Quiet as a Nun - Antonia Fraser

2015 has turned out to be my year of rereading. I think I could almost put together a Top 10 list of my rereads for the year as well as my usual Top 10. Reading Antonia Fraser's childhood memoir, My History, led me back to her first mystery novel, Quiet as a Nun, published in 1977.

Jemima Shore is a television journalist. She presents a program called Jemima Shore Investigates which looks into social issues & public scandals. Jemima is having an affair with a married politician, Tom Amyas, who's also very involved in social issues. At a loose end one night as she waits for Tom, Jemima sees a story in the newspaper about a nun found dead in an isolated tower. Jemima is taken back to her schooldays as she attended the convent school where the nun died. Blessed Eleanor's convent had been founded by a royal patroness, the Blessed Eleanor, who founded the Order of the Tower of Ivory & built a tower as a private retreat in the grounds. It was in this same tower that the nun, Sister Miriam, was found dead. It seems that she had accidentally locked herself in to the tower & starved to death. Jemima not only knew the convent but the nun. Sister Miriam had been Rosabelle Powerstock, a schoolfriend of Jemima's.

Jemima is surprised to be contacted by Reverend Mother Ancilla who asks her to visit the convent & find out what happened to Sister Miriam. The inquest into her death was scathing about the lack of support Sister Miriam received. She had been distressed before her death& there is speculation that she may have starved herself to death deliberately. Sister Miriam was a very wealthy woman before she entered the convent & retained control over a lot of property including the land on which the convent was built. It seems that her family business, the Powers Estate, was involved in a project to evict poor tenants to build a high-rise development. Sister Miriam wanted to change her will & give the convent land to a group who were trying to prevent the development. The protesters, led by the charismatic Alexander Skarbek, had been the focus of one of Jemima's recent programmes. Sister Miriam's death & the disappearance of her new will (if it ever existed) is very convenient for Mother Ancilla. Jemima soon discovers that there is evil in the convent & many secrets. There is also the mysterious Black Nun who is rumoured to be the spirit of the Blessed Eleanor & is seen flitting around the convent at night.

I've read Quiet as a Nun several times since it was first published. I love books about nuns & convents, fiction & non-fiction, & many mysteries are set in convents & monasteries. It's a closed community & the nuns all had other lives & other names before they entered so there's a lot of scope for mystery. Jemima also mentions several times that it's difficult to know how old a nun is because their habit hides the telltale signs of aging at the neck & forehead. Even though I'd read it before, I was still misled & ended up suspecting the wrong person. Some scenes I remembered very well, especially the scene when Jemima goes in to the Tower (alone, of course) & hears a chair rocking in the chamber above. She opens the door to reveal a nun rocking to and fro although it's actually only the empty habit. But someone must have started the chair rocking... There are a few missteps. The ending is tied up a bit too neatly & the sexual politics are very much of their time. Although that's not really a misstep because that's just the way things were, I suppose. It just feels odd for a successful, independent woman like Jemima to be sitting at home waiting for her married lover to turn up. It's a bit of a cliché. On the other hand, there are some genuinely creepy moments when Jemima is in the crypt under the chapel with the coffins of previous Reverend Mothers of the convent, including the Blessed Eleanor, all around her. There's also a funny scene at the school fete where Jemima silently criticises the wife of the local MP for making a mess of her speech. As the former wife of a Tory MP & daughter of a politician, I'm sure Fraser was an expert on stump speeches & opening fetes.

There was a TV version made of Quiet as a Nun as part of the Armchair Thriller series, with Maria Aitken as Jemima. I'd love to see it again but it's hard to get hold of. The subsequent TV series, which I do have, didn't redo Quiet as a Nun but did star Patricia Hodge who I always enjoy seeing. She's probably best known now as Miranda's mother but I remember her in this series & as Phyllida Erskine-Brown, "the Portia of our chambers" in Rumpole of the Bailey. It doesn't seem that any of the episodes are based on the subsequent novels by Antonia Fraser, except for A Splash of Red. I would love to read a few more of the novels & luckily they were reprinted last year & I bought them all for my library so no temptation to break my book-buying ban!

Rogue Herries - Hugh Walpole

Francis Herries uproots his family & takes them to his family home, Herries, in the Lake District in the early 18th century. Francis is a proud, arrogant man who has alienated most of his family, including his timid wife, Margaret, who is terrified of him. The only person Francis loves is his son, David. David adores his father & his younger sister, Deborah, a sensitive child who is devoted to David but frightened of her father. Their sister, Mary, is confident & attractive & will always go her own way. Francis has humiliated his wife by bringing his latest mistress, Alice Press, to Herries, supposedly to look after the children. Alice, however, longs for the early days of their affair to be rekindled, even though it's obvious that Francis's interest has disappeared. She takes her revenge by being rude to Margaret & trying to ignore the gossip & David's contempt for her.

When the Herries family arrive in Borrowdale, the house & farm are neglected & falling into ruins. Francis, however, is immediately drawn to the land & the house & will never willingly leave it. He will continue to battle the barren land, one way or another, for the rest of his life. Francis has a reputation as a hell-raiser, a womaniser & brawler. His family & servants don't know whether he'll smile on them or raise his fist to strike them. He's feared in the neighbourhood because of his reputation & because he keeps a servant, Mrs Wilson, who is reputed to be a witch. He also harbours a Catholic priest, Father Roche, whose position is dangerous in the years when the Jacobite threat is still present. Father Roche fills David's head with stories of the glories of the martyred King Charles & the Catholic religion. Francis earns the nickname Rogue because of his temper & his determination to go his own way, regardless of opinion or propriety. His brother, Harcourt, tells David,

He spoke of Francis' youth, of how he had been always different from the others, capable of the greatest things, but that some instability had always checked him. 'He hath always imagined more than he grasped, dreamed more than he could realise. There is a wild loneliness in his spirit that no one can reach.'

Francis is capable of sudden acts of kindness & compassion. He gives his coat to a beggar woman he meets on the side of the road, an act of charity that will have far-reaching consequences when he meets the woman again years later & becomes enthralled by her daughter, Mirabell. Later, when Francis & David find themselves in Carlisle during the Jacobite invasion of Carlisle by Bonnie Prince Charlie, Francis meets Mirabell again, with the young man she loves & wishes to marry. Francis's love for the elusive, self-contained Mirabell will come to dominate his life & cause him as much frustration as joy.

He had never once been free of her ... All the new compassion and softness that had lately been growing in him so that the sterner, more ironical part of him had been frightened at the change and tried to drive it away, all this had been from her. It had been as though he had been educating himself out of the nastiness and pride of his earlier life, so that he might be ready for her when she came to him: and now she would never come.

Meanwhile, David & Deborah have stayed at Herries - David because he promised his mother before she died that he wouldn't leave Francis & Deborah because she doesn't have the courage or confidence to go anywhere else. David is well-liked in the community for his gentle strength & honesty but, when he finally falls in love with Sarah Denman, a fairy princess trapped with a wicked uncle who wants her inheritance, he finds himself ignoring the laws of God & man to rescue her.

Rogue Herries is a big, sprawling family saga. Apart from the interest in the story of the Herries family, from their arrival in the Lakes when David is just eleven until the 1770s when he's a married man in his 50s, the picture Walpole draws of the Lake District is very atmospheric. But really, the dominant figure is Francis Herries & it's his story that fascinates, more so than David's story which is tame compared with the wild passions & dramas of his father. David's wife, Sarah, describes the difference between the two men when she tries to explain why she & David should leave Herries & make a life for themselves,

'Davy, your father and Mirabell are in another world from you and me, from Deborah too. We see things plainly as they are, and always will. A road is a road to us, and a house a house. But Mirabell and your father see nothing as it is. I cannot sit still like a puss in the corner to wonder which way the wind is blowing. For me, give me a fireside and you, a square screen to keep off the draught, a work-basket, and I can do well enough; but for them they see neither screen nor work-basket. But always something beyond the window that they have not, or once had or would have, or will have if they wait long enough.'

There are also elements of myth & legend in the book. From the fear of the country people that leads to Mrs Wilson being swum as a witch to the mysterious pedlar, "a tall, thin scarecrow of a man, having on his head a peaked, faded purple hat, and round his neck some of the coloured ribbons that he was for selling. By his speech, which was cultivated, he was no native, and, indeed, with his sharp nose and bright eyes he seemed a rascal of unusual intelligence." whose appearances never bode well, superstition & portents are never far away. I feel that Walpole must have read & loved Wuthering Heights as there seemed to be echoes of that book in Rogue Herries. I loved this description of Christmas at the home of the Peel family which reminded me of a similar scene at the Heights,

In the chimney wing were hung hams and sides of bacon and beef, and near the fire-window was an ingle-seat, comfortable most of the year save when the rain or snow poured down on to the hearth, as the chimney was quite unprotected and you could look up it and see the sky above you. Such was the kitchen end of the room. The floor tonight was cleared for the dancing, but at the opposite end the trestle-tables were ranged for the feasting. Here was also a large oak cupboard with handsomely carved doors. This held the bread, bread made of oatmeal and water. On the mantle and cupboard there were rushlight holders and brass candlesticks. In other parts of the room were big standard holders for rushlights.
All these tonight were brilliantly lit and blew in great gusts in the wind.

The omniscient narrator ranges backward into history & forward into the far future which emphasizes the timelessness of the story he tells. Sometimes he hints at the future of the characters or of the Lakes or England, describing the changes that will come with the Industrial Revolution. I've marked so many passages of beautiful description of landscape & the details of the domestic life of the characters. Walpole loved the Lakes & he felt that this series, the Herries Chronicles, would make his reputation. The energy of the narrative swept me along but it's the character of Francis Herries, his struggles, his almost spiritual feeling for his land & his essential loneliness that is so captivating. I'll give Francis the last word,

"'Tis as useless a life as a man can find and as pitiful, but I've had moments, Davy, that you will never know, and 'tis by the height of your divining moments that life must be judged. I love this woman that I have got here as you and Sarah will never love, in the entrails, Davy, down among the guts, my boy. ... And they'll not drag me from this house till the rats are gnawing at my toes and there's lice in my ears. For this is my home, this spot, this ground, this miry waste, and here I'll die."

Jean Erskine's Secret - D E Stevenson

Jean Erskine's Secret is one of the manuscripts by D E Stevenson that was literally "found in the attic" a few years ago & published by Greyladies. I've read & enjoyed The Fair Miss Fortune & Emily Dennistoun but Jean Erskine's Secret is the earliest of the manuscripts to be written. It's thought to have been written in about 1917 & is set in the Scottish village of Crale in the years just before & during WWI.

Jean Erskine is a daughter of the manse. Her father is advised to move from his city parish to the country &, soon after their arrival, Jean meets Diana McDonald. Diana is living at Crale Castle with her uncle Ian & cousin Elsa. Her parents aren't mentioned (Diana had previously lived with an aunt in Kensington) & Jean senses a mystery. However, the girls soon become great friends. Elsa is not a sympathetic person. She's engaged to a young man, Ray Morley Brown, who Jean knew as a child. Elsa is sarcastic, petty & generally unpleasant, spending as much time as she can in Edinburgh with Ray & her other friends & looking down upon country society. Her father sees none of this & assumes that his daughter & niece are good friends. Jean also meets Fanshaw Locke, who lives nearby & works in Edinburgh. Romantic complications develop as Jean is attracted to Fan but believes that he's in love with Diana.

The real subject of the book though is the friendship between Jean & Diana. The book is in the form of a story that Jean is writing about Diana, to explain the secret in Diana's life. I won't go into that part of the plot to avoid spoilers but the friendship between the two girls is touching & very believable. Both of them had been lonely & their friendship fills a gap in their lives that helps to make up for the disappointments & mysteries they have to overcome. Because so much of the plot is about secrets, I won't say any more about the plot.

There are many things to enjoy in this book although I do wonder whether D E Stevenson would have wanted it to be published. It's a very early work & there are plot holes & frankly unbelievably melodramatic incidents, particularly towards the end, that I felt were just ridiculous. One twist of the plot near the end reminded me more of Mary Shelley or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle than the comfortably domestic fiction I associate with D E Stevenson. To me, this book shows all the signs of being a way for the author to try out different styles of writing & I do wonder what she might have toned down or changed if she'd ever revised the manuscript for publication. There are changes of personality in some of the characters that are inconsistent. For example, after being pretty despicable all through the book, Elsa suddenly has a complete change of personality when war breaks out & goes out to France as a (completely unqualified) nurse. There are too many coincidences involving friends and relations of Jean being involved with Diana & the Macdonalds to be altogether credible or necessary.

One of the aspects of Stevenson's writing that I do love is her sense of place, particularly in her Scottish novels. Even in this early work, this is evident & I especially love she writes about weather. Here, Jean & Ian are walking through a rainy Edinburgh,

Edinburgh was a black dripping place today; the castle towered up threateningly, clearly seen against the light patches of grey sky in its jagged ebony outlines. Arthur's Seat was swathed in a wet and smoky mist; here and there it was rolled back by a puff of chill wind, one caught a glimpse of black shoulder or jutting crag only half real in the gathering gloom. The trees in the gardens were sodden, the gardens themselves deserted and sloppy, the houses all dripping wet and as black as if the rain had been ink. Every street was a running river of muddy water, across which here and there a light twinkled out, making long pale yellow reflections like pointing fingers in the quickly falling gloom. On every face was written a patient yet sullen acceptance of the comfortless conditions, as their owners ploughed through the muddy water on their several businesses.

As always, she writes about the countryside beautifully,

The day fixed by Diana for her return was one of those rare days in winter when the whole world is like an old-fashioned Christmas card. Hoar frost outlined every branch of every tree and gleamed like powdered silver over the crackling ground. A pale pink mist shrouded the valley and softened the hard glare of the sun on the white-coated land.

All in all, I'm pleased to have had a chance to read this early work of one of my favourite authors &  bringing more Stevenson novels back into print has to be a good thing.

Greyladies is also starting a new venture, a magazine, The Scribbler, that will be published three times a year. My copy of the first edition arrived on Tuesday & I couldn't wait to sit down with a cup of tea & read it from cover to cover. It's subtitled A Retrospective Literary Review & the first edition has articles on the Desert Island Discs episode from 1976 featuring Noel Streatfeild (you can listen to it here, or wherever you find your podcasts), reviews of novels set in girl's schools that concentrate more on the teachers than the pupils; the book that changed editor Shirley Neilson's life (it was called Shirley, Young Bookseller by Valerie Baxter!), an author spotlight on Lorna Hill, a literary trail of the Scottish Borders & a short story by D E Stevenson.

Copies of Jean Erskine's Secret & many other books by D E Stevenson are available in the US from Anglophile Books.

The Deepening Stream - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

We've come up with several acronyms in my online reading group, including HIU - have it unread (for books that someone mentions that other members own & immediately rush to the shelves & plan to read next). I came up with a new one just recently, RIAL - read it at last. The Deepening Stream was first mentioned in our group at least three years ago. I was enthusiastic, ordered a copy but then, by the time it arrived, I'd moved on & it sat on the tbr shelves. I picked it up several times but didn't actually begin reading it. Then, I saw a review of it on the blog TBR 313 & I just knew I had to read it at once. I didn't even finish reading the review for fear of learning too much about the book.

I loved this book & can't imagine why it took me so long to get around to reading it. It's the coming of age story of Matey Gilbert. We first meet Matey (her name is Penelope & the nickname is never explained) as a small child, living in France with her parents & siblings Priscilla & Francis. Her parents are an unhappy couple, forever trying to get the better of each other. Her father is a literature professor in the States who needs frequent sabbaticals in Europe but only French-speaking countries. Her mother takes up new enthusiasms & new friends, only to have her husband sneer at them. All three children are scarred by the experience of tiptoeing around their parents. Priscilla grows up to be afraid of relationships. When she does marry, it's to an older widower who is looking for a mother for his children rather than a wife. Francis projects confidence but covers up his hurt with a brash exterior. Matey is more vulnerable but learns to cope by avoiding confrontation & through the love of her dog, Sumner. Only when her father is dying does Matey see the real depth of love between her parents.

As a young woman, Matey goes back to her mother's home town of Rustdorf in Dutchess County, New York when she receives an unexpected inheritance. There she meets her extended family, many of them Quakers, including a cousin, Adrian Fort, who works in his family's bank. Matey & Adrian fall in love & their marriage is the beginning of Matey's blossoming. She realises that there can be a true partnership in marriage, without the game playing her parents indulged in. When the Great War breaks out, Matey & Adrian decide to go to France. Matey had stayed in touch with Madame Vinet & her family, with whom she had stayed as a child & Adrian had spent some time studying art in Paris before he decided he didn't have the talent to be an artist. They speak excellent French & when they hear from the Vinets of the hardships that the French are suffering, Adrian decides to become an ambulance driver & Matey to help the Vinets in any way she can. By this time they have two small children &, although they have some qualms about taking their children to Europe in the circumstances, they are determined to do something. The next four years are spent helping refugees & providing a place for soldiers on leave to rest & get news of their families through Madame Vinet's network of friends. When the war ends, Matey & her family return to Rustdorf, to recover from the trauma of their experiences & to try to make their lives valuable & worthwhile in the post-war world.

This is such an absorbing book. I admired the accuracy of Canfield Fisher's psychological insights into the mind of a sensitive child like Matey even though I've never really been interested in books written from a child's eye view. I usually skim the opening chapters of biographies too, especially when they go back several generations. However, here it was compelling. Once Matey grows up & visits Rustdorf, I couldn't put the book down. This is where Matey begins to develop as a person, the deepening stream of her personality begins to emerge from her troubled childhood. We also begin to see her through the eyes of others, Adrian & his father, & she becomes part of their family which is also her own. On the journey to France, with the threat of torpedoes ever-present, Matey realises that no fear will ever really affect her like the fears of her childhood,

It was true. This was not her first encounter with fear. She had met it years ago, and what she felt now could not be compared to that black helpless waiting for catastrophe of the child she had been, tragically unfortified, like all children, by experience. Nothing had then come into her life strong enough to stand between her and her fear - over the oatmeal, bitter as poison on bad mornings - that there was nothing real in life but the wish to hurt. That had been true despair. But this present danger - all that was not physical in her stood apart from it, unthreatened, secure.

The war section of the book is based on Canfield Fisher's own life as she & her husband did just what Matey & Adrian do. I know a little of Canfield Fisher's life through reading Willa Cather's Letters among other things but I would love to read her own letters & more of her fiction. I read The Home-Maker years ago when it was reprinted as one of the first Persephones & I've read some of her short stories. These wartime scenes are wonderful. I loved all the domestic detail of how Matey & Madame Vinet scrimped & saved to put food on the table, how they contrived to get news of soldiers to their families as well as the more personal troubles of the Vinets - Henri & Paul in the Army & Ziza, Matey's closest friend from childhood, keeping her husband's business going in the countryside but with secrets of her own that estrange her from her mother. Matey identifies so much with the Vinets & the French people that she struggles to understand her brother, Francis, when he arrives in Paris with a delegation when America enters the war. His priority is to use America's wealth to win the war & if he makes a profit out of it, all the better. Another instance of how their childhood experiences have shaped their lives. Francis sees his money as a shield against trouble while Matey uses an inheritance from her great-great-aunt Constance to finance the trip to France & their war work. I felt as exhausted as Matey & Adrian when they finally return home & have to pick up the threads of their old lives. There's a real sense of peace at the end of the book which is very satisfying,

Her years with Adrian answered that question, stood before her, beckoning her on. She walked forward again. Had Adrian ever needed words to share with her all she had learned from him? The medium for the communication of the spirit is not words, but life.

The Crime at Tattenham Corner - Annie Haynes

It seems appropriate to be reviewing a murder mystery with a link to the racing world on Melbourne Cup Day. The racing link isn't as prominent in The Crime at Tattenham Corner as it was in another of Annie Haynes' novels, The Crystal Beads Murder, which I reviewed last month, but the murder of a racehorse owner does seem to have thrown up a possible motive in this briskly-written Golden Age mystery.

When the body of Sir John Burslem is found in a ditch in Hughlin's Wood on the morning of Derby Day, the fortunes of his horse, Peep o' Day, are of almost as much interest as the discovery of his killer. Peep o' Day was the favourite for the Derby & the horse's only rival was Perlyon, owned by Sir Charles Stanyard. The two men had been seen arguing at their club about the merits of their horses but they also had more personal reasons for disliking each other. Sir Charles had been engaged to Sophie Carlford but the engagement was broken off when Sophie decided to marry Sir John, a very rich, older man. Sir John has been shot, rolled into the ditch & his car dumped some way off. Sir Charles's cigarette case is discovered in Sir John's car & he has no explanation for its presence. Detective Inspector Stoddart & Sergeant Harbord question Sir Charles but are none the wiser at the end of the conversation,

"What do you think of that young man, Harbord?"
"I really don't know." Harbord hesitated. "I thought he was all quite straight and above-board at first; but I didn't quite like his manner over the cigarette case. He wasn't quite frank about that, I am certain. But he doesn't look like a murderer."
"Murderers never do. If they did they wouldn't get the chance to murder anybody." the inspector observed sententiously.

However, what seems to be an open and shut case for Stoddart & Harbord soon becomes much more complicated. On the night of his death, Sir Charles & his wife went to the stables for a last look at Peep o' Day. When they returned home, Sir Charles suddenly decided to write a new will & it was signed in the presence of two of his servants, including his valet, Ellerby. Sir John then left to drive his car to the garage & was murdered. The will left his entire fortune to his wife, disinheriting his grown-up daughter, Pamela, who loathes her stepmother & who immediately accuses Sir Charles of murdering her father with the help of her stepmother. Sophie's behaviour is a mixture of grieving widow & very frightened woman as she tries to carry on her husband's business while also acting so strangely that her maid's suspicions are aroused. Then, the valet, Ellerby, disappears in the middle of the night & another line of enquiry has to be pursued.

Sir John's only other relative, his brother, James, is an explorer, currently trekking in Tibet. James's brash wife, Kitty, has been given an allowance by Sir John as James's investments never do very well & she arrives at the Burslem residence to tell Sophie of messages from Sir John that she has received at a seance conducted by the American medium, Winifred Margetson.

He (Sir Charles) knew a little of Mrs James Burslem's reputation, and also knew that her husband was popularly supposed to have deliberately chosen ruin hunting in Tibet to the lady's society. He had gathered too from the gossip of the day, which of late had greatly concerned itself with the Burslems and their affairs, that Sir John Burslem and his wife had had little to do with Mrs Jimmy. It was distinctly a surprise therefore to meet Pamela in the society of, and apparently on such intimate terms with, her aunt.

Kitty insinuates herself into the lives of both Sophie & Pamela but is she really concerned for them or is she more concerned for her allowance? What exactly does she know or suspect about Sir John's murder?

I enjoyed The Crime at Tattenham Corner very much. I've enjoyed all Annie Haynes' books so far & look forward to reading more of them. Her style is brisk & witty. She can pinpoint a character in just a few lines. I loved her description of three women attending Miss Margetson's seance, "All three were well dressed and evidently belonged to the moneyed class, but none of them looked particularly intelligent; their chins by one consent appeared to be absent." Her books are just the right length for a murder mystery (around 200pp) & so full of plot that it's hard to keep everything straight. I did guess the central idea of the plot but not the way it was worked out. I was concerned at some of the methods used by Stoddart & Harbord in gathering their evidence. Both of them mislead women to get information out of them but would any of that evidence have been admissible in court? I'm sure it wouldn't have been. It's an oddity in Haynes' books that her detectives are allowed to ignore proper procedure although most of the time they seem to follow the rules.

Annie Haynes is a definite discovery of the Golden Age & I'm very pleased that Dean Street Press have reprinted her books. The publisher kindly sent me a review copy of The Crime at Tattenham Corner.

Pimpernel and Rosemary - Baroness Orczy

I knew that Baroness Orczy had written a lot of sequels to her most famous book, The Scarlet Pimpernel. What I didn't realise, until I started looking at a list of books published in 1924, was that she had written a modern-day version of the Pimpernel that was published in the magic year. I had somehow always thought of the Baroness as an Edwardian writer who wrote historical fiction & mysteries featuring Lady Molly of Scotland Yard or The Old Man in the Corner. She lived a very long life (1865-1947) & her final Pimpernel novel was published in 1940.

Pimpernel and Rosemary features Peter Blakeney, great-great-grandson of the famous Sir Percy (in fact, he's the image of the famous Romney portrait of Sir Percy). Peter is a famous cricketer, was awarded a VC during the Great War &, as the book opens, is devastated by the news that the girl he loves, Rosemary Fowkes, is engaged to his friend, Jasper, Lord Tarkington. Rosemary is a respected journalist, beautiful & sought after.

She was one of those women on whom Nature seemed to have showered ever one of her most precious gifts. There are few words that could adequately express the peculiar character of her beauty. She was tall and her figure was superb; had hair the colour of horse-chestnuts when first they fall out of their prickly green cases, and her skin was as delicately transparent as eggshell china; but Rosemary's charm did not lie in the colour of her hair or the quality of her skin.  It lay in something more indefinable. Perhaps it was in her eyes. Surely, surely it was in her eyes. People were wont to say they were "haunting", like the eyes of a pixie or a fairy.

Peter & Rosemary have been friends since childhood & she has spent time with the family of Peter's aristocratic Hungarian mother who live in Transylvania. Rosemary is in love with Peter but he had never quite committed himself to her so, disappointed by Peter's elusiveness, she agrees to marry Jasper, even though she's not in love with him. Jasper agrees that Rosemary should continue her career after their marriage, and, when she is challenged to visit Transylvania by the military Governor, General Naniescu, & see what conditions are really like, Rosemary agrees. A series of anonymous articles has recently appeared in the European Press & Rosemary is intrigued. She plans to write a series of candid articles about post-war conditions for the Hungarian minority & Naniescu assures her that she will not be censored. Jasper convinces her to marry him before the trip so that he can accompany her.

Hungary has been devastated by the Great War. The country was carved up after the Armistice & Roumania has occupied the part of the country where the Imreys have their estate. The Hungarian aristocracy are persecuted by the new Communist regime & the Hungarians are virtually second class citizens in what used to be their country. General Naniescu has free rein to do what he wishes, far away from any central government control. Peter's aunt, Elza, Countess Imrey, has invited Rosemary to stay with her family at their estate, during her visit. Elza's son, Philip, & his young cousin, Anna, resent the military occupation of their homeland & are determined to let the outside world know what life is really like in post-war Hungary. Philip has written the inflammatory articles that Rosemary has read & Anna has smuggled out of the country. They are playing a dangerous game as the authorities are not amused & Naniescu is determined to prosecute the author.

Rosemary discovers what Philip & Anna have been doing but is sworn to secrecy. However, it soon becomes obvious that her trip to Hungary was all part of a plan by General Naniescu. He arrests Philip & Anna, they are imprisoned & charged with treason. Naniescu presents Rosemary with an ultimatum. She is to write a series of articles praising the new regime or else Philip & Anna will be tried by a military tribunal & almost certainly sentenced to death. If she agrees, they will be released & allowed to leave the Romanian occupied territory & live in Hungary. Rosemary is torn between her love for the Imreys & her integrity as a journalist. She also realises that by saving two people, she will be condemning thousands of other Hungarians as her reputation as a journalist is such that her opinion of the new regime will influence policy makers in Europe & convince them that all is well & to leave Hungary alone.

At the same time, Rosemary is becoming concerned about her marriage. Jasper is almost cringingly devoted to her & anticipates her every need although at times the intensity of his passion for her is frightening. She can't stop thinking about Peter, who also visits Hungary, ostensibly to arrange a cricket match, but Jasper tells Rosemary of rumours that Peter is working for the new Romanian regime. Rosemary is desperate to help the Imreys but it seems that all her efforts are in vain as the mysterious spy, known only as Number Ten, appears to be manipulating both the Imreys & Naniescu for reasons of his own. Unsure who to trust, Rosemary must discover the truth, no matter how personally devastating it may be.

As you can tell by the quote above, Baroness Orczy doesn't go in for under-statement. I've never read prose as purple as this. All the men are handsome, dashing, devoted unless they're Romanian, in which case they're devious, evil & probably unshaven. The women are beautiful, dignified & stoic in the face of disaster. The Baroness is definitely on the side of the aristos, the lower orders are either devotedly loyal & ready to die for their masters or scoundrels & blackguards. All the way through the book I was marking particularly florid declarations like this one, when Peter farewells Rosemary on her engagement,

Jasper is my friend, and I would not harbour one disloyal thought against him. But you being the wife of an enemy or of my best friend is beside the point. I cannot shut you out of my life, strive how I may. Never. While I am as I am and you the exquisite creature you are, so long as we are both alive, you will remain a part of my life. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you, whenever I hear the sound of your voice, my soul will thrill and long for you. Not with one thought will I be disloyal to Jasper, for in my life you will be as an exquisite spirit, an idea greater or less than woman. Just you. If you are happy I shall know it. If you grieve, Heaven help the man or woman who caused your tears. I have been a fool; yet I regret nothing. Sorrow at your hands is sweeter than any happiness on earth.

I thought Pimpernel and Rosemary (cover picture from here) was a complete romp. I enjoyed the Hungarian setting. Baroness Orczy was Hungarian & used her knowledge of the country to good effect in her beautiful descriptions of the countryside & the Imreys' estate of Kis-Imre. The slightly faded old-world charm of the Imreys' life with its privilege & its arrogance is implicitly compared with that of the aristocrats before the French Revolution who were rescued by the original Scarlet Pimpernel. The updating of the story to the early 1920s is made explicit in the illustration on the cover above where Peter is overshadowed by his illustrious ancestor Sir Percy. I'm not sure that I could read all ten of the sequels to the original novel, actually I'm positive I couldn't! There were also two prequels about ancestors of Sir Percy (The Laughing Cavalier & The First Sir Percy) as well as Pimpernel and Rosemary. Interestingly there doesn't seem to be a novel that was the basis for Pimpernel Smith, a 1941 movie starring Leslie Howard (who played Sir Percy in the 1934 movie with Merle Oberon as Marguerite) as a WWII era Pimpernel. The movie was based on an original story by A G Macdonell who wrote the novel England, Their England. Baroness Orczy isn't even credited.

I also have to confess that I relaxed my book-buying ban for the 1924 Club by buying the eBook collection of four Pimpernel novels for 73 cents. I just couldn't resist the idea of an updated Pimpernel novel set in Hungary. My excuse was that Simon set the challenge of finding obscure novels written in 1924 & I thought I should take up that challenge after reading the better-known John Buchan novel earlier in the week.

The Three Hostages - John Buchan

I really enjoy John Buchan's Richard Hannay thrillers so it was great to realise that the fourth novel, The Three Hostages, was published in 1924 so I could read it as part of Simon & Karen's 1924 Club. Even better, I had the book on the shelf & as an eBook so I wasn't tempted to buy a copy.

Richard Hannay is settled at Fosse, his home in the Cotswolds. The War is long over, he's married to Mary & they have a son, Peter John. Hannay wants nothing more than to spend his days fishing & working on his estate. He's vegetating with a vengeance.

... the place wanted a lot of looking to, for it had run wild during the War, and the woods had to be thinned, gates and fences repaired, new drains laid, a ram put in to supplement the wells, a heap of thatching to be done, and the garden borders brought back to cultivation. I had got through the worst of it, and as I came out of the Home Wood to the lower lawns and saw the old stone gables that the monks had built, I felt that I was anchored at last in the pleasantest kind of harbour.

So he's less than happy when he's contacted by his old boss, Macgillivray, who wants his help in solving a mystery involving an international crime syndicate. Macgillivray's men are about to round up the members of the syndicate but, as extra insurance, they've taken three hostages. Adela Victor, daughter of a rich banker; Lord Mercot, heir to the Duke of  Alcester & David Warcliff, the eight year old son of soldier & administrator Sir Arthur. On the face of it, there seems to be no connection between the three cases & Hannay is reluctant to become involved. His conscience begins to bother him, particularly about young David after a visit from Sir Arthur & eventually he agrees to help. The only clue he has is a piece of doggerel, six lines of verse about the fields of Eden & a blind spinner, sent to the fathers of each of the hostages. The lines trigger the recollection of a conversation, half-remembered by Hannay's friend, local doctor Tom Greenslade, & this sets him off on the trail of a criminal mastermind who is too subtle to use physical violence but instead steals the souls of his victims through hypnosis.

Hannay's trail leads him from the dining clubs of London to a seedy dance hall, the fjords of Norway & eventually the Highlands of Scotland. He's under pressure to locate the hostages before midsummer when Macgillivray will tighten the net & swoop on the gang. The hostages must be released at the same time as the gang is arrested or they will certainly be killed. Along the way, Hannay meets up with his former colleagues, Sandy Arbuthnot & Archie Roylance. I was also glad to see that Mary has a pivotal role to play. She was such an integral part of the adventure in the previous Hannay novel, Mr Standfast, & I was a little perturbed when she seemed to have dwindled into a wife & mother in this book while Hannay went off adventuring. I needn't have worried as Mary's abilities & intelligence are crucial in the unravelling of the plot & the discovery of the hostages. The mastermind of the conspiracy is truly frightening with his ability to subordinate the will of others & his total single-mindedness is well-hidden under a facade of urbane charm. As Sandy tells Hannay,

"There's such a thing, remember, as spiriting away a man's recollection of his past, and starting him out as a waif in a new world. I've heard in the East of such performances, and of course it means that the memory-less being is at the mercy of the man who has stolen his memory."

John Buchan is so good at writing a tight, fast-moving thriller but what I enjoy almost as much as the plot (& there is a fantastic twist near the end that I didn't see coming) is his sense of place. His descriptions of Scotland are always gorgeous but Hannay's home in the Cotswolds & the trip to Norway are just as evocative. I especially enjoyed the peace of Fosse as the still centre of all the chaos around the chase. It becomes a metaphor for England's place in a world still recovering from the Great War & reluctant to become involved in the world's woes. Hannay is so very noble, his stiff upper lip barely trembles except when he thinks of young David Warcliff or thinks his family is in danger. There are a few distasteful references to race & eugenics (the shape of the villain's head is seen as a sign of his degeneracy) but such references are of their time & if you read books published in the early 20th century, you have to accept, or at least learn to discount, the attitudes of the time. I loved The Three Hostages as an atmospheric thriller & I'm so pleased that the 1924 Club inspired me to read it.

John Buchan's sister, Anna, wrote under the name O Douglas. She also published a book in 1924, Pink Sugar, & I reviewed it several years ago here.

The Man with the Dark Beard - Annie Haynes

Dr John Bastow is an unlikely murder victim (especially if you believe my theory that it's the unpleasant characters who are marked for murder in Golden Age novels). He is a respected doctor, a widower with two children & seemingly no enemies. So, when he's found murdered, the motive seems elusive. Just before his death, however, he had a conversation with his old friend, barrister Sir Felix Skrine, where he hinted that he had knowledge of a crime that had gone undetected. Sir Felix advises him to go straight to the police & advises Dr Bastow to take a holiday as he's obviously overworked. There are other potential motives lurking under the surface of the doctor's seemingly placid life. Dr Bastow's daughter, Hilary, has fallen in love with her father's assistant, Basil Wilton, but the doctor doesn't approve of the relationship. Dr Bastow forbids the relationship & sacks Basil. Also in the household are Hilary's disabled brother, Felix, named after his godfather (usually known as Fee), the Doctor's secretary, Iris Houlton, & Aunt Lavinia, an outspoken, eccentrically dressed woman who lives with the Bastows in between her travels to exotic parts of the world. She struck me as a cross between Mary Kingsley & Lady Catherine De Bourgh. Aunt Lavinia disapproves of Basil & is also suspicious of the Bastows' new housemaid, Mary Ann, who she suspects of planning to entice the doctor into marriage or worse.

That same evening, the doctor is in his consulting room but doesn't respond to the parlourmaid or Basil knocking on the door. Even Aunt Lavinia can't rouse him. The maid goes goes into the garden, looks through the consulting room window & sees the doctor slumped at his desk. When the household break in, they find him dead, shot through the head at close range. Inspector Stoddart of Scotland Yard is called in & examines the scene of the crime. He finds a half-written letter to Sir Felix, about the subject of their earlier conversation, & a scrap of paper with the words, "It was the Man with the Dark Beard". A Chinese box with the proofs of that other suspected crime has also been stolen. A colleague of Dr Bastow's, Dr Sanford Morris, has a dark beard & when he shaves it off soon after the crime, & confesses that he had an appointment with Dr Bastow on the night of the murder which he says he didn't keep, he becomes one of the main suspects. Adding to the puzzle is the disappearance of the mysterious parlourmaid, Mary Ann Taylor, & the sudden transformation of Iris Houlton, who seems to have inherited money. When a second murder occurs, it seems too much of a coincidence that the same person could be involved with both victims & not be the murderer. Inspector Stoddart & his assistant, Harbord (is he a Sergeant? I assumed he was but I don't think his rank is ever mentioned) have their work cut out for them.

This is the first of four detective novels by Annie Haynes featuring Inspector Stoddart. As with The Crystal Beads Murder, I enjoyed Stoddart's investigation of the crime, with its red herrings & false trails. However, I don't think this book is as good as the later one. The villain is fairly obvious from the start although I didn't work out how the murders were done. There's also a touch too much melodrama for me in several scenes. Some aspects of the plot were more Wilkie Collins than Agatha Christie. I did enjoy some of the characterizations. Hilary's brother, Fee, has been indulged because of his disability & is peevish & demanding because of it. My favourite character was Aunt Lavinia. I enjoy characters who call a spade a spade, even though they may be completely wrong. I can't believe that she ever actually left the house in an outfit like this,

Today she wore a coat and skirt of grey tweed with the waist-line and leg-of-mutton sleeves of the Victorian era, while the length and extreme skimpiness of the skirt were essentially modern, as were her low-necked blouse, which allowed a liberal expanse of chest to be seen, and the grey silk stockings with the grey suede shoes. Her hair was shingled, of course, and had been permanently waved, but the permanent waves had belied their name, and the dyed, stubbly hair betrayed a tendency to stand on end.

I also didn't believe the end of Lavinia's story for one moment. However, The Man with the Dark Beard is a suitably convoluted mystery. Once the second murder is committed, I couldn't stop reading. I'm looking forward to reading more Annie Haynes & luckily, Dean Street Press are reprinting all her novels & kindly sent me this one for review.

Envious Casca - Georgette Heyer

I like to read Christmas-themed mysteries at Christmas & I planned to read Envious Casca last Christmas. However, I didn't get to it, I read J Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White instead. I'm not sure what made me pick up Envious Casca last week & make it my lunchtime book, but I did. It's a well-plotted murder mystery with the requisite nasty victim & cast of plausible suspects & I enjoyed it very much.

Nathaniel Herriard is a rich but miserable man. He lives at Lexham Manor with his brother, Joseph & his wife, Maud. Joseph is an out-of-work actor who loves to talk about his great roles but was really only ever a character actor. Maud is quiet & colourless, her only enthusiasm is her love of reading royal biographies, the more romantic & tragic the life, the more she enjoys it. Joseph has decided to bring the family together for Christmas, against Nathaniel's wishes as he hates Christmas. Nat & Joseph's nephew, Stephen & his sister, Paula are invited. Stephen is presumed to be his uncle's heir but the two have an abrasive relationship. Stephen has just become engaged to pretty, empty-headed Valerie Dean, a young woman that Nat has taken an instant dislike to. Paula is an actress & is desperate to borrow money from her uncle to put on a play written by Willoughby Roydon, a young man who writes serious plays about the sordid underbelly of modern life. Unsurprisingly none of his plays have been produced. Paula is excited about his new play because he's written a perfect part for herself. Nat's business partner, Edgar Mottisfont & Mathilda Clare, a cousin of the Herriads, make up the party.

Despite Joseph's desire to keep the party on an even keel, the cracks soon begin to appear. The guests arrive on Christmas Eve &, almost immediately, Nathaniel is rude to Valerie, who dislikes the house & its atmosphere. Stephen seems to be having second thoughts about his engagement anyway as he's rude to Valerie & abrasive with his uncle. Paula pushes everyone into hearing Roydon read his play & is then upset when Nathaniel is offended by the content. It seems it won't be so easy to get the money from Nathaniel & Roydon is upset because Paula had told him she would get the money as her inheritance so why shouldn't she have it now? Unfortunately she hadn't taken her uncle's disposition into account. Nathaniel has a meeting with Edgar Mottisfont which leaves Edgar furious & frightened. Then, Maud's copy of The Life of the Empress Elizabeth goes missing & Joseph & Mathilda have a hard time keeping the peace.

When the party assemble for dinner on Christmas Eve, they're all upset or angry to some degree. When Nathaniel doesn't appear, Joseph & Ford, the valet, go up to his room. The door's locked &, after calling Stephen to help, they break in, finding Nathaniel dead on the floor. It soon becomes apparent that he's been stabbed in the back. However, the door & windows were all locked &, apart from a tiny window in the bathroom, there seems no way a murderer could have escaped. The local police are called & then Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard arrives to take over the baffling case.

Envious Casca is a very good mystery, with almost everyone in the house party having a motive. As Inspector Hemingway puts it, "Here I've got no fewer than four hot suspects, and three possibles, all without alibis, and most of them with life-size motives, and I'm damned if I see my way to bringing it home to any of them." The locked room & the absence of a weapon is another twist in the tale. None of the house guests is particularly sympathetic, although I did like Mathilda Clare, a plain (or ugly, as Valerie Dean keeps emphasizing) thirtyish spinster with a dry sense of humour. I got to the solution ahead of the detectives but it was more to do with my knowledge of history than spotting any other clues. I liked Inspector Hemingway, he's intelligent & clever at choosing the right manner when questioning his suspects, from flirting with Valerie Dean to refusing to take umbrage when the very superior butler Sturry (who tends to speak in Capital Letters) turns his nose up at the police & sees the murder as a personal affront.

According to Jennifer Kloester's biography of Heyer, she had a very hard time writing the book, which was originally called Christmas Party. It was 1940, her brother-in-law was killed in action in May & she was upset & preoccupied by the news of the war. She had also just published The Spanish Bride & was worried by the opinion of some readers (including her mother) that her regular readers wouldn't enjoy it as much as her usual, lighter, books. She also felt that the subject matter - another European war, even though it was over a hundred years earlier - was ill-timed. Every time she tried to work on the mystery, she wanted to be writing a light romance instead. I also loved the anecdote in the biography that, after trying various titles for the book, she thought that Envious Casca would be a good title & assumed that everyone would recognize the allusion to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar & not be too annoyed that the number of stab wounds in the murders was different.

Envious Casca is about to be reprinted with the original title, A Christmas Party, in time for Christmas this year. I think there's also a nod to the very successful British Library Crime Classics in the cover art of the reprint. The BLCC series has a new Christmas book out as well, a collection of short stories, Silent Nights, selected by Martin Edwards. My copy is on its way. There's also a reprint of an earlier BLCC title, The Santa Klaus Murder, with a new cover (a great improvement on the hideous cover it had when first published a few years ago). I doubt the British Library Crime Classics would be so successful if they hadn't come up with that gorgeous cover art based on railway posters. All the earlier titles have been reprinted with covers in this style & I'm sure their sales must have improved.

A copy of Envious Casca is available at Anglophile Books.

Wodehouse and Kay - two short reviews

I decided to write short reviews of two books I've read recently - The Code of the Woosters by P G Wodehouse & The Youngest Lady in Waiting by Mara Kay. I enjoyed them both but I know that if I don't write down a few thoughts now, it won't happen at all. I'm writing this on Sunday & the weather is warming up here as Spring begins. I spent the morning weeding the garden (my triumph was digging out an enormous spider plant. It took ages & then once it was out, it was so heavy, I didn't think I'd be able to heave it into the recycling bin. Phoebe enjoyed jumping out at me from her "hiding" places as I worked my way along the fence & it was lovely to see bees enjoying the lavender & geraniums after all the horror stories recently about the demise of bee populations all over the world) & once the soil warms up properly & I start planting my veggies, I know I'll be spending more of my weekends in the garden than writing reviews. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that short, sharp reviews may be the norm for the next little while.

The Code of the Woosters is one of the most famous of all the Jeeves & Wooster novels. It has everything - Aunt Dahlia, soppy Madeline Bassett, lovers parted over misunderstandings, a menacing dog, vengeful magistrates & the attempted theft of a cow creamer. Bertie wakes one morning after another night on the tiles to be summoned by his Aunt Dahlia, who has a proposition for him. Uncle Tom has his eye on a silver cow creamer & he's devastated when his rival, Sir Watkyn Bassett, father of Madeline, snaffles it from under his nose. Aunt Dahlia needs Tom to be in a good mood when she asks him for more money for Milady's Boudoir, her financially challenged magazine. Sir Watkyn has offered to trade the cow creamer to Tom in exchange for his French chef, Anatole. Aunt Dahlia's solution is to ask Bertie to go down to Totleigh Towers, the Bassett country seat, & steal the cow creamer. Bertie is horrified at the thought of losing Anatole but, as Sir Watkyn hates him after fining him (in his capacity as magistrate) for stealing a policeman's helmet, Bertie isn't keen. Then, his friend, newt-fancier Gussie Fink-Nottle, asks for help as his engagement to Madeline Bassett is in peril. Madeline has always imagined that Bertie is in love with her so Bertie is keen to see their engagement continue as it lets him off the hook.

Bertie finds himself at Totleigh Towers, planning to steal a cow creamer, keep Gussie's engagement to Madeline on the rails & also help Madeline's cousin Stiffy Byng in her endeavours to get her uncle Watkyn to approve of her engagement to the local curate. I can't remember how many attempts at blackmail & theft (including the theft of another policeman's helmet) occur in just 250pp but there are a lot of them. As always, Jeeves is the one to extricate Bertie from all his troubles even though he's not above a little blackmail himself in the cause of persuading Bertie to take a round the world cruise. There's even some satire at the expense of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the form of the Black Short wearing would-be dictator Roderick Spode. It's all reliably funny & very hard to keep track of the plot, which is half the fun of reading Wodehouse. I'm always amazed at how he managed to keep track of the plot himself.

I'm not going to be able to give an objective, reasoned review of The Youngest Lady in Waiting by Mara Kay because it was one of my favourite books as a teenager & I'm just so thrilled that Margin Notes Books have reprinted it so I can read it again after over thirty-five years.

This was the book that I discovered in my High School library that sparked my love for Russian history, especially the story of the Romanovs. That would have been in the late 70s & I've been reading about it all ever since. The edition I read has been long out of print & very expensive second-hand but, in a way, it didn't matter because I'd read it so many times that I hardly needed the book. Having said that, I was very happy to be able to get hold of a copy & slightly apprehensive as to how I'd feel about the book after so many years. Would it live up to my memories? I sat down on a cold Sunday evening a few weeks ago, put on some Russian music (Glinka & Tchaikovsky) & read the whole book in one sitting. I loved it & I was amazed that so much of the story came back to me, even down to scenes & phrases. I had forgotten that Glinka himself makes an appearance in the book during the St Petersburg floods so it was lovely to be listening to his music as I read.

Masha Fredericks (first introduced in Masha, also reprinted by Margin Notes Books) is an orphan who has been educated at the Smolni Institute, a school for the daughters of the military & nobility, in St Petersburg. Masha has been noticed by Grand Duchess Alexandra, wife of Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of Tsar Alexander I, & is about to leave school & become the Grand Duchess's lady in waiting. Her best friend, Sophie, is going home to a father she barely knows. Masha & Sophie have been inseparable at school & are determined not to lose touch. Masha falls in love with Sophie's dashing cousin, Sergei, & is swept up in the excitement of first love. She also meets Sergei's quieter, more thoughtful brother, Michael, & they become friends. Sergei is part of a group of young nobles who want to push for reform in the authoritarian Russian state. When Tsar Alexander suddenly dies & Grand Duke Nicholas becomes Tsar, there is unrest, exploited by the Army who wanted Nicholas's brother, Constantine, to succeed, & Sergei & his friends, including Sophie's fiancé, Mark. Masha is horrified by Sergei's plans & stays loyal to the new Tsar, bound by loyalty to the family. Sergei rejects her & rushes out to join his friends, called the Decembrists, in their rebellion.

I remembered so much of this story - the scene where Masha & Sergei stand on a plank over a puddle on a St Petersburg street & she realises that he cares for her; Sophie's Aunt Daria & her old country dacha, Rodnoye, with the household spirit, the Domovoy, flitting about the house, just out of sight. Masha's encounter with an old man who may or may not be Tsar Alexander, rumoured to have faked his own death & to be living as a holy man in Siberia. In some ways, The Youngest Lady in Waiting is just a historical romance, full of the cliches of Tsarist Russia - the glittering parties, the sleigh rides though the snow with the bells on the troika tinkling, the aristocrats on their dachas & the downtrodden serfs. But, seeing it through Masha's eyes, a shy young girl with no advantages & no expectations, is quite wonderful. This was probably the first book I'd ever read about Russia & I went on to read many more historical romances by Constance Heaven, Catherine Gavin, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' Kirov trilogy & Victoria Holt. I also picked up Anna Karenina & Robert K Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra (the Readers Digest condensed version first), which started me on a reading journey that continues to this day.

Lucy Maud Montgomery : the gift of wings - Mary Henley Rubio

I don't think I read any of L M Montgomery's books when I was a child. I remember enjoying the TV adaptation of Anne of Green Gables & I may have read the book afterwards but it was Montgomery's Journals that were my first real exposure to her work. I borrowed them all through ILL & was amazed at the difference between Maud's often unhappy life & the sunny atmosphere of her novels. This biography, by one of the editors of the Journals, reinforces that impression. It's an excellent, if often harrowing, read.

Maud was brought up by her maternal grandparents on Prince Edward Island, the famous setting for her most loved books.Her mother died when Maud was only a small child & her father left the Island & eventually remarried. Maud's grandmother was a sympathetic but conventional woman; her grandfather was stern & very dismissive of the ambitions & dreams of a mere girl. Maud had to struggle for her education & she used her journals as an escape from her life when it became difficult. Eventually she became a teacher & began writing stories & poetry which she sold to newspapers. Her emotional life was difficult. She was bright, vivacious & talented at recitation & story telling. She was also very conscious of the downside of living in a small community where gossip could be deadly. Her grandfather's sarcasm at her ambition or her presumption in "putting herself forward" had the ability to dampen Maud's spirits.

Maud had to contend with intrusive talk about her prospects as she grew older & was still unmarried. Her Journals describe a passionate relationship with a young man, Herman Leard, with whose family she boarded when she worked as a teacher. This secret relationship was vividly described in the Journals but Maud never mentions the fact that Herman was engaged to another girl at the time. How much was true & how much was romantic imagination? One of the most fascinating things about the biography is in exploring the truth of the Journals. Maud rewrote them years after the events were originally described & Rubio explores not only the accounts in the Journals but also what she discovered in the process of editing & publishing the Journals in the 1980s. She was able to interview many people who were mentioned in the Journals & it's often amazing to see the differences between the way Maud records an incident & how others viewed it.

Nowhere is this disconnect between Maud's reality & what others remembered than in her account of her marriage. Maud married Reverend Ewan Macdonald when she was in her thirties. Ewan was an Islander, like Maud, & they were secretly engaged for five years before marrying in 1911. Ewan was a good man, kindly & caring to his parishioners. Unfortunately he suffered from depression & the social stigma of any kind of mental illness combined with the medications he took to relieve his symptoms, made his life a misery for much of their marriage. Both Ewan & Maud seem to have been severely over-medicated for much of their lives. Ewan saw doctors who prescribed bromides & sedatives but he was also self-medicating with other over-the-counter medicines while Maud often dosed him with her homemade wine or brandy. The strain of parish work in small communities, "keeping up appearances", & later problems with their eldest son, Chester, played on Maud's nerves & led to her taking all kinds of medication. She often seems to be on the verge of a complete nervous collapse. Maud's Journals portray all this in great detail but she was also able to put on such a good face to neighbours & parishioners that many people who knew the Macdonalds in their parishes in Norval & Toronto were amazed when they read the Journals. Even their maids, who lived with the family, were shocked to discover what Maud had written. They were also shocked by Maud's caustic opinions about many of the people she knew in her daily life.

I found the description of Maud's literary career especially interesting. The success of Anne of Green Gables was enormous & laid the foundation for Maud's career. The financial rewards compensated for Ewan's lacklustre career & Maud certainly enjoyed her fame. Sometimes the effects were two-edged, as when the success of her books led to such an increase of tourists making the pilgrimage to PEI that Maud could no longer relax when she went home. I also couldn't help wondering how Ewan felt about his wife's career & whether the humiliation of being sidelined, both financially & emotionally, may have contributed to his depression. As Rubio writes at the end of the book, we only have Maud's side of the story so Ewan's story will never be told. Maud's lawsuits with an unscrupulous publisher dragged on for years & she felt stifled by the demands of her public for stories with happy endings. Her popularity did her no favours with the literary critics, nearly all of them men. Although Maud worked hard to promote Canadian literature & help young authors, her books were sneered at by male critics who relegated her to the lowly status of an author of children's books & romances. Even her later books, such as A Tangled Web, which she intended for an adult audience, were invariably shelved with the children's books in libraries & bookshops.

Mary Henley Rubio's biography is the product of many years research & the thoroughness of that research is evident on every page. When I was reading the Journals, especially the final one, I can remember having to put the book down several times & read something light because Maud's final years were just so grim. I felt the same way when reading this biography. The contrast between the sunny skies of her novels & the storms & dramas of her life is so great that it was useful to be able to look at it from the outside with the perspective of a biographer rather than to be inside the maelstrom with Maud as it often felt when reading the Journals. Reading the biography has also made me want to read more of the fiction. Last year, I read Jane of Lantern Hill & Rilla of Ingleside when they were reprinted by Virago & I have the Emily books & A Tangled Web on the tbr shelves.

Kristin Lavransdatter : The Cross - Sigrid Undset

The final book in the trilogy begins two years after Erlend's punishment for his part in the treasonous plot that almost cost him his life. Kristin & her family are back at her childhood home, Jørundgaard, as Erlend's properties are forfeit to the Crown.  Erlend feels like an outsider among the people on Kristin's estate. His manager, Ulf, has also come to oversee the work on the farm & he's resented as well. Kristin, too, is still remembered by some as the girl who broke her father's heart with her scandalous marriage to Erlend. Kristin's sons are growing up & she tries to keep the youngest, Lavrans & Munan, at her side as long as she can as she watches the older boys chasing girls & getting into scrapes.

But always with that secret, breathless anguish: If things go badly for them, I won't be able to bear it. And deep in her heart she wailed at the memory of her father and mother. They had borne anguish and sorrow over their children, day after day, until their deaths; they had been able to carry this burden, and it was not because they loved their children any less but because they loved with a better kind of love.
Was this how she would see her struggle end? Had she conceived in her womb a flock of restless fledgling hawks that simply lay in her nest, waiting impatiently for the hour when their wings were strong enough to carry them beyond the most distant blue peaks? And their father would clap his hands and laugh: Fly, fly my young birds.

Kristin & Erlend's marriage has always been difficult. Even the heady days of their courtship were marred for Kristin by her awareness of the sin she was committing & her grief at betraying her father. She was devastated by Erlend's imprisonment & did everything she could to help him but now that he's free, she feels the same conflicts she always has. Kristin strives to care for the house & farm while Erlend has no interest in the estate. She became so absorbed in the children that Erlend felt excluded. The misunderstandings between them escalate until Erlend leaves Jørundgaard, ostensibly to look into the state of a hunting lodge some distance away. However, he doesn't return & finally Kristin makes the journey to see him. Their reunion is passionate although she refuses to stay with him in this remote spot. She feels a responsibility to the farm & the children & returns home. Erlend refuses to follow her, even when he learns that Kristin is pregnant. Kristin's pregnancy & her secretive behaviour regarding the child become the subject of gossip, which only intensifies when she names the child after his father - naming a child after a living person was superstitiously avoided at the time. When Erlend finally comes home after one of the boys tells him about Kristin's plight, he's killed in a minor scuffle. Even his dying leaves Kristin conflicted as he dies without a priest to say the last rites.

Kristin's son, Gaute, seduces a young woman, Jofrid, from a rich family. He kidnaps her & brings her back to Jørundgaard where they eventually marry after her relatives are pacified with a handsome settlement. Gaute has been left in charge of the farm as his brothers have chosen other paths. Kristin's relationship with her daughter-in-law is prickly as Jofrid is jealous of Kristin who tries to refrain from criticising Gaute & Jofrid's management of the farm & what she sees as their stinginess with visitors & travellers. Even her relationship with her grandson causes jealousy as Jofrid feels that Kristin is judging her & finding her wanting. Feeling shut out from her home & aware that her presence is causing tension, Kristin decides to enter a convent after undertaking a pilgrimage to atone for her sins.

I loved this book. The story is completely involving but it's the characters that draw the reader in. Kristin & Erlend's relationship is no fairytale & every mistake they make is revealed unflinchingly. Their sons, servants, tenants & other relatives all live in the imagination & the setting of 14th century Norway felt real with the beautiful descriptions of the landscape & the attitudes of the people. My favourite character, though, is Simon Andressøn, the man Kristin rejected when she fell in love with Erlend. Simon has always been there, in the background of the story, kind, honourable, more than a little dull. He never stops loving Kristin, even after he marries her sister, & helps her to save Erlend from imprisonment. Kristin sees him as a brotherly figure & is oblivious to his true feelings for her. Kristin's skill as a healer saves Simon's son but, as well as her herbs & potions, she also carries out a pagan ritual when it seems that the child will die. This mixture of the pagan & the Christian permeates the book & leads to the sense of spiritual conflict that Kristin & Simon share.

  What had happened when the boy lay ill - that was something he must not and dared not mention. But this was the first time in his life that he reluctantly kept silent about a sin before his parish priest.
  He had thought much about it and suffered terribly over it in his heart. Surely this must be a great sin, whether he himself had used sorcery to heal or had directly lured another person into doing so.
  But he wasn't able to feel remorse when he thought about the fact that otherwise his son would now be lying in the ground. He felt fearful and dejected and kept watch to see if the child had changed afterward. He didn't think he could discern anything.

I see Simon with a permanent worried frown on his face. His relationship with his wife, Ramborg, is blighted by her feelings of inferiority to Kristin & by Simon unconsciously comparing Ramborg's lax household management with Kristin's. He compares himself with Erlend & always finds himself wanting. He's not as handsome or as confident but he's more thoughtful & reliable. Unfortunately they're not the qualities to appeal to a headstrong girl. Even his one infidelity in his first marriage was a fling with a servant girl that resulted in a daughter, Arnbjorg. The girl lives with Simon & he loves her but Ramborg is jealous of her as well & her goodness & quiet efficiency just show up how lazy her stepmother is. Even Simon's death is the result of a minor accident that leads to blood poisoning. Kristin tries to heal him but, even on his deathbed as he tries to tell her of his feelings, she bustles around completely oblivious, not listening to him & he just fades away. It's such a poignant moment & I felt sadder about Simon's fate than anyone else in the book.

I've just finished reading several very long books & all of them are going to be in my Top 10 of the year (at this stage, anyway) - John Forster's Life of Dickens, A N Wilson's biography of Queen Victoria (posts on both of these to come soon) & Kristin Lavransdatter. I seem to be in the mood for very long books at the moment, &, having finished these three over the last week, I'm not really sure what to read next. I've just started Mary Rubio's biography of L M Montgomery which I'm sure will leave me wanting to read more of her fiction.

These are the books I've pulled off the shelves. Virago will be reprinting more Angela Thirkell next year so I really should read some of the Thirkells on my tbr shelves before I order any more. The D E Stevenson online group is reading Celia's House at the moment but I didn't have time to start reading it when they did. Maybe I can catch up? I'm still in the mood for non-fiction & especially books about WWII so the Persephones & the Slightly Foxed edition of Christabel Bielenberg's The Past is Myself are calling me (& isn't it the most gorgeous purple?). Just in case I haven't read enough royal biography, A Royal Experiment is about George III, Queen Charlotte & their family. I'm also thinking about starting Sir Walter Scott's Journal & then reading another big Victorian baggy monster of a biography, the Life of Scott, written by his son-in-law, J G Lockhart. The first edition was in 7 volumes - (the second edition was in 10 volumes!!!) but fortunately I have an abridged version as part of the Delphi Classics Scott.

Kristin Lavransdatter : The Wife - Sigrid Undset

The first part of Kristin Lavransdatter ended with a wedding, but this was not the conventional happy ending of romances & fairy tales. Kristin & Erlend had waited years for this moment & Kristin, especially, had been weighed down by the guilt she felt at transgressing against God's laws as well as deceiving her beloved father. She also realised that she was pregnant & faced the prospect of shaming her parents even more if this became known. Erlend & Kristin travel to his estate at Husaby after the wedding & Kristin begins her new life as a wife & mistress of a great estate. At first, all she can think about is the child that will be born too soon after the wedding. This first section of the book is called The Fruit of Sin. When Erlend finally realises that Kristin is pregnant, he is dismayed but he has never really understood the wrong he did to Kristin in seducing her & encouraging her to carry on their affair. Kristin's labour is horrendous & she barely survives. Her son, Naakkve, is her only consolation. Soon after the birth, she goes on pilgrimage, barefoot & alone except for the baby, to pray at the altar of Christ Church.

And here knelt Kristin with the fruit of her sin in her arms. She hugged the child tight - he was as fresh as an apple, pink and white like a rose. He was awake now, and he lay there looking up at her with his clear, sweet eyes.
Conceived in sin. Carried under her hard, evil heart. Pulled out of her sin-tainted body, so pure, so healthy, so inexpressibly lovely and fresh and innocent. This undeserved beneficence broke her heart in two; crushed with remorse, she lay there with tears welling up out of her soul like blood from a mortal wound.

The pilgrimage soothes Kristin in some ways, & her work at Husaby also helps to relieve her feelings. The estate has been left to run down. Erlend is no farmer & his travels & adventures have left him little time to settle down. Kristin is a good & careful manager & soon gains the respect of the servants & tenants. She has more children - seven sons in all - & her absorption in the children & her lingering sense of grievance over Erlend's past behaviour & thoughtlessness, lead to tensions between them. Erlend's two children from his relationship with Eline are another source of guilt to Kristin. She establishes a good relationship with the boy, Orm, after a rocky start, but Erlend's daughter, Margret, is proud & arrogant. Erlend feels guilty about these children. They're illegitimate & so can't inherit his property. He spoils Margret & is hard on Orm, a frail, gentle boy who will never be a great warrior. He resents Kristin's advice & blames her for supporting Orm & trying to correct Margret.

Kristin's brooding on her sins often threatens to dominate her life. The local priest, Sira Eiliv, counsels her to stop worrying about her own sins. She should pray & do good deeds, much more useful than dwelling on the past. Erlend's brother, Gunnulf, is a priest, & Kristin looks to him for help as well. She also realises that Erlend is not respected by his peers & worries about what this will mean for their future. Erlend is impetuous & rash, not a steady man like her father or Simon Andressøn, the man she rejected when she fell in love with Erlend. Simon has stayed on good terms with her parents. He married a rich widow &, after her death, marries Kristen's younger sister, Ramborg. When Kristin & Erlend travel to her childhood home, Jørundgaard, they see how her father relies on Simon as his health fails.

The political situation in Norway plays a larger role in this book than in the first. The King, Magnus, succeeded to the throne as a child. His mother, Lady Ingebjørg, ruled as Regent but was forced out by another faction. She remarried & left Norway with her new husband, who was considered below her in rank. Some years later, when Magnus began to rule alone, his mother began plotting with some nobles, including Erlend, to return to Norway with one of her other sons. She hoped to regain control of the country through her younger son. When the plan is discovered - partly through Erlend's thoughtlessness - he is arrested & charged with treason. It's now, when their relationship has been nearly destroyed by old resentments, that Kristin is forced to realise how tightly her life is bound up with Erlend & she turns to her brother-in-law Simon to help them both.

He shook hands with his eldest sons and then lifted the smallest ones into his arms, while he asked where Gaute was. "Well, you must give him my greetings, Naakkve. He must have gone off into the woods with his bow the way he usually does. Tell him he can have my English longbow after all - the one I refused to give him last Sunday."
Kristin pulled him to her without speaking a word.
The she whispered urgently, "When are you coming back, Erlend, my friend?"
"When God wills it, my wife."
She stepped back, struggling not to break down. Normally he never addressed her in any other way except by using her given name; his last words had shaken her to the heart. Only now did she fully understand what had happened.

As well as an exciting plot, full of drama & incident, Sigrid Undset gives the reader access to Kristin's mind & heart. There are many beautiful set pieces of quiet description, in the natural world & often in church, as Kristin prays for her dead loved ones,

She sat on the bench along the wall of the empty church. The old smell of cold incense kept her thoughts fixed on images of death and the decay of temporal things. And she didn't have the strength to lift up her soul to catch a glimpse of the land where they were, the place to which all goodness and love and faith had finally been moved and now endured. Each day, when she prayed for the peace of their souls, it seemed to her unfair that she should pray for those that had possessed more peace than  she had ever known since she became a grown woman. Sira Eiliv would no doubt say that prayers for the dead were always good - good for oneself, since the other  person had already found peace with God.

Undset paints a picture of medieval Norway where the pagan past has not quite been banished by the Christian present. There's also a real sense of the loneliness of life in the forests & remote countryside where violence is often the response to unhappiness or a sense of being wronged. Society's laws aren't always respected & the Church struggles to supplant the old gods & the power of the feudal past. I'm looking forward to the last part of the story, The Cross, very much.

An Infamous Army - Georgette Heyer

In honour of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, I decided to read Georgette Heyer's An Infamous Army, a novel that combines her usual sparkling romance & social comedy with a detailed account of the climactic battle of the Napoleonic Wars.

The scene is Brussels in the summer of 1815. A group of English army officers & their families have taken houses in Brussels as the army under the Duke of Wellington faces the prospect of Napoleon's re-emergence on the political scene after his escape from Elba. Napoleon has been gathering troops & acclaim on a triumphant journey through France & the allies - English, Prussian & Belgian - are readying themselves for his next move.

Judith, Lady Worth & her husband, Julian are the centre of a small circle that includes the Duchess of Richmond's daughters, Lady Worth's young brother, Peregrine & his wife, Harriet, & Lady Worth's protégée Lucy Devenish, an heiress with middle-class connections. Judith thinks that Lucy would be a perfect wife for Lord Worth's brother, Colonel Charles Audley, an aide-de-camp to Wellington. However, when Charles arrives from Vienna, in advance of Wellington's arrival from talks with the Allies, he is immediately smitten with the notorious young widow, Lady Barbara Childe.

Barbara is still only in her 20s but was married off to an older man by her relations. Fortunately she was soon widowed & she has vowed never to be trapped by marriage again. She & her brothers, George & Harry, had been brought up by their reckless father & all three have a streak of wildness. Barbara's beauty & wit have inspired a string of admirers but, when she meets Charles at a ball, & he proposes marriage almost straight away, she's intrigued in spite of herself. Barbara's other chief suitor is Etienne, Comte de Lavisse, suave, confident & very sure of his own appeal. Barbara's sister, Lady Vidal, favours the match because Lavisse is rich & Barbara has no money at all. Charles, with only his salary, is not a suitable prospect in her point of view but Barbara, who thinks nothing of scandalizing society by painting her toenails to match her gown & riding alone in the early morning, is headstrong enough to ignore her sister's advice.

Charles & Barbara become engaged, much to the consternation of both their families. However, Barbara seems determined to sabotage her relationship with Charles by continuing her rackety lifestyle. The last straw is when she entices Peregrine away from his wife because Harriet snubbed her. The engagement is broken & the situation is still not resolved when Napoleon's army crosses the Belgian border & the allied army marches towards Waterloo for the final confrontation.

I was a little daunted when I read that this book had been used in courses on Napoleonic history at Sandhurst. There's certainly a very detailed description of Waterloo & I think it is possibly too long & too detailed. However, I was listening to the audio book read by Clare Higgins & I did find it interesting. If I'd been reading the book, I may have skipped a few pages. Heyer lets us see several characters - Charles, George, Harry, Lavisse - during the battle which kept me interested. The portrait of Wellington is also very well-done. His loyalty to his staff, his family as he calls them; his frustrations with the politicians & army chiefs in London & with his allies in Brussels; his ability to flirt & attend parties in the midst of his preparations for war & his very moving anguish after the battle as he surveys the scene & comes to terms with the many lives lost.

Charles is a true Heyer hero, kind, gallant, loyal, steadfast. Barbara wouldn't be my idea of a friend but Heyer makes her understandable by showing how her background & unfortunate early life have shaped her present behaviour. The most moving scenes in the book are when Barbara & Judith help to look after the wounded men returning from the battle of Quatre Bras, the day before Waterloo. Like any description of war, these scenes reinforce the real cost of battle to the men who have to engage in it. Judith comes to respect & admire Barbara & realises that she has many good qualities that have been hidden under her pose of flippant disregard for the conventions. An Infamous Army is an absorbing novel, one of my favourite Heyers - although I tend to think every Heyer I read is my favourite, until I read the next.