{reviews} her father's name & the golden child

I have just read two really enjoyable books in a row, and it would certainly be remiss not to share these. They were quite different books, but both made me laugh and reminded me why I love books.

Florence Marryat Her Father's Name (1876)

Leona Lacoste was a woman who would never give in—until she died.

I chose this one because I read a tantalising blog post on it by Catherine Pope, who has published the Victorian Secrets edition of the text. The novel is available free (e.g., archive.org), but this edition is well worth having - actually, I'd say indispensable - for the absolutely wonderful Introduction by Greta Depledge, in which she provides all sorts of contextualization on the author and the varied and often kooky themes of the novel. 

Basically, if you like 'sensational' novels and you admire a strong heroine (with admirable bosoms, "body supple as a cat-o'-mountain's" and "eyes of burnished bronze, like... the eyes of a spotted panther in repose") who scorns the conventions of polite society in order to escape a fate worse than death ("Bah! In a country where the girls marry at fourteen! But were she twelve it would make no difference. She is old enough for me." Ew.) AND clear her father's name of a heinous accusation, then this is for you.

"I am quite determined, father. I shall never marry. Marriage is slavery, and I was born free. I will never be such a fool as to barter my birthright for any man."

But wait, there's more: cross-dressing...

She commenced to stroll leisurely in the direction of the cabin as she spoke, and as Valera followed her, he could not help wondering at the easy grace with which she filled her part, and the admirable disguise it was, to which, however, the effeminacy of many of the men in those southern climates much assisted her.

... hysteria, sweaty sickbeds, effeminacy, a touch of Sapphism on the chaise-longue, duelling, travel, disguises, faint downy moustaches, guitar playing, ethnic stereotyping ("I shall not faint, doctor, I have too much European blood in me for that") and really tall women who smoke cigars. What more could you ask? 

This is my second Marryat, and I'm loving her more and more. I previously reviewed The Blood of the Vampire (1897), which was one of my 'best of 2012'. 

*

My second recommendation is by an author who made it onto my 'best of 2013', although I never managed actually to review that book. That was Penelope Fitzgerald's The Bookshop (which all lovers of independent bookshops should read: what could possibly go wrong with one woman's ambition to bring a bookshop to her country town?). 

I'll try to do better with my second Fitzgerald: Penelope Fitzgerald's The Golden Child (1977):

       

'Three minutes to go... We are all quite clear, I take it. Slight accidents, fainting, trampling under foot — the emergency First Aid posts are indicated in your orders for the day; complaints, show sympathy; disorder, contain; increased disorder, communicate directly with my office; wild disorder, the police, to be avoided if possible. Crush barriers to be kept in place at all entries at all times. No lingering.'

What made me love this? I did wonder if my list of things that I love might only be applicable to me, but I hope not! The British Museum, a golden treasure from a lost civilization, a group of highly eccentric curators and academics, a quick trip to Russia, and a murder or two. No, surely there's universal appeal there?

Half over the sill, the eminent maniac was holding Untermensch by his two thin wrists, hanging him down outside while he sawed the wrists to and fro on the frame. The Professor’s voice came only faintly: ‘Spare me! I alone can read Garamantian!’

Waring Smith is the naive but practical assistant curating a huge British Museum exhibition (inspired by the Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition of 1972) of golden treasures from the mysterious civilisation that was Garamantia in Africa. 

Few know anything about the artifacts which were discovered by Sir William Simpkin many, many years ago: there is Professor Untermensch (Fitzgerald's names are brilliant) who has written the definitive study of the Garamantian script, Garamantischengeheimschriftendechiffrierkunst; there is "Tite-Live Rochegrosse-Bergson from the Sorbonne - the distinguished anthropologist, anti-structuralist, mythologist and paroemiographer" (anti-structuralist - still giggling about that; he also believes in "the irresistible impulse to stop thinking at all"); and there is, of course, Sir William himself, who refuses to visit the exhibition. Is this because of an alleged curse? The museum's Director sees the exhibition as a cash-cow, and Sir William as another source of funds which can all go towards his love of French "dix-septième" objets: "He particularly hated Oriental rugs, which took up an immoderate amount of display space." 

But then things start to go awry and Waring Smith is dragged in well over his head:

And the Museum, slumbrous by day, sleepless by night, began to seem to him a place of dread. Apart from the two recent deaths, how many violent ways there were in the myriad rooms of getting rid of a human being! The dizzy stairs, the plaster-grinders in the cast room, the poisons of conservation, the vast incinerators underground! And the whole strange nature of Museum work, preserving the treasures of the dead for the curiosity of the living, filled him... with fear.

The Golden Child is black humour at its best - gentle, ridiculous and wonderfully well written. 

{review} variations on the great game

A mound of unreviewed books teeters precariously on the edge of my desk, their teeter aided by one of my little helpers who also likes to sit in judgment on my desk.

George

Here are three vaguely themed on the Great Game - espionage. 

Mary Stewart Airs Above the Ground (1965)

(This is the cover of the copy from my university library, 

donated by a former Professor of English).

Yes, I have been guilty of suggesting that all Mary Stewart books are alike. But, don't get me wrong, the reliable alikeness of their travel-mystery-romance is the drawcard. Airs Above the Ground did not start prepossessingly: I don't particularly like books about horses (except the Jill books by Ruby Ferguson: but that was way back in my 'pretend my bicycle is a horse' pre-teens, so that doesn't count...); I'm not particularly keen on blushing youths in adult books; there were also a fair few jibes aimed at plumper women. Stewart heroines do not carry a spare ounce, of course. My private theory is that declining cream cakes explains why they often feel weak enough to express thoughts of the sort of "it helps occasionally to be made to feel that it is little short of marvellous for anything so rare, so precious, and so fragile to compete with the tough world of men." [Short pause while I barf into my rubbish bin]. Interestingly, this heroine - Vanessa - is a veterinary surgeon, although she dumped a career for marriage. Anyway - anyway - the plot soon starts barrelling along with mistaken identities, circus performers, dancing horses (Xenophon gets a look-in!), jewels, castles, the Cold War, and a lot of treacherous Austrian mountain scenery. There's even some sex. 

*

Kim Newman Anno Dracula (1992 [2011])

 

Anno Dracula is a Victorian 'Great Game'/fantasy/alternative history/thriller novel with a vampire twist. It's 1888 and Queen Victoria is married to Count Dracula. Vampires live openly in the community, and to get ahead in the new administration it is almost obligatory to undergo the transformation (as Inspector Lestrade has done). Those who disagree with the new movement have been sent to prison camps. Among their number is Sherlock Holmes, which provides a neat excuse for his absence from the scene during that most horrendous of crime sprees, the Jack the Ripper killings. This book cleverly blends history, alternative history and fiction. It is also very funny if you like Victorian in-jokes and references. Dr Jekyll and Dr Moreau are conducting experiments together (though Dr Jekyll is acting rather oddly); Professor Moriarty (obviously) heads up a huge criminal organisation with the aid of Raffles; Dr Seward, still pining for Lucy, runs a hospital/refuge for the East End poor with the assistance of our nearly 500 year old heroine Geneviève Dieudonné; Basil Hallward is sketching the vampire Prime Minister; everyone dreads the possibility that Tennyson might remain Poet Laureate for "dreary centuries. Egads, imagine Locksley Hall Six Hundred Years After"! Ruddigore was written to entertain vampires. Rupert of Hentzau, Joseph Merrick, Madame Corelli… This is a book with an excellent sense of history and of humour. In sum: hero-spy Charles Beauregard (of the Diogenes Club) and vampire-heroine Geneviève set out to sort out the Jack the Ripper crimes, but their investigation will bring them up against the greatest of ancient evils, Count Dracula himself. It's the first of a series in which its long-lived protagonists work on cases throughout the 20th century. Fun, but really perhaps a bit long. Annoying pedantic note: I suspect that, along the lines of anno domini, Anno requires the genitive of Dracula (which I'm guessing is Draculae); but I can see that's not so perky. 

*

P. D. Martin Body Count (2007)

P. D. Martin Hell's Fury (2012)

  

Body Count is procedural rather than espionage, but I'll squeeze it in. The heroine is an Australian behavioural analyst and cop in the serial killer unit at Quantico. I overestimated my ability to deal with women being kidnapped, raped, murdered and dumped, so this serial-killer book with an E.S.P. twist (the first of a series) didn't work for me. Personal judgement only here, obviously - it's an interesting concept. I have also read P. D. Martin's Hell's Fury, which I liked a lot more. The heroine of Hell's Fury is a real toughie who has survived a horrific experience while spying for the CIA. I thought the plotting of this book was well done, notably the slow revelation of the heroine's ordeal set against her struggle to rehabilitate herself. She is strong, clever and determined never to be a victim again, and her world is one where justice matters. This was a solid spy-action-mystery story. I found some of the dialogue a little stilted in places, but I'm keen to read the next one in the series (don't think it's out yet). P. D. Martin is an Australian author. 

If you liked these: well, my favourite espionage story set in a circus in the Cold War is Alistair McLean's Circus; the most memorable vampire book I've read recently is Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire {REVIEW}; and for decent CIA stuff it has to be anything by Charles McCarry. Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise has recently caused me to remember my resolution to re-read Helen MacInnes too.

{review} beautiful for ever

Helen Rappaport Beautiful For Ever: Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer (2010)

  

This is the first book that I've read by Helen Rappaport, but it most certainly will not be the last. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and quick read and - even better - it tied in really nicely with some other reading I've done. It's always good to add a few facts to fiction, I say. 

'How frequently we find that a slight blemish on the face, otherwise divinely beautiful, has occasioned a sad and solitary life of celibacy, unloved, unblessed, and ultimately unwept and unremembered.' [from a Madame Rachel advert, c.1859] 

Madame Rachel was an infamous purveyor of dubious potions and lotions to the well-heeled ladies of London. Her most famous beautification sell was 'enamelling' which involved coating her willing victims in Heaven knows what to make them all whitely stuccoed for - generally - the ball. But Madame Rachel had another lucrative sideline in fleecing sillier sorts of every penny they possessed. Whether she was merely facilitating the meetings of ladies with their paramours, or actually running a knock-shop, isn't entirely clear. Perhaps there are hints that she was helping ladies get rid of other embarrassing problems than just bad skin. Certainly she seemed to making ridiculous amounts of money simply from cosmetics that made one Beautiful For Ever (but, then, what's a pot of Crème de la Mer go for these days to an equally silly market? AUD$250 for 30mL). Oh, and then there was that nice source of income in allowing gentlemen to watch ladies receiving her full body Turkish bath services... 

Madame Rachel and the ‘before and after’ hard sell (source) 

This book is good on the sensational aspects of the various legal trials in which Madame Rachel and her victims became enmeshed. Rappaport also has a good handle on the less savoury aspects of Madame Rachel's own treatment by a anti-Semitic media and establishment. Other interesting themes weave through the biography: contemporary concerns regarding cosmetics and female amorality; debate surrounding the much-delayed Married Women's Property Act (why allow women to control their money when they just spent it running up huge bills at Madame Rachel?); contemporary bias towards women in court for any reason whatsoever. I particular liked Rappaport's use of the 'popular culture' ephemera (racy song, cartoons) surrounding Mme. Rachel's run-ins with the law. Mme. Rachel also featured in Wilkie Collins' Armadale (his 'Mother' Oldershaw is close-to-libellously based on Mme. Rachel) and there is a reference too in Mrs Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (one of my favourite sensational reads).

Rating: a very entertaining historical read, even more so if you love a good legal trial or two.

If you liked this... definitely Armadale. I can't remember why on earth I didn't review it when I read it a few years back, especially since it has the heroine-villain to end all heroine-villains in it. Teresa and Jenny at Shelf Love sum it up nicely.

{review} soulless

Gail Carriger Soulless [The Parasol Protectorate, Book 1] (2009)

He kissed as though he needed her to subsist. It was unbearably intimate. Worse than allowing one’s ankles to be seen.

This was fun. I read it on the plane to Europe, and it is perfect for that sort of ordeal - light and funny and rather silly. But! - if you don't like vampires, werewolves and anachronistic Victoriana, turn away now...

Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening. Private balls were never more than middling amusements for spinsters, and Miss Tarabotti was not the kind of spinster who could garner even that much pleasure from the event. To put the pudding in the puff: she had retreated to the library, her favorite sanctuary in any house, only to happen upon an unexpected vampire.

Alexia Tarabotti is a preternatural - she has no soul. This is a little tricky for her, although it is not causing her as much social difficulty as reaching a dangerously unmarriageable age for a young lady. Being soulless affords good protection against the vampires and werewolves who openly roam this alternate England where the supernatural mingle openly with the human population. Being a spinster is making her home life hellish. And then she discovers that someone is intent on destroying the fragile peace between the supernatural and human worlds...

She was quite uncomfortable, for corsets, bustles, and all other accoutrements of a lady’s appropriate dress were not conducive to lying, bound, on a hard floor. She shifted, sighed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but Lord Maccon, her current predicament, or Lord Akeldama’s safety. Which meant she could do nothing but reflect on the complex plight of her mama’s most recent embroidery project. This, in itself, was a worse torture than any her captors could devise.

This really is over-the-top silly; but an enjoyable read. The heroine is strong and independent of mind (and wields a mean parasol "with purple satin pansies... and buckshot in its silver tip"), and not averse to getting to (all sorts of) grips with the handsome Lord Maccon, sent by the supernatural side of the civil service to sort things out.

She could not restrain herself; she did so like it when the earl’s Highland lilt came out. It was currently her second favorite thing he did with his tongue.

If you liked this... it was like India Black {REVIEW and REVIEW} meets vampires. 
And (bonus!)... if you like retro things, Gail Carriger has a blog on retro fashion.

    

{review} blessed days of anaesthesia

Stephanie J. Snow Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World (2008) 

 

I have had the pleasure of reading a couple of really astonishingly good non-fiction books so far this year. Stephanie Snow's popular history of anaesthetics is one of the best.

Life (and death) really sucked before anaesthetics, and the only thing that is really astonishing is how reluctantly it was embraced. Looking back, can we even imagine a time when it was thought that "pain was necessary and functional in surgery"?! If you have a strong stomach, try reading Fanny Burney's account of her mastectomy without pain relief: "…when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast - cutting through veins - arteries - flesh - nerves - I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision - & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony." (more here)

Anaesthesia challenged Victorian understandings of pain at the most fundamental level. What was its purpose? How could medical control of suffering be reconciled with the Christian view that human pain was God's will? Doctors, clergymen, and writers debated the subject passionately. Because inhaling ether and chloroform could be fatal, it struck deep into one of medicine's central questions: what were the risks versus benefits of medical intervention?

Snow has a great grasp of the big picture - how anaesthetic reforms filtered slowly downwards to change society as a whole:

Beyond medicine, anaesthesia became a touchstone for humanitarianism, fuelling public distaste of pain and concern about the morality of inflicting suffering. It is no coincidence that from the 1860s onwards public executions became private events, legislation was introduced to reduce cruelty to animals in scientific experiments, and ideas of pain in Christian doctrine were reworked.

Snow works her way through the slow development of various types of more or less (usually more) dangerous anaesthetics - from opium to laughing gas, ether, chloroform and then onto the modern drugs we take so much for granted. The tendency of innovators in the field to experiment on themselves and their friends is remarkably consistent throughout history:

Liston was convinced of ether's potential: it had 'the most perfect and satisfactory results' and was 'a fine thing for operating surgeons', he wrote… Then he hosted a celebratory dinner party at which he demonstrated the effects of ether on one of the guests.

The big breakthrough in anaesthetic PR was Dr John Snow's management of Queen Victoria's labour with chloroform in 1853, although this in itself should tip the reader off to the social inequalities that still continue in medical treatment. {Incidentally, John Snow is my medical hero for his work on cholera - REVIEW}

Even after announcements of the Queen's use of chloroform and the publication of Snow's article, Dr Sheppard, a physician living in the provinces, felt strongly enough to write to the Association Medical Journal saying he would not change his view of chloroform. 'No female for whom I have any regard shall ever, with my consent, inhale chloroform,' he vowed, 'I look upon its exhibition as a pandering to the weakness of humanity, especially the weaker sex.'

Anaesthetics, along with a better understanding of antisepsis and the development of endotracheal intubation, revolutionized surgery. Snow has written a really readable and sensible account of the history of anaesthetics and also the place of anaesthetics in the modern world.  

Rating: excellent. 

If you liked this… definitely Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map: A Street, an Epidemic and the Hidden Power of Urban Networks (2006), on John Snow, cholera and the Broad Street pump. 

 

{review} the mystery of a hansom cab

Fergus Hume The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886) 

source

On the twenty-seventh day of July, at the hour of twenty minutes to two o'clock in the morning, a hansom cab drove up to the police station in Grey Street, St. Kilda, and the driver made the startling statement that his cab contained the body of a man who he had reason to believe had been murdered.

Fergus Hume has the distinction of writing the first Australian crime novel. It was HUGE - a phenomenon in its time (to borrow from John Sutherland: the "most sensationally popular crime and detective novel of the century" [dodgy source]). However, poor Hume had sold the rights and made sod all from its subsequent wild success. 

Hansom Cab is the story of the investigation into a mysterious murder in, yes, a hansom cab. It is set in Melbourne and, for those who know Melbourne ("Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria"), it is quite a good game to try to figure out how little has changed in that streetscape since Victorian times.

If there is one thing which the Melbourne folk love more than another, it is music. Their fondness for it is only equalled by their admiration for horse-racing. Any street band which plays at all decently, may be sure of a good audience, and a substantial remuneration for their performance. Some writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon. In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, whom he describes as being "a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship," it is more likely that he will be a cultured, indolent individual, with an intense appreciation of the arts and sciences, and a dislike to hard work and utilitarian principles.

The story is a fairly typical one: a murder, a corpse without identification, a handful of potential suspects, a lovable dialect-speaking landlady, a determined detective or two, a crime with its roots in the past, and a spot of tender romance.

"You do not regret?" he said, bending his head. "Regret, no," she answered, looking at him with loving eyes. "With you by my side, I fear nothing. Surely our hearts have been tried in the furnace of affliction, and our love has been chastened and purified."

It is quite a good read and a decent shot at sensational fiction. It is hard to imagine how astonishingly original it must have been in its day, since it fits so neatly the stereotypes of the typical crime novel… stereotypes it created. There is apparently a parody of it out there somewhere; it is hard to see how it could beat the original. Its modern day appeal may well now be primarily to Australians as a sort of period piece on Melbourne society, rather than as a crime novel. 

My interest in Hume lies in another area, namely his reuse of ancient themes in other novels that never hit the big-time like Hansom Cab. It is noticeable how often the ancient world pops its head into this book, which is filled with references to popular myth - the sphinx, Midas, asses' ears and so on: "I don't like Latin," said Miss Frettlby, shaking her pretty head. 'I agree with Heine's remark, that if the Romans had been forced to learn it they would not have found time to conquer the world.'" The narrator also suggests that Australians would be cooler if they adopted Greek dress!

It was a broiling hot day--one of those cloudless days, with the blazing sun beating down on the arid streets, and casting deep, black shadows--a real Australian December day dropped by mistake of the clerk of the weather into the middle of August. The previous week having been really chilly, it was all the more welcome. It was Saturday morning, and fashionable Melbourne was "doing the Block." Collins Street is to the Southern city what Bond Street and the Row are to London, and the Boulevards to Paris. It is on the Block that people show off their new dresses, bow to their friends, cut their enemies, and chatter small talk. The same thing no doubt occurred in the Appian Way, the fashionable street of Imperial Rome, when Catullus talked gay nonsense to Lesbia, and Horace received the congratulations of his friends over his new volume of society verses. History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws of civilisation to have one special street, wherein the votaries of fashion can congregate.

This sort of thing may well irritate the hell out of many readers. The book is also frequently interestingly intertextual, which probably should not surprise given that Hume set out in cold-blood to write a popular crime novel based on his reading of other instances of the genre: "Puts one in mind of 'The Leavenworth Case,' and all that sort of thing," said Felix, whose reading was of the lightest description. "Awfully exciting, like putting a Chinese puzzle together. Gad, I wouldn't mind being a detective myself."

"Murdered in a cab," he said, lighting a fresh cigarette, and blowing a cloud of smoke. "A romance in real life, which beats Miss Braddon hollow."

Hume has a great turn of phrase: one character, hot on the trail of scandal, "was one of those witty men who would rather lose a friend than suppress an epigram." And sultry Queensland gets an unforgettable mention: "a profane traveller of an epigrammatic turn of mind once fittingly called it, 'An amateur hell'." 

Rating: a must read for anyone interested in the history of the crime novel or Victorian (in both senses) Australia. (I read a free manybooks.net edition with an unfortunately amount of typos) 

If you liked this: oh, surely "Miss Braddon" (Lady Audley's Secret is a cracker), though Anna Katharine Green's The Leavenworth Case is another marvellous period piece. 

{review} the blood of the vampire

Florence Marryat The Blood of the Vampire (1897 [2011]) 

I love a good old-fashioned sensational vampire tale.

She had become fainter and fainter as the girl leaned against her with her head upon her breast. Some sensation which she could not define, nor account for—some feeling which she had never experienced before—had come over her and made her head reel. She felt as if something or someone were drawing all her life away. She tried to disengage herself from the girl's clasp but Harriet Brandt seemed to come after her, like a coiling snake, till she could stand it no longer and faintly exclaiming: "Miss Brandt! let go of me, please! I feel ill!" she rose and tried to make her way between the crowded tables, towards the open air. As she stumbled along she came against (to her great relief) her friend, Elinor Leyton.

This one came out in the same year as Dracula. The affectionate Harriet Brandt - "a mass of magnetism" - is the girl who has everything - looks, wealth and independence: "She wants to kiss everyone. Some times, I tell her I think she would like to eat them. But she only means to be kind!" But those around her wither away and die, their life-force drained from their bodies. The twist? - she doesn't use her fangs. I'll let you have a think about what she might use...

"Did you suffer so much from sea-sickness? I can sympathise with you, as I am a very bad sailor myself!" "O! no! Madame, it was not the mal de mer. I can hardly tell you what it was. Miss Brandt and I occupied a small cabin together, and perhaps it was because it was so small, but I did not feel as if I could breathe there—such a terrible oppression as though some one were sitting on my chest—and such a general feeling of emptiness. It was the same in London, though Miss Brandt did all she could for me, indeed she sat up with me all night till I feared she would be ill herself—but I feel better now! Last night I slept for the first time since leaving Jamaica!"

Victorian Secrets (www.victoriansecrets.co.uk) is doing a great job in getting forgotten Victoriana back on our shelves, and I want to put in a word for not skipping the Introduction (by Greta Depledge) to The Blood of the Vampire, as it added an enormous amount to both my understanding and enjoyment of the book. It was also interesting to read the contemporary reviews of Marryat's "repulsive style" and the obituary in The Athenaeum that she was "author of some seventy novels, too hurriedly written, unfortunately, to prove of enduring value." 

This has, sadly, been the case, but Depledge makes an excellent case for viewing The Blood of the Vampire in terms of - among other things - themes of women's vulnerability, women and science/medicine, and "hysteria, race, eugenics and the fear of the racial 'other'". 

Rating: good meaty read, 8/10. 

A sentence I have already used this week: "If we cannot get cavidre it is wise to content ourselves with cod's roe." 

If you liked this… Carmilla. Definitely Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. So kinky.

{review} diary of a nobody

George & Weedon Grossmith The Diary of a Nobody (1892)

  

I have finally read this wonderful, funny book. Why did I ever put it off so long?

The Diary of a Nobody presents the reader with the putative diary of a lower middle-class London clerk, Charles Pooter. Hence, 'pooterish':

A person resembling or reminiscent of the character Charles Pooter, esp. in displaying parochial self-importance, over-fastidiousness, or lack of imagination. (Oxford English Dictionary)

Poor Charles Pooter: nothing ever goes right or comes off as planned. All of his attempts at bettering his position or helping family and friends or entering society or fixing things or almost anything he attempts are doomed to go bizarrely wrong. Pooter is so terribly serious ("I don't often make jokes" - this is quite untrue, since he invents many, many poor witticisms) about getting things right and doing things properly. Yet nothing goes to plan and he is constantly humiliated. At the theatre his bow tie drops off over the balcony - so many of his clothes malfunction:

I was a little vexed at everybody subsequently laughing at some joke which they did not explain, and it was only on going to bed I discovered I must have been walking about all the evening with an antimacassar on one button of my coat-tails.

His DIY is doomed: his love of red enamel paint results in a personal coating of the aforementioned. He can't even buy a Christmas card without disaster. Mr Pooter is the Mr Bean of the Victorian era: "I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat."

His attempts to negotiate with those whom he perceives as lower in status are doomed to disaster:

...Borset, the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City clerks any more—the game wasn't worth the candle. I restrained my feelings, and quietly remarked that I thought it was possible for a city clerk to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one, for he hadn't. He left the house, slamming the door after him, which nearly broke the fanlight; and I heard him fall over the scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn't removed it. When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him.

At every step he is foiled by his dreadful, unreliable sponging friends, his wastrel son, the son's dubious fiancée and friends, and - mostly - his own incompetence.

I wrote a very satirical letter to Merton, the wine merchant, who gave us the pass, and said, "Considering we had to pay for our seats, we did our best to appreciate the performance." I thought this line rather cutting, and I asked Carrie how many p's there were in appreciate, and she said, "One." After I sent off the letter I looked at the dictionary and found there were two. Awfully vexed at this.

The Pooter son is a ne'er-do-well only child who brings mayhem into the family home and nearly destroys the firm for whom his father works - despite Pooter's fond hopes for his son to follow in his footsteps into respectable toil:

I lay awake for hours, thinking of the future. My boy in the same office as myself—we can go down together by the ’bus, come home together, and who knows but in the course of time he may take great interest in our little home. That he may help me to put a nail in here or a nail in there, or help his dear mother to hang a picture.

The 'diary' is also a wonderful evocation of Victorian daily life: the decor of the rented house at "The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway", the endless reappearances of mutton and blancmange, the making-do with clothing and DIY home repairs, the parlour games (Pin the Tail on the Donkey), and what a loving Victorian wife must put up with ("Carrie back. Hoorah! She looks wonderfully well, except that the sun has caught her nose.")... 

The last few weeks of my diary are of minimum interest. The breaking off of the engagement between Lupin and Daisy Mutlar has made him a different being, and Carrie a rather depressing companion. She was a little dull last Saturday, and I thought to cheer her up by reading some extracts from my diary; but she walked out of the room in the middle of the reading, without a word. On her return, I said: “Did my diary bore you, darling?” She replied, to my surprise: “I really wasn’t listening, dear. I was obliged to leave to give instructions to the laundress..."

Rating: 10/10. Must read.

If you liked this... I want to read another 'G' of the era, namely George Gissing: either New Grub Street or - one that's got some blog love of late (here; here) - The Odd Women.

  

{review} india black & the widow of windsor

Carol K. Carr India Black and the Widow of Windsor (2011)

Ah the miracle that is a pre-ordered book, about which one has entirely forgotten, popping onto the Kindle on its day of release. I really enjoyed the first India Black mystery {REVIEW} and the second proved to be a pretty good follow up.

India - the brothel madam with a secret past - and the mysterious French are dispatched by Disraeli to Balmoral where Queen Victoria has been persuaded to spend Christmas. She was persuaded by a spirit message from the dead Albert, which is the first hint that Carr's Queen Victoria is going to be characterised by most of her least attractive traits - "In any other family, Her Majesty’s eccentricities would have meant a locked room in the attic and a lifetime of meals on trays" - such as gluttony and her ill-considered relationship with Mr Brown. 

But the Queen has other problems than mere eccentricity: Scottish nationalists are plotting to assassinate her in Scotland, and India and French must go undercover to discover the assassins. In India's case, she must pretend to be a lady's maid to a wildly eccentric Marchioness with a snuff habit and - more worryingly - a habit of sniffing out India's secrets. This "snuff-dipping, narcoleptic bibliophile" makes for some of the funniest moments in the book.

India Black & the Widow of Windsor is a satisfying 'cosy' mystery with an acceptably historical enough set of trappings (I frowned at the housekeeper being a 'Miss': aren't Victorian housekeepers granted an honorary 'Mrs'? Or have I got that wrong?). The sexual tension between India and French continues to grow, albeit slowly, and the little hints at India's past tantalise the reader. Some of the minor characters are also very amusing, notably 'Bertie', Queen Vicky's naughty heir. 

Rating: 7/10. An easy frolic. There were a couple of odd typos: wretch (for 'retch'); broach (for 'brooch'). Eek.

If you liked this... the Lady Julia Grey mysteries by Deanna Raybourn are an obvious parallel.

{review} constance: the tragic and scandalous life of mrs oscar wilde

Franny Moyle Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde (2011)

‘My dearest Otho,’ his sister announced, ‘Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news! I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy.’

Poor Constance Wilde. This book made me very angry with Oscar Wilde. I don't think that I had fully perceived the amount of damage that his sensational fall from grace had done to anyone apart from himself.

Every day that I see you, every moment that you are with me I worship you more, my whole life is yours to do as you will with it, such a poor gift to offer up to you, but yet all I have and so you will not despise it.

Franny Moyle has written a most interesting book about the woman who married Oscar Wilde. In a sense it is also an interesting book because it reveals how little remains of a Victorian woman's life unless it is recorded contemporaneously with that life. Constance, we find, has been almost entirely historically subsumed within the life of her famous husband. Perhaps, too, the 'cult' of Oscar Wilde has pushed her into a lesser position? And, further, owing to the loss of many of her letters and possessions (for example, when the Wilde household was sold off to pay his creditors), there are some very patchy areas of her life which require an imaginative leap towards reconstruction.

Moyle has done a good job of filling in the blanks. Her Constance is a woman of letters, a clever translator, a contributor to her husband's work, a feminist, a political animal, an avid interpreter of Aestheticism in art and design, a fashionista (and early advocate of 'rational dress' who "used fashion to convey something of her political, feminist leanings") and a woman of intense religious feeling. She was also 5'8" (I love that detail).

When they became engaged,

Oscar was just as infatuated with her as she was with him, a fact revealed in Oscar’s letter to his friend Lillie Langtry. ‘I am going to be married to a beautiful girl called Constance Lloyd,’ he wrote, a grave, slight, violet-eyed Artemis, with great coils of heavy brown hair which make her flower-like head droop like a flower, and wonderful ivory hands which draw music from the piano so sweet that the birds stop singing to listen to her.

What happened? It is possible to make some assumptions in the broadest terms: Constance's second pregnancy was very difficult; and Oscar had always enjoyed spending time apart from his wife anyway. And then there was the increasing recognition of his sexual preference for men.

The journalist and author Frank Harris, a friend of Wilde’s, claimed that years later Oscar recounted to him how during this period his sexual attraction to Constance plummeted: When I married, my wife was a beautiful girl, white and slim as a lily, with dancing eyes and gay rippling laughter like music. In a year or so the flower-like grace had all vanished; she became heavy, shapeless, deformed: she dragged herself around the house in uncouth misery with drawn blotched face and hideous body, sick at heart because of our love. It was dreadful. I tried to be kind to her; forced myself to touch and kiss her; but she was sick always, and – oh! I cannot recall it, it is all loathsome.

There were constant worries with money; with the children; with Constance's health (Moyle makes a valiant attempt to figure out what was wrong with Constance; unsurprisingly, given the lack of information, it was likely something gynaecological); with Oscar's absences; with his friendships with young men as he strove to fill that ‘secret sacred niche’ [urgh! What a phrase…]. Yet they managed to hold things together:

On the surface they were fine. Yeats, who joined the Wildes on Christmas Day in 1888, described Oscar’s life in Tite Street as a ‘perfect harmony … with his beautiful wife and two young children’. And yet Yeats, with terrific perception, added that his home life ‘suggested some deliberate artistic composition’.

Constance with her eldest son Cyril, 1889 (Source)

Constance filled her life with activities. She was a keen supporter of clubs where unaccompanied women could dine without critical comment. Her other interests were political, such as the Rational Dress Society and the Women's Liberation Federation (to whom she gave papers on Irish Home Rule and other international issues):

‘I was astonished and delighted to notice yesterday … how very much Mrs Oscar Wilde has improved in public speaking,’ one critic noted after a WLF event. ‘She was always graceful and always charming, but now there is an earnestness and an ease about her which is the result of practice in platform speaking, and I shall not be surprised if in a few years Mrs Wilde has become one of the most popular among “platform ladies”.'

It seems that she also turned to religion and the occult (Theosophy was a popular pastime for Victorian men and women), becoming a member of the Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (amusingly, "[p]rospective members… could apply via the offices of the Sanitary Wood Wool Company in Holborn"). The Latin name she chose to assume in the Temple was, tellingly, 'Qui Patitur Vincit' - 'Who Endures Wins' and her course of study for the Temple involved learning Hebrew.

Her tolerance for Oscar's young male friends was extraordinary; it is difficult to determine how much she understood about what was going on around her, literally in her own home.

‘Having got all our rooms quite full yesterday a telegram comes from Lord Alfred Douglas asking to be put up for a night! I don’t believe that even you have to contrive to put 7 people into 6 rooms. However, fortunately he put it off till to-day, and I think we can manage.’41 The day after Bosie arrived, Constance had to return Cyril to Hunstanton. When she got back to Cromer, she discovered that, far from staying for just a day, Bosie had installed himself for the duration. She didn’t mind too much. The daily golf sessions Oscar began enjoying with Bosie were a source of amusement for her rather than concern. ‘I am becoming what I am told the wives of golfers are called a “golf-widow”,’ she quite happily related...

It is with Bosie, of course, that it all goes off the rails. It has always astounded me that, even after his prison time, Wilde was unable to resist Bosie, 'a friendship that was entirely destructive of everything fine in me either from the intellectual or ethical point of view' (1893). Constance's unhappiness about Bosie's influence leads her, in turn, to look outside her increasingly fraught marriage for support and love. There are hints that she fell in love with Arthur Humphreys (general manager of Hatchard's), with whom she was editing some of Oscar's works. But then the great scandal broke, Wilde was sentenced to jail, the Wilde house was broken up for the creditors, and Constance was forced to flee overseas with the two children to escape the scandal. As one of her few remaining friends, Lady Georgina Mount-Temple wrote to her daughter,

‘I do not think there could be a greater trial with such disgusting shame … one cannot bear even to allude to it... Can one touch pitch and not be defiled? You are quite right in keeping aloof – so would I if I did not feel called upon to shelter her.’

And that's a friend!

The final years of Constance's life were a misery. Exiled from England by the scandal, she continued to face constant battles with money, and with Oscar's friends who wished to interfere with their putative divorce and financial settlements (astonishingly, Constance continued to provide funds to her husband). There was the indignity of his taking up with Bosie again - and breaching the conditions under which she was providing an allowance. And there was her continued ill-health, which led to her decision to undergo what proved to be a fatal surgical procedure. Constance was only 40 when she died, on the 7th of April 1898. She is buried in Genoa.

Moyle's biography is a well-researched and sensitive reclamation of her subject's life. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. So that you can become nicely irate about poor Constance Wilde, I leave you with Bosie's comment on her death:

‘As to his wife,’ Bosie said, ‘he married her for love and if she had treated him properly and stuck to him after he had been in prison, as a really good wife would have done, he would have gone on loving her to the end of his life … Obviously she suffered a great deal and deserves every sympathy, but she fell woefully short of the height to which she might have risen.’

Ouch.

Rating: 9/10.

If you liked this... I'm in the mood to loath Wilde after this book, but he's still a genius. Perhaps I ought to go back and try to read between the lines of An Ideal Husband...