And the rest

I’m pleased with the way this year has gone so far – so far – in that I’ve stuck to my resolution of regular postings, and got several of my subsections moving again: Chronobibliography, the Gothic novel, and Authors In Depth; as well as keeping my struggle through the pre-history of the silver-fork novel ticking along.

And after an absurdly long delay, I have at least read the book that represents the point at which Reading Roulette got stuck: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis.

Of course all this progress has had its usual consequence, in that I’m letting myself get carried away: I’m currently eyeing my list of “side-project” books, those which have come up in discussion and noted as worthy of consideration for one reason or another; namely—

– Gains And Losses: Novels Of Faith And Doubt In Victorian England by Robert Lee Wolff: the third of the important studies of the 19th century religious novel, along with Joseph Ellis Baker’s The Novel And The Oxford Movement and Margaret Maison’s Search Your Soul, Eustace. I have actually read this with intention to blog; but it turned out to be another instance of pondering how to attack a book so long, I forgot what I wanted to say in the first place. The problem is that this lengthy work goes off on tangents from the main issue, so it’s a case of picking the eyes out of it. That said, it does do one insanely clever thing in its handling of the proliferating 19th century religious factions, which on its own makes it worthy of review.

– The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie: this one came up apropos of Julia de Roubigné, which we agreed was a deconstruction of the sentimental novel, rather than a sentimental novel itself—raising the question of whether Mackenzie’s earlier work, too, had been so intended. There are certainly some novels (for example, John Robinson’s Sydney St. Aubyn) where it is difficult to tell whether or not we’re supposed to take the narrative at face value; but as I confessed at the time, I’ve never had any sense that The Man Of Feeling wasn’t written with a straight face, and the thought that Mackenzie had intended it as a criticism of the overwrought sentimentalism that infected English novels during the second half of the 18th century was intriguing.

– Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval: we touched upon this one in the lead-up to Féval’s Les Mystères de Londres, at which time I remarked of it, “The hero…is a Zorro-esque figure who fights against injustice—and may be the earliest example of the crime-fighter with a double life and a secret identity. (He’s also an albino, because if there’s one thing Paul Féval believed in, it was piling it on.)” ‘Nuff said.

– Theresa Marchmont; or, The Maid Of Honour by Catherine Gore: this is also about the pre-history of the silver-fork novel, though in a different way. Gore was that genre’s leading exponent, and a clever and entertaining writer; but she got her start writing “proper” novels, and this was her first.

I think all four of those are worth tackling…sigh…though beforehand, I’d really like to get through both Pique and Mary Leman Grimstone’s Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert—the latter with a view to re-starting that subsection conspicuous by its ongoing absence, Australian fiction.

Having finished reading Pique, I allowed myself a spin of the wheel for Reading Roulette—and ended up making a decision that, astonishingly enough, should make things a little easier around here rather than (as usual) exponentially harder.

The book I landed on was Octavus Roy Cohen’s Midnight, from 1922. A little research determined that this is one of Cohen’s mysteries, featuring series detective, David Carroll.

I have, in the past, simply carried on upon hitting a book like that; but I’ve decided I’m not going to any more. Since that time my mystery and series reading has multiplied exponentially into a major project (albeit one dealt with elsewhere); and on that basis, I’m going to eliminate such works from Reading Roulette. I will still read Midnight (at least, I won’t: I’ll be reading The Crimson Alibi, the first in the David Carroll series), but it won’t be written up here.

A second spin of the wheel then landed me on Sinclair Lewis’s Our Mr Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures Of A Gentle Man, from 1914; and that’s what I’ll be blogging.

 

The Prisoners Of Hartling

 

    As he read, Arthur lost the sense of his surroundings. He visualised the narrow sitting-room of the little Peckham house, and heard Somers’s voice telling him that he ought to be doing hospital work or getting varied experience as a general practitioner; that he was becoming soft, going to pieces from a professional point of view. He blushed like a student under the rebuke of the demonstrator.
    Then he looked up and the illusion vanished. He saw that all his circumstances were now changed. All that advice would be sound enough if he were forced to return to such a general practice as Peckham. But if the old man left him, say £10,000, he might have a shot for his Fellowship; try for a registrarship at one of the bigger hospitals; perhaps get on the staff of one and set up in Wimpole Street. With a certain amount of capital, this would be so much easier, and the war had given him a taste for minor surgery. Indeed, it had always appealed to him more than medicine. Meanwhile, it was true that he must not let himself get rusty. He ought to go on reading, order some books from town; or at least have the Lancet sent to him every Friday. He must keep himself up to date while he was waiting. At the outside he could not have to wait more than five years…

 

 

 

While stories of ‘The Lost Generation’ may represent the most public face of the phenomenon, the between-the-wars era naturally gave rise to a significant body of work dealing with the readjustment of returned service people to society—or their inability to do so. The British subset of this literature deals, almost invariably, with life in the country, and the passing into history of the “long summer” of the Edwardians. It tends to fall into one of two categories: either a soldier, filled with longing for home, faces disillusionment in discovering that home has irrevocably changed; or conversely, in the face of his old life he discovers that he has irrevocably changed.

One odd but interesting example of this form of novel is J. D. Beresford’s 1922 psychological drama, The Prisoners Of Hartling, which finds a young medico returned from battlefield service growing increasingly restless and dissatisfied with his life as a panel-doctor in London.

(A ‘panel-doctor’ was a creation of Britain’s first, well-meant but mostly unsatisfactory system of health insurance, established in 1911 under David Lloyd George: those contributing to the scheme were entitled to – limited – healthcare from one of a panel of doctors who attended a particular geographical area. The work could be thankless and the turnover of medicos in poor districts was high. However, a positive consequence of this situation was that quite a considerable number of female doctors, who struggled to secure positions in hospitals and more ‘prestigious’ areas, gained both employment and practical experience working on the panels.)

Arthur Woodroffe went straight into his partnership with his older friend and mentor, Bob Somers, upon being demobilised, and the nature of the work and, in particular, his surroundings are beginning to tell upon him. His feelings remain unfocused and unspoken until he receives an invitation to spend a weekend in the country…

During a dinner, an acquaintance mentions to Arthur that he has been invited down to Hartling, the country estate of the wealthy Garvice Kenyon. This prompts Arthur to reveal that he is a connection of Kenyon’s, one of the old man’s sons being Arthur’s uncle-by-marriage. This conversation is, evidently, repeated during the visit to Hartling: Arthur receives a letter from his Aunt Hannah, written on behalf of the elderly Mr Kenyon, offering him a weekend in the country.

Childhood memories of the beautiful country estate, mental comparisons of the Kenyons’ life of ease and relative wealth with his own narrow financial circumstances, and the unpleasant realities of his working-life trigger a reaction in Arthur; and what starts as a desire to get away for a weekend escalates into a wholesale rejection of his current life and circumstances.

Arthur’s passionate longing for space, and beauty, and cleanliness, after the filth and misery of war, is entirely reasonable. Something of a problem arises, however, with his expression of that longing:

    “But you still avoid the real issue,” Somers persisted; “why this invitation has unsettled you.”
    “I don’t know,” Woodroffe said, settling himself a little deeper in his arm-chair. “I suppose if one analyses it, the thing set me thinking of—of the differences between Kenyon’s position and mine. Here I am with no decent clothes, and no money; sweating myself thin over a dirty job like trying to mitigate the sickness of Peckham, while old Kenyon’s got more money than he knows what to do with.”
    “Incipient socialism, this,” Somers confided to the wall opposite.
    “It isn’t,” Woodroffe said. “I’ve no sympathy with the greasy proletariat; not my line at all. It is that the whole thing has just set me wondering how I’m going to get out of it. It’s no damned good pretending, my dear Bob, that I wouldn’t sooner be lying snug in a clean comfortable bed than delivering women like Nellie Mason. And, oh! Lord, the accent is on the clean all the time.”
    “You don’t mean to imply…” Somers began.
    “My dear chap, of course I don’t,” Woodroffe cut in. “My bed here is clean enough for any one, but for about twelve hours of the day I am mixing with dirtiness of every sort and kind, and I had more than my fill of it in the war—lice by the yard and every sort of filth… I used to tell myself stories of getting clean, fantasy hot baths in exquisite surroundings, and picture myself going straight from them into brand new clothes and that sort of thing. Instead of which I’ve dropped straight into this…”

So much for the long-suffering people of Peckham—whose inescapable living conditions evidently resemble those of a battlefield. Yet having delivered himself of this comprehensive dismissal, Arthur is nevertheless startled and somewhat offended when Bob Somers responds to this not merely by releasing him from their partnership, but by telling him frankly that he wouldn’t keep him if he wanted to stay: that in his present state of mind, he’s not fit for the work.

The upshot is that Arthur departs for Hartling without any idea of where he is to go or what he is to do when the weekend is over—his vague future plan of emigrating to Canada notwithstanding. During his journey, he realises that the conversation with Somers, which was unplanned, brought into focus both his dissatisfactions and his desires; in particular, his resentful sense that the world owes him, if not a living, then at least a good time, in exchange for the years given up to the war. That good time will start with a weekend of luxury in the country; and should the weekend turn into something more, all the better…

He was beginning life again. Everything was coming right. He had visions of some delightful, improbable enlargement of his condition. Old Kenyon might take a fancy to him. Some one in the house, some special favourite of the old man’s, might be taken seriously ill, and Arthur Woodroffe, the brilliant young general practitioner from Peckham, would work a miracle at the eleventh hour. Old Mr Kenyon’s gratitude would take a practical form, and the thing was done. There were other variants of the dream, but this seemed to be the most promising.

Arthur’s fantasies take on a more concrete form when, during their drive from the station to Hartling, Mr Kenyon’s chauffeur reveals to him that the old man has a curious health complaint. Otherwise a surprisingly vigorous ninety-one years, Mr Kenyon is periodically afflicted by strange, almost catatonic seizures that the doctors have so far been unable to diagnose or treat.

Upon arrival at Hartling, Arthur is somewhat taken aback when he discovers that the people he assumes at first to be a houseful of guests are actually all residents of the estate: he meets his aunt, Mrs Hannah Kenyon, who he has not seen for many years; and he is introduced to Joseph, his uncle-by-marriage, and his cousins, Hubert and Elizabeth; to sixty-year-old Miss Esther Kenyon, the eldest daughter of the house; and to Charles Turner, who is married to Catherine, another daughter. He also hears of Eleanor, Mr Kenyon’s granddaughter, an orphan who works as his secretary.

Arthur immediately notices an attitude of only partly veiled suspicion amongst his relatives, and thinks he understands it when he has a talk with his rather hangdog young cousin, Hubert, who finally asks him tentatively if he is expecting to get something out of Mr Kenyon? – a recommendation for a job, for instance. Arthur puts Hubert in his place easily enough, summing him up in his own mind as a “feeble sort of rotter”, and concludes that the rest are jealous of their own privileges.

Meeting Eleanor, Arthur is immediately attracted to her. However, she too begins to quiz him about his presence at Hartling and his intentions for the future; while her attitude to his work is the last thing he wants to hear:

    “You’re a full-fledged doctor, aren’t you? Aunt Hannah said you wrote from Peckham. Were you practising there?”
    As they made their way to the terrace she had indicated, Arthur told her something of his work in Peckham and of his reasons for wishing to leave it. He expected sympathy from her, but he found none.
    “I dare say it was dirty,” was her comment—his insistence on that aspect had demanded a reply—“but it was work, real work. You were doing some good in the world.”

Arthur continues his attempt to win understanding, if not sympathy, from her, but in the end grows resentful of her lack of response, and what appears to him an interrogation of his intentions unwarranted by their degree of acquaintance:

He knew that he was not saying the things she wanted him to say. He could feel her longing to hear him disparage the delights of Hartling and enlarge upon those of what she had called “real work.” But her very urgency made it impossible for him to respond in his present mood. Also, he was aware of a curious desire to contradict her, even to hurt her. It was, as he put it to himself, all very well for her to talk about things she knew nothing about. He looked at her with a new criticism, and her youth and freshness seemed almost an offence. The whiteness of her hands, the spotlessness of her pale grey linen dress, the clearness of her complexion and of her blue eyes, even the lines of her firm, well-nourished young figure were all effects of the protected life she had led. It was not for her to find fault with him for wanting some share of the luxury that to the Kenyons had become commonplace.

When a message arrives from the as-yet unseen Mr Kenyon, asking Arthur to extend his stay from the weekend to “a few more days”, he accepts with alacrity; his defiance turning into giddy glee when he sees…his bathroom:

    He had a bathroom all to himself—a perfect bathroom with white walls above a tiled dado of pale green that curved round smoothly at its base to form a tiled floor of the same colour. The bath and lavatory basin were of white porcelain with nickel-silver taps, and the ample bossy towel rails, heated by hot water, were also of nickel silver…
    With a sudden whoop of joy he came back into the room and began to strip himself. He would have a bath at once, and another when he came to bed. Lovely hot water, nice soap, and splendid hot towels. Ripping house! Would he stay as long as he could? Wouldn’t he rather! He would stay altogether if he had the chance…

(It is perhaps worth pointing out that many English country houses, rich as well as poor, retained the most primitive of plumbing arrangements until after WWII, never mind WWI: running hot water and an – implied – flush toilet represent a height of luxury that few aspired to at the time. These details come of the back of the revelation that Hartling has electricity, another rare luxury in the country, generated by its own powerhouse.)

At dinner, Arthur finally meets his host, and is impressed with the power of his personality, which makes itself felt in spite of Mr Kenyon’s great age. However, during the meal he notices a strange, strained atmosphere: conversations seem to die for no reason he can elucidate. An unnerving distraction then occurs in the form of one of Mr Kenyon’s fits: he simply freezes, as if having fallen sound asleep with his eyes open. The others present, apparently accustomed, fall silent and wait for the fit to pass, as it duly does. Arthur notes that Mr Kenyon seems unaware of his withdrawal.

Arthur sees little of either Mr Kenyon or Eleanor over the next few days. During this time the others seem to pull back from him, their interaction settling into a sort of “boarding-house acquaintance”, as Arthur puts it to himself, a superficial passing of the time. This chiefly takes the form of games, at which several of his relatives excel: Elizabeth at croquet, Charles Turner at billiards and, most to Arthur’s surprise, Hubert at golf, at which he displays professional-level ability. The more he sees of his relatives, the more contemptuous of them he grows, interpreting their wary attitude towards himself as resentment of anyone sharing Mr Kenyon’s bounty. Their very passivity annoys him, with only the autocratic Miss Kenyon displaying any backbone—though that tends to take the form of a scornful and dictatorial manner. Arthur eventually becomes aware of the erection of a silent barrier between himself and the rest—as if the others all share a secret from which he is excluded.

It briefly crosses Arthur’s mind that the family secret which the rest seem to share, and are determined to exclude him from, might have regard to Mr Kenyon’s sanity; he even mentally casts Eleanor in the role of ‘keeper’. However, this suspicion is banished when Mr Kenyon surprises him one evening by visiting him in his room and settling in for a long talk. Arthur soon discovers a shrewd intellect behind the physical infirmities of age. Mr Kenyon questions him closely about his wartime experiences, his medical training and his intentions for the future. He then offers him a job: to stay on at Hartling as his medical attendant; although, as he admits, the main task would be to monitor his health so as to give him sufficient warning of his likely demise, so that he will have an opportunity to put his affairs in order, and write a proper and binding will—his current one consisting of, as he puts it, “a mass of codicils”.

Despite his enjoyment of Hartling, Arthur is repelled by the mental image of his future conjured up by this offer—passing the days as the others do, making a profession out of games, and waiting for an old man to die. Mr Kenyon sees his reluctance, and assures him quietly that he is sure within himself that Arthur’s attendance would be a matter of six months to a year at the outside; and of course Arthur would be properly recompensed for his services: there would be a legacy in that will.

They are interrupted by the dinner-gong before Arthur can respond, and he is given time to reflect. He is annoyed later to discover that everyone else seems aware of his situation, and even more annoyed by the general assumption that he will accept the offer. Once again he is conscious of a sort of unspoken conversation going on about him, an exchange of significant looks and cryptic remarks. He concludes, in his anger, that these battening relatives resent the possibility of having to share their presumed legacy with an outsider. Even Eleanor, whom he consults expecting honest advice, seems to have an ulterior motive behind what he views as her over-urgent insistence that he not only refuse the offer, but leave Hartling at once. They part coldly, with Arthur left nursing feelings of mingled disgust and hurt pride:

    It had come to him that he had an honourable purpose to serve by remaining: he might be a true help and support to the aged head of the house. Old Kenyon was so pitiably isolated from his family. He must always be aware that he was marked down, that the circle of harpies was forever closing more tightly about him, that the only interest his descendants took in him was in the search for symptoms of his approaching death. He would surely welcome some one coming from the outside, who would have no selfish object in view, who would give him real sympathy and understanding.
    Arthur felt a glow of self-satisfaction at the thought. He would make it quite clear, of course, in the coming interview, that no question of any legacy must complicate the arrangement. That should be absolutely definite; and yet—it was just a whimsical fancy, and he shrugged his shoulders—what fun it would be to cut out the rest of the family, to be made one of the principal heirs and disappoint those ghastly birds of prey! The disappointment would be only momentary. He would take the fortune solely to hand it back to them, but in doing that what an admirable lesson he might read them; what contempt he might show for the pitiful gaud of wealth. (He might possibly retain just enough to give him a small—a very small independent income?)

He stays, of course; though as it turns out his intention to demand – or at least request – a regular salary rather than a legacy comes to nothing. This causes him increasing worry, as his own resources are dwindling—his weekend at Hartling having stretched to five weeks…

The first break in the unvarying daily routine at Hartling is the arrival of Kenyon Turner, the only son of Charles and Catherine, which sends ripples of unwonted anxiety through the relatives. It emerges that Ken is in severe financial difficulties and, both in search of help and to avoid his creditors, has returned to his family. Arthur is present during a curious conversation between Ken and Hubert:

    Turner almost whimpered. “He’s got to put me right,” he protested, “absolutely got to.”
    Hubert rocked silently from foot to foot. “He hasn’t,” he said quietly, “and you can’t make him. You know that well enough. What did Eleanor say?”
    “She promised to do all she could,” Turner replied unhopefully, and added: “I’d sooner emigrate than come to live down here.”
    “Got the money for your passage?” Hubert inquired.
    “I suppose I could get that somehow,” Turner said. “Trouble’d be to dodge my creditors. Besides, some of the money must be paid—fellows in the office and so on. I couldn’t let them down.”
    “You’ll be living here before you’re a week older,” Hubert decided. “Safe as houses.”

Left alone with Hubert, Arthur becomes the recipient of confidences. He learns that Hubert is engaged, or would be, if either he or his intended had any money, or saw any opportunity for earning some. This coming out into the open in the wake of the revelation of Ken’s difficulties engenders a mood of suppressed panic amongst the Kenyons, which exasperates Arthur. He sees a revolting selfishness in their reluctance to rock the boat by supporting Hubert. Rashly, he promises to speak a word for Hubert to the old man—preening himself upon being above the petty financial considerations which he assumes are holding the others silent.

However, there is a delay before he can. As he stares at the rain falling in torrents outside, Arthur feels his moment of self-confidence giving way to doubt; all sorts of doubt:

    It was not a day, he reflected, remembering many such days, to spend going from house to house through fountains of London mud; nor in receiving poor patients at the surgery. How their wet clothes reeked! They brought all the worst of the weather in with them, the mud and the wet invaded the consulting room; one was never dry or clean on such days as this.
    Instinctively he rubbed his hands together, and then looked down at them. They were better kept than when he first came to Hartling; it had been impossible to keep his hands like that in Peckham. He liked the brown of their tan, deeper on the back than at the finger tips, and his nails were rather good. It was worth while now to spend a little time on them.
    Were the Kenyons to be pitied? They were not free, of course, but no one was free. They were certainly more free here than he would be if he went back to Peckham… If the old man turned him out for interfering in a matter in which he was not concerned, he would have to go back to Somers for a night or two. If he were not very careful with the little money still left to him, he would have to give up the idea of Canada altogether. Living in a place like this for five weeks changed one’s scale of values. He did not look forward to “roughing it” so much as he had before he came away from Peckham.
    Was he pledged in any way to plead Hubert’s cause with his grandfather?…

And indeed, it is very likely that Arthur’s “word” would never have been spoken, had he not encountered Eleanor on his way in to see Mr Kenyon. Even though he considers their fears exaggerated and probably unjust, the sincerity with which the others try to dissuade him from speaking, their conviction that he will be turned out if he opposes the old man’s will, all have their effect. He is putting it to himself in terms of doing more harm than good when he encounters Eleanor: clearly, she wants him to speak; and even more clearly, she thinks he won’t:

    “You admit that I shan’t do any good to Hubert,” he said. “Why are you so anxious that I should get myself into trouble by interfering—unless it is that you want to be rid of me? Because if that’s all, I can go any time of my own free will.”
    “I don’t want you to go,” she said coldly.
    “Then why are you so keen on—on my taking the chance of offending Mr Kenyon?” he insisted.
    She faced him with a cool, ready stare. “You can’t seriously believe,” she said, “that I should be so mean and small as to persuade you into this for any purely selfish purpose of my own? Why, none of them would be as paltry as that.”
    He blushed, but he would not drop his eyes from hers. “I’m to respect your motives, of course,” he said defiantly; “But you’re at liberty to impute any sort of cowardice to me?”
    “Isn’t it cowardice then?” she asked, returning his stare without flinching. “Haven’t you changed your mind because you’re afraid of having to leave here?”

In the face of that, Arthur’s wounded amour propre propels him into Mr Kenyon’s presence. Once the leap is taken, to his astonishment and relief, the old man takes his intervention in good part. Arthur learns that the old man’s objections to the engagement are, in his own view, entirely reasonable: Miss Martin has no money, no more than Hubert himself; and as the daughter of the agent of a neighbouring estate, she isn’t quite quite: a position with which the snobbish Arthur sympathises. So calmly reasonable is Mr Kenyon that Arthur, not for the first time, finds his entire way of thinking swayed by a conversation with him; while the apprehensions of the rest of the family come to seem foolish, even hysterical.

Mr Kenyon, meanwhile, is very far from wanting to turn Arthur out for his boldness:

    “I have taken a peculiar fancy to you, Arthur,” he continued after a brief pause, “and I need not be ashamed to tell you why; it is because I admire the independence of your spirit. I liked the way you spoke to me just now; your disregard of what might have been against your own interests; your championship of Hubert. I could wish—I have often wished—that there was more of the same spirit in my own family.”
    Arthur flushed with pleasure. But it seemed to him that he understood now, finally, conclusively, the secret of the Kenyons.
    They were all cowards, and Mr Kenyon despised them for their cowardice; not one of them had ever had the courage to stand up to him. If he had, in a sense, bullied them, it was because he had tried to stimulate them into some show of active response…

The flattering conversation then embraces Arthur’s future intentions. He has already been led into into holding himself up as a contrast to the others on the basis of his greater life-experience and need to earn a living; but he is more alarmed than pleased when Mr Kenyon takes it for granted that he must be “pining to get back into the struggle”:

    “And yet, Arthur, I should be so glad if you could stay with me—till the end. I gave you my reasons when we first talked the matter over together. I can add still another, now; I’ve taken a great liking for you… I wouldn’t ask you to make the sacrifice if I were a younger man. But as it is what difference will a year, two at most, make to you at your time of life? Come, now,” he smiled with a flash of roguery, “let’s make a bargain! Your friend Hubert shall have his Miss Martin, if you’ll promise to stay with me…”
    “Oh, of course, sir, rather,” Arthur said, blushing with pleasure and embarrassment. “I would promise that in any case. There’s no need for any—any quid pro quo, I mean.”
    Mr Kenyon still had his hands on the young man’s shoulders, and he gave him a gentle shake as he said, “Very well, that’s a bargain then; and I may tell you that you’ve taken a very great weight off my mind…”

Arthur’s sense of triumph soon fades when the others hear of the agreement. There is astonishment over Hubert’s engagement, but no sense of gratitude. If anything, the wariness with which the rest regard him increases. Arthur thinks he understands, and is nettled into a blundering assurance that he has no intention of accepting a legacy from the old man, at least, not an unreasonable one; and his offer to sign an agreement to that purpose only makes things worse. There is an embarrassed scattering of the relatives, with Charles Turner and Uncle Joe left to reject any such arrangement as unnecessary—assuring Arthur that they trust him to keep his word, should it become necessary:

    There was apparently nothing more to be said, and Arthur was on his feet preparing to go when Turner remarked casually to his brother-in-law, “Totting ’em up pretty fast just now, isn’t he? That’ll make three more of us if poor Ken has to come in.”
    Joe Kenyon’s only reply was to draw down the corners of his mouth and raise his eyebrows.
    Arthur did not want to hear any more. He was sorry he had heard so much. These petty criticisms of old Kenyon made him despise Turner and his uncle; they represented another aspect of their cowardice.

Nor is Hubert’s attitude to his grandfather at all altered, despite his excitement over his engagement. Rather, he complains that he has had no chance to see Miss Martin since the edict was handed down, being instead dispatched to do a job on the estate:

    “Probably he did it just to tantalise me a bit,” Hubert complained; “teach me that I couldn’t have everything my own way.”
    “Oh, surely not!” Arthur protested. He was offended, again, by this imputation of unworthy motives to old Mr Kenyon. “I don’t believe any of you understand him,” he continued warmly. “We had quite a long talk this morning and he rather came out of his shell. He may seem a bit hard and inhuman at times, you know, but underneath, I’m sure he’s trying to do the best for everybody.”
    Hubert looked faintly surprised. “Oh! that was the way he took you, was it?” he remarked.

When the family reconvenes for dinner, Arthur is surprised to find himself the object of Elizabeth’s attentions. Though she is attractive in an obvious sort of way, he is not at all drawn to her—and annoyed to realise that Eleanor’s image keeps getting in the way. This instinctive choice receives reinforcement the next day when Eleanor, albeit rather ungraciously, invites Arthur to accompany her on a long walk on the Downs—intimating that she has something to say to him which cannot be said under the roof of Hartling. The miles they cover, a simple lunch at an inn, and a rest on a hilltop overlooking the beauties of the countryside combine to bring down the wall of misunderstanding that has grown up between them, and finally Eleanor brings herself to say what she feels she must: that one of them must leave Hartling immediately.

To Arthur’s astonishment, Eleanor speaks bitterly of her grandfather’s intention to use her as bait—an added attraction to hold him, Arthur, at Hartling. He protests instinctively, yet cannot help remembered the old man’s urging of a closer relationship between the two of them. Seeing his resistance to the idea, Eleanor allows herself to speak frankly of herself and her family for the first time: her own father’s defiance in the matter of his marriage, which led to his banishment from Hartling, and ultimately his death under conditions of unrelieved illness and destitution; and her own, strange upbringing after being orphaned, isolated from the world to the point of barely knowing that there was a war. All the rest, too, trapped in a web of financial dependence and a failure of willpower: turned into the playthings of the old man’s selfishness and need to dominate…

In spite of Arthur’s lingering incredulity. Eleanor continues to insist upon the departure of one or the other of them: in that, at least, she is determined that Mr Kenyon will not get his way. Appalled by what he considers her unrealistic plans for herself, in securing either an office job or undergoing nursing training, if she can afford it, Arthur determines that if one of them must go, it will be him. Recklessly, he promises to write immediately to Bob Somers and accept an offered partnership, in a slightly better practice and at a slightly increased income—albeit still in Peckham. He will depart Hartling within the week.

But even this is hardly good enough for Eleanor: if he is going, why not go at once? Why wait? – risk it…?

Eleanor’s evident unselfish fear for him – her willingness to stay, if only he will make his escape – puts a new idea into Arthur’s head: why should they not both go—together?

Before he can act upon his new resolve, there is upheaval at Hartling. Far from “coming in”, as his father feared, Ken bolts—borrowing enough to pay the worst of his debts and to secure his passage to South Africa, where he has the offer of a job. In the wake of this, Mr Kenyon makes one of his exceedingly rare journeys away from the estate, a paraded departure that means only one thing: a visit to his solicitor in London and an alteration to his will…

In his absence, Arthur and Eleanor come to an understanding. They will depart together, and immediately. Arthur takes upon himself the task of telling Mr Kenyon their intentions upon his return…and finds it even more difficult and unpleasant than he anticipated:

    “Have you had it in your mind that you might be married quite soon?” he asked.
    “I think so, sir; yes, quite soon,” Arthur replied, andf then frowning and keeping his eyes averted from the old man’s face—he went on quickly. “As soon as ever we can find somewhere to live, in fact. Flats and so on are fearfully difficult to get just now. And in Peckham, where I shall be practising…”
    He paused and looked up. The old man had changed neither his position nor his expression. “But I know of no reason why you shouldn’t be married while you are still here,” he said, apparently missing all the implications of Arthur’s speech.
    “We—we thought of leaving here—at once,” he replied, making an effort that even as he made it seemed gross and brutal. “In fact I meant—that is, I’m leaving today.”
    Mr Kenyon’s keen blue eyes slowly concentrated their gaze with an effect of extraordinary attention on Arthur’s face; and as they did so, their lids, which commonly drooped so that the iris was partly hidden, were lifted until the pupils, completely ringed by white, stared with the cold, intent watchfulness of a great bird.
    “But that’s impossible,” he said quietly…

At its best The Prisoners Of Hartling is an unnerving psychological drama, particularly in its slow revelation of the domineering monster behind the kindly if autocratic façade of Garvice Kenyon, and of the various means of progressive entrapment by which he claims and holds his victims. As we watch in detail his manipulation of Arthur, we become aware that similar tactics have worked in the past—certainly the plea for companionship “until the end”. There is a subtle if morbid humour about the way Arthur’s likely “term” increases every time the subject is raised, from six months to one year, then to two, then to five… At the same time, the novel’s most chilling moment is Charles Turner’s response when Arthur tells him that he will be extending his visit from a weekend to a week—that he too once came to Hartling for a week’s visit…thirty years ago…

(In retrospect, we are able to appreciate that to Mr Kenyon, Dorothy Martin’s lack of money probably makes her a more, not less, suitable bride for Hubert.)

The main problem with this novel is that we have to see everything from the perspective of the distinctly dull-witted Arthur. Now, I do not need to like or admire a novel’s protagonist in order to like the novel, and were this a story of the drawing in to his destruction of Arthur Woodroffe, that would be just fine. Unfortunately, there’s a sense in The Prisoners Of Hartling that we’re supposed, at least, to sympathise with Arthur and worry about his fate—though for the life of me, I can’t think why. Despite his medical training and having served in war as both a soldier and a surgeon, Arthur’s dominant trait is his emotional immaturity; and that, combined with his conceit, and his snobbery, and his total lack of perception, makes him a thoroughly exasperating companion.

And that, finally, is where this novel really fails—the realisation that almost anyone would have made a more interesting protagonist than the one we were given. There are so many stories here: that of Miss Kenyon, living the life of a Victorian spinster more than two decades into the 20th century; or of Uncle Joe, the oldest son, kept from a career because he will inherit the estate…eventually (and maybe: there’s no entail); or even the Turners, finding a welcome refuge at Hartling from their struggles against the world, hardly noticing that the gates have closed behind them… And Eleanor; particularly Eleanor, clear-sighted and intelligent; raised in ignorance of the world but ironically learning about it from novels; holding hard to her resistance to her grandfather’s grip—even as she fears that her own willpower might fail when the crisis comes…

That crisis is another failing: there’s no earthly reason why Arthur and Eleanor should fall in love, except that it’s necessary for the plot. We can appreciate that Eleanor might fear for and even pity Arthur, seeing him walking unresisting into the Hartling trap; but that such feelings should turn to love is wholly incredible, particularly given the mixture of rudeness and petulance with which Arthur treats her whenever he realises that she doesn’t share his high opinion of himself. The idea that the two of them might provide ballast for one another, and together create the impetus for escape, is sound but the working out of it certainly is not.

Still—there are some devastating touches in The Prisoners Of Hartling, even if most of them exist outside of Arthur’s limited perceptions. The idea of this group of people being drawn into financial dependence through acts of seeming generosity, and their lives being reduced to waiting in helpless passivity for an old man to die, is a disturbing concept, and all the more so since none of them have any knowledge of the contents of the will dangled in front of them whenever Mr Kenyon is in any way defied—still less any guarantee. The possibilities of this situation are exploited to the full as The Prisoners Of Hartling builds to its climax: this is a story with a vicious sting in its tail…

 

 

It’s been a while, by gar!

No, not just since I updated the blog: sadly, that almost goes without saying.

What I actually meant was that it’s been quite a stretch since Reading Roulette landed me on something outside my comfort zone.

The ‘goalposts’ for this particular subsection are set at 1741 – 1930, so we really should be mixing it up more; but the always-capricious Reading Gods have seemed content for some time to present me with a series of sentimental and didactic 18th and 19th century novels.

So I was a bit taken aback suddenly to find myself dealing with something from 1922.

John Davys Beresford was born in 1873 and, after being crippled by polio, devoted himself early in life to academic pursuits and a writing career. His marriage produced two children, Marc Brandel (Marcus Beresford) and Elizabeth Beresford, both writers of supernatural fiction—although the latter is best known for creating The Wombles.

As a young man, Beresford grew estranged from his clergyman father and his conventional views, embracing first agnosticism and later more esoteric beliefs including Theosophy. But however unconventional his religious views, Beresford always professed a sincere spirituality that was reflected in his writing, which often dealt with miraculous events and the triumph of the spiritual over the material. He also studied psychology as a different way of understanding the world.

Today, J. D. Beresford’s literary reputation rests chiefly on his works of speculative fiction, which cover a spectrum from outright science fiction to alternative / dystopian fantasies to allegories of religious doubt. An admirer of H. G. Wells (about whom he wrote the first critical study, titled simply H. G. Wells, which was published in 1915), Beresford followed though not copied him in writing novels about the clash between the miraculous – or even merely unusual – and narrow-thinking modern society. His first and most famous novel, The Hampdenshire Wonder, is the story of a super-child born to ordinary parents, and his rejection by the world around him; while his 1913 novel, Goslings, is the first literary attempt to depict seriously an all-female society. In 1921’s Revolution, Beresford imagined a full-scale socialist revolution in the United Kingdom.

However—my roll of the dice landed me upon none of these, but instead a between-the-wars psychological drama, The Prisoners Of Hartling.

Trust me.

 

 

Had You Been In His Place

 
    The voices of the men waxed louder. More bottles were uncorked—other tables were brought forth, cards were produced, and games went on. The small, hump-backed man behind the counter grew jubilant. His fingers pressed over the gold pieces in his palm, his black eyes sparkled and danced as he saw the piles on the different tables. Soon it would all be his. It was safe to count upon it. Rubbing his hands, he smiled up to the cut decanters standing in rows on the polished shelves. “You are handsome. You do your work well. It is impossible for these men to resist you.”
    It seemed to Fairfax that he heard the words. He ventured a look from under his hat. He saw the sparkle of the fiery fluid. There was a fascination that held him spellbound. Gradually the bottles enlarged, flames wrapped them in. Demons leaped from shelf to shelf, and from cork to cork. With airy sprightliness they filled tiny goblets with choice liquor. With charming grace one of these approached him. He looked at the sparkling creature, bewitchingly beautiful. A gossamer veil enveloped her, but did not obscure her inimitable loveliness. Reaching forth her snowy hand, she held the jewelled cup. The fluid glowed and sparkled. and sparkled. “Drink !” said the beauty, in her most honeyed tones, “Drink, and grow strong. What is life without strength and enjoyment?”

 
 

“Temperance”, as a social issue, existed in the United States of America even before (as it has been put) there was a United States of America; but in the early 19th century something shifted. Though the concept of temperance was, in practice, chiefly economic – chiefly about control of the working-classes – there had always been a moral aspect too; and during the 19th century temperance became not merely a moral, but a specifically female-moral cause.

As the Temperance Movement gained strength, it manifested itself in all sorts of new ways, including temperance fiction. As with the movement itself, this was something that began with men but was progressively taken over by women; and while over time an explicitly feminist aspect emerged, with tales of men too weak to control themselves and the strong and saintly women who fought to redeem them becoming a popular sub-genre, stories set within a traditional religious framework remained the most common face of this branch of literature.

Though it suffered an understandable hiccup across the Civil War, the Temperance Movement regrouped in the later decades of the 19th century, and temperance fiction began to appear again. Short stories were the most popular form – they didn’t wear out their welcome in quite the same way – but some writers in this area managed to bang the drum for the length of an entire novel.

One of those who did so was Lizzie Bates (aka Lizzie-Bates-B ), who in addition to her work in the magazines published the novel, Had You Been In His Place, in 1873. This is in many ways a text-book example of temperance fiction, by which I mean that it is preachy, exasperating, dull and gigglesome in turns—although I do not for a moment suggest that Miss Bates was anything other than perfectly sincere in writing it.

As a novel, Had You Been In His Place is distinctly second-rate, full of repetitions and ridiculous coincidences as it moves towards its inevitable conclusion (which encompasses a cop-out likewise obvious from the beginning). It also suffers from its author’s refusal to admit the existence of any vice but drinking, so that every time we come across a scene of misery or a family in crisis, drink is invariably to blame; although whether we can consider that a shortcoming in the context of a piece of temperance fiction is debatable, I guess. It does, however, add yet another dollop of repetition and absurdity to the mix.

Our protagonist is Bertol Fairfax, a young man whose father died of his addiction to drink, leaving a widow and two children. Fairfax has always sworn to his mother and sister that the “demon” which consumed his father would never touch him, but we all know about good intentions… Fairfax’s ambition to excel at college has led him to take on an excessive workload, which in turn has placed him in the position of requiring “stimulants” to meet his own goals. Fairfax is unaware – or deliberately blind to – how far he is in the grip of the same addiction that destroyed his father until his lifelong friend, Terence Redford, confronts him about his weakness and, in particular, his broken promises to his family. The ensuing quarrel leads to a serious breach between the two.

Fairfax is still nursing his grievance when, on the verge of departure from his college, he is summoned to the office of its President. A guilty conscience makes him assume that Redford has ratted him out—and he lashes back, telling his other friends that Redford has done this out of jealousy because he, Fairfax, has taken the college prize they were both competing for.

One serious but kindly-intentioned lecture later, however, and Fairfax can no longer evade the truth about his own behaviour. He leaves the home of President Raffles sorrowful and chastened and full of new resolutions and—

—really needing a drink.

And indeed, Fairfax’s latest promises last just as long as it takes him to walk past the nearest saloon, where some of his college friends are celebrating their emancipation. Redford’s supposed derelictions are the topic of conversation, and Fairfax broods upon them resentfully as he drinks…

Redford was not there. But, as Fairfax once more found himself in the street, he encountered his boyhood’s friend, waiting, it would seem, with no other purpose than to see him safely home. Stung by the memory of what had been, the calm, gentle face of Redford roused his passion into fury. Words followed. Blind with anger, frenzied with wine, Fairfax drew a revolver and fired. A groan, a stifled cry, and Redford fell!

Now with blood upon his hands, Fairfax flees, heading for the docks and the first ship out of the country. He finds one, but it is not to depart until the dawn—so, of course, he “wanders into a saloon”. He is desperately tempted (as described in the passage quoted above), but at the last moment he is saved by his guardian angel—or a reasonable facsimile thereof:

The vision of the child passed before Fairfax’s eyes. A small, half-clad figure, with a sweet, oval face, eyes of the deepest blue, and hair that rippled away from the torn gypsy hat in waves of soft, flossy brightness. A lovely face, but unmistakably sad; nothing of the child-face, but rather, the face of an angel fettered and hedged around with the sins of another, for whom she was to do penance all her life…

The girl, Lura, has come out into the night searching for her father; her mother is too sick to do it herself. The barman cannot help her there, but he offers the only form of assistance within his power—which brings Fairfax out of the state of stunned insensibility which has gripped him since his violent encounter with the man who was his best friend:

    “Hold, man!” exclaimed Fairfax, springing to his feet. “Not a drop for that child!” and the speaker clasped the brown hand and looked into the blue eyes. There was trust and confidence in the face, and instinctively Lura nestled to Fairfax’s side.
    “What is that child to you? Her father is here frequently, will be here again, a poor drunken devil that always manages to have enough for a drink; though I suspect his wife and child suffer for the want of it. Let her drink—it will do her good. And you too; let me fill a glass.”
    “Not a drop for either of us!”

So this time Fairfax resists temptation. He then walks the child to the squalid rooms where she lives with her parents, through ever-more horrifying scenes of poverty and filth:

    “Mamma used to be pretty, papa was good, and we had nice times; but now” – and here she hesitated a moment – ” it makes mamma sick. And last night she woke me up and whispered that she might die.”
    “Die!” gasped Fairfax. “And if she dies, what will become of you?”
    “Mamma said, if I could find papa in time he would be sorry, and if he was really sorry he would not drink any more. And when she was dead he would take me home. And God would care for us by the way.”
    “Drink—drink! your father drinks, child!”
    “He didn’t always, mamma says, that is, he didn’t take too much. You don’t take too much, do you, sir?”
    The small oval face was full of enthusiasm; the blue eyes misty…

Fairfax makes it soberly through the night and onto the Petrel, bound for Europe, where his physical and emotional suffering attracts the kind attention of a Professor Edelstein and his daughter, Amelia. There is also a clergyman on board, and Fairfax listens avidly to their many solemn conversations about God.

Here the religious aspect of Had You Been In His Place kicks in in earnest, with Bates arguing, reasonably enough, that Fairfax needs something stronger than himself to lean on. Fairfax, however, though he was given the proper religious upbringing by his mother, has since fallen away to become one of the social, lip-service, church-on-Sunday-then-forget-it kind, and now feels he has done that which cannot be forgiven. Over the course of the narrative, Fairfax is brought into contact with various manifestations of religious faith – one or two of which will distract Bates from her main plot, as we shall see – and experience an ongoing struggle between hope and despair.

Again, there is no question of Bates’ sincerity in all this; while Fairfax’s struggles are also believable; but having essentially the same set of arguments presented over and over, in almost the same words, becomes a significant test of the reader’s patience. (This is one of the main reasons that this is an unusually lengthy example of this kind of literature.) Also, though we understand that Fairfax may well feel that he has sinned beyond redemption, no-one of his upbringing should react to assurances of God’s forgiveness as though it were a new concept.

As the Petrel draws near its destination, it is caught in a violent and terrifying storm. At this point welcoming death, Fairfax meets the crisis calmly, and devotes himself to helping others into the life-boats. He is one of those still on board when the ship is engulfed…

…and is more than a little disappointed when he opens his eyes in the home of the Hatzfeld family, being nursed back to health by the two lovely daughters, Eudora and Ulrica.

Here Bates goes off on one of her tangents. This is too domestic a novel for a “Wicked Jesuit” to be found amongst its characters, but there is a lurking priest, who keeps a hopeful eye upon Fairfax and his obvious load of guilt. Fairfax is briefly tempted by Catholicism – at least, by the opportunity to confess – but finally pulls away. The main plot here, however, concerns the girls: Ulrica is a good Catholic, but Eudora has begun to think for herself—which, as always in Evangelical literature, means converting to Protestantism. In this Eudora is following the lead of her brother, Karl, and like him she has read the Bible… It was Evangelical dogma, often found in books of this sort, that no-one could read the Bible and stay a Catholic. Ulrica, meanwhile, is content to remain ignorant and to accept whatever Father Auberthal tells her.

Karl is away from home—not just away, but in America, which partly explains the girls’ excessive kindness to their American patient. Karl has gone to search for the family’s other brother, Paul, who left for America with his wife and young daughter looking for new opportunities, but who has fallen under the destructive influence of the demon drink.

Hmm…

While he is convalescent, Fairfax manages to avoid temptation, but as soon as he is on his feet, he is again placed in danger—mostly (in one of the book’s more credible touches) from social drinkers who won’t allow others to abstain. An afternoon out with Father Auberthal, for example, leads to an invitation to lunch and ends with Fairfax sleeping off a brandy bender. And later, when he finally leaves the Hatzfield house to make his own way in the world, Fairfax comes to the rescue of a Madam Von Sieberg and her niece, Frederica, whose carriage has broken down. It is Madam who suggests they crack a bottle…

It is also Madam who reveals a key detail of Fairfax’s future employment to him, Professor Edelstein having arranged for him the position of tutor in the household of the Countess Von Amburg. As they enter Detmold, Madam points out the Countess in a passing carriage, and she and Frederica comment on the lady’s unfortunate domestic issue:

    “I heard that her sons had promised to give her no farther uneasiness, provided she would dismiss Carncross, and employ a tutor, and that she had actually written to that famous professor, Edelstein, with regard to it,” observed Frederica.
    “In that case she will be sure of a worthy man; but I shall pity him. I do not think they care a straw for books.”
    “Indeed, auntie, if Countess Von Amburg would not allow of quite so much freedom at table. They spend so much time over their wine, that they cannot study.”
    “And if they are deprived of it they are full of wrath. Poor countess! I trust her new tutor will be a comfort to her,” returned Madam Von Sieberg.
    A deathly sensation passed over Fairfax. He felt like fainting, and only by the force of will did he keep from crying out, “Countess Von Amburg’s terribly wild sons—too much time over their wine!” Had he heard rightly?

Escaping from his companions, Fairfax retreats to an inn, chiefly to debate with himself whether – from any perspective – he should fulfill his commitment to the Countess Von Amburg. Unfortunately, he immediately runs into a few choice spirits, whose idea of a good time is a bottle in the moonlight…

Finally Fairfax concludes that his only hope is to flee civilisation altogether, and shunning both the Countess Von Amburg (who can look after her alcoholic sons her own damn self) and his engagement with Madam Von Sieberg and Frederica (and their travelling wine collection), he heads into the mountains. Once there, however, he is confronted with a different temptation:

Overcome with fatigue, the fugitive crouched down on a shelf of rock and covered his eyes. A terrible temptation was in his heart. Why not throw himself down? Why offer further resistance? He had tried, tried faithfully; it was his nature, he could not help it, he was not responsible; he had received this nature, the love for strong drink was inherent. Would God crush him for doing the very thing that was in his nature to do?

(Fairfax spends a lot of time having these I-can’t-help-it arguments with himself, but Miss Bates isn’t having any of it; and indeed, amusingly enough, her rebuttal is almost exactly that of a certain Miss Rose Sayer: “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”)

A storm of such violence and cold then builds that Fairfax nearly gets his suicide whether he really wants it or not. However, he is discovered by a passing peasant, and carried to a small community nestled upon the high slopes of the mountain.

The pastoral interlude that follows occupies nearly half of Had You Been In His Place, and contains some of the novel’s strongest passages, as Fairfax falls under the influence of both the mountain scenery, and the straightforward (though by no means simple) people who make up the little farming community. Bates’ real feeling for nature, and even more, for its therapeutic qualities, is very evident. Yet again, she can’t help writing everything into the ground, with Fairfax going through the same struggles, and the same religious counter-arguments, presented again and again. After the first half-dozen times or so, your eyes do start to glaze over…

Worse still, we are soon in the presence of one of 19th century literature’s most repellent constructs, The Saintly Child Who Exists Only To Die Beautifully. Fairfax is persuaded to take on the teaching of the one small local school (after which he is referred to in-text as “the master”), a job he is surprised to find he is quite good at. He is drawn particularly to one child, an orphan boy called Direchlet. His father was a painter, and the boy too shows “genius”; the local minister has plans to send him away, to be properly trained. But Direchlet hesitates:

    “The pastor has a friend in Dresden, an artist of very great celebrity. When I am a few years older I am to go to him.”
    “For this reason you must keep well and strong—even now your hands are feverish.”
    “I know, I know,” said the child; “much as I would like to go to Dresden, sometimes I am afraid.”
    “Afraid of what?”
    “Afraid of temptation,” answered the child.
    “What put such an idea into your head?”
    “My father was a great painter. He could do wonders with his brush; but he loved strong drink, and he yielded to it.”

Surprise!

But of course, none of this ever comes to pass: Direchlet’s real destiny is evident to the reader almost from his first appearance on the scene.

Before that, however, Fairfax is in for a different kind of shock, while examining specimens of Direchlet’s art. One subject he seems to recognise:

    …the pastor entered, and with a charming grace began to talk of the pictures, giving bits of history, and showing a just appreciation of artist work and artist life. “And this,” he continued, looking into the haunting eyes, “is the exact likeness of Terence. He was a beautiful boy. His mother was my youngest sister, a gleeful, happy girl—and now she is a widow in a land remote from her old home.”
    “Terence, did you say?” stammered the master.
    “Terence Redford. Poor lad, we had high hopes of him,” and the pastor paused abruptly.
    Drops of perspiration stood on the master’s forehead…

After this, Fairfax has another terrible struggle with himself. Should he confess? Is this his punishment, to be welcomed and cared for by the people he has wronged? Could they possibly forgive him if they knew the truth? Could God? Luckily, Saintly Direchlet is there to set him right:

“I remember, a long time ago, I disobeyed the pastor. I saw the tears in his eyes, but I could not be sorry. I did not consider that I had behaved so very bad. At night he did not kiss me, and when we kneeled his arm was no longer around me. I could not sleep. Suddenly I awoke to feel the wrong was mine—that I had by my own obstinacy shut the door of his heart. Black, ugly forms hovered about me. I left my bed, and crept to the study door. The fire was smouldering on the hearth, and the pastor sat before it; his head drooped, and I knew that he was sad. I did not wait to knock. I put my arms around his neck, and my lips clung to his. He lifted me to his knees, he nestled my head on his bosom, he forgave me; and never did it seem that he loved me half as well. God deals with us after this manner when we do wrong. And when we cling to him and tell him we are sorry, he loves us all the better.”

Direchlet follows this up by meeting his Manifest Destiny:

With the world fading from his sight, the child grew in wisdom beyond his years; he lived and breathed and thought in a purer atmosphere. Instead of the pupil, he became the teacher. His words carried point by their very simplicity. His was no complex creed—to take God at his word, to lean upon, to love him. To do this required neither age nor experience. Never before had the way appeared so plain, the truth so direct and beautiful…

The faith of the villagers allows them to accept Direchlet’s death quietly, though they grieve. Fairfax’s struggle is harder; different. Between them, Pastor Nielander and the Saintly Direchlet have got the job done, and now Fairfax faces a new challenge: confessing not to God, but to man. He goes off to the rocky ledge where he was found and rescued, to commune with himself:

    How long ago it seemed! How heavy the burden he had carried! Now his heart was lightened. Was it right? There was crime—repented of, true, but that did not change the act. It was there—written down against him. Had God forgiven, blotted it out? But the life he had taken, he could not restore. Once more the image of that widowed mother came up before him. She leaned upon her boy; down the declivity of life she thought to find support in his love. What right had he to peace, when she was desolate?
    With all of this, there was nothing of the old, hard feeling. God knew it all. He must leave it there. God saw the deep dark stain, and still He had spoken words of comfort. The way to the university was not clear, however. He would return to the place where the deed was perpetrated, and offer his own life for the one he had taken…

His decision taken, Fairfax goes to tell the pastor, and finds him in a mood of great cheer:

    “Sit down. I have news that will delight thee. My cup is full, running over.” The master drew his chair still nearer. “Doubtless you remember the picture of which Dirichlet was so fond, the beautiful-faced boy. He is coming, and his mother. The intelligence quite overpowers me.”
    “Terence Redford and his mother!” gasped the master.
    “The same. I remember I told you the mother was my sister. But what is the matter. You are ill—faint…”

Like I said— COP-OUT.

Anyway—

    A groan escaped the master. He started up, his white face looking still ghastlier in the lamplight.
    “You say that Terence was wounded in a quarrel with his friend. Did your sister name the person? Could you forgive, if you knew—?”
    The excitement was too much. Again the poor youth fell back upon the pillows.
    “Do not distress yourself,” said the pastor, pressing the thin hand in his own. “I have known for months that you and Terence were once friends.”
    “Known it, and cared for me still?”
    “Does God desert his creatures, although they sin against him with a high hand? Nay, he calls them tenderly to repent, and put away the wrong.”
    “Had it not been for the love of strong drink. To what did it not lead me!”

(None of which explains why the pastor didn’t tell him that Redford wasn’t dead…or what that “We had great hopes of him” crap was about.)

With the burden of sin, or at least the worst of it, off his shoulders, Fairfax is able to pick up the threads of his former life. Sure of himself now, he makes plans to leave the village and attend the nearest university, to resume and extend his studies. However, before he can do so—

—the Franco-Prussian War breaks out.

Well. I can’t actually say I saw that coming.

Its strong pro-German tone is one of the oddities of Had You Been In His Place, and I don’t know enough to judge whether in this it was picking up a prevailing American attitude, or if this was more personal on the part of Miss Bates.

(Madam Von Sieberg’s insistent bottle-cracking followed on from angry references to “unavenged insults”, and involved toasts to “the Fatherland”, and the reverse to anyone called “Napoleon”.)

Even the remote mountain village is not immune from the demands of King and Country, and recruiters turn up soon enough. As a farming community, the village is not required to give up all of its men – not yet – and those to do are chosen by the drawing of lots. Fairfax’s host, Fritz, is one of those who must go, to the despair of his heavily pregnant wife, Madchen. But she fainted too soon—

    An earnest conversation was going on between the master and the lieutenant. Turning his face to the people, the master said, “The king demands men. Fritz is on the list, true; but, if he finds a substitute, it will be the same. You all know how I have been treated by this family, and now I must be allowed to go down to battle in Fritz’s place.”
    “Himmels Ruh!” exclaimed Leutzen. “Just what we might have expected of thee, and, if thou art to go in Fritz’s place, thou art to be our captain, as Fritz was to be.”
    “Captain Bertol!” chimed in Wilhelm, and the cheers rung out merrily.
    “Captain Bertol Fairfax,” answered the substitute, taking his place at the head of the line…

And so the slaughter begins. Many of the villagers are doomed to fall, and Fritz is conscripted anyway in due course, but Fairfax not only survives, but truly finds himself, earning rapid promotion up the ranks and an Iron Cross. Late in the conflict he is almost fatally wounded, and he is still in hospital when word comes of the conflict’s end.

The suffering of the recovering men is lightened a little by the efforts of a lovely young girl, who reads and sometimes sings to them:

    While he slept an angel floated into the room; the atmosphere was full of melody. On the wings of song he was borne into a region pure and bright; flowers were sweetly blooming; with clear running streams, and fountains sparkling in the sunlight. Birds warbled in every thicket, and remembered forms and faces looked smilingly upon him.
    It was not sadness, and still the tears came. At length the music ceased, the chain of thought was broken.
    “You do not like my singing, you weep,” said a sweet voice. At the same time a tender hand wiped away the silent tears.
    The invalid opened his eyes. A small, graceful girl, half-child, half-woman, sat beside the bed. Her blue violet eyes were full of a tender pity. The rounded outline of her cheek was touched with rose…

Something stirs in Fairfax’s memory, and a flurry of dot-joining follows:

    He was weary, and he leaned against the pillows and looked at the young face, as if he looked upon it for the first time in years. Suddenly he sprang forward and clasped his hands. “I have it!”
    The young girl closed her book, and gazed into the thin, pale face.
    “You had a father in America, and his name was Paul.”
    “Quite true,” answered Lettchen.
    “And you are not Lettchen—you are Lura!”
    “Tell me,” cried Lettchen, while a low, passionate sob escaped her, “how came you to know this?”
    It was some time before the invalid could go on, and several days elapsed before he could speak of their meeting. And then he had no need for Lura to tell him that her parents were no longer living.
    “Uncle Karl found us after mother died. And had father lived, he would have been a reformed man…”

So, yes—the first people Fairfax met in Germany were the relatives of the young girl he encountered just before leaving America; just as his wandering path through the mountains carried him to the uncle of the man he shot…

And we’re not done yet: the “uncle Karl” of Lettchen / Lura (whose shifting name is never adequately explained) turns out to be Fairfax’s ranking officer, General Eidermann, who just happens to have a young American adjutant…

    It was over—the two who had parted in strife and apparent death, stood face to face.
    “We were both to blame,” said Redford, as he held Fairfax in a close embrace. “I should have known your mood.”
    “And I— But you forgive me!” was all that Fairfax could say.
    “From this moment, let us forget all but our boyhood’s love. Let us henceforth be to each other all that we were in the old college days,” returned Redford…

 

 

The two Lizzie Bates-es

So I was browsing obscure 18th and 19th century novels, as you do—

—okay, as I do—

—and I found myself taking an interest in a lady called Lizzie Bates, who seemed to have had a lengthy and interesting career.

Though she sometimes hid behind the modest moniker, “By A Lady”, I was able to determine that over a course of years Ms Bates published both fiction and non-fiction, and a great deal of both: sentimental novels, epistolary novels, historical novels, children’s stories, plays, poetry, “sentimental discourses”, tributes to other writers, collections of “witticisms”, transcriptions of sermons, commentaries upon “the female sex” (tending, seemingly, to both the traditional and the feminist), historical writing (including about the Bible), primers in history and geography for children, temperance fiction—

Wait a minute: temperance fiction? That didn’t seem right…

Yes—curiously enough, while I was able to accept that the rest of that fairly remarkable list had been the work of one fecund lady, the appearance on it of temperance fiction gave me pause, since (as far as I’m aware) that form of writing was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, and it was evident that the lady whose career I was tracing was English.

A closer look revealed that my instincts on that point were correct, and that there were, in fact, two Lizzie Bates-es (something which, in the wake of my self-debate about how many Mrs Meeke-s there were – and the subsidiary discovery of a Miss Meeke – I found rather humorous).

Lizzie-Bates-A, if I may call her that, was indeed English; and while we have encountered plenty of women who wrote to support their families, and while this too is a pretty clear case of it, we haven’t previously come across one who had such a long and varied career so early in the game. My research has her publishing on a regular basis for nearly fifty years, with her first work – on “female oeconomy” – appearing in 1751; while 1800 saw the publication of two novels and a volume of “poetical extracts”.

Lizzie-Bates-B, meanwhile, seems to have begun publishing around 1869; and while she also wrote novels, they were much narrower in their scope, being self-evidently didactic in purpose. At the same time, it seems that Miss B’s main area of activity was short stories for the magazines; although unfortunately, I have been unable to find out much more than that.

My latest trip to the random number generator for Reading Roulette brought up one of the many works by “Lizzie Bates”—and, given how my luck usually runs, I was not particularly surprised if a little disappointed that it was Lizzie-Bates-B. Our selection this time is what seems an entirely characteristic work, a piece of Christian-temperance-didactic fiction from 1873 called Had You Been In His Place.

Madeline; or, Love, Treachery And Revenge

    Herbert called late in the afternoon. When he entered the room, by invitation, Madeline was supported by some pillows, in a half-reclining position, looking through the window at the setting sun, and the soft rays lingered upon her faded cheek, and cast a delicately beautiful, but melancholy, glow over her face.
    “Are you better?” tenderly asked Herbert.
    “I do not know, Mr. Leslie,” answered Madeline.
    “I was just thinking,” she continued, “that I should not mind to die if I could sink to rest as quietly as yonder sun glides away in its beautiful vermillion shroud. I love to look upon the serene face of nature, and imagine that I can see God smiling with goodness, mercy and love; and that I can see bright angels standing upon the craggy points of the snow-white little clouds that float dreamily in the blue sea: that I can see harps in their hands, and diadems upon their brows. Yes, I love nature. There is no dissimulation in the works of our Father. There is no deceit ‘graven upon Jehovah’s heart.'”
    Herbert’s head dropped upon his bosom. These words found their way to his heart…

 

 

 

 

 

 
I’ll say this for James Summerfield Slaughter: he wastes no time whatsoever letting us know exactly what’s in store for us during a reading of his 1859 novel, Madeline; or, Love, Treachery And Revenge. Allow me to quote in full his preface:

    We will not detain you, reader, with a long Preface. The author indulges the hope, that our first meeting in the relations of reader and writer may not be disagreeable. He will not disguise that it is with feelings of parental solicitude for a kindly greeting from generous hearts, that his little ideal “MADELINE” is sent abroad to distant home circles.
    The present work is no candidate for fame. If the views and sentiments it presents, shall gladden the hearts of a single wayward fellow-being, or whispers consolation to a mourner of earth, or give encouragement to one struggling for the cause of virtue, then the author will have sufficient recompense in knowing that he has contributed something to the noble and good influences that redeem the world from the thraldom of sin, and invest life with beauty, unequaled by those glittering stars in the purple throne of night, and a fragrance more grateful than the bright flowers of earth.

Slaughter is dead on the mark when he calls his novel “no candidate for fame”. Though at this time Americans had a great appetite for sensation novels, they had also had sufficient exposure to enough well-written ones to be able to discriminate; and despite the preening that lurks behind the mock humility of this preface, and the lofty claims made for the novel in its advertisements, I am unable to believe that the first readers of Madeline greeted it with anything other than guffaws, despite its impeccable Southern credentials.

I give the eponymous Madeline star-billing in the quote up above, but the sad truth is that for most of the narrative she is an almost entirely passive figure, sitting alone in her antebellum mansion and twiddling her thumbs while the plot – or “plot” – plays out elsewhere in the country. It is only towards the end, when the machinations of the wicked Herbert reach their climax, that she is given much to do in the story that bears her name.

The book opens with Madeline Lindsey being deserted by her brother, Albinus, who (without a hint of authorial criticism) has decided that exploring in the north-west is a lot more interesting than staying at home to care for his orphaned young sister and run their plantation, even if he gets killed in the process, which he seems fully to expect; and not content with this, he takes with him both his friend Douglas Hardy, who is secretly in love with Madeline but considers himself ineligible, and the plantation’s mainstay, a devoted old black servant called – I kid you not – “Uncle Tom”.

I’m sure you can imagine the tenor of Uncle Tom’s discourse and his general conduct, but just to make sure, here’s a sample:

    It was in one of these musings in his office, late one evening, as he was sitting by his desk arranging his affairs to leave for the North-West, that Uncle Tom entered with a message.
    “Is that you, Uncle Tom?” spoke Douglas kindly, “and what can I do for you? I suppose I must not forget to leave you some keep-sake to repay you, in part, for your kindness to me, and to take a pledge from you, that you will never forget to favour your young mistress.”
    Here Uncle Tom began to draw out his large cotton ‘kerchief, for the tears were already gushing in his eyes.
    “God bless you, massa Douglas! poor old Tom goin’ too. Just to think! he stay home and let massa Binus go way off, and be killed by the Injuns, and no body to nuss him and take care of him! Old Tom ‘tends to go with the darling. He’s de berry pictur ob old Massa.”

So, basically, the hell with Madeline: the three go off without arranging any sort of company or assistance for her. She manages to locate and hire a middle-aged couple, the Carsons, he to act as overseer, she as companion-housekeeper.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its heroine’s isolated situation, we have progressed no further than page 8 before we get the first of the novel’s interpolated narratives, as Madeline asks Aunt Phebe, as she is known, for her life story. We learn that she was a native of Havana, and that while she was rescued from a fire at a theatre, her father was killed, leaving her an orphan—and an heiress. Her rescuer was a Mr Carson, with whom she promptly fell in love. An amusing recapitulation of Madeline’s own situation then occurs, with Phebe left alone at her father’s plantation and hiring a couple to work for her and keep her company. Also like Madeline (as it will later turn out), Phebe became subject to romantic persecution, with a fiery young Spaniard, Don Pedro Montie, whom she had already rejected, renewing his attentions. She rejects him again, with immediate consequences: she finds in her carriage a bullet dyed red, and attached to it a note reading, Beware the Spaniard’s revenge! She then learns that Mr Carson has been arrested:

I…told him that I desired him to find out the facts—the charge, and especially by whom preferred—and to report to me, enjoining him to keep the whole affair profoundly secret. He departed on his mission, and returned in a few hours. The charge, he stated to be conspiracy against the Government, preferred by Pedro Montie!

Duh, we might think. Turns out ol’ Pedro’s messing with the wrong woman, though: learning that Carson has been condemned to the chain-gang, Phebe sends her servant out again to find where he is held at night. Meanwhile, she makes her own preparations:

I drew the Red Bullet from my pocket, and retired to my father’s old desk and got a pistol that I knew to be there. When a girl, my father learned me to shoot with great accuracy. The pistol was loaded. I drew from the draw an ace of hearts—stepped back twenty paces—fired, and drove out the heart! The shot restored my confidence that I had not lost the skill with which I used to shoot. I returned to my room—charged the pistol—put in the Red Bullet…

Phebe and her servant devise a scheme to break Carson out, but are surprised in the middle of the enterprise:

    “Ha, ha! Beware of a Spaniard’s revenge!”
    I recognised Pedro Montie by the first gleam of the lantern. In a moment, I replied—
    “Yes! and BEWARE OF THE RED BULLET!”
    My pistol was discharged. I saw the figure reel in the dim, gloomy light and heard a groan. Mr Carson was by my side. We leaped into the carriage and dashed away…

Now both fugitives, Phebe and Carson are forced to take refuge in a haunted castle…leading to an interpolated nattative within an interpolated narrative, and the story of a lovely young noblewoman being forced into a hateful marriage, and the brave but foolhardy page whom she really loved. On her marriage-day the bride chose rather to kill herself; lamentations over her body were startlingly interrupted:

    The sharp report of a pistol, followed by a stream of blood, sent a thrill of terror through the crowd of spectators. The father fell down upon the floor and cried wildly:
    “Retribution! Retribution!”
    Don Leon staggered back, fell and expired.
    “Ha, ha! They thought to rob me of my lady love. I see her now!” His eyes was fixed wildly upon the ceiling. “I am coming, Adelaide!” and, as he spoke, he stabbed himself…

By the way, if you don’t come away from a reading of this blog post the same way I came away from a reading of this novel, namely, crying, “Ha, ha!” upon the flimsiest of pretexts, I shall be very disappointed in you.

Of course (as Madeline actually points out), this has nothing to do with anything, so instead Phebe recounts her own terrifying night in the haunted castle, where she encountered a madwoman believing herself to be the Prophetess of Fire and a chained up “man-monster”. As you do. The madwoman turned out be be an old friend of Phebe’s who was seduced and abandoned, and then lost her mind. (But don’t hold your breath waiting for an explanation of the man-monster.)

Phebe and Carson – “Ben” to us now – find an American minister to marry them, and then flee Cuba, leaving all their worldly goods behind and taking with them Phebe’s own faithful servant, “Old Juan”. (Sigh.) Then three of them hop into a boat and set out to sail from Cuba to Florida—but of course get shipwrecked on a desert island on the way. They are rescued, make it eventually to New Orleans, and find work. Old Juan dies without lacerating our sensibilities any more; and then there is only one more incident to recount before Phebe wraps up her life-story:

“The other event was the loss of our child. We were blessed with a child, who gave us more pleasure than all the world besides.
Percy—that was his name—attained the age of twelve, was merry as a song-bird, and as sportive as the lambkin. One morning he went to the beach, drawn I suppose, by idle curiosity or pleasure; but never returned. We have no doubt that he was drowned…”

That, or he ran away upon discovering that his mother was in the habit of describing him to random strangers as “sportive as the lambkin”.

So, we’re about 30% of our way through Madeline now without its heroine doing much more than listening to stories, and since that’s not about to change any time soon, we (like her own brother) now abandon Madeline for the middle of nowhere, and are introduced to a young woman in every way more interesting than she is—even if she does have what I’m inclined to call “an obvious character flaw”:

White Fawn was the daughter of an Indian chief. She was just blooming into woman-hood—an intelligent, beautiful girl. You would hardly believe that she was an Indian. True, her cheeks were slightly bronzed—and very slightly—but her forehead and chin was perfectly fair; her face possessed a peculiar attraction; the contour was bold and well-marked; her eyes first drew your attention; her nose, you would admit, was beautiful; but when you beheld her hair float back from a broad, snowy forehead, you at once felt the magic of the beauty of an Indian girl…

…who within a single page of her introduction is spurning her would-be native husband for the attractions of a wandering white man and having oblique conversations with Chief Radiola about her paternity. Sigh.

Discovering that the spurned Hawk is plotting bloody revenge, White Fawn slips away through the snowy woods to where Albinus Lindsey, Douglas Hardy, Uncle Tom and a third white man to whom we are not immediately introduced are camped. The latter is the object of White Fawn’s passion. Upon receiving White Fawn’s warning, the men break camp and try to slip away, but are ambushed by Hawk and his followers, and White Fawn and her lover carried away. The others follow and manage an ambush of their own. They carry White Fawn back to her father, who immediately goes on the war-path against Hawk. The others agree to fight with him, but only after White Fawn’s still-nameless lover has, with her father’s consent, placed her with a family living at safe distance—and who, Could not readily believe, that she was an Indian, sigh.

The conflict begins, and at the last moment Radiola’s men are reinforced:

He did not make his appearance until the silent moment that precedes the dreadful battle-shock. His equipage was very handsome, even dazzling. He wore a dark velvet frock-coat, beautifully and ingeniously inwrought with beads—bright military buttons and a red scarf—yellow buff pants and light, well formed boots that came to the knee; a beautiful belt encircled the waist, and a light, straightsword hung glittering by his side. The form was slender and extremely graceful. A mask concealed the face. He rode a wild, spirited black horse that stamped the earth and danced, while the rein fell carelessly upon the flowing mane…

In the middle of the ongoing war, the unnamed man is decoyed away and imprisoned. At this point the narrative lurches once again, and we are finally informed of his identity—and, oh surprise!—

    He is Percy Carson—the lost child. Wandering down to the beach on a beautiful spring morning, to view the many objects of attraction to be seen along the “sounding shore,” he met with a man who seemed to be selecting shells.
    “What is your name ?” asked the stranger.
    “Percy Carson, sir,” replied the lad, raising his bright eyes to the questioner’s face.
    The man started back as if an apparition was before him, and then recovering his self-possesion from the shock, assumed an air of perfect indifference. Like Lucifer, in the shape of a toad, to whisper in the ear of Eve while she reposed beneath the fragrant bower in the Garden—while the silver stars glittered above Paradise and trembled upon the four rivers, and the angel watchers winged through the mystic light—this man had assumed a shape, a countenance, not his own, and to beguile, like a lurking demon, an innocent child…

It is soon revealed that the Red Bullet didn’t finish its work:

This man is Don Montie. The infernal spirit of revenge has possessed him, as the unclean spirit possessed the man “who had his dwelling among the tombs” in the days of Christ. It has been his accursed incentive ever since his overtures to Phebe Laniz. He has now followed her to America to get another opportunity of glutting his terrible passion—to rob a mother’s heart of its dearest object. All of life’s aims and purposes, were swallowed up in the one thought—Revenge!

Despite what we might fear from all this, Don Pedro’s plan is merely to, Bind the noble-spirited boy with dark chains of dissipation, and then send him back to his doating mother—a captive of the Evil One: a process slow enough to allow for his rescue by another stranger, this one well-intentioned, who turns out to be Percy’s uncle-by-marriage.

We then hear the history of Mr Shelley and Aurelia Laniz, the latter of whom bore the brunt of Don Pedro’s anger after Ben and Phebe escaped. Using his influence, Don Pedro arrived at the Laniz estate to confiscate the family’s property, only to be thoroughly cowed by a lecture from the spirited Aurelia:

“It is false that my brother fled for the commission of a crime. It is meanly false that I have had any complicity in a conspiracy against the government of this Island. We were both, however, born too free, upon the soil of America, not to despise, upon the one hand, the grinding tyranny of the government, and, upon the other hand, the cowardly submission and servility of a large portion of the population; and had I power commensurate with my desire, I would drag down the regal fabric upon the heads of both tyrant and willing submission. There breathes not an American, animated by the genius of the free institutions of his native land, who does not abhor the vile vassalage imposed by the bloody minded mother government, and old Moro Castle with her bristling cannons, may one day yield as readily to American arms as the famed Castle of San Juan de Ulla did.”

Mr Shelley, a spectator of this scene, is swept off his feet by this patriotic eloquence—though he expresses his passion in practical terms, determining by law what part of the estate has been secured to Aurelia, and holding that when the rest is confiscated. The two are married, and for a time blissfully happy, until one day Aurelia dies suddenly—poisoned. The grieving Mr Shelley learns that he has had a narrow escape:

Mr Shelley would have met the same fate, but for the fact that he was perusing the daily journals, as was his custom, while his cup of tea was cooling. For years he had read the daily papers while sitting at the table by a smoking breakfast. To this habit he owed his life, in this instance.

Mr Shelley and Percy throw in their lots together and set off to make a new life for themselves.

(“What!?” I said out loud at this point. “Didn’t they even try to find his parents!?”—a question not answered for some considerable time, and as an obvious afterthought: “Oh, yeah! We, uh, we looked for them but they weren’t there. Sure, that’s what happened…”)

Anyway, somewhat surprisingly, Percy becomes an actor—and, At the age of twenty, he became what is called in theatrical parlance, “a star.”

But not everyone is a fan, and one night Percy has his performance interrupted by hissing, issuing from none other than Don Pedro—who seems to have moderated somewhat his ideas on “revenge”.

Percy, like his Aunt Aurelia, is undaunted:

“I can brook insults from so great a villain as Don Montie. It is a serpentine hiss, and I am willing that he shall roll in the slime and eat the dust of his own degradation.”

Percy goes on to denounce Don Pedro’s villainy and cowardice, until, with all eyes in the theatre upon him, Don Pedro cannot do other than respond with a challenge. To his dismay, Percy leaps at this:

    “I trust this large and respectable audience will remain perfectly quiet. I need not affirm that I have not been the cause of this uninteresting quarrel, but I wish you to witness its end. I accept your challenge,” he said, as he fixed his eyes fiercely upon Don Montie, “which was thrown out with the vain expectation that the time would be set in the future; but I prefer this moment—upon this stage, the place—repeaters, the weapons—across a pocket-handkerchief, the distance—we will need no seconds.”
    “Rash youth!” exclaimed one.
    “He’s a brave one!” answered the second.
    “He’ll do to let alone,” observed the third.
    In a moment suggestions ceased, and every one awaited, with breathless interest, to see the result.
    Don Montie sank down upon his seat, turning pale, and great drops of perspiration gathering upon his forehead. He essayed not to utter a word.
    “Coward! Coward!” ran through the audience.
    Percy bowed gracefully to the crowd, and retired under a shower of boquets…

The narrative then wrenches again, and we catch up with Don Pedro some months later. Another interpolated narrative, this one the life-story of Don Pedro and how he came to be eaten up by—Revenge!—a story peppered with vague references to various crimes committed in his past, some of which sound familiar to us. However, the centrepiece of the tale is Don Pedro’s repeated, La Belle Dame Sans Merci encounters with a strange woman (who we sort-of recognise as the Prophetess of Fire), who again and again ambushed him while he was riding, leaping up behind his saddle and forcing him to ride wildly by holding a knife to his throat.

And in the very midst of Don Pedro’s reflections, the woman appears to him again—this time forcing him into the burial vault of an old and noble Spanish family:

    The view was at once awful—they were in a charnal-house—a Golgotha. Human bones lay profusely about, while in the centre there was a heap of bones some two or three feet high.
    “Now, sir,” spoke the woman, as they came to the vault, “I have brought you hither to show you the place where your bones will soon be piled. No grave yard shall be your resting place, but here your body shall remain until the day of final accounts. Do you know me?”
    Don Montie shook his head solemnly in reply to the interrogation.
    “Ah! you feign forgetfulness of one whom you injured—victimised—robbed of her chastity,” continued the woman, and there was a fearful emphasis in her expression… “You have lived only to persecute—to blast the happiness of others—to lurk about and accomplish mischief—to war upon women and children! You are a murderer—a forger—and—and—”
    The woman paused for a moment, and laughed frantically, and then continued—
    “A seducer! You turned me loose upon the world, covered with shame and scorn and misery; blasted—robbed of hope—debarred from virtuous society—with no claim for sympathy, while you mingled in the festive throng, and was admitted in society—and all the while you laughed at the credulity of woman. You shall now realise that a woman, weak though she may be, is yet strong enough and capable of avenging herself…”

And so Don Pedro meets an appropriately gruesome end.

The narrative (some 50% passed) then jumps back to—gasp!—the story of Madeline Lindsey. Remember her? Her author finally did:

This scene is going on at Woodland. Madeline and Douglas Hardy have been engaged over twelve months. He has been in the North-west, with his friends, nearly two years.

Thanks for sharing; this is the first we’ve heard about it.

But all is not well between Madeline and the man who prefers wandering around pointlessly in the snow to spending time with her. His letters complain (ironically enough) of her coldness, and demand that they break their engagement. Madeline is angry and indignant, as well as miserable and confused: she endures a state of suffering relieved only by the friendship of a young man called Herbert Leslie, who likes to read poetry with her.

That old ploy.

It is soon revealed to us that between desire for Madeline and desire for her property and fortune, Herbert has launched upon an elaborate scheme to break up her relationship (such as it is) with Douglas, intercepting their letters and getting a useful forger-friend to substitute some of his own composition. The forger, Tom Martin, is (fittingly enough) getting cold feet, but Herbert scoffs at his scruples:

“I will undeceive her when I have succeeded, and the joke has gone far enough for all practical purposes. By that time I will have established my claims as a good husband, and we will laugh it all over as a clever bit of pleasantry. It will no doubt divert her, that you could so successfully counterfeit Douglas Hardy’s handwriting.”

Madeline is deceived by Herbert’s insinuating demeanour; Aunt Phebe is glad of anything that can cheer her up these days; but Ben Carson has suspicions that receive support from an anonymous letter denouncing Herbert as “a monster” and warning of a plot against Madeline. Until now Ben has not been informed of the situation with Douglas, but when an anguished Madeline reveals it he puts two and two together and decides that Herbert has somehow had a hand in things. Madeline rejects this idea, but the suggestion that she has a false friend as well as a false lover is too much for her, and her health begins to fail. It is not long before Herbert has reason to fear he has seriously overreached himself…

In a moment of overwhelming guilt, Herbert confesses. The revelation is a blow that Madeline cannot withstand in her already enfeebled condition. Soon the household is gathered about what they expect to be her death-bed…

…and the narrative jumps back to the North-West, where in the middle of bemoaning Madeline’s conduct towards him, Douglas receives a letter alerting him to the truth, and sets out at once for Woodland…

…and the narrative abandons both of them to follow the adventures of Albinus Lindsey, who we shall give the benefit of the doubt for the moment and assume doesn’t know about his sister’s situation, since the text never bothers to verify that point. He encounters an old friend of the family and accepts an invitation to his home, Clifton Hill.

Mr Wolsey, a year earlier, married a widow with four children; he has since learned not only to resent his step-children, but to be actively cruel to them: among other things, using their money, of which he is trustee, for his own children’s advantage:

Mr Wolsey had cherished a secret prejudice against the Leighton orphans, and all because they elicited more attention from the public than his own children. How revolting, that a man should have prejudice against an innocent, fatherless child! How terrible must be the curse that awaits such a being. Alone in the world, untaught in the great business of life, with no great throbbing heart of sympathy to lean upon when fever racks the brain and gives hot eye-balls! Vile man! to feel no kindly impulse for the orphan in your charge!

(Unexpectedly, and one of the few genuinely interesting things in this silly novel, the narrative will later contend that Mrs Wolsey’s first duty was to her children, and that she should have left her husband when she saw his attitude towards them.)

Almost immediately, Wolsey begins making plans for Albinus and his daughter, Louise. Albinus, however, has rediscovered a childhood friend in the youngest of the Leightons (although given what must be the age gap between them, the subsequent description of how they used to “romp together in the woods” has an uncomfortable edge; however—):

Nannie was a simple child of nature. Her heart knew no guile. She never knew the artfulness of society—the cunning and address of the world, but her heart and hands were as pure as the riven snow of the mountains. Her face was full and fair, and tinged with the healthful life-current that bounded through vein and artery; her wavy, tressy hair was as dark as a raven’s; her lips soft and delicate, and her form was perfect and graceful. She deserved to be called “Pretty Nannie.” She was known far away for her beauty, gentleness and intelligence. Her life was as quiet and even as the little brook that flows along its smooth channel, and murmurs its pleasing, rippling song, and kisses the flowers that bow their delicate faces to the stream for a grateful drop. But in the hidden depths of her heart were glorious sentiments—worthy, noble, pure, holy sentiments!

Sorry—I’m with Mr Wolsey on this one.

Albinus and Nannie go walking together and, when Albinus expresses admiration of a “grand peak” in the district, Nannie is moved to offer an interpolated narrative—that of “The Man Of The Rock”, a wanderer who, in his youth, fell in love with the same girl as his brother, and killed him in a jealous rage. After many years of bitter repentance, the man fell in love with a pretty Italian flower-seller (as you do), and finally overcame both her mother’s doubts and his own feeling that he deserved no happiness in life, and married her. The two had a daughter, but Gabriella died. After placing his child—somewhere—the man returned to the mountains where he and his wife had been happy, and jumped off a cliff…

The narrative then lurches back to Woodland—where Douglas Hardy arrives in time only to hold Madeline’s dead body in his arms…and promptly loses his mind. He is locked up for his own safety while her burial is conducted, but no sooner has he been freed than he undertakes a little body-snatching…

Just as well, too:

    There was the verification—a figure before them, in burial habiliments sitting up and possessed of life.
    “This is a strange world!” began the ghostly figure. “How strange!”
    “It’s Madeline Lindsey!” exclaimed several…
    The dead’s alive! She had been lowered into the silent grave as dead, was resurrected to life—for she moves and breathes and speaks…

It turns out that Herbert Leslie drugged Madeline with something that brought on the appearance of death, that Tom Martin warned everyone frantically that she wasn’t dead, only drugged, and that the doctors and undertakers went ahead anyway, in spite of everyone agreeing that “she did not look dead”, and a corpse that “retained something of a perspiration, and the colour of life”—yike!

Douglas (whose resurrection-work goes politely unremarked) hunts down Herbert and is about to murder him when a mysterious old man intervenes, arguing that he should allow Herbert to be “blasted by God’s vengeance” instead.

As for our undead heroine—

One month from the occurrences just narrated, she was completely restored to her wonted vivacity of feeling and vigorous, blooming health; so entirely that Douglas Hardy again took his leave of Woodland to return to the North-West…

To be fair, this time there’s some excuse for him: he doesn’t know what has happened to either Albinus or Percy. Surprisingly, the narrative stays with Madeline, who gets lost while out riding. With a violent storm coming, she finds herself in a steep, rocky ravine, and makes her way into a winding, secret cave—which turns out to be a bandit’s hideout. While she (and her horse) are hiding in a narrow tunnel, she overhears two of the bandits discussing their latest recruit—none other than Herbert Leslie. She learns to her horror of another plot against herself, when the bandits express doubts about “warring on women”, and hears to her confusion a reference to her father:

“I think—I know that my father died at sea, when I was a child. So I have always heard, and had it not been true, he would certainly have appeared in the interim of fifteen years…”

Oh, certainly! Madeline tries to convince herself that some other girl, lucky enough to have a father, is the target of the plot. She also starts looking for an escape route from the cave, carefully eluding the bandits as she (and her horse) try to find another way out. She glimpses a distant ray of light—hears strange music—and eventually finds herself confronted by a woman who, having been seduced and abandoned by one of the bandits, chose to stay in the cave rather than face the world again. The miserable woman tells Madeline that there are other ways out, but she doesn’t know where they are; so Madeline (and her horse) press on, only to be confronted by—a bear! Madeline has a pistol with her, and arms herself, but before she can take action—her horse springs into action!

You wondered why her horse was being dragged through all this, didn’t you??

Madeline and Snow Ball between them manage to overcome the bear, but their troubles are hardly over:

    “Ha! we have met!” exclaimed a voice near.
    Madeline started up with affright and turned to see who it was that spoke. It was Herbert Leslie!

Snow Ball again intervenes, and this time, sadly, gets a bullet in the chest for her pains. But before Herbert can carry out his nefarious intentions towards Madeline, he gets a bullet in his chest:

    Madeline raised her head to discover from whence her deliverance came. Upon the bank above, just on the verge of the channel stood an old man with a rifle in his hand, apparently as collected as if nothing had occurred.
    “I will draw you up in a basket,” spoke the man above.

Herbert dies, but not before confessing that (i) he already has a wife, and (ii) he was the one who seduced the woman in the cave. The old man, meanwhile, as he helps Madeline out, admits that he is the one who intervened to save Herbert from Douglas, but won’t say any more.

We then lurch back to Douglas, who is talking to a no-longer-captive Percy. The two men exchange stories, the latter explaining that he owes both his own preservation and the conclusion of the conflict to the mysterious masked warrior—and that, oh gosh, no-one’s seen or heard anything of White Fawn since Percy left her with his friends. Funny, that.

Percy does find her again, though, with Radiola, who gives his consent to their marriage; which is to happen at Woodland due to the insistence of Albinus—last seen on a mountain with Pretty Nannie. Douglas now thinks to mention that there are two people called “Carson” at Woodland, though Percy doesn’t think they can be anything to do with him, despite the fact that the woman exactly matches the description of his mother and her name is “Phebe”.

We then catch up with Albinus—or rather Nannie, on whose behalf a couple of cousins have intervened, taking her away from Wolsey on a visit, and then facilitating her elopement. She, White Fawn and the three young men set out together:

Merrily the party conversed—wit and humour passed around. As they were thus rattling away, they were suddenly aroused by a band of highwaymen.

It happens, right? Percy is slightly injured in the ensuing fight, and White Fawn is abducted. Albinus and Nannie continue the journey to Woodland, while Percy and Douglas set out in pursuit; falling in with a small band of trappers, who join with them in their rescue attempt.

White Fawn is carried to the isolated villa of a Spaniard called Gonzoles, for no apparent reason (except that our author is clearly struggling to meet his word count; this was written for serialisation, remember?). We roll our eyes through a lot of highwayman blather, Percy demands White Fawn of Gonzoles, and he hands her over.

Percy, White Fawn and Douglas catch up with Albinus and Nannie at St Louis, and they all set out again together. They make another friend upon the way, one LeRoy Pennance, an elderly man travelling south, and invite him to join them at Woodland. There, Percy and the Carsons rediscover each other; while two more elderly men turn up from nowhere and are invited to stay for no reason.

We are now two pages from the end of Madeline, and from here I think I’ll let the text speak for itself:

*******************

    “LeRoy Pennance!?” exclaimed one of the strangers.
    “Ay! why?” was the answer.
    “And who is this ?” inquired the first speaker, evincing great agitation.
    “I cannot tell,” answered Mr Pennance—“who are you?”
    “Hampton Lindsey,” he answered.
    “What! Hampton Lindsey?” exclaimed the other.
    “Hampton Lindsey!” exclaimed the third stranger.

*******************

    “My Father !” exclaimed Madeline, and she rushed into the arms of Lindsey. He sustained her for some minutes, and then, looking earnestly into her face, said:
    “No, Madeline! I am not your father; but he is here;” and the speaker turned and pointed to Mr. Pennance. “Here is your father. Your name is not Lindsey, as you have supposed, but Pennance!”

*******************

    “Who was my mother?” enquired Madeline.

*******************

    “Hampton, do you not know me?”
    “Jerrald! thank God, the reunion is perfect.”
    “Forgive me, Hampton !”
    “In the name of God, I do.”
    The brothers embraced.
    “De Lord knows! here’s massa Jerrald—after jumping off ob de rock at Clifton—”
    “Clifton Height!”” exclaimed Nannie.
    “Clifton Height!” joined White Fawn and Albinus Lindsey.
    “How’s this?” asked Douglas Hardy.
    “Wonders will never cease,” remarked Percy Carson.
    “What of my child?” asked Jerrald Lindsey of Uncle Tom.    
    “Here she is !” replied the old servant gathering White Fawn in his arms. “Dis is de child, Gabriella,” and he bore her to her real father, Jerrald Lindsey.

*******************

    “And what of—of—what of—Mary?” asked Jerrald of his brother.
    “Ah! that is a painful question,” answered Hampton, “but this is the proper time to answer it,” and as he spoke he regarded LeRoy Pennance earnestly. “She became the wife of my friend, Pennance, and he was an affectionate, kind, indulgent husband, and their union was blessed with the birth of Madeline—but distrusting and jealous by nature, she doubted her trust-worthy husband. She left him, fled to disgrace and infamy. Madeline was left to my charge. By her father’s request she was to pass as my daughter until she became old enough to know and consider properly the facts connected with her unfortunate mother. But let us pass them now, since Mary has long since paid the great debt of nature which, sooner or later, all of us must discharge.”

*******************

    The evening following, witnessed the marriage of the three happy couples.
    Our story is finished.

*******************

And so bewildering is this rush of revelations, enough to sustain any self-respecting soap opera through about five seasons, that we might well think so; but a moment’s reflection informs us that:

(1) We don’t know who the chained-up man-monster was;
(2) We don’t know what happened to Mr Shelley;
(3) We don’t know how Percy came to be wandering around in the north-west;
(4) We have no fricking idea how Gabriella Lindsey became White Fawn, daughter of Chief Radiola;
(5) We never get confirmation that White Fawn and the Masked Warrior are one and the same;
(6) We never find out which of the three elderly men was the person who intervened to stop Douglas killing Herbert, subsequently killed Herbert himself, and rescued Madeline; or if it was someone else altogether.

And yet we get to sit through three pages of highwayman blather…

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Spoilers. Literally.

I’ve noticed a dismaying trend emerging in my random reading for this blog—namely, the worse and/or more gigglesome a novel is, the sadder the story behind it. Whether this is the universe punishing me for laughing at things that were intended to be taken seriously or just an odd coincidence I couldn’t say, but it sure is starting to spoil my fun.

Most obvious case in point? The hilarious Munster Abbey, whose mind-boggling blending of sentiment and cold hard cash and myriad absurdities were enough to fill out three lengthy blog posts—and which turned out to be a posthumous work, the only novel of Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, who died at the age of twenty-six, leaving his young widow to oversee the publication of his manuscript

And even the last novel I examined here, Ermina Montrose, had a story of fraud, suicide and poverty lurking behind its literary failings.

This time the work in question is an American novel from 1859: Madeline; or, Love, Treachery And Revenge by James Summerfield Slaughter. The novel itself is both absurdly plotted and poorly written, lurching from improbability to improbability. I snickered my way through it, sat down to try and find out something about its author—and immediately learned that he had committed suicide at a fairly early age.

Thanks, Universe.

There isn’t a lot on the record about the life of James Summerfield Slaughter, who tends to be alluded to in the context of other people rather than spoken about in his own right. He worked chiefly as an editor for various newspapers and periodicals, and wrote for the latter himself, mostly short stories. We gather he underwent something of a revolution in his political convictions: he is first mentioned as a “Know-Nothing”, a party which was anti-slavery inasmuch as its adherents believed that slavery undercut the rights of white workers; but when he next surfaced, Slaughter was hand-in-glove with the Alabama Fire-Eaters, a radical pro-slavery faction that fought to reopen the international slave trade, and which hid secessionist plans behind a facade of “states’ rights”—or at least, they did until James Summerfield Slaughter entered the picture.

At some point Slaughter had become friends with William Lowndes Yancey, a former Alabama Congressman. Both men were natives of Georgia, both had relocated to Alabama; Yancey, one of the Fire-Eaters, apparently saw Slaughter as a useful tool in the recruitment of new members to his “League of United Southerners”. However, he reckoned without his young friend’s capacity for indiscretion. In June 1858, Yancey wrote to Slaughter, stating his political views with alarming frankness; Slaughter, in a fit of enthusiasm, allowed the letter to be published:

No National Party can save us; no Sectional Party can do it. But if we could do as our fathers did, organise “Committees of Safety” all over the cotton states (and it is only in them that we can hope of any effective movement) we shall fire the Southern heart—instruct the Southern mind—give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organised, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into a revolution.

This passage was leapt upon by all factions in the growing political maelstrom, lauded in some quarters, held up as a dire warning in others. Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, dubbed the document “The Scarlet Letter”. As such it has gone down in history, with James Summerfield Slaughter achieving a tiny slice of immortality not for his literary accomplishments, but as the recipient of Yancey’s letter.

Both men suffered in the subsequent fall-out, Yancey – though not regretting the spotlight – asserting that he had dashed the letter off in a hurry and implied more than he meant, Slaughter excusing his indiscretion and denying in a series of letters to the newspapers that he held secessionist views.

Having made Alabama too hot to hold him, Slaughter soon returned to Georgia. The next concrete information I have been able to discover about him comes apropos of his brief connection with Mary Edwards Bryan, the journalist and author, who was appointed editor-in-chief of the magazine, the Georgia Literary and Temperance Crusader, in 1858, before she was twenty years old. Bryan arrived in Atlanta at around the time that Slaughter began working for a local newspaper, the National American—and that he married a local beauty bearing the fabulous name of Taccoah Badger.

It was in the Georgia Literary and Temperance Crusader that Slaughter’s only novel was serialised, early in 1859, before being published in book form shortly afterwards. While we can find assertions (or at least, an assertion) of its success and popularity, it is clear that these were not attributable to any literary merit. As this advertisement from the magazine, the Virginia Index, makes amusingly clear, the crux of the matter was that Slaughter’s Madeline was the first novel to be written and published in Atlanta:

(We note that despite the bland subtitle used in this ad, in both serial and novel form Madeline carried the far more enticing one, Love, Treachery And Revenge.)

After this, however, Slaughter drops out of the public record—until the Atlanta Confederacy of 9th August 1860 carried a report of his death. The news was picked up and reprinted around the country, invariably including the original item’s reference to “The Scarlet Letter”, and sometimes with the suggestion that the scandal was responsible for the “fit of melancholy” to which his death was attributed. It was only the New York Times that was unkindly moved to add the rider, As far as he is remembered…although we cannot say that history has not proven them correct:

(Original notice, reprinted in the Newbern Daily Progress of North Carolina, 18th August 1860)

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Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale

    One fine evening, when the children were retired to rest, Ermina stole gently down stairs, and crossing through the hall to her own apartment, opened the glass door which led into the shrubbery, which she walked, and passed lightly over the lawn to a favourite walk, which was a long avenue of trees by the side of a canal, at the end of which was an elegant alcove, where she frequently delighted to seat herself, as she now did. A pleasing languor stole over her senses…
    The dews of eve that bathed the various fragrant plants and odoriferous shrubs that surrounded the spot where she was, diffused a sweet refreshing perfume, which, added to the general stillness that reigned amidst the shades of night, lulled her mind into calm repose. The images of those she loved, and had so cruelly lost, presented themselves to her imagination in the most pleasing forms, and she pictured to herself that they beheld her conduct and sufferings with approbation. “Alas!” she mentally exclaimed, “though unrelenting fate persecute and tear from me all that my soul holds dear, yet have I the soothing consolation of preserving a heart unsullied with guilt, though not free from error, and this bosom can boast of moments of happiness which the conscience of those who injure me will not suffer them to enjoy, and of which they cannot deprive me, poor and dependent as I am.”

 

 

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When your bosom starts boasting, it might be time to worry.

Emily Clark’s Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale is a fairly typical second- (or third-) tier novel of the turn of the 19th century, featuring a persecuted heroine and much high-flown sentiment, but with lingering flickers of the Gothic impulse (which, indeed, would not be fully extinguished for another two decades or so). Though the persecution persists, most of the Gothic touches are confined to the first of the novel’s three volumes; after which the narrative settles down and goes through essentially the same set of cyclic motions until the three volumes have been filled—viz. our orphan heroine finds a refuge where she can work and support herself, someone traduces her character, she flees secretly for some reason or another, she struggles with poverty until she finds a refuge where she can work and support herself…

But the repetition of the action is not the major shortcoming of Ermina Montrose, which is rather that Ermina suffers more at the hands of the people who are supposed to love her than she does through the machinations of her enemies. Indeed, this is one of a worrying number of novels I’ve read recently that turn on a man’s willingness (even eagerness) to believe the worst of the woman he loves. This novel features one of the most unlikeable “heroes” of a genre that rarely seems to recognise dickish behaviour when it sees it, and Ermina’s repeated forgiveness of her lover’s distrust, tantrum-throwing and selfishness grows ever more exasperating.

While it will turn out to play the most minor of roles in the story, aside from its symbolic value —“cottage” is a signifier for a sentimental novel in the same way that “abbey” is for a Gothic novel—Ermina Montrose does open at the titular cottage; while the language – and the occasionally infelicitous grammar – used in these opening paragraphs let us know clearly what we’re in for over the next 700 pages or so:

    Embosomed in the deep romantic valley of Riversdale, stood the habitation of Colonel Montrose. Simple was its structure, being little superior to the cottages of the neighbouring rustics. Yet, with all its simplicity, dear was this abode to his feeling heart; for it had sheltered his beloved Ermina from the storms of life, and witnessed her flight to those regions of happiness, which the superior virtues of her mind rendered her worthy of attaining. The soft harmony of her voice, the æthereal sweetness of her smile, all dwelt on his imagination with forcible and pained remembrance.
    Oh! souls of sympathy, cannot ye picture to yourselves the poignant anguish which overwhelms to agony a mind of sensibility, when it has lost a tenderly beloved friend and companion? What is the grief of common souls compared to theirs, who wear not only the semblance of sorrow, but its keenest shafts penetrate their lacerated bosoms; and objects that formerly created pleasure, serve only to bring the mournful recollection, that, alas! the chief source of delight is fled for ever?

If anything has the power to divert us from our attempts to make sense of that last sentence, it is the text’s apparent revelation that this novel’s heroine is dead—but of course, this turns out to be Ermina Montrose Sr. She and Colonel Montrose married without the permission of her father, Lord Belvidere, “a haughty, imperious nobleman”, who responded not merely by disinheriting her, but by actively persecuting the young couple, who finally fled to their isolated cottage to escape his vindictive wrath. Six years of happiness which included the birth of their only child followed, but now Colonel Montrose has been widowed and left the raise his daughter alone. The narrative skips lightly over this, content with observing matter-of-factly that, Each year, as it rolled away, brought some accomplishment in Ermina nearer to perfection, until she is fourteen, at which time the Colonel decides to place her in a convent in France for two years, so that she can perfect her French.

Like many sentimental novels of this period, Ermina Montrose chooses to behave as if the French Revolution never happened; though it goes its competition one better by forgetting, evidently, that its characters aren’t Catholic, and having Ermina decide to become a nun (it is clear later that she hasn’t converted). But while they occupy a fair chunk of the first volume, Ermina’s convent experiences and friendships – and hints at interesting back-stories for several of the nuns – ultimately turn out to have nothing to do with anything; except to make me suspect, in conjunction with what happens to her once she gets out of the convent, that Emily Clark originally intended writing a much more Gothicky novel, but for some reason changed her mind and instead sent her narrative in a domestic direction over the succeeding two volumes.

Neither Ermina’s sojourn in the convent nor her entering upon her novitiate prevents every man who sees her from falling in love with her. Victim #1 is the Count de Valcour, a volatile (to say the least) young Frenchman, who goes so far as to break into the convent in order to get up close and personal with her; Victim #2 is Father Eustache, a young Benedictine monk (!!), who starts repenting his vows the moment he lays eyes on her; and Victim #3 is Lord Henry Beauchamp, the son of the Earl of Darlington, who saves Colonel Montrose from bandits. The latter is invited to accompany the Colonel on one of his visits to the convent, and the damage is done. Here, however, we get damage in the other direction too:

…she was then as much charmed with his manners as with his appearance. She thought him learned without pedantry, sensible without affectation, and animated and witty without being frivolous or a coxcomb; and she admired him mostly for not being the least vain of his person (as handsome men in general are), but apparently unconscious of possessing more beauty than what falls to the usual lot of the male part of creation…

As it turns out, it’s just as well he’s got his looks to depend upon.

Lord Henry lays indirect siege to Ermina via poetry and then, as the time for her to take the veil draws near, declares himself in frantic smuggled letters, begging her to marry him. She is moved and confused, but still intends to take her vows when her father’s health collapses—because he can’t stand her becoming a nun, as he might have wanted to mention about a year ago. Ermina decides to leave the convent, and she, her father and Lord Henry become the guests of de Valcour.

The convent may be a thing of the past, but we’re not done being Gothicky just yet:

At supper the count introduced them to Father Anselmo, a monk, his friend and confessor. Ermina felt something repugnant to her feelings in his appearance; for though his sallow countenance was always dressed in smiles, yet under those smiles she fancied lurked cruelty and deceit… He easily perceived he was no favourite with her, as he had a great deal of penetration; and the glances he sometimes gave her from his yellow eye balls were replete with venom and ill-nature…

De Valcour regrets inviting Lord Henry to his chateau from the moment he gets a good look at him. His fears are well justified, as we learn with amusing casualness that—

…this animated party had been three weeks together at the chateau, which had passed on such silken wings that it appeared but as one. In this happy interval Lord Henry had again offered himself to Ermina, who, with the sanction of her father, had accepted his addresses…

…provisional upon Lord Henry receiving the approbation and consent of his father: this probably wasn’t intended as a pot-shot at her own parents, but it sure does read that way. Lord Henry is then abruptly called back to England, to the bedside of Lord Darlington, who is seriously ill, and must part from Ermina:

A cold shiver came over him…and his eyes were dimmed with tears as he entered the carriage… He could not shake off an uncommon depression of spirits, which he feared presaged some misfortune to himself, or (who was dearer to him) his innocent and beauteous Ermina.

He’s right about that, of course; although ironically he himself is the main misfortune which strikes her.

In Lord Henry’s absence, Ermina takes to wandering the grounds of the chateau alone, and on one of her expeditions comes across a lonely cottage occupied by a young Englishwoman and an elderly Frenchwoman. This, of course, is the cue for an interpolated narrative. Long story short, Adeliza’s intended marriage to de Valcour was prevented by the revelation of him being already married, so he abducted and eventually seduced her.

Shocked by her discovery of de Valcour’s true nature, Ermina begins to consider how to help Adeliza escape, but is diverted when Colonel Montrose’s health collapses. On his deathbed, he succeeds in extracting from de Valcour all sorts of promises about Ermina’s welfare; but no sooner is he dead than the count begins laying siege to her, intercepting her correspondence with Lord Henry, refusing to let her return to the convent, and finally imprisoning her, refusing to release her until she promises to marry him. Ermina withstands all this, and at length even persuades de Valcour to let her walk in the grounds, on the score that her health is suffering from confinement. On one of these expeditions she discovers a grotto, with a cave that has been turned into an apartment in its depths. Here she overhears a terrifying conversation between Father Anselmo and another monk:

    After something that Anselmo had said, the other monk replied in an agitated voice, “Hold, ’tis cowardly to assassinate a woman, poison would be better.”
    “No,” rejoined Anselmo, “she may then by some means escape, and suspicion be infused into her bosom. She shall no longer stand between me and my interest; for, were she disposed of, I could do whatever I pleased with de Valcour, and his fortune. Call it not murder.” Here he raised his voice, his countenance assuming a more diabolical expression, which she plainly perceived, as the cowl he wore concealed but half his face. “Is it not a religious act to stab an heretic, who, wedded to the count, will raise a brood of others? Here, mark me! take this dagger, steal to her chamber in the dead of night, and point it to her breast: for I’ve decreed it; ere three days more shall pass, she dies: France shall not another week contain alive the hated offspring of Colonel Montrose.”

At this point I had high hopes of Ermina Montrose, on the level of entertainment if not as literature, exactly; but sadly from here it’s downhill all the way. The present situation resolves itself when Adeliza’s outraged brother finally catches up with de Valcour and kills him; Adeliza dies of grief; Anselmo flees, never to be seen again (alas!); and Ermina returns to the convent to recover and sort out her life. There she becomes acquainted with Lady Julia Vernon, in retreat while mourning her husband (a short interlude that gives Ermina a completely false idea of her character), who offers to carry her back to England.

From here we settle into the wash-rinse-repeat aspect of the novel. Invited to stay with Lady Julia for a time, Ermina does in the hope of finding out why Lord Henry is not responding to the letters she is now certain he is receiving. Despite her disinclination, she feels obliged sometimes to accompany Lady Julia into society, and one night is taken to Ranelagh, where a certain Mr Devereaux becomes smitten with her.

From this point, Emily Clark strives in Ermina Montrose for the kind of social satire and character types with which Frances Burney’s novels abound, but her efforts are feeble, and occasionally embarrassing (as, for instance, when she stops to explain to us that any person with a disability or some sort of deformity, or is simply not physically attractive, will invariably prove to be “deformed” on the inside, too). All sorts of eccentrics wander in an out of the narrative, in scenes that are generally tiresome, rather than amusing as they are intended to be.

Clark is on firmer ground with the endless scenes of her heroine being persecuted; and we return to this dominating theme when, as Ermina walks with Devereaux, someone steps on the train of her gown:

The intended apology died away in confused murmurs on Lord Henry’s lips, the glow of surprise faded to an ashy paleness, and instead of returning the animated smile, he received from her, with the same look of pleasure, or accepting her proffered hand…he surveyed her with a repulsive gravity, uttered in a faultering voice, a few incoherent words of congratulations on seeing her in England, coldly bowed, and left her.

Get used to it, people: scenes like this comprise most of what this novel has to offer by way of “a love story”; when, that is, Lord Henry isn’t ranting at Ermina for being a whore. (My word, not his; but that’s the gist of it.)

When she can extricate herself from Lady Julia, Ermina returns to “the cottage of the vale” and is happy there for a time, reuniting with old acquaintances, until she receives word that the bank in which her small inheritance was placed has failed, and the banker fled. Forced to find work, Ermina requests her various friends to find her a position as governess, and is taken into the country house of Sir John and Lady Assop: near neighbours of the widowed Mrs Helderton, another person who, at this time, she considers a friend. For a time all seems well: the Assops are kind, Ermina’s young pupils well-behaved, the surrounding countryside beautiful. The first reversal of fortune comes when Mrs Helderton makes it very clear that her “friendship” for Ermina has altered with the girl’s circumstances.

But if Mrs Helderston dislikes Ermina as a governess, she positively hates her when she sees that her handsome cousin, Sir Charles Melrose, is immediately attracted to her. Mrs Helderton has no intention of remaining a widow, and Sir Charles is one of the two marital prospects she is assiduously pursuing, though only her second choice. The first happens to be Lord Henry Beauchamp…

By one of those capricious chances, in which fortune delights, a friend of Lord Henry’s and Mrs Helderton’s told her in confidence (unsuspecting her designs), of the hold Ermina still had on his affections, notwithstanding he was convinced of her unworthiness, though in what manner she had improperly acted Lord Henry would never tell his friend. Enraged, that she should be slighted for this insignificant girl (as she styled her), she vowed to do every thing in her power to mortify her…

And in this respect, at least, Mrs Helderton is a woman of her word; and her machinations and their consequences will b e at the root of much of what Ermina suffers over the following two volumes.

For a time Ermina is oblivious to the evil currents that are beginning to swirl around her; but one evening she overhears an enlightening conversation between Mrs Helderton’s maid and the Assops’ nursery-maid:

“Sir Charles may amuse himself with her as a mistress, but she will never be any thing more honourable to him. For my part,” continued Bridget, “if I was such a noble, handsome, rich gentleman as Sir Charles…I would never take up with other people’s hangers-on… Only to think now, that this wicked Miss Montrose enticed away my dear lady’s lover Lord Henry Beauchamp, when he was in France. She spent almost all his fortune, and then ran away with another gentleman, whom she intrigued with beforehand, which broke her poor father’s heart. There’s a wicked hussy for you, when she knew my lady was engaged to Lord Henry…and the poor gentleman, who was as beautiful a man as ever the sun shone on, is now wasting to a shadow: for nobody thinks he’ll live, it hurts him so, to think of her bad conduct; and I’m sure I wonder such a good woman as your mistress keeps the naughty creature in her house. Now you can’t be surprised that my lady hates her; and then to think, that she should make Sir Charles in love with her too! I do believe her to be a witch.”

This speech is a good example of the kind of talk that follows Ermina throughout the rest of the novel, always a framework of circumstantial truth surrounding the worst possible interpretation of events. But while it may be understandable that people who don’t really know Ermina may begin to lend an ear to the constant denigration of her character, there is no excuse for the people who are supposed to know and love her.

Annoyingly enough, the main thing that Ermina carries away from her enlightening eavesdropping (she does that a lot, though the narrative takes pains to find excuses) is the bulletin about Lord Henry’s failing health. This possibility preys upon her mind, affecting her spirits and her health so that everyone notices—including Sir Charles, who is so moved by her evident distress that he impulsively proposes marriage. Caught between her lingering feelings for Lord Henry, her awareness that he now despises her, and her gratitude for the generosity of Sir Charles, whom she likes and admires, Ermina wrestles with herself but finally accepts his proposal. News of the engagement spreads quickly, pleasing the Assops and causing everyone but Mrs Helderton to treat Ermina with increased respect.

Soon after this, however, Ermina is walking out when she is accosted by a gipsy—who turns out (for reasons not worth getting into) to be Lord Henry in disguise. She is taken so much by surprise that she stays to hear what he has to say for himself. As she suspected, their letters were intercepted; and Lord Henry knew nothing concrete until the news of Colonel Montrose’s death was reported. Shortly afterwards, still trying to bring his father (who objected to Ermina’s all-but-penniless state) to consent to their marriage, Lord Henry received further word of Ermina through a French friend of Lord Darlington’s, who mentioned to him a certain beautiful Englishwoman who was known by common report to be the mistress of the libertine Count de Valcour:

“I now attributed your neglect of me to a passion for my rival; and rage, jealousy, and contempt for your depraved conduct and infidelity, seized complete possession of my soul…”

Then the meeting at Ranelagh: he wondered at seeing her with Lady Julia—but assumed she had deceived her, too; he noted her mourning—and concluded it was for de Valcour… And so on. Finally he tore himself away from London and went wandering, ending up by pure chance at The Cottage Of The Vale, where Ermina’s maid, Therese, told him what had actually gone on in France:

“But, oh heavens! when she related in those simple unadorned terms, which so forcibly convey the truth, the various miseries and misfortunes in which you had been involved by the treachery and deceit of your worthless enemies, I execrated my credulity and unfeeling behaviour, reflecting with remorse that I ought, before I had condemned, to have heard your justification, and enable you to defend yourself against every calumnious aspersion.”

On the back of this, Lord Henry confronts the gossipy Baron de Belmont:

“…whom I brought to a confession that he had been instigated by Lord Darlington (whom de Valcour had treacherously informed of our attachment, and at the same time suppressed our letters) to invent those falsehoods of you, having himself never seen, or even heard of you and de Valcour, and would not for any consideration have aided such a scheme, if my father had not represented you as a girl of infamous character, who wished to seduce me to marry her.”

Now—you’d think an experience like this might have taught Lord Henry a thing or two, but you’d be very wrong: he spends the rest of the novel listening to anyone who has a bad word to say about Ermina; when, that is, he isn’t busy behaving like a dick of monumental proportions.

When telling Ermina’s story, Therese also informed Lord Henry of her engagement to Sir Charles Melrose; and now, though she forgives him for his distrust of her, Ermina insists that honour forbids her to break with the baronet. Lord Henry begs and pleads, but she is adamant; which produces this outburst:

Almost frantic at the idea of losing her, Lord Henry implored her compassion, intreating her not to sacrifice their happiness to a vain phantom of honour. This she steadily refused; and, irritated, abandoned to passion by the stings of disappointed affection, he exclaimed: “Then you have never loved me, deceitful girl, if I am to be resigned for the empty opinion of the world! You must prefer Sir Charles; but I swear by God, that I will not live to see you his wife—either one or other of us must fall. I will hasten instantly to him and demand satisfaction.”

Ah! – the always charming and by no means a sign that you are dealing with a narcissistic sociopath if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-will gambit! (Which was last seen around these parts in Barford Abbey.) I must admit, though, to being intrigued by Lord Henry’s casual dismissal of “honour” as a mere excuse, given how many novels of this period have their characters tying themselves in knots over merely perceived demands of honour, let alone a case as clear as this one.

Ermina manages to calm Lord Henry down, admitting that she still loves him, and pleading with him neither to risk his own life nor Sir Charles’s. Finally they part—forever, as far as Ermina is concerned. Preparations for the wedding continue, and the entire party travels from the country to Sir John’s house in London, where the ceremony to to take place. All is well until a few days before, when Sir Charles’s behaviour towards Ermina suddenly changes. He offers no explanation, however (of course not!), and Ermina is at a loss until the party attends a play: so emotionally caught up in the miseries on stage that she nearly swoons, Ermina is just recovering when…

…the first object she saw was Lord Henry Beauchamp contemplating her with an air of the deepest dejection, apparently regardless of every one but herself, whilst Sir Charles surveyed him with a fierce and sullen countenance…

Sure enough, the threatened duel takes place, though at Sir Charles’s seeking, and on the morning of his wedding-day!—and it is Sir Charles who gets the worst of it, being carried back to the Assops’ covered in blood and not expected to live. Mrs Helderton has been in the mix lately, so we are not much surprised at this, even if Ermina is; and in a state of guilt and shock, contemplating Sir Charles’s death on one hand and Lord Henry either under arrest or fleeing the country, she flees herself, slipping out of the house unseen and making sure no-one knows where she has gone (and that no-one will be able to find her, should things prove not quite so grim as anticipated, sigh).

Under the name of “Miss Smith” (no really), Ermina finds lodgings – poor, but with a kind landlady – and work, being employed to do fancy needlework by a French modiste. Though tormented by not knowing whether Sir Charles is alive or dead, and Lord Henry consequently safe, under arrest or on the run (it doesn’t occur to her to buy a newspaper), Ermina settles into her new, narrow existence until discovered by the dissolute Sir Patrick O’Neil, to whom she was introduced at Lady Julia’s. He informs his good friend, Mr Glencarnock – “an ugly, little, hump-backed man” – and the two begin persecuting her, both determined to obtain her in one capacity or another. Glencarnock, indeed, finally proposes marriages—provided Ermina is willing to keep it a secret.

In the face of this harassment, Ermina starts regretfully making plans to change her lodgings; but this is forestalled by an offer of work as a live-in seamstress for a certain Colonel Rivers. She accepts this offer with relief, only to be shocked by the discovery that – duh! – she has been decoyed into a trap by Glencarnock. To her credit, Ermina shows some backbone and makes several unsuccessful attempts to escape, failing narrowly only when she suffers a bad fall, before Glencarnock unwisely gets into a physical confrontation with her over the key to her room and is left sprawling with a head injury. Ermina takes to her heels and is fortunate enough to find someone willing to help her, one “Zemin Linmore”.

Here erupts one of Ermina Monstrose‘s most absurd subplots; though its absurdity cannot compensate for its bad taste. Linmore turns out to be the son of a Native American chief – no, really – who has been handed over to one Captain Linmore to be raised and educated as an English gentleman. The narrative goes on and on about how handsome Zemin is, how good, how generous, how high-principled, how accomplished…before shaking its head over how sad it is that he isn’t white, without which the rest means nothing. Zemin falls in love with Ermina, of course, and equally of course knows it’s futile, since he isn’t white. He finally leaves the country to try and get over his hopeless passion—and when a newspaper reports that his ship sank with all hands lost, it is accompanied by a straight-faced suggestion that an early death was a fate to be desired, considering that he wasn’t white, and therefore could never be happy. (Too bad for the rest of the passengers and crew…)

Anyway— Zemin cannot prevent Ermina being dragged back by Glencarnock’s servants, but he arranges her escape and places her with friends of his, Quakers called Mr and Mrs Fairfield. Here the wash-rinse-repeat cycle starts again: Ermina is safe and happy for a time, until the Fairfields carry her to London, on a visit to their far less unworldly son and daughter-in-law. Against her will, Ermina is taken out into society, usually under the chaperonage of a Mrs Ballenden, where she attracts the attention of an elderly nobleman, the Earl of Valency, to whom she is also drawn for reasons she cannot articulate. (Jane Austen alert!) Other consequences are less pleasant, and include an encounter with Mrs Helderton. Soon enough, the daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, is asking pointed questions about Sir Charles Melrose, and excoriating Ermina for abusing the trust of the Fairfields:

“I have already spoken to them,” replied the quaker, “and it has occasioned a misunderstanding between them, my husband, and myself; for thy arts, of which I have been fully informed, have blinded them to believe any thing thou doth choose to advance. Verily, it was not well done of Zemin Linmore to introduce his mistress under the roof of our respectable parents, whose ill-placed charity in protecting thee, must bring disgrace on all their family.”

In the wake of this, Ermina has an excruciating encounter with her former employer, the modiste, who in front of Elizabeth addresses her as “Miss Smith”—which leaves her with nothing to do but run away again. This time she cannot find employment, and sinks into real poverty before being discovered and rescued again, this time by the same Mr Devereaux whom she met at Ranelagh, before her first encounter with Lord Henry. Devereaux finds a position for her as companion to his aunt, the eccentric Mrs St Austin. Before she leaves London, he begs her to allow him to escort her to the theatre. She feels that she cannot refuse the invitation—but of course is made to regret her decision:

…she perceived to her extreme consternation, Mrs Helderton and another lady of a most unprepossessing appearance, looking at her with a sneer on their countenances, and talking at the same time, apparently about her, to a gentleman who seemed very much interested in what they said… Suddenly, however, he turned round to seat himself by Mrs Helderton, and, overcome with joy, surprise, and terror, Ermina felt ready to faint, when their eyes at the same moment meeting, she discovered the man whom she had so long regretted, whom she fancied to be wandering, forlorn, unhappy, and anxious for her fate, far from his native country, to be now before her; for it was indeed Lord Henry…

…who behaves towards her exactly as we expect; and for a few glorious moments, Ermina reacts to it as she should:

When at liberty to reflect on the conduct of Lord Henry, she felt keener resentment against him than she could ever have thought it possible for her to feel for any person, particularly one who had so often vowed his affection for her was interwoven with his existence…How sincerely did she regret the loss she had sustained in the alienated affections of Melrose, whose faith and truth were so much more valuable than the fickle passion of Lord Henry… She regretted bitterly, that he should have prevented an union in which the greatest felicity would most probably have been her lot… She even worked up her imagination to a belief, that the story he had told her at their last interview in Devonshire, was a fabrication to exculpate himself…

Well—it’s nice while it lasts, anyway.

Ermina travels to Mrs Austin’s country estate, where she is safe and happy for a time; until—

Do I really have to say it?

First, however, Ermina interests herself in the situation of a peasant family living on the estate. Long story short (again), the beautiful daughter became the object of the lustful interest of a Squire Brandon, who to pave his own way to her, had her soldier-fiancé transferred to a regiment about to be sent overseas on active duty, while forcing Helen and her grandmother off their farm in order to deprive them of their income. Ermina relieves the immediate wants of the unfortunate women, but worries that Helen’s illness may be fatal. She and Dame Primrose agree to present an account of the circumstances to Edward’s commanding officer, in the hope that he will undo the young soldier’s transfer if he knows why it was brought about. Ermina writes a letter, stating everything she knows and asseverating her belief in the good character of all three, and Dame Primrose carries it to Carlisle. She manages to see the regimental colonel, and he does indeed read the letter—and is so affected by it that even the hopeful grandmother is surprised.

And here we get the novel’s one successful touch of humour as, thanks to Dame Primorose’s extreme country accent, Ermina does not recognise who she means when she speaks of “Lord Bochon”.

Sure enough, Lord Henry soon rocks up. He is scrupulous in assisting Dame Primrose, Helen and Edward; but when he sees Ermina, we start all over again:

“Fool, mean-spirited madman that I am, not all your infidelity and ill usage can eradicate the fatal passion you inspired, which has been my ruin… Yes, wretched woman, you have been my destruction, blasted every prospect of my happiness, and forced me to seek in battle an oblivion of my sorrows; as the fatal remembrance of your cruelty has denied me peace in this world. In a few months I quit England for ever; and in far-distant Eastern climes will bury all recollection of the falseness and treachery with which you have required my faithful love.”

He then has the gall to promise “always to be her friend”, if she will “return to the paths of honour”; warning her however that “the loss of [her] innocence is never to be recovered”.

Ermina is not unnaturally stunned by this outpouring, but as he starts to leave she insists on being heard; and again she says exactly as she should—except for not sending him on his way with a hearty wish of a close encounter between himself and a cannon-ball:

    “That you should harbour suspicion after the explanation that took place between us in Devonshire, appears to me beyond belief; for having once made me suffer from your credulity, it is certainly unpardonable of you to err a second time. I have not much to say on the subject, because I feel myself perfectly undeserving of reproach, and know not who are my accusers; but in talking of injuries you totally mistake the affair, as it is myself, and not you, that is the injured person. I compassionate, however, the weak credulity of your disposition… Perhaps you will find a pleasure…in the reflection that you have insulted a woman you pretended to love with the most gross suspicions…”
    “I would fain believe you innocent,” replied Lord Henry, “and what you affirm overwhelms me with fresh doubt, but will listen no more; warned by those, who know you and your power over me, not to attend to your fascinating voice…”
    “Alas! I see but too plainly,” exclaimed Ermina, “the extent of my misfortunes. Not any assertions of mine will make you believe me innocent, and to combat with prejudices so rooted is quite useless. And now, Lord Henry, I take my leave; yet the time I hope will come…when you will repent your too easy belief, but it will then be too late, as from this moment I obliterate all traces of you from my remembrance; and be assured, that wounded pride and injured virtue will make the task far from difficult.”

And, oh!—if only she’d meant it! If only she had married Devereaux – who is in love with her, of course – or Charles Melrose – who isn’t dead, of course. I’d’ve quite liked this novel then, or at least liked it better. Buuuuuuuut, no; and sadly, Catherine Cuthbertson’s Santo Sebastiano remains the only novel of this era I’ve yet discovered to have its heroine respond to mistreatment by breaking with a man who doesn’t deserve her and finding one who does.

Around this time we finally get some explanation of the chain of gossip which has pursued Ermina, and how Mrs Helderton managed to rope the Earl of Darlington, the Baron de Belmont, Mr Glencarnock and even Sir Charles into her plots against the girl; convincing the latter that she was Lord Henry’s cast-off mistress, and calling various “witnesses”, including her maid, Bridget, who overheard the conversation betweem Ermina and Lord Henry in Devonshire (translated into a “secret assignation”), to back up her story.

In the latter Mrs Helderton overreached herself, having certainly not meant for Sir Charles and Lord Henry to try and kill each other; and great was her exasperation upon discovering afterwards that although she had succeeded in ruining Ermina with both men, neither of them showed the slightest increase of partiality for her. Her malice then pursued Ermina to the Fairfields, where to the existing stories another involving Zemin Linmore was added; while later, applied to by Lord Henry, who knew her only as a connection of the various interested parties, after Ermina’s disappearance from the Assops’ house, she added to the mix the assertion that her reduced circumstances forced Ermina to become the mistress of Sir Patrick O’Neil; after which she taken under the protection of Mr Devereaux.

Mrs Helderton overreaches again, this time fatally, when she sends an anonymous letter denouncing Ermina to Mrs St Austin: the latter shows the ugly epistle to its subject, and Ermina recognises the handwriting. She tells as much as she understands of the sorry tale, which isn’t that much (as she knows nothing of Mrs Helderton’s personal plans for Lord Henry and/or Sir Charles), and Mrs St Austin persuades her (or orders her) to travel to London, to seek out those to whom she believes she has been calumniated by Mrs Helderton, and to show them the letter and the handwriting. Ermina obeys, but finds everyone she needs to talk to out of the country.

Forced, reluctantly, to wait in London for their return, Ermina is at least moved to send Mrs Helderton a satirical letter, thanking her for all her good offices (not that she knows the half of it!). This is a tremendous shock for Mrs Helderton, whose guilty conscience brings on hysterics, which eventually reduce her to a convenient state of shattered health, and put her into an even more convenient mood for confession.

But that is some time in the future. First (through circumstances too dumb to be dwelt upon), Ermina goes through one more round of lonely destitution; this time being rescued by the long-forgotten Earl of Valency, who turns out to be – surprise! – her grandfather, who inherited another title after he was introduced to us as the “haughty, imperious” Lord Belvidere. His lordship has long since repented his cruel treatment of his daughter and son-in-law, and wants to make amends of sorts by re-establishing Ermina.

After that, things fall into place pretty quickly, the process being greatly assisted by Bridget who, after being sacked by Mrs Helderton, retaliates by telling the truth to the Assops; while Mrs Helderton, literally dying of shame, as we are asked to believe, calls for Lord Henry and tells him the truth. This sends him flying to Ermina, and to her feet, to beg forgiveness.

So we would hope.

And yet there is still time for one more outbreak of dickishness from Our Hero, when the altogether too forgiving Ermina rightly “determine[s] to punish him just a little for what he had caused her to suffer”, by telling him:

    “…your present confession, though it cannot restore my love, which your ill treatment of me quickly effaced, yet gains you my esteen and friendship”; and as she uttered these last words, with an assumed coldness and indifference, she held out her hand to him.
    So well did she dissemble, that with an angry and mournful air mingled with surprise, Lord Henry rejected her proffered hand. “Cruel, insulting woman,” said he, “I will not accept your friendship; your love I require or nothing. Oh! had I ever been truly valued, you would not thus have wounded my feelings by such cold language, but would eagerly have forgiven errors for which I have been sufficiently punished.”

That’s right, folks—SHE has been cruel to HIM. And, yup, SHE ends up apologising:

Lord Henry now drew from the blushing Ermina a reluctant confession, that, notwithstanding the reasons she apparently had to detest him, he had always continued dear to her…

Woman—you ought to blush…

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A royal liar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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There’s a much more interesting story behind my latest Reading Roulette pick, Emily Clark’s Ermina Montrose; or, The Cottage Of The Vale, than we find between its covers.

That reference on the title page of this sentimental novel from 1800 to “the late Colonel Frederick” is shorter and more discreet than that which graces the title page of Clark’s earlier novel, Ianthé; or, The Flower Of Caernarvon, where the author’s grandfather is boldly announced to be “son of Theodore, King of Corsica”: all in all, a statement which for all its brevity contains a considerable amount of misleading information.

Theodor Stephan Freiherr von Neuhoff was a German soldier of fortune who, in the course of a career dabbling in political intrigue all over Europe and the Mediterranean, convinced a group of Corsican rebels that he could help them overthrow the Genoese rule of their island—and promised to do so in exchange for being crowned king of Corsica. Somehow von Neuhoff managed to acquire military backing from the Bey of Tunis, and landed on the island in March, 1736. The locals held up their end of the bargain and had the adventurer crowned as Theodore I of Corsica, but the conflict against the Genoese forces was a failure. Theodore fled Corsica in November, ostensibly to raise more support and funds: a project which ended ignominiously when he was imprisoned for debt in Amsterdam.

Somewhat surprisingly, Theodore did not give up his efforts, but arranged to supply the rebels with arms, and himself returned to the conflict on several occasions; but the rebels made no headway against the incumbent forces. Theodore’s next stop was England, again with the aim of raising support—and where again he ended up in debtors’ prison, where he was confined for some six years. This time he did give up, freeing himself by declaring bankruptcy—and by making over his kingdom to his creditors (!). He died only a year later, in 1756, having been supported to the end by various friends, including Horace Walpole.

In 1750, shortly after King Theodore was imprisoned in London, a certain Colonel Frederick appeared upon the scene. He too was German, and had served in the army of Frederick II of Prussia, before entering the service of the Duke of Württemberg. When Theodore died, Colonel Frederick began publicly mourning his father and calling himself the Prince of Capera; establishing his position more firmly by publishing Memoirs of Corsica, Containing the Natural and Political History of that Important Island in 1768.

Over the following years, the Colonel managed to manoeuvre his way into high society, becoming an intimate of the royal princes (for whose benefit he tried, but failed, to raise loans on the Continent); but at length his life began to unravel. For many years he had been sustained – just – by a pension paid by the Duchess of Württemberg; and when this was stopped his situation became desperate. He began to show signs of mental instability and to talk of suicide—and in 1797 he acted on his threat, shooting himself outside Westminster Abbey. A kind coroner’s jury ruled that he had been of unsound mind, and he was buried in the churchyard of St Ann’s Church in Soho—next to his “father”. Friends who had failed to assist him while he was alive arranged for a plaque near his grave, declaring Colonel Frederick to be indeed the son of Theodore, and, A finished Gentleman; in honour, honesty, and truth, he was princely.

However, The European Magazine; and London Review, reporting the story, appended to it a statement from “a Gentleman who was for many years on terms of intimacy with him”, who declared his royal heritage a fabrication, but agreed that he was very like Theodore in being also a German adventurer:

“He arrived much about the same time that Theodore died, and finding the people take a kind of interest in the hapless fate of a man who they were told was a King, Mr Frederick hit upon the expedient of passing as his son, and it succeeded. The assertion could not easily be contradicted. The fact did not merit investigation, and it was everywhere believed that he was the son of Theodore… Excessive vanity was the weak point of Colonel Frederick’s character, but in almost every other point of view his qualities were of the most estimable kind.”

Aside from describing Colonel Frederick’s personal tragedy, the magazine report makes mention of the fact that he left behind, A daughter and, we believe, four grand-children. One of the latter was Emily Clark, already earning money as a painter of miniatures, and whose work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799. Like so many other women across the 18th and 19th centuries, Clark also tried to supplement her family’s slender income by writing. She published Ianthé in 1798, by subscription: the reviewers were kind, if not effusive, and subscribers – including the royal princes – were generous. When she tried the same expedient two years later, however, she was less successful; no doubt the story had worn a little thin. She continued to publish, writing poetry and three more novels over the following twenty years; but the truth is, she wasn’t a very good writer, and no-one took much notice.

Nothing much else is known about Emily Clark, although her situation and her attempt to address it via subscription publication was referenced in Peter Garside’s essay, Subscribing Fiction in Britain, 1780–1829, which brackets her with the unfortunate young widow, Lady Leigh, who published her husband’s Munster Abbey by subscription after his premature death.

Alas! – would that Ermina Montrose were half as entertaining as Sir Samuel Edgerton’s Leigh’s magnum opus…

Though the subscriptions themselves dropped off, and princes and members of the aristocracy are largely conspicuous by their absence in spite of the novel’s dedication to the Countess of Shaftesbury, there is one name of interest on the list which prefaces Clark’s novel—though we may suspect it is there out of charity rather than judgement:

(I’m guessing those are the same Dashwoods who subscribed to Munster Abbey.)

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The Holy Lover

    John Wesley received Oglethorpe’s order with an emotion in which astonishment mingled with a wild and heart-shaking joy… The flood of his happiness almost succeeded in drowning his uneasy clericalism. For a brief, enchanted interlude, a sunlit pause, John Wesley was become like other men, a very human lover, quivering with the joy of being alone with his beloved.
    When he had threshed and winnowed his conscience, he yet had a good hope that he would be delivered out of this sweet danger, this perilous joy, since it had not been his own choice that had brought it upon him; and he coddled the notion that he still perceived in himself his old desire and intention to live celibate. Further, he tried to believe he believed Sophy’s statement, which all young girls make to all men at the beginning of their more intimate acquaintance, that he resolve was to live unmarried. He wished to believe that this resolution of hers would hold fast even though his own wavered. So much he understood a girl’s heart; so much he understood his own!
    The thought of Sophy invaded him even at his prayers. She appeared, a tender and seductive vision, with sweet, persuasive lips and ardent eyes; and this occasioned him so profound a pleasure that he was terrified. He knew it for a snare of the devil, and redoubled his prayers. But as if the heavens were deaf, he was unable to quell the passion that shook and tormented him. He forgot that he was at high noon and high tide, son of a cleric who begot nineteen children, grandson of another who begot twenty-five. And he was afraid. He was dreadfully afraid.

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We know from the very first sentence of Marie Conway Oemler’s 1927 novel, The Holy Lover, that we’re about to be confronted with a very different kind of book from the religiously-themed novels previously examined at this blog:

“Sukey!” his father once shrieked to his mother in a fit of exasperation, “I profess, Sweetheart, I don’t believe our Jack would attend to the most pressing necessities of nature, even, if he couldn’t give a reason for it!”

This up-front reference to its central character’s bodily functions serves two purposes, although only one of them is immediately apparent: to wit, to alert the reader to the possibility that this biographical novel might not contain an altogether flattering portrait of its subject. The other, evident only in retrospect, is to foreshadow the fact that The Holy Lover is, to a significant degree, about the bodily functions of John Wesley—or rather, the lack thereof.

All of which immediately begs the question of what audience this novel was intended for?—certainly not for the admirers and followers of Wesley, who would likely be angered and offended by it; though those opposed, for whatever reason, to Methodism might get an unkind kick out of its merciless exposure of Wesley’s early-life feet-of-clay. Ultimately this is a book perhaps best read from an historical point of view, for its description of the early days of Georgia, and of the challenges faced by those who ventured into what was, even in its more “civilised” regions, a wilderness.

Briefly, in 1733 James Oglethorpe founded a British colony in Georgia, which was intended to provide a military buffer between the English settlements in the Carolinas and the Spanish settlements in Florida. Oglethorpe’s plan was create an agrarian society on a principle of equality, and to populate the region with “the worthy poor”, in particular basically honest people who had fallen foul of England’s harsh laws against debtors. Oglethorpe carried cotton seeds to the region, and played an important role in the establishment of the South’s cotton-based economy, even while declaring slavery illegal in the colony (a decision which would finally bring about his downfall, when “the worthy poor” wiped their feet on the principles of equality and demanded slaves to work their land grants). And finally, Oglethorpe wanted the civilising influence of religion—and thus invited four members of Oxford’s “Holy Club” to Georgia, to undertake ministries and work at the conversion of the local Native Americans. These men were John Wesley; his brother, Charles; Benjamin Ingham; and Charles Delamotte.

History has generally condemned John Wesley’s mission to Georgia as an almost total failure; Methodist writers have tended to interpret this period as a time of chastening, preparing Wesley for the great “revelation” that would precede his founding of the Methodist Church. However, there has been some revisionism in this area in recent times, a suggestion that the perception of failure was based mostly on Wesley’s harsh judgement of his own performance.

The Holy Lover, however, goes to the other extreme, highlighting the lack of proportion, the thin skin and the ignorance of the world that, the novel contends, made Wesley’s failure almost an inevitability. It also takes a distinctly female view of the behaviour of John Wesley—arguing tacitly that believing you have a hotline to God is no excuse for wrecking a young woman’s life.

Much of this novel rests upon Wesley’s own words, supporting its contentions with quotes from his journal and letters, and those of others—but the material is used in a self-evidently highly selective way. Whether Marie Conway Oemler’s own Catholicism influenced this choice (the Oglethorpe colony explicitly welcomed people of all religions but Catholic), or whether Wesley’s treatment of Sophia Hopkey earned her ire, is difficult to judge. At the very least, however, this novel goes some way towards restoring the reputation of the unfortunate Sophia, who has been roughly treated by a number of Methodist historians, and viewed indeed as a “catch” and a “snare” for the holy Wesley.

The Holy Lover opens with a sketch of life at the Epworth parsonage in Lincolnshire, placing “Jacky” amongst his bustling family and emphasising the lifelong influence of Susannah Wesley upon her youngest and favourite surviving son—but emphasising too a legacy from his mother that would cause John and those around him considerable grief at a later date: the lack of a sense of humour. These early scenes highlight both the positive and negative qualities that would shape Wesley’s life: his profound faith, tireless labours and self-sacrifice on one hand; on the other, his convenient ability to see “God’s will” in whatever it suited him to do.

The same mingling of positive and negative is seen in John’s conduct at Oxford, where he draws followers with his faith and dedication, building a group that achieves much good, particularly amongst the prison population; but ultimately alienates the majority through his assumption of superiority, his demands for a damaging personal austerity, and his unshakeable conviction of his own essential rightness.

It is at this point that John Wesley is introduced to James Oglethorpe, on the lookout for young men willing to undertake missionary work in Georgia, and offered a position. After much heart-burning, Wesley accepts and sets out on the long and dangerous sea-voyage to Oglethorpe’s colony with his three companions, all surviving members of his Holy Club.

Overtly the most important consequence of this trip was that it served to introduce John Wesley to some brethren of the Moravian Church, travelling to Georgia to become part of an established settlement. The Moravians were, historically, the first Protestant missionaries, and in America the first to gain a converted congregation of Native Americans (although their success in interacting with the Mohicans drew accusations that the Moravians were, sigh, secretly Jesuits recruiting for the French, and got them expelled from New York). The narrative of The Holy Lover reproduces the famous shipboard incident wherein, confronted by a violent storm and the apparently inevitable foundering of their ship, the English passengers (clerical and lay) gave way to panic and the terror of death, while the Moravian congregation stayed calm, singing hymns together in the teeth of the gale:

    “But were you not afraid?” Wesley asked one of the Moravians.
    “I thank God, no.”
    “But were not your women and children afraid?”
    “Brother, no.” And the German added, with a gentle smile: “Our women and children are not afraid to die.”
    Women and children…not afraid to die! Wesley had no answer to that. These humble folk had something which he, with all his intellect, his logic, his learning, his fastings, prayers, formulas, rituals, had not attained. They had some emotion of the spirit, some instinct of the heart which he had missed… He was afraid: afraid of life, of death, of God, of circumstances, of men, of women, of himself…

Subsequently, the Moravians’ quiet practicality and common sense form an amusing contrast to the extreme emotionalism of everything connected with Wesley. They also, alone of the Georgia settlers, manage to keep patience with Wesley, even as he uses them as an ongoing sounding-board for his increasing woes, constantly pouring out his troubles to them and begging for advice which (since it doesn’t happen to coincide with his own wants) he never takes.

(But it was after John Wesley’s return to England that the Moravians exerted their most significant influence upon him. He and his brother Charles were accepted by a Moravian congregation, and were counselled by Peter Boehler, a young Moravian missionary about to depart for Georgia himself, whose ideas about faith and grace had a profound effect upon Wesley’s own thinking. [A future bishop, Boehler was instrumental in founding the Pennsylvanian towns of Bethlehem and Nazareth.] It was while attending a Moravian meeting in London that Wesley underwent his great “revelation”, which altered and crystallised his views on personal salvation, and which planted the seed for the creation of the Methodist Church. But all of this is beyond the scope of this novel.)

Wesley’s interaction with the Moravians highlights what is, at this point in his life, his most significant failing as a minister of God: a total lack of love for humanity. Looking around, Wesley sees only sinners, damned by their failure to practice religion as he practices it. Of course, a deeper failing lies beyond this: Wesley has no love of God, either, just a deep and abiding fear. Much of his behaviour at this time resembles that of someone he would no doubt designate a “heathen”, trying to placate an angry spirit by sacrifice.

Throughout the journey to Georgia, Wesley and his companions pursue their fellow-passengers: not merely conducting services but attempting to bring the others to their own way of thinking and believing and acting, and doing so with unrelenting energy. There is nowhere for the passengers to run:

Their zeal kept the passengers in a chronic state of exasperation. For John wouldn’t feed them as babes with the milk of the Word; already he was cramming them with great raw collops of theology, and drenching their unwilling stomachs with the sour wine of High Church formalism… That he honestly practiced what he preached made him all the more infuriating, since it left no saving doubt to soften his rigid righteousness. There was no love in him; only the horrid zest of sacerdotal selfishness which urged him, for the saving of his own soul, to save other souls willy-nilly. Quite as though there were a bounty on souls, redeemable by Deity. The wonder is that some exasperated sinner didn’t quietly heave Mr Wesley overboard some dark night.

One of the exasperated sinners—though less so than the rest, since he alone has the option of withdrawing himself—is James Oglethorpe, who early on sees signs that his future work with Wesley will be no easy collaboration. Though the soldier views the priest with amused tolerance, the priest is constitutionally incapable of returning the favour, instead taking advantage of his calling to lecture Oglethorpe on various aspects of his conduct, particularly the nature of his interactions with the female sex.

But ironically, it is not Oglethorpe but Wesley who gets into trouble with the female passengers. Susceptible to female beauty, though wary of it, Wesley is drawn to Beata Hawkins, the wife of a surgeon, who, seeking some new form of amusement on the dreary sea-voyage, expresses a great desire to be instructed in religion. The minister is no more than a new sort of toy for her, something to test her theory that men are just men. Wesley, in turn, becomes obsessed with “saving the soul” of the pretty young wife, stubbornly ignoring the warnings of his companions, who see only too clearly that she is playing with him, and who have heard the shipboard gossip about her conduct—gossip that is now encompassing him. Over his friends’ strenuous objections, Wesley takes his infatuation to the extreme of administering Holy Communion to Beata Hawkins: an act which will have bitterly ironic echoes in his future life…

Did he really believe he had converted Beata Hawkins? Or was the wish father to the thought? Or was it that she attracted him more than he himself knew? To a temperament like his, sex-attraction was dangerously troublesome. He must repress it, stamp it out, become a celibate, a eunuch of the spirit. Sex to him stood for sin, so that when a woman intrigued his imagination and threatened the control which he wished to achieve and maintain over his natural impulses of a man, his immediate reaction was to desire to save her soul, shift his sex-emotion to the religious plane, and thus placate and enlist God, whom he was convinced his natural passions offended, and of whom he was afraid.

After a long, tedious and often dangerous journey, the Simmonds arrives safely in Georgia. John Wesley assumes his ministry in Savannah, with Charles Delamotte to assist him, while Charles Wesley and Bejamin Ingham travel on with James Oglethorpe to the island township of Frederica, a much rougher and less civilised settlement of Oglethorpe’s own making, and vital to his plans for the area. For a few brief, glorious weeks all seems well, the future bright:

Everything promised plenty. The people who greeted him so cordially seemed to him good and happy. And of the Indians he had not seen enough to dampen his ardour and dispel his illusions. He shared the curious notions of his age as to the Indians, picturing them as childlike souls panting for conversion, and with no preconceived errors of doctrine to keep them from ardently embracing the faith once delivered to the saints—his faith. They were clean, empty vessels into which should foam the pure milk of the Word. So he came to Georgia with his heart singing hymns in his breast.

But the narrative that follows is one of good intentions appallingly executed, for reasons jointly accounted for by the peculiar nature of the settlement and the ingrained nature of John Wesley.

Despite the clash of their personalities and morals, James Oglethorpe had high hopes for John Wesley’s contribution to his colony, recognising his honesty, his capacity for hard work and – where his own emotions and beliefs weren’t involved – his judgement. The austerity of his religious practice and his inflexibility did give the soldier some considerable concern, yet Oglethorpe’s hope was that the realities of life in Georgia would bring the minister to a more reasonable state of mind.

But in this respect, Oglethorpe was too optimistic. Much good John Wesley certainly tried to do—he was active in fighting the growing demand for slaves in the new colony, for instance, and he did sterling work in the founding and operation of schools—but his capacity for rubbing people the wrong way made him enemies at almost every turn, many of whom opposed his efforts out of personal dislike:

Oglethorpe wanted a colony for England, as against Spain. The colonists wanted everything they could get, including ease and pleasure. The Holy Club wanted a theocratic State, with God as Governor, John Wesley as Grand Vizier, and Charles, Ingham and Delamotte as Chief Deputies. These diverging aims brought them all one thing in common: Trouble.

Wesley’s fantasy with regard to the conversion of the local tribe is the first casualty. Whatever illusions the new minister may have cherished about them, the natives have met white men before and are under none whatsoever:

    This was the Holy Club’s first contact with the red men they had come out to convert—and didn’t. Wesley never had any closer contact with them. When Tomochichi was urged to become a Christian, the fine old Mico said vehemently:
    “Why, those Christians at Savannah! Those are Christians at Frederica! Christians lie! Christians steal! Christians beat men! Me no Christian!”

The new minister’s good opinion of his own parishioners soon undergoes revision too, with his initial positive outlook suffering from the contrast he cannot help drawing between the godly Moravians and his secular parishioners. Many and varied are the clashes between John Wesley and his congregation over the next two years, some provoked by his conduct, some by theirs, but all playing their part in the minister’s eventual downfall.

Meanwhile, Charles Wesley, too, is busy making enemies in Frederica, where his solemn condemnation of of anything secular is particularly offensive to the settlement’s female contingent. Charles Wesley, it is concluded, has to go…

On shipboard, even as John tried to “save” Beata Hawkins, Charles backed his own judgement about women by similarly adopting a Mrs Welch. At that time the women were bored enough to welcome even male attentions that came in the form of religious instruction and lectures about the state of their souls; but now in Frederica, Charles has become an intolerable nuisance. Both women, with unsatisfactory husbands and too much time on their hands, are pursuing James Oglethorpe: an amusement which the persistence of the Wesleys is making impossible. Well aware of the ministers’ credulity and their willingness to believe the worst of everyone, the two women put their heads together and come up with a daring plan: one which involves a public falling out and Mrs Welch’s assertion – made to Charles in the strictest confidence – that Beata Hawkins is in fact James Oglethorpe’s mistress; this on the back of the women complaining to Oglethorpe that the Wesleys’ pursuit of them isn’t entirely about religion.

The escalating trouble caused by the women and their circulating rumours and gossip finally drives Charles Wesley away: the Holy Club needs someone to return to England and report on conditions, and he is only too glad to go—and James Oglethorpe to see the back of him.

John takes over Charles’ duties in Frederica, and finds a hornet’s nest of resentment and criticism waiting for him. Even as the Wesleys believe the worst of others, Frederica is only too willing to believe the worst of them; and John veers between being shunned and being abused. Matters reach a climax when he feels himself bound in duty to call upon Beata Hawkins, who has been busy painting herself publicly as a victim of the Wesleys’ slander—by which she means, of course, that she she didn’t count on her invented adultery being made public; but in this, she and Mrs Welch bargained without the Wesleys’ habitual indiscretion:

    “You have wronged me!” she exclaimed suddenly and violently. “I am going to shoot you through the head this minute with a brace of balls!” and bringing her hands from behind her with a jerk, she showed him in one a large pistol, in the other a pair of shears.
    The startled man caught hold of the hand clutching the pistol, then of the other armed with the shears. With a piercing shriek, she hurled herself upon him, forcing him backward on the bed.
    “Villain! Let go my hands!” she roared at the top of a pair of lungs that carried half a mile. “You dirty dog, let me go!” And she began to swear like the mate of a troop-ship, pouring into his outraged ears a torrent of personal abuse, mingled with frightful imprecations. All the while she struggled to free herself.
    “I’ll have your hair, you lousy beast, or I’ll have your heart’s blood, damn you!” howled Mrs Potiphar, straddling the meagre stomach of the unlucky Joseph and making furious thrusts of the shears at his head. Weakened by fever, almost swooning with horror, John Wesley used all his enfeebled strength to keep the shears at bay.
    He feared to cry aloud, for very shame, unwilling to make public that which for her sake as well as his own, he wished to keep private. He dared not attempt to rise, since that would have made her ride him like a nag. Indeed, she rode him all too strenuously now, gripping his flanks with her knees, and using her heels to spur his shins black and blue…
    Her two men servants now rushing in: “Hold his hands!” she yelled at them. “Come here and hold his hands for me!”
    “Take her off me!” cried Wesley. “Take me off her, and hold her!”
    But they dared do neither. And in a burst of sudden, furious strength, the woman broke Wesley’s hold upon her wrists, and seizing his hair, sheared one side of his head…

This incident, a humiliating nadir in John Wesley’s time in Georgia (because of course it cannot be kept a secret) occurs in a period of unusual happiness for the minister—for he has been introduced to Sophia Hopkey, the young niece of Mr Thomas Causton, a magistrate of Savannah, and his bustlingly social wife, to whom the quiet, gentle and deeply religious girl is an annoyance and a burden:

You thought her pretty when you met her. You thought her beautiful when you knew her. She was in the the first flower of her youth, a tall and very slender girl topping John Wesley by the head, a girl whose quiet loveliness embodied as it were the freshness of an April morning softly shadowed by clouds. Her light brown hair was full of gold, her eyes a clear hazel, her lips a pink, sweet curve, soft lips at once innocent and provocative, the lips of a woman born to be loved… There was intellect in the clear brow, and when the veiled lifted, the hazel eyes were full of light. She wore her plain dress with a simple elegance that impressed the fastidious Wesley…

James Oglethorpe has already decided that what Wesley needs to settle him down and soften his hard edges is marriage, and he is quick to sound Mr Causton on the girl’s situation. One declared lover there is, the wild, violent Tom Mellichamp, who has frightened Sophy into a promise not to marry anyone else, if she will not marry him; while another, the cautious, long-sighted and rather cold-blooded William Williamson, a man of no birth but strong ambition, has also turned his eyes in her direction. Oglethorpe soon makes his feelings on the subject known to Mr Causton, who is willing enough for the connection. There’s just one problem…

    “You would wish me to encourage this?”
    “I should regard it as helping the welfare of the colony, Mr Causton.”
    “But I must tell you that I have heard from others, and once from himself, that he has a notion to remain celibate,” said Mr Causton. And he added: “As an aid to holiness.”
    “We must trust Miss Sophy to wean him from so deluded a notion, then,” said Oglethorpe, with what in a less superior person might have been called a grin.

And it is the battle between John Wesley’s austere and self-sacrificial religious beliefs, which include a determination never to marry, and his natural passions as a man that comprise the rest of The Holy Lover.

Through the giving of French lessons, Wesley soon has the opportunity to know Sophy better; while her desire for religious instruction sees her offering him the sweet incense of submission and obedience, as she joins his pre-dawn prayer sessions, attends his services, and in every way shows herself a willing follower and a devout believer. Her intelligence, her seriousness and her faith, combined with her physical attractions, are enough – almost enough – to overcome the minister’s long-held resolutions. When Wesley falls ill, as he does at intervals due to overwork and a near-starvation regime, Sophy insists upon nursing him—much to the silent anger of one particular observer…

One of the most peculiar details in The Holy Lover—a novel consisting almost entirely of peculiar details—is its sketch of the relationship between John Wesley and his Holy Club companion and assistant, Charles Delamotte. Though inevitably expressed in terms of the “snare” represented by women, and his fears for John Wesley’s soul in the face of such a temptation, Delamotte’s resentment of Sophy and his seething anger in the face of Wesley’s growing passion for her is impossible to read as other than a jealousy sexual in nature.

The long-suffering Moravians have become accustomed to John Wesley pouring out his troubles to them, albeit without ever taking their gentle, understanding, common-sense advice. Now Charles Delamotte likewise turns to them, and gets as little joy:

    “If the maiden is as pious as she seems, and loves our brother with a holy love, she might make him the godly and modest wife that he, and all men, need,” said David Nitschman, mildly.
    “Marry him? Ye would have her marry him?” croaked Delamotte, aghast.
    “We believe in holy matrimony, my brother,” said the Moravian. “It is a help to holiness. It trains and disciplines and restrains. If the maiden be what she seems, let us sing for joy!”
    “And if she is what I think she is—?” asked Delamotte.
    “Then must ye fast and pray,” said the Moravian.
    Delamotte fasted and prayed…

It is around this time that matters reach a crisis for Charles Wesley, with his departure for England requiring John to take over his duties in Frederica. Delamotte is overwhelmingly relieved, but the conspirators are before him: Mr Causton dispatches Sophy to visit friends in Frederica, and the relationship between herself and John Wesley continues and deepens—all under the watchful eyes of a community that has learned to view everything the Wesleys do with suspicion.

Despite their growing closeness, Wesley makes no definite sign to Sophy, apparently content instead to keep their relationship wholly in terms of their religious interchange. It is not until James Oglethorpe takes a hand, arranging for Wesley to escort Sophy back to Savannah by boat that circumstances begin to overwhelm the minister’s self-command. Days and nights spent in each other’s company bring the couple’s mutual but unspoken passion to a fever pitch. Finally a declaration of passionate love escapes John Wesley—but even then, he goes so far and no further; his demand for a life together does not include a proposal of marriage. Instead, he imagines a lifelong – and wholly celibate – companionship between himself and Sophy, with (although he does no express it like this, of course) all of their sexual passion channelled into religious devotion:

Presently, as if to lay the turbulent spirit which moved him, he entered upon the topic of Holiness, which seems to obsess the Christian mind. And as the ascetic in him feared he was in instant danger of losing this fine Holiness by becoming a natural human being, he held Holiness up to the young girl as a peculiar hope and grace, using all his powers of persuasion.

To this point in The Holy Lover, Marie Conway Oemler has shown sympathy as well as understanding in her portrait of John Wesley, albeit that criticism and a certain mockery sometimes creep in too, in the face of his blindness and self-absorption. But from here there is a distinct shift in tone, in response to the selfishness of Wesley’s treatment of Sophy: a selfishness dangerously blended with ignorance of, even contempt for, the ordinary usages of the world. A note of overt anger enters the text as Oemler describes the egoism which is the foundation of John Wesley’s conviction that he has been singled out by God, and the consequent crushing of Sophy Hopkey under the wheels of his relentless chariot of self:

    Had he loved the girl less passionately, or had she been older, he would not have feared her so much; for he would not have been afraid to take an older woman in marriage, as an act of expediency, somewhat as one might have put on a flannel shirt in a chill. Had there been no passion, no glamour, there would have been no terror of sin…only two stodgy Christians ambling heavenward in a sort of second-hand celibacy.
    But as it was now, Sophy with the dew of her youth sparkling on her bright hair, threatened his God-ordained mission—whatever it might prove to be—and so endangered his freedom, and his pride of supremacy, that his colossal selfishness saw in her the Great Temptation.
    He might talk of sacrifice; but to any artist, any priest, any professional man, nothing can be a sacrifice that does not call upon him to give up his work. There is no sacrifice in letting go anything that might interrupt or endanger the work… From the day he stepped out of his cradle, John Wesley had been at work moulding and fashioning and shaping his life in his own image and likeness, in his own way, to his own ends. Against that enormous egoism, what chance had any mortal woman?

As for Wesley’s obsession with physical chastity, his belief that only so can God’s work be done:

    Celibacy, virginity, a state of physical being too overrated among sentimental unthinking Christians, is an excellent restrictive regulation, good enough when not overemphasised and unduly enforced; but it is not, per se, virtue. Nature respects continence; she is apt to fill the unploughed, unsowed, and barren field with briars.
    Steeped in clericalism, with the bones of the ancients hung around the neck of his soul, John Wesley made a fetish of celibacy. It was, he thought, the most potent means to the end he sought—the saving of his own soul. It never seemed to dawn upon him that he might be involving a young girl’s happiness; nor did his own great selfishness occur to him. Men who seek heavenly riches are too often quite as ruthless and rapacious as they who are determined to gain the more obvious wealth of the world.

Sophy herself is understandably hurt and bewildered by John Wesley’s behaviour towards her—making passionate declarations and demanding eternal fidelity one minute, the next coolly suggesting that if she is unhappy at home she might go and stay with the Moravians; but being a modest young woman there is little she can do to help herself. Mr and Mrs Causton, looking on, grow increasingly frustrated, wondering how they might bring matters to a crisis. Already there is gossip about Sophy and the long hours spent at the parsonage—hours spent in prayer and religious discourse, as we know, but who outside could believe that their interaction has gone no further? – particularly in light of the lingering doubts in the colony about the probity of the Wesleys. The Caustons begin to fear that the talk will damage Sophy’s reputation to a point where no other man will marry her, should John Wesley disappoint them all.

The hot-tempered Tom Mellichamp, having gotten into trouble with the law, is more ineligible than he ever was, though still determined to prevent Sophy’s marriage to any other if he can. Eager to get the girl off her hands, Mrs Causton has always encouraged Tom, and continues to do so—until a more viable prospect emerges in the form of William Williamson who, with an eye on Sophy’s position as the Caustons’ heiress, has watched the non-progress of her romance with John Wesley with great interest.

Mrs Causton dislikes John Wesley intensely, but is willing enough that Sophy should marry him—partly to curry favour with James Oglethorpe, partly to rid herself of responsibility for the tiresome girl. But failing Wesley, another will do. In the spirit of getting Sophy married to—whoever—Mrs Causton undertakes the amiable task of making the girl’s home-life miserable. Having always encouraged Mellichamp herself, she now turns on Sophy for receiving from him the letters she is too soft-hearted to refuse, abusing the girl for encouraging a worthless young man and threatening to turn her out of the house. She makes sure that John Wesley is a witness to this last threat:

    “If your uncle and me did what we ought to do he’d give you a whipping for the hussy you are! Nothing but trouble with you! I am heart-scalded. Get out of my house!” she was yelling, as Wesley entered the room. “Get out of my house! I won’t be plagued with you any longer!”…
    For some minutes she continued to pour out a torrent of abuse and reproaches, mingled with threats. Then, as if becoming aware of Wesley’s presence, she turned to him:
    “Mr Wesley, I wish you would take her. Take her away with ye this minute, Mr Wesley! Take her out of my house!”
    Sophy raised her desperate eyes… She was driven to such a pitch of misery as to be careless of who saw her shame and anguish. Those uplifted, weeping eyes were full of an almost unbearable appeal. Oh, why didn’t he do something, say something, that might save her?
    If you love me, said her eyes, save me now or never! You must see how I am beset, how driven, how tormented; you must see, now, what they do to me; you must see that I am come to the end, that I can bear it no more!
    He said nothing at all. Had he allowed his heart to speak for him, he would have snatched the forlorn young creature in his arms, and rushed forth with her out of that wretched house, away from that virago. He said nothing at all…

John Wesley leaves the Causton house; and when the following day dawns, after a night of bullying, abuse and threats, Sophia has agreed to listen to Mr Williamson. She stands on a conditional agreement, however: insisting that she must have her minister’s advice and approval…

But Wesley chooses to misinterpret this:

    Mrs Causton was worrying about these stipulations now, as she looked at the clergyman. She said hurriedly as if against her will: “Mr Wesley, if you have any objection, pray speak. She is at the Lot. Go to her there. She will be glad to hear anything Mr John Wesley has to say.”
    After a moment’s reflection, he said, in a grave voice: “No, madam. If Miss Sophy is engaged, I have nothing to say. It will not signify for me to see her any more.”

And he walks away, wholly conscious of what he is doing:

She loved him, John Wesley, and because she loved John Wesley, she must know that William Williamson had no power to make her happy. He turned that thought over and over; but yet, with the obstinate man’s cruel struggle with himself, he could not make up his mind to save her by marrying her himself.

Sophy Hopkey is not the only young woman to whom John Wesley has expressed his conviction that a state of celibate devotion is the ideal one: her friend, Miss Bovey, likewise a young woman of faith, has also had the dubious benefit of his tenets—and has offended him by engaging herself to a worthy young man, a Mr Burnside. Wesley’s response is to counsel both of them to give up their plans of marriage, hectoring Miss Bovey until she loses all patience with him. The lovers agree that being married by John Wesley after this would be too absurd; they make plans to travel to Purysburg, to be married there by the town’s Swiss Protestant minister.

But there is more to this journey than immediately meets the eye. After consultation with Mrs Causton, Miss Bovey and Mr Burnside persuade Sophy to go with them, as bridesmaid; while Mr Williamson is invited to be the one to escort her home, after they have departed on their wedding-trip. But by the time they do return, thanks to a judicious but unrelenting course of pleading and pressure, Sophy has become Mrs Williamson…

The blow is almost more than John Wesley can stand:

    Sophy a wife. Sophy, in another man’s arms. Sophy, who belonged to him. He had never desired her as he desired her now… He experienced an agony so frightful that it all but deprived him of reason. He experienced a sense of desolation so immense it seemed to him he was lost, in time and in eternity.
    His imagination dragged him by the hair of his head into that bridal chamber, and though he winced, and cringed, and would have fled, it held him fast…

But when the first pain recedes, its place is taken by overwhelming anger. Here we see the very worst of John Wesley, the monstrous egoism that allows him to believe that in offending him, Sophy has offended God; by rejecting him—that’s how he sees it, she rejected him—she has rejected God. It is incredible to him that she continues to attend church, his church, as if she had done nothing wrong; without a sign of her sin upon her. He soon sees that her religious practice—that is, his religious practice, including pre-dawn prayers and regular fasting—has fallen away since her marriage, and he is glad of a concrete transgression to charge her with. The truth never crosses his mind: that she has been forbidden such extremes of behaviour by her husband, because she is pregnant. Nor would he – nor does he – consider obedience to her husband an excuse for anything, greatly as he always valued her obedience when it was at his own disposal. All it means now is that she has put another man before him God:

Sophy no longer came to him; no longer sought his advice. He doubted that she adhered to the strict rules he had laid down for her guidance. She was disobeying God and John Wesley, choosing rather to obey—her husband. Brooding on this terrible fall from grace into carnality, he began to doubt whether he would admit her to the Communion until she had, in some manner or other to be determined by himself, admitted her fault and declared her repentance…

Sophy’s faults have, by this time, achieved immeasurable proportions in his warped imagination. Her sins against him prove her guilty of countless other sins—falsehoods innumerable, misconduct with Tom Mellichamp, deliberate deception of himself right from the beginning of their acquaintance, a falling away of her duty to God… A scene conducted in the middle of the street, which ends when Sophy turns her back upon him in righteous anger, drives him to new heights of rage and jealousy.

And John Wesley’s mind begins to turn on what he does not recognise for what it is—revenge:

If angels, principalities, powers, thrones, dominions, seraphim and cherubim had said or seen or hinted otherwise, John Wesley, in the state he was then, would have rejected them all as lying spirits, false voices, evil cousellors trying to turn him aside from his plain duty: which was to punish Sophy. He had to punish Sophy. God Almighty meant him to punish Sophy. John Wesley meant John Wesley to punish Sophy.

And when Sophy next presents herself for Holy Communion, John Wesley—the same John Wesley who administered Holy Communion to Beata Hawkins onboard the Simmonds—publicly repulses her:

    His conscience licked its paws before the fire of content. He felt exalted—his punishment of Sophy had fulfilled the law… Confusing the will of God with his own will, he couldn’t see himself in the role of self-appointed harsh judge, the disappointed lover. Rather he saw himself as the Christian pastor doing his duty, nobly, unselfishly, refusing her even whom he had loved the Bread of Life, because she was unworthy to partake of it.
    The home-made robe of martyrdom is by no means uncomfortable in rough weather. Wesley wrapped it around his shoulders now and it kept him snug; it kept warm his sense of righteous superiority.
    He had, like many another, set the seal of duty to the Lord upon an act of self-will. He had been as autocratic, ungenerous, and unjust as only the godly can be in such crises. He had done exactly what he wished to do—punished and humiliated a woman who had married another man; and he did it in the name of duty and God.

Fittingly, it is this act of ungodly spite, recognised by Savannah for exactly what it is, that seals John Wesley’s fate in Georgia:

Admitting the most notorious sinner on earth to the Lord’s Table—as Jesus himself had admitted the Magdalene—would not have offended any congregation as much as John Wesley’s repelling of the girl whose only sin was that she had married someone else offended the people of Christ Church Parish.

—though the surrounding circumstances degenerate from tragedy to farce soon enough, when William Williamson brings an action for defamation of character against John Wesley, on behalf of his wife, which sees the minister summoned before the magistrates, and bound over to appear during the next session. Upon hearing the news, much of Savannah laughs in anticipation of rare entertainment—particularly when Williamson responds to Wesley being granted bail by setting up a public advertisement:

    …forbidding any person or persons to take John Wesley out of the Province of Georgia, under penalty of one thousand pounds sterling, Mr Wesley being “guilty of divers notorious offences”.
    All Savannah thronged to look at it and read it, those who couldn’t read hearing it from the lips of those who could. “Di-vers no-to-ri-ous of-fen-ces!” repeated the populous, and smacked its lips. “Eh, sirs!”

By the time the proceedings open the list of grievances lodged against Wesley is “divers and notorious” indeed, although most of them have to do with the way he does things rather than what he does. An undignified air of public brawling surrounds the entire affair, with opinions being aired on every street corner, Wesley arguing that most of the charges made lie within the purview of an ecclesiastical, rather than a civil, court, and the magistrates uncertain of their own authority and the public will—particularly with James Oglethorpe away in England. The case brings to flashpoint many of the religious and cultural dissensions with which the fledgling colony is rife, and pits faction against faction; John Wesley’s guilt or innocence soon ceases to be the issue.

Finally, the only thing left for John Wesley to do is leave—to return to England—and this he does in spite of William Williamson’s continued threats of action should be break bail, or anybody help him do so. By this time Georgia is aching to see the last of “the Holy Club”; the magistrates’ attempts to detain the errant minister are an empty gesture indeed:

    If he elected now to return to his own stamping ground, should they say him nay? But…there was the Majesty of the Law. They had to make the gesture of upholding the Majesty of the Law! Hence the Notice in the Great Square.
    It is quite possible that if any citizen of Savannah had taken that Notice seriously enough to try to prevent Mr Wesley’s departure, the magistrates would have mobbed him and then kept him in jail for the term of his natural life.

It is only at the very last that Marie Conway Oemler removes her foot from the throat of John Wesley, alluding obliquely to great deeds that would sweep away the memory of the bitter disappointment and failures of his time in America. But though the final paragraphs of The Holy Lover hint at this future, they do so without losing sight of what – and who – John Wesley sacrificed to achieve it:

Never, no matter what great hour might lie ahead; never, no matter what high destiny, what great and holy mission God might have in store for him; never, never more to know such joy, such love, such ecstasy, such high tide of ardour, and emotion, and despair…

.