Independent press dedicated to publishing books from and about the nineteenth century
We are very pleased to announce that our new edition of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sensation classic Henry Dunbar is now published. This edition features a critical introduction by Anne-Marie Beller, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, and additional contextual material.
To find out more, please visit the Henry Dunbar webpage.
Fellow Victorian geeks will recognise Madame Rachel as Maria Oldershaw, foster mother and business partner of the delicious Lydia Gwilt in Wilkie Collins’ Armadale. She and her beauty products were also referred to in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. In this excellent biography, Helen Rappaport tells the true story of the woman behind the infamous creation of “Madame Rachel”, purveyor of dubious unguents which promised to make women “beautiful for ever”.
Madame Rachel, aka Sarah Rachel Levison, cleverly exploited women’s perennial obsession with youthfulness. The wealth of background material includes descriptions of actresses nightly wrapping their hands and faces with slices of raw meat in order to preserve their complexions (presumably, it also worked to ward off any unwelcome sexual attention). There was a range of less repellant, but largely inffectual remedies on the market from such well-known names as Rimmel. Cosmetics companies vied to claim responsibility for Queen Victoria’s youthful appearance when she came to the throne, which was entirely explicable on account of her being only eighteen. Figaro in London commented that the queen “must have had decayed teeth, grey hair, a head nearly bald, scurf, superfluous hair, a tanned skin, rough and sallow complexion, pimples, spots, redness and cutaneous erruptions” in order to require so many products whose daily use was imputed to her. Madame Rachel was no less modest in her claims when she started advertising her Arabian preparations and enamelling technique in 1859, which were designed for the “restoration and preservation of female loveliness”, and had obtained the “patronage of royalty”.
Despite Punch lambasting what it called “Stucco for the Softer Sex”, Madame Rachel’s enamelling process was in high demand. This involved:
A careful removal of rough hairs or fuzz on the face … followed by the application of copious amounts of alkaline toilet washes, then a filling-in of wrinkles and depressions in the skin with a thick paste (usually made of arsenic or white lead and other ingredients), followed by applications of rouge and powder to finish off.
Although wealthy women flocked to undergo this dubious treatment, the actress Lola Montes was more sceptical, commenting: “Nothing so effectually writes memento mori! on the cheek of beauty as this ridiculous and culpable practice.”
The exact figures are unknown, but Madame Rachel seems to have made hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from this “ridiculous and culpable practice”, based at her New Bond Street premises. Gullible patrons were taken in by her risible claims that she and her daughters were many decades older than they appeared and had in fact witnessed the guillotining of Marie Antoinette. Her clients became addicted to the treatments, often running up ruinous bills which they were then unable to pay. She ended up in court after one Mrs Carnegie (and her bewildered husband) refused to settle a bill for £938 5s 0d (nearly £65,000 in today’s money). Interestingly, Rappaport argues that wives spending vast sums of money on beauty treatments partly informed the drafting of the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, which paved the way for women being financially independent and therefore liable for their own debts.
The Carnegie court case gave Madame Rachel her famous catchphrase: ‘beautiful for ever’, which also became the title of her treatise on “Female Grace and Beauty”. This was essentially a glossy marketing brochure designed to butter up potential customers by praising their inherent female beauty, which could be subtly enhanced by products from an exclusive range. ‘Exclusive’ essentially meant expensive: an individual consultation with Madame Rachel cost a minimum of £250 (£16,250), and her miraculous Jordan Water cost the modern equivalent of £1,500. One could argue in her defence that such prices were simply a tax on stupidity (or naivety, if one is to be generous), but Madame Rachel was also engaged in more cynical activities to exploit human weaknesses. She would often recommend her female customers to take one of her patented Arabian baths at £5 (£325) a time, and then also charge “gentleman” visitors to spy on them through a Judas hole. To compound matters, she would then convince vulnerable spinsters that eligible aristocratic bachelors wanted to marry them, making all the necessary arrangements for an extortionate fee. Of course, the marriage never took place, and the hapless victim was left penniless and humiliated.
Amongst the press there was limited sympathy for the unfortunate dupes, but they made much of Madame Rachel’s Jewishness. The majority of the coverage indulged in sickening anti-semitism, portraying her as a hook-nosed crone who was trying to bleed her victims dry. In the two major court cases of her career, she was not given a fair trial and was sent to prison on the basis of ethnicity, rather than her questionable activities. An unbiased judge and jury would have acquitted her on both occasions, but she was born in an age where the aristocracy could do no wrong and all “foreigners” were dubious. The attendant publicity made her infamous, and her waxwork went on display at both Madame Tussauds and Smithfield Cattle Show. She became the subject of music hall songs, and there was even a farce called Beautiful For Ever playing to a packed Royal Surrey Theatre.
Apart from her wealthy patrons, Madame Rachel counted amongst her children amongst her victims. Although one of the daughters was a willing acolyte, setting up a branch in Paris and keeping everything going during her mother’s spells in prison, the other children struggled with notoriety. The sensational aspects of Madame Rachel’s extraordinary career are poignantly imbricated with the tragic implications for two of her daughters, whose own lives were ruined by association with a notorious con-artist and blackmailer.
Helen Rappaport has skilfully brought together a variety of resources detailing Madame Rachel’s extraordinary career, and has also unearthed hitherto unknown biographical material on her origins. The story is told compellingly, with clear but unobtrusive historical context. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to find out more about this curious character who pervades Victorian literature. While reading the book, I came across a reference to her catchphrase – ‘beautiful for ever’ – in a novel published in 1896, 16 years after Madame Rachel’s death. Henceforth, I shall be on the look out for her everywhere.
Beautiful For Ever by Helen Rappaport. Victorian Secrets publishes Helen Rappaport’s No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War
Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t have a favourite novel: then I read The Beth Book. First published in 1897, it tells the story of Elizabeth Caldwell, a heroine whose experiences are closely modelled on Grand’s own life. The young Beth is a bright, inquisitive and loving child who is constrained by her difficult upbringing in a remote town on the west coast of Ireland and then in Yorkshire. Her mother has no idea how to deal with an intelligent daughter and desperately tries to instil in her ideas of feminine self-sacrifice. Like many girls of the period, she is denied an education and encouraged to make an advantageous marriage as soon as possible.
Imagining that marriage might afford her at least some freedom, she accepts the proposal of local doctor Daniel Maclure. He too treats her like a child, however, and taunts her with his infidelities. Beth is able to tolerate his many faults until she discovers that he is in charge of a Lock Hospital, an institution in which prostitutes with venereal disease were effectively imprisoned. He convinces her that the local women shun her because of her eccentricities, but it is actually because they believe her to be complicit in her husband’s dubious activities. The discovery that he is also a keen vivisector marks an irrevocable breach. Through establishing a room of her own and developing her literary voice she is able to become an independent woman and achieve happiness. She is aided by a supporting cast from Grand’s two previous novels, including Ideala and Angelica (one half of The Heavenly Twins).
Although polemical in places, Grand mainly criticises masculine “morality” through the ingenuous statements of the young Beth, who innocently questions the behaviour of the men in her life. Sally Mitchell has written that “Beth from 11-14 remains one of the most compelling and convincing descriptions of female adolescence yet created,” and I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve claimed in the past (controversially) that it’s superior to Jane Eyre, and I stand by that statement. It’s a long book (Madame Grand wasn’t known for her brevity), but it should be savoured as a work of true genius. It is clever, funny and moving in equal parts, and I felt bereft after finishing it.
Alas, there is no edition currently in print. But now there is! I’ve just published a new edition of The Beth Book, edited by Jenny Bourne Taylor.
The reading public seems to be divided into those who fall hopelessly in love with Mrs Gaskell’s saintly Ruth and those who find her irritating. I belong to the latter group, an admission which will no doubt lead to some accusations of heartlessness (I’m also with Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell). Ruth Hilton, an orphaned dressmaker’s assistant, is seduced and abandoned by the wealthy Henry Bellingham. Alone and pregnant, a hunchbacked nonconformist minister, Thurstan Benson, takes pity on her and helps her establish a new life as a respectable widow, Mrs Denbigh. In this guise she is able to obtain employment as a governess with the evangelical Bradshaw family. All is well until Bellingham reappears on the scene as the local prospective parliamentary candidate, and then Ruth’s hidden past is brought into the light. Her continuing self-sacrifice leads ultimately to tragic consequences.
Contemporary reviewers were critical of Ruth’s faultlessness and unwavering self-flagellation. The Gentleman’s Magazine thought she should have been portrayed as “more alive and less simple”. Gaskell’s refrain of “Remember how young and innocent, and motherless she was” is unconvincing beyond the early chapters, and her contention that Ruth was both faultless and necessarily contrite is inherently contradictory. In the author’s defence one could argue that if society is minded to reject an unfortunate victim like Ruth, then how would it behave towards a less angelic figure? Although the critical reception was more understanding of Ruth’s predicament than Gaskell had perhaps predicted, the novel did cause trouble in her own household, and two men of her acquaintance burned their copies in disgust.
The excellent introduction by Alan Shelston in this edition thoughtfully considers the novel’s strengths and weaknesses and draws the reader’s attention to the poetry of Gaskell’s writing. There is also illuminating contextual material in the form of a letter Gaskell wrote to Charles Dickens during his Urania Cottage days in support of a young girl who had suffered a similar fate to Ruth. After being seduced by a doctor she was forced to embark upon a life of crime in order to support herself. Finally ending up in jail, she was again confronted by her seducer, who was by now the prison surgeon. Although Ruth’s unrelenting martyrdom is unpalatable to many readers (including me), Gaskell’s staunch defence of the vulnerable is genuinely moving, and her story inspired future less-than-perfect (and more credible) literary heroines.
Victorian Secrets publishes The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction by Carolyn Lambert
George Moore by Edouard Manet
Sent out to domestic service by her drunken stepfather, Esther Waters is forced to leave a good position after being seduced and abandoned with child by fellow servant, William Latch. Repelled by her family, she struggles with life as a single parent, nursing a rich woman’s baby to the detriment of her own, working eighteen hours a day for a capricious mistress, and even resorting to the workhouse in desperation. Although an occasional character looks upon her kindly, most are out to exploit her weakened state. Her fortunes seem to improve when she finds work with a benevolent novelist and wins the affections of Fred Parsons, a steady and earnest member of the Plymouth Brethren, who believes she has already atoned for her “sin”. Just as she glimpses the prospect of security, William Latch reappears, begging her to come back to him so that he can be a father to his child. Esther must choose between the safe option of Fred and the more exciting, but dangerous, alternative offered by William.
Her deliberations are exquisitely portrayed, as are the consequences of her choice. The novel is set against a background of horse racing and the heady atmosphere of gambling and drinking that surrounds it. People of all classes get caught up in the highs and lows, and there are many innocent victims, mainly the women and children. Moore exposes the hypocrisy of the establishment who condemn the poor for their vices, yet also indulge in them and profit from their addictions. There is a polemical strain to the narrative, which is at times a little heavy-handed, but also poignant. Moore, not known for his modesty, said of Esther Waters: “though pure of all intention to do good – that is to say to alleviate moral suffering – it has perhaps done more good than any novel written in my generation.” There is anecdotal evidence that a nurse founded a refuge for homeless children after reading Moore’s descriptions of neglect.
The short introduction shows that Moore was heavily influenced by both Hardy and Zola when writing Esther Waters. The novel never quite reaches the grotesqueness of L’Assomoir or Nana, but comes quite close with characters such as baby-farmer Mrs Spires, who offers to murder Esther’s child for £5. Moore’s frank treatment of the sexual episodes led the novel to be banned by W H Smith, a decision they revoked after a high profile campaign. Many authors lent their support, stressing the importance of the work. A notable exception was George Gissing, not a man easily pleased, who complained of “miserable writing” and “grotesquely phrased” dialogue. Although there are obvious thematic similarities with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Moore allows his heroine to struggle with and overcome her fate: he is deterministic without being fatalistic. Esther’s trajectory is both moving and memorable, the glimmers of hope amongst the gloom are painted with a masterly touch, and its conclusion is both understated and uncontrived.
Victorian Secrets publishes George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife.
Ouida’s Moths is credited with being the first English novel to show a divorced woman happily remarried, and as such represents a landmark in women’s writing. Of course many authors, notably of the ‘sensation school’, tackled the thorny issue of divorce, but ultimately either the heroine’s inconvenient spouse would obligingly die at the eleventh hour, or she would have to live a nun-like existence, hidden from society’s disapproving gaze.
I’ve always been slightly wary of Ouida, having hitherto only ever read her work in the form of extracts. This approach does not do her justice, as what can appear bizarre out of context can be startlingly original when seen as part of a wider picture. Although generally classed as a sensation novelist, Ouida’s settings owe more to the earlier Silver Fork novels, which dealt with the machinations of fashionable society. The sparkling narrative sweeps across the glamorous capitals of Europe, to the snowy outposts of the Russian empire.
Moths is the story of Vere Herbert, a serious and beautiful, if slightly gawky, teenager who is forced into marriage with the cruel Russian Prince Zouroff. Uninterested in the approbation of the demimonde, Vere desperately resists her fate until her mother, the superficial and deluded Lady Dolly, pleads that she must surrender her to the Prince in order to release herself from serious debts. Resigned to her defeat, Vere strives hard to perform her wifely duty to the man she despises. As a powerful nobleman with the full force of wealth and the law behind him, Prince Zouroff treats her appallingly, flaunting his extra-marital liaisons and demanding that she befriend his mistresses. When she refuses to share a house with his lover, the Prince is infuriated by her uncharacteristic defiance, striking her a vicious blow and banishing her to his remote Polish estate. Having committed both adultery and marital cruelty, the Prince has given his wife grounds for divorce, but he remains confident in the knowledge that a virtuous woman such as Vere would shrink from the horrors of a public scandal. Her goodness and fortitude drive him to distraction, and his fury manifests itself in a terrible act of violence. Vere’s quiet submission is eventually broken when she discovers the true reason why Lady Dolly married her off to a brute.
Moths are used as a metaphor for society and women, one character explaining: “[This world] is a world full of moths. Half the moths are burning themselves in feverish frailty, the other half are corroding and consuming all they touch.” It is Vere’s resistance to becoming a moth that provides much of the narrative interest and contrast. Although the main male protagonists are essentially ciphers, some of the female characters are brilliantly drawn. The portrayal of Lady Dolly’s delusion is masterful; she believes that had she married a rich man “how easy it would have been to have become a good woman!” She sees herself as a hapless victim, whilst all the time making terrible decisions that affect both her and Vere. She also provides comic gems, such as her appalled reaction to her prudish daughter’s old-fashioned bathing costume – “It must have been worn at the deluge. The very children would stone you!” Perhaps my favourite line in any Victorian novel is now: “Lady Dolly felt the mist over her eyes again, and this time she knew it was not the prawns.”
Less amusing, despite her name, is Lady Stoat of Stitchley, a sinister and sadistic character who succeeded in “marrying her daughter…to a young marquis, who, with the small exceptions of being a drunkard, a fool, and a brute, was everything that a mother’s soul would desire.” She encourages the weak Lady Dolly to sacrifice her daughter and chastises Vere when she revolts. Fuchsia Leach, initially a caricature of a vulgar American, develops into a courageous and sympathetic woman who is prepared to act according to her conscience, rather than merely react to public opinion. As an outsider, she is impervious to the specious qualities of high society.
Ouida’s philosophy of marriage pervades the narrative. She is clearly sceptical as to its merits, with the only autonomous female characters being the adulterers and the forthright Fuchsia. There is a recurring image of marriage as slavery and legalised prostitution, and Vere actually envies the prostitutes their freedom and solidarity. Although fabulously wealthy and moving in the highest social circles, Vere suffers both mental and physical abuse and must submit to the will of a capricious husband. As he tells her shortly after their marriage, “I am your master, and I can be a bad master.”
Despite mounting such a direct challenge to the idea that marriage was the desideratum of all young women, Ouida has been accused of timidity by modern critics. This is an unfair charge, however, as any attempt to be truly radical would have resulted in an outright ban by the circulating libraries. Indeed, Mudie’s seriously considered withdrawing Moths from their catalogue, but were probably swayed by the novel’s enormous popularity. Willa Cather has described Ouida as a “brilliant mind that never matured”, but this lack of maturity makes her a particularly engaging and unique writer.
Moths by Ouida. Published by Broadview Press. ISBN 1-55111-520-4
Workers in the Dawn (1880) was the first published novel from the pen of George Gissing, one of the nineteenth century’s most original writers. It tells the story of Arthur Golding, a young boy who finds himself orphaned after his dissolute father dies in the squalor of a London slum. Through a series of fortunate encounters, he gains a good education and embarks upon a career as an artist, meeting the woman of his dreams, Helen Norman, along the way. As this is Gissing, however, it all goes horribly wrong when he rescues an alcoholic prostitute from the streets and tries to reform her, an episode that is largely autobiographical.
All of Gissing’s novels reflect his obsession with class, sex, and money, and Workers in the Dawn is no exception. Here he examines the place of women in society, and also presents a realistic picture of working-class life at the time. At this point in his career, Gissing was going through a Socialist and Positivist phase, and the debates surrounding both are interwoven throughout the narrative. Explaining his socialist agenda, Gissing wrote:
First and foremost, I attack the criminal negligence of governments which spend their time over matters of relatively no importance, to the neglect of the terrible social evils which should have been long since strongly grappled with. Here I am a mouthpiece of the advanced Radical party.
He came to regret his early adherence to left-wing principles, however, later leaning towards to Malthusian view that the poor were irredeemably vicious and ought not to be supported. Indeed, he later heavily revised the text of Workers in the Dawn and eventually expunged it from his list of publications.
Although the initial critical response to the novel was mostly unfavourable, the Manchester Examiner and Times wrote: “He has written one of the most painful stories we have read for a long time, but assuredly one which emphatically offers a promise of something great.” In 1880, the press were still wary of the literary school of realism, and inclined to castigate its exponents. Gissing’s authorial voice is mindful of this situation, adding in chapter five: “A conversation ensued which I shall not endeavour to repeat, under fear of being stigmatised by the critical world.”
In Workers in the Dawn, Gissing went much further than his contemporaries in exposing poverty and attacking the causes of it, aligning himself more closely with Zola and Flaubert than Dickens and Trollope. The narrator is an urban flaneur, who guides the reader through the squalid streets of some of the poorest areas of late-Victorian London. There is a sense of Mayhew when we are introduced to the baked-potato seller and the umbrella-mender. Geography is fundamental to the novel, and this edition includes a detailed map prepared by Richard Dennis, Professor of Human Geography at UCL.
Professor Dennis’ work shows that the East End of Arthur Golding’s London was much close to the city than the districts associated with fin-de-siècle ‘Darkest London’. Adam and Eve Court, the centre of the novel’s degradation, is close to the Barbican and was actually cleared by the Metropolitan Board of Works just a few years after Workers in the Dawn was published. Now, of course, the area is associated with wealth and prosperity. As Debbie Harrison writes in her introduction:
The novel reflects the anxieties of a metropolis troubled by the growing contagion of pauperism in the east, threatened by an increasingly radical working class, and weakened by an effete generation of middle-class apostates, cynics, hypocrites, and rakes.
Workers in the Dawn is rich with allusions to art and the Classics, and also the philosophical debates of the day. As a debut novel, it is inevitably stuffed with every idea Gissing ever had, but is nevertheless an intriguing evocation of the preoccupations of a mid-Victorian intellectual. The wealth of detail is covered both in the scholarly introduction and extensive endnotes, so there is plenty here for the seasoned Gissing scholar and the general reader. Perhaps in an attempt to achieve wide appeal, Gissing also includes a sensational subplot involving adultery, divorce and (excitingly) firearms. Although John Sutherland laments the “melodramatic excesses” of the novel, Pierre Coustillas in his preface quite rightly says that it “cannot leave a thinking man or woman indifferent.”
Victorian Secrets publishes George Gissing’s Demos, Thyrza, and Workers in the Dawn.
I’m so glad to have come across Jenny Hartley’s book, as it has greatly improved relations between Charles Dickens and me. We previously had a complicated relationship, as I was unable to forgive him for the appalling way in which he cast aside his wife, Catherine, and consequently, I found his hypocrisy rather repellant. Hartley seems to share my discomfort, but has addressed her subject with commendable skill and balance – her portrait of the soi-disant Inimitable is sympathetic without being sycophantic.
The eponymous house of fallen women was Urania Cottage in Shepherd’s Bush, established in 1846 by Dickens with the (mainly financial) help of the immensely wealthy Angela Burdett Coutts. The philosophy behind the project was that it would give unfortunate women shelter from the dangers of society and prepare them for emigration to the colonies. Unlike similar schemes, the emphasis was on recreating a safe and happy domestic environment, rather than ascetic conditions in which women were required to spend their time contemplating their sins. Whereas Millbank adopted the silent system in which prisoners were forbidden to communicate, and forced its inmates to wear drab clothing, Dickens insisted that they must build friendships and wear bright clothing (rather like his own).
The staff were under strict instructions not to ask their charges about the past – the focus was to be on the future. The women were able to learn to read, grow flowers, and enjoy good food; indeed it was a lifestyle far superior to most of their peers in the outside world. Obviously, such luxury didn’t come cheap, but with an annual income equivalent to £5m, Miss Coutts was happy to bankroll the project if Dickens would manage to day-to-day running.
This was a role which he relished. As Hartley writes, “this home for fallen women would be another total world for him to control. Here he could create and run everything according to his rules.” He concerned himself with the smallest detail and was personally involved in the progress of each woman. Unsurprisingly, this was to the detriment of his own family, who felt neglected during this period, their household distinctly less cheery than that of Urania Cottage. Although keen that the women should not dwell on the past, Dickens was emphatic that they should develop in line with his ideas of redemption. Anyone who thought they could get free lodging and still cause trouble found themselves summarily ejected. Of one lost cause, Dickens commented: “she would corrupt a nunnery in a fortnight”.
Over the years, Dickens expected an increasing amount of interaction with the women and did, in fact, start eliciting their stories, collecting them in what is known as the Case Book. Unfortunately, it no longer survives, and Dickens’ plan to work it into a book were aborted. This is perhaps the most sinister aspect of the story – Dickens uses some of the women in his fiction, and Hartley suggests some cases where his decisions regarding their future may have been dictated by the plot of the novel he was writing at the time. There is a sense that these women were puppets in a private theatre show. Hartley makes a compelling argument for Rhena Pollard being the inspiration for Little Dorrit‘s Tattycoram, and she also provides other examples, such as Martha Endell in David Copperfield.
Nevertheless, Urania Cottage was a fine example of mid-Victorian benevolence. In 1853 Dickens reported to Coutts that out of the first 54 inmates, 30 had emigrated and built good lives in the colonies, 14 had left of their own accord and 10 had been expelled. Hartley has done sterling work in tracking down some of the women who emigrated, even unearthing a photograph of ‘Tattycoram’. The stories are immensely touching and would have been very different had those women not been given an opportunity to start a new life. The experience of being in a pseudo family taught them how to love and to build relationships with others. Unfortunately, it was Dickens’ own abilities in this area that led to the closure of Urania Cottage. He met a certain Ellen Ternan and suddenly his fallen women became less compelling. An irrevocable breach had also developed between him and Miss Coutts after she took his estranged wife’s side in the acrimonious marital separation.
Although constancy was not Dickens’ strong suit and his interest in Urania Cottage was not entirely selfless, he made a significant difference to many vulnerable lives. The women who passed through its doors were treated with humanity and respect, possibly for the first time in their experience, and for this he should be commended unreservedly. I’m rather wary when it comes to celebrities promoting good causes, but, whereas I’d very much like to slap Bono, Dickens is now giving me a warm fuzzy glow for the first time. Jenny Hartley should also be commended for having written such a scholarly, touching and engaging account of these women who have now been given a second opportunity to shine.
Charles Dickens and the House of Fallen Women by Jenny Hartley
We are very pleased to announce that our new critical edition of George Gissing’s Workers in the Dawn has now been published. It features a preface by leading Gissing expert Pierre Coustillas, a critical introduction by Debbie Harrison, a unique map of Arthur Golding’s London by Richard Dennis, suggestions for further reading, a George Gissing chronology, and explanatory notes.
The Belton Estate (1865) is the story of a young woman, Clara Amedroz, who vacillates between two suitors: her bucolic but passionate cousin Will, who is heir to her father’s entailed farm, and Captain Aylmer, an urbane but unemotional MP who is tied to his rebarbative mother’s apron strings. The narrative reflects the Jane Austen novels read by Trollope during the 1860s, and they inform his portrayal of an impecunious unmarried woman. With no income of her own and an ailing father, marriage is Clara’s only means of survival, and she struggles with her impending dependence on the men who surround her. She dramatically articulates her frustration: “I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the time they are thirty.” The sub-plot, involving Captain and Mrs Askerton, deals with society’s intolerance towards others marital misfortunes (an echo of Dr Wortle’s School) and it also serves to highlight both Clara’s humanity and the superficiality of one of her suitors.
Clara’s position must have been particularly resonant for many of Trollope’s female readers. There was a growing surplus of women that was soon to reach one million – a situation memorably explored in George Gissing’s The Odd Women. An intelligent spinster of Clara’s class, with no independent income, often had little option but to become a governess, a position that was only marginally superior to domestic service in terms of conditions and pay. Real women couldn’t simply live on their wits like Becky Sharp and Lydia Gwilt.
Trollope recognised the difficulties faced by women: “the world is harder to women than to men; that a woman often loses much by the chance of adverse circumstances which a man loses by his own misconduct.” The passivity demanded of a nineteenth-century woman left her with scant control over her own destiny. Although Trollope is mindful of that fact, he doesn’t offer any solutions, his innate conservatism cleaving him to the laws of primogeniture and the idea of wifely submission. He can appreciate the intellectual argument for female emancipation but recoils emotionally from the concept of women having a viable alternative to marriage. Indeed, Trollope described himself as “an advanced, but still a conservative Liberal.” During the parliamentary elections, Captain Aylmer campaigns on a ticket of repealing the Matrimonial Causes Act, a recent piece of legislation which, at least theoretically, made it easier for women to divorce unsuitable husbands and laid the foundations for more progressive reform. He was reaching out to middle-class men who resented the intrusion of the state into their private lives and sought to retain the sexual double standard.
In his introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition, John Halperin accurately describes the novel as being about “the pathology of desire and indifference”. As such, it seems remarkably slow and tame when compared with the sensation novels that characterised the literary period. Henry James wrote “we slumber on gently to the end” and the Athenaeum found that “the story drags”. Trollope himself thought it unmemorable when surveying his oeuvre in his Autobiography (1883). The novel’s merits certainly do not lie in its originality of plot or incident, but his portrayal of Clara Amedroz is an early triumph of the realist school. As such, the novel can be seen as an experiment – The Fortnightly Review, the periodical in which it was originally serialised, was a proponent of realism. Although forward-thinking in his style, and also giving consideration to some of the social issues of the day, the novel’s conclusion is essentially conservative. Trollope perhaps speaks through Clara when she says: “I’m not prepared to alter the ways of the world, but I feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes.”
We’re pleased to announce that our new edition of Rhoda Broughton’s Twilight Stories has just been published. This edition features a critical introduction from Emma Liggins and suggestions for further reading. More details on the Twilight Stories page.
We’re pleased to announce that our new edition of Charlotte Riddell’s Weird Stories has just been published. This edition features a critical introduction from Emma Liggins and suggestions for further reading. More details on the Weird Stories page.
There can’t be many conditions more protean and elusive in nature than hysteria. Andrew Scull’s Hysteria: the Biography is, therefore, a considerable achievement. It is at once concise, detailed, eminently readable, and also peppered with pleasing literary allusions.
The story begins with hysteria’s uterine origins, and the ancient Greeks’ curious belief that it was caused by “the womb wandering around in search of moisture”. Yes, quite. Although it’s easy to be dismissive of such musings, not much progress was made in intervening centuries, and hysteria simply became an easy diagnosis for anyone who was behaving a bit oddly, and it often obfuscated underlying conditions such as tertiary syphilis, multiple sclerosis, tumours, and epilepsy. Hysteria was also big business, with a profusion of quacks touting their patented remedies. Sufferers of hysteria, and especially their families, desperately wanted to believe that is was a somatic, rather than mental, illness, and were willing to pay large sums of money for supposed treatments.
One “expert” who jumped on the eighteenth-century bandwagon was George Cheyne, a 32-stone Scot who had already built a successful career as (if you please) a diet doctor. He did a roaring trade in wealthy patients for whom hysteria was a fashionable disease. In The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope parodies such women who saw the “vapours” as a sign of superior sensibility:
Hail, wayward Queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th’ hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays.
Although many doctors were dismissive of hysteria as a medical condition, they were still happy to take their patients’ money. Whilst Cheyne’s were entirely ineffectual, other practitioners adopted a more hands-on approach. The self-styled gynaecologist Isaac Baker Brown thought that women were inferior creatures who were at the mercy of their reproductive organs. He declared that the origins of hysteria lay in that unmentionable habit, “peripheral excitement of the pudic nerve.” To prevent idle hands doing the devil’s work, his extraordinary solution was the remove the “cause of excitement” by means of a clitoridectomy. The only small mercy is that his unfortunate patients were by this time able to benefit from the use of chloroform as an anaesthetic. He claimed a 100% success rate with no recidivism. One can only assume that it diverted those poor women’s minds from whatever had been ailing them.
Baker Brown was eventually stopped by his “professional” brethren, but not because of the appalling mutilation he was inflicting on his patients; rather, they objected to his “tradesmanlike” habit of self-promotion, which brought medicine into disrepute. Only marginally less disturbing was the craze for ovariotomies, thought to be “therapeutic” for hysterical women. Again, the discontinuation wasn’t due to qualms as to the justification of such butchery; instead, moral reasons were cited: who would marry a woman who was unable to reproduce? If she engaged in sexual activity, it would be for enjoyment rather than procreation, thus making her no better than a whore.
Surgical intervention came to be replaced with the “rest cure”, which in many respects was no less pernicious in its effects. Silas Weir Mitchell treated many prominent figures, such as Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman famously discredited him in her novella The Yellow Wallpaper, in which she disturbingly described the effects of the complete absence of mental stimulation he prescribed, which brought her “so near the borderline of mental ruin”. The dislike he provoked in his patients was entirely reciprocated by Mitchell, who quoted Wendall Holmes in saying that the hysterical woman was “like a vampire, slowly sucking the blood of every healthy, helpful creature within reach of her demands.” Unfortunately, he was not alone in his opinion, and it is hard to fathom how infantilising his patients and denying them any form of intellectual nourishment would make them any happier with their already restricted lives.
The work of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, although profoundly misogynistic, did at least take a less gendered approach to hysteria, believing as he did that men were equally susceptible. He developed a method of diagnosis that involved applying pressure on a woman’s ovaries or squeezing a man’s testicles. I can’t speak for the boys, but imagine that approach would provoke hysteria in the most lucid patient. His most notorious patient was Blanche Wittman, dubbed the queen of hysteria, who played up to the role required of her. After finally being discharged sixteen years later, she became Marie Curie’s laboratory assistant, and had both legs and her left arm amputated as a result of radium poisoning. Another patient, “Augustine”, despite having suffered sexual abuse, was put on show in a state of undress. She endured this inhumane treatment for five years, before escaping dressed as a man.
This fundamental insensitivity toward any entirely understandable explanations for hysteria persisted into the twentieth century, thanks to Uncle Sigmund. His unwelcome contribution was to blame the victim for the abuse they suffered and attribute hysteria to feelings of guilt. Unsurprisingly, a decreasing number of patients were prepared to submit themselves to an expensive session on the couch with a psychoanalyst who would conclude that they were either mad or sexually depraved.
Hysteria, or at least reported cases of it, petered out during the last century and it was officially excised from the list of recognised disorders in the early 1970s. Interestingly, psychiatrists protested at this change, worried that they were losing a lucrative condition to treat. Of course, it persists as a term of abuse: a woman who expresses her emotions strongly is “hysterical”, whereas a man exhibiting similar behaviour is justifiably angry/upset.
Scull draws interesting parallels with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, although they are undermined somewhat by his apparent scepticism. The obvious similarity is the reluctance of the medical profession to take seriously a condition that is tricky to diagnose and even trickier to treat. However, I don’t think it’s helpful to suggest that CFS will come to be seen as a catch-all term for a reaction against modern life, in the same way that hysteria was thought to be the corollary of a woman fighting her biological destiny. There is already much research to show that CFS is a somatic disease. I hope the, dare I say, hysterical attempts to dismiss it as yuppie flu will soon seem as ridiculous as some of the treatments meted out to the patients of Cheyne, Charcot and Freud.
The Dead Man’s Message (1894) is an intriguing novella in which a vivisectionist, Professor Aldwyn, enters the spirit world after death and is forced to account for his actions on earth. Previously a rational man of science, he realises that neglecting his spirituality has had disastrous consequences.
The plot is refreshingly unconventional, with the protagonist dying at the beginning of the narrative. We see him leave behind his temporal husk and travel to the “other side”, where he encounters the animals on which he experimented, and also his first wife, Susan, who he treated abominably. He must do penance for his abuses, and also observe the happiness of his second wife (still on earth), who embarks upon a new life. Rather like Scrooge, his spirit guide escorts him back to earth so he can hear the opinions of those to whom he behaved badly during life.
Marryat, who herself suffered at the hands of a tyrannical husband, uses this gothic tale to suggest that bad behaviour in marriage will be punished in the next life. The spirit world that she depicts embodies a more egalitarian society in which women are no longer subordinate, and are “partners” rather than wives. Although she endured a miserable marriage on earth, Susan is rewarded with a loving partner and a brood of spirit offspring. She is also able to watch over her children who are still living, and her ghostly presence appears in a photograph taken of her daughter, warning her not to make an unsuitable marriage herself.
This edition also includes articles on the Science versus Spiritualism debate and spirit photography, and also extracts from Marryat’s non-fiction work, There is No Death. The introduction by Greta Depledge discusses the representation of vivisection and the novella’s wider context.
I would be the first to admit that Florence Marryat isn’t the greatest Victorian writer, but she is certainly one of the most interesting. The Dead Man’s Message is a fine example of her best work.
The Dead Man’s Message by Florence Marryat has now been published. It’ll take a week or so for it to appear on book retailer websites and catalogues. If you really can’t wait, you might be lucky enough to live near a bookshop that has an Espresso Book Machine. We’ll update you when the title is more widely available. To find out more, or to be notified when it hits Amazon, please visit the web page.
As with many Victorian writers, George Gissing’s life (1857-1903) reads rather like one of his novels. In some spooky cases, his life actually imitated his art, the fates suffered by some of his characters later befalling the author. Born in Wakefield in 1857, George Gissing’s existence was one of eternal struggle. Although a gifted scholar, the early death of his pharmacist father left Gissing perennially short of money. His extraordinary talent won him a prestigious scholarship to Owen College (now the University of Manchester) and it looked as though his troubles were over, with a distinguished academic career virtually guaranteed. However, his weakness for a prostitute called Nell was to be his undoing. Initially her client, they soon became lovers, but she still demanded increasing sums of money from him to fund her alcohol addiction. With very limited means, he was forced to steal on her behalf and was eventually caught when the suspicious college authorities laid a trap for him. He was expelled in disgrace and his family wanted nothing more to do with their black sheep.
After a short spell in prison, Gissing emigrated to Boston, hoping to put some distance between him and his disgrace. He supported himself through writing and teaching, proving to be gifted at both. His continued correspondence with Nell, however, meant he was unable to completely embrace his new life, and he soon returned to England. He settled in London and began eking out an existence through literary hackwork. Any chance of advancing himself was scuppered by the reappearance of Nell, who came to live him. Her anti-social behaviour meant they were continually having to look for new lodgings, and her drunken outbursts ruined his concentration. She would also regularly desert him to return to her old trade.
Despite these considerable challenges, in 1879 Gissing managed to complete his first novel – Workers in the Dawn. This achievement was tempered by his curious decision to marry Nell a few days before it was finished. Even more curiously, his action mirrored that of his protagonist, Arthur Golding, a talented artist from humble origins who marries an alcoholic prostitute in the hope of reforming her. Like Arthur, Gissing believed that marriage would provide a moral framework which would help Nell improve herself, and also give him the stability he craved. Unfortunately, Workers in the Dawn was not an auspicious start. No publishers were prepared to take a punt on this unknown writer, and Gissing was forced to spend £125 of his own money to get it published. This was at the time Disraeli received a whopping £10,000 advance for Endymion, thus illustrating the enduring bankability of celebrity. He earned a paltry sixteen shillings from sales of 49 copies, and the critical reception was distinctly frosty.
Undeterred, Gissing continued writing in the hope of achieving critical acclaim and financial reward. He separated from Nell, moving house several times in order to evade her, but she kept tracking him down (just like Arthur Golding’s wife). The quality of his fiction improved, and novels such as The Unclassed, Demos, Thyrza and A Life’s Morning received some favourable reviews. There was to be little financial reward, however – his perpetual impecunious state forced him to accept trifling flat rate fees, rather than a potentially more lucrative royalty. When success came, it was the publishers, rather than Gissing, who benefited. He worked himself ragged and had but a few hundred pounds a year to show for it.
After a particularly bleak period, a measure of relief came in the form of Nell’s death. They had been estranged again, and Nell’s body was found in a miserable room in Lambeth. She had died of alcohol, syphilis, cold and hunger. Gissing used the powerful emotion evoked by her tragic end to spur him on to new literary heights, beginning with his masterly account of urban decay, The Nether World. Although this work graphically depicted the plight of London’s poor, Gissing’s agenda was not one of reform, rather a Social Darwinist argument that the very lowest classes were irredeemably hopeless, and any intervention in their miserable lives would be entirely pointless. Gissing believed that social class was an indelible mark, and that any attempt to rise above one’s station in life would end in disappointment, or worse. Although an intensely depressing read, The Nether World is a welcome antidote to Dickens’s irrepressibly chirpy cockney sparrows, whose essential good nature shines through the grime of their poverty. There couldn’t be much more difference between the diminutive heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop and Gissing’s own Nell.
Although Nell’s death had meant freedom for Gissing, he struggled with his solitary state, threatening to appropriate the first “decent work-girl” he could find. The waspish H G Wells commented that Gissing sought another wife simply because he couldn’t afford prostitutes. His first biographer wrote that he met Edith Underwood when unbearable solitude prompted him to rush into Baker Street and speak to the first woman he saw. His intentions towards her were entirely dishonourable – he was too poor to marry an “equal”, so compromised on co-habitation with someone he considered beneath him. Edith, however, was unconvinced by the merits of a free union, and he was forced to relent and give her the dubious honour of becoming the second Mrs Gissing.
One could take a generous view of his behaviour by concluding that he was distracted by the completion of arguably his greatest novel, New Grub Street. As Halperin writes, it deals with the “collision of the creative impulse with material circumstances,” a situation with which Gissing was only too familiar. It is almost masochistic, therefore, that he exacerbated this collision by making another imprudent marriage. Many reviewers disliked the inherent pessimism in New Grub Street, but overall it was praised for its power and skilled execution. Although sales were brisk, Gissing had again accepted a meagre flat payment (£150), and the profits from one of his most successful novels lined the pockets of his publisher. He ploughed on with his writing, the time with the more commercially-minded bigamy novel, Denzil Quarrier, the completion of which coincided with the arrival of his first son. Gissing’s reaction to this addition to his family was characteristically mournful: “The baby has a very ugly dark patch over right eye. Don’t know the meaning of it.”
With another mouth to feed, Gissing’s financial situation became even more precarious. Even at his peak, he was averaging only £500 per annum. He was incredulous at the news that Mrs Humphry Ward had earned £18,000 (around £900,000) from David Grieve. Perhaps the resulting feelings of inadequacy prompted the idea for his next novel, The Odd Women. Although drawing attention to the predicament of those one million “surplus” spinsters who were destined never to marry, Gissing’s call for women to be educated was inspired by his belief that it would make them better wives for intelligent men (like himself). He well-publicised views on the matter were:
“I am convinced there will be no social peace until women are intellectually trained very much as men are. More than half the misery of life is due to the ignorance and the childishness of women…I am driven frantic by the crass imbecility of the typical woman.”
This outburst was perhaps provoked by Edith’s dislike of her husband’s novels and her inability to lose her “vile” London accent. Marriage seemed not to have a mellowing effect on either of them, and Gissing admitted defeat in 1897, leaving his wife and claiming that she had “behaved like a maniac”. Magnanimously, Gissing admitted that he too had been at fault in trying to remove her from her natural sphere, gallantly declaring that she “would have made an ordinary mate for the lower kind of London artisan.” His estrangement from Edith brought Gissing closer to H G Wells and his wife. The two authors were able to commiserate with one another over their often unfavourable critical reception. Gissing pondered as to the identity of the reviewers: “Are they women, soured by celibacy and by ineffectual attempts to succeed as authors?…They are beastly creatures.”
It was during the unlikely event of H G Wells teaching Gissing to ride a bicycle that he met the third Mrs Gissing, Gabrielle Fleury. She had written to him to suggest a French translation of New Grub Street and decided to come and see the author for herself. She was young, intelligent and beautiful – Gissing’s ideal woman – and he fell hopelessly in love. Of course, there was the inconvenient matter of the previous Mrs Gissing in London, and she had been making a nuisance of herself by attacking her perceived enemies with a stick. Although Wells snottily reminded him that his duty lay with his wife and children, Gissing followed his heart and pursued his seemingly futile relationship with Gabrielle. He knew Edith would never give him the satisfaction of a divorce, and he bemoaned the unfairness of the English marriage laws which trapped men in unhappy unions. Presumably, it never occurred to him that the law didn’t treat women any better. His egregious solution was simply to move to France and marry Gabrielle anyway, keeping the news secret from those back home (echoing the plot of his earlier novel Denzil Quarrier). Divine retribution came in the form of an infuriating mother-in-law, who made his life a misery and practically starved him. Although he was the first time happy in a relationship, his perpetual lack of money forced him to endure yet another unsatisfactory domestic situation. The lack of food had a disastrous effect on his already delicate constitution and he decamped Chez Wells to be fattened up. Meanwhile, in true Victorian sensation tradition, Edith was confined to an asylum.
Gissing’s health continued to deteriorate, with H G Wells and Gabrielle squabbling over his sick bed that the other was responsible for his condition, and his struggle finally ended in 1903. Although loyal to his friend during life, Wells became positively vituperative after his death, which is not entirely surprising behaviour from this unpleasant little misogynist. He embarked upon a campaign to undermine Gissing’s literary reputation, which had risen towards the end of his career with the successes of Born in Exile, The Whirlpool, In the Year of Jubilee, and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. The Times‘ obituary was rather equivocal, evaluating his output as a “series of books which, if they cannot justly be called great work, were at least the work of a very able and conscientious literary artist, whose purity and solidity may win him a better chance of being read a hundred years hence than many writers of greater grace and more deliberately sought charm.” Whilst Gissing had greatly envied Mrs Humphry Ward’s astonishing ability to turn out remunerative novels, she is largely forgotten today, while there are three major editions of Gissing’s works in print.
Gissing’s attitude towards women was nothing short of rebarbative, but he is one of the most extraordinary writers of the nineteenth century. His novels are just as interesting as his life, mainly because they are so overwhelmingly autobiographical. His obsession with sex, money, and class are on every page, and many characters share his tendency towards exogamous marriages. Where else in Victorian fiction do the wicked always prosper and the good come to a sticky end? In Hardy, perhaps, but Gissing’s creations seem more realistic. John Halperin’s biography manages successfully to praise the work without endorsing the opinions of the author. I don’t always agree with Halperin’s assertions, such as his wholesale dismissal of Workers in the Dawn, but it is refreshing for a biographer to be unashamedly opinionated, rather than attempting to give an illusion of objectivity. My selfish perspective as a modern reader is that we wouldn’t have the novels without the misery. Gissing must have known that too, else he wouldn’t have done such a good job of making his life so extraordinarily complicated. As he said himself, “Few men, I am sure, have led so bitter a life.” Few men, I am sure, have written about it so well.
Victorian Secrets publishes George Gissing’s Demos, Thyrza, and Workers in the Dawn.
Samuel Plimsoll MP (1824-1898) is a peripheral character in Victorian history, but his contribution to politics was immense. His Big Idea was to mark a line on the side of a ship to indicate the lowest level at which it might safely sit in the water. Although that might sound like plain common sense, opposition to Plimsoll’s proposal was colossal. Some ruthless shipowners would deliberately over-insure their vessels and send them to sea in a terrible state of repair. If the ship sank, they would receive several times its value, but the crew would meet with a salty death. Although such extreme cases were mercifully rare, it was relatively common practice for businessmen to seriously overload their vessels in a bid to maximise profits. Understandably, sailors were reluctant to crew these “coffin-ships”, but refusal meant three months’ imprisonment – the law protected the criminal, rather than the victim.
Plimsoll was effectively a whistle-blower. His campaign took 20 years, during which he was pitted against many of his Parliamentary colleagues with vested interests, who were keen to maintain the status quo. Like a Victorian Joanna Lumley, he whipped up national feeling, thereby shaming the cowardly Government into action. Opponents cried that profits would be affected, thereby causing job losses (the same tired arguments that were used more recently against the introduction of the minimum wage). Those who were expected to risk their lives had no voice at all, thanks to the limited franchise. As one account put it: “The appearance of a seaman in a court of law was as rare as giraffes in drawing rooms.” Life on the high seas was hard enough without an increased risk of death. One of the many illuminating anecdotes in the book is that of the weevil-infested ship’s biscuit scampering around the decks of its own accord. Plimsoll took it upon himself to speak for the underrepresented (and undernourished).
Samuel Plimsoll’s vocation was clear from an early age. When Oliver Twist was published in 1837, the 13-year-old Samuel was inspired to write a pamphlet entitled A Plan to Have Fatherless and Motherless Children Cared for Instead of Being Consigned to the Workhouse. This was the beginning of a long career that was to be devoted to standing up for the poor and oppressed. He initially made a name for himself by supporting the widows and orphans of miners killed in explosions. His indefatigable fund-raising efforts kept many families from the workhouse. Plimsoll was an instinctive campaigner and one who could quickly grasp an issue of importance. His 1863 paper Is it desirable to consolidate the existing railways of the United Kingdom into one system under government control? has a certain timeless quality. The chaos caused by a plethora of profit-hungry rail operators is apparently a perennial problem. He also spoke out against police brutality, and in particular the heavy-handed actions of those charged with controlling public protests. Later in life, he turned his attentions to the appalling conditions endured by transported livestock, proposing a simple solution (which was ignored).
He wasn’t just a mouthpiece for the causes he espoused, however – he attended protests and was known to leap from his bed when alerted that a coffin-ship was about to set sail. He direct action in these cases potentially saved hundreds of lives and won him many fans. It also won him many enemies, who were keen to silence this impertinent man, and did not care for the way in which he was reducing their profits and exposing their villainy to public scrutiny. Plimsoll became a regular defendant in libel cases and the high costs caused him to lose his house. Undaunted, he and his wife continued to tour the country, rallying support and raising awareness. His cause was finally vindicated by the passing of the Merchant Shipping Act on 12 August 1876. For the first time, it was illegal to knowingly send sailors to their deaths, and loading levels were to be marked on the outside of ships with the famous symbol – a circle with a line through the middle – that became popularly known as the Plimsoll Line. The symbol is even more well-known these days as the London Underground sign.
As one might expect, Plimsoll found it impossible to retire quietly from political life after having achieved his ambition. Although a devout Christian himself, he was appalled when Charles Bradlaugh’s atheism led to his being prevented from taking his seat in the House of Commons. Plimsoll saw this action as another example of Parliament’s “spirit of domination and intolerance”. As Nicolette Jones writes: “Bradlaugh found it easier to secure a place in Madame Tussauds, which admitted him in July 1880, than to be allowed to take the seat his electorate repeatedly voted him into, which did not happen until 1886.” How odd that Parliament should be out of step with public opinion.
The sincerity of Plimsoll’s beliefs was epitomised by the manner in which he buried his beloved wife, who died ten years after their great achievement. Although he paid for a private burial plot at Highgate Cemetery, he insisted that the family vault be placed amongst the poor. This bereavement was a blow from which it took him a few years to recover, but he eventually regained some of his former momentum, this time proposing prison sentences for rich men who raped poor women, referring to them as “crawling creatures”.
Such radical stances resulted in an equivocal response to news of Plimsoll’s death in 1898. His involvement in controversial campaigns had earned him a reputation as a trouble maker, and the common sense nature of his proposals gave them an air of inevitability which detracted from his considerable achievements. His method was encapsulated by another national treasure, Tony Benn, almost 100 years later:
We like to think that [social progress] is made by an amendment from a Back Bencher, and accepted by the Government. It is not like that at all. Social progress is made when public pressure builds up…My experience is that when people come along with some good idea, in the beginning it is completely ignored: nobody mentions it at all. If people go on, they are mad, and if the continue, they are very dangerous. After that, there is a pause and then nobody can be found who does not claim to have thought of it in the first place. That is how social progress is made.
Nicolette Jones’ biography is another welcome tribute to Plimsoll’s life and career. She has produced a meticulously-researched and highly readable account which is carefully placed within its historical context, along with a wealth of informative (but not excessive) detail. The book is an excellent example of how skilled biographers can bring our attention to once-prominent figures who have been unjustly forgotten. We need a few Samuel Plimsolls today to stand up for those who are crushed by the relentless pursuit of profit.
The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea by Nicolette Bell
My Trollope season continues with The Eustace Diamonds (1873), the third in the series of Palliser novels, and my least favourite thus far. The young and beautiful Lizzie Greystock traps the elderly and very wealthy Sir Florian Eustace into marriage, and within a year she is a widow in possession of a necklace worth £10,000 (around half a million quid): the Eustace diamonds. Although she is adamant that the jewels were a gift from her late husband, the Eustace family lawyer insists they were an heirloom and therefore not hers to keep. He embarks upon a quest to retrieve them from the clutches of the recalcitrant Lady Eustace, who boldly repels the intrusions of detectives and decamps to Scotland in order to protect her assets.
She cunningly contrives a fake robbery during which the diamonds appear to have been stolen, but are safely stashed in her strongbox. Although her supposed loss initially attracts sympathy, her enemies start to suspect her complicity. When the necklace is stolen for real by Lady Eustace’s maid, the memorably-named Patience Crabstick, she discovers that diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend after all and that she doesn’t have any others. Lady Eustace has by now lost her reputation and much of her fortune and must settle for marriage with an odious clergyman. Her attempts to net a more attractive husband fail when her various suitors discover that her beauty is entirely specious and that her tangle with the law has rendered her a social pariah.
I was really rather disappointed in Trollope’s portrayal of Lizzie/Lady Eustace. There is a strong Victorian tradition of shameless yet engaging villainesses, such as Lydia Gwilt and Becky Sharp, but Trollope’s creation lacks their appeal. His narrator spends far too much time telling us that she is thoroughly wicked, rather than giving her an opportunity to demonstrate it through her misdeeds. I actually ended up feeling quite sorry for her, despite her pathological inability to tell the truth, as to her the diamonds are simply a trinket to which she believed herself entitled. She is essentially hunted down by the male characters, who are primarily concerned with maintaining the system of inherited wealth on which their families are based. Lizzie is also contrasted with the ineffably dull but good Lucy Morris, a governess who is little more than a cypher. Lady Glencora Palliser and Alice Vavasor were far more successful female creations in the two previous novels, and former makes only a very brief cameo appearance in this novel.
Overall, the novel relies too much on description and ponderous dialogue, and not enough on narrative drive. Trollope has clearly borrowed a few plot devices from Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, but eschews its dramatic tension. Trollope believed that the reader should focus on character, rather than plot, commenting through his narrator that he “scorns to keep from his reader any secret that is known to himself.” This technique works well in the other novels, but seems to lose its way in The Eustace Diamonds. I believe Lady Eustace resurfaces in the next Palliser novel, Phineas Redux, so I am looking forward to discovering her fate, although hoping that she will be playing a minor role next time.
Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897) was rather overshadowed by a certain Transylvanian Count who made his debut in the same year. Although there are similarities between the two novels, Marryat’s vampire is female and drains her victims’ life force rather than their blood, making it a far less gory read.
Harriet Brandt, the daughter of a mad scientist and a mixed race voodoo priestess, is brought up in Jamaica on her parents’ plantation. Her father’s sinister tendency to perform vivisection on his slaves leads them to rebel, bludgeoning him and his wife to death. Harriet is spared and subsequently travels through Europe, meeting the eccentric Baroness Gobelli and finally settling at her home in London.
Although everyone is initially attracted to Harriet, people who get close to her seem to sicken and die. Women become deeply suspicious of her when their menfolk find her completely irresistible. They attribute her sensuality to her African heritage, and feel threatened by her apparent sexual availability. Although highly critical of her, they do not make the connection between her arrival and the sequence of deaths. This connection is made by Dr Phillips, a particularly rebarbative racist and misogynist, who believes Harriet has inherited her disposition through her maternal line. As a “quadroon”, he believes she is unable to escape her heritage. He tells her not to marry, in order that she doesn’t further pollute the British race.
At no point is there any proof that Harriet causes the seemingly inexplicable deaths; the reader is guided to that conclusion by the Doctor’s supposed medical authority. The other female characters accept his judgement unquestioningly, deferring to him both as a man and a member of the scientific establishment. The “scientific” basis for his claim that Harriet is a silent killer is that her slave grandmother, impregnated by her owner, was attacked by a vampire bat. He attempts to dehumanise mixed-race offspring, thereby expressing his fear of miscegenation. Eventually, Harriet accepts his diagnoses, leading to a tragic conclusion (which I shan’t spoil). She is a woman who wants only to love and be loved, but her “otherness” denies her security she craves.
One critic has dismissed The Blood of the Vampire as a “race-obsessed eugenic argument in fictive format,” which is a reductive reading. Although Marryat is certainly guilty of some toe-curling racism, this was an unfortunately prevalent feature of fin-de-siècle writing. There have been many obvious comparisons with Dracula, as both writers present a weak nation being invaded by a much stronger “alien” who tries to replicate itself. There is no evidence to suggest that Stoker and Marryat discussed their ideas, so it is likely this was a widely-held fear (think of H G Wells and his pesky martians). What makes Marryat’s creation different, however, is her apparent sympathy for Harriet, which is often overlooked by critics.
This psychic vampire, apart from representing the racial “other”, can also be read as the New Woman. She is financially independent, moves around freely, and is sexually liberated. It is this behaviour, as much as her heritage, that makes her appear dangerous and minatory. There is also a potential feminist reading of the metaphorical syphilophobia running through the novel. Dr Phillips is quick to diagnose Harriet as the problem, declaring that he can “tell at a glance” that she has inherited her mother’s “condition”. This incident evokes the behaviour of the medical profession when the Contagious Diseases Act were in force, where the communication of syphilis was assumed to be the fault of the prostitute – it was she who was stigmatised, rather than her priapic punter. Harriet’s stigma is clearly indicated by her surname of “Brandt”.
Like Harriet, Marryat was a strong, independent woman, with a decidedly un-Victorian attitude towards gender ideology. This made her something of an outcast, too, as did the Catholicism she also shares with her vampiric creation. Her distrust of medical authority is a leitmotif throughout her work, and the views of her fictional doctor should not be conflated with her own.
Hopefully, this new edition will make this work more widely-available for critical attention, as it deserves to be known as more than just the “other vampire novel”.
The second of Trollope’s Palliser novels, Phineas Finn, is also the first of his works with a predominant parliamentary theme. Although of relatively humble origins, the eponymous hero is elected MP for Loughshane through the support of his father’s old friend Lord Tulla. His father urges him to merely dabble in politics and focus on building a more lucrative legal career, but Finn is seduced by a life in Westminster and the circles in which he is now moving.
He soon falls in love with the well-connected and winsome Lady Laura Standish, but she has to plump for the odious, but wealthy, Robert Kennedy after using her fortune to pay off her brother’s debts. The ambitious Finn soon transfers his affections to the rich and mischievous Violet Effingham, who Lady Laura has in mind to marry her feckless brother, Lord Chiltern. Although Violet loves Chiltern desperately, she repeatedly refuses his marriage proposals, fully aware that he would make a bad husband. She also rejects Finn, knowing that her fortune means she enjoys more autonomy that Lady Laura and has no need to marry in haste. Although Finn is unsuccessful in his suit, Lord Chiltern takes umbrage at the appearance of a rival and challenges him to a duel, from which he escapes with minor injuries.
Finn’s fortunes change when he is awarded a junior ministerial post, complete with modest salary, but he is eventually forced to resign his position due to his strong views on Irish tenant rights. When a wealthy widow offers him her hand he is tempted, but decides instead to return to Ireland and marry his childhood sweetheart, thus forsaking his parliamentary career.
Although Phineas Finn is an effective protagonist, and the reader is introduced through his unworldly eyes to the heady atmosphere during the months leading up to the 1867 Reform Act, Trollope is at his best when drawing his female characters. Lady Laura’s sense of helplessness when she finds herself trapped in a truly miserable marriage is poignantly conveyed. As in many of his novels, Trollope addresses the iniquitous position of women in mid-Victorian society, but at the same time cautions them against rebellion. Lady Laura finally manages to separate from the increasingly tyrannical Kennedy, but her social status is severely compromised and she simply exchanges her husband’s authority for that of her father. She must also endure her estranged husband’s repeated attempts to legally enforce his conjugal rights. Violet Effingham’s lively wit and fortune place her in a stronger position, but her wish to be an independent woman is met with scorn by those around her.
Other than a brief cameo appearance by Plantagenet and Lady Glencora Palliser, the only happy relationship portrayed in the novel is the eventual betrothal of Finn and Mary Flood Jones. This forms a rather odd conclusion to the tale, as Finn’s return to Ireland and subsequent appointment as a Poor Law Inspector removes him from the centre of the action. Elucidation is to be found in Trollope’s Autobiography, where he admits to having made a mistake after not having thought through his hero’s fate. As the novel was originally serialised, he probably had to quickly think of a narrative expedient, without the option of going back and revising earlier chapters. Unfortunately, the normally helpful Who’s Who at the end of the text refers to Mary as Finn’s first wife, which would tend to suggest how he later re-emerges in Phineas Redux. That niggle aside, the Palliser novels, encapsulating as they do one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, are surely to be considered a truly great literary achievement.
Although “Victorian Sex Goddess” is a rather sensational title for a book, this account of the redoubtable Lady Colin Campbell by G H Fleming is refreshingly understated. I’m sure few writers could resist the temptation to ham up one of the most dramatic court cases in British legal history. He mainly allows the case to speak for itself, but includes a plethora of seemingly insignificant details which both delight and enlighten the reader.
Lady Colin Campbell was born Gertrude Blood in 1857 and enjoyed a liberal upper-middle-class upbringing. She developed into an attractive, intelligent and urbane woman. Unfortunately, she was also impulsive, agreeing to marry Lord Colin Campbell MP just three days after they met on holiday in Scotland. A whirlwind romance ensued, followed by elevation into high society. Marital felicity was not to be her lot, however. Lord Colin, it appeared, had knowingly infected her with syphilis. The delicate state of his lower portions meant that they had initially refrained from sexual relations, but after a few months, Lord Colin handed his wife a note from his doctor stating that intercourse would be beneficial to his health. Hardly a billet-doux. As a husband’s conjugal rights were paramount, she consented.
Unsurprisingly, Lord Colin’s illness overshadowed the marriage, and the relationship quickly broke down. He was an irascible patient and frequently violent towards his nurses. Lady Colin, understandably, kept her distance and tried to build an independent life for herself. It is hard to imagine that she would have agreed to marry Lord Colin had she know the full truth regarding his medical background and the risk it posed to her. Of course, it was unseemly for a woman to be even vaguely aware of such matters. As she tried to estrange herself from him, he simply asserted his legal mastery over her and endeavoured to force her to leave the marital home. Had she done so, she could not have sued for maintenance, which would have left her destitute. Wives were unable to take this action until the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1886. Furthermore, choosing this course would have suggested that the blame lay with her and placed her in an invidious position.
The law did partially come to Lady Colin’s rescue. During a court hearing in March 1886, the judge was convinced that Lord Colin had infected her with syphilis and granted a decree of separation, a decision that was upheld on appeal. Lady Colin moved in with her parents, and the recently passed Married Women’s Property Act meant that she retained control over her own modest financial resources. Before 1882, they would have been automatically ceded to her husband on marriage.
Lord Colin was outraged by her defiance and pledged to ruin her reputation in a full divorce trial, knowing that her behaviour would be viewed by many to be unwifely. He accused her of adultery with a Duke, a General, a surgeon, and London’s fire chief (not at the same time), whilst she countered with charges of adultery and cruelty. At that time, wives could not divorce their errant husbands on grounds of adultery alone – it had to be “aggravated” by cruelty or desertion, this double standard having been enshrined in law by the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Lady Colin’s counsel argued that Lord Colin knowingly infecting her with syphilis constituted cruelty.
What followed was a forensic examination of an upper-class marriage. The case stretched over eighteen days during the final weeks of 1886 and saw a procession of more than fifty witnesses and a barrage of revelations concerning both parties. Fleming has carefully assembled a transcript from over forty newspaper reports and presented it with illuminating, yet unobtrusive, commentary. Fortunately, the quality broadsheets of the day tended to quote considerable chunks of court cases verbatim. The nineteenth-century tabloids, on the other hand, were obsessed with Lady Colin’s sexuality, one describing her as a “sex-goddess”, and another declaring that she possessed “the unbridled lust of Messalina and the indelicate readiness of a common harlot.”
Some witnesses extolled Lady Colin’s intellectual virtues, which actually did her more harm than good. The gentlemen of the jury (for there were no ladies at that time) were likely to be unimpressed by a woman defying her conventionally prescribed role. Her involvement in good causes also counted against her, the prosecution thundering that: “A married woman with a husband is better employed looking after him than in attending forty charitable concerts in the course of a year.” Although Lady Colin’s QC described how unbearable life with her husband had become, public opinion decreed that she should submit to him unquestioningly. Lord Colin was clearly upholding a husband’s right to behave badly with impunity, whilst his wife was far ahead of her time in believing there were limits to what she should reasonably be expected to tolerate.
The jury took some considerable time to reach a verdict, but eventually cleared both Campbells of adultery. As that was the only grounds for divorce at the time, they had to content themselves with a legal separation. Although her reputation had taken a considerable battering, Lady Colin was officially exonerated and she smiled as she left court. Lord Colin (or at least his father) was landed with a legal bill of £20,000 and soon departed for an undistinguished career at the Bar in Bombay.
Lady Colin did a much better job of reinventing herself, although she never quite escaped the notoriety of having been part of the longest-running divorce case ever seen. She found herself a modest apartment and embarked upon a varied and prolific career in journalism, also writing several novels and a play. She espoused such causes as the introduction of cycle lanes and equal smoking rights for women. She could easily have settled for a quiet life of penitence and reflection, but instead continued to push the boundaries. Lord Colin died of pneumonia in 1885, leaving Lady Colin free to marry, an opportunity of which she declined to avail herself. Debilitating rheumatism left her increasingly reclusive and she died in 1911 at the age of 53. Ahead of her time, as ever, she opted for cremation over the more traditional burial.
As this book focuses on the trial and its background, there is only brief consideration given to her subsequent career. Happily, a spot of Googling has shown that a full-length biography by Anne Jordan is forthcoming. Lady Campbell should be remembered for more than just her unfortunate choice of husband.
Lady Colin Campbell: Victorian Sex Goddess by G H Fleming
Referred to by G A Sala as “that remarkable and eminently disagreeable fiction”, Caroline Clive’s Paul Ferroll is a rare example of a unique novel. Published in 1855, it could be described as an early sensation novel with a strong element of psychological drama.
Although the eponymous Ferroll is the embodiment of a successful Victorian gentleman – he is an eminent author, respected magistrate and friend of the local gentry – there is a cold-blooded killer lurking beneath the respectable exterior. The reader gradually learns that he murdered his first wife in order to marry his true love, Elinor, with whom he goes on to have a daughter. Although his neighbours gossip about the unseemly haste with which he re-marries, they cannot imagine that a man of his standing could have committed such a crime. Instead, a servant is charged then acquitted, and subsequently emigrates to Canada in order to escape the scandal. It is the return of this servant after eighteen years that prompts Ferroll to publicly confess his crime. Although sentenced to death at the conclusion of a dramatic trial, he manages to escape to a new life in Boston.
Murder plots, of course, are not unusual during this period. However, the extraordinary element of this novel is that the author fails to condemn the actions of the murderer. The reader is forced to act as judge in the complete absence of any authorial guidance. The other characters judge him, but are swayed by his social status into exonerating him. Readers were used to neatly resolved narratives, where the good ultimately prospered and the wicked came to a sticky end, so reading Paul Ferroll was a profoundly new and destabilising experience.
The clever construction of the novel excited much admiration, but critics were horrified by Ferroll’s ability to escape punishment for his crime. Public opinion was so strong that Caroline Clive in the fourth edition added a chapter in which he was brought to his death. She also published a prequel, Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife, showing how he had been driven to murder by the unreasonable behaviour of his first wife. Beyond the scandal it caused, the novel had a powerful legacy, as its influence is clear in the work of authors such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
It is odd there hasn’t been a major edition for many years. Valancourt Books‘ offering, therefore, is particularly welcome, with its characteristic wealth of contextual material. The introduction by Adrienne E. Gavin is illuminating on the relatively unknown life of Caroline Clive, which reads like a Victorian novel in itself. Born to an MP and his wife in 1801, Clive was left lame by polio at the age of two. Elizabeth Barrett Browning rather uncharitably described her as “the ugliest woman I ever saw in my life”. Despite this apparent disadvantage, she won the heart of a handsome man, inherited some money, and led a deliriously happy life for many years. Happiness turned to tragedy, however, when a series of accidents left her seriously injured and in a wheelchair. A severe stroke then left her with severe paralysis, putting an end to her writing career. She was fatally injured when her dress caught fire in her library, and the newspapers that were surrounding her created an inferno. A tragic end to an exceptional talent.
Paul Ferroll by Caroline Clive
I was prompted to seek out The Mysterious Marie Corelli – Queen of Bestsellers after reading The Sorrows of Satan. Quite apart from the astonishingly narcissistic writing style, I was tantalised by the short accompanying biography, which suggested a fascinating and contradictory life. Although an independent and successful woman, she vehemently opposed women’s suffrage, referring to the Suffragettes as “Ladies who scream”. Her novels portray marriage as the desideratum of all girls, yet she chose to share her life with another woman, Bertha Vyer.
It was known that she had been adopted by the poet and journalist Charles Mackay, but manuscripts unearthed after her death suggest he was actually her biological father, and that she had been born illegimately. In order to hide her “shameful” past, she claimed Italian lineage and appropriated the name Corelli. Her real name was the more prosaic “Mills”. After the death of her mother, money was tight and she approached the publisher Bentley & Son with a proposal for a novel called Lifted Up. It was accepted and later published under the title of A Romance of Two Worlds. Although Oscar Wilde was utterly charmed by it, critics were dismissive of her “ridiculous ideas”. However, this Italian writer with a mysterious past captured the public’s imagination and it was a huge success.
A number of other triumphs followed, and Miss Corelli was becoming a household name. She was rapidly acquiring celebrity friends, such as Ellen Terry, and Lillie Langtry asked to play one of her heroines in a stage adaptation. Even William Gladstone called at her home in the hope of meeting the great lady. Although her reputation was enormous, she was little over 4ft in height and would stand on a raised dais to greet her guests.
One of her most curious publications was My Wonderful Wife. A Study in Smoke. It is a sardonic look at “a few specimens of women of the future,” and concerns the “unnatural and strutting embryos of a new sex which will be neither male or female.” Corelli abhorred the New Woman, seeing her as symbolic of all that was wrong with the world. Like many of her contemporary women authors, she had an ambivalent attitude towards feminism. Although she believed women should be treated as intellectual equals, she still thought they should be subservient to men.
Perhaps it was the excitement caused by the patronage of the royal family that caused Corelli to overreach herself by publishing anonymously The Silver Domino, a satire lampooning other writers. Of Rhoda Broughton, she comments: “The liberties she takes with the English language are frequently vulgar and unpardonable. Familiarity with ‘slang’ is no doubt delightful, but some people would prefer a familiarity with grammar.” Mrs Henry Wood, she said, wrote “in the style of an educated upper housemaid.” An attack on Oscar Wilde prompted him to reconsider his earlier enthusiasm for her work. He is reported to have said in Reading Gaol: “from the way she writes, she ought to be here.” The controversy caused by the book resulted in an irrevocable rift with her publisher. Undaunted, she soon found another publisher and began work on her next book.
Barabbas is a bizarre retelling of the crucifixion story, in which she gives Judas a sister – Judith Iscariot. It’s hard to read her description of Jesus Christ without cringing:
Still as a statue of sunlit marble He stood, erect and calm. His white garments flowing backward from His shoulders in even picturesque folds, this displaying his bare rounded arms, crossed now on his breat in a restful attitude of resignation, yet in their very inertness suggesting such mighty muscular force as would have befitted a Hercules. Power, grandeur, authority and invincible supremacy were all silently expressed in His marvellous and incomparable Presence.
Again, the critics dismissed it and the public couldn’t get enough. It was even quoted from the pulpit, presumably seen as a vital antidote to the poison of decadent literature.
Changes in the literary marketplace further boosted Corelli’s success. It was announced that from the beginning of 1885 the circulating libraries and booksellers would both hold new titles at the same time, rather than the libraries being given a six-month headstart. This greatly increased sales of popular writers, and consequently, the initial sales of The Sorrows of Satan were higher than those of any previous novel written in English.
A period of ill health followed and Corelli showed her commitment to a woman’s right to a profession by allowing a female surgeon to perform a hysterectomy. She moved to a hotel in Brighton to convalesce, but was continually hounded by the press. Her doctor advised a move to the countryside, and she decided upon Stratford-upon-Avon. She soon endeared herself to the community by getting involved with local events and paying for the entire grammar school to go to the circus.
After a break of three years, she resumed her novel writing, but her relationship with the critics had not improved. She even trained her dog to tear up the negative reviews. Her relationship with the people of Stratford-upon-Avon was also deteriorating, her interference in the matter of a Shakespeare monument causing ill-feeling. The press waded into the argument and it became a cause célèbre. Although her argument eventually won the day, she was thought to have rather overplayed her hand and was christened “Quarelli” by one wag. A further intervention into town planning procedures alienated even more of her neighbours.
She aired some of her grievances in her next novel, God’s Good Man, and also criticised the Church, which she saw as insufficiently Christian. Needless to say, the heroine is a diminutive and misunderstood woman who is persecuted by her enemies. The local community were none too pleased with this further slight. Rather than adopting a low profile, she instead imported a Venetian gondola, complete with gondolier in full regalia, to transport her and Bertha on the River Avon.
Corelli became increasingly paranoid about her appearance and sought to carefully control her image. On one occasion she threw a blanket over her head when she spotted a camera lens pointing in her direction. She wanted the public to retain an idealised portrait of an eternally youthful author. After sitting for a London photographer, she was horrified to receive a set of prints showing a plump woman with a wrinkled face. She demanded that the photographer made alterations to give her a younger and slimmer appearance. It is an impressive feat of trickery in pre-Photoshop days.
Although Corelli was busy accumulating enemies, she did strike up an unlikely friendship with fellow author Ouida. Like Corelli, she was a successful writer, opposed female suffrage, and was as mad as a stick. Her extravagant lifestyle, which included keeping 40 horses and 30 dogs, left her in penury and she couldn’t afford to eat. Corelli launched a campaign to republish some of her work to generate royalties, but Ouida was horrified by the suggestion of charity and refused all help. She died of malnutrition six months later.
Just before the outbreak of World War One, Corelli wrote an impassioned anti-war tract. Her plea against “the ghastly holocaust of slaughtered bodies” still resonates today. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t chime with the jingoism of the day, and she soon threw herself into the war effort. Her initially commendable activities were overshadowed by an unfortunate (and unfair) conviction for hoarding sugar. The press reacted with glee, and she was deeply embarrassed. The resulting publicity led to her being inundated with letters accusing her of hypocrisy.
The stress took its toll on her, and by the age of 64, she resembled a woman of 80. It is telling that her 1918 novel The Young Diana features a woman who undergoes scientific experimentation in order to regain her youth. She wrote one last novel and then began to slow down, actually mellowing in her old age. Her long-held resistance to women’s suffrage was finally relaxed when she concluded that the sexes were equal in all respects: “By every law of justice they should have the vote – and I who, as a woman, was once against it, now most ardently support the cause.”
As her health declined, she also became more relaxed towards her enemies and had made her peace with many of them before she suffered a serious heart attack in January 1924. She passed away three months later. In death, as in life, she divided public opinion, with some mourning her passing, and others taking the opportunity to parody her. Her memorial was a marble angel pointing to heaven, which is probably how she saw herself. Her lifelong companion, Bertha, was utterly distraught but fought hard to maintain her posthumous reputation.
Although Marie Corelli was undeniably a difficult character, and in many ways an unlikeable one, Teresa Ransom has done her justice in this excellent biography. Although only too aware of her subject’s faults, she does an admirable job of showing her more endearing qualities and presenting a flawed human being, rather than a caricature. Corelli’s oeuvre is also thoughtfully evaluated and placed within its literary context. Although not the most talented novelist, Corelli’s ideas were ahead of her time and she also established an important precedent for authors to be appropriately remunerated for their labours.
The Mysterious Marie Corelli – Queen of Bestsellers by Teresa Ransom
Antonio Melechi’s Servants of the Supernatural is an eclectic selection of accounts describing the Victorians’ fascination with the supernatural, what he calls a “gallery of contrasting thumbnail portraits”.
Perhaps the most intriguing portrait is that of Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian who took the continent by storm with his theory of animal magnetism, which he believed was capable of “curing directly all disorders of the nervous system, and indirectly all other maladies.” People were queuing up to be healed, and Mesmer built a makeshift infirmary in an oak tree, personally magnetised by him. Incredibly, it housed up to 100 patients, who were tied in by a rope. The popularity of this bizarre treatment enabled Mesmer to franchise animal magnetism throughout France. Franchisees would be instructed by Mesmer and then receive a diploma authorising them to practice. One can but wonder how he would have fared on Dragons’ Den.
By this stage, Mesmer’s antics had caught the attention of the French authorities, who appointed a commission to investigate animal magnetism. Unsurprisingly, it was denounced as a “machine of incitement” and Mesmer’s reputation was in shreds. Animal magnetism was not quite dead, however. William Godwin translated the damning report into English, thereby sparking renewed interest in the “science”. Godwin’s son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was one of the first who sought to remedy their ailments through animal magnetism, although it was reported to have had no lasting effects.
Anxious to distant themselves from the discredited animal magnetism, British practitioners rebranded their science “mesmerism” and it was a palpable success. Not everyone was convinced. The Lancet led a campaign against what they perceived to be a dangerous activity, and Fanny Trollope, although intrigued, worried about the long-term effects on patients.
One strong advocate of mesmerism was the writer Harriet Martineau, who had been seeking relief from her painful ovarian illness with increasing doses of opium. Her friend and fellow writer, Edward Bulwer Lytton, recommended that she consult the mesmerist Spencer Hall, whose abilities were the talk of London. He did not have time to take her on as a regular patient, so Martineau asked her maid, Jane Arrowsmith, to repeat the actions she had seen him perform. She was soon able to effect a “radical amendment” to her mistress’ condition. Martineau’s pain diminished, as did her opium intake. She subsequently became an evangelist for mesmerism and wrote a series of letters for the Athenaeum, describing its many benefits.
Her enthusiasm for the supernatural was displacing her religious faith, and her increasingly agnostic sentiments offended many readers. The moral backlash was led by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, editor of the Christian Lady, who accused her of being the “polluted receptacle of an evil spirit”. Her critics felt vindicated when Martineau’s post mortem showed a “vast tumour”, thereby proving that mesmerism had not cured her. It had, however, eased her considerable suffering and reduced her reliance on opiates, a fact which they did not seek to explain.
Not everyone had such a positive experience with the supernatural. Catherine Crowd, author of The Night Side of Nature – a Victorian compendium of things that go bump in the night – was persuaded by spirits to leave her house as nature intended, her modesty protected only by a fan and a card case. On being asked to explain her appearance, she explained that spirits had guaranteed her invisibility. Her family promptly moved her to Hanwell Asylum. The celebrated medium Daniel Dunglas Home caused a rift in the Barrett Browning household after they attended one of his seances. Elizabeth was captivated by him and spiritualism generally, but Robert remained sceptical. Although not mentioned in the book, Robert later denounced him as a charlatan in his poem Mr Sludge, Medium. There is an excellent account of Dunglas Home in Peter Lamont’s The First Psychic – The Peculiar Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard.
Opinion on spiritualism remained divided between those who saw it an important new science and those, like George Eliot, who declared it to be “odious trickery”. Servants of the Supernatural successfully presents a variety of perspectives and case histories covering both spiritualism and more general beliefs in the supernatural. Melechi is something of a magpie, selecting interesting snippets from across the period. As such, the book is not a history of the Victorian supernatural, nor does it seek to be, but it would be appreciated most by those who already have a general understanding of the subject. I would point curious minds in the direction of Ronald Pearsall’s The Table-Rappers (a readable but highly sceptical account), Alex Owen’s The Place of Enchantment (focusing on the later period), and Janet Oppenheim’s comprehensive study The Other World. For those with a particular interest in the seance, Owen’s The Darkened Room is not to be missed.
Victorian Secrets publishes Georgiana Houghton’s Evenings at Home in Spiritual Seance.
Marie Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is possibly the oddest novel I’ve ever read. And that’s saying something. The plot concerns Geoffrey Tempest, a struggling novelist, who unexpectedly inherits £5 million from a distant relative. This stroke of good fortune coincides with a visit from Prince Lucio Raminez, who the reader soon realises is the eponymous Satan. Tempest unwittingly makes a Faustian pact, and the life of which he could once only dream finally becomes a reality. He marries a much-celebrated society beauty, Lady Sybil Elton, and is able to buy them an idyllic home in the countryside. His new-found wealth also brings fame, thus ensuring an eager market for his novel.
All is not rosy, however. Lady Sybil has been corrupted by reading New Woman novels, and she wantonly offers here body to Raminez (aka Satan). Although he rebuffs her, their confrontation is overheard by an appalled Tempest. He insists on an immediate separation, and the ruined Sybil poisons herself. Tempest eventually realises that his “success” has come at a high price. His wife’s beauty is entirely specious, and his novel is a bestseller purely because of his notorious wealth. He can’t help but compare his wife with his neighbour, the saintly Mavis Clare, who writes wholesome Christian stories. He had once written an excoriating review of one of her novels, but is overcome with contrition when he meets her. She is a tiny angelic figure who exudes goodness and suffers undeserved abuse at the hands of critics. Only she is able to uncover the true identity of Raminez, and thus the destruction of Western civilisation is narrowly averted by a diminutive authoress. In an exciting denouement on Raminez’s yacht Flame, Tempest renounces suicide and with it his fortune. On his return to shore, he discovers that his millions have been embezzled by the accountants. He is forced to resume the humble existence of an impecunious writer, but is inspired by the fine example of Mavis Clare.
John Sutherland refers to The Sorrows of Satan as Corelli’s “most extravagantly narcissistic romance”, and it’s easy to see why. Mavis Clare is a thinly disguised portrait of the author herself, and she uses the novel to attack her many perceived enemies. Although Corelli vehemently denied that Mavis Clare was a self-portrait, they shared the initials which were the trademark gold monogram on her book covers. Like Mavis, Corelli was poorly received by critics, although her phenomenal book sales proved her perennial popularity. Reviewers of such organs as the Athenaeum are denounced as failed novelists who have no idea whereof they write. She also rails against her fellow novelists, most of whom she sees as morally corrupt. Although she is careful not to use specific examples, her charge that “polygamous purity is the ‘new’ creed” is likely to refer to Tess of the D’Urbervilles, with its subtitle ‘A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented’. Corelli liked novels to be morally unambiguous. Mavis disapproves of the circulating libraries, and Lady Sybil’s one redeeming feature is that she buys books, rather than borrowing them. Although the objection Mavis voices to library books is that they spread infection, Corelli was mainly concerned that the money should end up in her pocket, rather than Mr Mudie’s. She also stipulated that no review copies of her novels should be sent out, safe in the knowledge that the periodicals would buy them regardless and thus add to her already considerable coffers.
Mavis Clare is the most curious literary creation, and indeed the first ever Mavis. The name means “song thrush” and had never before been used. Geoffrey Tempest, as narrator, declares: “at rare intervals God makes a woman of genius with a thinker’s brain and an angel’s soul”. He also in a moment of despair sees “an angel floating towards me on pinions of light, with the face of Mavis Clare”. Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel was based on the life of Corelli, and I can only imagine this novel was part of the inspiration. She sets herself up as a paragon of virtue and an antidote to the poison of New Woman novelists: “the self-degrading creatures who delineate their fictional heroines as wallowing in unchastity, and who write freely on subjects which men would hesitate to name, and unnatural hybrids of no-sex.” She voices contemporary fears of fin-de-siecle degeneration, believing there will be a “new sex which will be neither male nor female” and lambasting the “tomboy tennis-players and giantesses of the era”. Lady Sybil confesses that her failure to adapt to marriage and inability to feel has been caused by all the novels pointing out the inadequacies of such unions. The consequences of the ensuing apathy are Armageddon. Raminez reveals that “the world is a veritable husk of a planet; humanity has nearly completed all its allotted phases, and the end is near.” I suspect Corelli thought the end came in 1924, when she laid down her pen for the last time.
George Grossmith (1847-1912) is, of course, cherished by the nation for having penned the inimitable The Diary of a Nobody with his younger brother Weedon. It is less well known that he was a talented entertainer, appearing in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and also touring with his own show. Tony Joseph, in George Grossmith: Biography of a Savoyard, illuminates all areas of his life and career, giving a sense of his inestimable contribution to nineteenth-century culture.
Grossmith’s father, known as George I, was a Bow Street court reporter and also enjoyed giving public performances, particularly readings from Dickens’ novels. It was rumoured that his delivery was even better than that of the novelist himself. George Junior was to follow in his footsteps, both as a court reporter and in his love of entertaining an audience. He was devastated when George I died at his club following a suspected stroke. It is unfortunate that the news was broken to his wife in a rather thoughtless (although comic) manner. The club factotum announced on her doorstep: “I’ve come to tell you your husband’s dead, here’s the sausages we found in his pocket, and would you mind paying sixpence for having the handkerchief laundered one of the members put over his face.” History does not tell us the provenance of the sausages.
Although Grossmith derived little enjoyment from his court reporting, he was able to use his experiences to good effect by writing comic sketches for Punch. However, even this work wasn’t entirely fulfilling, and Grossmith finally indulged his great love of performance by becoming a pianist and entertainer. One of his early ventures was a tour with one Florence Marryat. Marryat was a prolific novelist, playwright, spiritualist, magazine editor, actress and singer, and also happens to be the subject of my doctoral thesis. Grossmith’s biographer describes her as: “galleon-like in appearance and movement, she had a presence that, to put it at its lowest, commanded attention.” She was clearly what Trollope has referred to as a “woman of altitude”. Their show was called Entre Nous and comprised a selection of Grossmith’s piano sketches, alternating with scenes and recitations in historical costume. The finale was a 25-minute play called Cups and Saucers, featuring two characters: Mrs Emily Nankeen Worcester and General Deelah. The tour took them around the United Kingdom and Ireland, with a mixed reception. A train journey between venues brought them face to face with one of their harshest critics, who decided to lecture them on the evils of intemperance and the blessings of prayer. An infuriated Florence Marryat pointed out that they were evils and blessings “of which we were all perhaps perfectly well aware but did not choose to have expounded to us by an impertinent stranger.” Quite.
The tour led to Grossmith being offered a few other engagements, but his big break came when a certain Arthur Sullivan (partner of the equally famous Gilbert) invited him to take the eponymous role in their new opera, The Sorcerer. This was the start of a long and fruitful relationship with the kings of comic opera. Grossmith didn’t miss a single night of The Sorcerer and clocked up 195 performances of H M S Pinafore. He was seemingly indefatigable and threw just as much enthusiasm and brio into the later operettas Patience, Iolanthe and Princess Ida. In Patience, Grossmith played Bunthorne, a poet closely modelled on Oscar Wilde, to great critical acclaim. He “passed from lackadaisical affectation to most exaggerated melodrama with humorous effect.” His performance in The Mikado was also celebrated and was recently portrayed in the film Topsy Turvy. Grossmith was perhaps not the most naturally talented of singers, but his stage persona was extraordinary and he made a vital contribution to the phenomenal success of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sadly, a row over alleged over-acting brought an end to his career at the Savoy Theatre.
Although that was a sad day for British opera-goers, it was a glorious day for literature, as Grossmith turned his attention to the creation of another comic character: Mr Charles Pooter. The Diary of a Nobody was originally serialised in Punch, the first installment appearing in May 1888, and it has delighted readers ever since. The biography lists the events from Grossmith’s own life which influenced the mishaps and solecisms of Mr Pooter. The oft-quoted “I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat” was inspired by the young Grossmith’s encounter with his father, who had accused him of drinking: “I bowed to my father with stilted politeness. But as I approached the door I most unfortunately caught my foot in the rug and absolutely rolled on the floor…”. He also used the Diary to parody his former partner, Florence Marryat. Her book There is No Death is referred to as There is No Birth by Florence Singleyet. We don’t know what she thought to this egregious pun, but she had already taken a pop at him in her earlier work, Tom Tiddler’s Ground.
This literary success was followed by a return to the comedy circuit. Recent developments in theatre had provided a new wealth of materials, and Grossmith created a piece called The Ibsenite Drama:
She: Don’t keep secrets from me. Are you still ill?
Dollghost: I am more than ill – I am dying.
She: You never told me that – you know that I am dying. Don’t keep secrets from me. Why are you dying?
Dollghost: I am dying because – because – it is hereditary.
By this time, history had repeated itself and another George Junior was in the ascendant, this time Grossmith’s eldest son. Although proud of his achievement, Grossmith Senior had to cope with the fact that he was now famous for being someone else’s father. The death of his beloved wife in 1905 was another blow. Ever the professional, he distracted himself by embarking upon a farewell tour which was punctuated by ill health. Although still relatively young, his thousands of performances had caught up with him, and he looked and felt much older than his years. His last show was to be in Brighton, and the Brighton Gazette reported: “Never in our experience has he been in better form. Never has he displayed a prettier wit or launched his satiric arrows with truer aim.” Perhaps such plaudits made him decide this was a good point at which to bow out. He retired to Folkestone and devoted his remaining energies to writing his memoirs. He died at 2am on 1st March 1912, anxiously awaiting a telegram to tell him whether George Junior had been accepted by the Beefsteak Club. His passing was mourned at Kensal Green Cemetery by the great and good of the theatrical world, and his life is celebrated every time someone reads of Mr Pooter painting his bath.
When Aubrey Beardsley died in 1898, he was aged just 25. Although his career was tragically short, his work epitomises the Fin de Siècle, with its decadent, and sometimes shocking, figures. Beardsley was born in Brighton in 1872, in the home of his maternal grandparents. Although his immediate family moved to London soon afterwards, he retained his affinity with Brighton, attending the Grammar School while staying with his aunt. His school days are described as being unusually happy, and he benefited from the tutelage of the dynamic and progressive headmaster Ebenezer Marshall. Marshall pushed both pupils and teachers to achieve their full potential, and he had the reputation of a slave driver: “He refused to countenance the establishment of a ‘staff room’, considering that his teachers should be out among their pupils, not skulking in a den consuming tea and digestive biscuits.”
Beardsley’s development was also influenced by his faith. He attended a small, understated church in the Hanover area of Brighton, two streets from where I live. My initial delight at discovering this fact was tempered by the biographer’s description of a “poor area of mean two-storey terraces.” Although the exterior of the church is unremarkable, resembling a medieval barn, the interior features decorations and stained glass by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones greatly influenced Beardsley’s early work and also became his champion. He urged him to devote his evenings to studying at art school while continuing to earn a living as an insurance clerk, a job he despised. Beardsley’s illustrations for Malory’s Morte D’Arthur were thought to be highly derivative of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but they also demonstrated his rare talent. William Morris, however, was distinctly unimpressed, fulminating that “a man ought to do his own work”.
His growing reputation led Beardsley into the fashionable world inhabited by the likes of the literary hostess Ada Leverson, whom Oscar Wilde described as ‘The Sphinx of Modern Life’ and ‘the wittiest woman alive’. Commissions came flooding in, including one to illustrate George Egerton’s seminal Keynotes. When Punch later parodied the work as ‘She-Notes’ by Borgia Smudgiton, Beardsley’s fame was assured. Although apparently heterosexual, Beardsley enjoyed the homosexual milieu, and also had a tendency to go out “dressed up as a tart”. His fascination with both androgyny and sexuality in general outraged some areas of society. One publisher, fearful of legal action, took to examining the pictures with a magnifying glass, sometimes spotting non-existent obscenities and missing some of the more obvious sexual imagery.
In 1893, Arthur Symons published an article on ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, thus crystallising ideas of what decadence comprised, and establishing a movement that could be both followed and attacked. The most famous embodiment of the decadent period was The Yellow Book, first published in April 1894. The yellowness was a deliberate ploy to link it with French novels, which were produced in distinctive yellow wrappers. French novels had a reputation for being scandalous and outre, qualities Beardsley and his colleagues wanted to emulate. The chief object of The Yellow Book was to protest against “the story picture” in art and “sloppy sentimentalism and happy endings” in literature. As his biographer writes, Beardsley had established himself at the “vortex of modernity”. His work encompassed the New Drama, the New Woman and the New Art – movements Punch referred to collectively as the ‘New Newness’. The Yellow Book was referred to as a “mighty glow of yellow”, as though “the sun had risen in the West.” Not all responses were as enthusiastic, however, the Spectator denouncing the “jaundiced-looking indigestible monster.” Granta thought is no more than “a collection of semi-obscene, epicene, sham erotic and generally unimportant literary and artistic efforts,” and others demanded an Act of Parliament to “make this sort of thing illegal.” The controversy, unsurprisingly, fanned the flames of publicity and ensured high sales for the first edition.
Beardsley’s name soon became inextricably linked with The Yellow Book and decadence in general. Although this made him a figurehead for all that was new and exciting, it also made him a target for the inevitable backlash. Decadence became the symbol for all that was wrong with society, and the overtly sexual nature of Beardsley’s creations was seen as an expression of its malaise. Burne-Jones declared his former protégé’s drawings to be “immoral”, and his family were appalled. Beardsley had been careful to avoid any formal association with Oscar Wilde, although he saw him socially. Being linked with such a notorious figure was a dangerous business. Unfortunately, Wilde’s arrest for gross indecency found him with a yellowback novel under his arm, which was assumed to be The Yellow Book. Also, Beardsley had been unable to resist the temptation of illustrating Wilde’s controversial play Salome. His perceived association with Wilde was disastrous, with so many luminaries lobbying for his downfall, including Mrs Humphry Ward, described here as an “indefatigable busybody”.
Beardsley was forced to retrench and his former brightness was dimmed. A sporadic sufferer of tuberculosis, his health started to decline and the overwhelming sense of his own mortality prompted a period of religious contemplation and an eventual conversion to Catholicism. He spent some time convalescing in France, not far from the diminished Oscar Wilde, who was masquerading under the guise of Sebastian Melmoth. Beardsley deliberately avoided him in the street, still painfully aware of the dangers of being seen with a disgraced figure. He increasingly clung to his faith and tried to distance himself from some of his most graphic work, pleading with his publisher to destroy it. Fortunately for posterity, his publisher recognised his talent and quietly disregarded his request. We’ll never know what Beardsley would have achieved had he enjoyed a longer span on this mortal coil. However, he inadvertently left a lasting legacy and was a defining figure of the Fin de Siècle. Matthew Sturgis’ biography does justice to the life and work of the man and is also lavishly illustrated with some of his key works. There is much to interest both the general reader and those with a more detailed knowledge of the period.
Aubrey Beardsley by Matthew Sturgis
Mary Augusta Ward (1851-1920) is one of the many intriguing Victorian personalities who make the nineteenth century such a perfect place for academic rummaging. John Sutherland’s biography manages to successfully evaluate both the writer and the woman, with just the right balance between it being scholarly and accessible.
Ward was born in Hobart, Tasmania into a veritable Victorian dynasty: the Arnolds. Her grandfather was the infamous Dr Thomas Arnold of Rugby and her uncle was Matthew Arnold, affectionately known as Uncle Matt. Dr Arnold had an astonishingly strong work ethic, much parodied by Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians, and this both inspired and alarmed his family. Although he rather undermined his own teachings by dying at the age of just 47, he continued to exert a powerful influence over the other Arnolds. According to Sutherland, his “dead but inextinguishable presence loomed over their subsequent lives like some deity in a Greek tragedy.”
As is often the case, his strength of character was not inherited by his eldest son, Tom (Mary’s father), who was permanently tossed on the horns of a dilemma. His conversion to Catholicism scuppered his chances of a plum job in Australia, and the family were forced to move to England. His outraged wife vented her frustration by hurling a brick through the window of the local Catholic cathedral. Although Tom finally landed a job in Oxford and set up home there, Mary was banished to boarding school for eight years, while her siblings were allowed to remain in the bosom of the family. There appears to be no evidence to suggest why she was effectively quarantined, but her tempestuous nature might have been deemed to be a bad influence. There is one documented incident where she was discovered flinging buttered slices of bread at her governess. This exclusion during her formative years unsurprisingly left its mark on Mary, and she craved affection and approval throughout her life. Sutherland becomes rather too psychoanalytical at various points, seeing a father-daughter dynamic in all her subsequent relationships with men. I think he overlooks the fact that most women were treated as children and were naturally deferential towards men.
More plausible is Sutherland’s assertion that Tom’s weak character was “as malign an influence on his family as any wife-beater, drunkard, adulterer or gambler”. His tergivisations brought shame upon the Arnolds and seriously affected his ability to earn a living. Extraordinarily, he later converted to Anglicanism, only to again renounce his faith in favour of Catholicism. In the meantime, scant attention was given to his children, and the highly intelligent Mary received only a rudimentary education. She was clearly being prepared for marriage, and no other option was available to her.
Humphry Ward was one of seventeen children. His poor mother died at the age of 42, presumably exhausted. Like Mary, he would have received little attention from his parents, but did at least have the opportunity of going to Oxford. He became great friends with Walter Pater, and it seems that they enjoyed an unlikely romantic tryst in Sidmouth. Although not quite the useless cipher of a husband with whom many Victorian women novelists were lumbered, Humphry had an unremarkable career, and the family soon became reliant on Mary’s writing. He managed to eke out a living as a journalist, but would fritter away more money than he earned on largely unsuccessful art speculations. Perhaps to compensate for his failure, Mary was keen to subsume her identity into that of her husband – styling herself throughout her career as Mrs Humphry Ward – what Sutherland pleasingly refers to as a “chattel name”.
Her status as a writer was finally endorsed when she established that all-important room of her own when the family moved to London in 1881. It was here in 1885 that she conceived her most famous work, Robert Elsmere. She wrote to her publisher that she had the novel all planned and that she would take “five quiet months in the country to write it. It will be in two volumes.” Anyone who has ever had to produce a long piece of written work will be aware of the extreme folly in setting aside a block of time and banking on it being quiet. The gestation period of what she referred to as her “baby” was actually three years, and the first draft weighed in at an eye-watering 1,358 pages – around three times the length of the average three-decker. Consequently, she was forced to embark upon the painful journey of excising large chunks of the narrative, before finally publishing the novel in February 1888. Sutherland remarks that it took an inexplicably long time for reviews to appear. However, those who have read Robert Elsmere will know that even the revised version is still a weighty tome of around 800 pages, much of it dealing with theological debate, so the reviewers couldn’t really be expected to rush out a considered response within a few days. The Times called it “a clever attack upon revealed religion”, and William Gladstone’s copy was annotated with objections to Ward’s heterodoxy.
In the Victorian age, nothing was more likely to generate publicity than religious controversy, and Robert Elsmere became a runaway success. Mrs Humph made around £4,000 in royalties, which would today put her in the millionaire author bracket. As Sutherland writes, she became a “money-generating fiction machine,” earning around £45,000 over the next decade. She would have earned more if it weren’t for the absence of international copyright laws when Robert Elsmere was first published. Many cheap US editions were hurriedly produced to cash in on its success. Some were sold as loss leaders for just 4 cents, and other copies were given away free with every cake of Maine’s Balsam Fir Soap. Apparently, this special offer was supposed to convey the idea that cleanliness was next to godliness.
In addition to maintaining her prodigious literary output, Ward was also involved with a number of causes. She was the moving spirit behind the establishment of Somerville College, and chose the name as an homage to the mathematician Mary Somerville. She also masterminded the establishment of the Passmore Edwards Settlement, an invalid school, and by 1906 there were 23 special schools for disabled children. Unfortunately, her extraordinary achievement in this hitherto neglected area was greatly undermined by her rather repellent views in other areas. Like many people, she became increasingly conservative with advancing years and became manifest in her anti-Boer, anti-Home Rule and anti-female suffrage stance. It was the latter position that severely affected her transition from Victorian to Edwardian. As Sutherland writes, her “implacable crusade to deny women the vote was as offensive to most under thirties as a campaign to send little boys back up chimneys.” She became seen as an inveterate Victorian at a time when that epithet was entirely pejorative. Lytton Strachey mercilessly lampooned her, and Max Beerbohm reviled her as “Ma Hump”. Somerville College was eventually moved to disown her, as her ante-diluvian views were hardly compatible with an institution seeking the advancement of women.
Although rejected by the more progressive sections of society, Ward was embraced as a much welcome figurehead for the parliamentary anti-suffragists. Here was a successful woman who felt no need to have the vote. Indeed, she thought the very idea unseemly and cried “For Heaven’s sake, don’t let us be the first to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of Europe!” She helped establish The Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908 and campaigned extensively against the suffragists, also using several of her novels to criticise them. Although believing that women had no place in politics, she still saw fit to orchestrate her feckless son’s election campaign, writing his speeches for him and reminding him to wrap up warm when he was on the hustings. He was ridiculed as “the member for Mrs Humphry Ward”, and the Suffragettes would send him postcards after his anti-suffrage speeches saying “Mother will be pleased!”
The First World War was something of a mixed bag for Ward. She enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after writing propaganda such as England’s Effort, and her anti-suffrage work was placed on hold. However, there was little demand for her fiction and the new super tax relieved her of much of her fortune. Her husband and son did their best to relieve her of the rest. Her beloved homes in London and Hertfordshire had to be let to Edith Wharton and she never recovered her former social status. Her final triumph came when she successfully lobbied Parliament to make provision for physically disabled children in the Education Bill of 1918. One can only agree with Sutherland’s sentiments that she could have enjoyed many similar worthwhile successes had she not wasted 10 years trying to deny women the vote.
Ward’s body finally gave up on her in 1920, after many years battling debilitating pain and gynaecological problems for which she took liberal quantities of cocaine (“It works like magic”). Virginia Woolf commented: “Mrs Ward is dead; poor Mrs Humphry Ward; and it appears that she was merely a woman of straw after all – shovelled into the ground and already forgotten.” There is perhaps an element of truth in this characteristically unkind assertion, but Ward has left a legacy as powerful as that of her grandfather. Aside from her variable literary output (some of it truly great), she made laudable progress in the fields of women’s education and the treatment of disabled children. The Passmore Edwards Settlement still exists, now as the Mary Ward Centre, and Somerville College enabled women to educate themselves for paths other than marriage.
Unfortunately, these inestimable achievements have been overshadowed by her work with The Women’s Anti-Suffrage League. It seems incomprehensible to the modern reader that such a formidable woman would not wish to be enfranchised. This biography doesn’t offer any explanations, other than suggesting that she was simply seeking to please father figures. However, she was far from the only woman novelist to hold such views. There are obvious parallels with fellow anti-suffragist Mrs Oliphant, who was also required to be a fiction machine in order to support her ineffectual menfolk. I wonder whether they both dreamed of a life in which they could inhabit the traditional female sphere and were not relied upon as the main breadwinner? They share a certain nostalgia for an age which probably never existed, and also a resistance to the inexorable pace of social change. Although Mrs O hopped the twig in 1897, Ward was forced to face the onslaught of the twentieth century. Her inherent contradictions are what make her so fascinating.
Victorian Secrets publishes Mary Augusta Ward’s (Mrs Humphry Ward’s) Robert Elsmere and Helbeck of Bannisdale.
Having long been a firm advocate of Lady Audley’s Secret and defended it against charges of anti-feminism, I am delighted to discover that Mary Elizabeth Braddon has reworked some of its themes in her later novel, Thou Art the Man. Originally published in 1894, this work takes account of the prevailing discourses on heredity, degeneration and madness. This time, however, it is the male characters who are shown to be degenerate, and the female heroines turn detective in order to unmask the villain.
Sybil Higginson, a young heiress, is distraught when her cousin and lover, Brandon Mountford, is accused of a brutal murder. His epilepsy, which causes seizures and memory loss, means he is unable to defend himself with a suitable alibi. He escapes from prison and is thought to have perished in a shipwreck. Years later, Sybil, now Lady Penrith, receives a mysterious note indicating he is still alive. She decides to uncover the truth, with the help of her cigarette-smoking, horse-riding niece, Coralie Urquart.
Although the plot is a traditional Victorian pot-boiler, the way in which Braddon examines the idea of madness makes it particularly interesting. A number of perspectives are presented, from those who believe that epileptics are dangerous monsters, to others who think it is an illness that should be treated like any other. The idea of criminal responsibility is also explored, so Braddon must have taken an interest in the nascent science of criminology. Although such themes are given sensationalist treatment, it is never at the expense of characterisation. Braddon manages to both build suspense and present complex villains, such as the solipsistic vicar, and Coralie’s grasping and cynical father. Unlike the baddies in some of the works by earlier sensation novelists, they are depicted as weak men, rather than Vaudeville villains. Coralie herself is an intriguing, although not entirely flattering, portrait of a New Woman. Although this character does slightly undermine Braddon’s proto-feminist credentials, the fact that Sybil Higginson triumphs (I shan’t say more than that) over her weak male counterparts shows that the author was keen to avenge Lady Audley’s defeat.
The novel is complemented by a insightful introduction by Laurence Talariach-Vielmas, and the edition is of the usual high standard we’ve come to expect from the inestimable Valancourt Books.
Victorian Secrets publishes Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Henry Dunbar.
Sarah Grand’s Ideala is one of the early New Woman novels. The eponymous heroine grapples with the decision of whether to leave her domineering and adulterous husband for another man, or to become an elective singleton and reject the need for a normative relationship. The story is narrated by her friend Lord Dawne, who struggles to understand her need to question her role in society. He cannot understand why she would renounce the respectability and stability of marriage, but Ideala finds greater meaning in performing charitable works, writing poetry, and experiencing other cultures.
Ideala partly reflects Grand’s own experience, as she left her own unhappy marriage and established herself as a professional writer and feminist campaigner in London. The narrative explores how women sought ways to overcome the legal and economic restrictions placed on them by marriage. Ideala argues that the marriage laws should be reformed and takes issue with the oath of obedience required of women, describing it as “farcical”. She asks: “If men were all that they ought to be, wouldn’t we obey them gladly?” Indeed, there is much discussion of the inadequacy of modern men and the “death of manliness”, Ideala believing that all the best men went into the church and failed to propagate their superior genes. The marriage contract is shown to be one-sided, with men pursuing infidelities yet demanding loyalty from their wives.
In addition to the sexual double standard, women are also shown to suffer from not being taken seriously. Lorrimer, with whom Ideala falls in love, refuses to admit female patients to his sanatorium because he thinks all their problems are simply down to “sentimentality, hysteria and silliness”. There is dismissive talk of women novelists, who engage in the serious art of “making the worst ideas attractive”. Ideala complains that men condemn such books and insist that women should do as they say, rather than as they do. There is also a barely-concealed rebuttal of Eliza Lynn Linton’s attack on the “shrieking sisterhood”, pointing out that women shriek for a reason, usually because they’re in pain.
Lord Dawne believes Ideala has a responsibility to society rather than to herself, and urges self-sacrifice. She comes to agree, but from a rather different perspective, deciding to do good works in the community, rather than to uphold societal norms. This element was undoubtedly influenced by the much earlier Not Wisely But too Well (1863) by Rhoda Broughton, in which Kate Chester becomes a Protestant Sister of Mercy, rather than submit to the shackles of marriage. As it is an open religious community, she has much more freedom that she would have done as a wife. I’m rather pleased to have spotted this similarity, having asserted in my dissertation that Broughton’s work prefigured that of some of the New Woman novelists. Through her heroine, Grand also argues for greater education of women. She believes this would be a natural check on overpopulation (a less sinister manifestation of Grand’s interest in eugenics).
Apart from the important consideration of gender relations, Ideala is interesting in terms of its narrative structure. Grand uses a proto-modernist technique, and there is a marked departure from the Victorian realist tradition. Ideala’s consciousness is central to the novel and the reader sees both subjective experience and shifting perspectives. The first half of the novel is firmly modernist, lacking any form of plot, and mainly comprising Ideala’s stream of consciousness. Her thoughts are not always clear, a deliberate tactic on Grand’s part, as she wanted the “imperfections” to be studied. The reader witnesses the ingenue at the beginning of the novel undergo a teleological experience and become more worldly by its conclusion.
Molly Youngkin provides an informative introduction to another excellent Valancourt Books edition. A wealth of contextual information is included, along with contemporary reviews. The critical response was something of a mixed bag, with the Saturday Review describing it as “the story of a nasty-minded woman”. However, other critics praised the realist portrayal of Ideala’s dilemma, and Mrs Oliphant was a most unlikely advocate. Mind you, I have learned from rummaging in her earlier reviews that Mrs O will forgive a feisty heroine many solecisms, so long as she doesn’t succumb to the temptation of adultery. I’m was pleased to discover that both Ideala and Lord Dawne also make a cameo appearance in The Heavenly Twins, although I might have to spend a bit longer at the gym before I can manage that extraordinarily heavy book.
Victorian Secrets publishes Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book.
I think Trollope is just showing off. Apparently, he wrote Dr Wortle’s School (1881) in just three weeks. Admittedly, it’s a fairly slim volume, but even so, he’s still a pesky overachiever. The eponymous Doctor runs a successful private school and enjoys a good reputation in the fictional county of Broughtonshire. His life is severely disrupted, however, by the arrival of a new schoolmaster, Mr Peacocke, and his beautiful American wife. Although outwardly a perfectly respectable, although enigmatic, couple, the appearance of a stranger at the school gates heralds the revelation that Mrs Peacocke is a bigamist. Now, I’m not spoiling anything here, as Trollope ruins this plot element himself in the opening pages. He wanted to avoid the plot-driven style of the sensation novel and instead focus on the psychological drama.
There are mitigating circumstances surrounding the bigamous union: Mrs Peacocke believed her violent and alcoholic husband to be dead when she remarried. However, the good people of Broughtonshire are scandalised and Dr Wortle is placed in an iniquitous position. His character is reminiscent of the Vicar of Bullhampton, who has to navigate complex issues within the context of the moral absolutes dictated by Christian teaching. He counters the prevailing bigotry with his own policy of empathy and forgiveness.
The illuminating introduction by Mick Imlah suggests that Trollope based Dr Wortle on himself, and that the character of Mrs Peacocke was inspired by the Bostonian Kate Field, for whom he felt a deep affection (and possibly more). His portrayal of the unfortunate bigamist is deeply affecting. She is shown to be unremittingly good in order to avoid the reader’s censure, but without ever becoming dull, and is always poised and dignified in the face of prejudice. She resists the temptation to tell her antagonists that their hardness is as bad as her supposed impurity.
Trollope enjoyed exploring the narrative possibilities of bigamy. In the earlier John Caldigate (1879) he addressed the issue of whether a man is entitled to a sexual past, where a seemingly unblemished bridegroom is accused of having contracted an earlier imprudent marriage. This departure, to me at least, marks a slight erosion of the double standard which held a woman’s impropriety to be a far more serious matter than that of a man. Although many critics believe the sensation novel had died out by the end of the 1860s, Trollope was successfully perpetuating the genre until the 1880s, although imbuing it with more moral complexity and a greater depth of character.
I’m currently enjoying something of a Trollope Fest. This is a rather indulgent activity, as really I should be focusing on some women novelists. In my defence, I was reliably informed that The Vicar of Bullhampton was inspired by Trollope’s interest in the Woman Question.
An unexpected dip in her friend’s pond brings Mary Lowther to her senses, and she realises she cannot marry a man she doesn’t love. Although she is adamant, those closest to her conspire to change her mind and they ultimately come to regret it. This is one strand to the novel and, in my opinion, the least successful. Trollope did a much better job in Miss Mackenzie and Can You Forgive Her?, where he considered whether a woman should marry out of a sense of duty. Rachel Ray also saw a far more nuanced examination of the Woman Question. The authorial voice, reflecting, I assume, the opinion of Trollope, decrees that marriage is a woman’s inexorable destiny and she should not fight it. If only they (and also men) came to accept the fact, then life would proceed more smoothly for everyone. The novel was published in 1870, by which time other writers were highlighting the plight of the “surplus” women, for whom marriage was an unlikely prospect. It’s odd that Trollope appears to have taken a retrograde step, unless it was a personal backlash against his own earlier liberalism.
Those grumbles aside, there are some truly wonderful moments, such as the deliciously venomous epistolary feud between the eponymous vicar, Mr Fenwick, and the supercilious Marquis of Trowbridge. The Marquis repeatedly makes himself look ridiculous, whilst his more worldly son and heir is the embodiment of what the aristocracy must become if it is to survive. There is also the exquisitely drawn portrait of the marriage between Mr and Mrs Fenwick. Trollope captures perfectly their astonishment that not all unions are as felicitous as their own.
Indeed, Mr Fenwick is in a permanent state of bewilderment at the complexities of “modern” life. Religious teaching and clerical authority seem unequal to the task of dealing with reality. Fenwick’s parishioners prejudge Sam Brattle when he is accused of murder, and refuse to show Christian forgiveness towards his sister, Carry, when she renounces her life of prostitution. He is obliged to deal with a number of seemingly inextricable issues, solving some of them, but exacerbating others through his own stubbornness. The Vicar of Bullhampton is a delightful character, and I’m hoping he makes a cameo appearance in some of the other novels.
In writing Miss Mackenzie (1865), Trollope was attempting to “prove that a novel may be produced without any love,” but later admitted in his autobiography that the attempt “breaks down before the conclusion”. Margaret Mackenzie is an unlikely heroine, being both plain and middle-aged. I shall overlook the fact that at 34 she is described as being clearly past her best. After many years lodging with an older brother and nursing him through his illness, Miss Mackenzie finds herself the beneficiary of a £12,000 legacy. This sum produces a not inconsiderable income of £800 per annum, and she is suddenly a valuable commodity, rather than an encumbrance. Her other, impecunious, brother expects her to move in with him and his large family, seeing himself as more deserving of the fortune. Margaret instead moves herself to Littlebath, a fictional watering-place in the West Country, and establishes a life of her own.
From being an unremarkable spinster, Margaret soon receives the attentions of three importunate suitors, all of whom are desperate to get their hands on her money – some more transparently than others. In addition, the local Evangelical community of Littlebath, headed by the unyielding Reverend Stumfold and his rebarbative wife, “whose chief pleasure in life was browbeating her husband’s women parishioners,” are keen to tell Margaret how to live her life. Trollope’s comic portrait of provincial society is particularly successful, and it includes an interesting early portrayal of elective spinsterhood in Miss Sally Todd, who is said to have been modelled on the redoubtable Frances Power Cobbe.
Trollope is asking whether a woman has the right to exist in her own right, or should she simply subjugate herself to the needs of others. Miss Mackenzie struggles with this question, while those around her seek to control her money. She begins to hate her fortune and all the trouble it has caused. Her suitors all believe in their “right” to her wealth and are appalled by the idea of a woman being independently wealthy. Unusually for Trollope, there are many twists and turns in the plot, and Margaret’s fate is never obvious. However, the authorial voice makes it clear what is happening, thus allowing the reader to focus on the characterisation. Trollope does finally allow her to fall in love, although she does so unsentimentally. The working title for the novel was A Modern Griselda and she is referred to as Griselda several times, Trollope thus comparing her with the long-suffering wife in Chaucer’s The Clerk’s Tale. Although she engages the reader’s sympathies, she is no saccharine Dickens’ heroine. Her attitude to those she perceives as being beneath her in the social scale is unreconstructed, and this flaw makes her appear more plausible. Less convincing is the grasping Jerimiah Maguire, whose pronounced squint seems a superfluous indicator of his underlying malevolence.
It’s hard to know Trollope’s reasons for choosing the names Ball, Rubb, and Handcock for three of the suitors. In conjunction with the Chaucerian allusion, the novel consequently has a rather bawdy air. Perhaps this is why Michael Sadleir referred to it as “amusing but faintly sordid”. Readers, both contemporary and more recent, have objected to the ordinariness of heroine and some of the supporting characters, but herein lies the real charm of the story. Although the conclusion is, of course, normative (I shan’t divulge it), Trollope gives centre stage to an ordinary woman who wouldn’t have merited even a small role in the work of other writers – she is no Lady Audley or Lydia Gwilt. In so doing, he offers an intriguing commentary on the position of women in the mid-Victorian period.
According to P D Edward’s introduction, Trollope sent a copy of Rachel Ray to George Eliot, wondering what she would think of his “little story”. History does not tell us her response, but I suspect she would have enjoyed it, as it is not unlike her own Scenes of Clerical Life. He tried to confine himself to the “commonest details of commonplace life” but this anything but a dull novel.
It is set in the pastoral idyll of Baslehurst, a fictional village 40 miles outside Exeter. The local brewery, Tappitt and Bungall, is known for its “vile beer” and the late Bungall’s nephew, Luke Rowan, decides to take an active role in the business. His return is much to the horror of Mr Tappitt, who had expected him to be a silent partner, and Mrs Tappitt is none too pleased when he fails to sweep their eldest daughter off her feet. He instead falls for the charms of rustic ingenue Rachel Ray and sets out to woo her. Rachel’s widowed sister, Mrs Prime, is horrified by this development and seeks to thwart their young love.
The blossoming of their relationship is contrasted with Mrs Prime’s very practical decision to allow the local curate, Mr Prong, to court her. As their marriage looms, Mrs Prime worries (quite rightly) that her husband would assume all her wealth. Written in 1863, this novel appeared long before the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 and wives were not allowed to maintain independent finances, unless they possessed the means and nouse to organise a trust fund. Mrs Prime decides that seeking legal advice on the matter will simply erode even more of her modest income. She also fears that married life won’t be entirely congenial when Mr Prong refuses to listen to her views on the relative merits of the candidates in the forthcoming general election. Of course, one of the many specious arguments to justify the endless dithering over female suffrage was that women already exerted informal influence through their husbands. Mr Tappitt decides to vote for the candidate who supports his feud against Luke Rowan and refuses to listen to the reasonable voice of his wife.
Trollope cleverly examines both domestic and local politics through his intimate portraits of the people of Baslehurst. Their reaction to Jewish candidate, Mr Hart, is a fascinating examination of contemporary prejudices. Many voters decide to vote Tory on the basis that electing a Jew would be contrary to the teachings of the Church and also, like Mr Tappit, they clearly fear change.
As with many of Trollope’s novels, the Church is a central theme, and this time he turns his attentions to low-church Evangelicalism. I think it’s safe to say he didn’t approve of it. The Evangelicals are all depicted as bitter and rebarbative, and their names are indicative of their personalities – Mrs Prime, Mr Prong, Miss Pucker. The Dorcas meetings attended by Mrs Prime are filled with vulgar and humourless women, and Rachel refuses to accompany her. Mr Comfort, rector to a neighbouring parish, is shown to be a hypocrite who is more concerned with money than the spiritual needs of his parishioners. Although he does offer support to Rachel’s mother, his advice is misleading and causes her more anguish.
The ideas which Trollope explores mean that this novel is far from just a “little story”. Although it doesn’t compete with the complexity and intellectualism of Eliot, it is both charming and thought-provoking, and has further stoked my enthusiasm for his work.
After the Victorians is the type of book that demands to be immediately re-read on completion. Alas, there are so many books and so little time, I shall simply have to content myself with the nuggets of information that percolated through to my less than capacious memory. A N Wilson’s tome follows on from his masterly The Victorians, and many of the characters survive through to the sequel. It’s tempting to think that all the Victorians were conveniently erased in 1901, but many of them continued undiminished, yet slightly bewildered, into the new century.
Wilson has received much criticism for his eclectic style, but this is actually one of the strengths of the book. There have been many conventional, linear histories of the first half of the twentieth century, so his more opinionated approach is welcome. His style is engaging and thought-provoking. As a prodigious writer of non-fiction as well, his interest is piqued as much by the literary figures as by their historical contemporaries. He is something of a magpie, swooping on shiny facts, sometimes chosen for their interest rather than their relevance. If anything, this inspires the reader to delve further into the wider context, thus leading to a richer experience.
Critics have also derided Wilson’s decision to champion “minor” voices such as Hillaire Belloc. Again, this is part of the book’s appeal, as the reader is presented with a perspective other than that of the traditional historical protagonists. Indeed, Wilson is highly iconoclastic, singling out Churchill for particular consideration, and reinforcing our notions of the uselessness of some of his parliamentary predecessors. We are also reminded, lest we forget, that the reasons for war are often economic and based on a very shaky understanding of the issues at stake.
Incisive analysis of some of the major events of the last century are peppered with interesting facts such as that Rupert Brooke was killed by a gnat bite, the Titanic was described as “unsinkable” only after it had sunk, and Louis Mountbatten was known as “Mountbottom”. The reasons for the latter do not require further elucidation. I suspect the wide-ranging nature of the work means that some of the “facts” are questionable, and Wilson is not attempting a particularly objective study. His voice is always in evidence, giving a chatty rather than scholarly air. Particularly pleasing to me was his tendency to rewind to the nineteenth century in order to illuminate a particular concept or event. That might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I salute him for it.
After the Victorians by A N Wilson
One can’t help but be excited at the prospect of a fin de siecle novel featuring chapters written by 24 different authors. The Fate of Fenella was first serialised in the illustrated weekly The Gentlewoman in 1890 and then published in three volume format two years later. Contemporary reviewers described it as a “curious mosaic”, as it was a collaborative work written with no consultation between the myriad writers. They included Helen Mathers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Florence Marryat and Adeline Sergeant. The plot involves the adulterous Fenella Ffrench, her husband’s affair with an evil temptress, a brutal murder, a sensational trial, bigamy, altered states of consciousness, false imprisonment in a lunatic asylum, and a shipwreck. Phew. It’s a plot in which you could stand a spoon.
Each chapter, unsurprisingly, ends with a cliffhanger, and the subsequent author is tasked with resolving the twist and then coming up with their own. Although obviously a thoroughly sensational tale, the themes with which it encompasses makes it a particularly interesting and important work. Fenella’s trajectory deals with the sexual double standard and the deeply-contested notion of femininity. The authors are all writing from different perspectives and Fenella’s behaviour is handled differently according to their opinions, thereby providing the reader with a panoramic view of the attitudes within the literary marketplace of the 1890s.
The Spectator thought the plot “ridiculous” and concluded that too many cooks did, indeed, spoil the broth. However, this is an experimental piece of fiction that is more than a sum of its parts. The text itself is enhanced by explanatory notes, biographies of all the authors, and a scholarly and illuminating introduction from Andrew Maunder. Thank you to Valancourt Books for such a welcome release.
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Richard Morris’ biography is an investigation into an investigator. There must be a clever Latin phrase for that sort of caper, but I know not what it is. I saw an excellent exhibition of Price’s ghost investigations at The Photographers’ Gallery a few years ago and came away with the impression that he was a serious scientist, although something of a show-off. Morris’ research, however, unearths evidence to prove that he was often responsible for the phenomena he was trying to debunk. Indeed, in an early piece of writing, he admitted that many people prefer the “bunk” to the “debunk”. He was essentially an accomplished showman who was desperate for recognition. Although greatly admired in some quarters, he was never sufficiently successful to give up his day job as, of all things, a paper bag salesman.
I can’t help thinking he undermined his authority by his unwise selection of cases. Only the terminally credulous could believe in Margery the Ecotplasmic Vesuvius, from whose vagina “teleplasmic hands, like misshapen Danish pastries” emerged. Surely they’d be muffins? Price also travelled to the Isle of Man to visit Gef, a mongoose with a penchant for gossip and cream buns. Surprisingly, Gef had nipped out when Price arrived, but thoughtfully sent him a hoof print afterwards. To be fair to Price, he wasn’t the only one to be duped – an American film director was desperate to buy the film rights for $50,000, but Gef refused to appear for the screen test. He hated make-up, apparently.
Price is never less than interesting and entertaining, but he also had a thoroughly unpleasant side. He seems to have largely ignored his wife Connie, and instead focused all his energies on paranormal hoaxes and a succession of mistresses. Until the end of the book, I kept reminding myself that he’d at least made a valid contribution to posterity by bequeathing his considerable library to Senate House. However, one is not so impressed after discovering that he’d originally tried to sell his collection to the Nazis. As if being a love rat and charlatan weren’t sufficient, he was also a great admirer of Herr Hitler, even after the horrors of Kristallnacht left nobody in any doubt as to the regime’s real agenda.
I wonder whether he’ll read my blog in impotent rage from the Other Side?
Harry Price – The Psychic Detective by Richard Morris
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I had expected to like Hillaire Belloc. It was a profound disappointment, therefore, to learn from A N Wilson’s biography that he was a frightful anti-semite who neglected his wife and thought the world owed him a living. Mind you, one cannot fail to be impressed that he managed to walk the 58 miles from Oxford to London in just eleven and a half hours. His literary output was also impressive, although mainly in terms of quantity rather than quality. His mother lost the family fortune, partly through converting to Roman Catholicism and partly due to entrusting a stockbroker lodger with £12K. Undeterred, Belloc still imagined he was going to inherit great wealth and become an idle gentleman. Paradoxically, he styled himself as a Radical and was elected to Parliament as such by the good people of Salford. However, his stance seemed to be motivated more by envy of the rich, rather than a genuine commitment to social change. He soon resigned his seat, proclaiming that Parliament was boring and undemocratic, and shocked that the country appeared to be run by an oligarchy who were concerned only to protect the interests of bankers. Not much has changed there, then.
Although much about the man himself is distasteful, even taking into account the prevailing attitudes of the day, the biography is a superb examination of a particularly fertile period of history (1870-1953), and Wilson’s treatment of the religious, social and political issues is masterly. This is not surprising, given he also covered this era brilliantly in The Victorians and After the Victorians. His attention to historical detail helps illuminate the often confusing thoughts of Belloc, for whom ignorance of a subject was no barrier to writing about it. An extraordinary man and an extraordinary age.
Oh dear. I’ve just seen an Amazon reviewer complaining that Zola’s The Masterpiece is “too depressing”. Just what would he expect from a realist writer who focused on the poor in 19th century Paris? It’s the most autobiographical novel of his Rougon Macquart series and provides a fascinating insight into the life of the artist, whether their medium be paint or the written word. His expose of the snobbish reaction to the work of the Impressionists is almost painful to read, and Zola’s friend Cezanne never to spoke to him again after receiving a complimentary copy. Mrs Zola, however, thought it her favourite novel. I suspect it was more important to keep her sweet.
Claude Lantier, the anti-hero, throws his life and soul into his painting to the detriment of his family, and his wife Christine comes to resent his work. As part of the “Open Air’ (read ‘Impressionist’) school, his efforts are met with derision and he fails to achieve commercial success. He is contrasted with his friend Sandoz who manages to earn a decent living by writing books that people want to read, whilst still managing to convey some of his own ideas. This is quite obviously Zola himself, and he seems to suggest that it’s all very well being seized by the creative muse, but you still have other responsibilities to consider. Christine represents the claims of life over art and challenges his devotion to such a fruitless exercise. They are both ultimately disappointed. Yes, it’s depressing, but there’s always Bunty if you want a happy ending.
The Masterpiece by Emile Zola
After vowing to never read another Victorian novel, I find myself teetering on the brink of the 20th century with Grant Allen’s Miss Cayley’s Adventures. Published in 1899, it features the redoubtable Lois Cayley, a Girton graduate who refuses to enter the teaching profession, instead becoming a self-styled adventuress. With only twopence in her pocket, she manages to travel around the world, solving mysteries and trying her hand at a number of professions. A particularly enjoyable chapter sees her taking part in a mountain biking competition and landing herself a job selling bicycles in Switzerland. Other escapades include setting up a typing agency in Florence with her conservative and downtrodden friend, Elsie. It’s hard to imagine that Alexander McCall Smith hasn’t read this book, as Lois is very much a nineteenth-century Mma Ramotswe. Despite a rather conventional conclusion, the book is fairly progressive for the time, in terms of Allen’s treatment of both gender and race. He also created one of the earliest literary female detectives. Well done to Valancourt Books for reissuing it.