Emily Sarah Holt's 'At Ye Grene Griffin or Mrs. Treadwell's Cook' 1882

 

John F. Shaw first edition - n.d. (1882)

This is the second John F. Shaw 'wholesome' novel I have read in a row. This time it is by one of the publisher's favoured authors - Miss Emily Sarah Holt. On the first page of the Advertisements at the back of the book, there are several reviews extolling John F. Shaw's publications. Here are two of them:

Amongst publishing house for the young, Messrs. John F. Shaw & Co. hold high rank as uniformly aiming, not merely at the entertainment, but the moral and spiritual elevation of their readers. They have a staff of writers who most ably assist them in this endeavour.  The Watchman.

The provision of tales for girls and boys, which, while attractive and of a good order of workmanship, lack the vicious sensationalism of the novels of what would in some circles by termed 'the naughty but nice' school, is an important part of the annual operations in the literary factory, and in no case is it performed with more complete success than by Messrs. John F. Shaw & Co. They provide a series of tales of a high order of merit, in which, while the tone of religiousness is preserved throughout, there is not a  suspicion of dullness.   Publishers' Circular.  

Emily Sarah Holt's novels certainly fit the bill.  The author was possibly the most popular novelist published by Shaw. She came from a well-off family and she spent almost her entire life in their ancestral home, Stubbylee Hall, Bacup. She had a working knowledge of six languages, including Latin and Greek'; her library was dominated by history, both original and secondary sources. Her true success as a published author came with her historical fiction, publishing more than 40 novels between 1868 and 1893. Her project was an explicitly Protestant and reactionary history of Britain through fiction, so as to counter the dangers of both Roman and Anglo Catholicism. She was fascinated with John Wycliffe and the Lollards. Holt integrates heavy doses of antiquarian detail into her fiction - everything from fashion to architectural motifs. Narratives temporarily derail in order to convey "quaint" factual detail...(Miriam Burstein, chapter in Clio's Daughters)  

At Ye Grene Griffin is a short tale, concerning Mrs Dorothy Treadwell, a fat, slothful, domineering wife of a London tailor, and her quest for a new cook. Her husband, Master Humphrey Treadwell, was a quiet, humble individual, (a meek-looking man with a slight limp) who never contradicted anybody, and least of all his wife. It is May 1471, and Mrs Treadwell's cousin, Roger Cordiner, turns up with a possible answer to her prayers. After several pages of rather simplistic history-telling of the course of the Wars of the Roses up to the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury by the author, Roger is introduced as a follower of the late Earl of Warwick. He thinks he has the ideal person as cook for Mrs Treadwell.

'Nan' arrives - the girl was very young looking, and very, very beautiful. She was tall, slightly built, and stately in carriage, though so young...[with a] look of intense mournfulness in the eyes.

There is plenty of evidence of Holt using original sources. She refers to the landlord of the Crown Inn being hanged for jokingly saying that his son was "heir to the Crown".  She quotes the Patent Rolls more than once. As mentioned above, Holt peppers her narrative with information about 15th century behaviour - e.g. the time and content of breakfasts; the meaning of potage and crustade; the fact that 'garbage' meant a stew of chicken giblets. Another example occurs when Kate is taxed by Nan for having no worse sorrow than losing of a pomander. The author breaks off to tell the reader what a pomander was. Such asides certainly pad out a shortish book, but they also interrupt the flow of the narrative. Increasingly, the novel appears didactic. Perhaps, if we were to feel a little more thankful for the liberty we have, and to make a little less noise about the rights and liberties we have not, it might not do much harm, either to ourselves or other people! Thus speaks the spinster Sunday School teacher. More Christian orientated morality follows when old Alice Treadwell arrives at the house. There are several pages of Christian homilies and parables. 

Gradually, Humphrey Treadwell's live-in younger sister, Kate, drags information out of Nan. The latter is scared to venture out, is terrified of strangers and determined to keep 'hidden'. Eventually, she is unmasked as the fugitive Anne Neville, the younger daughter of the great Kingmaker. Her sister would prefer her to remain where she is, as the Warwick inheritance would then not be divided. However, the final chapter is ominously headed 'Found At Last'.  Into the shop comes a well-to-do stranger with a voice known Anne. She asks, Hath he the one shoulder higher than the other? Look and tell me." On the answer being "Yes." she exclaims: "Too late! too late! Is there no mercy, O God?"

It is Richard, duke of Gloucester. Anne recoils from him: "You knew that it was from you I was hiding. Not from the law...Outlawry hath no terrors, death is no ill; but I pray God put the ocean betwixt me and you, for you are worser unto me than either." Oh dear; alas, it is no good. She is whisked away to a loveless marriage. Kate does not see Anne again for twelve years and then only as the new King Richard and his Queen Anne passed through the city towards Westminster.

The King had passed by, - the deformed prince with the handsome face and sinister eyes, the nervous restless man who must be perpetually fingering something, and who could not look fixedly at any man for more than a second... Anne's son dies, closely followed by Anne herself. Then Bosworth. The Nemesis was not long in coming upon him who had been the evil angel of that short and sorrowful life.

So perished Richard of Gloucester. 

"God's mill grinds slowly, but it grinds very small."

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Miss Emily Sarah Holt would not be receiving Christmas cards from the Richard III Society then.

C.M.M's 'The Earl-Printer. A Tale of the Time of Caxton' 1877

 

John F. Shaw first edition - n.d. (1877)

The publisher John F. Shaw was well known for producing what one might term 'Sunday School Books', usually with a firm moral tone to them. It published nearly all of Emily Sarah Holt's large output of morally uplifting tales, and the advertisements at the end of this short novel includes titles under the heading 'Happy Sundays for the Little Ones' and 'Books for Christians'. Along with the Religious Tract Society (RTS) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), Shaw dominated religious publications in the second half of the nineteenth century.

C.M.M's tale is a slight one, more aimed at the juvenile market rather than adults. It commences with a description of a small group working under Master Caxton in the Chapel of St Anne besides the Westminster Abbey almshouses.  Apart from the Master Printer, there are Wynkin de Worde and his young brother Bertram,  and Arthur Falconer, a strangely silent, reserved but diligent young man. They are to be honoured by a visit by King Edward IV, his wife and entourage. As early as Chapter II, the reader learns that Arthur is actually the Earl of Wynnehamme, a devoted Lancastrian who had escaped from prison a year earlier and was now the subject of a large reward for his capture. His father Maurice fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury and escaped with his son, by now his page, to wander for seven weary years up and down through the loneliest parts of the country. Finally caught and imprisoned in the Tower, the father was executed and his son imprisoned. However, this was not in a cell but at the old Manor House of Arnewoode, under the guardianship of its lord. Here a love affair begins between Arthur and Margaret, the only child of the master of Arnewood. Arthur escapes from further confinement under another Yorkist lord and eventually ends up at Caxton's works in Westminster.

Amongst the contingent visiting the printing works with King Edward is Margaret, now an orphan and Lady of Arnewoode. Their eyes meet...! However, all will not end well, thanks mainly to the inevitable 'baddie' in such tales. On this occasion it is a Yorkist, Sir Ralph Moreton, who is desperate to marry Lady Margaret, but is constantly rebuffed by her. Having seen the look that had passed between Arthur and Margaret during the royal visit, he disguises himself as Gilbert Tyler, and gets a job working for Caxton.  By trickery he unmasks Arthur and has him imprisoned again. Five years go slowly by; the captive Arthur pines for Margaret; she is sent back to Arnewoode in disgrace for refusing to marry Moreton. Then came the news that Richard of Gloucester was King instead, and that the royal children were dead too; and with it, dark rumours crept all over the land, rumours that made women shiver...

Two further years pass and Henry Tudor lands at Milford Haven. Moreton, most unwillingly, has to join King Richard at Nottingham. Before he goes, he imprisons Arthur in a dungeon hard by Westminster Abbey (it appears to be under the Jewel Tower). Luckily, he is rescued by Wynkin and Bertram de Worde, borrows a fast horse and gets to Bosworth just in time to join Tudor's army. Allowed by the grateful new king to travel to Arnewoode to find Margaret, he finds not a living soul but a tomb, a single figure lay upon it, carved all in pure white stone; the figure of a young girl with her hands clasped on her breast, lying peacefully as in sleep... Oh dear. What would normally be a story with a happy ending, serves up a tragedy. Margaret had died in 1483, two years earlier. The only balm is that her uncle is able to tell Arthur that so long as she lived, she loved thee and clung to thee with all her very heart.

Six more years pass by, and the reader is amongst mourners again - this time for old Caxton - in the Church of St. Margaret, Westminster. Arthur is there, a tall noble-looking man of about thirty-four years of age, whose fair hair was prematurely streaked with grey, and in whose dark eyes there was a look that told that he had suffered long and patiently. However, in the correct vein of a J.F. Shaw tale, Arthur murmurs to himself at the very end - "And then out of this world, full of wretchedness and tribulation, I may go to heaven, to God and His saints, unto joy ever durable." So, everything will be alright then.

W.S. Symonds' 'Malvern Chase: An Episode of the Wars of the Roses' 1881

 

Tewkesbury, William North first edition - 1881

The novel purports to be the Autobiography of Hildebrand de Brute, who is looking back in happily married old age in the peaceful times of Henry VII's reign to the unsettled period known as the Wars of the Roses. Born in 1438, on the borderland between England and Wales, he is descended from the Saxon rather than the Norman race. The family had settled at Birtsmereton, where Hildebrand's grandfather, Giles de Brute, had pulled down the Norman Keep and erected the present Manor House. The author knows his Borderland well - occasionally the pages read like a gazetteer - and has researched in detail the names and family trees of the local gentry. It feels as if he personally has ridden around all the places and scenes he refers to.

For most of the book, the story is concentrated on these Herefordshire-Shropshire borderlands and this is what gives it structure as well as its commendable 'tightness'. Above all, it shows how Civil War can destroy relationships, some of long-standing, even within families (as happened in the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century). Hovering over the political strife, is the added problem of Lollardy. Hildebrand's father was a Wyclifitte (the grandfather was the dearest friend and cousin of Sir John Oldcastle), as was Hildebrand's young lover Rosamond Berew. It is not long before the latter persuades her boyfriend to accept the 'new' faith.  Hildebrand's father thought the teaching of Wycliffe in advance of the age...Liberty of opinion for Lollard as well as Catholic was his demand. What this does is to give enemies another stick with which to beat them.

The story concentrates on the years between 1458 and 1471. It includes details of Edward of March (then York) successfully hiding from his Lancastrian pursuers; his linking up with the Earl of Warwick; and his astonishment at the comfort and safety of the well-defended Manor Houses on the Borders. Hildebrand recalls I have charged on the battle-field amidst the startling surroundings of war, and have laid stricken myself, and thought I was a dying man; I have stood by the bedside of those I loved when the last flicker of the lamp of life was dying out, but never has memory impressed a sight deeper on my soul than that look of Lord Edward as I recounted the fate of his beloved father and brother after the battle of Wakefield.

The author has a unusual account of how Richard of Gloucester gained his deformed back: Edward tells Hildebrand's mother that my young brother Richard, not yet nine years old, was tall and as straight as a young poplar tree, when one day he happened to ride on his palfrey against an old crone. She cursed him by her demons and attendant fiends, and look at him now...Richard has crooked shoulders through that hag's sorcery, and I much doubt if he ever lives to be a man. Hildebrand eventually meets Gloucester: Lord Richard was dark and swarthy like his father, with an inclination to high shoulders; his face was handsome, but his form was then feeble, and I little thought that I should behold him leading the most terrific charges at the battles of Barnet and Theocsbury, or that he would become a knight renowned for feats of valour and of arms. Hildebrand also meets Anne Neville - I thought at the time how little this noble girl was fitted to battle with the stern ambitious men with whom her lot was cast. Of note is that Hildebrand (and the author?) do not believe the traditional story of Prince Edward being slain after Tewkesbury by Gloucester, Dorset and Hastings, but it was rather by servants. As for the Princes in the Tower, Hildebrand writes - the Prince of Wales and his young brother murdered, as was supposed, by their uncle's commands, but without trace of their lonely grave

Every good historical novel must have at least one 'baddie' or bête noire. Malvern Chase has two scoundrels: Sire Andrew Trollop, who is worse than the Vicar of Bray for changing from Lancastrian to Yorkist and vice versa. He rightly meets a dastardly end. There is also Sire John Carfax, of Castlemereton Keep, a near neighbour of the de Brutes. He, too, is a double-dyed villain who also meets a timely demise.

Symonds has clearly done his homework on the period, citing local documents, the Rous Roll, the Paston Letters and Holinshed. Mention is made of various battles - such as Mortimer's Cross, Hedgley Moor, Hexham and Edgecote- and compelling accounts are given of the examples of the lawless times affecting both manor and town. Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the parlous witch and Friar Bungay, the great nigromancer, are referred to, which tally well with Bulwer Lytton's treatment of them. The author should be congratulated on a spirited tale, told with pace and accuracy. Yes, from the Yorkist viewpoint, but no harm in that.

Bulwer Lytton's 'The Last of the Barons' 1843

 

 Saunders and Otley first edition - 1843

This is the first time I have read one of Bulwer Lytton's novels. I have an Oxford World's  Classics edition of his Harold, but only know the titles of others - such as Rienzi, The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram and Kenelm Chillingly. That he was well regarded in his time can be inferred from Anthony Trollope's comment, Bulwer was a man of very great parts...very much more than amusement may be obtained from his novels; and Professor Jowett, preaching his funeral sermon, spoke of him as a man of genuine kindness, of endless activity of mind of great knowledge, and of a noble interest in literature and literary men. Nearly all his novels came out in three volumes, two of them in four. With The Last of the Barons, he had two main objects in mind: first, to portray the mid 15th century as the passing of the age of feudalism into that of commercialism. Warwick was the representative of the feudal State, Edward IV the merchant King. Bulmer often makes reference to this gradual formation of a class between knight and vassal - which became first constitutionally visible and distinct in the reign of Henry VII. Bulwer argues that both Edward IV and Richard III had a determined desire...to destroy the dangerous influence of the old feudal aristocracy.

Secondly, to assess the character of Warwick and to supply an answer to one of the great mysteries of history - why did this staunch supporter of the House of York, so suddenly in 1470 not only take up arms against Edward, whom he had put on the throne, but to espouse the cause of the Lancastrians, his lifelong enemies? Lytton suggests that Edward attempted an assault on Warwick's younger daughter, Anne. Hence the hatred, but also hence the secrecy.    

The tale starts in the early spring of 1467 and ends with Warwick's death on the battlefield of Barnet on 14th April 1471. The first scene is placed near the hamlet of Charing, the setting for a bout of holiday games such as archery and the quarterstaff. The characters are a mixture of fictitious and historical - Lord Montague, Warwick's brother, and Lord Hastings amongst the latter. Two youths, the Northern Marmaduke Neville and the London trader Nicholas Alwyn (later Lord Mayor of London in 1499, deceased in 1505), represent the past and the future. Linked up with them all for much of the story, is Adam Warner - fanatically attached to his 'machine' which will turn out to be a wonder of science and the world, and his pure daughter Sybill. 

The story is too convoluted to go into in detail, but I was particularly interested in the portrayal of the main historical characters. 

Warwick  is in the lusty vigour of his age...with his high, majestic, smooth, unwrinkled forehead, - like some Paladin of the rhyme of poet or romance; his brother Montague is realistically sketched as a more malleable figure, drawn unwillingly into the clash with Edward IV.

Edward IV - brave in battle, no fool but too easily ensnared in a hedonistic life and seemingly controlled by his wife and her family. 

Elizabeth Woodville is not favoured by the author: with an eye which never looked direct or straight upon its object, but wandered sidelong with a furtive and stealthy expression, that did much to obtain for her the popular character of falseness and self-seeking.

The Duke and Duchess Isabel of Clarence - the husband a weak, vacillating fool; the wife coldly ambitious.  

Richard, duke of Gloucester (b. 1452) is in his late teens when he is first mentioned (on p.139 of volume I). It refers to his love of music; Bulwer gives as his source Sharon Turner's History of England. The author comments that Gloucester, by dint of custom each day can wield mace or axe with as much ease as a jester doth his lathe-sword. Richard was still a boy, whose intellect was not yet fully developed, but in whom was already apparent to the observant, the dawn of a restless, fearless, calculating, and subtle genius... Moreover, Bulwer concurs in the traditional belief of Richard's involvement in the murder of his two nephews, who breathed their last in the Tower. When Montagu reminds Richard of Edward's pre-contract to Lady Eleanor Talbot, the former dropped his eyes, abashed before that steady, unrevealing gaze, which seemed to pierce into other hearts, and shew nothing of the heart within. Bulmer heads in Chapter VI in the final volume, The Subtle Craft of Richard of Gloucester: here he is urged by Montagu to support Warwick and Clarence against Edward; here he muses over the marriage of Anne Neville to Prince Edward of Lancaster and how it would it affects his own claim. And then, with that wondrous, if somewhat too restless and over-refining energy which belonged to him, Richard rapidly detailed the scheme of his profound and dissimulating policy. His keen and intuitive insight into human nature had shewn him the stern necessity which, against their very will must unite Warwick with Margaret of Anjou. Only in passing does Bulwer refer to Richard's physical 'problem' - Richard, clad in a loose chamber robe, which concealed the defects of his shape...The author makes Edward say admiringly about his youngest brother: "O young boy's smooth face! - O old man's deep brain!...what a king hadst thou made!"

And at the Battle of Barnet: through the mists, the blood-red manteline he wore over his mail, the grinning teeth of the boar's head which created his helmet, flashed and gleamed wherever his presence was most need to encourage the flagging or spur on the fierce. And there seemed to both armies something ghastly and preternatural in the savage strength of this small, slight figure thus startlingly caprisoned, and which was heard evermore uttering its sharp war-cry - "Gloucester, to the onslaught!" As he looks down on the dead Warwick, Richard mutters, The Age of Force expires with knighthood and deeds of arms. And over this dead great man I see the New Cycle dawn. Happy, henceforth, he who can plot, and scheme, and fawn, and smile!" The final volume ends with Elizabeth Woodville clasping her infant son to her bosom and looking at Gloucester - the only life, save the despised and powerless Clarence...which stood between the ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage of the English throne!

William Hastings, although full credence is given to the popular image of a man who pursued the fairer sex, is given a positive image by Bulwer. His mind is profound and vast; all men praise him, save the Queen's kin. He loves scholars; he is mild to distress; he laughs at the superstitions of the vulgar. Of course, the fictitious Sybill falls head-over-heels for him and tragically finally loses out to his first love, the real-life Lady Katherine Neville. Bulwer quotes Philip de Comines in his assessment of Hastings:  he was one of the most remarkable men of the age...like Lord Montagu, he united in happy combination the talents of a soldier and a courtier. The love affair between Hastings and Sybill, a recurrent theme throughout the three volumes, is deftly done. The author is sympathetic to Hastings' behaviour whilst not minimising the dolorous, and ultimately, tragic effect on Sybill.

Interestingly, this is yet another novel which refers to the Lollards and suggests that they tended to favour the Yorkist, due to the long history of antagonism with the Lancastrians. It was impossible that these men should not have felt the deepest resentment at the fierce and steadfast persecution they endured under the House of Lancaster...

There are footnotes galore, all impressing on the reader that Bulwer has studied his sources. David Hume, Hallam, George Buck, Rapin, Habington, Carte, Agnes Stricklad, Sharon Turner and John Lingard; as well as the contemporary writings such as the Parliamentary Rolls, the Paston Letters, the Croyland Chronicle, Polydore Vergil, Holinsed, Hall and Fabyan are all catalogued.                                                                                                    

Jenny Woolf's 'The Mystery of Lewis Carroll' 2010

St. Martin's Press first edition - 2010

On our visit to London in early January, I visited Judd Books in Marchmont Street (scene of my old stomping ground as a university student in the late 1960s. It was like an old-fashioned 'village' street then; now, half of it has been destroyed by a huge concrete shopping centre. Ugh!) Back to the bookshop. I never come away without at least one purchase from a huge stock of what are termed 'remainder books'. This time, I bought two biographies of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. The more substantial one - Edward Wakeling's Lewis Carroll: The Man and his Circle (I.B. Taurus, 2015) - I shall leave for another day. Jenny Woolf's slighter tome, I have enjoyed reading over the past week.

Her chapter headings are strange and mildly off-putting: 'Nose in the Middle, Mouth Under', 'Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow',...'took the Camera of Rosewood'; but explanatory sub-titles follow them: 'The Human Body', 'Alice', 'Photography'. The Foreword by Edward Wakeling, editor of Lewis Carroll's Diaries, gives credit to the author's viewpoint: She has painted a picture of the man based on her thorough research, with accurate descriptions, and her evidence is clear and well presented. Wakeling also submits that Carroll's personality is many-faceted and complex. Maybe that is what attracts us to him - he is a very interesting person. After reading Woolf's book, I can thoroughly agree.

She explains the importance of Carroll's early years, being brought up as the eldest boy in a large family. Although Carroll himself hardly ever spoke about his own childhood and his brothers and sisters supplied only a few carefully edited recollections of him as a boy, Woolf is able to piece together an account of the years in the village of Daresbury, Cheshire and then at Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire. Apparently, as he grew older, Carroll emerged as the family entertainer. He attended a small boarding school at Richmond and then moved to the now famous Rugby School. He hated the three years he spent there: I cannot say that I look back upon my life at a Public school with any sensation of pleasure, or that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again. However, the picture that emerges of Carroll is of a boy with considerable reserves of toughness and concentration beneath a sensitive exterior. Woolf argues that Carroll may have had some issues about mothers and sons; there are a lack of mothers in his work and the brutal, domineering female figures that occur in it have attracted comment. On the other hand, Carroll - as the oldest son - had a special relationship with his father. When the latter died aged 68, his son appeared to fall into a kind of depression from which he thought he might never recover.

Carroll became a student and then a tutor at Christ Church College, Oxford - where he was to spend the rest of his life. He spent his time there as an Oxford mathematics don - numbers formed a thread running through his life. Inevitably, the sections devoted to this important angle of his life left me cold - maths was my least favourite subject at school and, even now, I find it difficult to show any interest in the topic. Carroll was also fascinated in the ways and workings of both the human body and mind. He particularly focussed on the possible cause[s] of his mild stammer - he spent a great deal of time, effort and money on trying to cure it. Unsurprisingly, when he was tired or stressed. his stammer was far worse. Carroll put together a huge library of medical books; he nursed, visited and sat with the sick. He was very curious about madness and mental abnormalities; this interest in mental functioning spilled over into his books - not only is everyone mad in Wonderland but altered mental states figure in his later Sylvie and Bruno.

The three chapters in the middle of Woolf's book are possibly the most interesting - or unsettling! 'This strange wild man from other lands' is subtitled 'Love and Sex; 'Children are three-fourths of my life'; and 'Child of the pure unclouded brow', on Alice Liddell. In his later life, many looked on Carroll as a quaint old bachelor, but he was far from being a maidenly nun-figure who was ignorant of sexual matters. He strongly disapproved of pornography, but owned some very frank books on sexual matters. During his moralistic later years, he demonstrated a well-honed and effective knowledge of how to win over girls in their teens and grown-up women, as well as children. In fact, he attracted a large female retinue and tongues did wag. During the 1860s, Carroll's diaries recorded an increasing concentration on being with children, especially on 'pure' little girls. Perhaps over the next 20 years, he was able to channel his intense yearnings for romantic love into the company of children. They were beautiful, but their purity was the antithesis of predatory female sexuality. In the 1860s and 1870s, he photographed many children in family settings, including some nude photographs of under-sevens which he (and their families) considered perfectly virtuous. The 21st century is a very different world. A Review of a BBC documentary in 2015, had as its heading Was Lewis Carroll a Paedophile? His photographs suggest so. Will Self certainly agrees: I think Carroll was a heavily repressed paedophile, without doubt. Of the approximately 3,000 photographs Carroll made in his life, just over half are of children - 30 of whom are depicted nude or semi-nude It is disconcerting, to say the least.

This Blog is too long already, so suffice it to say that the chapters on Literature and Storytelling, on Photography and Woolf's finding of Carroll's bank account are all worthy of more detailed comment. The author finishes her biography with A Personal Conclusion. She emphasises that whilst he very much liked female company and was unusual for his times in treating women more or less as equals, men do not seem to have attracted him emotionally. His time at Rugby School is said to have revolted his sensitive nature. Carroll did not desire men and boys, and he could not have women, so his preoccupation with little girls therefore seemed to his contemporaries to be a total rejection of sexuality... he said that what he got from his child friends was love, which he equated with the pure love of God.

Nicola Upson's 'Shot with Crimson' 2023

 

Faber & Faber first edition - 2023

In her Acknowledgements at the end of her novel, the author pays tribute to a considerable number of non-fiction books: autobiographies, biographies, Hollywood movie accounts and two books on the famous ocean liner the Queen Mary. The fruits of her research are clear throughout the book.

There is a compelling opening chapter (the text all in italics) dated Summer 1917, which describes the ten year-old Daphne du Maurier's visit and stay at a fine country mansion, Milton in East Anglia. Du Maurier later wrote that it was partly the inspiration for the famous Manderley in her best-seller Rebecca. Moreover, Upson argues that the formidable, dressed-in-black housekeeper is the model for the sinister Danvers in both book and movie.

The reader is then transported to 1939, with Josephine Tey embarking from Southampton for a trip to America (this never happened to the real-life Tey). Seen off by her close friend, the detective Archie Penrose (modelled on Tey's fictional detective in her novels, Alan Grant), she meets up with Alma Reville, Alfred Hitchcock's wife, who is travelling with her daughter Pat back to the States. She had met the Hitchcocks three years earlier in North Wales (in a previous story of Upson's, Fear in the Sunlight), when the director was filming her A Shilling for Candles. She had just about forgiven him for his Young and Innocent film - a travesty of her novel. The links between the 1917 episode and the rest of the story quickly become clear. This is not a plot spoiler, so it is suffice to say that the two murders (one had been a delayed reaction to a smothering) committed 22 years earlier, are solved by some fairly basic sleuthing by Penrose and a rather mild case of insight by Tey - the former at Milton, the latter in California.

Positives? I enjoyed the detailed account of the problems faced by Hitchcock with the shooting of Rebecca. Upson uses her research material to portray the very real tensions between Hitchcock, the director, and David Selznick, the producer; and between the experienced Laurence Olivier and the fawn-like, ingenue, Joan Fontaine. I even warmed to Judith Anderson's insecurities over her 'fire' scene in Manderley. A pity there was no room for a portrayal of George Sanders. There is a very natural interchange between Penrose and du Maurier in London, when he is trying to get her to recall the events of two decades ago. I also liked the final, short chapter dated February 1940, (again in italics) when du Maurier returns to Milton with daffodils for a grave in the nearby churchyard. I found the overall structure of Upson's novel quite skilfully put together. She has now settled into a comfortable narration of Tey's 'life', fact and fiction melded together effectively. 

Tey's fictitious 'girlfriend' (and lover in every sense) Marta is not really necessary to the plotline, but this is the 21st century and the author does appear to have a personal agenda to push here. It matters not. Similarly, it is clear from the outset that James and Matthew's predilection lies in their love of Housman's A Shropshire Lad.