Thomas Nelson first edition - 1907
Not much is known about Helen Elrington. She was born in Dublin in 1854 and began her writing career in the 1870s with books for young adult readers. By the 1920s, she was living in Hook, Hampshire. She never married and died at Basingstoke in 1950. I have two more of her books - In the Days of Prince Hal (1901) and Page or Prentice (1920). The latter is in The Children's Hour series, edited by Herbert Strang, designed to meet the universal demand for bright, entertaining, and instructive literature for children of all ages from 7 to 12. The Luck of Chervil is for slightly older youngsters and is blessedly free of the didacticism I have encountered recently, in the novels of Emily S. Holt, Evelyn Everett-Green and Charlotte Yonge.
Elrington's tale is a simple, straightforward one. It is 1476, and a child, stuffed in a woolsack, is found by Martin the carder placed against an outside wall of the new Guildhall in the small town of Chervil. Poor, but not destitute, Martin carries the bundle home. His wife Ursula already has to look after three young children: the eldest is seven year-old Robin; a younger boy is a a cripple named Gil. Marion, a girl of five lies sickly in cradle, unwilling to eat or drink. Wonder of wonders, the girl takes immediately to the strange boy and never looks back in her recovery. Martin lacked any basic business instinct and only manages to eek out a bare subsistence for his family. His elder brother, Reuben, however, had risen through hard work and an eye for the main chance. Now a well-off cloth-seller, with many workmen and apprentices, he has his eyes on the position of Mayor of Chervil.
A new Guildhall stands as the symbol of the town's elite 'blowing with the wind' in the Lancaster-York conflict. Now on the Yorkist side, Chervil's success stands in marked contrast to the nearby ruined and once proud castle of the Delameres, ruinous due to the family's allegiance to Henry VI. Seven years pass and the story is now focused on the second year of Richard III's reign - 1484. The setting rarely leaves the little town of Chervil or the nearby castle, but there are occasional asides about the national situation. As to the respective rights of the Red Rose or the White Rose, Ursula knew nothing at all, but she did know by this time that a man to be feared sat on the throne of England; and as she glanced at the outline of her youngest child under the covering of the tester bed she gave a little shudder, as if the grisly rumours afloat about Richard the Third had begun for the first time to come home to her.
A major part of the tale centres around the enmity another father and son feel for the seeming foundling, Humphrey. Twice he is nearly killed, and when he saves another stranger from a local mob, he decides to leave the town so as not to bring odium on Martin and his family. He rests first at the Delamere castle; two others also take refuge there. Amazingly, it is his father and his squire! This explains the flashbacks the boy has been having over the years. He is the son of Lord Delamere, who had to flee after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 - the reader would never have guessed. All is revealed on both parts and luckily it is late July 1485. As his long-lost father says, "... in the struggle that is coming, we shall fight not against Yorkists, but against the man who has supplanted and, if report speaks truly, foully murdered his brother's children. God defend the right!" The following month sees the complete overthrow of the usurper. Lord Delamere and his son return to Chervil. The final chapter, The Mayor of Chervil, describes the town of 1495. Whereas the town had formerly been straitly limited within its walls, there were now large suburbs on the north and east...a fine new banqueting hall had been built to the side of the Guildhall. His Majesty King Henry the Seventh, loving towns and townsfolk, has confirmed and enlarged our charter, and the town has prospered mightily within the last ten years. The new Mayor is about to be inaugurated; and guess who it it is - none other than Martin the carder. In the procession is a young man, tall and strong, with dark hair and bright brown eyes...his dress was that of a young noble, rich in colour and quality. Yes, it is Humphrey Harcourt, Lord Delamere, son-in-law to Martin (so he must have married his childhood sweetheart Marion), but in the town we call him Humphrey the carder, the Luck of Chervil.
This is very much a story for the young, but Elrington does get across the life of a small town in the late fifteenth century quite well. Only Roger and Richard III come out of it badly!
No comments:
Post a Comment