1900s

The Benefactress by Elizabeth von Arnim

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If I told you I had read an Elizabeth von Arnim novel in which a woman decides to invite three other women she’s never met to live with her in a European country, and that they all start off a bit prickly but gradually warm to each other, then you’d be forgiven for thinking that I meant The Enchanted April. It turns out, though, that von Arnim had a bit of a trial run for that novel – 21 years before The Enchanted April was published was The Benefactress (1901).

The heroine is introduced in the opening lines in von Arnim’s characteristically witty, slightly cynical prose:

When Anna Estcourt was twenty-five, and had begun to wonder whether the pleasure extractable from life at all counterbalanced the bother of it, a wonderful thing happened.

She lives in some privilege, after her brother married a nouveau riche young woman, but even from her youngest years Anna has been drawn towards a more honest, hard-working life. Which is somehow immortalised in the idea of sweeping crossings.

When she was younger and more high-flown she sometimes talked of sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her dance and dine and do as other girls did, being of opinion that a rich husband of good position was more satisfactory than crossings, and far more likely to make some return for all the expenses she had had.

There is a lot of delightful stuff about the contrast between forthright sister-in-law’s wealth and the meek family’s own heritage, all the sort of class vs money material that can be treated in any number of ways and was treated in more or less every conceivable way by novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. In the case of The Benefactress, it is all a little frothy and enjoyable, and even Anna’s conception of honest hard work probably bears little comparison to the hard working of the servant classes. Von Arnim is not a writer of gritty class realism, and that’s fine. But it’s also all slightly immaterial to what follows, because Anna’s brother and sister-in-law are not big players in the novel. I rather missed them once they were gone, but the whole thing is really just leading up to her mysteriously receiving a legacy of a house in Germany.

This bequest comes from a German uncle whom Anna spends time with shortly before his death – and seems to be impelled by a shared exhaustion in relation to the sister-in-law as much as anything else. Anna sees it as a providential way of avoiding having to marry someone, and heads off to this house…

A low, white, two-storied house, separated from the forest only by a circular grass plot and a ditch with half-melted snow in it and muddy water, a house apparently quite by itself among the creaking pines, neither very old nor very new, with a great many windows, and a brown-tiled roof, was the home bestowed by Uncle Joachim on his dear and only niece Anna.

As the title of the novel is The Benefactress rather than The Heiress, you’ve probably guessed that this isn’t the end of the story. Anna decides to use the home as a refuge for gentlewomen who are down on their luck financially. She has hopes of eventually helping dozens of such women, but starts small – with just three women, from the many who answer her advertisement.

Frau von Treumann and baroness Elmreich are quite similar at first – snobbish women who may have fallen on bad times, but have no intention of letting that warm them to their less fortunate neighbours. Their good name, good families, and good past are more or less the only things they have to cling to. Anna may be doing them a good turn, but they see it as little less than their due, and certainly don’t show much gratitude. The third woman, Fräulein Kuhräuber, comes from less elevated stock – and there is little friendship between the three recipients of Anna’s generosity.

Alongside all of this is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a romantic plot. Several people think that beautiful Anna must be in want of a husband – this leads to the arrival of one of the gentlewoman’s horrendous son, an entanglement with a local curate, and a genuine friendship with local landowner Axel. He is drawn with beautiful restraint, and von Arnim knows how to give him exactly the qualities that will charm the reader while also being the dependable companion that Anna will inevitably realise she needs. I will quote Claire’s review (linked below):

Axel is my favourite type of male hero – quiet, calm, responsible, stable – and my sympathies were all with him as he struggled to counsel Anna on her project, though in her enthusiasm she refuses to listen to any warnings, and then to conceal his love for her, knowing that any offer he made would be rejected.

I’d normally feel a bit short-changed if a feminist tale of independence and marriage-resisting led to a woman realising that, actually, she should get married after all. But von Arnim earns the pairing, and I felt more than usually keen that they would end up together. I was a little less invested in the fortunes of the house for gentlewomen, and got the three women living there mixed up a few times. The plots involving them get resolved quite quickly, and it’s all entertaining but not especially memorable. The introduction of Axel’s sister is similarly a bit of a distraction, though did lead to one of my favourite lines in the novel:

Anna thought Trudi delightful. Trudi’s new friends always did think her delightful; and she never had any old ones.

As you can see, von Arnim’s slightly caustic wit is certainly present in The Benefactress, and I enjoy the contrast of Anna’s naïve goodness and the narrator’s more cynical take on proceedings. I suppose, ultimately, the novel suffers a little by being so clearly a prototype for The Enchanted April – and I also think that’s why it doesn’t necessarily need to be a priority for reprinting – but it is a lovely read nonetheless.

Others who got Stuck into this Book

“Never before have I finished one of her books caring so much about the characters, as I did for the genuinely sympathetic Anna and Axel.” – Claire, The Captive Reader

“In The Benefactress, Von Arnim has given us a fascinating mix of characters with decidedly mixed moral standards, from whom Anna learns much in the course of her social experiment.” – Chris, Tales from the Landing Bookshelves

“I enjoyed The Benefactress very much. It’s another of those beguiling books where a house is inherited & we follow the attempts to make the house a home.” – Lyn, I Prefer Reading

Anne of Avonlea… isn’t very good?

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Anne of Avonlea--cover page.jpgHere’s a blog post that might get me in hot water – but I recently listened to the audiobook of Anne of Avonlea and, let me tell you, I felt let DOWN.

Anne of Avonlea (1909) is the second book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Until now, I had only read the original – and loved it. Anne is so spirited and fun, and there is a great deal of heart and humour in Anne of Green Gables. Fast forward to the next book, Anne is in her late teens, still living in Avonlea. All of the books are available for free in the Audible Plus catalogue, so I thought it was worth diving in.

Oh.

So much that made Anne of Green Gables wonderful is missing here. Anne is a schoolteacher, a founding member of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, a sort of grown-up foster sister to a pair of twins who arrive on the scene (more on them later), and generally a noble and good member of society.

The rest of this post is going to be in bullet point form, because that is the best to describe my disappointment. Though I’ll try to throw in some good things along the way.

  • Anne is so Noble and Good in this book. She has become the quintessential heroine of a Victorian children’s novel (albeit this is later than that), thinking good thoughts and doing good deeds.
  • ALL her spirit seems to have gone. I cannot emphasise how dull she is now.
  • Gilbert Blythe gets maybe four lines of dialogue?
  • Even in his most interesting scenes, writing pretend letters to someone, he barely appears.
  • WHY SO LITTLE GILBERT?
  • (I know he comes back in later books, but I cannot fathom why L.M. Montgomery took away one of the two most interesting relationships from Anne of Green Gables. The other was with Matthew, so I can at least see why that isn’t present.)
  • Marilla takes in the twins, Dora and Davy. And lord knows I wish she hadn’t. Davy is forever doing naughty things then saying “Good gosh, Miss Anne, I had no notion this was a naughty thing to do! How will I ever repent of it when it was so fun?” and Dora just cries. How did an author who made a girl character like Anne also make these Boys Will Be Boys And Girls Will Cry characters? I loathed them.
  • Mrs Lavendar Lewis was great, I will acknowledge. An old lady who is something of a recluse but brings joy and wit to every scene she’s in.
  • Did I mention that there is basically no Gilbert?

I had planned to go on with the rest of the series, but I’m much more reluctant now. Anne has gone from one of the best characters in fiction to one of the most tedious – and, without her spark, the novel really dragged for me.

Others have promised me that the series looks up in later volumes. Does Anne get her spark back? Should I continue?

 

The Red House by E. Nesbit

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Edith Nesbit – Store norske leksikonI downloaded an ebook of the complete(ish) works of E. Nesbit a few years ago, and I have it for emergencies on my phone’s Kindle app. Since it really is only for emergencies (I usually have a book in my bag, as a first port of call) it probably takes me a year to read each book. Often I’ve forgotten everything that’s going on by the time I stumble to the end. But no matter, they are there to reread, the whole collection cost me about a pound.

I’d just finished Daphne in Fitzroy Square and decided to start 1902’s The Red House. Here’s the opening…

Conventionally our life-story ended in a shower of rice at the church door, amid the scent of white flowers, with a flutter of white favors all about us. We left behind us those relatives whose presence had been so little desired by us during our brief courtship, and a high-heeled white satin slipper struck the back of the brougham as we drove off. It was like a parting slap on the shoulder from our old life—the old life which we left so gayly, eager to fulfil the destiny set as the end of our wooing’s fairy story, and to “live happy ever after.”

And now all that was six months ago; and instead of attending to that destiny, the fairy princess and her unworthy prince were plunged over head and ears in their first quarrel—their first serious quarrel—about the real and earnest things of life; for the other little quarrels about matters of sentiment and the affections really did not count. They were only play and make-believe; still, they had got our hands in, so that when we really differed seriously we both knew exactly how to behave—we had played at quarrels so often. This quarrel was very serious, because it was about my shaving-brush and Chloe’s handkerchief-case. There was a cupboard with a window—Chloe called it my dressing-room, and, at first, I humoured her pretty fancy about it, and pretended that I could really see to shave in a glass that faced the window, although my shoulders, as I stood, cut off all light. But even then I used really to shave at Chloe’s mirror after she had gone down to make the tea and boil the eggs—only I kept my shaving things in the embroidered vestments which my wife’s affection provided and her fingers worked, and these lived in the “dressing-room.” But the subterfuge presently seemed unworthy, and I found myself, in the ardour of a truthful nature, leaving my soapy brush on her toilet-table. Chloe called this untidiness, and worse, and urged that I had a dressing-room. Then I put the brush away. This had happened more than once.

This contretemps leads to the narrator (Len) and his new wife Chloe deciding that their home – though happy – is inconvenient and cramped. And, would you believe it? They are suddenly left The Red House as an unexpected legacy. It is far too big for them, and they couldn’t possibly live in it, but they might as well go and see it…

I had read about this far when I knew I needed to have a paper copy. Reading on my phone wouldn’t do. I suspected I would love The Red House – I already loved Chloe and Len. It had ingredients that I can’t resist: house-hunting, and an Edwardian contended whimsy, where the stakes are low, the humour constant, and the whole thing delightfully affable. It reminded me a lot of the sketches A.A. Milne wrote for Punch. This wasn’t quite house-hunting, but it was house-viewing, and that would do.

Original copies of The Red House are hard to find, and even nice editions aren’t easy – so I had to settle for one of those print-on-demand editions that apparently forgets the size that novels always are and prints oddly tall books with too much text on each page. No matter; the book was in hand and I could dive in.

Of course, as the title betrayed, after some debate Chloe and Len move to the Red House – which, confusingly, is built from yellow bricks. That was never really explained. Here is their first sight of it:

“Is this really it?” asked Chloe, in a whisper. And well might she ask. The yellow brick on which in my talk I had laid so much stress was hidden almost—at any rate transformed, transfigured—by a net-work of great leaves and red buds; creepers covered it—all but. And at the side there were jasmine that in July nights would be starry and scented, and wistaria, purple-flowered and yellow-leaved over its thick, gnarled boughs, and ivy; and at the back, where the shaky green veranda is overhung by the perilous charm of the white balcony, Virginia-creepers and climbing roses grew in a thorny maze. The moat was there, girdling the old lawns—where once the Elizabethan manor stood—with a belt of silver, a sad swan and a leaky boat keeping each other company. Yellow laburnums trailed their long hair in the water, and sweet lilac-bushes swayed to look at their pretty plumes reflected in it. To right and left stretched the green tangled mysteries of the overgrown gardens.

It is too big for them, and run down, and has all manner of problems – and, of course, they have to move there. Having read Julia Briggs’ biography of E. Nesbit a while ago, it’s interesting to see that the house is closely based on one the Nesbit lived in herself – though towards the end of a difficult and unhappy marriage. She has chosen to redeem it in this novel, putting it at the beginning of a marriage that is joyfully happy. Think Greenery Street levels of cheer and wit. I was intrigued that she chose to write from the man’s point of view, and I wonder why. It works, but it is a curious decision if the couple are even loosely based on her and her husband – or her imagined, hoped-for versions.

Chloe is an illustrator and Len is a writer of short pieces for magazines – they continue this work, earning enough to keep going and not much more. And the plot is really about their everyday life – the trivial ups and downs of early married life, and of trying to make ends meet in a home that is impractical but much loved. Harriet has written a lovely review of this book, and I have to agree with her when she writes “You might think that doesn’t sound like much of a plot, but it is narrated so vividly and joyfully, and Chloe and Len are such immensely loveable people, that the sheer verve of it all carries you through, if you’re like me, loving every minute.”

I haven’t mentioned Yolande – their straight-talking friend, much more practical than them – or the series of people who move into the cottages that come with the estate. There are some interesting moments with local villagers, and a few stray maids and the like who come for a bit. It’s all quite episodic. Most interesting for fans of Nesbit’s children’s books are the arrival of a group of children – who are the Bastable children from The Treasure Seekers and other books. I think I’m right in saying that the event appears in one of the Bastable books, from the children’s perspective rather than Len and Chloe’s, which is a fun moment of what we called intertextuality at university.

Few books can live up to the unalloyed joy of Nesbit’s final novel, The Lark, but this is right up there. It’s a thoroughly happy book, and how many of them are there in the world? I’m afraid, for the time being, it’s not easy to get nice editions. Until such a time, I think it’s worth getting hold of any copy you can.

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen by Elizabeth von Arnim

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The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen (1904) by Elizabeth von Arnim was the result of my BookTube Spin #2, and a book I bought back in 2012. It’s the second sequel to Elizabeth and Her German Garden – I haven’t read the first sequel, but it didn’t seem much to matter. Indeed, I don’t think you really need to have read the first – ‘Elizabeth’ is just a handy way of crafting a persona, without any significant call back.

I love von Arnim a lot, but was a bit lukewarm about Elizabeth and Her German Garden, which I read for an episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ a few years ago. Perhaps that’s why The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen had been neglected on my shelves for a fair while. But I actually ended up liking this sequel rather more.

Elizabeth is off to Rügen – spelled Ruegen on the cover of my edition, but Rügen inside. Don’t know where it is? Fear not – the opening paragraph is here to guide us:

Every one who has been to school, and still remembers what he was taught there, knows that Rügen is the biggest island Germany possesses, and that it lies in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Pomerania.

In the next paragraph, she says she wants to do a walking tour of the island. She seems to spend more of the book on wheels of one sort or another, but that is the declared intention. Nobody wishes to go with her, so she heads off with only an accompanying servant.

It has been a conviction of mine that there is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the frequent turning of one’s back on duties. This was exactly what I was doing; and oh ye rigid female martyrs on the rack of daily exemplariness, ye unquestioning patient followers of paths that have been pointed out, if only you knew the wholesome joys of sometimes being less good!

That gives an indication of von Arnim’s tone, which is in quite dry mode. Some of her novels are more earnest or melancholy, but this is one where she is using a tone of voice I much prefer – wry, dry, and quite ready to see the ridiculous in everybody she encounters. (One might also note, from a 21st-century point of view, that Elizabeth might be taking a break from her duties but the accompanying servant certainly is not…)

I don’t know about subsequent editions, but my copy comes with a lovely fold-out map in the front, as you can see at the top of this post. As the book progresses, Elizabeth continues to tour the island and mention the places on it – though my initial worries that it would turn out to be simply a list of places and sights turned out to be groundless. The tour is really only a premise for a very enjoyable story about Elizabeth trying to escape her life – and finding her life waiting for her, in the form of an unexpected meeting with Cousin Charlotte. My favourite sections of the novel dealt with her trying to avoid this burdensome cousin, who apparently longs for Elizabeth’s company while also judging everything about her life.

“I know you live stuffed away in the country in a sort of dream. You needn’t try to answer my question about what you have done. You can’t answer it. You have lived in a dream entirely wrapped up in your family and your plants.”

“Plants, my dear Charlotte?”

“You do not see nor want to see farther than the ditch at the end of your garden. All that is going on outside, out in the great real world where people are in earnest, where they strive, and long, and suffer, where they unceasingly pursue their ideal of a wider life, a richer experience, a higher knowledge, is absolutely indifferent to you. Your existence – no one could call it a life – is quite negative and unemotional. It is negative and as unemotional as -” She paused and looked at me with a faint, compassionate smile.

“As what?” I asked, anxious to hear the worst.

“Frankly, as an oyster’s.”

One of my favourite things to read about it is someone who is unashamedly rude, so long as the person they’re rude to is witty and blithe about it. The exchanges between Elizabeth and Charlotte reminded me a bit of Elizabeth and Lady Katherine in Pride and Prejudice, though the power dynamics are certainly different and Elizabeth-in-Rügen saves her outbursts for reflections in the narrative. Having said that, Charlotte is blunt and a nuisance, but she is not always wrong – she has a wonderful speech about how men don’t do any of the ‘female’ roles in the house, and rails against ‘smug husbands’ who ignore the ‘miserable daily drudgery’. Again, it’s hard not to feel that this would hold more weight for women without servants, but the general point holds.

Along the way, Elizabeth also meets some tourists she can’t get rid of – again, they seem unaware that they are unwanted – and she is very funny about them too. The whole book appeals to the sense of humour of the slight misanthrope – or those of us introverts who would be misanthropes if we allowed ourselves to be. I’m not sure I learned anything about Rügen in this novel, but I greatly enjoyed the journey and, for my money, it’s a rather more enjoyable book than Elizabeth and Her German Garden.

A Couple of Arnold Bennetts

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File:Arnold Bennett 1928.jpg - Wikimedia CommonsI’ve recently read two books by Arnold Bennett about being an author, both published in 1903 – one fiction and one non-fiction. He’s one of those authors who was ubiquitous during his lifetime, and now only seems to be remembered fleetingly for a couple examples of his prolific output. Neither The Truth About An Author nor A Great Man are in that number, as far as I’m aware.

The Truth About An Author (1903) is the non-fiction one, and was written astonishingly early in his career. At this point, he’d only published a handful of novels, though had also made something of a name for himself as a journalist and reviewer. The edition I have is a reprint from 1914, for which Bennett was written a rather bizarre new preface – very defensive about how it was received the first time around:

The book divided my friends into two camps. A few were extraordinarily enthusiastic and delighted. But the majority were shocked. Some – and among these the most intimate and beloved – were so shocked that they could not bear to speak to me about the book, and to this day have never mentioned it to me. Frankly, I was startled. I suppose the book was too true. […] The reviews varied from the flaccid indifferent to the ferocious. No other book of mine ever had such a bad press, or anything like such a bad press. Why respectable and dignified organs should have been embittered by the publication of a work whose veracity cannot be impugned, I have never been able to understand.

Never trust somebody who thinks the only negative thing about their book can be an exaggerated good trait! ‘Too true’! It is hard to see, though, why The Truth About An Author should cause any great shock. It is a bit silly and self-congratulatory, but a lot of books are that. It essentially tells the story of Bennett’s rise from a jobbing journalist to a prodigious book reviewer, then to someone who tried writing stories and discovered he was good at it. He has a successful serial, tries writing plays, etc.

The most memorable section is where he talks about being a reviewer – and boasts that he can read and review a book within an hour. Or, rather, that he doesn’t read the books. ‘In the case of nine books out of ten,’ (he says) ‘to read them through would be not a work of supererogation – it would be a sinful waste of time on the part of a professional reviewer.’

It’s odd to put a preface on a book that essentially prepares the reader to dislike it, and if he hadn’t I’d probably have enjoyed it more. But there is no doubt that Bennett comes across a little silly and self-satisfied – and would sound still sillier if he didn’t happen to be extremely successful.

In the same year, he had similar things on his mind for fiction. A Great Man: A Frolic follows Henry Shakspeare Knight from his childhood to his successful life as a novelist and playwright. The opening scenes deal with his infancy, and his cousin Tom was a substantially more interesting character – who fabricates stories about his baby cousin escaping from his crib. A few years later, we see Henry’s issues with dyspepsia and Tom seeking to escape a future of drudgery in work. It’s an interesting family dynamic.

It feels a little like Bennett was making up the plot as he went along, as we soon ditch all the other family – but not before an attentive aunt writes down the story that Henry makes up when on his sickbed with scarlet fever. He titles it Love in Babylon and everyone agrees it is wonderful. Everyone, that is, except the editors to whom he sends it. The story is repeatedly rejected, not least because it is only 20,000 words long.

Eventually, though, it is taken as the inaugural title of a new line of silk-bound square books – and becomes an enormous success. Knight’s name is made, and he starts a (chaste) love affair with the agent’s secretary. He follows it up with A Question of Cubits, about a very tall man who falls in love – and some of my favourite stuff in the novel was Bennett writing about how the title took off in the popular consciousness, used equally in advertising and slang.

Knight is a success with the masses, but the intellectuals – including Cousin Tom, who reappears later in the book – dismiss and mock him. The novel reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel but with claws retracted. He is certainly not the monster she is. Just a bit pompous and silly… he could easily have written The Truth About An Author.

I enjoyed reading A Great Man – or, in fact, listening to the free Librivox recording of it. Woolf’s dismissal of him makes us forget what a talented writer he was, certainly on the level of the sentence even if his structures and plots can be a bit suspect. This novel doesn’t have any big point to make or a rug to pull from under anyone’s feet – it’s just a good, linear book about becoming a successful author.

I didn’t intend to read these in tandem, but they are fascinating that way – as two sides of the same coin.

Crossriggs by Jane & Mary Findlater

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I read a review of Crossriggs (1908) by Jane and Mary Findlater back in my early days of blogging, and I now have no idea where – but I bought it in 2008, and it’s only taken me twelve years to take it off my Virago Modern Classics shelves and finally read it. And I loved it! (I have no idea how two authors go about writing a book together, so I’m going to quietly ignore that element of it. If anybody has any insight, do share.)

The novel is about the small Scottish village Crossriggs, which only has a handful of families, most of whom have known each other forever and can date back their family in the area through several generations.

We made at Crossriggs a right little society within a very small circle. True, the village was only an hour by train from a capital city; but our excursions there, and our returns, only made our independence the more marked. Crossriggs was no suburb – owed none of its life or interest to another place. Edinburgh was our shopping centre; some of us had business, and all of us had relatives there; our surgeons and our boot-makers lived there; but socially, Crossriggs hugged itself in a proud isolation from ‘town’. We didn’t want it; of course ‘town’ would never have believed that, but it is true all the same, and although the Scottish capital is at all seasons swept by sufficiently bracing airs, one of our customs was to draw a deep breath on alighting from the train at our own station, and remark with satisfaction, “How good the air tastes after being in town!”

Our heroine is Alexandra Hope, commonly Alex, who is a clever, witty, impetuous young woman living with a kind, unworldly father (‘Old Hopeful’) who is terrible at keeping money and excellent at having new interests and schemes. He is a fruitarian, and is usually to be found trying to get unsuspecting locals to try various vegetable pastes that he eats instead of proper meals. I loved him – think the kindness of Anthony Trollope’s Septimus Harding and the absent-mindedness of Mr Pim from A.A. Milne’s Mr Pim Passes By, rather than the self-centred eccentricity of Mr Woodhouse in Emma. He has a childlike wonder and delight in the world, and an equally childlike inability to manage responsibility and duty.

Alex tolerates him but has to do something to help the family finances – particularly when her widowed sister returns from living abroad, bringing five children with her. She refuses the help of Mr Maitland – a local man of some renown, who has moderate fame and riches, and a wife that nobody is particularly fond of. Some of my favourite scenes in the novel are when he is dealing bluffly with Alex, trying to educate or reason with her, while clearly very fond of her and a little in awe of her. There is something of the Emma/Knightley relationship.

Instead of his money, she starts reading for a local Admiral, whose sight is not up to reading for himself. And he has a smooth, handsome grandson in tow.

Crossriggs felt a lot like an Austen heroine in a Gaskell novel to me – all update a little for the Edwardian period. (In the writing, that is; it is set in the late-Victorian period). Alex is in the same mould as Elizabeth Bennett – very lovable and quite flawed. And not at all like the cover pic on the Virago Modern Classic, which I think is a rare poor choice from them. The story of romance is not simple, as there are a range of male candidates and none of them are quite suitable. But, like Austen’s novels, this is much more a book about the heroine’s development and dawning self-understanding than it is about romance.

I shan’t spoil the ending, but the plot develops in a way I didn’t at all expect – and very satisfyingly. I think I originally bought the novel because it was described as a comedy – well, it’s more a comedy of manners. Smiles rather than laughs, and not without sensationally tragic moments that are of their time, but a wonder set of characters and an enchantingly engaging setting. Perhaps Alex’s similarity to Austen heroines isn’t entirely accidental, but the novel succeeds in being entirely its own thing, however much it owes to a history of sister novelists.

Others who got Stuck into it:

“I could just say – find a copy, read it!” – HeavenAli

“It’s a good story, but I thought that Alex was a bit dense most of the time” – A Girl Walks Into A Bookstore

“I did love it. I can’t say that it’s a great book, but it is a lovely period piece.” – Beyond Eden Rock

Cynthia’s Way by Mrs Alfred Sidgwick (25 Books in 25 Days: #4)

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My little Nelson’s Library edition of E.F. Benson’s Daisy’s Aunt (which I wrote about in 2016) has a section at the back where they advertise other titles that they publish. And that’s where I read the following description of Cynthia’s Way (1901):

Mrs Sidgwick has won a reputation as a writer of ingenious comedies. The heroine in this tale is an English girl of great wealth, who to amuse herself goes to Germany and masquerades as a poor governess. These studies of German home life are accurately observed and done with much humour and art, and in the background there is a charming love story.

A century and more after it was written, this marketing copy still worked its wonders on me, and I tracked down a copy of Cynthia’s Way. People masquerading as other people is always something I enjoy in a novel, especially in a good-natured comedy – and this novel is exactly that. Cynthia combines the whimsy of somebody who would find this deception amusing, with the straightforwardness of a heroine who has to deal with the household she enters. Here she finds a welcoming mother (who is an excellent cook), some slightly naughty young boys, and – most amusingly – Wanda. She has recently turned 18, and talks constantly of poetry and love and how she’d willingly kneel at the feet of a statue of Goethe all day. (When asked if she would do the same for any great poet’s statue, Cynthia replies simply “Certainly not”.)

Cynthia’s Way reminded me a lot of early Elizabeth von Arnim, and not just because of the period and the German setting. I could imagine her embracing this tone completely, particularly when no-nonsense Cynthia starts trying to sort out Wanda’s complicated love life. All while maintaining her innocent but complex deception, and starting to fall for the older son of the family, recently returned… Cynthia is not unused to proposals, but Adrian is something rather different.

It is all very diverting and very Edwardian, if you know what I mean. Cynthia’s disguise is not penetrated by anybody, and Sidgwick doesn’t introduce any of the detailed or unlikely plot twists that E.F. Benson would have done with this premise. Instead, it is simply used to set up the novel. After this, Sidgwick relies on her cast of characters to tell a story that is largely a portrait of a time, place, and class. It’s all gently amusing and easily swallowed whole in a day, if one can spare four or five hours of reading. Which, thankfully, today I could!

 

Buried Alive by Arnold Bennett

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Another audiobook I’ve been listening to is Arnold Bennett’s 1908 novel Buried Alive, courtesy of Librivox (the free audiobook site). Each work is read by one or more volunteers, so the quality of the reader is pretty variable, but I will now be listening to more or less anything Simon Evers reads. He’s extraordinarily good – and I really enjoyed listening to Buried Alive.

If the title is bringing up your worst nightmare, then don’t worry – nobody is literally buried alive in the book. But it almost happens to the noted artist (and recluse) Priam Farll. His work is known and loved throughout the nation, but he has kept his face out of the press and doesn’t interact with the public. Not because he is obstreperous – he is simply very shy. And this is the sort of premise that leads almost inevitably to mistaken identity, isn’t it? When his valet, Henry Leek, suddenly dies – having taken ill to Farll’s own bed – it is natural that the policeman might believe that Farll has died. Partly out of awkwardness, partly seeing an opportunity to avoid the public glare, Farll goes along with it.

Things get more complicated when he has to leave his own home quickly, as it (and all his wealth) has been distributed in his will – some to a distant relative, but a large chunk to build a picture gallery in his honour. Which all feels a bit of a poor decision when he discovers he only has a few pounds to his name (and those few pounds are more than he was expecting Mr Leek to possess… he turns out to have been a bit of a ne’erdowell). The buried bit? Well, ‘Farll’ – actually Leek – is buried in Westminster Abbey.

We watch Farll try to live an ordinary life, having never been unwealthy – and witness the nation’s apparent response to his death. Bennett is very funny about this, even while we recognise the tumult of emotions that come with such an unusual experience.

Special large type! Titles stretching across two columns! Black borders round the pages! “Death of England’s greatest painter.” “Sudden death of Priam Farll.” “Sad death of a great genius.” “Puzzling career prematurely closed.” “Europe in mourning.” “Irreparable loss to the world’s art.” “It is with the most profound regret.” “Our readers will be shocked.” “The news will come as a personal blow to every lover of great painting.” So the papers went on, outvying each other in enthusiastic grief.

He ceased to be careless and condescending to them. The skin crept along his spine. There he lay, solitary, under the crimson glow, locked in his castle, human, with the outward semblance of a man like other men, and yet the cities of Europe were weeping for him. He heard them weeping. Every lover of great painting was under a sense of personal bereavement. The very voice of the world was hushed. After all, it was something to have done your best; after all, good stuff was appreciated by the mass of the race. The phenomena presented by the evening papers was certainly prodigious, and prodigiously affecting. Mankind was unpleasantly stunned by the report of his decease. He forgot that Mrs. Challice, for instance, had perfectly succeeded in hiding her grief for the irreparable loss, and that her questions about Priam Farll had been almost perfunctory. He forgot that he had witnessed absolutely no sign of overwhelming sorrow, or of any degree of sorrow, in the thoroughfares of the teeming capital, and that the hotels did not resound to sobbing. He knew only that all Europe was in mourning!

Isn’t that great? It’s passages like that, where Bennett shows his firm hold of irony, dry humour, and an underlying poignancy that show how Virginia Woolf was too sweeping in her condemnation of him. He is not a pompous writer at all, at least not in Buried Alive – it’s delicious stuff.

Wonderful in rather a different way is Alice. By a series of unlikely coincidences, which we will allow him, Farll ends up meeting Alice – whom Leek had arranged to marry. And, by a further series of unlikely steps, they do end up married. I shan’t spoil any more of the plot, but I had to talk about Alice. She is extremely fond of Farll, but completely no-nonsense. The world can no longer surprise her, and she takes everything in her stride – while also being kind and affectionate, and tolerant of her husband’s shyness and eccentricities. She’s a brilliant character, entirely lovable and mildly intimidating. Simon Evers voices her dialogue perfectly, but I think I’d have loved her even without that. Here she is on Farll’s legacy going towards a picture gallery:

“I call it just silly. It isn’t as if there wasn’t enough picture-galleries already. When what there are are so full that you can’t get in–then it will be time enough to think about fresh ones. I’ve been to the National Gallery twice, and upon my word I was almost the only person there! And it’s free too! People don’t want picture-galleries. If they did they’d go. Who ever saw a public-house empty, or Peter Robinson’s? And you have to pay there! Silly, I call it! Why couldn’t he have left his money to you, or at any rate to the hospitals or something of that? No, it isn’t silly. It’s scandalous! It ought to be stopped!”

This is the fourth book I’ve read by Bennett, and the second novel. Since Evers has narrated quite a few of his novels, I think I’ll be listening to quite a few more – hopefully they’re all as fun as this one was.

Brewster’s Millions by George Barr McCutcheon

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Claire’s review of Brewster’s Millions (1902) by George Barr McCutcheon made it sound so delightful and funny that I couldn’t resist tracking it down myself – and decided that it would be a good candidate for an audiobook from Librivox. (For the uninitiated, Librivox offer free audiobooks of out-of-copyright titles, read by members of the public.) And what a curious book it was.

I believe it’s famous, or at least filmed versions of it are, but I hadn’t heard of it before. Two people have read it for Librivox, and I have to admit that neither of them have the most engaging delivery, but I picked one and went with it. As usual with audio, I can’t quote from it – but bear with me.

The premise of the novel is totally absurd, but you can just about buy it. Monty Brewster is a jolly young man out for a good time, when he discovers that he’s been left a million dollars by his grandfather – which, of course, was an even more enormous amount in 1902 than it is now. Happy days! But there is a complication – when, shortly afterwards, he inherits $7 million from an uncle he barely knew… but only if he is penniless after a year. And then the money will be his. There is some back story about a family feud meaning the uncle doesn’t want to mingle his money with another part of Brewster’s family, and all sorts of additional clauses – Brewster must show himself to be good with money, he mustn’t tell anybody etc. – that chiefly serve the purpose of giving the book a plot.

This absurdity out of the way, we can settle back to watch Monty try to squander $1 million while also seeming to be (for the cross-examination of his uncle’s lawyer) responsible with his finances. He throws large dinners. He buys expensive cutlery. He treats his friends left, right, and centre – and they are, at first, appreciative. Before long they start to think he might be mad.

And, quelle surprise, things start to go comically awry. He tries to gamble away money (playing fast and loose with the ‘sensible with money’ bit) but ends up winning more; he tries to invest unwisely, and becomes the toast of Wall Street. And, all along, he is dealing with – guess what? – a love triangle!

Well, a love triangle of sorts. Barbara and Peggy are both objects of his affection – and, unusually for this sort of novel, both seem like equally good options to the reader. Both are fond of him, like him for himself rather than his money, etc. etc. Naturally enough he does make a choice, but it could have gone either way without derailing the novel.

It was all great fun, and McCutcheon obviously had a lot of fun writing it. I could have enjoyed a whole novel about his financial escapades, so it was rather a surprise when it suddenly became much more dramatic and an evil sheik appears on the scene. And then there’s a battle at sea. Yep. And it all predates the (in)famous novel The Sheik by 17 years, so there was clearly something in the water. This whole section felt like it was just added to make the novel longer, and detracts rather than adds to it, but it’s not like the previous bit had clung to stark realism – so I’ll forgive it.

So, all very silly – some of it sillier than other bits – but as much fun as Claire suggested, and McCutcheon clearly has an able hand at taking the reader on a joyful, absurd journey.

25 Books in 25 Days: #16 The Murderess

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My friend Malie bought me The Murderess (1903) by Alexandros Papadiamantis a couple of years ago – by which I mean, she told me to buy some books I wanted for my birthday, and this was one of the books I chose. I found it surprisingly hard to find out when it was originally published, as my copy doesn’t say and Wikipedia is keeping coy about it, but some other review I read says 1903. My edition is translated from the (you guessed it) Greek by Peter Levi.

The murderess in question is a grandmother who decides to smother/strangle her infant grandchild – and then goes on a bit of a spree of drowning and otherwise killing young girls. If that sounds like the sort of modern crime novel I have zero interest in, then it’s not really. It’s more of a philosophy-meets-chase, where Hadoula decides that the world is such a cruel place for women that it would be a kindness to kill these young girls before they find out (and we see, in flashback, how her son has spoiled her own life).

It’s an intriguing concept, and Papadiamantis is subtle enough about her motive (or motives) to make it more intriguing still – is Hadoula really just thrilled by power, for instance. Then she goes on the run, and it all gets a bit bizarre.

It was interesting to read in Levi’s introduction that he found the translation very difficult, particularly to match the leisurely pace and regional language of Papadiamantis. I don’t speak any Greek, but the translation did feel a little obstructive or false at times – I don’t quite know how to explain that feeling, but perhaps you’re familiar with it. Not my favourite book I’ve read this 25 Books, but I’m glad I read it.