Then there are the women - Lady Wallace, destined to take her place in the heavenly choir;  Helen Mar - Wallace's devoted but chaste lover, who is with him in the Tower of London at the end, where she marries him. Her step mother, Joanna, Countess of Mar is the archetype of evil. The author demonstrated that women had a crucial role to play in the drama of national identity, either as temptresses or national heroines. The sides are drawn in black and white - there are few characters who bestride the middle. The book begins and ends in tragedy and, as one commentator has remarked, the book requires an emotional intensity and earnest belief in patriotism and virtue that no longer are in vogue. 

The five volume first edition - 1810