The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore

2021 is 100 years since the novelist Brian Moore was born – and 22 since he died – and Cathy at 746 Books is helping lead a year of celebrations in the blogging world. You can read the details of that over on her blog, including a schedule of books to read. She’s picked a good representation of his books, but the only Moore novel I had unread on my shelves was The Great Victorian Collection (1975) – this isn’t in the schedule, so I decided to read it whenever. And that time came about now.

(The only other book I’ve read by him is The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, which is extraordinarily good.)

The Great Victorian Collection features a Canadian professor with the absurd name Tony Maloney. He is staying in a fairly mediocre hotel in Carmel, California, when he has a dream. Don’t worry, dull as it is to hear the dreams of others, this is a necessary step to the plot. Tony’s dream is that he climbs out of his bedroom window and discovers a sort of Victorian fair…

I unfastened the catch of the window, opened it, climbed out on the sill, and eased myself on to a wooden outdoor staircase, which led down to the lot some twenty feet below. I began to walk along what seemed to be the central aisle of the market, an aisle dominated by a glittering crystal fountain, its columns of polished glass soaring to the height of a telegraph pole. Laid out on the stalls and in partially enclosed exhibits resembling furniture showrooms was the most astonishing collection of Victorian artefacts, objets d’art, furniture, household appliances, paintings, jewellery, scientific instruments, toys, tapestries, sculpture, handicrafts, woollen and linen samples, industrial machinery, ceramics, silverware, books, furs, men’s and women’s clothing, musical instruments, a huge telescope mounted on a pedestal, a railway locomotive, marine equipment, small arms, looms, bric-a-brac, and curiosa.

When he awakes – the fair is there, outside the window, just as he dreamed. As he explores it, he discovers it isn’t just a collection of Victoriana – it includes the foremost antiques from that era. Tony’s hobby is Victoriana, and so he recognises the various artefacts – and Moore presumably knows what he is talking about when he lists them, though it is far from my area of expertise. There are one-off chairs designed by the greatest designers of the period; there are the finest jewels and ornaments. There are even items that have long since vanished, and are only described in books – whereas others should exist only in museums. And Tony has apparently dreamed them all into existence.

Moore then takes us onto the various things that might well happen, given this bizarre premise. The strength of any fantastic novel lies in how they take us beyond surprise and into the narrative – and the best way to do that, in my opinion, is by making everything else that follows logical. So Moore is, first and foremost, berated by the hotel owner for unauthorised occupation of his yard.

When his story starts to spread, there is a kind and ambitious journalist who takes his side – partly for the exposure it might give to his own career – and there are some more sceptical ones. The debate wages about whether or not they are fakes, with a couple of academics trying to put the kybosh on it, and Tony trying to explain the idea of simultaneous originals. It’s an intriguing concept, and Moore’s exploration of the miracle’s reception rings true.

Perhaps less interesting, to me at least, is the romantic strand of the novel. Tony starts to fall in love with an enthusiastic woman who supports him, but who also has a boyfriend. Etc etc. I know the novel can’t just be a short story, and it’s useful to have a secondary plot, but I didn’t find this one had the necessary depth and vitality to let it stand next to the powerful central conceit.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne was such a brilliant novel that it’s hard to compare. The Great Victorian Collection certainly doesn’t have the same psychological depth, but nor is it trying to. I think it has enough originality to stand on its own merits, as long as you don’t come expecting Moore to replicate that masterpiece. It is something different, odd, quirky, curiously grounded, and – though I won’t spoil it – with an ending that perfectly fits and adjusts the tone of everything that went before.