Tag: 19th century

Day 990: Cripps the Carrier

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Cover for Cripps the CarrierAlthough Cripps the Carrier has behind it a serious adventure plot, it is mostly a comedy of rustic characters in a rural countryside around Oxford. One of these characters is Zachary Cripps, an honest, god-fearing carrier of goods, who acts as a deux ex machina.

But the novel begins with the disappearance of Grace, the beloved young daughter of Squire Oglander. No one even knows she is gone when Hetty Cripps, coming along by a deserted quarry with an evil reputation, sees some men burying a woman. It is a freezing night, and by the time the weather has let up enough to dig her up, the girl’s face has been smashed by the rocks. But the body that is buried has a mass of hair that appears to be Grace’s.

So, Grace is presumed dead, and her elderly father is stricken with grief. Only her suitor, Russel Overshot, won’t believe she is dead.

We soon learn that she is not dead. She is hidden away and believes she is following her father’s orders. Who is keeping Grace, though, and why?

There is a lot to enjoy in this novel—some rustic humor, some adventure, some danger, a dastardly villain, and some likable characters. Until recently, of R. D. Blackmore’s novels, I had only read Lorna Doone, but I enjoyed reading this, and I will continue to seek out more Blackmore.

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Day 985: That Lass o’Lowrie’s

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Cover for That Lass O'LowriesThat Lass o’Lowrie’s is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s first novel, written in the style of Realism. It is set in a Lancashire mining town and features a lot of Northern dialect.

The lass in question is Joan Lowrie, a miner’s daughter. She is a tall, strong, proud woman who has survived years of abuse at the hands of her father. At the beginning of the novel, she dresses partly in men’s clothing and works in the mine as a pit girl.

She attracts the attention of a young mining engineer, Derrick, and his friend Paul Grace, a curate. Later, Derrick finds her injured by her father and helps her, after which she promises to pay him back for his help. When Derrick has a dispute with Lowrie, who would like to revenge himself by ambushing Derrick, she follows Derrick home in the dark every night to protect him.

Grace himself is in love with the rector’s daughter, Anice. But Paul Grace is small and unprepossessing and doesn’t hold out much hope. He also has problems being accepted by the miners, who distrust clerics and think he is too small and refined to heed.

This novel deals with the difficulties of the miners’ lives and of their grievances against the owners. Although it sympathizes with them, it’s true that the only bad men in the novel are Lowrie and his buddies, as well as one son of an owner, who debauches a foolish girl that Joan befriends. It is in taking care of this girl’s child that Joan begins to want to learn more womanly ways and arts.

This novel provides some interest, but it is not one of Burnett’s best. The dialect can get old. Unlike the other books in dialect I’ve read recently, the dialect is not confined to minor characters, since Joan is from a poor background (although it’s easier to understand than Walter Scott’s Scottish dialect). The only relief we get from it is from the upper-class characters, Derrick, Grace, and Anice.

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Day 977: Far From the Madding Crowd

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Cover for Far From the Madding CrowdBest Book of the Week!
I had to laugh at the blurb on my old 1960 paperback copy of Far From the Madding Crowd. It says, “She was a wanton who needed taming.” I think that says a lot more about 1960 than it does about Thomas Hardy’s novel.

Bathsheba Everdene is not a wanton, but she is a spirited, beautiful young woman. We first see her from the eyes of Gabriel Oak, a farmer and sheep breeder, as she moves house to live with her aunt. He observes that she is vain, but she takes his fancy. Soon, he proposes marriage.

Bathsheba is not interested. Still, Gabriel has fallen in love with her and stays in love. Soon, in a horrible mishap, Gabriel loses all his sheep and has to sell his farm for debts. His first thought is relief that she didn’t have to be brought low by his sudden poverty.

By this time, Bathsheba has left the area. When Gabriel is hired as a shepherd, he finds himself working for her, as she has inherited a substantial farm from her uncle. Soon, she has dismissed the thieving bailiff and put Gabriel in his place.

The bulk of the plot of this novel is about Bathsheba’s relationships with three different men—her growing friendship with Gabriel; the obsession Farmer Boldwood has for her, which is provoked by an act of mischief; and her own infatuation with Sergeant Troy, a liar and womanizer.

Far From the Madding Crowd is the first of Hardy’s Wessex novels, and it is much sunnier than any of the others. That is not to say it is light-hearted. It has many dark threads—Farmer Boldwood’s fetishist obsession, Gabriel’s ruin for a freakish reason, the fate of Fanny Robin, a supposed suicide, and a murder. Victorians would have categorized this novel as sensationalist.

With Tess of the D’Urbervilles, this is one of my favorite Hardy novels. I love its depictions of English rural life and customs of the times. I think Bathsheba is an interesting heroine and Gabriel a fine hero. I have been meaning to reread this novel since I saw the new movie last year (good, but not up to the Julie Christie classic), and I’m happy to have finally done it. Also, this is one of the few remaining books left on my current Classics Club list.

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Day 976: The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

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Cover for The Wicked BoyDuring a scorching 1895 July in East London, Robert Coombes murdered his mother while she was sleeping. He and his younger brother Nattie continued to live in the house for ten days with their mother locked in her bedroom, decaying. They hocked items from the house for money and attended a cricket game and a play. They told neighbors and relatives their mother had gone to Liverpool to visit her sister. They invited a laborer named John Fox to live with them, and they all slept downstairs in the parlor. Their father was away at sea at the time.

When the boys’ Aunt Emily forced her way into the house and found the body, Robert told her that his mother had beaten Nattie and that Nattie had asked Robert to kill her when he gave the signal. This story later seemed to have been forgotten, and Nattie testified against Robert in trial.

This crime was shocking to the Victorians, and there were many theories about it, from the morally debilitating effects of the penny dreadfuls Robert loved to ideas about children’s innate base instincts that must be covered over by civilizing influences. No one really knows why Robert killed his mother, but journalist and writer Kate Summerscale has her ideas.

link to NetgalleySummerscale was able to follow Robert’s movements to Broadmoor Asylum after his committal and traced his career in World War I as an instrumentalist and stretcher bearer. At first I wondered where the epilogue was going but figured it was connected with the opening of the novel, about a fleeing boy.

I found this book very interesting. Although most of it focuses on the crime and trial, I found this story of a murderer’s redemption satisfying.

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Day 971: Basil

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Cover for BasilSuch a deal. Last spring I purchased the collected works of several writers from Delphi Classics in e-book form. I made my choices from authors whose works I thought may not all be available in hardcover, which I prefer. Wilkie Collins was one of them, although I already own copies of several of his novels.

I also decided to tackle these works in the order in which they appear in each collection, which is often in order of publication. That may not have been the best idea, because in some cases, although not all, it subjects me first to the novels that are, shall we say, less polished. In the case of Collins, I found his first novel, Antonina, unreadable. It is his only historical novel, set in Roman times, and it features turgid prose and overblown pseudo-archaic dialogue.

Basil is his second novel, and here he gets right into the sensationalist fiction for which he was known. The first thing I want to say about it is that usually I try not to judge an older book by modern standards, especially in regard to customs or mores. But I am going to have to address this subject a bit later on. First, I’ll tell you what the book is about.

Basil is the younger son of a very proud, wealthy upper-class man. Basil has always striven to please rather than to disappoint his father, unlike his older brother. But one day Basil decides on a whim to take an omnibus home. Such daring! On the bus, he sees a beautiful young woman and falls madly in love with her. To his dismay, he learns she is the daughter of a linen draper named Sherwin. Even though Basil knows his father will never approve, he enters into a secret marriage with Margaret. However, he agrees with her father’s demand that he live apart from her for a year, never to see her alone during that time.

Although any child could see through the cupidity behind this demand and understand that it was suspicious, Basil goes through with it. He marries Margaret when he has known her about a week and spoken to her only a handful of times.

Already, before the plot even thickened, I was close to putting the book down. I don’t like femme fatale plots, and it was clear this was going to be one. Collins does not even attempt to fool us that this is going to come out well, because Basil says at the beginning that he is writing the manuscript while living alone and in disgrace.

But here is where I might be judging the book based on modern ethos. What occurs between Margaret and Basil gives me the creeps. He follows her home from the bus and bribes her servant to tell him when she is going out. He ambushes her on her walk. Then after one conversation, he arranges the marriage with her father. If you’re thinking that marriages at that time were all arranged, it is clear by Mr. Sherwin’s reaction that this was a very unusual situation. That he leaps to take advantage only shows his greed. Basically, I had a hard time not thinking of Basil as a stalker, when I believe we’re supposed to be impressed by his virtue in offering marriage rather than something else. A stalker and an idiot.

Then Mr. Mannion returns and things get a little more interesting. Mr. Mannion is Mr. Sherwin’s confidential secretary, who has been doing business for him in France. Mr. Mannion is described as a handsome man with a wooden face. He seems to be a person originally from a higher class. It is clear to the reader that something is going on among Mannion, Margaret, and Mrs. Sherwin that Basil doesn’t notice.

The novel becomes darker and more complicated than I anticipated. Does this save it? Well, it kept me reading, but no, not really. Collins hasn’t yet figured out how to structure a narrative. He includes pages of fretting that are supposed to make us sympathize with Basil but instead are annoying. For example, after the main action ends in the wilds of Cornwall, he includes several letters. This technique allows him a bit of a cliffhanger (in more ways than one) while also leaving room to tie up loose ends. But the last three or four pages are almost entirely unnecessary, and they seem to go on and on.

My conclusion? Read some Wilkie Collins but not this one.

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Day 965: Strange Company

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Cover for Strange CompanyI read about half of Strange Company but decided not to finish it. It just wasn’t the book for me. I thought it might be interesting because it is about Native Americans during the Civil War.

Roderick “Dhu” Walker is a member of a group of the Cherokee Nation called the Pins, for pins they wear under their lapels. They are traditional Cherokees on the side of the Union who begged the government to protect them from the Confederates under the terms of their treaty. The government did nothing, though, and the Confederacy has forced the Pins to fight on its side.

Before a battle in Missouri, some of the Pins decide not to fight but instead to kill Confederate soldiers during the battle. Dhu kills a couple men but mostly because they get in his way while he’s trying to escape. Later, though, he is captured by the Confederates as a deserter.

As a prisoner, Dhu is teamed up with a Union soldier and forced to fight him at the instigation of Captain Gordon Early. This amusement is only stopped by the intervention of the Colonel. When the Union soldier, Ben Lacey, tells Dhu that Early is off to escort a load of gold from Mexico, Dhu talks Ben into escaping with the idea that, along with some other Cherokees, they’ll intercept the shipment.

The novel moves along fast enough but does little else. There seems to be no idea of characterization. Sentences are short and choppy. Although the writing is grammatical, it is not polished by any means. Any metaphors are clichés. In short, the novel is not very good. If you are interested in reading a Western, you’ll be much better off with one of the “Related Posts” at the bottom of this post.

Disclosure: This eBook was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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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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