Cousin Henry - Anthony Trollope

April marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope & there have been articles galore (just google Anthony Trollope 200 if you don't believe me). I even found a checklist to count how many of Trollope's novels I've read (22 out of 47 so not quite halfway). To celebrate the anniversary, I'm rereading Miss Mackenzie with my online reading group & I also took Cousin Henry off the tbr shelves.

Cousin Henry is one of Trollope's standalone novels. It's not part of the famous Palliser or Barsetshire series & it's not a blockbuster like The Way We Live Now or He Knew He Was Right. It's short by Trollopian standards (under 300pp), has no subplots & is an acute psychological study of guilt & indecision.

The plot is easily told. Mr Indefer Jones, owner of Llanfeare on the coast of Carmarthenshire, is an old man. He has no children & is undecided as to what he should do with his estate. He has made many wills as he dithers between leaving the property to Henry Jones, the next male heir, or to his niece, Isabel Brodrick. Henry Jones is a clerk in London, a very unprepossessing young man with no real vices but he just fails to please. On the other hand, Isabel is the darling of her uncle's eye. She has lived at Llanfeare for some years, mostly to get away from her unsympathetic stepmother. She is loved & admired by all the tenants on the estate & she loves them & the estate in return. However, Uncle Indefer's conscience inclines him to leaving the property to Henry & to leave £4000 to Isabel. Isabel is a noble, proud girl who would scorn to try to influence her uncle in any way. She leaves him to wrestle with his own conscience & never reproaches him. His lawyer, Mr Apjohn, has remonstrated with Uncle Indefer about disinheriting Isabel but to no avail. The only result has been a breach between lawyer & client which contributes to the misery that follows.

The final will seems to be the one leaving Llanfeare to Henry. He has been brought down to visit his uncle in the last months of his life & introduced to the servants & tenants, all of whom take an instant dislike to him. When Uncle Indefer dies, there's talk of a later will, favouring Isabel, having been written & witnessed by two of the tenants. Isabel was with her uncle when he died & he told her that he had made such a will. Mr Apjohn knows nothing of it because Uncle Indefer refused to consult him about it. However, he had told Henry of the will & showed Henry where he had hidden it, in a volume of sermons in the library. After the funeral, the tenants tell their story of witnessing a new will but Henry stays silent. As no later will can be found, the will favouring Henry is read & must stand.

Isabel immediately makes plans to return to her father's house in Hereford. Unfortunately the £4000 her uncle bequeathed her doesn't exist because the old man sold the land that was meant to provide the cash. So, she returns home with nothing. Henry is persuaded by Mr Apjohn to offer Isabel the money as soon as he can get it but she scornfully refuses him. She suspects that Henry knows the whereabouts of the later will. She despises him & has no reservations about telling him so to his face. Isabel is in love with William Owen, but her uncle didn't think a poor clergyman was good enough to marry his heir so Isabel has refused him. Now that she's poor, she refuses to marry him because she's too proud to go to him with nothing. Isabel's father & stepmother don't see why she shouldn't accept Cousin Henry's offer of the £4000 & marry Mr Owen but she refuses. She hates living with her family but her father won't allow her to earn her own living.

Henry, meanwhile, is at Llanfeare. He is tortured by guilt & paralysed by indecision. He knows where the will is hidden, & he can't bring himself to leave the library in case the will is discovered. He knows he should confess & produce the will but he can't. He vacillates between planning to tell all & wallowing in self-pity about his treatment & his dislike for Isabel. He's despised by the servants, who all give notice, & he's too cowardly to go about the estate because he fears the wrath of the Cantors, the tenants who witnessed the will. So he skulks around the house, afraid to leave the library in case the will is discovered but wishing someone would find the will to extricate him from the torment he's suffering.

Mr Apjohn suspects Henry of knowing about the will but can't prove anything. Without the will, nothing can be done. Then, as rumours spread about the will & about the injustice suffered by Isabel, the local newspaper, the Carmarthenshire Herald, prints a series of articles questioning Henry's honesty & his right to the estate. The editor hopes to provoke Henry into a libel action that would see him cross examined in court about the will & exactly what he knows about it. Could Henry commit perjury by lying in court or the even more serious crime of destroying the will? Mr Apjohn enlists Isabel's father & the two men decide to confront Henry & try to prove Mr Apjohn's theory about the will.

Cousin Henry is such an interesting character study. Henry is a coward, snivelling & self-justifying. He spends most of his time cowering from imaginary blows, vacillating between opposite courses of action, avoiding the servants & tenants & crying with self-pity over his situation. However, he's not altogether an unsympathetic character. Uncle Indefer doesn't help by openly disliking him & preferring Isabel. The tenants take their cue from him &, of course, Henry has never had an opportunity to get to know the estate. He's bullied by everyone from Mr Apjohn to the Cantors, despised by Isabel, but he's not evil. He could have destroyed the will & brazened it out but he doesn't do that. He does have a conscience but his fear of the consequences of almost any course of action leave him doing precisely nothing.

Isabel is an even more interesting character. Proud & prickly with a streak of masochism (she plans to work as a housemaid or starve herself rather than accept Henry's offer of money), Isabel prides herself on her moral rectitude. She refuses to blame Henry publicly, even though she is sure that he knows of the later will. She declares her love passionately to Mr Owen but then refuses to marry him. She drives her stepmother mad by standing on the moral high ground, refusing Henry's money, refuses to marry Mr Owen while she can bring him nothing &, as Mrs Brodrick puts it, taking the boots from her own daughters' feet as her husband has to provide for his ungrateful daughter. I sympathized with Henry & Isabel but was furious with Uncle Indefer for being such an old ditherer & creating such a mess. As Mr Apjohn says, the danger in owning property is in leaving heirs & tenants in ignorance of what is to come afterwards. I enjoyed Cousin Henry & I'm looking forward to reading more Trollope in this anniversary year.

Fortunata and Jacinta - Benito Pérez Galdós

Benito Pérez Galdós was the most famous Spanish author of the 19th century. He's been compared to Dickens & Balzac in his depiction of Spanish society & the broad canvas of his novels. He wrote 46 novels in his great series, Episidios Nacionales, from 1873-1912. In Spain, his name needs no explanation but very few of his novels have been translated into English.

Fortunata and Jacinta is the story of two women who both love the same man. One is his wife, the other his mistress. Juanito Santa Cruz is the spoilt only son of a wealthy merchant. He's never had to work in his life & shows no desire to try. Juanito spends his days & nights touring the poorer districts of Madrid with his friends. He meets Fortunata, a poor but beautiful young girl. They have an affair, she becomes pregnant & he leaves her. Juanito's mother becomes concerned about his profligate lifestyle, although she doesn't know about Fortunata. She engineers a marriage with Juanito's cousin  Jacinta, a lovely but sheltered girl who soon falls passionately in love with her husband. After the honeymoon, they settle in to a comfortable life with the older Santa Cruzes. Juanito has confessed his affair with Fortunata to his wife & she forgives him. However, Jacinta is desperate to have a child. When she doesn't fall pregnant, she becomes obsessed with Fortunata's son & tracks the child down to a relative of Fortunata's who is caring for the boy. However, this child is not Fortunata's son, who died as a baby. The unscrupulous relatives try to convince Jacinta to adopt the boy & almost succeed.

Fortunata has taken up with a man who mistreats her & when she leaves him, she has several unsuccessful relationships until she meets Maximiliano Rubín, a young man studying to be a pharmacist. Maxi falls in love with Fortunata at first sight but he's a poor specimen, thin, sickly & unprepossessing. He lives with his aunt, Doña Lupe, who disapproves of Fortunata's lifestyle but eventually gives in to Maxi's desire to marry her. Fortunata is still in love with Juanito but eventually agrees to marry Maxi for security. He persuades her to enter a convent that specialises in saving fallen women, where she will be able to cleanse her soul & prepare herself for marriage & life in a respectable family. While there, she meets an old friend, Mauricia, a seamstress who has delusions & visions caused by her drinking. Fortunata leaves the convent full of good intentions & marries Maxi.

Juanito, having lost sight of Fortunata for some years, sees her again & finds her more beautiful than ever. He pursues her, renting the apartment next door to the newly married couple & easily seduces her again. Maxi discovers the relationship & the torment he suffers begins to affect his mind. Juanito again leaves Fortunata & she is taken up by Don Evaristo Feijóo, an older man who becomes her protector & teaches her more cultured manners. Eventually he convinces her to return to Maxi as he worries about her fate after his death.

Almost immediately Fortunata realises that she has made a terrible mistake. She can't bear Maxi or his aunt, who is suspicious of her. She begins seeing Juanito again & confronts Jacinta, telling her that she is Juanito's true wife as she met him first & had a child by him. When Fortunata becomes pregnant, she can't hide it from Maxi, who begins having homicidal fantasies & vows to take revenge on his faithless wife & her lover.

Fortunata and Jacinta is a panoramic story of life in 1870s Madrid. The story is so rich that merely describing the plot doesn't begin to explain how absorbing it is. I know very little about Spanish history & the references to Spanish politics went over my head but it didn't really matter. I read a little bit about the fraught political situation around the succession to the Spanish throne but not knowing much about it didn't affect my enjoyment of the novel. The minor characters are just wonderful. Maxi's aunt, Doña Lupe, is a canny moneylender & investor who had brought up Maxi & his two brothers, political opportunist Juan Pablo & Nicolas, a priest whose appetite is legendary but who never pays for the enormous meals he consumes. The pharmacist, Bellester, who falls in love with Fortunata & tries to protect her from Maxi's odd behaviour. Mauricia, the alcoholic seamstress who shocks the nuns in the convent by her foul-mouthed tirades when she manages to get hold of drink. My favourite character was Guillermina Pacheco, an indefatigable worker for the poor who bullies all her acquaintances into supporting her charitable endeavours.

Juanito Santa Cruz was a completely worthless man with no redeeming features at all. I could only wonder why Fortunata loved him so much & why she kept going back to him after he treated her so badly. She seemed to think he was her fate & didn't even try to resist him. Jacinta became completely consumed by her desire for a child, unable to enjoy her privileged lifestyle & becoming more & more fascinated by the idea of Fortunata & her hold over Juanito. I read Fortunata and Jacinta with my 19th century bookgroup & I loved coming back to the book every week for another installment. I hope more of Galdós' novels are translated into English as I'd love to read more of his work.

John Caldigate - Anthony Trollope

In this 200th anniversary year of the birth of Anthony Trollope, I plan to read at least a few more of his books. I've begun with John Caldigate (picture from here), one of Catherine Pope's Top 10 Trollopes & I think it's now one of mine as well.

John Caldigate has a fractious relationship with his father. Young John has gone to Cambridge & racked up gambling debts with an unscrupulous character called Davis. His father doesn't consider him worthy to inherit his estate &, even though the estate is entailed, he now favours a nephew instead. John has no feelings of family pride & readily accepts his father's offer to buy his reversion to the title. John can then pay his debts & make a new start. He decides to go to Australia with a friend, Dick Shand, & try his luck at gold mining. Before leaving England, John finds himself mildly entangled with two young ladies - Dick Shand's sister, Maria & his cousin Julia Babington. John, however, is attracted to Hester Bolton, the daughter of his father's legal advisor, a man who disapproves of John's flippant disregard for his family name & fortune.

John & Dick travel to Australia second class to save money which excites quite a bit of comment among the first class passengers. John becomes friendly with a pretty young widow, Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith's antecedents are obscure - she claims to have made a living on the stage before marrying unwisely - & everyone warns John against the intimacy. However, by the time they reach Melbourne, John has become entangled with Mrs Smith & they are engaged "unless something happens to part us" as John ungallantly adds. John realises his mistake as soon as he goes ashore but feels obliged to regard himself as engaged, although Mrs Smith has left him free to pursue his gold mining plans without the burden of taking her along.

The two young men travel to New South Wales with a letter of introduction to a friend of a friend, Tom Crinkett. They set themselves up with a claim with the help of another miner & they prosper. Well, John prospers. Dick takes to drink & ends up as a shepherd in the Queensland outback, helped out with money from John from time to time. Mrs Smith, meanwhile, has gone back on the stage in Melbourne & then goes to Sydney with her show, performing under the name of Mademoiselle Cettini.  John hears of her from a former shipboard acquaintance & goes to Sydney to see her. She returns to the goldfields with him & they live together for a time before parting.

Over the next few years, John's fortunes rise & he eventually returns to England with a handsome fortune & a new appreciation of his family estate. John & his father have been corresponding & their relations have thawed so that by the time he returns home, his father is proud & happy to see him. Old Mr Caldigate has become disillusioned with the nephew whom he once favoured over his son & decides to reinstate John as his heir. John marries Hester Bolton, despite the disapproval of her father & her intensely religious mother. Just after their first child is born, John receives a letter from Mrs Smith, signing herself Euphemia Caldigate & demanding to be recognized as his wife. Mrs Smith had bought shares in John's mine along with Tom Crinkett when John sold out & returned home. After John had left Australia, the mine petered out & the unlucky partners asked John to refund some of their money. He refused & the two travelled to England, hoping to convince him in person. As a result of the information they lay against him, John is charged with bigamy & committed to stand trial. Is John really a bigamist or are Crinkett & Mrs Smith trying to blackmail him using circumstantial evidence?

John Caldigate is an unusual Victorian novel because it shows a rather weak-willed young man as a hero. John starts off as an easily-led spendthrift who is sent out to the colonies almost in disgrace. He flirts with a young woman on board ship, makes her promises, lives with her unmarried & then tires of her. He works hard & is good to Dick Shand when he goes off the rails but returns to England with his fortune. He only offers to refund some of the money paid by Crinkett & Smith when he fears a scandal. The fact that he pays them the money tells against him at his trial although his motive, in the end, was honourable. There is genuine doubt as to whether or not he has married Mrs Smith because he has been such a slippery character.

The unravelling of the evidence against Caldigate by a Post Office worker called Bagwax (one of Trollope's silliest names, along with his colleague, Mr Curlydown) makes good use of Trollope's own expertise as a Post Office employee. Unfortunately Bagwax is fond of explaining his theories in minute detail & this part of the narrative drags a little. Our heroine, Hester Bolton, is also a wishy washy character, a very conventional heroine. She does have her moment of glory when she sits in the hall of her parents house for several days, refusing to move when they lock her in to prevent her living with a man who they believe has tricked her into a bigamous marriage. Hester's mother is a wonderful character, her religious convictions so strong that I wondered why she married at all. Maybe her religious leanings came on after her marriage? She doesn't approve of John even before the bigamy allegation & does everything she can to prevent the marriage. When she's overruled by her husband & her stepsons, she almost seems glad to be vindicated, even though it means her daughter's ruin. On the whole, though, this was a great story with enough ambiguity in the storytelling & in the character of John Caldigate to make the trial & its aftermath very suspenseful.

Brook Evans - Susan Glaspell

Naomi Kellogg lives with her parents & younger siblings in a farming community in the United States. She's in love with Joe Copeland, a neighbour who lives & farms with his mother. Neither family approves of Naomi & Joe's relationship so they meet secretly by a brook near Naomi's home. When Joe is killed in a farming accident, Naomi realises that she's pregnant. Her parents are shocked & ashamed, worried about what the community & especially the Church will think. Joe's mother also rejects Naomi, who had imagined that both families would welcome her child as a memory of Joe & as the result of their love. With no other choice, Naomi is married to Caleb Evans, an older man who is willing to take on another man's child as he loves Naomi in spite of her indifference to him. Caleb has taken up land in Colorado & after the wedding, they leave for a new life.

Eighteen years later, Naomi's daughter, Brook, named after the place where she was conceived & where her mother was happiest, is a lovely young woman about to finish school. She has been strictly brought up by Caleb although Naomi is determined that her daughter won't suffer as she did for love. Naomi has never loved Caleb & her life is bitter & full of regrets. When Brook meets Tony Ross, Naomi does everything she can to encourage the relationship, against Caleb's wishes. Naomi encourages Brook to go to a dance with Tony while Caleb is away, even though he had forbidden her to go.

Brook stood there, doubtful; indeed, disapproving. She herself might defy her father, deceive him, girls did that at times - then were sorry for it, of course; but for her mother to do it for her, in this matter-of-course way, this was a state of things in which she did not know how to move ... Why was Brook not more grateful to her mother? She herself wondered why. Oh, she would go, all right, and yet she was on Father's side. It wasn't right to deceive him like that. Well, she would never do it again.

Tony's family is Catholic, he has Italian & Native American blood & Caleb disapproves of him & his family.  Naomi tells Brook about her own past & about her love for Joe but, instead of bringing mother & daughter closer together, Brook is upset & embarrassed. She loves Caleb & considers him to be her father & she begins to shut Naomi out of her life. Naomi conspires with Tony in his pursuit of Brook, even though Brook feels compelled to obey her father & refuses to see him.

Here was the hour when she was on the one side or the other. The danger she had braved for herself - was she brave enough to encounter it for her child? Did she believe enough? "Anything that life can do to you is better than not having lived." She spoke it as her creed. But she could no longer look into the large darkness. She went into the house to wait for her little girl to come home.

When Brook discovers her mother's plan, she rejects Naomi completely, turning her back on her mother's belief in the overriding importance of the emotional life.

Years later, Brook is living in France, a widow with a son she has named Evans. She was never reconciled with Naomi but now, in her late thirties, she finally begins to understand her mother & to regret her rejection. Brook is about to discover what her mother meant when she encouraged her to give in to love.

Why had there not been ease between her and her mother? From the very first, as far back as she could remember, she had known that here was a love that would do anything in the world for her - die for her, suffer, do wrong for her. She had soon come to know that her mother did not exist for herself, but existed for Brook. Why should this, of all things, exasperate one? Why was it so hard for her to show love in response to the completeness of this love? In any kind of emotional moment why would she be constrained, awkward, and finally resentful?

Brook Evans is a wonderful story about passionate love, for a lover & for a child. Naomi's passion for Joe defines her whole life, poisoning any relationship she might have had with Caleb & ultimately making her life one of regrets & thwarted plans. Naomi never had a chance to have a real life with Joe & so she treasures her memories, a tattered photograph her only tangible memento - apart from Brook. Caleb is a good man who probably thought that once Naomi was away from her family & her memories she would forget Joe & learn to love him. Naomi never gives him a chance, she's always repulsed by him, by his high, squeaky voice & his rigid religious beliefs. Brook has always been aware of something odd in her parents relationship but it isn't until she discovers that Caleb isn't really her father that she thinks she understands. Her love for Caleb is intensified & she goes out of her way to show him that she is his daughter in every way that matters, rejecting her mother's creed, "Anything that life can do to you is better than not having lived.".

I first read Brook Evans over 10 years ago when it was reprinted by Persephone Books. As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I want to reread some of those early Persephones from my pre-blogging days & I so much enjoyed reading Brook Evans again. Susan Glaspell's Fidelity was one of the very first Persephones I read & I thought it was an exceptional novel. I've read it several times since then but I'd never revisited Brook Evans. I'm so glad I did.

Death's Dark Vale - Diney Costeloe

Adelaide Anson-Gravetty wakes up on the morning of her 21st birthday & discovers that she's not who she thought she was. A letter from a firm of solicitors informs her that she is not the daughter of the man she calls her father. Her half-French mother was married before & her first husband, Freddie Hurst, Adelaide's father, was killed during WWI. Richard Anson-Gravetty had married Heather Hurst when Adelaide was only a toddler. He adopted Adelaide but didn't want her to know about her father or his family. Adelaide was only permitted to speak French with her mother when they were alone &, although she's close to her French grandmother, she knows nothing of the Hurst family. Now, however, she discovers that she has come into a considerable fortune from her Hurst grandfather & also receives a letter, written by her late mother, telling her something of Freddie & explaining the reason for the secrecy about Adelaide's birth.

Adelaide also discovers that she has an aunt, Sarah, who is a nun in a French convent. Worried that her grandfather's will makes no mention of Sarah, Adelaide visits her, now Reverend Mother Marie-Pierre, & learns more about her father, Freddie. She also meets her great-aunt Anne, Sister St Bruno, an elderly nun, almost bedridden but with a sharp mind. Sarah explains how she came to enter a French convent (a story told in Diney Costeloe's earlier novel, The Ashgrove, which I read last year) & that Adelaide need not worry about her inheritance. Sarah received her inheritance from her father as a dowry when she entered the convent. After nursing in the convent hospital during the war, Sarah stayed on & now, almost twenty years later, she is Reverend Mother of the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in St Croix. Adelaide is happy to have made contact & delighted to learn about her birth family. She returns home, goes to university & life goes on.

Two years later, in 1939, war breaks out. In France, Reverend Mother Marie-Pierre finds herself & her convent involved in this war as they had been in the last. The convent hospital cares for the local people but soon, refugees fleeing from the advancing German army are also in need of help. Sarah takes in the children of a Jewish woman killed when a group of refugees are bombed & hides them among a small group of orphans that the convent cares for. She has no illusions as to their fate if the Germans should find them & eventually she takes them to the Mother House of the Order in Paris where their story will not be known.

An English airman is shot down & finds his way to the convent. Sarah & Sister Marie-Marc hide him in the cellars & get him away by disguising him as a nun & taking him to Albert, where a sympathetic priest, Father Bernard, helps him get home. Sarah is reluctant to get involved in any more illegal activities, conscious that she has the responsibility of the welfare of all the nuns. She is also well aware that not all the nuns are willing to disobey the German regulations & there are informers among the villagers who would profit from informing on Sarah if they discovered what was happening. She may have lived in France for over 20 years but many remember that she is English & there is also some resentment that she has been promoted to Reverend Mother at such a young age. The German commander, Major Thielen, is suspicious of Sarah's activities but finds nothing on searching the convent. He is also Catholic & has a certain reverence for the convent & the sisters. That cannot be said of Colonel Hoch, a Gestapo officer who arrives in St Croix soon after, determined to find any traitors, as he calls them, who may be assisting the Resistance or harbouring Jews.

Adelaide, meanwhile, has been recruited to the SOE. Determined to do some war work, she joined up as a driver with the WAAF but, with her fluent French, was soon sounded out about her willingness to be dropped into France to help a Resistance network helping Allied soldiers escape. When Terry, the airman helped by Sarah, returns to England, & Adelaide's connection to the convent are discovered, she is sent to St Croix to make contact with Sarah & see if the convent is a suitable place to use in the escape route.

Death's Dark Vale is an exciting story full of suspense & danger. Adelaide & Sarah are both wonderful heroines, incredibly brave & resourceful. Their stories reflect those of many people during WWII who risked their own lives to help others. However, there are just as many characters determined to thwart their plans, whether from cowardice or greed. There's a real sense of the terror of the times as the Germans settled in to occupation, stealing the convent's chickens & appearing at any time to conduct a search, respecting no one & questioning everything they're told. The anguish of not knowing who to trust was ever-present & Adelaide experiences this just as much as Sarah. They are always aware that their actions have consequences, not only for themselves but for the people who help them & the people they're trying to help & not all their plans are successful. I also loved the impressive level of detail in the descriptions of Adelaide's training & then her mission in France as well as the many contrivances of Sarah & Sister Marie-Marc as they try to outwit the Germans.

As I mentioned when I reviewed The Ashgrove, Diney is a friend from my online reading group & she kindly sent me a copy of Death's Dark Vale to review.

Together and Apart - Margaret Kennedy

The Christmas edition of Shiny New Books is now available. There are lots of new reviews & I'm very pleased that my review of Together and Apart by Margaret Kennedy is among them. You can read it here.

The reprints section of Shiny New Books is my favourite (& not just because I have a review there). Edited by Simon of Stuck in a Book fame, there are also reviews of Gogol's A Night Before Christmas, R A Dick's The Ghost and Mrs Muir & another of the British Library Crime Classics, Mystery in White : a Christmas crime story by J Jefferson Farjeon.

A Reckoning - May Sarton

Why do we stop reading an author? Sometimes we grow out of them, sometimes we stop reading what they write eg science fiction or Regency romances. In my case, I stopped reading May Sarton because I read a biography of her by Margot Peters & didn't like what I found out about her. This is not logical or reasonable, I know. But I can remember being so annoyed by the fact that the wonderful journals Sarton wrote about her solitary life in New Hampshire & Maine with her house, her garden, her pets, were not what they seemed to be, that I stopped reading her altogether. In the journals - Plant Dreaming Deep, Journal of a Solitude, House by the Sea - she presents herself as a solitary woman, working in isolation & exploring the joys of solitude. Discovering through the biography that she was hardly ever alone during this period was a real shock. I know that journals written for publication are often shaped just as much as a novel, but I was still annoyed. I couldn't quite bring myself to get rid of my Sartons but they've sat on the shelf, unread, ever since.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was listening to The Readers podcast & Thomas mentioned that he'd had an email from a woman in Melbourne about May Sarton & how they were going to revive her reputation between them. I immediately wondered if this could be my friend L, & it was! I'm also interested in why a writer's reputation often suffers a dip after they die. This has certainly happened to Sarton since her death in 1995. Maybe it's because she was one of the first writers to write about lesbian relationships as though they were just like any other relationship. In Journal of a Solitude, Sarton wrote "The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing... to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality .." Once a subject becomes more mainstream, the pioneers who first wrote about it are often marginalised.

So, I decided to reread one of my favourite May Sarton novels, A Reckoning, which was published in 1978. This is the story of Laura Spelman, a 60 year old woman who has terminal lung cancer. Laura decides that she wants her death to be on her own terms. The cancer is inoperable but she refuses treatment that might prolong her life in favour of making the most of whatever time she has left. Laura wants to remember the real connections in her life & to try to understand some of the more contentious relationships, particularly her relationship with her mother, Sybille, & her daughter, Daisy.

In some ways, Laura's life is quite ordinary. She had a long, happy marriage to Charles, who died a few years earlier. She has three children - Brooks, married to Ann with two children, Ben, an artist & Daisy - lives alone in a comfortable house in Boston with her dog, Grindle & cat, Sasha. Laura has worked as an editor with Houghton Mifflin & is keen to keep working as long as possible, especially as she's just started work on a novel by a young lesbian writer, Harriet Moors. Harriet's novel is based on her own life & her partner is terrified that she will lose her job if it's published. Harriet's parents disapprove of her lifestyle so she's torn between upsetting her parents, maybe breaking up her relationship & publishing a book that she believes should be published.

Laura's plans to go on this final journey alone are soon stymied by her family & her own body. Brooks & Ann feel shut out when she reluctantly tells them of her illness but refuses any help. Her sympathetic doctor, Jim Goodwin, arranges for a nurse to live in, & though at first, Laura is opposed to this, she soon realises that she can't cope alone. Mary O'Brien becomes, in fact, one of the most important people in Laura's final weeks, with her sympathetic, detached presence. Laura's family are divided into those who are shocked & upset & thinking more about themselves than Laura like Brooks & her sister, Jo & then there are others like Aunt Minna, who comes to read to her, & her sister Daphne, who takes Laura on a journey to their childhood summer house on the coast.

This is a very quiet book. Much of it takes place within Laura's consciousness as she remembers the past & analyses her relationships, looking for those real connections that are so important to her. She visits her mother, Sybille, now suffering from dementia, & remembers a childhood dominated by this beautiful woman who wanted to be an actress but never really connected with any of her children. All she was able to do was dominate them & try to control their lives, often with disastrous effects. The most important relationship in Laura's life was her friendship with Ella, a young woman she met at the Sorbonne when she studied in Europe as a young woman. Their friendship was passionate, not explicitly sexual, but the most profound relationship of Laura's life. Sybille did her best to separate them when Laura spent two years in Switzerland, recovering from tuberculosis. Laura realises that her closest connections have been with women. As she grows physically weaker, she has to let go of all these memories & prepare for her death in her own way.

I enjoyed reading A Reckoning again after so many years. It's the kind of novel I enjoy - quiet, domestic & grounded in the everyday. Laura concentrates on beauty, flowers, Mozart concertos, the desire to see the spring one more time & gradually retreats within herself. The novel is a long reflection on one woman's life & the final journey towards death.

... Laura felt joy rising, filling her to the brim, yet not overflowing. what had become almost uncontrollable grief at the door seemed now a blessed state. It was not a state she could easily define in words. But it felt like some extraordinary dance, the dance of life itself, of atoms and molecules, that had never been as beautiful or as poignant as at this instant, a dance that must be danced more carefully and with greater fervor to the very end.

Time of Hope - C P Snow

Time of Hope is the first book chronologically in C P Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. It was the third book to be published but should really be read first as it fills in the background of Lewis Eliot, the narrator of the series. I read George Passant first & all the questions I had about Lewis & where he fitted in were answered in Time of Hope.

Lewis is a clever boy growing up in a provincial city. His parents are ill-matched - his father, Bertie, is easy going & cheerful; his mother, Lena, is conscious of having married beneath her. She is ambitious for Lewis & devastated when her husband's business fails & he is bankrupt. His sister, Lewis's Aunt Milly, condescends to help out but always makes her disapproval known. Bertie eventually finds a job again & Lena saves any money she can to send Lewis to the best school possible so he can make the most of what chances he can get. Her disappointment drives her on, especially as her own family disowned her when she married.

Her hopes had been brilliant. She had a romantic, surging passionate imagination, even then, when a middle-aged woman beaten down by misfortune. As a girl she had expected - expected as of right -  a husband who would give her love and luxury and state. She thought of herself in her girlhood, and as she spoke to me she magnified the past, enhanced all that she could glory in, cherished her life with her own family now that she looked back with an experienced and a disappointed heart.

Lewis works hard at school & believes he will accomplish great things. It's a disappointment to find himself, several years after leaving school, working as a clerk in the local Council education office, a job with no future. He decides to take some law classes at the local Technical College where he meets George Passant &, with George's encouragement, Lewis decides to stake everything on becoming a barrister. Aunt Milly agrees to loan him the money he'll need as he will have to leave his job & devote himself to study full time to pass the exams.

After several very lean years, Lewis passes his exams & is called to the Bar. He has very little influence in a profession that demands patronage in order to get ahead but George's employer, Mr Eden, recommends Lewis to Herbert Getliffe, & Lewis joins his chambers as a pupil, a very junior member of staff. Lewis gradually begins to make money & have some success with the opinions & notes he writes for Getliffe & the cases the clerk of Getliffe's chambers finds for him. A serious bout of illness threatens his progress but his love for Sheila Knight & his determination to marry her is the real obstacle to any progress in his professional life.

Sheila is a beautiful young woman but emotionally unstable. Lewis meets her in his home town, as part of the group that gathers around George Passant & is immediately attracted to her.

 I did not make dreams of her, as I had done of many other girls. That first state of love was delectable beyond my expectation; in its delight I did not stop to wonder that I had often imagined love, and imagined it quite wrong. I breathed in the delight with every breath, those first mornings. I did not stop to wonder why my thoughts of her were vague, why I was content to let her image - unlike those of everyone else I knew - lie vague within my heart.

Sheila's father is a self-absorbed clergyman & her mother is suspicious of Lewis, thinking him a fortune hunter. Sheila herself seems to tolerate Lewis but without much enthusiasm. She often hurts him by mentioning other men that she's seeing & seems to find more enjoyment talking to Lewis's landlady or the waitress in a cafe than to his friends. She often tells him that she can't love him but he blindly pursues her & eventually she agrees to marry him. Their marriage is a disaster, almost from the beginning. Sheila needs constant reassurance from Lewis & his work suffers. She can't take part in the social life that is so important to Lewis's career & he finds himself stagnating at work & miserable at home. He begins to wonder if all his sacrifices & work have been wasted & contemplates leaving Sheila & ending the marriage.

This is a fascinating study of a man who, on the one hand, is determined to make a success of his life & on the other hand, almost blindly follows a course that will destroy him. When he first meets Sheila, Lewis is dazzled by her & is blind to the fact that Marion, another member of the group, is in love with him. Sheila is always completely honest with Lewis & repeatedly tells him that she doesn't love him & doesn't think she can ever really be in love with anyone. In the end, he wears her down & she just gives in. Lewis has seen enough of Sheila's problems to know that she will never be able to help him in his career so I thought it was unfair that he begins to resent her. Before their marriage, he has several opportunities to break away but he is never quite able to do so. He even drives away another young man who Sheila believes she could be happy with. Lewis's obsession with Sheila is irrational & he realizes this but is powerless to forget her or to leave her alone.

I especially enjoyed the early chapters of Lewis growing up with his ambitious mother & ineffectual father. Father & son spend a day at the cricket - it's the first game Mr Eliot has ever seen - & it's here that Mr Eliot finally tells Lewis about his bankruptcy. The picture of small town life, the gossip, the shame & the irritation of everyone knowing your business & having an opinion about it, is intensely claustrophobic. I felt less sympathy for Lewis as he grew older but I was always interested in his struggles in his career, his fear that his health would break down & his unrelenting efforts to succeed. I pitied Sheila, living with her uncomprehending parents & pursued by Lewis. She always seemed so much more clear-eyed about herself & what she was capable of than anyone else. I'd like to have been able to see Lewis through her eyes.

The Letters of Rachel Henning - edited by David Adams

 Rachel Henning was born in England in 1826. She was the eldest of five children & both her parents had died by the time she was 19. In 1854, Rachel left her sheltered middle-class life to go out to Australia to join her brother, Biddulph, & sisters Amy & Annie. This first trip was short-lived. Rachel missed England & hated the hot summer weather & so she returned home.

There's a difference in tone between Rachel's letters home on  her first trip & the second trip in 1856. When she left Australia, Rachel realised how much she missed Biddulph & her sisters & knew that if she returned, she would need to have a different frame of mind. Rachel's second trip to Australia was different. She knew what to expect & her letters reflect her excitement at seeing her siblings again & her willingness to do whatever was needed to make life as comfortable as possible.

The letters in this book are mostly written to Rachel's sister, Etta & her husband, Mr Boyce, back home in England. They are full of interest & humour & this edition is enhanced by the lovely line drawings by Norman Lindsay. Lindsay was quite a controversial figure in his day & is probably best known for his love of painting nudes & the childrens book he wrote, The Magic Pudding. A fictionalised version of Lindsay was played by Sam Neill in the movie Sirens with Hugh Grant & Elle Macpherson in the 1990s.

Rachel's brother, Biddulph, was considered to be quite sickly in England but he thrived in Australia. He learned station management & eventually bought his own sheep station in Queensland. Rachel is much more philosophical on her second visit to Australia in 1861. Waiting in Bathurst with her sister Amy's family to join Biddulph at his new station, Exmoor, on the Bowen River near Port Denison in Queensland, she seems resigned to waiting nearly nine months for Biddulph to come down to fetch her & her sister, Annie. I think she relished the independence of her life with Biddulph compared to the life she would have had, living with relatives in England.

I believe the only way is to live on in the present from day to day, and do what is to be done and enjoy what is to be enjoyed, and there really is plenty of both here.

Rachel enjoyed all the housekeeping & making do of living in the bush. She was a very competent housekeeper & shared the duties with Annie. Although Biddulph had a good property & was making a success of it, they still had to travel quite a way for anything they wanted. Clothes had to last & be patched or mended & of course, had to be fit for purpose.

Bonnets, of course, are no use in the bush. I got a new hat when I first came down here, rather a pretty black straw, and I have had my old one cleaned and trimmed and have a riding-hat besides, so I think I shall do. I have that old brown shawl, you remember, and a thin one I got last summer, so I think I shall do very well, though Annie and Emily bewail over my deficiencies.

Rachel had many adventures. On a journey to Shoalhaven for a visit, her party became lost in the bush

Bella and I kept shouting to know where the other was and invariable answered "all right", till at last Bella pulled up, and said it was all wrong, that her horse was at fault, and she did not the least we know where we were. This was cheerful, and we began to discuss the probabilities of spending the night in the bush, and the consequent rheumatism that we should catch, when my horse, rejoicing in the name of Skittles, after turning round and round several times, seemed to find the way.
Altogether it was a most pleasant visit, and I was very sorry to leave that beautiful country and return to the dusty streets of Sydney.

Camping in the rain on the way home to Exmoor,

Tom lit a great fire and made some beautiful "johnny cakes" - thin soda cakes which are baked in about ten minutes and are the best bread you ever ate, and with johnny cakes and jam and hot tea, which was brought us in the tent by shiny mackintoshed figures, we continued to do very well. A tin pannikin of hot wine and water was put under the curtain the last thing with the remark from Biddulph that ot was to keep off the rheumatism, and we slept as sound as if we had a dozen roofs over our heads instead of the rain pattering on the canvas.

Sunday afternoon on Exmoor station,

Sunday seems so quiet in the bush. I should like to hear some church bells, but there is no bell near ... It is a beautiful afternoon, the warm air blowing in through the open door and window, and whispering among the gum-trees, cloud shadows gliding over the opposite mountain range, great Lion, the bloodhound, lying asleep in the doorway, quite regardless of being walked on or fallen over. Biddulph, arrayed in white trousers, white coat and regatta shirt ... is lazily reading in an armchair in the pleasant recess where the books are. ... Presently, when we have done writing, and Biddulph wakes up - he is not to say asleep - we shall go for a walk, probably to the site of the new house, and then on to the plains beyond, and up the "Blackwall", a curious range of cliff that bounds the station on the west for two miles, then we shall come back to dinner.

Rachel was game for anything - helping with the shearing, nurturing her pet lambs who followed her everywhere, encounters with snakes - she embraced the bush life. She gives pen portraits of the workers on the station& their visitors.

When she was in her late thirties, Rachel became engaged to Deighton Taylor, who worked with Biddulph on the station. Rachel's family were disapproving, not only because she was several years older than Deighton but because of his lack of prospects. However, they married & were very happy. Deighton began working as a supervisor at a timber mill on the Myall River in NSW & Rachel wrote to Etta about her new life & her happiness,

For the rest, I doubt if there is anyone else in the world who would have made me so happy or whom I could have made thoroughly happy. You know I am not the most patient of tempers, and I might possibly have quarrelled  and skirmished with anyone of less unvarying kindness and good temper. As it is, we have never had a word or thought of difference.

Rachel enjoyed setting up her own home, hanging wallpaper on canvas & meeting new neighbours. Eventually the timber mill job came to an end & they thought about buying a sheep farm near Stroud, eventually settling on a farm at American Creek, near Wollongong. They built a house called Springfield in the 1870s & lived there until 1896 when Deighton's health began to fail. Rachel died in 1914 at the age of 88.

Rachel's letters give such a lively picture of life in 19th century Australia. She's a wonderful observer of people & places; her descriptive writing of the bush & the mountains is very evocative. Her love of the country is evident in every letter. She often says she is reluctant to go to Sydney, not just because of the traveling but because she loves the bush so much. She found a freedom & independence in Australia that she could never have experienced in England. Even before she married, she was the head of her brother's household & knew that she was contributing to his success with her talent for keeping the accounts & her unfailing resourcefulness & good humour when things went wrong. She loved horses & describes riding & walking through the bush nearly every day. She was an intrepid traveller, as she needed to be in those days, when it took weeks to get from outback Queensland to Sydney. Rachel Henning's letters give an invaluable picture of life in Australia in the mid 19th century. I borrowed my copy from Open Library (which is why there's a price sticker on the front cover!).

The Master of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson

The story is mostly set at the time of the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 & the aftermath but the Preface is set in the late 19th century when a manuscript, telling the story of the Durrisdeers is discovered & a lawyer, Mr Thomson, shows it to an old friend (Stevenson) staying with him. The manuscript was written by Ephraim Mackellar, an old retainer of the family & describes the events leading up to a great tragedy that befell the family in the years after the Rebellion.

The Durie family have lived on their land for many years. Old Lord Durrisdeer has two sons. James, known as the Master of Ballantrae, is the elder. Handsome, blessed with winning manners but feckless & spoilt, James is forgiven his many misdeeds by his father & the local people.
Younger brother Henry is plain, quiet, dour & with none of the winning ways of his brother. His father openly favours James & plans to marry him to his ward, the heiress Alison Graeme. Alison is in love with James but his feelings for her are more offhand.

When the Rebellion breaks out with the arrival of Bonnie Prince Charlie in Scotland to claim his father's throne, the Duries do as many other families of the time did. The old Lord decides that one son will go to the prince & the other will fight for King George, hedging their bets &
ensuring that their estates will be safe no matter who wins. James wins the toss of the coin & goes to join the Jacobites. Henry, with a bad grace, stays at home & declares for King George.

James sets off with many of the local tenants with him. Word comes back from the sole survivor that all were killed at Culloden. The old Laird is reluctant to lose Alison's inheritance, so necessary for the upkeep of the property & encourages Henry to marry her. Both are reluctant. Alison because she loves James & Henry because he loves Alison but knows she doesn't return his feelings. The locals, meanwhile, have forgotten all the Master's wicked ways & turn against Henry, blaming him for staying at home while his brave brother.

The Master's return begins a period of misery for Henry. The Master is now known as Mr Bally because, as an exiled Jacobite, he could be arrested & tried for treason if he's caught by the King's men. Henry is compelled to provide his brother with money that he can ill afford to take out of the estate & the economies he is forced to make get him a reputation as a miser because he will not tell his father & Alison the truth. The Master persecutes Henry in other ways, by being pleasant & kindly in company & cutting & dismissive when he & Henry are alone which make Henry look surly & ungracious when the whole family are together.

He had laid aside even his cutting English accent, and spoke with the kindly Scots tongue, that set a value on affectionate words; and though his manners had a graceful elegance mighty foreign to our ways at Durrisdeer, it was still a homely courtliness, that did not shame but flattered us. All that he did throughout the meal, indeed, drinking wine with me with a notable respect, turning about for a pleasant word with John, fondling his father’s hand, breaking into little merry tales of his adventures ... that I could scarce wonder if my lord and Mrs Henry sat about the board with radiant faces, or if John waited behind with dropping tears.

The Master also ingratiates himself with Alison & little Katherine, Henry & Alison's daughter. The old Lord can, of course, see no wrong in his eldest son. Mackellar is often a witness to this because Henry has had to take him into his confidence. Mackellar hates the Master & makes a formidable enemy of him when he refuses to drive off Jessie Broun, the young woman who has borne the Master's child & hangs around Durrisdeer wanting to speak to him.

Henry & Alison's estrangement grows & they barely see or speak to each other except at meals. Mackellar begins to suspect that the Master is not in such danger as he asserts & Henry discovers that Mr Bally is, in fact, in no danger at all & is a Government spy to boot. However, even after Henry exposes him to their father as a liar, the old man makes excuses for his favourite & rejoices that he is in no danger rather than reproach him for the lies.

The ill feeling between the brothers comes to a head on the night of February 27th 1757. As they play at cards late at night, the Master taunts Henry with his influence over Alison & says that she has always loved him & loves him still. Henry strikes his brother & this leads to a duel which takes place in the long shrubbery behind the house. The Master tries to grab Henry's sword (against the rules of the duel) & is stabbed as a result. Henry & Mackellar think him dead & return to the house.  When Mackellar goes back to the shrubbery to retrieve the body, the Master has disappeared.

Henry falls very ill & Mackellar & Alison nurse him through a desperate fever.  Henry recovers from his illness but he is marked by it. He is devastated by the thought that he killed his brother & even when Mackellar tells him of the Master's disappearance, he is not really comforted as he knows that they will meet again. Even as Henry recovers, his father sickens & dies of a brain fever. Some months later, a son, Alexander, is born, & Henry begins to revive as he makes plans for the boy's future.

Chevalier Burke meets up with the Master again in India & is rejected by him when he needs help. The Master returns to Durrisdeer with his Indian servant, Secundra Dass & tries to ingratiate himself with the family again although with less success this time. The family escape to New York, leaving Mackellar to keep an eye on the Master.  It doesn’t take him long to discover where the family have gone & he follows them, forcing one final confrontation in the wilderness between the brothers.

The Master of Ballantrae is a novel full of adventure & excitement. James Durie is one of the most malevolent characters in fiction, able to inspire complete loyalty in his dependants but also inspiring fear, envy & hatred in others. His subtle undermining of Henry & attempts to seduce Alison & young Alexander are almost impossible to expose. Henry isn’t a completely sympathetic character which makes the tragedy more realistic. He’s sulky, resentful, stubborn &, after his illness, just as misguided as his own father in favouring one of his children over another. The Master is the incubus that haunts the family but he’s always very much a real man rather than a supernatural being although his end evokes all the reader’s fears of the uncanny.

Mackellar is a fascinating narrator. He begins by being completely on Henry’s side but his loyalties waver on the voyage to New York as the Master sets out to charm him as he has charmed so many others. The structure of the novel with several narrators telling the story & the role of a servant as witness reminded me of Wuthering Heights. Mackellar is like Nelly Dean; he’s our guide but he has his own prejudices & is just as interfering as Nelly ever was. The story is more than just a battle between good & evil but Mackellar’s dour narration is full of foreboding from the beginning as he tells his story from many years after the events.

A Lifelong Passion : Nicholas & Alexandra : their own story - ed Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko

This book has been on my shelves for many years. I've dipped into it before but never read it all through. After reading Helen Rappaport's wonderful Four Sisters earlier this year, I wanted to read more about the Romanovs & this book was perfect. It's a selection of the letters, diaries & memoirs of Nicholas, Alexandra, other family members, servants & other observers to the events of Nicholas's reign.

The tragic story of the last Tsar & his family is well-known. As I was reading A Lifelong Passion, I was struck by just how early on in Nicholas's reign the portents of disaster began. The personalities of Nicholas & Alexandra & the way they reacted to circumstances determined the course of their lives. The book begins with an account of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Known as the Tsar-Liberator because he liberated the serfs, Alexander was succeeded by his son, Alexander III, who became one of the most reactionary & autocratic of Tsars in reaction to what he saw as the failure of his father's liberal ideals. Alexander III dominated his son, Nicholas, who led an idle life in the Army & society.

At a family wedding, Nicholas met Alix of Hesse, a princess of a minor German royal house & a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Alix's mother had died when she was young & Victoria had virtually brought up Alix & her sisters. Alix had been a happy child but the deaths of her mother & two of her siblings changed her personality & she grew up a serious, melancholy girl. She was also very religious & the great stumbling block to her love for Nicholas was religion. Alix was unwilling to convert to Russian Orthodoxy & it took years to overcome this resistance. Alix's sister Ella had married one of Nicholas's uncles, Serge, & her influence was crucial in the engagement eventually taking place. Alix became a passionate convert to Orthodoxy &, as tragedy consumed her personal life, she became more & more religious which led to an estrangement from Russian society & her dependence on mystics such as Rasputin.

Alexander III died suddenly in 1894 at the age of only 49. Nicholas had no training for his destined role & his personality was not suited to playing a dominant role. Nicholas also had several very domineering uncles who saw him as a weak personality who needed bolstering. He reacted with polite attention which gave the impression that he agreed with the last person he spoke to but which often left people feeling that he had deceived them. Alix, on the other hand, was stubborn & strong-willed, always pushing Nicky to impose his will on his Ministers & be a strong Tsar for the Russian people. This was a disastrous combination. The saving grace from a personal point of view was their great love for each other. This never wavered from their earliest days together until the end & is expressed in passionate terms in their letters & diaries in this book.

Their marriage began in the tragic circumstances of Alexander III's death. Alix was summoned to Livadia to be present at the Tsar's deathbed & she & Nicky were married just weeks later & the superstitious Russians said that their new Tsarina had come to them behind a coffin. From that moment, nothing seemed to go right. The coronation was marred by the tragedy of the stampede at Khodinka Meadow, when hundreds were killed as they tried to get hold of souvenirs. The new Tsar went to a reception that night which gave a bad impression. Alix was shy & uncertain in society, in contrast to her mother-in-law, Maria Feodorovna, & the mistakes she made in the early days were never forgotten or forgiven. Alix's religious fervor was also wondered & laughed at by sophisticated Russian society.

Four daughters were born over the next six years, each one loved by their parents but the rest of the family despaired over the lack of a male heir. Alix's desire for a son led her to consult quacks & religious mystics. When the longed for son, Alexei, was born in 1904, he suffered from haemophilia. Alexei's illness dominated Alix's life from that moment & led to her reliance on Rasputin, who seemed to be able to calm the boy when he was ill. The family also isolated themselves at Tsarskoe Selo, preserving their happy family life but distancing themselves from the rest of the family, society & the people.

Politically Russia was also in revolutionary mood. The Bloody Sunday massacre in 1905 & the Russo-Japanese War led to demands for democracy but Nicholas was reluctant to grant any power to the people. Bolstered by Alix, he stubbornly vowed to uphold the autocracy of his ancestors. Russia's lack of preparedness for WWI led to enormous losses on the battlefield & Nicholas's decision to take over as Commander in Chief of the Army was a fatal mistake. Revolution in 1917 led to Nicholas's abdication, imprisonment with his family at Tsarskoe Selo, then Siberia & death in Ekaterinburg in 1918. Whether Nicholas could have done anything to avert the disasters of his reign if he had been a different man or if he had married a different woman, is a question that is impossible to answer. There are so many What Ifs in the story of the last Romanovs which is why it's so interesting to read these firsthand accounts.

It's so interesting to read how concerned Nicky's family were about the isolation of the Royal Family. Right from the very beginning of his reign, there was concern that Alix was avoiding her duties to society, but as the family grew & especially after Alexei was born, the desire to be completely private & especially not to allow anyone outside the immediate family to know of Alexei's illness, became more obvious. Nicky's sisters, Olga & Xenia, write in their letters & memoirs of their concern at the Tsar's isolation. The wider Romanov family were bewildered & concerned. Many of them grew to resent Alix & blame her for the increasing discontent in Russia, including her own sister, Ella, from whom she was increasingly estranged.

The most interesting sections of the book are the Diaries of Konstantin Konstantinovich, known as KR. KR was a cousin of Nicky's, the grandson of Tsar Nicholas I. He was a writer, poet & translator; he translated Hamlet into Russian. He was a devoted husband & father of nine children but he was also bisexual which caused him great anguish. It also left him open to blackmail & he struggled with this although there was no open scandal. KR was one of the few Romanovs who were close to Nicky & Alix right up until his death in 1915. By then, it was too late to save the dynasty. Alix was virtually running the country when Nicky was at the Front & her letters to him are full of exhortations to be strong & save the throne for Alexei. Her letters become more & more unbalanced & it's hard to imagine how Nicky must have felt when receiving yet another letter full of advice about ministerial appointments from his wife with total reference to Rasputin. The eyewitness accounts of Rasputin's murder, & the murders of members of the Imperial family are also fascinating.The most poignant diary entries are from Alexei in captivity in Tobolsk as he writes day after day, "Everything the same." "The same as yesterday".

A Lifelong Passion is a fascinating book. There's virtually no commentary from the editors, apart from chapter headings & footnotes, so the eyewitness accounts speak for themselves. With the mass of material available to them (the first draft was 2,500 pages long. The published book is 650 pages) the editors had to leave a lot out but they have done an excellent job of making a complex story coherent & allowing as many diverse voices as possible to be heard. The Memoirs may have the benefit of hindsight & self-justification (especially in the case of Felix Yusupov, one of Rasputin's murderers), but the letters & diaries are so immediate that the well-known story becomes new once more.

Wilfred and Eileen - Jonathan Smith

In 1913, Wilfred Willett is about to graduate from Cambridge & pursue his medical studies at the London Hospital. At a ball just before leaving Cambridge, he meets Eileen Stenhouse, & immediately feels an attraction for her. Eileen is beautiful, well-off but bored with her undemanding life & soon, Wilfred & Eileen are meeting to go for walks & attend galleries & exhibitions. Wilfred's medical studies are absorbing but sometimes bewildering as he learns about hospital hierarchies & is shocked to realise that the patients' welfare isn't always the top priority.

Wilfred's relationship with Eileen is frowned on by both families. Wilfred's parents have never had much sympathy for their son. The descriptions of Wilfred's meals with his parents are excruciating. They feel that Wilfred should concentrate on his studies &, as he relies on an allowance from his father, Wilfred is reluctant to jeopardise his career. Eileen's family are snobbish about Wilfred's prospects. The couple eventually marry in secret in December 1913 & meet for blissful afternoons in a hotel when they can. When war is declared in September 1914, Wilfred is determined to enlist & they're forced to tell their families that they are married.

Forced into a rushed church wedding, Wilfred enlists in the London Rifles Brigade &, after training at Crowborough, is posted to the Front. His regiment is in Belgium, at Ploegsteert, & Wilfred throws himself into his duties as an officer just as he threw himself into his studies at the Hospital. In December 1914, as he helps to bring a wounded man back into the trenches, Wilfred is shot in the head by a sniper. Through a communication mixup, Eileen isn't notified for some time &, when she is told of his condition, she decides to go out to France to bring him home.

Wilfred and Eileen is remarkable because it's based on a true story. In an Afterword, the author tells how he first learnt of the story from a pupil of his at Tonbridge School in the 1970s. The pupil was Wilfred & Eileen's grandson & this conversation led to Smith being entrusted by the family with Wilfred's diaries & papers. He was encouraged to turn the story into a novel, which was published in 1976 & later adapted as a TV series with Christopher Guard & Judi Bowker.

The story is simply told, with a great economy of style. It's a short novel, less than 200pp, & spans only a couple of years but there's so much experience contained within this short time frame. I was especially drawn to Eileen as she seems to draw on reserves of strength that she doesn't even realise she possesses. Defying her family in marrying Wilfred is one thing but when she has to go to the War Office to find out what has happened to Wilfred & then get a passport to go out to bring him home, she is transformed,

Something curious was happening to Eileen. She noticed it that night in her face. She was not by nature self-analytical and no one's habits and instincts could have been further from narcissism; sometimes she dressed if anything rather too casually, people thought, without sufficient attention to detail and straightness of hemline - even safety pins had been seen in her dress. But as she looked into the mirror she was caught and held by something dignified, tenacious, almost wilful in the eyes. Her mouth was set. This most adaptable and sensitive girl was revealing the firmness which perhaps had attracted Wilfred that night in Cambridge.

It's a measure of Smith's skill that Eileen is such a fully-formed character when the book is based on Wilfred's writings, especially as the early sections are more concerned with Wilfred's medical training. There are some horrible scenes in the Hospital of the self-absorption of the godlike surgeons & the contempt of the students for the poor patients who go to them for help. Wilfred's idealism about his work foreshadows the way he will react to the outbreak of war. He feels he must enlist, it's a reversion to his training & class, even though Eileen doesn't want him to. It does provide the catalyst for telling their families about their marriage which would have had to happen anyway but it still leaves them in limbo because they can't really begin their lives together while Wilfred is in the Army. I don't want to spoil the story by writing any more about the ending but it's very satisfying. It was definitely a good idea to print Jonathan Smith's essay as an Afterword rather than an Introduction (even though I never read the Introduction first). I knew from reviews that the novel was based on a true story but I only skimmed the reviews I did read because I didn't want to know too much.

In this year of the centenary of the beginning of WWI, there will be many books published & reprinted. Wilfred and Eileen is a lovely novel with the added interest of being based on truth.

Jane of Lantern Hill - L M Montgomery

Jane Victoria Stuart lives with her mother, Robin, in her grandmother's house at 60 Gay Street, Toronto. Gay Street doesn't live up to its name, & Jane (as she prefers to be called) is unhappy living with her formidable grandmother, Mrs Kennedy, who insists on calling her Victoria. Grandmother is a controlling, sarcastic woman, who can wither Jane's spirits with a glance or a comment. Jane had been born on Prince Edward Island after her mother ran away with her father, Andrew Stuart. Mrs Kennedy had not approved of the marriage &, when Jane was three years old, invited her daughter & granddaughter home to Toronto for a visit. Robin had become disillusioned with her marriage. She was much younger than Andrew & Jane's arrival had increased the tension. Robin was very young & dominated by her mother. Andrew's sister, Irene, also did her utmost to separate the couple as she had wanted Andrew to marry a friend of hers.

Once Robin & Jane were back with Mrs Kennedy, she was convinced to stay. She wrote to Andrew saying she wouldn't be going back & the next six years were spent in an empty round of social visits for Robin & misery for Jane as Grandmother disapproves of everything she says & does. Robin is even made to feel guilty of her love for Jane & they have to whisper together like thieves in the night. Jane's only friend is orphaned Jody, who works in the kitchen of the boarding house next door. Jane spends her nights looking at the moon outside her window & making up stories about adventures there.

Jane has always imagined that her father is dead because his name is never spoken & Grandmother forbids Jane to ask her mother about him. So, when a letter comes from Andrew, asking that Jane spend the summer with him on Prince Edward Island, the shock is immense. Jane hates her father as she has only heard bad things about him & assumes that he didn't want her so is very reluctant to go. However, a family conference decides that, if she doesn't go, Andrew is within his rights to demand custody & so, she sets off reluctantly on the long journey to the Island.

Once Jane arrives, her life changes. She loves her father almost at first sight. She adores the Island & soon blossoms into a confident, capable girl who loves keeping house for her father & makes lots of friends. She soon adopts two cats & even tames a lion & finds herself on the front page of the Charlottetown papers two days running. The spirit that had been crushed by Grandmother & Gay Street, is liberated by the immediate sympathy between Jane & her father. There is a lot of Stuart in Jane which is possibly what her grandmother most disliked in her. The only fly in the ointment is Aunt Irene, who is as destructive to Jane's spirits as Grandmother but covers her snide comments in patronising condescension.

Jane of Lantern Hill is a lovely fairy tale of a story. If, as Thomas at My Porch says, Nevil Shute is D E Stevenson for boys (& engineers), then L M Montgomery is D E Stevenson for little girls. I loved all the domestic details of Jane's life on the Island (especially her experiments in cooking) & my heart just bled for her during the soul destroying months she spends in Toronto just counting the days until she can return to her father & the Island. As in all Montgomery's writing about Prince Edward Island, her love & nostalgia for the place come through so strongly. The beautiful summers, even though there are storms & rain, are always contrasted with the miserable grey of Gay Street. It's a greyness of the spirit as well as the climate & I think every reader will be crossing their fingers for a happy ending to Jane's story.

I was sent a copy of Jane of Lantern Hill for review by Virago.

The Duke's Children - Anthony Trollope

The Duke's Children is the final book in Trollope's Palliser series of novels. It begins with a shock on the very first page, because Glencora, Duchess of Omnium, is dead. Her husband, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, is devastated & the novel describes how he copes with his bereavement & with his three very determined children.

The Duke is a reserved man, consumed by his political career. He loved Glencora very much, after the difficult start to their marriage, but he barely knows his children at all. He has provided for them in a material sense but doesn't understand them. Eldest son, Plantagenet (but always called Silverbridge after his title), has been sent down from Oxford & declares that he wants to enter Parliament as a Conservative. As the Pallisers have always been Liberals, this wounds his father deeply. The Duke blames Silverbridge's closest friend, Frank Tregear, for his decision. Tregear is from a Cornish gentry family but has no money. Unfortunately, he has fallen in love with Silverbridge's sister, Lady Mary Palliser, & she with him, a match that the Duke absolutely forbids. Middle son, Gerald, is at Cambridge but is caught up in a gambling scandal while still in his teens.

Silverbridge falls in love with Lady Mabel Grex, a distant cousin of both his & Frank Tregear's. Frank & Mabel had been in love but both realised they could not marry as neither had any money. Mabel's father may be a Lord, but he has gambled & squandered his estate so she is practically penniless, although well-bred, beautiful & witty. Mabel is still in love with Frank but determines to marry Silverbridge if he makes her an offer. Unfortunately, her own worst (or maybe best) instincts lead her to let him off the hook when he makes a tentative declaration. He feels slighted &, soon after, falls under the spell of a beautiful American, Isabel Boncassen. However, the Duke has given his approval to Silverbridge's pursuit of Mabel so Silverbridge finds himself avoiding one girl while he pursues another. The Duke, meantime, is favouring Mabel & wondering when Silverbridge will announce their engagement.

Mary, meanwhile, is devastated when her father forbids her marriage to Frank. She agrees to do nothing without her father's permission, but is determined to marry no one else. The Duke can't help but remember Glencora's own passion for Burgo Fitzgerald, & wonder if she would have been happier if she had not been forced into a marriage with a man she didn't love. Mary's situation leads to a rift between the Duke & Marie Finn (formerly Madame Goesler), Glencora's greatest friend, as she treads a fine line between her loyalty to the Duke & helping Mary without becoming estranged from her.

Silverbridge's troubles aren't confined to romance. He becomes involved with a racing set that includes Major Tifto, a man who knows a lot about horses but isn't quite respectable or honest. Silverbridge is led into huge losses at the race track, & scandal when a horse he part owns with the Major is nobbled just before a big race. Silverbridge is also becoming dissatisfied with his political career as he despises the leader of his party, Sir Timothy Beeswax, & finds himself reluctant to support him. The Duke, meanwhile, is in despair. His heir has shown himself to be flighty in love, a gambler who consorts with undesirable people & a Conservative in politics, although he doesn't seem very serious about that. His daughter is stubbornly continuing to love a penniless man while ignoring any eligible suitor who comes her way. He loves his children & wants them to be happy but he comes to realise that the old standards that he has lived by are changing & he must change too.

The Duke's Children is a wonderful book. The Duke is such a lovable man & his bewilderment as his children get into one predicament after another is very poignant. He misses Glencora but also realises that she has contributed to the problems as she approved of Frank Tregear's suit & he sees her wilfulness intensified in Mary. There are painful scenes between the Duke & Mary as she remains resolute & also many comic scenes between the Duke & his sons as they almost seem to speak different languages & almost wilfully misunderstand each other. Silverbridge is a very silly, immature young man but all his difficulties seem to come upon him unawares. He loves & respects his father but is also afraid of disappointing him. He is full of good intentions but doesn't have the strength of character to follow through. He finds himself entangled without knowing how it happened.

Mabel & Isabel are both fascinating characters & much more mature & self-aware than Silverbridge. Mabel knows how much her future depends on a "good" marriage but she is not mercenary enough to take a man she doesn't love. Even as she decides to accept Silverbridge when he asks her, she is determined to be a good wife to him & try to love him. She knows she can be a good wife & can behave as a Countess (& eventually a Duchess) should but her honesty looks set to ruin her chances. Isabel is very aware of her position as an outsider & has enough good sense not to accept Silverbridge's proposal until she is accepted by his family. The Duke may be a Liberal politically but his feelings about family & nobility are very conservative. The Duke's Children is an involving family saga that rounds off the Palliser series in a very satisfying way. And, now that I've finished reading the books, I can get back to the TV series & watch the last three episodes.

Vittoria Cottage - D E Stevenson

 

Vittoria Cottage (cover picture from here) is the story of the Dering family, who live in the village of Ashbridge, just after WWII. Caroline is a widow in her late 30s or early 40s. She married young & her husband, Arnold, was much older &, by all accounts, a blight on humanity. Arnold was miserable, unhappy, never satisfied & crotchety. He stifled Caroline & wasn't liked in the local community. Caroline's children are James, serving with the Army in Malaya; Leda, pretty but difficult, dissatisfied with her lot like her father; & Bobbie, much more open & natural than her sister.

Caroline's sister, actress Harriet Fane, makes regular visits & whisks Caroline off to London for a change occasionally.  Harriet is younger than Caroline, very sophisticated but has no illusions about the difficulties of her sister's married life & is bluntly honest with her nieces, especially selfish Leda. As always in a Stevenson novel, there's a loyal retainer. In this case, it's Comfort Podbury, a still young woman who was jilted by her fiance when she grew enormously fat. Comfort is a member of a whole clan of Podburys who are evident in every part of village life.

Leda has become engaged to Derek Ware, a young man just as selfish as herself. Derek is supposed to be studying law but is restless after returning from his war service & is looking instead for a job with good pay & long holidays. Derek's father, Sir Michael, is a lonely widower who doesn't really approve of the engagement & wants his son to settle down to something. His daughter,
Rhoda, on the other hand, is studying at the School of Art in London &, in her father's opinion, working much too hard.

Robert Shepperton arrives in Ashbridge looking for peace & rest after his experiences in the war. He returned home from abroad to find his house had been bombed & his wife killed. His son, Philip, has been evacuated to the US &, after a long illness, he needs to recuperate. Robert becomes friends with Caroline & her company begins the healing process. Caroline has been content with her quiet life, although she worries about James & isn't convinced that Leda's engagement will make her happy. I loved Caroline, she was such a warm, sympathetic character.

It was important to Caroline to do things right, to do whatever she did to the best of her ability. She saw beauty in ordinary little things and took pleasure in it (and this was just as well because she had had very little pleasure in her life). She took pleasure in a well-made cake, a smoothly ironed napkin, a pretty blouse, laundered and pressed; she liked to see the garden well-dug, the rich soil brown and gravid; she loved her flowers. When you are young you are too busy with yourself - so Caroline thought - you haven't time for ordinary little things but, when you leave youth behind, your eyes open and you see magic and mystery all around you...

Caroline's feelings for Robert soon deepen from friendship to love but she is uncertain about his feelings for her as she thinks he's falling in love with Harriet. James returns from Malaya & changes the atmosphere of the cottage as he leaves his belongings all over the hall & begins thinking about his future which he hopes will include Rhoda Ware. Rhoda, however, is reluctant to give up her independence & her art which is so important to her.

I read Vittoria Cottage thanks to Open Library & I read it as a PDF file in Bluefire Reader on my iPad instead of as an ePub file in the Overdrive app. What a difference! Reading the PDF file is just like reading the actual book as you can see. No scanning glitches & it's a much better reading experience. Thanks to Bree at Another Look Book (do have a look at Bree's blog, lots of great reviews of middlebrow novels) & the support people at Open Library for helping me sort it out.

I'd also like to recommend this website to any D E Stevenson fans, especially those of us who have just discovered her & are reading everything we can get our hands on. There's a fantastic table listing all the series & the recurring characters. Although, I must say that I haven't had any problem reading the books out of order. I read the Miss Buncle series out of order & I recently listened to Summerhills on audio but haven't read Amberwell. Stevenson filled in the background of the characters so well that I never felt lost.

Rilla of Ingleside - L M Montgomery

I've only read the first book in the Green Gables series, Anne of Green Gables, & that was many years ago. I loved Lucy Maud Montgomery's Journals, which I borrowed on Inter Library Loan as they were published over many years. Montgomery's life was a far cry from the happy family life of Anne Shirley, the Cuthberts & Gilbert Blythe, who she eventually marries. I think her writing must have helped her to survive her difficult circumstances with a husband afflicted with mental illness & her sons so very unsatisfactory. Virago are reprinting some of Montgomery's books & I was pleased to be offered Rilla of Ingleside & Jane of Lantern Hill for review. I was especially interested in Rilla of Ingleside because it deals with WWI & it was a very enjoyable as well as heartrending read.

Rilla is the youngest daughter of Anne & Gilbert Blythe. She's 15 & living a peaceful life in Glen St Mary, a small town on Prince Edward Island. Rilla is a typical teenage girl, wanting to grow up as fast as possible & willing to push against her mother's authority just a bit. Rilla is about to attend her first grown-up dance, at a lighthouse on Four Winds Point. Rilla hopes that Kenneth Ford will be there. He is & they dance together & spend an enchanted hour together on the beach. On the night of the party, war is declared between England & Germany, which means that Canada, as part of the Empire, is also at war.

Rilla's brothers Jem & Walter, join up. Jem, with much enthusiasm, as soon as war is declared; Walter reluctantly, as he dreads fighting & is afraid that his courage will fail him at a crucial moment. Other young men in the district enlist &, gradually, Glen St Mary becomes a place for women, children & older men. The strain of being left behind, waiting for news, relying on the newspapers for information of the progress of the war, becomes greater as news of the death & wounding of the local boys drifts back from Europe.

Rilla is determined to help the war effort. She starts a chapter of the Junior Red Cross. She adopts a baby when she calls at a house for a donation & finds a young mother dead & a slovenly, drunk old woman left in charge of a baby boy. His father has gone to England to enlist & Rilla is determined not to leave the baby with the old woman or put him in an orphanage so she takes him home with her in a soup tureen, the only possible receptacle. Rilla begins to grow up as she takes responsibility for the little boy who she calls Jims. The same stubborn nature that led her to announce that she would wear the expensive green velvet hat that she bought, despite her mother's advice, until peace came, also helps her to persevere in raising Jims with the help of a baby care manual & advice from Susan Baker, the family's cook & housekeeper.

There are many amusing episodes in the story. Rilla has to eat humble pie & apologise to Irene Howard, a disagreeable, spiteful girl, when she desperately needs her to sing at a Red Cross concert. Unfortunately, Rilla was so worked up about her apology that she didn't realise until she arrived at Irene's house that she had odd shoes on. Irene spends the whole interview staring at Rilla's feet & makes her grovel & almost lose her temper & walk out, before she agrees to help. Rilla organises a secret war wedding for Miranda Pryor when her pacifist father refuses permission for her to marry Joe Milgrave before he sails to Europe. Rilla, as bridesmaid, ends up having to hold Jims all through the ceremony when he has a tantrum & won't stop crying & then Miranda's overfed dog has a fit & Rilla has to try very hard to keep a straight face. It's something her mother, Anne, would have done in the old Green Gables days.

There's also a lot of poignancy in the story as is natural in a story set during the war. Not all the boys who enlist will come home & of those that do return, they will all be touched either physically or mentally by their experiences. Jem's dog, called Dog Monday, refuses to leave the railway station until he returns & becomes a sad, mournful presence as he refuses all comforts. I admit that I was tearful more than once. Rilla regrets that her youth is passing in such worry & anxiety, not just about her brothers ( another brother, Shirley, becomes a pilot) but also about Kenneth, who left her with a kiss but no firm commitment. Only when the war is over will Rilla & her family be able to look to the future with confidence.

I enjoyed Rilla of Ingleside very much. The style is quite sentimental & I grew very tired of Susan calling Gilbert Dr dear & Anne Mrs Dr dear. It's written in a very romantic style with noble speeches about patriotism & helping the mother country in fighting the Hun. However, it was published in 1921 & I suppose we've grown a little more cynical about such words as patriotism in the century since then. Montgomery writes beautifully of the landscape & the countryside of Prince Edward Island. I also enjoyed Gertrude Oliver, a schoolteacher who boards with the Blythes. She's older & has had a hard life & is reluctant to believe in her present good fortune. She is engaged to a soldier & is prone to prophetic dreams & grand statements. Rilla, Anne & Gilbert, however, are at the heart of the story & their emotions always rang true.

There's a copy of Rilla of Ingleside, as well as many other books by L M Montgomery, available at Anglophile Books.