Tag: 19th century

Day 959: The Perpetual Curate

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Cover for The Perpetual CurateBest Book of the Week!
After the failure of Mr. Proctor in The Rector, the new rector, Mr. Morgan, has arrived to take charge of Carlingford Church. But he is almost immediately offended by the activities of the Perpetual Curate of St. Roque’s. Failing any leadership from the first two rectors but with their permission, the young Perpetual Curate has established a place of worship and a school in the poor area of what Mr. Morgan views as his own district. Now the curate refuses to give up these activities.

If you’ve read any of the earlier books in the Chronicles of Carlingford, you’ve had glimpses of the Perpetual Curate, Frank Wentworth, coming and going from the green door on Grange Lane, where the Wodehouses live. He and Miss Wodehouse have been working together on their charities, and he and Lucy Wodehouse are innocently in love. This love remains unspoken, for a Perpetual Curate cannot afford to marry.

The curate’s poor but apparently blissful and blameless life is first disturbed by the arrival of his aunts, just before Easter. His aunts have the gift of a living to bestow, which if given to Frank Wentworth would allow him to marry, and it will soon be available. But the commanding Miss Leonora Wentworth has religious views that are much more stern than Frank Wentworth’s, and he knows she will disapprove of the lilies on the altar and the surplice he wears in conducting his services. Frank’s adoring yet foolish (and irritating) Aunt Dora has supposed that Miss Leonora will be swayed in Frank’s favor if they attend his Easter service, but Frank knows it will not work that way, and it doesn’t.

Then Frank is suddenly besieged on all sides. Miss Wodehouse has asked him to secretly take in a lodger, a man who seems to be disreputable. Talk has just begun about this when Frank makes the mistake of escorting Rosa Elsworthy, the shopkeeper’s niece, down Grange Lane to her home one evening. Her foolish aunt and uncle make too much of this, even though he tells them sharply not to let her walk around alone at night. Then he is called home unexpectedly to try to talk his older brother Gerald out of resigning his post and turning to Rome.

This novel has some of the most endearing characters I have encountered so far in Oliphant’s work. Frank Wentworth at first believes naively that, having lived and worked blamelessly in Carlingford for years, people will understand his character, which is charitable and upright. But as circumstances build against him, even his friends have moments of doubt.

As a secondary plot, we occasionally visit Mrs. Morgan. She has waited ten years to marry Mr. Morgan and is disappointed to find him capable of pettiness and malice in regard to Frank Wentworth.

I just loved this novel. Mrs. Oliphant is able to create great suspense over a conjunction of trivial incidents that make Frank Wentworth look guilty of misbehavior. She introduces characters who are lovable, funny, and irritating, some all at the same time. This is another great novel from Mrs. Oliphant.

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Day 951: Christowell, A Dartmoor Tale

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Cover for ChristowellR. D. Blackmore is best known as the author of Lorna Doone. I found that novel so enchanting that recently I decided to look for others by Blackmore. He is known, like Thomas Hardy, for his depictions of country life, his West England settings, and his personification of the countryside. But unlike Hardy, he is known for adventure plots.

Blackmore was a horticulturalist and fruit grower, as is his main character “Captain Larks,” in Christowell. Captain Larks is a middle-aged man living in retirement with his daughter Rose. Although they nominally live in the village of Christowell, Captain Larks only admits a few chosen visitors to his property, across the drawbridge over the Christowell River.

But the outside world is about to come in anyway, first through an accident. Dickie Touchwood, a young sportsman who is out ratting on Dartmoor, falls over a cliff and through one of Captain Lark’s greenhouses. Nursed by Rose, he decides he is in love with her. Another young man, Jack Westcombe, meets them while fishing in the river and also falls in love with Rose.

Captain Larks has some kind of shadow over his past to do with when he was in the military. Because of this, he refuses to meet Colonel Westcombe, Jack’s father, even though he clearly knows and likes him. Colonel Westcombe also seems at a loss for how to treat Captain Larks.

But the Captain has an enemy he does not even suspect. A red-faced man named Mr. Gaston is having him watched and has stolen some mail directed to him.

All of this activity is connected with Captain Larks’s former life. He finds that, instead of avoiding the issue of his past, the truth of it must come out.

Although there are many scenes of the rural life of Christowell, including a fascinating treetop dance, this novel also has plenty of adventure, featuring a dangerous housebreaker living on the moor, a threatened kidnapping and murder, a chase across the moor, and a horrendous storm. Some vernacular made it occasionally hard to understand, but in general I found it enjoyable.

Unfortunately, most of Blackmore’s books are out of print. I purchased an old used book in preference to reading a print on demand book. While looking for a copy, I noticed that the print on demand publishers have found a way to make more money by breaking up old novels into several volumes, often unnecessarily.

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Day 943: The True Heart

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Cover for The True HeartThe True Heart is the book chosen for my Classics Club spin on Monday. I’m reviewing it this week because I have Literary Wives on the same day. It is the first book I’ve read by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and it is an interesting mix.

On the surface, it is a simple tale about the efforts of a naive young woman to win her love. But it has allegorical overtones and Warner admitted that it is her retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Let me just say that stories of women who labor long and hard to prove their love for men (and, actually, the other way around) have never been my favorite.

Sukey Bond, straight out of an orphanage school, is sent to work on a farm as a servant girl. Her escort part of the way is Mrs. Seabourn, a clergyman’s wife, and even though Sukey is afraid of the unknown, she is sure that Mrs. Seabourn would not take her anywhere bad.

On the Noman’s farm, she meets Eric, who appears to be another farm worker, but no one seems to mind if he doesn’t work. Sukey is very naive and inexperienced, and she is surprised when Eric seems to like her. She doesn’t notice how he is different than the other workers. They begin meeting each other away from the farm and decide they are in love.

But one day Eric has an epileptic fit after he sees Sukey kill a chicken. It is not until then that Sukey learns Eric is considered an “idiot.” (He is odd, certainly, but doesn’t really seem mentally lacking so much as on another plane of existence.) It is also not until then that Sukey learns Eric is Mrs. Seabourn’s son. This puts him well above her in social station, but she thinks Mrs. Seabourn would be happy that Eric has her to take care of him. So, when Mrs. Seabourn comes to take Eric away, Sukey quits her job and follows.

But Mrs. Seabourn is not the person Sukey thinks she is. She is ashamed of Eric and horrified and angry when Sukey presents herself. She sends Sukey away, and the girl is penniless and friendless until she finds work at another farm.

At the home of her new employer, she hears a garbled account of Mrs. Seabourn being snubbed by a “princess” at some event. She decides that if she were to go to Queen Victoria and get Mrs. Seabourn a bible from her, Mrs. Seabourn might be grateful and relent. So, she quits her job again and is off to London.

I hardly know what to think about this novel. On the one hand, it seems unlikely that events, which could go so horribly for Sukey, depend on her constantly receiving help from unexpected people. Too, it was difficult for me to imagine a person could be so simple-minded and naive. (Of course, I assumed she was a little older than she actually was until they told her age at the end.) On the other hand, I don’t think we’re supposed to take this apparently simple tale at face value.

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Day 941: Let Me Tell You about a Man I Knew

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Cover for Let Me Tell You About a Man I KnewLet me first get this over with. I have rarely encountered a book title that seems so inappropriate to the actual book. This title, which seems so similar to the opening of a 60’s Ray Charles song, is for a historical novel about a fictional relationship between an ordinary woman and Vincent Van Gogh.

That over with, the book itself is another matter. Susan Fletcher’s Corrag was one of my favorite books a few years ago. Even though I have missed some of her others, I was excited to hear about this one. It did not disappoint.

Jeanne Trabuc is the wife of Charles, who runs the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy. She finds herself in a lonely time of life. Her best friend has left town, and her boys have gone off to lead their own lives. She and her husband sleep separately, and she feels unloved. He has many rules about how the house should be run. She feels separate from the other women in the village, whom she feels gossip too much.

link to NetgalleyThere have been no arrivals at the asylum in years, so Jeanne’s interest is piqued when she hears a Dutch painter is coming. Charles does not allow her near the asylum, but she sees the man in the olive orchard painting and begins talking to him. Slowly, she finds herself wondering how she became what she is, instead of the adventurous girl she was.

This novel is more about Jeanne than Van Gogh, but it is touching and compelling. Jeanne Trabuc and her husband were actual people that Van Gogh painted, but Fletcher tells us that the lives she has created for them within the novel are entirely fictional. This novel is about the silences that can grow between people.

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Day 940: Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland, of Sunnyside

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Cover for Passages in the LifeI have mentioned before that Margaret Oliphant was one of the most popular novelists of her time, but only a few of her novels are easily available except in print by demand. So, her complete works was one of the collections I selected from Delphi Classics in e-book form.

I decided to read the works in order of their appearance in the collection, and this novel is the first, published in 1849. Like the others I have read, it is a domestic novel, about events in the lives of ordinary people. It has a few light overtones of a more sensational genre, however.

Margaret Maitland is a spinster when she takes on the charge of raising a young orphan, Grace Maitland. Since her mother’s death, Grace has been in charge of an aunt, but Margaret’s friend thinks she will do better with Margaret, and Grace’s aunt has no objection. So, Margaret takes young Grace and frankly loves her at first sight. Grace lives happily at Mistress Maitland’s home of Sunnyside and spends a lot of her time with Margaret’s niece Mary and nephew Claud. Margaret’s brother Claud is a minister, and Margaret and her family are strict Scottish Presbyterians.

When Grace is a young woman, though, her aunt, Mrs. Lennox, demands that she return to live with her in Edinburgh. Grace does not have fond memories of Mrs. Lennox and does not want to go, but Margaret urges her toward obedience and hopes that things will be better for her than Grace expects. There have been rumors that Grace is an heiress, but no one at Sunnyside has put much store in them.

For some time, all we hear from Grace are her letters. Her family keeps her isolated from other people, never letting her attend events but telling others she is an invalid. When Claud, who is at school in Edinburgh, calls on her, he is first told she is not at home and later treated shamefully.

There is other drama closer to home, because Margaret’s niece Mary is being courted by Allan Elphinstone, young Lilliesleaf. His mother is looking higher for him than Mary, though, and encourages him to associate with the nearby gentry, where he gets into bad company. Mary won’t have him, therefore, and Margaret can only agree, for a similar situation in her youth brought her to her solitary state. Margaret thinks Allan can improve, though, and he sets out to try to do so. A subtitle on some editions of “Lilliesleaf” leads me to suppose that the plot about Mary and Allan was supposed to be the main story, but I was more interested in Grace’s predicament.

This is an enjoyable novel with likable characters, even though some of its attitudes seem very dated. One difficulty I had with it, though, is that it is written in Scots dialect. The narration by Mistress Maitland isn’t difficult to understand, but some of the country folk use expressions with which I am unfamiliar, so I think I missed most of the humor of the novel. In addition, this e-book was almost certainly machine read from an old manuscript and there are many mistakes, especially in words where old-style typography had ligatures, or connected letters. The combination of the dialect, which had words I didn’t understand, with the many typos made the text difficult. If you want to read this, you might try finding an old used book instead of an e-book or print on demand edition (which I assume would have the same problems).

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Day 927: The Casebook of Carnaki the Ghost Finder

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Cover for the Casebook of CarnakiW. H. Hodgson’s sleuth Carnaki is in answer to the fad for detective stories that came about after the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories. But Carnaki is not a regular detective. He is a psychic detective who investigates hauntings. The Casebook of Carnaki the Ghost Finder is a collection of nine Carnaki stories.

These stories all follow the same format. Carnaki summons a group of friends to his house for dinner. He speaks very little before and during dinner and will not talk about what he’s been doing. After dinner, he relaxes into his favorite chair and relates his latest case. This format is very common in earlier genre mysteries. Unfortunately, it removes some of the immediacy of the story.

These stories are straight wonder tales. There is no attempt made at characterization, of Carnaki or anyone else. The stories are simply meant to amaze and puzzle and so have more in common with earlier gothic stories than with Sherlock Holmes. The puzzle of whether the mystery will be of human or occult causes is probably the most interesting part of the stories.

I actually found one of these stories to be quite chilling. That was “The Gateway of the Monster.” In that story, Carnaki is called to investigate the Grey Room in a very old house. Although the door of the room is locked every night, it is slammed continually all night long. Each morning, the bedclothes are found jerked off the bed. Since three people were killed there years before, no one has slept in the room.

Unfortunately, Hodgson cheats by waiting until the end to tell us a key piece of the story. Also, this haunting, along with some of the others, runs more along the lines of something like The Castle of Otranto than a more modern ghost story, and I find things scarier that are more feasible.

In “The Thing Invisible,” Carnaki is summoned to figure out how the butler could have been struck with an ancient dagger when there was no one around him and he was in full view of everyone. This story is marred, too, because one person there understood what had happened and would never have summoned Carnaki.

Still, this book is full of haunted castles, spectral horses and pigs, a ship pursued by strange weather, and other wonders. It can be quickly read and should offer most folks some pleasure on a rainy afternoon (or a dark and stormy night).

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Day 911: A Place Called Winter

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Cover for A Place Called WinterI read A Place Called Winter for my Walter Scott Prize project, the second book I’ve read for the 2016 list. Like one of the other books I read recently for that project, Arctic Summer, it has as a major theme the main character’s homosexuality. However, I found myself feeling much closer to the characters and more interested in the plot of this novel than I did for Arctic Summer.

At the beginning of the novel, Harry Cane is being treated, or rather mistreated, in an asylum in Canada. Shortly thereafter, he is transferred to an experimental center that treats the patients much more humanely. We understand that Harry has committed a crime, but we don’t know what it is. Between short chapters about his life at the center, we learn what brought him there.

The story of Harry’s life begins when his wealthy father dies. His brother Jack is still in school, and Harry undertakes his education and expenses. Harry is a man of no occupation who feels that he would like one, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. He feels vaguely that he would like to work an estate or a farm but thinks he has to be born to it. A shy man with an occasional stammer, he likes reading and horses. Eventually, he marries a shy woman, Winnie, who informs him on their wedding night that she loves someone else. Nevertheless, he cares for his wife and loves his daughter.

An investment recommendation by his brother-in-law takes a large part of Harry’s inheritance, and Harry and his family are forced to move in with his in-laws. He is an innocent-minded person, so it is not until he meets an actor named Browning that he realizes he is homosexual. He begins an affair with Browning, but then disaster strikes. His affair is exposed to his in-laws by a blackmailer and Harry is forced out of the family. Even his brother Jack, whom he loves, is pressured by his wife not to correspond with him.

Now totally alone, Harry emigrates to Canada and ends up in Saskatchewan, which is just being opened to settlement by the arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway. On shipboard, he meets Troels Munck, who finds him a position where he can learn farming and then helps him purchase a homestead. Munck, though, is a bully, and from the moment Harry meets him, we know that relationship will not end well.

link to NetgalleyHarry finds that a farmer’s life suits him. He settles in, works hard, and makes friends. But we know where he is at the beginning of the book, so the tension builds as we find out how he got there.

Although the time spent to get him to Canada, where the book really captured me, seems a little long, by the time he gets there, we know Harry very well. He is a kind and polite person, but he earns our respect when he finds his niche. Eventually, I became deeply involved in his story. It was also interesting in its details of early homesteading and treatment of mental illness.

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Day 910: The Sisters Brothers

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Cover for The Sisters BrothersThe Sisters Brothers is a book I read for my Walter Scott Prize project, but it also turns out to qualify for my Man Booker Prize project. It is a peculiar novel indeed. It is blurbed as hilarious. I did not find it so. Satirical, maybe; dark, yes; picaresque, definitely.

It  is 1851, and the Sisters brothers are on their way from Oregon City to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. They are hired killers who work for a man known as the Commodore. Charlie is the Commodore’s man, but Eli is tired of the life and wants to own a store.

This is definitely a road trip novel, and on the road, Eli and Charlie encounter many odd people. Most of them they deal with brutally. Eli and Charlie are themselves almost self-parodies, as is their mode of speech.

Although there is an underlying plot, the novel is a series of episodes, where the brothers encounter one situation after another and get out of them more or less fantastically. There is a bit of dark humor in the dialogue, but unlike some other reviewers, I did not find the novel funny. I was interested in Eli’s mental journey, but after he and Charlie blew away a bunch of people, not so much.

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Day 907: Victorian Fairy Tales

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Cover for Victorian Fairy TalesApparently, in Victorian times there was a fashion for fairy tales. Not only did some writers, especially of children’s books, concentrate on them, but many writers of other types of works wrote them as well. Although Victorian Fairy Tales is published as a scholarly work with notes and essays, the tales are well worth reading by anyone, and many of them are by well-known writers.

My favorite tale was “The Rose and the Ring,” by William Makepeace Thackeray. It is about a couple of usurping kings and the confusion that results when an enchanted ring and a rose that each make the wearer irresistible to the opposite sex are traded around among the characters. The story is very funny, with different types of humor to appeal to both adults and children, as well as silly names and repetition, which children love. The pictures by Thackeray from the original are wonderful.

“Prince Prigio” by Andrew Lang is another funny tale, about a prince who is so smart that he annoys everyone. Another outstanding tale is by E. Nesbit, “Melisande,” about a princess who is cursed by a wicked fairy to be bald. Her father gives her a wish, and as happens in fairy tales, she doesn’t wish wisely.

Other favorite stories are “The Queen Who Flew” by Ford Madox Ford and “The Reluctant Dragon” by Kenneth Grahame. “The Reluctant Dragon” and “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde are the only stories in the volume I have read before, although I vaguely remember there being a copy of “The Little Lame Prince” by Dinah Mulock Craik around our house.

There is much to enjoy in this book, both for children and adults. I thought a couple of the stories were a bit ethereal and symbolic to be enjoyed much by children (or by me), but most of them were fun to read.

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Day 905: The Rector and The Doctor’s Family

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Cover for The Rector and The Doctor's FamilyThe Rector and The Doctor’s Family is in fact a collection of two novellas in Mrs. Oliphant’s Chronicles of Carlingford, the first two works, I believe. Out of order, I have already reviewed two of this series—Miss Marjoribanks, which I found delightful, and Salem Chapel, which was funny and moving. Fortunately, although these novels have some characters in common, they don’t depend upon one another except for incidentals and the occasional reappearance of characters.

The Rector, a very short work that is mostly a character study, begins on a comic note but then becomes more serious. Before Mr. Proctor, the new rector, arrives, everyone wonders whether he will be high church or low church. Upon his arrival, all Carlingford finds that they can’t tell what he is. Instead, they wonder if he will marry Miss Wodehouse.

Mr. Proctor knows nothing of women and is upset by the notion that he might marry, even though he first learns of this idea from his elderly mother. Soon, though, there is something more to concern him. Called in to comfort a dying parishioner, Mr. Proctor finds himself useless. His 15 years at All Souls College have not prepared him for certain of his duties. All his essays on religious doctrine are no help. Mr. Proctor is appalled, and doesn’t know what to do, and he is humbled when he sees that the young Perpetual Curate does.

The main character of The Doctor’s Family is young Dr. Edward Rider, who is trying to build a practice in Carlingford. He is a little bitter because his poor financial position obliged him the year before to give up the idea of marrying Bessie Christian, but instead he gained a more unwelcome burden. His shiftless older brother Fred returned from Australia five months earlier and has been lounging around the doctor’s home drinking and smoking ever since. Edward Rider has been all the more resentful because Fred’s behavior apparently cost him his previous practice.

To this unhappy household some unexpected visitors arrive. Edward is shocked to learn that Fred left behind him in Australia a wife, Susan, and three children. They have journeyed to find Fred, accompanied by Susan’s astonishing sister Netty. Edward is immediately attracted by Netty, who is small and dynamic. Fred’s wife Susan is lethargic and stupid and quickly shows a disposition to blame her family’s situation on Edward. Netty removes the household to its own lodgings and runs it single-handedly, taking on all the responsibilities of the family for the two lazy and irresponsible parents.

Now Edward has rid himself of his brother, but he haunts their household to see Netty and falls in love with her. But Netty won’t relinquish her duties. Who will do them if she doesn’t? she reasons. And she knows that Edward won’t be able to tolerate the situation with his brother’s family.

This little novel shows such a knowledge of human foibles. I was completely captivated by the story of Edward and Netty, even while realizing that Netty would not be thanked for her efforts. I was also not at all sure how the story would end, because Oliphant often surprises us.

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