G.P.R. James' 'The Forgery' 1849

T.C. Newby first edition - 1849

There was certainly no falling off in James' proverbial output between 1843 and 1846. Towards the close of 1843, he had moved to a house called The Oaks in Upper Deal, Kent, only a mile away from his previous home, The Shrubbery. Not only did he write Agincourt, Arabella Stuart, Rose D'Albret (all published in 1844) and The Smuggler (1845), but he also compiled a long autobiographical piece for the collected and revised edition of his Romances, published from 1844 onwards by Smith and Elder. Here, he gave an interesting account of his method of prolific literary composition : I am an early riser; and any one who has that habit must know that it is a grand secret for getting through twice as much as lazier men can perform. Again, I write and read during some portion of every day...then again, the habit of dictating instead of writing with my own hand, relieves me of the  manual labour which many authors have to undergo, leaves the mind clear and free to act... The Step-Mother or Evil Doings was originally printed for Private Circulation only in 1845; then, as a second edition in 1846, in three volumes by Smith, Elder, and Company. 

The story commences with a brief background on a Mr. Humphrey Scriven, a highly educated and gifted man, the son of wealthy and respectable parents in a class of society peculiar to England, the untitled country gentry. Originally bound for the Church, a marriage to the only daughter of a rich merchant was only acceptable to her father if Humphrey became a merchant like himself. It is now some twenty years later; his wife is dead but she had left him four very handsome children...the daughters were all lovely, kind, affectionate, and gentle in disposition. Maria, the eldest, married Henry Marston and they both went out to India with sufficient capital to establish a house of merchandise there. Isabella, the second daughter, married Sir Edward Monkton, a baronet with ample means and property. The youngest daughter, Margaret, after an array of suitable and not so suitable suitors, finally succumbed to the rakish Sir John Fleetwood, but only after her father Humphrey, thrown by his horse, joined the counting house in the sky. Not before he leaves an eighth of his business to his young and faithful lawyer, Stephen Hayley. Humphrey's son, Henry, was a sharp, clever lad had been taught by circumstances to attach more importance to the possession of wealth than it deserves. An apprenticeship at Hamburg unfortunately gave vast development to certain germs of selfishness which were in the boy's own nature...his principles were always to gain something off every transaction...to regard everything with a mercantile eye. This deeply ingrained character was to play a major role, if not the major component in the novel.  Thus, Chapter I sets out the Scrivens' family tree as a prelude to the main narrative.

Ten years pass. The only one of the four children of the merchant, who had undergone few vicissitudes, who had known but little change, was the son, Henry. He had neither wife nor children. He had made money, and therefore he loved it all the better...people said that the house of Scriven and Co. was a hard house. Maria had given birth to Charles Marston, a stronger, finer little fellow was never seen. She, however, in frail health from the Indian climate, returned to England and died. Isabella Monkton lost her first three children and her ten-years'-older husband, but one daughter, Maria, survived. Almost inevitably, Sir John Fleetwood's scandalous life ended with a pistol shot through his lungs. Meanwhile, Stephen Hayley is also bringing up a child, Henry Hayley, whose mother is not talked about, being shrouded in mystery! The boy grows up in regular company with Charles Marston and they become close friends. The final family to bring into the story is that of the Earl of Milford and his son, Lord Mellent, the latter a friend and neighbour of the widowed Lady Monkton. The Mellents' daughter, Lady Anne Mellent, become a close bosom pal of Maria Monkton. Moreover, Henry Hayley is also treated with great kindness by Lord Mellent and also grows closely attached to Lady Anne. Has everyone followed so far? Actually, James has been quite skilful at explaining and developing these familial and other relationships.

Suffice it to say, we now have the main pieces on the novel's chessboard: Charles Marston; his cousin Maria Monkton; their aunt Lady Margaret Fleetwood; their uncle, Henry Scrivens; Lady Anne Mellent; and, most importantly, Stephen Hayley and his son Henry. What of The Forgery? It occurs when, Stephen Hayley, increasingly with financial troubles, passes a forged banker's draft with the fake signature of Henry Scrivens. Terrified of being found out, (it could lead to trial and even death if caught), he persuades young Henry to flee abroad, essentially taking the rap for the crime. He is pursued and traced to an Italian monastery where, alas, the officer finds he has died of a malignant fever. The waxy hue of the face, the plain ravages of illness. the closed eyes, the emaciated features...showed the officer that there indeed, before him, lay all that remained of the once gay, frank, happy boy. Well, that should be the end of it - bad luck Mr. Scriven; the forger has, like the famous parrot, simply ceased to be. However, the reader is only on page 109 of the first of three volumes.

Thus, it is with no great surprise, when the next chapter commences a decade later, that we read that Stephen Hayley may have expired (having given himself up to intemperance) but find first Maria and then Lady Anne quickly realising that the remarkably handsome man, though very dark, who they meet, going by the name of Colonel Frank Middleton, is none other than their childhood sweetheart Henry Hayley, returned after ten years to prove his innocence. The next two and a half volumes show the author at his best and at his worst (his usual flights of pseudo philosophy or, simply, 'padding'). The multiplicity of characters, both honourable and despicable are pulled along by the force of the narrative. Henry Scriven soon guesses who Middleton really is, as do aunt Lady Fleetwood and Charles Marston. One needs to suspend disbelief on several points in the tale and coincidence, as usual, plays too great a part; but it's all good telling, particularly for late autumnal evenings. 

There are the usual minor characters, such as two rogues - Sam Nugent a general dealer (i.e. a thug who steals Middleton/Hayley's important pocket book) and Mingy Bowes, a disreputable 'fence' (receiver/seller of stolen goods) - who try to blackmail Hayley and even Lady Fleetwood;  an amiable pedlar, Joshua Brown, who helps Middleton establish legally who he really is (spoiler alert - Middleton --> Hayley --> ??); Mr. Winkworth, a kindly old gentleman and confidant of Charles Marston and another character masquerading under an assumed name. All these add to the spice of the story. James has some good 'set pieces', in the various houses in London but, particularly in the denouement at Belford Castle, Lady Anne's family Northumberland mansion, where Henry Scrivens gets his comeuppance and Henry Hayley finally reclaims his honour and good name.  

Now on to my last G.P.R. James for a while - Margaret Graham: A Tale Founded on Fact (!848). 

G.P.R. James' 'The Step-Mother' 1846

 

Smith, Elder & Co first edition - 1846

The scene is narrow, certainly, but very important things are often enacted in a very confined space...which is, in this case, a small Midlands village called Mallington. We are introduced to a variety of village inhabitants, including Dr. Western, the rector and his wife; Mr. Nethersole, the doctor; and the lawyer, Mr. Middleton. Included are the Misses Martin, two maiden sisters, somewhat past their prime, who employed a portion of each day in settling the business of everyone in the place. I was slightly reminded of the gossips in John Galt's stories or, at a more extreme level, the busybodies in The House with the Green Shutters of George Douglas Brown. 

What of the step-mother of the Tale, Mrs Emily Latimer? - on first meeting, she is a widow: the lady herself did not look more than two or three and thirty...a very pretty woman, moreover, with bright blue eyes, fine teeth, a good complexion, soft clear skin, a chin somewhat too prominent perhaps, a beautiful hand and arm, and as smart a foot and ankle as ever was seen. She was tall...well formed, plump, but not stout, with a very charming fall of the neck and shoulders, and a waist of a mere span. A catch, then. In fact, the catcher proved to be a wealthy man, much older than her, Mr. Charlton, a widower who lived at Mallington House, the large red building at the top of the hill above the village. He had a daughter, Louisa, of some ten years of age; she had a son, Alfred of about twelve or thirteen, strong, and active, but with something unpleasant in the expression of his face.. Louisa is to prove the heroine of James' story, Alfred the arch villain amongst several. By the end of Chapter III, Mrs Latimer has become Mrs Charlton and has embarked on her increasingly nefarious career as Step-Mother to Louisa. It is not long before Mr Charlton flees this mortal coil, and the two-time widow (unsurprisingly, as we shall eventually discover) proves to have the control of her wealthy step-daughter's matrimonial prospects. She, with another guardian, is arbiter of whom Louisa marries, gaining one half of the inheritance if it is with her approved but the entire fortune if her step-daughter flouts her wishes! 

The years roll by. Louisa is now nineteen, Alfred into his twenties. The latter is regularly in trouble, usually supported by two other blackguards; initially it is merely a question of poaching from the estate of nearby Mallington Hall. Its childless owner has died and the mansion is slowly degrading, if not to ruin certainly to rack, and the grounds reverting to wilderness. Onto the pages comes the hero of the story, one Edmond Morton - his complexion was dark, with hair, eyes, and whiskers nearly black, and the eyebrows strongly marked. His forehead was both wide and high, rising straight from the brow, and surrounded by wavy curls...in age, perhaps, six or seven and twenty. No, not Lord Byron or, even, Mr. Darcy. Well, even if Louisa didn't twig who he was until much later (her step-mother far too late and the Misses Martin not until near the end), I guessed almost immediately who he was - and that he would end up marrying Louisa, out foxing the Step-Mother in the process.

I liked the regular touches of humour:

The fair widow (Mrs. Latimer/Charlton) was all smiles and graciousness, though, to say sooth, some part of her youthful grace had fled, for she had become rather fuller in her proportions than was altogether consistent with exact symmetry.

The constable made his appearance; a keen stout man, with hawk's nose, and a pair of sharp bright eyes, not altogether parallel in their direction. The degree of obliquity which they possessed could hardly be called a squint, but nevertheless, the effect was a certain cunning and not very satisfactory expression, which conveyed to the mind of the beholder, perhaps wrongly, the idea of a shrewd but not very sincere character.

Mrs. Dixon, who was a tall, large-boned, gaunt woman, with the frame of a life-guardsman, and the face of a hyena.

There are many varieties, indeed, of the post-boy genus: the loquacious, the taciturn, the observing, the stolid, the drunken, the grave, the smart, the slow, the impassable, the picturesque, and the poetical...

There is a nice depiction of small town Society:

...they all met and they all played cards, and they all drank tea and ate cakes and bread and butter, it is true; but they all tore one another to pieces with their tongues, if not with their teeth; and, as in most other societies, the grand, though secret object of meeting seemed to be for every pair to say some ill-natured thing to each other of a third, whose back was turned... what a happy and fortunate thing it is for certain classes of society that there are vices and wickedness, accidents, misfortunes, and sorrows, in this good world that we inhabit!

On why Mallington residents were not keen on Morton: the body of the rest of the townsfolks hated him for two very sufficient reasons - first, because he did not deal with them; and, secondly, because they knew nothing about him, and would have liked to know something about him.

There are kidnappings, burglaries, gaol breaking, a Bow Street runner; Mr Tobias Gibbs a travelling vendor of Balm of Trinidad for a brilliant head of hair (and the only really irritating character in the novel!); a murder or two and plenty of excitement to sustain a three-decker novel. Moreover, the main cast are admirably supported by a range of fascinating support characters.

On the Misses Martin:  malignity scorns all the bounds of probability, and is not checked by gross absurdity itself...

Captain Tankerville, a very dangerous person, a villain; Jack Williams,  a seafaring gentleman and sturdy rogue; and two unpleasant henchmen, Billy Maltby and Tom Brown. They were all very different scoundrels one from the other...

Mr Timothy Quatterley Esq., the lawyer  - whose upper part was large, round, and bulky; the lower part minute enough to make an almost ludicrous contrast with the rest - could have come straight out of a Charles Dickens novel.

There is a trace of anti-semitism again in a James story: Moses Levi is a little fat, dirty, blear-eyed Jew who knowingly accepts the stolen good of Mallington Hall from the villains.

The novel could as well have been entitled The Step-Brother, as a major theme is the decline of a rascal into an out-and-out criminal who meets a deserved end.

Bankrupt in purse and reputation, contemned by those who might have loved and esteemed him, alienated from those classes of society in which he was born to move, cut off from all chance of raising himself above that rank from which he had chosen his companions, hopeless of improving his means but by adding crime to vice, with nothing to look back upon in the past but wasted advantages and evil passions pampered, with nought to hope for in the future but a wild life of feverish pleasure, mingled with deadly peril, and intervals of sickly lassitude, he was going to take the first profound plunge into the dark ocean of crime...Such was Alfred Latimer, burglar, thief and murderer.

A fascinating story of true love, deceit, villainy and good triumphing over all. James keeps control of the narrative, with several major strands. I now move on to another of his three-deckers - The Forgery, published three years' later, in 1849. 

G.P.R. James' 'The King's Highway' 1840

Longman first edition - 1840

Back to one of my old favourites, G.P.R. James. In fact, this in the first of four first editions (three of which are triple-deckers and one of only two volumes) which I hope to read before Christmas. As the weather draws in, our open fire is lit, the heated blanket is placed over the recliner and our Border Collie nestles nearby, the author is a perfect companion to accompany the occasional sips of Talisker or Highland Park. One of the pleasures of reading James is that he takes you up Historical byways you may not have known about, let alone thought about.

After the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, which placed William III and Mary II on the throne, the new monarchs may have thought matters would settle down. Mission accomplished. Not a bit of it; from the start there were a series of plots by the disgruntled Jacobites (so named after their deposed king, James II). After their army's failure in Ireland, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, their attention turned to either kidnapping or assassinating William. Between 1695 and 1696, what became known as the Fenwick Plot merged into an assassination plot in the latter year. Sir John  Fenwick (c.1645-1697) had served in the English army and was a long-time meddler in politics. He was M.P. for Northumberland from 1677 to 1687 and made no secret of his allegiance to James II, although he remained in England after the Revolution of 1688. As early as 1689, he began to plot seriously against William and was imprisoned briefly in that year. He was certainly involved in even more dangerous plotting  thereafter and went into hiding when others, such as Robert Charnock, Sir John Friend and George Porter, were seized and several afterwards executed. Eventually he was caught and accused of treason. To save his skin, he charged several leading Whig noblemen with treachery. A special Act of Attainder was passed through Parliament to convict him and he was beheaded on 28 January 1697 (the last person ever executed under an Act of Attainder). William personally disliked Fenwick intensely.

G.P.R. James' tale begins on the shore of the Irish coast, immediately after the Battle of the Boyne. Two men - not quite reached the middle age - and a young boy of perhaps eight years old or a little more, are gazing out to sea, clearly waiting for a ship. The reader knows the boy is going to figure prominently in the ensuing story, as it was scarcely possibly to conceive any thing more beautiful than his countenance, or to fancy a form more replete with living grace than his. Step forward the undoubted hero of the tale. The story that follows is one of the author's more convoluted ones. A severe storm seemingly sinks the small boat one of the men and the boy embark on to take them out to a brig; we know this won't be correct, as the hero has to survive! Sure enough, they had turned back and, ever and anon, we find them both in England and Lennard Sherbrooke, the adult, after an encounter on 'The King's Highway' with highwaymen, hands over the lad to the Earl of Sunbury for safe keeping and an education. We now enter the not unusual realm (for 19th century fiction) of the boy being given an assumed name - Wilton Brown. And such he is known as until near the very end of the third volume.

The next chapter leaps forward some seven or eight years; Wilton is schooled, including at Oxford University, and grows up as a loyal Protestant servant of the present monarch. On one of his travels between Oxford and London, he encounters an overturned coach, with its occupants at bay from yet more highwaymen. The gentleman who had been riding with him and who helps in the rescue is none other than Sir John Fenwick; the rescued? - the Duke of Gaveston and his fair daughter, the Lady Laura. For Wilton, this will prove to be a match made, if not in heaven, at least on the King's Highway. He was struck with surprise by the vision of radiant loveliness which her face and form presented.

We are soon introduced to the Earl of Byerdale, who takes Wilton on as an amanuensis. Neither we nor Wilton are entirely sure of this earl's nature or honesty and one of the themes of the novel is the working out of what hidden motives lie behind his less than pleasing behaviour. More than once, Wilton remarked the eyes of the Earl fixed stern and intent upon him from beneath their overhanging brows. Those eyebrows should give Wilton and the reader fair warning that something is not quite kosher. The Earl's son, Lord Sherbrooke (a big clue, surely, in the name) is a spendthrift tearaway, who rarely sees eye to eye (or eyebrow) with his father, but gets on well enough with Wilton.

Once all the main characters have been given their moment in the tale, it now speeds on to get them all enmeshed in the real 1695/6 assassination plot. It is too convoluted to explain in a few sentences here; suffice to say that there is a most convincing pen portrait of King William, an exciting section where the dastardly plotters nearly finish off Wilton; an equally exciting escape for him and his beloved Laura; a different 'escape' for the Duke of Gaveston, who was stupid enough to attend an earlier meeting with the plotters; and a great finale when Wilton's true identity is revealed (I guessed that as early as Volume I); Lennard is also unmasked; and the 'Earl of Byerdale' gets his deserved comeuppance. 

There are rather more Jamesian paragraphs - i.e. musing and ruminating on the weather, the countryside, life in general, true love - than the normal modern reader would like; even this one, who is much more attuned to the prolixity of Scott et al, occasionally skipped another philosophical outburst. However, I still regard him as a skilled storyteller - a strong narrative drive supported by flesh-and-blood characters, whom the reader grows more attached to, or more disgusted by, as we turn the pages. 

I now turn to another James triple decker: The Step-Mother, published six years' later. Two more of his novels await after that!

Dan Jones' 'Henry V' 2024

Head of Zeus first  edition - 2024

It's been quite some time since I have read a book relating to Henry V - fiction or non-fiction (or movie). I found Dan Jones' biography refreshing and packed with information I hadn't previously fully 'taken on board'. Unusually, half the book (just under 200 pages) deals with Henry's life before he became king, viz. 1386-1413. Jones convincingly shows how a long, eventful and invaluable apprenticeship to the office of monarchy, where Henry learned as much from his and other's mistakes as from any successes, shaped his ruling modus operandi. Secondly, through a narrative style, the author writes Henry's biography in the present tense. Henry rides. He fights. He prays. He plans, He rules. And it works! It is almost as if the story is presented in 'real time'.

Jones details the importance of Henry's mother, Mary de Bohun; of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster; and, most importantly, of his father, Henry Bolingbroke, who, in 1399, usurps the crown as Henry IV from Richard II. From his mother, Henry inherits his love of books and, above all, music. A devotee of fine cloths and good living, she is also pious; this will be one of her eldest son's traits throughout his life. Henry is 12/13 years old, a most impressionable age, when his father is banished from the kingdom for a decade. But just a year later, and his father, only recently made Duke of Hereford, has returned and overthrown Richard. A bewildering sequence of events, as Jones emphasises young Henry's attachment to the deposed monarch.

The years of his father's time on the throne are a helter-skelter of opportunities and dangers for Henry. He narrowly misses death, from an arrow lodged in his skull during the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury; he fights wearying skirmishes and conducts sieges in Wales, attempting to put down the tiresome rebellion of Owen Glendower; he watches as his father's health degenerates and he, for a while, is virtually reigning in his stead; and he becomes evermore determined to root out the heresy of the Lollards, even if it means dealing with his old friend and fellow warrior, Sir John Oldcastle. What Jones has successfully done is to make the reader feel that they are there with Henry in 1413, having followed him, almost as a companion, through the previous decade or more.  

As the author writes: 

In March 1413 Henry ascends to his father's throne better prepared for rule than any king in living memory. He arrives at a moment of extraordinary opportunity. Yet he succeeds with some doubts still remaining about his fitness for office, entrenched financial, religious and political challenges, and lingering resentment of the Lancastrian dynasty at large. The fourteen chapters and Epilogue which follow, guide the reader through the vicissitudes of the reign. The image of the playboy Hal transforming into monarchical gravitas is over-egged. Any newfound seriousness does not require a wholesale changing of his ways, for gravity, religiosity and intensity of focus are already essential parts of his character.  We see him cajoling various Parliaments into granting yet more funds for his increasingly expensive military campaigning in France; dealing ruthlessly with plotters at Southampton (his close friend Lord Scrope is summarily executed), on the very eve of his voyage to Harfleur; by force of personality leading his weary and sickly troops towards Calais and the 'miracle' of Agincourt; and the long, drawn-out aftermath of mainly siege warfare which leads not only to the Regency of the French crown and a marriage to the daughter of the permanently 'unwell' French king, Charles VI; but to his early death from dysentery on 31st August 1422 at the chateau of Bois-de-Vincennes.

I hadn't realised how important Henry's younger brothers were to the success of his reign. John, created Duke of Bedford, shaped in the same mould as Henry, who served as warden of the north-east, 'managed' England as lieutenant whilst Henry was abroad, and who took up the mantle in France - achieving at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424 a victory as splendid as that of Agincourt. Moreover, four years before his death in 1435, he had overseen the crowning of his nephew, Henry VI, as king of France. Thomas, created Duke of Clarence, a headstrong but brave soldier who was killed in March 1421 at Baugé, the first defeat for an English army in a major battle in France in nearly eight decades. Humphrey, created Duke of Gloucester, the youngest brother, under-occupied and inexperienced before the Agincourt campaign, who becomes one of Henry's ablest supporters and who is sent back to England in 1420 to take over the reins of domestic government and who excels in the tricky task of cajoling parliaments to grant yet more money. Moreover, in his uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry V has another consummate politician, who regularly provides finance for his nephew from his wealthy bishopric's coffers. All these men are consistently loyal to the king and, in no small part, contribute to the successes of his reign, whether on the battlefield or in the politics at home.

Jones has an interesting Summary of Henry's posthumous image. Curated and maintained by his younger brother Humphrey - who commissioned a Latin biography known as Vita Henrici Quinti -  enthusiastically aped by a young Henry VIII and further embroidered by Shakespeare, only from the 19th century was the warrior king looked at with a critical eye. Whereas William Stubbs maintained the king was the noblest and purest man who ever ruled England, J.R. Green accused Henry of wanton aggression and a failure to make good on his miraculous victory at Agincourt. Whilst C.L. Kingsford called Henry a typical medieval hero, and K.B. McFarlane stated that he was the greatest man that ever ruled England; Ian Mortimer, a 'popular writer', in his 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (2009), lays into the king from a 21st century viewpoint: Henry was a deeply flawed individual, a misogynist, a religious fundamentalist, a reckless spender of other people's money and a second-rate military commander! As a fellow History alumni of University College, London, I feel a trifle embarrassed by his over-the-top anachronistic strictures. He appears to belong to the Desmond Seward 'school' of slanted history. Rather, I agree with Dan Jones who, siding with McFarlane, suggests that he has presented a Henry who is a little more rounded and human...Henry's contemporaries saw in him a paragon of Christian, knightly virtue and the living embodiment of traditional kingship. They perceived - rightly - a ruler who made the systems of English government work as they were supposed to without resorting to novelty or swindling the system...

Other Biographies of Henry V in my Library:

1703/4:  The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth

1838:  J. Endell Tyler - Henry of Monmouth (Richard Bentley)

1889:  The Rev. A.J. Church - Henry the Fifth (Macmillan and Co.)

1901:  C.L. Kingsford - Henry V. The Typical Medieval Hero (G.P. Putnam's Sons)

1919:  R.B. Mowat - Henry V (Constable & Company)

1934:  Philip Lindsay - King Henry V. A Chronicle (Ivor Nicholson & Watson)

1935:  J.D. Griffith Davies - Henry V (Arthur Barker)

1937:  L.A.G. Strong - Henry of Agincourt (Thomas Nelson and Sons)

1947:  E.F. Jacob - Henry V and the Invasion of France (Hodder & Stoughton)

1967:  Harold F. Hutchinson - King Henry V (The John Day Company)

1968:  C.T. Allmand - Henry V (The Historical Association)

1972:  Peter Earle - The Life and Times of Henry V (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)

1975:  Margaret Wade Labarge - Henry V. The Cautious Conqueror (Secker & Warburg)

1985:  G.L. Harriss - Henry V. The Practice of Kingship (Alan Sutton)

1987:  Desmond Seward - Henry V as Warlord (Sidgwick & Jackson)

1992:  Christopher Allmand - Henry V (Methuen London)

2004:  Keith Dockray - Henry V (Tempus Publishing)

2009:  Ian Mortimer - 1415. Henry V's Year of Glory (The Bodley Head)

2015:  Teresa Cole - Henry V. The Life of a Warrior King (Amberley Publishing) 

I also have 25 Novels on Henry V's reign, which, not surprisingly, tend to concentrate on the Agincourt campaign. One of these, Monmouth Harry by A.M. Maughan (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), I first read as an impressionable teenager - it got me 'hooked' for evermore on both the king and Agincourt.