In Which I Read Vintage Novels

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster

2012-02-19T12:13:00.000+11:00

Jerusha Abbott, raised in an orphanage, has never known love or nice things—until one of the trustees of the orphanage offers to pay her way to college to become a famous author. Suddenly, Jerusha has money, friends, and intellectual stimulation—and she owes it all to her anonymous benefactor, whose only terms are that she write to him monthly to describe her life.

Jerusha—or Judy as she prefers to be called—enjoys herself so much she can't stop writing. But will she ever find out who Daddy-Long-Legs is?

I'd only heard of this book recently, but after hearing it mentioned in a number of places, picked it up at an op-shop to try it out. This book and I did not get on well.

To begin with, I didn't like the main character. Jean Webster, the author, appears to hold the exact opposite convictions to me on almost every issue. Thus her idea of the virtuous heroine who deserves her happy ending is of a girl who instinctively dislikes the religion of her upbringing, and eagerly embraces all the new ideas she comes across—independence, women's suffrage, socialism. She rarely if ever says a nice word about her orphanage upbringing—which even she acknowledges not to be all bad; not as bad as Jane Eyre's Lowood at any rate—and what the author obviously thinks of as “high spirits” I think of as “saying horrid things about people you treat as friends, behind their backs.”

I don't mean to say that an unloved orphan who's had a depressing upbringing should be instinctively full of sweetness and light. But please—if Jane Eyre could manage it, so can Jerusha Abbott, even if it takes her a while to get there. But no...Indeed, the book's whole theme could be summarised thus:

“I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.”

What?

But that's not the end of the moral confusion in this book. There is an antithesis here, very clearly drawn, between religion and intellectualism. There is a place in The Lion, the Witch,and the Wardrobe where the four children hear Aslan's name for the first time; to three of them, the name seems utterly delightful, but to Edmund, the traitor, the name seems loathsome and frightening. This book is a study of a girl who finds the name of Aslan loathsome, and can't get enough magic Turkish Delight. The book is liberally sprinkled with digs at religion. For example, Jerusha resolves to help a needy family she knows:

“The mother isn't very strong and is extremely ineffectual and pious. She sits with her hands folded, a picture of patient resignation, while the daughter kills herself with overwork and responsibility and worry.”

And it's the book's lovely Fabian socialist heroine and hero—the emblem of the Fabians is of a wolf in sheep's clothing, by the way—to the rescue of the poor stupid Calvinists!

Because it is very clear that the brand of religion which this book militates against is Calvinism:

“I find that it isn't safe to discuss religion with the Semples. Their god (whom they have inherited intact from their remote Puritan ancestors) is a narrow, irrational, unjust, mean, revengeful, bigoted person. Thank heaven I don't inherit any god from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding—and he has a sense of humour.”

Daddy-Long-Legs literally takes place in a world where everything nice that happens happens because of a Fabian socialist. And everything that happens for religious motives is horrid. There is very little subtlety here.

You could say that I disliked the book, but it might be more accurate to say that it left me apathetic, with no common ground upon which to connect with the heroine. I do, in fact, respect the fact that the author created a consistent vision—she knows, unlike some, that there is an antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In that we have common ground. It is merely that she takes the opposite side of the antithesis, and uses this story to promote the seed of the serpent in much the same way that any book I might write would be for the seed of the woman. The writing is good, and if you had any respect at all for the main character's salient traits, you might enjoy this book very much. But for the seed of the woman, there was nothing to please, nothing to nourish, nothing to be enjoyed.

Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay

2012-02-16T19:11:00.000+11:00

One of the things that has always saddened me about Australia is our very short history of letters. Modernity came of age in the 1780s, at the same time that Australia was first being settled. There was never an Australian Christendom; only Australian modernism.

This makes it difficult to for an inhabitant of Christendom to find really enjoyable Australian fiction. And I hate to disappoint you, but this book is definitely not a rare example of Christendom in Australia. Its author, Lindsay, wrote plenty of other books unfit for human consumption and I have sometimes wondered whether this one is enjoyable only because the author has toned down his subject-matter for children.

That aside, I'm not sure I would recommend this book for children quite so much as their parents. Because The Magic Pudding, whimsical illustrations and all, is a comic masterpiece with a keen satirical edge.

Bunyip Bluegum, a gentlemanly koala, leaves his uncle and goes forth as a Gentleman of Leisure. At first he finds the life charming, but then about lunchtime he feels the pangs of hunger. It is then that he meets two old sailors—Bill Barnacle and Sam the Penguin—just sitting down to eat a steak-and-kidney Puddin'. The Puddin' is, of course, no ordinary Puddin'--eat as much as you like, but it'll always regenerate, and it'll always be the kind of Puddin' you want it to be—and it's terribly rude, runs like the wind, and is known as Albert.

The four characters get on so well, that after foiling an attack of dastardly Puddin'-Thieves (“One was a Possum, with one of those sharp, snooting, snouting sort of faces, and a the other was a bulbous, boozy-looking Wombat in an old long-tailed coat, and a hat that marked him down as a man you couldn't trust in the fowl-yard”) Bill and Sam invite Bunyip Bluegum to join the Noble Society of Puddin'-Owners and share their travels, their battles with the Puddin'-Thieves, and their Puddin'.

Much zaniness results, some of it legal.

“I'm afraid this is unconstitutional,” said the Mayor to the Constable.
“It is unconstitutional,” said the Constable; “but it's better than getting a punch in the snout.”

Bunyip Bluegum proves himself a koala of graceful eloquence.

“As our misfortunes are due to exhibiting too great a trust in scoundrels, so let us bear them with the greater fortitude. As in innocence we fell, so let our conduct in this hour of dire extremity be guided by the courageous endurance of men whose consciences are free from guilt.”

Albert fails to behave himself.

“No whispering,” shouted the Puddin' angrily. “Speak up. Don't strain a Puddin's ears at the meal table.”
“No harm intended, Albert,” said Sam, “I was merely remarking how well the crops were looking. Call him Albert when addressing him,” he added to Bunyip Bluegum. “It soothes him.”
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Albert,” said Bunyip.
“No soft soap from total strangers,” said the Puddin', rudely.

And there is much incidental verse.

“Then let the fist of Friendship
Be kept for Friendship's foes.
Ne'er let that hand in anger land
On Friendship's holy nose.”

One of the funniest children's books I know of, The Magic Puddin' is recommended for all audiences who know not to yell, “Eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle” at guests during dinner.

Gutenberg etext (without pictures)

Librivox recording (also without pictures)

Poem: Cried Out With Tears by Christina Rossetti

2012-02-13T21:49:00.001+11:00

The last few days have been incredibly busy, so today's post will just be a Christina Rossetti poem. This one, reminiscent of John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV, is perhaps my favourite of her poems so far.

"Cried Out With Tears"

Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief:
Lord, I repent, help mine impenitence:
Hide not Thy Face from me, nor spurn me hence,
Nor utterly despite me in my grief;
Nor say me nay, who worship with the thief
Bemoaning my so long lost innocence: --
Ah me! my penitence a fresh offence,
Too tardy and too tepid and too brief.
Lord, must I perish, I who look to Thee?
Look Thou upon me, bid me live, not die;
Say "Come," say not "Depart," tho' Thou art just:
Yea, Lord, be mindful how out of the dust
I look to Thee while Thou dost look on me,
Thou Face to face with me and Eye to eye.

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

2012-02-09T17:07:00.002+11:00

When my friend Charmagne recommended this book to me, I reacted with skepticism.

“Elizabeth Gaskell? She was a Unitarian!”

I'd never read any Gaskell before, but I did have Wives and Daughters on my shelf. And there it stayed until my sister Elizabeth discovered that Gaskell was worth reading. For the next week, my not-quite-as-bookish-as-me sister was glued to the page. “This is thrilling,” she told me at intervals. And so I promised to read it when she'd finished.

Wives and Daughters is the story of Molly Gibson, the doctor's daughter in the little town of Hollingford. Molly, a quiet, sensitive girl, is beginning to attract the attention of young men and Dr Gibson realises for the first time that Molly really needs a mother. His choice falls upon Hyacinth Kirkpatrick, a handsome widow with a daughter of Molly's age named Cynthia.

Meanwhile Molly has made friends with the family of proud old Squire Hamley, whose family has been in the district since before the Norman Conquest. There's Osborne Hamley, the handsome and brilliant heir upon whom the Squire and his wife have pinned all their hopes, and Roger Hamley, the plain and plodding younger son.

When the charming and dashing Cynthia comes from France to live with the Gibsons, Molly immediately loves her. Unfortunately, so does everyone else—including the man to whom Molly has, almost without realising it, lost her heart. But an impenetrable air of mystery surrounds Cynthia. What is her secret? Why does the sinister yet handsome Mr Preston seem to have some hold over her? Read on to find out...

Wives and Daughters is a very satisfying book, containing just the right amount of character development and plot. The domestic nature of the story, combined with the romantic imbroglio that erupts among the characters and the understated, biting wit is reminiscent of Jane Austen; but there are a few marks which—after hearing something about the plots of North and South, Cranford, and Mary Barton—distinguish the book as one of Elizabeth Gaskell's. Unlike Austen, Gaskell has a keen interest in the interplay of social classes—the bourgeois class to which the Gibsons belong, the aristocratic Cumnor family, and the untitled but excessively proud Squire Hamley. There is also a difference in tone. People die in this book with very little provocation; lives can be blighted; there is no guarantee of a happy ending for everyone.

Not that Wives and Daughters is an unhappy book, for those of you who were getting worried!

I was interested to consider how Mrs Gaskell's Unitarianism came out in the book. I don't believe there's anything particularly wrong in the book itself—Molly could sometimes be annoyingly perfect, and a bit know-all even with her father—but the reader with no knowledge of her beliefs would not be concerned at all. The Unitarianism, I think, makes itself most felt in the author's overriding concern with class. Unitarians drove much of the social reform movement of the early 1800, since (like Horace Mann) they tended to put their faith more in the saving power of legislative and social reforms than in the really efficacious saving grace of the dying God-man.

It's also interesting to note that Mrs Gaskell, a cousin of Charles Darwin, included a naturalist character in this book in tribute to him.

The bottom line? A well-written book with great characters and an intriguing plot. Unfortunately, Mrs Gaskell herself suffered a bad case of Author Existence Failure before the book was finished—the last chapter or two is missing. Readers should not be put off by this, however, since by that time it is possible to see how the book would have ended, and Mrs Gaskell left notes behind her for the last chapter itself.

I have seen the 1999 BBC miniseries adaptation of Wives and Daughters with Justine Waddell as Molly Gibson. It's a fine adaptation of the book, quite faithful, and I recommend it—though, as always, not as a substitute for the book itself!

Project Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

The Sign Above the Door by William W Canfield

2012-02-05T14:11:00.000+11:00

Oh, yes, it's another of those desperately obscure, drippily melodramatic vintage novels, this time set during the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt! This vintage novel, however, has been rediscovered: I read it in a reprint by Salem Ridge Press, a purveyor of reading for the home educated.

Our hero, Martiesen, is an Egyptian prince of the nome in which the Hebrew slaves live. After eight plagues have crippled Egypt, the nobles are beginning to think that something must be done to remove their Pharaoh before Egypt is completely destroyed. To his dismay, Martiesen is their choice to replace the Pharaoh, but complicating factors such as his love for the Hebrew Elisheba, the dastardly schemes of his vengeful Libyan scribe, and the last two plagues will ensure that none of Martiesen's plans for the future work out as he had planned. Terrifying darkness closes down on Egypt, a daring kidnapping is carried out, and nothing will be the same...

This was a quick read, a fun adventure story lightly spiced with romance, set during the last two plagues of Egypt and the Exodus, no doubt with the aim of being mildly edifying. And indeed, it was not without merit, containing generally unobjectionable morals, as much historical detail as the author could weave into the eddying plot, and a rather good imagining of the ninth plague, the darkness.

There are one or two things about this book that could be improved. It seems as though the romance is more important to the plot than God is, and He is often referred to as a “Being” or “Deity” so that I wondered if Canfield really thought of Him in a personal way. I also felt the author didn't fully avail himself of the possibilities in the plot—Martiesen hopes, for example, that if the Pharaoh could be brought to be nicer to the Hebrews, everyone would stay in Egypt and get on with each other just fine, happy ending; when in fact no matter whether slave or free, the Hebrews have been called to the Promised Land and must obey. I thought there were possibilities in that set-up which could have been better exploited than they were.

One other thing that could perhaps be improved was the writing style. You will die of adjective poisoning—unless, like me, you find the style charming in an antiquated sort of way. I resisted for a hundred pages before finally giving in and taking down some particularly good specimens of the author's grandiosity:

Here he could find those who, for pay, would do his bidding and ask no questions. Indeed, he had previously made several visits to this desolate region with that end in view, and had formed acquaintances there upon whom he could depend for assistance in any nefarious scheme he might propose.

[...]

Both labored under the stress of consuming passion, followed by the outlay of most unusual exertion and exhausting strife.

[...]

“Aye, the Pharaoh!” replied Martiesen, with whitened lips. “Untaught by the lessons which have been sent him, the mighty lord of Egypt has summoned his hosts of warriors, and now leads them in the wake of those fleeing from his oppression, it may be to his complete overthrow, or it may be to the utter destruction of those whom he pursues.”

It's exactly the kind of thing Stephen Leacock made a living out of ridiculing. Indeed it took an effort to stop mentally adding Leacockisms to the text as I read...

Apart from this, however, The Sign Above the Door is refreshingly free from the usual defects of vintage novels. The heroine, for example, although described as beautiful and slender, with hair the colour of midnight and an air of luminous, feminine piety, is also clever enough to put two and two together and figure out that the scribe is up to no good. (Sadly, like with many vintage novels, someone still has to be dense enough to give the villain a chance to get the plot going, so Martiesen doesn't believe her when she warns him). When her suspicions turn out to be well-grounded, she has not a moment's hesitation in clawing the villain's face off. However, she still succumbs to one of the besetting sins of the heroine of the vintage adventure novel, as explained by PG Wodehouse in his essay on Thrillers:

She may have escaped death a dozen times. She may know perfectly well that the notorious Blackbird Gang is after her to secure the papers. The police may have warned her on no account to stir outside her house. But when a messenger calls at half-past two in the morning with an unsigned note saying “Come at once”, she just snatches at her hat and goes. The messenger is a one-eyed Chinaman with a pock-marked face and an evil grin, so she trusts him immediately and, having accompanied him to the closed car with steel shutters over the windows, bowls off in it to the ruined cottage in the swamp. And when the hero, at great risk and inconvenience to himself, comes to rescue her, she will have nothing to do with him because she has been told by a mulatto with half a nose that it was he who murdered her brother Jim.

Although for the defence I might point out that no such misunderstanding arises in this book, which is another exception to the rule of second-rate vintage novels: that some terrible misunderstanding must crop up between the two lovers and threaten their happy ending. Since this usually requires one or both of them to act tiresomely dense, I can only commend William W Canfield for omitting it, despite how tempting it might have seemed to throw it in.

There are many books I can recommend more highly than The Sign Above the Door. But not all books need to be a solid meal or a dazzling, mouthwatering concoction. Some readers will go through anything in sight and enjoy it all hugely. By them, this book will be justly enjoyed--an exciting story for all ages.

Veritas Press Promotion/Giveaway

2012-02-01T08:33:00.004+11:00

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled vintage novels to do a plug for Veritas Press, one of my favourite book suppliers. Veritas Press caters to Christian home educators, especially to those interested in classical education.

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Readers of my blog who are interested in great reading material cannot do better than have a good browse through the Veritas catalogue!

A propos of the catalogue, here's the REALLY exciting news: Veritas Press is doing a huge promotional drive right now. Enter your email, and you'll get a $5 gift certificate. Entice other friends to do so (just as I am doing now) and you'll get more! What better way to sample the delights of that catalogue, stuffed as it is with great classics, tried-and-true stories, and only the best in homeschooling curricula!

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Le Morte D'Arthur: To Conclude

2012-01-29T08:25:00.001+11:00

This concludes my rambling collection of thoughts on Malory. I read him this time with a determination to make some kind of sense of him, and I think I did. I enjoyed Le Morte D'Arthur much better this time than I had before. I think I understand what he was trying to say, and why he was trying to say it.

I still don't like Sir Tristram at all, and if I should ever meet Queen Guenever in the street I will shake her till her teeth rattle. Sir Launcelot still tries my patience. I am still quite put out about the character assassination of Sir Gawain. But at least now I feel like I understand.

Although parts of this book had me grinding my teeth in frustration, I loved other parts. The early stories of the Round Table, especially Book III, Book IV, Book VI, and Book VII, were most enjoyable. The Grail Quest, Books XIII to XVII, is hands down my favourite part of the whole epic, a world I can understand although I may not agree with all the theology—evocative, dreamlike, with layers of meaning and characters I don't feel like hitting over the head. Finally, the last books, especially Books XX and XXI, complete the grand tragedy; there is a reason why the whole work is named after the topic of the last few chapters. The cumulative force of the whole Morte builds up and crashes down in those last books.

While parts of it still irritated me, Le Morte D'Arthur is justly famous as the great English epic of Arthur and contains more to enjoy than it does to irritate. I recommend it to anyone who's interested in the Matter of Britain or the medievals.

Le Morte D'Arthur: Miscellanea

2012-01-28T09:18:00.002+11:00

As a book, the Morte is worth reading. Like other historical literature, to read it is to immerse oneself in another time. It was written near the height of English literature, back in the days when, if you cut a malapert knave or a scurvy villain, he would bleed distinguished, graceful prose. Malory's is as graceful and distinguished as the next man's. As I read it, I kept pausing to enjoy the fact that he has a special word for shards of armour carved off during a fight (“cantels”), that every damosel or gentlewoman or anyone is “fair” (and there's a sixty-year-old damosel), Joshua of the Old Testament has become “the good knight Duke Joshua,” and Sir Meliot addresses himself to the “Fair Lord of Heaven.”

There are lovely little turns of phrase everywhere. One forest is called “the Forest of Adventure.” Another is described as “a little leaved wood.” And when the Grail appears, “there was such a savour as all the spicery in the world has been there.” There's also the moment—but I'll let CS Lewis explain it:

...the exquisite episode of Sir Urry, where Launcelot at the very summit of earthly (and hardly earthly) glory 'wepte as he had bene a chylde that had bene betyn.' Why, unless he remembered a higher glory and 'pined his loss'?

Speaking of CS Lewis, many notes and moments in Malory were familiar—I had come across them before, in the Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis's aim in the Narnia books was to evoke the flavour of medievalism, and reading Malory this time around I was able to locate some of his sources.

In Book IV chapter 6 King Arthur goes hunting with King Uriens and Sir Accolon, and follows a hart so closely that they leave all their attendants behind and kill their horses—an echo of which comes at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the White Stag leads the four Kings and Queens of Narnia a great chase “till the horses of all the courtiers were tired out and these four were still following.” For both parties, a strange adventure results. In chapter 14 of Book IV, Morgan le Fay turns herself and her people into stones to evade capture, as the White Witch does in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In Book V, chapter 8 Arthur kills a giant by cutting his feet from under him, then cutting off his head, the same way Peter kills Sopespian in Prince Caspian. In The Horse and His Boy King Edmund, considering what to do with Rabadash, suggests that “any of us could swap off his head” in battle, an expression I have only come across there and in Book VI, chapter 17 of the Morte. Finally and most obviously, the knights of the Morte repeatedly state their intention to “take the adventure that God will send me,” as in Book XVIII chapter 9, an expression that crops up in The Silver Chair: “And then, let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us.” If these echoes of Malory were unintentional, they were certainly the product of a mind really steeped in the atmosphere of medievalism.

I could go on much longer about the Morte and what I found there. I shan't, but I shall mention just one more thing. During the Quest of the Grail, the knights on the quest continually run into little adventures, or see visions, which the next passing holy man will interpret. For example, at one point Sir Bors lodges with a lady who asks him to fight her rival's champion for the land which is rightfully hers. Sir Bors defeats the champion and returns the lady's land to her. The next man of God interprets it as follows:

“And that ye fought with the champion for the lady, this it betokeneth: for when ye took the battle for the lady, by her shall ye understand the new law of Jesu Christ and Holy Church; and by the other lady ye shall understand the old law and the fiend, which all day warreth against Holy Church, therefore ye did your battle with right. For ye be Jesu Christ's knights, therefore ye ought to be defenders of Holy Church.”

Note the very interesting link the holy man draws between the old covenant and the devil. Food for thought, there—is Malory identifying the Jews with the devil? On the other hand, there's also the interesting way “the old law and the fiend” is constantly represented by a woman, sometimes in scarlet, sometimes seated on a beast. Evidence for medievals identifying Jerusalem with the scarlet woman of Revelation? But that is a whole new conversation, and I'm getting off track.

What I love about this arrangement—adventure-allegory followed by interpretation—is the fact that the knights are given interpretations of the the events in their own lives. In most allegories, the characters themselves never have the allegory explained to them, although Bunyan does something similar to this in the Interpreter's House. Again, here in Malory we have something like what I enjoyed in Charles Williams and Elizabeth Goudge—a sense of the eternal ramifications of temporal actions. In Ascent to Love, Peter Leithart tells how the medievals interpreted the Scriptures according to four modes of meaning: first, the literal, second, the allegorical, third, the anagogical, and third, the tropological. You will pardon me if I don't explain these further here; I don't feel I have a good enough grip on how this worked to explain it. However, Leithart shows how the medievals wrote their own stories to be interpreted through this grid and Le Morte D'Arthur raises the curtain, so to speak, on this process: the literal, historical adventures of the knights also have allegorical meanings, and probably anagogical and tropological meaning as well. This produces quite an interesting effect: it is suggested to the reader that his own life and experience also contains deeper, allegorical meanings beyond the bare surface of literal fact.

Le Morte D'Arthur: The Peak That Failed to Reach Heaven

2012-01-27T08:21:00.002+11:00

Charles Williams argued in The Figure of Arthur that the Grail Quest was the backbone, the whole point, of the Matter of Britain. The Holy Grail is a symbol of divine grace, as administered through the sacrament of communion. The Grail contains the true blood of Christ and a vision of it is given to the Round Table at Pentecost. All of them then set out to experience it more fully. This becomes a test for them: if they pass the test, they will come at last to the Grail and be allowed to take communion from it. Only the holy will attain it, and three knights do find it: Sir Bors, Sir Percival, and Sir Launcelot's son Sir Galahad, the Grail Knight.

I suppose I always assumed that the Grail Quest was achieved. That it was a happy ending. Sometimes I would wonder how, if that was the case, Logres failed and fell anyway. But I didn't understand till I read Malory what was actually going on in the Grail Quest.

The Quest wasn't just for three knights; it was for all of them. The Quest was for the whole Round Table. And the Round Table failed. That was why it fell.

Sir Percival is one of the three knights who does achieve the Quest. Of him Malory says:

And as the tale telleth, he was one of the men of the world at that time which most believed in Our Lord Jesu Christ, for in those days there were but few folks that believed in God perfectly. For in those days the son spared not the father no more than a stranger.

A few pages later, Sir Percival explains himself as follows:

“Damosel,” said Sir Percival, “I serve the best man of the world, and in his service he will not suffer me to die, for who that knocketh shall enter, and who that asketh shall have, and who seeketh him he hideth him not.”

These short passages, especially the first, go a long way to explaining the Morte. Sir Percival, who is pure, courteous, and a true knight to his Lord, is an anomaly. As Sir Gawain's vision of the bulls shows (Book XVI, chapters 1 and 3), the three knights of the Grail Quest are the only knights of the Table who remain faithful to its original purpose and to the oath of the Table. The Round Table is not supposed to be a picture of virtue at all.

And suddenly, everything falls into place. This is no nostalgic picture of righteousness. This is no one brief, shining moment called Camelot. It is one of the greatest literary visions of sic transit gloria mundi that I have ever come across. The picture is one of men called to high things, of their failure, and of their destruction as a result of their failure.

In this sense, Sir Launcelot is the embodiment of the Round Table. Like them, he represents the best of the secular world—the peak of its glory. Like them, it is from him that the Grail Knight comes: only the best of the secular world is good enough to enter the sacred world. Like them, he comes close to attaining the Grail, but loses it in the end.

Of course, it is only from the best of the secular world that the Grail Knights can come. But the Round Table as a body falls short of the sacred world. That is why it is destroyed. CS Lewis confirms this conclusion in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature:

The human tragedy becomes all the more impressive if we see it against the background of the Grail, and the failure of the Quest becomes all the more impressive if it is felt thus reverberating through all the human relationships of the Arthurian world. No one wants the Grail to overthrow the Round Table directly, by a fiat of spiritual magic. What we want is to see the Round Table sibi relictus, falling back from the peak that failed to reach heaven and so abandoned to those tendencies within it which must work its destruction. And that is what we are shown.

And now I realised why I had been so confused and irritated by Malory before. I had the story upside-down. I thought it was about the noble, pure, and good Round Table going about righting wrongs; so why were the knights always doing the wrong thing? Malory was clearly trying to write a morality tale; so why was everyone so immoral? At last I realised that the story really does have a moral compass--it's just that not everyone who I thought was meant to be a hero, is. The knights are bad because they're meant to be. The Round Table is a glorious failure.

There's an immense, cohesive story going on underneath the Morte D'Arthur. From the first seeds of Camelot's fall, sown in Arthur's youth, to the gradual degeneration of the Table, the failure of the Grail Quest, and the final stages where the Table—and the marriage of Arthur and Guenever--becomes too rotten to hold together, the tragedy is guaranteed.

That is the meaning of Le Morte D'Arthur.

Le Morte D'Arthur: Courtesy

2012-01-26T09:22:00.002+11:00

The story of Sir Tristram and La Beale Isoud takes up a good third of the Morte. As I slogged through the endless tournaments, feuds, jealousies, and adventures of Tristram, Palomides, Lamorak, and the rest, I kept wondering why such a large part of the book was devoted to these ancillary characters. Sir Tristram has nothing to do with the foundation of Logres; he grows up in Cornwall and only comes to the Round Table later in life. He has nothing to do with the Grail Quest and by the time of the fall of Logres he is dead. So why spend a third of the book on him?

I may be over-analysing Malory here. The Morte is full of inconsistencies and editorial oversights. People and places are mentioned, never to be explained or heard from again; in two cases, knights who were main characters vanish from the plot and it is casually mentioned later that they were murdered. There is not a huge amount of literary cohesion here.

However, whether intentionally or not, the Tristram/Mark/Isoud story forms a fascinating contrast to the Launcelot/Arthur/Guenever story. In fact while the L/A/G triangle makes its appearance early on in the Morte, it sneaks up on the reader gradually and it's only during the T/M/I story that the reader realises its importance. It simmers gently in the background, while in the foreground Tristram and Isoud battle hopelessly for their impossible love, facing King Mark's wrath and treachery.

Sir Tristram and Sir Launcelot are the two greatest knights of the world. Both of them are nearly invincible in battle and both are paragons of courtesy. Sir Tristram, however, has faults that Sir Launcelot doesn't. For example, Sir Tristram, in what can only be called a fit of absent-mindedness, marries someone who is not La Beale Isoud, incurring the displeasure not only of Isoud but also of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenever, who consider this an almost unforgiveable affront to love. Quelle scandale!

The most obvious difference between the Cornwall and the Camelot love triangles, however, is—surprisingly--the difference between King Mark and King Arthur. Mark is treacherous, villainous, believes the worst of the lovers (which is perfectly correct) and persecutes them. On the other hand, Arthur is noble, just, believes the best of the lovers, and remains a kind lord to them. Unlike Mark, Arthur insists on believing, for as long as possible, that Guenever is no more than an inspiration to Sir Launcelot. The husband's duty to believe his wife faithful to him (even when she flagrantly isn't) is seen as just as important as the lovers' duty to be faithful to each other.

This seems completely crazy to me, but in the context of medieval ideals, it begins to make sense. Because King Mark is constantly chasing his wife or Sir Tristram, he seems a ridiculous cuckold. But because King Arthur is too noble-minded to suspect such a thing of Launcelot and Guenever, he remains noble, elevated, and tragic rather than ridiculous. As long as he never suspects, he remains admirable.

The upshot? While King Mark's villainous behaviour almost excuses Tristram and Isoud, King Arthur's behaviour heaps coals of fire on the heads of Guenever and Launcelot. For the secular knight, courtesy is the highest attainable virtue. He may not be holy enough to achieve the Grail, but at least he is never-failingly polite, meek, and humble. In Malory, you need not be invincible or chaste to be a good knight; but you do need to be courteous. CS Lewis (in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature) sums it up like this:

It all depends on what is meant by nobility. The predominant ethical tone of Malory's work is certainly not the bourgeois, still less the proletarian, morality of our own day. And, on its own showing, it is not the Christian rule of life; all the chief characters end as penitents. It is aristocratic. It does not forbid homicide provided it is done in clean battle. It does not demand chastity, though it highly honours lifelong fidelity to the chosen mistress. Though it admires mercy it allows private war and the vendetta. And it has no respect at all for property or for laws as such. It is distinguished from heroic morality by its insistence on humility. It can be very accurately called nobility if the noble is defined as the opposite of the vulgar. It does not condemn all whom we would now call 'criminals'; its displeasure is primarily for the cad. It is magnificently summed up in Sir Ector's final lament, which, so far as we know, is Malory's own invention: 'Thou was the mekest man and the jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes and thou were the sternest knyght to thy mortal foe that ever put spere in the rest.' There is the real, and indispensable, contribution of chivalry to ethics.

By taking advantage of King Arthur's courtesy, Sir Launcelot commits one of his few blunders and contributes to the fall of Logres. Had Sir Launcelot remained pure and depended on the Queen for no more than inspiration, he would have been able to adhere to the strictest rules of courtesy and answer the call of the sacred world in the Grail Quest. But he failed.

Le Morte D'Arthur: Malory, Morals, and Manners

2012-01-25T08:19:00.002+11:00

There are three major themes twined into the plot of the Morte, three medieval concepts that hold the key to the confusing moral tangle. They are, first: the Thomistic tension between the sacred and the secular, in which the sacred sphere is seen as a world removed and superior from the secular world which holds its own secondary virtues; second: the ideal of courtly love, the impossible or forbidden love of a knight for a lady which holds lasting interest only because it is secret; third: the chivalric ideal of courtesy as the highest secular virtue.

The morality of love in Malory can only be comprehended in the context of what the medievals believed about love. Their views on the subject were strongly influenced by the sacred/secular divide as explained by Thomas Aquinas. As I understand it, in the same way that the sacred world—the Church, the priesthood, philosophy—was somehow better than the secular world of kingdoms, families, and manual work, so to the mind of the medieval Catholic, virginity was better than marriage.

The Reformation assaulted the sacred/secular divide with all its might. Medievals like Malory could speak of Sir Launcelot “serving God daily and nightly” during the Grail Quest, meaning to be in prayer and fasting and suggesting that other occupations did not serve God; the Reformers told knights, merchants, craftsmen, and farmers that they too had vocations no less important and no less holy than those of churchmen. In the same way that the Reformers rescued mundane work, they also rescued marriage. To Malory, marriage is a middle way between pure virginity and guilty adultery. It is chastity reluctantly subordinated to the good of fruitfulness. It is fornication reluctantly legitimised (see Malory, Book XVII, chapter 5 for a good allegory of his views).

Add to this viewpoint the courtly love ideal. Courtly love celebrates an impossible love—often an illicit love. Because the love is hopeless, the lover's main attitude is one of tortured, pining grief. The love feeds on obstacles—if they all vanished away, so would all the romance of the thing. Peter Leithart says, “What keeps the passion passionate is that it is not consummated, or that it is consummated rarely and secretly” (Ascent to Love, p 35). The obstacles also provide a distance between the lovers which enables them to thoroughly idealise each other. In addition the ultimate loyalty of the lover is to his lady: it must be lifelong and exclusive of all other loyalties. Worship is given to the lady rather than to God, and the lady becomes the inspiration of the lover to all noble deeds. So in Malory, Sir Palomides is spurred to do the greatest feats of arms in his life at a tournament where he knows La Beale Isoud, whom he loves but can never love him, is watching; also Isoud and Tristram reprove the clownish knight Sir Dinadan, saying that only lovers can truly achieve greatness.

One of the most important themes of courtly love was the tension between worship of the lady and worship of God. Poets like Giacomo da Lentini in “Io m'aggio posto” tried to reconcile the two, hoping to get to heaven, but only as long as the lady also got there. The undercurrent to the courtly love ideal of Malory's time was the knowledge that the lover's love of the lady was pulling him away from his love of God. Since courtly love was incompatible with service of God, it could never pass from the secular to the sacred sphere.

The poet Dante and the other poets of the later courtly love movement, the stilnovisti or “new stylists,” resolved this tension by characterising the beloved as a manifestation of Divine Love and the pathway to God: the lady reveals Christ.

But for Malory, the lady remains opposed to Christ. She is a secular goddess, the inspiration for Sir Launcelot's and Sir Tristram's virtues of courtesy, nobleness, gentleness, and strength in battle. She raises them to higher things. However, she can only raise them within the secular world. If a man is to achieve the immeasurably higher and nobler sacred world, he must turn his back on the lady and serve God instead. Plot details suggest that there may be a way to have both, to solve that tension, but only by loving the lady without consummation, purely.

With that groundwork laid, the morality of the Morte becomes understandable. For Sir Launcelot, Sir Tristram, and other knights, the sin is not so much loving a married woman but making love to her. Malory suggests that Sir Launcelot should have allowed the love of Guenever to spur him on to glorious deeds without allowing that love to become gross and earthly. Sir Percival, the naïve young knight who will go on to achieve the Grail, rebukes King Mark for being jealous of Sir Tristram:

“Ah, fie for shame […] Are ye not uncle unto Sir Tristram, and he your nephew? Ye should never think that so noble a knight as Sir Tristram is, that he would do himself so great a villainy as to hold his uncle's wife; howbeit,” said Sir Percival, “he may love your queen sinless, because she is called one of the fairest ladies of the world.”

Sir Percival can be reasonably assumed to be articulating the viewpoint of the sacred sphere. A pure love, Malory suggests, could be consistent with serving God, with being in the sacred sphere. Even Sir Galahad, the perfect sacred knight (as Sir Launcelot is the best secular knight) hints at a courtly-love relationship with Sir Percival's sister:

“Damosel,” said Galahad, “ye have done so much that I shall be your knight all the days of my life.”

For Malory, the difference between perfect and sinful love is not marital status. The difference is whether the love is consummated or not, and whether it is faithful or not. This is why adulterous love is not seen as particularly bad. It is good to love a lady purely, whether she's married or not; it is a shame if the love is “sinful,” whether you are married to her or not. If you are married to her, then at least you have the Church's sanction for it and the good purpose of producing children. If you aren't married to her, then at least she is your ideal of love, raising you to be the best that the secular world has to offer. The true sin would be in having a paramour, but not loving her faithfully.

Notice that there is a double standard in operation between the sacred and the secular world. Although the sacred world is best, the secular world has its own worthiness: courtesy, inspiring love, preservation of honour through revenge and feuding.

Those planted in the secular world have fewer expectations. But even for Malory, that isn't enough. The sacred world is calling, and cannot be ignored.

Le Morte D'Arthur: The Problem

2012-01-24T07:51:00.004+11:00

Given this plot, what's the problem? The problem has to do with the underlying themes, assumptions, and morals of the story. Without a cohesive theme to hold the book together, it becomes a tedious shaggy dog story, a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The problem is that Malory seems to be morally schizophrenic. Is there a theme at all? Does any of this have any point?

In Roger Lancelyn Green's King Arthur, things are far more comprehensible. King Arthur and his knights are the good guys, who go around rescuing damsels. Sir Launcelot might be in love with the Queen, but it's not like they do anything about it. Evil Sir Mordred (he gets it from his mother Morgan le Fay) makes it look as though they are, and then it's death and destruction.

The problem with the sanitised version is that the tragedy at the end has little basis in the characters' previous actions—the retribution is disproportionate. In Malory's version, on the other hand, there would be a good explanation—Launcelot and Guenever are guilty as sin—if it wasn't that he seems to praise their love instead of condemning it.

This is what I objected to when I first read the book, and what I wrestled with this time: The Round Table is no noble company of good knights. Sir Launcelot really does look good by comparison to some of them. Sir Gawain—my favourite character from the Green version, which incorporated the heroic stories of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, and Parsifal—has in Malory become a treacherous, murderous villain (although toward the end of the book his character is somewhat rehabilitated). His brothers are little better, even Sir Gareth, the closest thing in the book to a Boy Scout. Meanwhile La Beale Isoud and Guenever become friends-- “It's so hard, cheating on your husband with his most trusted knight! Only you can understand my pain!”

So far, so revolting. Admittedly not so bad as the Orlando Furioso. But you see, the Furioso never pretended to high moral ground. But Malory does. After pages and pages of the Round Table being treacherous and lecherous, the Holy Grail intrudes on their lives and they all rush off to find it--but suddenly, they're not good enough; the Holy Grail can only be achieved by the truly pure. Sir Launcelot is even brought to see the error of his ways and repents in literal sackcloth. But it doesn't stick: even he slips back into evil after the Quest.

This, then, was the thing that repulsed me about Malory. First, he depicted a Round Table riddled with vice. Then, to add insult to injury, he can't seem to figure out whether this is really such a bad thing or not. Early in his career, Sir Launcelot seems shocked at the idea of taking a paramour:

“...and as for to say to take my pleasance with paramours, that will I refuse in principle for dread of God; for knights that be adventurous or lecherous shall not be happy ne fortunate unto the wars, for either they shall be overcome with a simpler knight than they be themselves, other else they shall be unhap and their cursedness slay better men than they be themselves. And so who that useth paramours shall be unhappy, and all thing is unhappy that is about them.”

The reader is not advised how or when Sir Launcelot changes his mind about this: it eventually becomes obvious that he and Guenever are more than platonic lovers. But he's still the best knight in the realm. Then the Grail Quest happens, and he repents. Then it ends, and he's caught in Guenever's room, and the following puzzling exchanges take place:

“Truly,” said the queen, “I would and it might please God that they would take me and slay me, and suffer you to escape.”

“That shall never be,” said Sir Launcelot. “God defend me from such a shame, but Jesu be thou my shield and mine armour!”

Nice prayer, for an adulterer. So just what exactly is going on in Malory? How can knights like this be described as “good”? Does anyone really know what's going on? Is there a transcendant standard at all? Is this what it feels like to be an agnostic?

As it turns out, there really is a standard and a system of morality in Malory, one that supports the book's theme. There are two reasons why it is hard to figure out. The first is that the morality of Malory is very much based on some medieval concepts that have become foreign to the twenty-first century. The second is an idiosyncrasy of Malory's style, where he very rarely comments on the characters' actions, to praise or condemn them. The only clues we have come either in the biased comments of other characters within the story itself—or in the actual plot: who is rewarded and who is punished for his actions. The best way to understand the book is to read it as a whole. You cannot dissect it: the plot must be considered as a whole and not until the last page is it possible to say with any certainty what the author meant.

Le Morte D'Arthur: Characters and plot

2012-01-23T08:16:00.004+11:00

Just in case your knowledge of Arthurian myth is sketchy or non-existent, this is of course the story of Arthur, the Once and Future King of Britain in a legendary and anachronistic version of the fifth century AD. Skip this if you know the legend well, or if you'd rather not be spoiled for the plot ending.

Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, begets him in secret and then dies, plunging Britain into civil war for fifteen years. Merlin the enchanter then produces a sword struck deep into a stone; it can only be retrieved by the true-born king of Britain. Arthur does this, but his claim as supreme king is challenged by many minor kings, and more civil war ensues until finally guided by the wisdom of Merlin he emerges as High King.

Arthur's early years are marked by sin and foolishness—the sin of begetting Mordred on his own sister Morgawse, followed by a foolish duel with King Pellinore in which he breaks the sword from the stone.

“But ye have done a thing late that God is displeased with you, for ye have lain by your sister, and on her ye have gotten a child that shall destroy you and all the knights of your realm.... Marvel not,” said Merlin, “for it is God's will your body to be punished for your foul deeds.”

Merlin then leads him to the Lady of the Lake, and Arthur takes the sword Excalibur, with its marvellous girdle, from a hand reaching out of the lake.

The story of Sir Balin follows, who struck the Dolorous Stroke, maiming King Pellam and laying waste a large area, before being killed in an accidental duel with his brother Sir Balan. Sir Balin's cursed sword is put by Merlin into another stone and set to float on the water, awaiting the hand of the Grail Knight who will heal the Dolorous Stroke and achieve the Quest of the Sangrail.

Next we hear how Arthur chooses to marry Guenever. Her father sends 150 knights to serve Arthur, and Merlin makes a great Round Table to seat them. Upon each of its seats, or sieges, there magically appears the name of the knight who shall sit there. One seat, the Siege Perilous, is empty. Merlin foretells that it is fated to remain empty until the coming of the Grail Knight.

Three knights of the new fellowship—Sir Gawain the nephew of Arthur, King Pellinore, and King Pellinore's son Sir Tor—undertake the first Quest of the Round Table. Along the way they meet the Damosel of the Lake, Nimue, for the first time—the successor to the Lady who gave the sword Excalibur, she will end up as Merlin's pupil and after imprisoning him within a hawthorn bush will partly take over his role as Arthur's magical protector and advisor.

Arthur has the knights of the Round Table take an oath:

...never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor, upon pain of death. Also, that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, ne for no world's goods. Unto this were all the knights sworn of the Table Round, both old and young.

The knights then spend a good deal of time having adventures. Morgan le Fay, another of Arthur's sisters, emerges as an enemy of his when she tries to steal Excalibur. In a hangover from Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudohistorical History of the Kings of Britain Malory takes some time from the main narrative to tell how King Arthur and his knights travel to Europe to fight the Emperor Lucius of Rome. Then it's back to Britain, and some adventures from Sir Launcelot's early years are related. Malory then gives an original story—he invents a new brother for Sir Gawain, Sir Gaheris, Sir Agravain, and Sir Mordred: Sir Gareth, who becomes a protege of Sir Launcelot.

Next comes a very long section of the Morte, comprising a good third of the book. The main characters are Sir Tristram, a knight of Cornwall, and La Beale Isoud, the princess of Ireland who marries King Mark of Cornwall despite the love between her and Sir Tristram. Sir Launcelot is also important here, as is Sir Palomides (who loves Isoud) and Sir Lamorak (who loves Arthur's sister and Gawain's mother Morgawse). Tristram, Mark, and Isoud comprise a love triangle keenly reminiscent of that between Launcelot, Arthur, and Guinevere, although the focus is on the former. This section is mainly composed of a series of tournaments and wanderings around Britain, as Sir Tristram tries to escape the vengeance of King Mark and accumulates a reputation as a courteous and strong knight as great as Sir Launcelot. The two of them eventually meet and form a friendship based on their similar illicit love for beautiful queens.

By now it has become obvious that Sir Launcelot loves Queen Guenever. While travelling about one day, he comes to the Castle of Carbonek and acquires the love of the king's daughter, Elaine. A few days and a shape-shifting spell later, Sir Launcelot is horrified to find that he has begotten the Grail Knight upon Elaine. When the Queen finds out, he goes mad for two years, then eventually manages to win back her favour.

At last, fifteen years later, Sir Galahad the Grail Knight, Sir Launcelot's son, comes to Camelot at the Feast of Pentecost, where a vision of the Holy Grail appears to the Round Table. The hundred and fifty knights, led by Sir Gawain, make an oath:

“Now,” said Sir Gawain, “we have been served this day of what meats and drinks we thought on; but one thing beguiled us, we might not see the Holy Grail, it was so preciously covered. Wherefore I will make here avow, that tomorn, without longer abiding, I shall labour in the quest of the Sangrail, that I shall hold me out a twelvemonth and a day, or more if need be, and never shall I return again unto the court till I have seen it more openly than it hath been seen here; and if I may not speed I shall return again as he that may not be against the will of Our Lord Jesu Christ.”

Everyone goes off looking for the Grail, but four knights especially do well. Sir Galahad, the Grail Knight, Sir Percival of Wales, and Sir Bors de Ganis, nephew of Sir Launcelot, are the only three knights of the Round Table found pure enough to achieve the Quest and find the Holy Grail. Sir Launcelot, the best of sinful men, after repenting of his love for Queen Guenever, is given one sight of it.

Sir Galahad and Sir Percival do not return from the Quest. When Sir Launcelot returns, he attempts to cut off his affair with the Queen, but she manages to keep her hold on him and soon the two of them are as thick as ever. A series of scares then results—twice the Queen is charged with treason, and each time Sir Launcelot fights the trial by combat to save her, but finally Sir Agravain and Sir Mordred conspire to catch Sir Launcelot in the Queen's chamber. The King is no longer able to turn a blind eye to the affair and the Queen is sentenced to death for treason. Sir Launcelot, who has escaped, rescues the Queen but kills Sir Gawain's beloved brothers Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris in the process. Although Sir Launcelot is able to convince King Arthur to receive the Queen back, forgive, and forget, Sir Gawain insists on getting revenge for the death of his brothers. In the resulting civil war, Sir Mordred takes advantage of King Arthur's absence to seize control of the kingdom. Arthur raises the siege on Sir Launcelot and rides to face Sir Mordred. Only King Arthur and Sir Bedevere, both seriously wounded, survive the battle and after Sir Bedevere returns Excalibur to the lake, King Arthur departs for the vale of Avilion in a barge tended by four queens. Guenever becomes a nun, Sir Launcelot becomes a monk, and both soon die, repenting the wilfulness that has ruined the most glorious king in the world.

Still awake? Well done.

Feature Week: Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

2012-01-22T17:11:00.004+11:00

The Arthurian legends, also known as the Matter of Britain, are certainly among the world's most well-known, influential, and important myths. They were very popular all the way through the Middle Ages and remain just as well-known as ever today, probably thanks to the Victorian medievalist revival.

Oddly enough, the stories didn't become really well-known in England until they'd made a big hit in France. During the rise of the ideal of courtly love in the south of France, French minstrels who could tell stirring tales of chivalry and this new mode of love became popular. Poets like Chretien de Troyes found the Arthurian stories of England a perfect vehicle for their theme. They took the fragmented legends, old Welsh stories and the bare-bones narrative of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and built upon them a grand epic cycle in French. Finally, in the 1400s, an English knight named Thomas Malory wrote his own version of the cycle, a comprehensive, first-to-last account reducing the French romances into English and also incorporating some old alliterative English poems and some completely original touches. Le Morte D'Arthur survives in two old manuscripts: one, printed by Caxton in 1485, divides the story into twenty-one chaptered books. Another, discovered in Winchester in 1934, divides the story into eight separate romances with no chaptered divisions.

Whether Malory's epic is one work or a cycle of eight, it remains the definitive English-language treatment of the Matter of Britain. I first tackled it when I was about twelve or thirteen, having cut my teeth, so to speak, on the Roger Lancelyn Green version. I disliked it. It confused me deeply. A couple of years later I tried it again, with a similar result. You see, there seemed to be a fundamental inconsistency in the very fabric of the book, some disconnect in the author's mind.

Ten years later, after discussing the book occasionally with friends (and with Kate in particular), I was ready to try Malory again. I wanted to brush up on Arthurian myth; I was ready to take it on faith that Malory had something to say here; I felt up to the task of finding out what. So I grabbed my two-volume Penguin Malory, a sheet of blank paper, and a pen. I went through our library for resources on courtly love (ah—Ascent to Love by Peter J Leithart, The Viking Portable Medieval Reader) and medieval literature (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature by CS Lewis). I discussed it with Kate. I took many notes. I reflected on what Charles Williams had to say in The Arthurian Torso.

And in the end, I believe I have an answer. Join me this Feature Week as I chew through the meaning of one of the greatest epics in the English language!

Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

The Poet and the Lunatics by GK Chesterton

2012-01-20T19:20:00.003+11:00

Another of GK Chesterton's slim volumes of iconoclastic detective stories, The Poet and the Lunatics is a kind of companion to The Paradoxes of Mr Pond, The Club of Queer Trades, Four Faultless Felons, and the Father Brown books.

To be drastically reductive, Mr Pond's purpose was to display the startling paradoxes of life; Basil Grant of the Queer Trades generally spent his time illustrating the fact that facts are a terrible basis upon which to draw conclusions; the Four Felons had each committed what appeared to be, but were in fact not crimes; Father Brown stood for the advantage that poetry and religion give to the student of human nature. Gabriel Gale, the hero of The Poet and the Lunatics, demonstrates the true nature of madness. Many think that Gale is mad when in fact he shows only an ability to grasp truth allusively and a quixotic urge to take every opportunity that presents itself. Given a chance to play on a swing, or to stare at a bowl of goldfish in the sunlight, or to make a wildly chivalrous oath to a madman, or to scale a ladder into a strange house, Gale will do it without thinking twice.

That is, of course, the hallmark of the really sane man—to see, to enjoy. This book is in a way the dramatisation of the chapter of Orthodoxy, “The Maniac,” in which Chesterton took the cross as a symbol of sanity and the neverending, inexorable, inescapable circle as a symbol of madness. The cross is a good symbol of sanity because it is two intersecting lines; in the mathematical sense, lines are infinite, like the cross is. But the circle! The circle is the realm of logic that spirals relentlessly in on itself. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason; he is the man who has lost everything else, and has persuaded himself that he is the King of England.

Or, to quote Chesterton putting it another way, “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Gabriel Gale is the man who has his head in the heavens, and not the heavens in his head, and consequently sorts out eight very unusual crimes in this slim volume. All the trademark Chestertonian themes and idiosyncrasies are here. Once again I'm reminded of Chesterton's excellence at painting colours with his words: to the imagination, his books are a blazing mass of colours: gold and green against deep purple, or the vivid blue of a peacock against the green grass of a suburban lawn.

Meanwhile, the stories involve the detection—and I use the word in its vaguest sense, as one who might detect a smell or a glimmer of light—of a variety of crimes, some of them before they happen. In one short story, “The Crime of Gabriel Gale,” however, the criminal appears to be the poet himself.

I won't give away the details, but I found this particular story a fascinating reply to the old “problem of pain,” as CS Lewis called it.

“And I believe profoundly that there was no other remedy. Anything in the nature of soothing or quieting him would only have made him yet more secretive and yet more swollen-headed. As for humouring him, it's the very worst thing to do with people who are losing their sense of humour.”

Only one thing can save the soul in question—and it isn't therapy. A wish to summon our pleasures at our pleasure is wildly destructive:

“All [mankind's] fun is in having a gift or a present; which the child, with profound understanding, values because it is 'a surprise'. But surprise implies that a thing came from outside ourselves; and gratitude that it comes from someone other than ourselves. It is thrust through the letter-box; it is thrown in at the window; it is thrown over the wall. Those limits are the lines of the very plan of human pleasure.”

And thus, pain:

“There is no cure for that nightmare of omnipotence except pain; because that is the thing a man knows he would not tolerate if he could really control it. A man must be in some place from which he would certainly escape if he could, if he is really to realize that all things do not come from within.”

The poem Invictus ends with the lines: “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” Reminds me of the story about the monkey in the bog who tried to pull himself out by the whiskers.

Wikilivres etext

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers

2012-01-16T12:00:00.003+11:00

“Not one of my best efforts,” Sayers said, but surely one of the most entertaining.

Dorothy Sayers, a friend and contemporary of CS Lewis, was one of those early-twentieth-century academics that appears to have been good at everything. Her most enduring works include translations of the Divine Comedy and The Song of Roland; essays including The Lost Tools of Learning, a famous argument for classical education; The Man Born to be King, a cycle of radio plays on the life of Christ; the famous Guiness Beer Toucan advertisement; and, perhaps most enjoyably, the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories.

To most people, including (to their downfall) most criminals, Lord Peter appears to be a rich idiot with no day job, fastidious tastes, and a Jeeves-like valet. In fact he has a quiet reputation as a brilliant detective. When a copywriter at Pym’s Publicity, Ltd (an advertising agency) falls to his death, foul play is suspected and Lord Peter agrees to go and work there for as long as it takes to unravel the mystery. By day he is Death Bredon, impoverished distant relative of the Wimsey family and inventor of the famous Whiffle Your Way Around Britain advertising campaign. By night he is the mysterious harlequin frequenting the wild parties of cocaine-addled socialite Dian de Mommerie, a friend of the deceased. What’s behind the death at Pym’s? Who else is involved?

Murder Must Advertise shows Dorothy L Sayers at her most entertaining, full of wit and fun and social satire (the Wimsey/Bunter relationship to begin with is intentionally Wodehouseian). She may have thought it inconsequential, but with a body of Wimsey novels including the more serious The Nine Tailors, Gaudy Night, and The Five Red Herrings, there’s plenty of latitude for a little froth. Unless you want to start with the first Wimsey novel, Whose Body?, this one is a great place to start.

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

2012-01-12T17:28:00.003+11:00

Here I am at last—I've finished Le Morte D'Arthur, and I'm sorry I've been away so long! This post will not be about Le Morte D'Arthur—not because I have nothing to say, but because I have so much to say that I have decided instead to have an Arthurian-themed Feature Week later on this month.

Instead, I'm going to review a play. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand first appeared in 1897 and was immediately wildly successful in both the French-speaking and the English-speaking world. It's ever-so-loosely based on a historical poet-soldier. Cyrano de Bergerac is a Gascon cadet in a regiment composed almost entirely of Gascon noblemen, a poet, and a great swordsman. The only sorrow in his life is his enormous nose, which he is sure makes it impossible for any woman to love him—certainly not his childhood playmate, the lovely and intelligent Roxanne. Alas! Roxanne loves good-looking but simple-minded Christian de Neuvillette, who has just joined Cyrano's regiment. Determined that Roxanne shall be happy, Cyrano offers his services to Christian: with love-letters written by Cyrano, Christian will woo Roxanne.

It's a somewhat simple and farcical plot, but Rostand turns it into an epic, comic, witty, and unabashedly romantic melodrama. It's full of swashbuckling and wordplay. In an age when other playwrights were exploring the depressing depths of realism, Rostand gives his hero a two-page-long speech exploring alternate insults for his nose preparatory to fighting a duel over it:

Thoughtful: 'You ought to put an awning over it, to keep its colour from fading in the sun.'

Pedantic: 'Sir, only the animal that Aristophanes calls the hippocampelephantocamelos could have had so much flesh and bone below its forehead.'

Flippant: 'That tusk must be convenient to hang your hat on.'

Grandiloquent: 'No wind but the mighty Arctic blast, majestic nose, could ever give you a cold from one end to the other!'

In an age when Bernard Shaw was writing cynical tracts like Man and Superman, Rostand revels in romanticism:

I sing, dream, laugh, and go where I please, alone and free. My eyes see clearly and my voice is strong. I'm quarrelsome or benign as it suits my pleasure, always ready to fight a duel or write a poem at the drop of a hat. I dream of flying to the moon but give no thought to fame or fortune. I write only what comes out of myself, and I make it my modest rule to be satisfied with whatever flowers, fruit, or even leaves I gather, as long as they're from my own garden.

There's nothing that's small or mean about this play. Cyrano is generous, but so is Christian when he begins to suspect that Roxanne may have fallen in love with the writer rather than the bearer of the letters. Even the villain, De Guiche, is capable of gallantry at a pinch. The final act may go on a little long, and be sad, but no really romantic story ends happily.

There isn't a great lot of deep philosophical substance to Cyrano de Bergerac. But then, there isn't supposed to be. Cyrano de Bergerac is a good time, a brilliantly well-written play, a story that is happy and heartening not because it everything ends happily but because it is as generous and expansive as its hero.

This review is of the English translation by Lowell Bair.

I have seen the 1990 French-language film Cyrano de Bergerac starring Gerard Depardieu, an excellent adaptation capturing the energy and romanticism of the original. Highly enjoyable for teens and up.

Gutenberg etext (translation by Gladys Thomas and Mary F Guillemard)

Best of 2011

2012-01-02T09:37:00.003+11:00

Apologies for my silence over the last few weeks! Once again I have taken some time off blogging to work through a medieval epic; this time Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. I'll let you know how that goes!

This year I read 75 books—more than the previous two years (and I have no records for years before that). Of those 75, I extract here a list of the best books I read—all the following are very highly recommended. Italics mark re-reads.

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge

The Way Home by Mary Pride

The Central Significance of Culture by Francis Nigel Lee

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

All the Way Home by Mary Pride

Joyfully at Home by Jasmine Baucham

The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

Salute to Adventurers by John Buchan

The Club of Queer Trades by G K Chesterton

To Have and to Hold by Mary Johnston

St Bartholomew's Eve by GA Henty

A Serrated Edge by Douglas Wilson

The White Horse King by Benjamin Merkle

Eternity in Our Hearts by RC Sproul, Jr

Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl by ND Wilson

Total Truth by Nancy R Pearcey

Emma by Jane Austen

Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams

Poems by Christina Rossetti

Margaret's Story by Marjorie Douglas

The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Frozen Assets by PG Wodehouse

If I had to pick an overall best from this list, I would say the best fiction book I read was probably Emma, with The Rosemary Tree, Descent Into Hell, and Salute to Adventurers providing the stiffest competition. Of the non-fiction, the one I enjoyed most is The White Horse King, which is about King Alfred the Great. Merkle tells the story with verve and enthusiasm, painting Alfred as a bonafide hero—warrior, scholar, visionary, and devout Christian who recognised his country's need for repentance as the only hope for lasting victory. Apart from that one, I particularly recommend FN Lee's Central Significance of Culture, Wilson's A Serrated Edge, Pearcey's Total Truth, and Lewis's Four Loves.

This year I discovered a couple of new authors and got better acquainted with those I'd just met, such as Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Goudge, and even Charles Williams. Two poets, however, were my two greatest discoveries of 2011.

James McAuley is the great Australian anti-modernist poet, a man whose works dug back into Christendom, order, form, and meaning. The postmodernist elite have banished him from national memory, but I look forward to the day that he is recognised as one of Australia's greatest poets and one of the few that ever gave God glory.

Christina Rossetti was in her youth a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, part of the Victorian medievalist movement. Sister of the painter, poet, and playboy Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the atheist modernist William Michael Rossetti, Christina remained a devout Christian all her life, even turning down two offers of marriage because of religious differences. For years feminists have alternately tried to show that she was a bad poet because of her beliefs, or that she was a good poet in spite of the crushing weight of patriarchal Christendom. The truth is, of course, that she was magnificent, and that she was magnificent because of her knowledge of the truth. Although her life and many of her poems are tinged with sadness, there was a deeper joy beneath them which burst out occasionally in works like A Birthday, of which the insufferable William Rossetti commented that he could not imagine how she could have wrote it, seeing how unhappy her life was. (Hint: A Birthday is not necessarily about any mortal love).

I will leave you with one of my favourite Rossetti poems.

In Progress

Ten years ago it seemed impossible

That she should ever grow so calm as this,

With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss

And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well.

Slow-speaking when she has some fact to tell,

Silent with long-unbroken silences,

Centred in self yet not unpleased to please,

Gravely monotonous like a passing bell.

Mindful of drudging daily common things,

Patient at pastime, patient at her work,

Wearied perhaps but strenuous certainly.

Sometimes I fancy we may one day see

Her head shoot forth seven stars from where they lurk

And her eyes lightnings and her shoulders wings.

The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery

2011-12-13T13:34:00.003+11:00

One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.

LM Montgomery is best-known for her Anne of Green Gables series—and The Blue Castle must be one of her most obscure books. Nevertheless the world seems to be divided into two kinds of people—the people who have never heard of The Blue Castle, and the people who have read it, and love it.

I first made its acquaintance quite by mistake one rainy Saturday morning, and when I finished it soon after lunch, I had a new favourite Montgomery book. I'd forgotten what a quick read it is. Yesterday, feeling a little like spoiling myself, I read it again.

It tells the story of Valancy Stirling, a downtrodden, perpetual spinster—the butt of jokes at family gatherings, living a useless life with a controlling mother, her only happiness coming from reading John Foster's poetic, evocative nature guides and her daydreams of the Blue Castle in Spain where she has everything she always wanted—riches, friends, a handsome prince...

Then Valancy finds out that she has only a year to live, and bursts out of her prison. No longer afraid of the consequences of her actions, of dying a poor and lonely old maid, Valancy decides to stand up for herself, to enjoy life, and to do something worthwhile. After giving her relatives a sizable piece of her mind, she moves in with Old Roaring Abel, the town drunkard, to take care of his dying daughter who has been ostracised by the respectable people of the town since returning pregnant from a summer away. She also gets to know another local pariah who has befriended Abel and Cissy—Barney Snaith, who lives on an island on Lake Muskoka and is dimly rumoured to be an axe murderer.

When she finds herself falling for Barney, Valancy feels that her Blue Castle has materialised before her eyes. But only a year's happiness lies before her. How will she be able to let it go?

As I mentioned, I loved this book when I first read it some years ago. On the second reading, however, I found myself looking at it with a more critical eye. LM Montgomery's books have always given me a great deal of pleasure, but she had her faults, and this book seems to contain an equal measure of bad and good.

Valancy finds her freedom in rebelling against her clan and rushing into a life of rash romanticism. Tired of living for unappreciative others, she decides to live for herself a little (although to be fair, this does manifest in going off to care for Cissy, who really does need her).

LM Montgomery paints a somewhat unfair picture in this book. Establishment and established religion, with its false guilt, snobbery, and failure to care for people like Cissy, is justly castigated. But in denouncing that, Montgomery makes the classic blunder of falling into the ditch on the other side of the road. Valancy, in defying societal wrongs, also defies her family, abandons her reputation, and thoroughly enjoys shocking everyone.

On top of that, Montgomery takes some theological liberties. “Fear is the original sin,” one character says. When Valancy finds happiness, she says, “I understand now what it means to be born again,” and the narrative states, “Old things passed away and all things became new.” This language of grace and salvation relates to Valancy's liberation, but this seems to be a liberation of romanticism, not of Christ. To be charitable to Montgomery, perhaps she did mean to use the Biblical language to hint at real grace working in this story—shades of GK Chesterton here, whose Innocent Smith would shoot at people in order to bring them to life.

Whether my charitable impulses are correct or not, I really appreciated the way Montgomery wraps up her theme of freedom and bondage:

“There is no such thing as freedom on earth,” he said. “Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me—that's a bondage.”

“Who said or wrote that 'the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is'?” asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps.

“Ah, now you have it,” said Barney. “That's all the freedom we can hope for—the freedom to choose our own prison.”

Not whether, but which—a distinctively Christian way of putting it, after all.

In the end The Blue Castle is probably LM Montgomery's best work, flawed as it is. It contains some of her most powerful writing, whether in describing Valancy's dreary life, her hilarious confrontations with the Stirling clan, or the idyll on Lake Muskoka—which alone is worth the price of admission. It's a more serious work than the Anne books, not as problematic as the Emily books, and just as sweet as it needs to be. A great book for a grey day.

The School for Scandal and The Critic by Richard Sheridan

2011-12-09T20:21:00.003+11:00

Richard Sheridan (1751-1816) was a comic playwright of particularly fine vintage. His two most famous plays, The School for Scandal and The Critic, are still side-splittingly funny even though their primary target is eighteenth-century society.

The School for Scandal, peopled with characters named Teazle, Backbite, Surface, Sneerwell, &c, is a play about gossip, hypocrisy, and true worth. In some ways it's a retelling of the parable of the two sons, the one that said "Yes" and didn't, and the other that said "No" and did. An old bachelor with a young extravagant wife; two brothers in love with the same girl; and a collection of intriguing scandalmongers add up to a sparkling comedy of intrigue.

But The Critic is my favourite--a play-within-a-play, with hilarious commentary. The main characters are Mr Puff, a playwright who invites the author Plagiary and the critics Dangle and Sneer to attend the rehearsal of his new tragedy, The Spanish Armada--a little history, as Mr Puff explains, filled up with some romance:

Sneer: No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope?
Puff: O Lud! no, no. I only suppose the Governor of Tilbury Fort's daughter to be in love with the son of the Spanish admiral.
Sneer: Oh, is that all!
Dangle: Excellent, i'faith! I see it at once. But won't this appear rather improbable?
Puff: To be sure it will--but what the plague! a play is not to show occurrences that happen every day, but things just so strange, that though they never did, they might happen.

The lovers, even more improbably, are named Don Ferolos Whiskerandos on the one hand, and Tilburina on the other... As the play rollicks on, Sheridan mercilessly lampoons all sorts of things: Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Christopher Hatton enter the stage, telling each other the backstory--

Sir Walter: You also know--
Dangle: Mr Puff, as he knows all this, why does Sir Walter go on telling him?

Meanwhile Mr Puff must deal with fractious actors, who keep cutting their lines--

Whiskerandos: O matchless excellence!--and must we part?
Well, if--we must--we must--and in that case
The less is said the better.
Puff: Hey day! here's a cut! What, are all the mutual protestations out?
Tilburina: Now pray sir, don't interrupt us just here, you ruin our feelings.
Puff: Your feelings!--but zounds, my feelings, ma'am!

Needless to say, the play is one laugh from beginning to end, when Tilburina goes "stark mad in white satin"--

Sneer: Why in white satin?
Puff: O Lord, sir, when a heroine goes mad she always goes in white satin--don't she, Dangle?
Dangle: Always--it's a rule.

They say the past is a different country. But fortunately, in Sheridan's England, they liked to laugh just as much as we do.

Gutenberg etext of The School for Scandal
Gutenberg etext of The Critic

Margaret's Story by Marjorie Douglas

2011-12-05T17:50:00.002+11:00

This book was recommended--and loaned--to me by my lovely friend Fiona. I sat down to begin reading it and before I knew it I has halfway through the book and almost completely through the afternoon.

Margaret Disbrowe is a lady of leisure approaching her twenty-first birthday. She realises how frivolous and irreligious she is beside her best friend Phyllis, who spends her time in ministering to her family and the people of the parish, but isn't quite sure where to begin, even if she wished for, improvement. Then a terrible blow falls. Margaret's mother falls ill and a terrible secret is revealed--a secret which sends Margaret out into the world alone, with no family, no friends, and no means of support. Eventually she is able to find a position as a parlourmaid with a kind mistress, but her life is saddened by her separation from her family and the disapproval of her mistress's nephew, who seems to threaten the only security she has in the world. As she faces difficulty and sorrow, Margaret learns to cling to the only real security in life--our Lord.

This book, originally published sometime in the 1920s, is a wonderful, sweet, and gentle coming-of-age story. I enjoyed the heroine's sweet narrative voice and while I don't generally approve of preachy passages in books, this was mostly unobtrusive and profound enough not to come across as simple platitude. Meanwhile the plot was mostly credible and very enjoyable. Margaret's journey from frivolity to real usefulness and concern for others is the main stuff of the plot, but there was also an understated romance that reminded me a little of the one in Emma.

If my life was a novel, chances are it would look rather similar to Margaret's Story. I thoroughly enjoyed it, felt a lot in common with the heroine, and would recommend it to anyone.

Friday poem: The First Spring Day

2011-12-02T10:37:00.002+11:00

I was able to read a small volume of Christina Rossetti's poems lately. It was the first serious reading of Rossetti that I've done, and now I wish I hadn't let it so long! Here's one of my favourites:

The First Spring Day
by Christina Rossetti

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing, robin, sing!
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

I wonder if the spring-tide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:
Sing, hope, to me!
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:
Sing, voice of Spring!
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.

Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams

2011-12-01T15:09:00.004+11:00

I think everyone must know about CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, the two great Christian fantasists, who also happened to be both Oxford dons, firm friends, and members of the famous Inklings—the writing group in which early drafts of The Lord of the Rings and the Space Trilogy were read and discussed. There were many members—Hugh Dyson, Owen Barfield, Warnie Lewis, Christopher Tolkien, and Roger Lancelyn Green all attended over different periods—but none of these achieved the same level of fame as Lewis and Tolkien. However, there was one member who arguably achieved the same level of greatness, though his work has never been so well-known. This was Charles Williams, a man who, like Tolkien (who never really got on with him), appeared to have been born in the wrong time-period. At first glance one might say that he lived his life as a mystic poet of the courtly-love period. As far as scholarship goes, his great contribution to English letters was his book on Dante, The Figure of Beatrice. His magnumopus is his unfinished cycle of Arthurian verse, contained in Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars. But probably it is his novels which are most widely-read today.

They have been called supernatural thrillers. That is somewhat misleading; it suggests a book full of plot and sensation. Williams’s novels are more meditative than otherwise, and while the plot usually involves a desperate struggle with unspeakable evil, it is the kind of struggle where souls and symbols are at stake, not earthly lives or kingdoms. The result is somewhat unlike anything else you’ve ever read, but immensely rewarding.

Descent Into Hell is one of the most famous of these. Broadly speaking, it chronicles the spiritual journeys of three people in a quiet new suburb called Battle Hill. An unnamed suicide, trapped in the pocket of time when he killed himself, awaits grace or damnation. Pauline Anstruther, who has been haunted her whole life by a doppelganger which comes a little closer each time it appears, lives in blind terror of the day it will actually meet her. And finally, Lawrence Wentworth, watching the girl he wants being competently wooed away from him, marinates in self-pity until his desires take physical form as a succubus.

All this against the backdrop of a play written by Stanhope, the local poet, whose doctrine of substituted love prompts him toward a somewhat literal interpretation of the command to “bear one another’s burdens”. Other characters include Pauline’s dying grandmother, who deals out love and grace indiscriminately; Adela, the woman who Wentworth believes he loves; and Lilith, guardian demon of the city of Gomorrah, whose citizens are consumed by love of themselves.

I cannot pretend to have grasped all the meanings and allusions of this book, and I could not even begin to fully discuss all the rich themes that I did grasp. As far as I could see, there are two main themes intermingled in the book. There is the theme of “the doctrine of substituted love”, as previously mentioned. Bearing one another’s burdens, in this sense, means taking on the fears or troubles of another. Christ’s substitution, Williams says, is a law of the universe for all. As He took our sins, so we must take each other’s burdens. This does not, of course, extend to carrying each other’s sins; only Christ can do that:

Pauline said: “But let’s try at least. Look, let me go and learn your part.” She was not quite sure, as she said it, whether this came under the head of permissible interchanges. She had meant it but for the part in the play, but this new fashion of identities was too strong for her; the words were a definition of a substitution beyond her. Adela’s past, Adela’s identity, was Adela’s own. A god rather than she, unless she were inhabited by a god, must carry Adela herself; the god to whom baptism for the dead was made, the lord of substitution…

This doctrine of substituted love is the thing that will save the souls of the book from Hell and Gomorrah. Self-love is the second theme. It is self-love that Lilith emptily promises; it is Wentworth’s self-love that takes form as the succubus, so that in some incredibly creepy way he becomes the object of his own love. “Greater love hath no man than this,” said Christ, “that he lay down his life for his friends.” “Learning to love yourself,” says the old power ballad, “that’s the greatest love of all.” These are the two intertwined themes of Descent Into Hell.

There is a third, which grows out of these. In the book it is named as Joy and Fact, or Joy in Fact. The word, I fancy, should be “contentment”. To love outside yourself includes loving God first and God’s will as it is revealed, even before loving your neighbour. This is a deep, rich, far from passive contentment:

She looked out of the window. There would be few more evenings during which she could watch the departure of day, and the promise of rarity gave a greater happiness to the experience. So did the knowledge of familiarity. Rarity was one form of delight and frequency another. A thing could even be beautiful because it did not happen, or rather the not-happening could be beautiful. So long always as joy was not rashly pinned to the happening; so long as you accepted what joys the universe offered and did not seek to compel the universe to offer you joys of your own definition.

This is something that, unlike Wentworth, Pauline is able to learn, so that at the end when she confronts Lilith, who offers her “anything, everything; every--“

“But I don’t want anything,” Pauline cried out; and as she heard her own vain emphasis, added with a little despairing laugh: “How can I tell you? I only want everything to be as it is—for myself, I mean.”

“Change,” said the shape. “I don’t change.”

Pauline cried out: “And if it changes, it shall change as it must, and I shall want it as it is then.” She laughed again at the useless attempt to explain.

When I reviewed Elizabeth Goudge’s book The Rosemary Tree on this blog, my friend Kate (who has always encouraged me to read Charles Williams, and even went to the trouble of sending me a copy of the Arthurian poetry, which was perfectly marvellous of her) responded by saying she thought Charles Williams was better. That puzzled me at the time; I was not sure how the two could be compared. After Descent Into Hell, it became clearer. The thing I loved about The Rosemary Tree was Mrs Goudge’s ability to depict the spiritual undercurrents of everyday life, so that a somewhat everyday story became the mask for a deep fantasy, the kind of fantasy that is actually true. Descent Into Hell also depicts the spiritual undercurrents of everyday life, but with this book the fantasy breaks out; Lilith, the succubus, the doppelganger, all intrude into the world of the senses. I am not familiar enough with either author to say that one is better than the other. Williams is more challenging, more profound; Goudge is more accessible, with simpler imagery. Both are worth reading.

Like all Williams’s books, Descent Into Hell is profound and challenging; perhaps more challenging than either War in Heaven or The Place of the Lion, the two others of his novels which I have read. I would not necessarily recommend it to the first-time reader of Williams, but it’s well worth the challenge.

Beric the Briton by GA Henty

2011-11-30T17:34:00.003+11:00

It all began, actually, with a picture. The scene: the Coliseum at Rome. In the foreground, her hands clasped with anguish, a despairing maiden. In the middle distance, a young man of muscular build is creeping towards a lion, obviously hoping to do it a bit of no good. The lion appears to have adopted a similar attitude.

From this illustration I could tell right away that Beric the Briton was my kind of book. In earlier years, poking through the stacks of GA Henty books on the tables at homeschool conferences, I had thought the entire book was about wild Queen Boadicea, British scourge of the Roman invaders. In fact I found that Beric the Briton is actually a snapshot of the Roman Empire around the time of the Emperor Nero.

It begins in Britain, naturally, where we meet our hero Beric. He is the chieftain of a sub-tribe of the Iceni—Queen Boadicea’s tribe. As a child he was sent to the Romans as a hostage, and has spent his days among them growing to appreciate their culture and taking copious notes on how to fight them. After the Romans’ brutal treatment of the Queen and her daughters, Beric joins the ill-fated revolt, escaping from the final battle with a handful of men with whom to wage guerilla warfare against the Romans in the marshes. After many adventures, Beric is captured and sent to Rome, where he trains as a gladiator; witnesses the great fire, the persecution of Christians, and the excesses of Nero; and even leads a gladiatorial revolt.

This all makes for a gripping yarn in the best Henty style. As usual, it’s packed full of historical details, especially in military matters. There are also some unusual characteristics in this book. It’a children’s book; so Henty is obliged to gloss over some of what is really going on in the plot. For example, he doesn’t explain exactly why it would be so shocking for a maiden of good family to go to one of Nero’s orgies. All the same he has obviously read his Suetonius, and does a good job of suggesting dim horrors.

I can imagine the literati sniffing at this approach, but despite its discretion Beric the Briton has interesting nuances. The treatment of Nero is particularly sympathetic—without trying to disguise his weakness or cruelty, Henty tries to be just to the man as someone who genuinely cared about art and was generous to his (momentary, doomed) favourites. He also dismisses out of hand the idea that Nero himself started the fire that burned Rome, attributing to him nothing more sinister than a delight that the old ugly city was burning to make room for a new and improved one.

Interestingly, this is the one Henty book I’ve ever read which focuses on the role of women. The women of Britain are tall, strong, inured to hardships, and liable to throw themselves fiercely upon the enemy. They are also able to take public office. On the other hand, Roman women are little better than possessions, and noble Roman women especially are expected to do little but be quiet and look pretty. When Beric becomes engaged to a Roman girl, he assures her that he will not treat her like a child, the way the Romans do. The interesting question to think about as you read Beric the Briton is this: Did Henty think the women of his own day were more like Roman, or like British women?

Although he expresses a preference for the capability and status of British women, Henty is by no means a protofeminist; in this book or anywhere. There is one episode in this book which particularly surprised me. Henty, that writer of wholesome books in which all the good people have good relationships (and I’m not complaining) depicts a divorce in this one. From her first appearance, the lady who is divorced later in the plot is a discontented nag. Not obviously or ridiculously so; not so much that Henty could not have treated it as comedy instead of tragedy. Nevertheless it happens, in a scene that for Henty is unusually charged with painful emotion.

One final thing before I finish. I particularly enjoyed the romance in this book. In many Henty books, the romance—there is almost always a romance—seems perfunctory. It is almost always firmly sidelined by the main plot. Fame, fortune, and family always await the hero; but the adventure is the main thing. Accordingly, whenever a young lady of good family pops up in a Henty plot, you expect the hero to marry her. Unusually, there are three such young ladies in this book, and Henty keeps you guessing for a while as to which of them is intended for the hero. Just as unusually, Henty takes time to show—instead of mention—the two of them getting to know each other. There was one scene, shortly after a death in the lady’s family, that was particularly moving.

Of course, then there was that particularly distasteful scene near the end where one of the young ladies tells Mrs Beric, half-jokingly, that her own husband is all very well, but of course she really wanted to marry Beric all along. Oh, Henty! Bad form!

Despite this fumble, Beric the Briton was enjoyable and exciting with some unusually well-drawn characters. Highly recommended.

Librivox recording

Gutenberg etext

The Rider of the White Horse by Rosemary Sutcliff/Introduced by Elizabeth Goudge

2011-11-24T20:56:00.001+11:00

Rosemary Sutcliff was a novelist who is mainly famous for writing children's books set at different times during the history of England—especially that period during the decline of the Roman occupation and the Saxon invasions. One of the most well-known of her works, The Eagle of the Ninth, was recently made into a film and she is a household name among the homeschool community.

She also wrote a variety of books for grown-ups, including one, The Rider of the White Horse, about the wife of Sir Thomas Fairfax, the great Puritan general of the Civil War whose military partnership with Cromwell turned the tide against the King. I have not yet read this book, nor any of her other books for adults, but my friend (and regular Vintage Novels reader—hello, there!) Christina is quite a fan of hers. Another of Christina's favourite authors—one to whom her family introduced me, much to my gratitude—is Elizabeth Goudge. For some time, Christina told me, she had wondered if Elizabeth Goudge and Rosemary Sutcliff read each others' works at all. She was unable to find any evidence of a connection until one day, opening a library copy of The Rider of the White Horse, she found it introduced by Elizabeth Goudge herself.

I transcribe the introduction here (adding a word of caution if you have not read the book; at least some ending details are given away below):

There can be nothing nicer than being asked to write an introduction to a favourite book, but at the same time it is a difficult task. It is like being asked to describe the charm of a face you love. If you did not love the face so much, and even more the person behind the face, it would be easy. But as things are, what can you possibly say? I can only say, baldly and inadequately, that I love this book. It may not be such a great book as Sword at Sunset but it has qualities of poignancy and gentleness that make it unforgettable.

Thomas Fairfax, the Rider of the White Horse, is a man of “scarecrow distinction” and “scarecrow gentleness”, dedicated and uncompromising, a great solider yet, like the Duke of Wellington, never so miserable as in the hour of victory; and again like the great Duke he is tragically unable to return his wife's love for him. Anne Fairfax, warmly loving and fiercely loyal, has no beauty to compel a man's passion. She follows her husband to war, he being her world, and he can give her in return merely admiration and tenderness. Their child, little Moll, who also follows her father to war, is one of the dearest of Rosemary Sutcliff's children. Who will ever forget little Moll having her tooth out, or little Moll with Dicken, when he gives her the ginger kitten? A younger child, the baby Elizabeth, dies early in the book, but one does not forget her. She is too poignantly described to be forgotten.

The fortunes of this little family are set against the fitting background of the civil war. They are like leaves in the wind, swept this way and that in its tragic eddies, inextricably a part of it, and making a frame for this central picture. Rosemary Sutcliff has spun her own magic of the seasons, wind and rain, the greenness of a lost England, the coldness of winter and the warmth of old gardens in summer sun. Artist as well as writer she sees details of colour and light that most of us would never see, and opens our eyes to them. Describing a cat she says, “the little cool marsh wind made bluish zigzags in her tabby fur”. Out on the wind swept Lincolnshire wolds at night a fire has been lit. “Men came and went about the fire, and the rose-gold light of the flames sprayed sideways over the flank of the white horse picketed under the lashing thorn trees.” And who could forget this? “William and I lay out on the moors above Denton many and many a summer night, when we were boys, and watched the northern sky echoing with daylight as the sea echoes in a shell, all the short night through.”

The story is not woven entirely in quiet colours, the fighting crackles and flames through the autumnal gentleness. Now here is a startling thing about this writer. Rosemary Sutcliff writes of love, suffering and beauty out of her own experience as woman and artist, but what about the battles? Most of us, attempting to write a historical novel and brought up short against a battle, something of which we are thankful to know nothing whatever, set up a few lines of toy soldiers, do our best with the usual phrases about sounding trumpets and thundering hoofs, and pass thankfully on to something else. But Rosemary Sutcliff writes as though she had been present at every battle she describes. She understands the strategy and the lie of the land, she knows what the weather was and how it affected the outcome, she knows exactly how the thing looked and sounded, and so do we by the time we have finished reading about it. I must confess that I do not enjoy reading about battles, but I can also say that I have never yet missed a Sutcliff battle. Bloody though the may be they are lit with courage and courtesy. “Sir Thomas's compliments to Colonel Lambert … General advance at sound of trumpets.” The whole picture is spread out before one like a stormy sunset and one is obliged to watch to the end.

But the heart of this book is not Marston Moor, it is the scene towards the end of this book when Thomas Fairfax, in the extremity of suffering, and it some way liberated by it, opens his heart to his wife. With moonlight lying upon them “like a silver shawl” they are as near to each other as two human beings can be in this world. Rosemary Sutcliff has never written a more moving scene that this except perhaps the farewell scene between Raleigh and his wife in his prison cell, which opens with the words, “I have brought your good clothes, Walter.” She had brought them to be worn on the scaffold, but “the silver shawl” was for continued life together.

Rosemary Sutcliff is too true an artist to give us the conventional happy ending. The deepest moments of our lives strengthen and refine our characters but do not radically alter them. In the last chapter, coming home to his wife after a time of parting, Thomas can ask her to love him still, and can admit his need of her love, but he cannot even now return it in equal measure. But Anne had known her moment was winged and in her selflessness had made no effort to hold on to it. “You could not hold a winged thing; you could not even perfectly remember it afterward, for that, too, was a kind of holding.”

ELIZABETH GOUDGE.

Emma by Jane Austen

2011-11-21T20:31:00.002+11:00

I had read all of Jane Austen's major works by the age of seventeen. Pride and Prejudice I had first read by twelve, and that one was obvious enough to be enjoyed, repeatedly, from that age. Though Emma came some years later, when I was fifteen or sixteen, its subtle plot, humour and characterisation flew right over my head. I remembered it as a long and not very engrossing book which it had taken effort to get through.

Two weeks ago I was able to watch the 2009 BBC miniseries production of Emma and found it fresh, funny, and engaging—enough to make me wonder whether it might not be worthwhile to read the book again. Meanwhile I had read Peter Leithart on Emma in his book Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen. This had got me thinking about the larger themes of charity and community in the novel, themes which came through loud and clear in the miniseries. I was now able to appreciate how the little ins and outs of social life in Highbury contributed to an intricate yet understated plot.

When a discussion began on Facebook about whether the miniseries was true to the book, I decided I had to take the plunge for a re-read. And I'm so glad I did. Emma is a wonderful story.

Miss Emma Woodhouse is twenty-one, independently wealthy, pretty, charming, and an inveterate matchmaker. Having decided that her former governess's happy marriage was all her doing, Emma looks around for some other pair to render happy for life. She settles on the local vicar, Mr Elton, and soon decides that Miss Harriet Smith—a beautiful girl of mysterious (that is to say, not very respectable) parentage is the perfect match for him. Old family friend Mr Knightley, the only person in Highbury who does not think Emma is perfect, rebukes her for meddling when she persuades Harriet to decline an offer of marriage from a young farmer who is in love with her. Meanwhile the little village of Highbury is buzzing with the return of Miss Jane Fairfax, accomplished niece of the garrulous Miss Bates and Frank Churchill, the long-lost son of Mr Weston. Frank's attentions to Emma almost cause her to reconsider her resolution never to marry, while the suggestion that Mr Knightley might be Jane Fairfax's secret admirer causes her some concern as the adoring aunt of the small heir of Mr Knightley's estate. Through a tangle of gossip, secrets, sundered hearts, and mystery, Emma grows in understanding and finds true love of her own.

Emma is a delicious, frothy confection with a chewy centre. Jane Austen chose as her setting a small community where everyone knows everyone else—and where, if someone offends someone else, there can be no escape from awkwardness. In such a setting, Emma's gossip and thoughtlessness become a twin spectre of destruction. Indeed, gossip and drawing-room chatter drive the whole plot. Careless remarks have shattering consequences.

In this subtle, understated masterpiece, what Jane Austen doesn't say is almost as important as what she does say. There's a wonderful scene where Emma's former governess, Mrs Weston, suggests that Mr Knightley may be Jane Fairfax's admirer. Emma reacts in shock, protesting that Mr Knightley must never marry and giving shallow reasons. If the reader looks far enough under the surface to realise that Emma is in love with Mr Knightley and doesn't realise it yet, this scene becomes exquisitely funny. Then there's the scene near the end where Mrs Elton brags about how Mr Elton is Mr Knightley's right hand man—nobody can do anything without Mr Elton—Mr Elton has gone to see Mr Knightley on a matter of great importance. Enter, on cue, Mr Elton complaining that Mr Knightley was not at home (though he promised to be there) and none of the servants know where he is. Surely he left you a message, says Mrs Elton, trying to save face. Not a word, says Mr Elton. Oh, to be sure he did, Mrs Elton says—the servants must have forgotten it. And in the middle of this scene, Emma—who Mrs Elton is trying to simultaneously impress and snub—excuses herself and leaves because she knows where Mr Knightley is, and knows that he wants to see her, Emma. The whole book, like this scene, drips with delicate, ironic comedy.

Meanwhile, some have suggested that Emma, revolving as it does around a central mystery, is the first English mystery story. Indeed one of the chapters could aptly be titled Mr Knightley: Gentleman Detective. This is part of why a second reading of Emma is so rewarding: if you know what happens at the end, you can read more carefully between the lines, picking up more clues—even in Miss Bates's endless chatter. Indeed, careful reading of all the dialogue is a must—even if the characters aren't dropping hints to solve the mystery, they are dropping hints as to their own true characters and motivations.

And Jane Austen is merciless to her characters, foolish or duplicitous. Mrs Elton's conversation is one long name-dropping exercise (how fitting that her friends should have names like Suckling and Bragge!). Of Harriet Smith, the remark is made that “Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would always be in love.” And even nicer characters like Miss Bates or Mr Knightley are not passed over without remark on their faults, while even the heroine is not allowed to rejoice over the birth of Mrs Weston's baby girl without some thought of arranging a match between the child and one of Emma's nephews. More than once I felt myself squirming upon seeing myself reflected in the characters.

Underneath the fun and wit, Jane Austen provides in Emma a wonderful discussion of charity—of love in public and private forms. Peter Leithart says,

Perhaps the most Christian novel Jane Austen wrote, Emma is concerned with the relation of charity and truth; it is about “speaking the truth in love,” or more precisely, about truth-speaking as the path to love. --Miniatures and Morals

Love in Emma has much more to do with community than with romance. Throughout the book, she must face the consequences of not loving Harriet enough to refrain from exciting false hopes, of not loving Jane enough to refrain from starting rumours, of not loving Miss Bates enough in her reduced circumstances. Truth and deception are a big part of this love: truth is almost embodied in the person of Mr Knightley, who alone dares to tell Emma the harsh truth of herself and others:

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty, not by manoevering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.”

Love in a small community is nothing easy or glamorous. The same people's faults rub up on you the same way, day after day. In Leithart's words, Austen “knew all about the pettiness, the gossip, the boredom, and the inanity of life in a small community.” People are always “as tiresome as ever.” And yet God tells us to love our neighbours. Emma is about the unique challenges that come with trying to love the person next door, with the one little idiosyncracy that nearly makes you want to scream.

Essentially, the answer of the novel is that the neighbours can only remain a “band of true friends” by a continual exercise of charity and by a continual devotion to truth. --Miniatures and Morals

In Emma, the characters must navigate deception and their own uncharitable impulses in order to make community life bearable. It's a high-stakes plot, in which the enemies are whispers and veiled insults. It's a profound and thoroughly enjoyable book—highly recommended.

Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

I have seen two film adaptations of Emma. The 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow film cuts a great deal of material out of the book, but remains an enjoyable and faithful treatment of what's left. The 2009 BBC miniseries with Romola Garai in the title role takes much more time over the material but updates the dialogue somewhat, as well as making the humour and emotional beats a touch more obvious. Both are worth seeing. As usual, neither can substitute for the book, but the 2009 miniseries may convince others, like me, to try the book.

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

2011-11-17T20:40:00.004+11:00

These are not my favourite books. Nor have I always thought they were very important to me. But they are a part of my mental architecture in ways so profound that it took me twenty years to realise just how great their effect has been on me.

This would be, incidentally, an interesting topic for discussion. The Chronicles had a formative effect on my life. Was that a good thing? I think it was, because I think they are good and wholesome books. But as my (potential) children grow up, I'll be remembering how I was shaped by the books that, from age four to nine, were my favourites, and choosing books accordingly.

The Chronicles of Narnia are seven, as following (in the order in which they were written, and should be read; take no notice of the spinal numbering that is ubiquitous today):

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Four children sent away from London during the Blitz discover a magic wardrobe leading into the enchanted kingdom of Narnia, which is terrorised by the cruel White Witch. An ancient prophecy states that after a hundred years of winter, the White Witch's power will be broken by Aslan, the Great Lion, who will appoint four human children to reign over a reborn Narnia. But the prophecy can only be fulfilled if all four children are present—and one of them has gone over to the White Witch.

Prince Caspian: High King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy—the four siblings from the previous book—have reverted to childhood and lived another year in the outside world. But then the note of Susan's magic horn summons them back to Narnia. This time, foreign invaders have taken over Narnia and driven all non-human and magic creatures into hiding. One boy stands between Miraz the usurper and total control of Narnia—young Caspian, the true king, who resists him with a guerilla force of Old Narnians. The woods return to life, Aslan is seen again, and it's time for the old kings and queens to prepare for war.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: To their great delight, Edmund and Lucy return to Narnia in time to sail with King Caspian to the uttermost East in search of ten lost lords, the end of the world, and Aslan's own country. To their great disgust, they bring a hanger-on—their horrible cousin Eustace, who insists on seeing the British Consul and getting back to civilisation. Fortunately for Eustace, there is no British Consul in the uttermost East—but plenty of danger in the form of slavers, dragons, sea-serpents, magicians, and nightmares.

The Silver Chair: Eustace, now a reformed character, and Jill, an unhappy girl at his school, call out to Aslan for permission to escape to Narnia. Permission is given, but only so that they can undertake a quest. King Caspian's only son and heir Rilian has been missing for years, so Aslan solemnly commissions Jill and Eustace to go in search of him until they find him and bring him back, or perish in the attempt.

The Horse and His Boy: Shasta, a boy growing up in poverty in the Arabian-Nights land of Calormene, knows that he cannot truly be the son of Arsheesh the fisherman. But then a visiting nobleman's horse changes his life forever with one whisper. The horse is in fact a Talking Horse from the far northern land of Narnia, and it is his dream to return there and be free...and from his fair northern features, says the horse, Shasta must be from Narnia too. Boy and horse escape together, and with the company of Aravis, a young noblewoman fleeing an arranged marriage, set out for Narnia and the North. But the passion of Prince Rabadash for Queen Susan of Narnia is likely to make their trip more eventful, more dangerous, and more momentous than they expected.

The Magician's Nephew: Digory Kirke knew his uncle had a secret, but he and next-door-neighbour Polly Plummer never expected to find themselves flung across the barrier between worlds, or to waken a powerful witch-queen among the crumbling ruins of a dying cosmos. Jadis of Charn lusts for new worlds to conquer, and Digory is desperate to save his own—at any cost.

The Last Battle: Eustace and Jill return to Narnia to find the Last King of Narnia, Tirian, bound to a tree awaiting trial for slaying a Calormene. The ape Shift preaches a strange heresy on Stable Hill; the creatures of Narnia have been decieved and frightened by his lies; then the mighty Calormenes strike Cair Paravel. An eagle bears the last message of Roonwit the Centaur to King Tirian: Remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy. In a Narnia racked with strife, strange gods, and doubt, Tirian and his friends choose a hill on which to loyally die.

When I read Michael Ward's Planet Narnia, which is the most staggering work of literary criticism any Lewis fan will ever read, I noticed Ward's overriding point with surprise: he was saying that Lewis intended to give readers a taste of a medieval aesthetic which would show many of them, for the first time, what a truly Christian work of art is like. This aesthetic would be communicated at all levels, even the subliminal.

It was at this point that I realised that I have always been fascinated by the medieval, and that this fascination was born in Narnia. I had to laugh as I realised how my whole perception of beauty and nobility were formed in Narnia.

‘As to that,’ said the King, ‘I do not doubt that every one of us would sell our lives dearly in the gate and they would not come at the Queen but over our dead bodies.’

Noblesse oblige, courtesy, chivalry, merriment, courage, humility, honour—I dare not say that the Chronicles of Narnia instilled these qualities in me, but they taught me to recognise them and admire them. They are first-rate stories, powerful allegories, and real food for the soul in an ugly, rebellious world.

The first three Chronicles—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, have been made into movies produced by CS Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham. They are of varying quality and faithfulness to the books and fall into the same traps as the Lord of the Rings movies, the Society for Creative Anachronism, and other things—that is, the trap of being meticulously researched, beautifully set-dressed, and sumptuously costumed, but not remotely authentic in attitudes, themes, or aims. I suggest reading the books five or ten times before watching the movies once.

The Broad Highway by Jeffery Farnol

2011-11-13T18:08:00.002+11:00

I had already read two Jeffery Farnol books, and quite like them. Although as a writer Farnol labours under many deficiencies—shallow sentimentalism and sensationalism for two—I enjoyed Martin Conisby's Vengeance for its unusual treatment of its revenge theme. From the vantage point of having read The Broad Highway, I am no longer sure whether Farnol is worth salvaging from obscurity, even for Martin Conisby.

The Broad Highway starts out promisingly enough with the reading of a will. Peter Vibart's uncle left him ten guineas, while his rake of a cousin Sir Maurice Vibart is given twenty thousand pounds. But the bulk of the uncle's fortune is to go to whichever of them, within a year, should marry the strong-willed, strong-armed, yet beautiful Lady Sophia Sefton.

The quiet, scholarly Peter strongly dislikes what he hears of Lady Sophia, and so instead of trying his hand for the legacy he sets out alone down the broad highway to Cornwall with ten guineas in his pocket and an idea of finding some way of earning an honest living. After many surprising adventures, in which he is regularly mistaken for his hell-raising, wicked, and violent cousin, Peter finds a job as a humble blacksmith. But then one evening he finds himself defending a mysterious lady known only as Charmian from the dishonourable intentions of his own cousin. Who is Charmian? What terrible scenes will conclude the acquaintance of Peter with his wicked cousin? Will the path of true love run smooth, not just in the main cast but also among the humbler supporting characters? Has anyone any real doubt?

Although entertaining for an idle hour, The Broad Highway contains many of the flaws, and few of the redeeming features, of the previous two Farnol books I read—Black Bartlemy's Treasure and Martin Conisby's Vengenace. It is no more than a very forgettable sensational novel—with little of interest to recommend it, and too much of sensation to make it very healthy. Then there is the particularly distasteful episode in which, for no apparent reason, the narrator takes it upon himself to declare that Our Lord was no more than a wise human teacher. I do not, on the whole, recommend this book.

Gutenberg etext

PS. I must apologise for my writing style today. I have been reading Jane Austen all afternoon, and now I am writing like her. Hopefully it will have worn off in time for my next post.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

2011-11-10T18:02:00.003+11:00

Unusual obstacles lie in the way of any woman trying to be a good novelist. No, I don't mean the repressions of a patriarchal society or any of that nonsense. I mean that women have some unique struggles with the way they are wired. Men tend to be mission-oriented, job-oriented. Women tend to be relationship-oriented, especially in a romantic sense. This leads to faults on both parts—once the mission of getting the girl is over, men tend to turn all their attention to the next mission. And women tend to focus on the relationship and forget that the relationship serves the mission.

Unfortunately for us ladies, the temptation to focus exclusively on relationships affects the quality of our writing. We forget to write characters that have something bigger in their lives than each other. We think up perfectly good plots and then drown them out by adding too much romance.

There is one lady novelist who rose above all these problems to write novels from a distinctively feminine point of view—that is, ultimately concerned with relationships—in a way that recognised the position of love in the order of things. Jane Austen was clever, insightful, witty, an excellent stylist, a lover of her fellow-man—and a devout Christian whose themes were directed to the right and wise ordering of the feminine life.

Sense and Sensibility tells the story of two sisters. When their father dies, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood move to a small cottage in a new community with their mother and younger sister. Both Elinor and Marianne are of marriageable age and face the obstacles of poverty and a lack of suitable likeminded men. Elinor, the elder sister, is reserved, discreet, and always keenly aware of her duty to her family—traits which cause the impulsive, romantic, and emotionally uninhibited Marianne to suppose her to have little feeling.

Marianne sprains her ankle and is rescued by a handsome, dashing gentleman named Willoughby. They form an attachment, but Elinor warns Marianne that her unguarded behaviour towards him will cause tongues to wag—in fact, Elinor and her mother suppose that Willoughby and Marianne must be secretly engaged. Meanwhile, Elinor is nursing an aching heart of her own—she has met a young clergyman of good sense and taste, who although he seems to appreciate her has ceased to pay her attentions. Through love and heartbreak, the Dashwood sisters must navigate their emotions, figure out what's really important, and learn to distinguish between honourable men and scoundrels.

One of my favourite Jane Austen books, Sense and Sensibility was the first book she was able to publish. This is Jane Austen we're talking about, so the book is a fantastic discussion of love, the benefits of societal rules, and the dangers of impulsiveness, impatience, or unguarded emotions. Crossed in love, Marianne reacts violently and falls dangerously ill. Later, having learned wisdom from her elder sister, she sums up what she has learned:

"Do not, my dearest Elinor, let your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My illness has made me think— It has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died,—it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,—wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died,—in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, my friend, my sister!—You, who had seen all the fretful selfishness of my latter days; who had known all the murmurings of my heart!—How should I have lived in your remembrance!—My mother too! How could you have consoled her!—I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. […] The future must be my proof. I have laid down my plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it—my feelings shall be governed and my temper improved.”

Humbled and determined to follow her sister's example of “gentleness and forbearance”, Marianne promises that her emotions shall be “regulated...checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment.” If only more girls took good notice of Marianne's resolve! A recognition of the sovereign dispositions of God, the retention of sense and reason, and the devotion of one's self to fruitful labour—these cures for emotional incontinence are still as important today as they were in Jane Austen's day.

Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen, by Peter Leithart

The 1995 Ang Lee film, Sense and Sensibility, stars Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars, and Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. It is an excellent film, faithful in spirit to the book and only making those changes which are necessary to condense the novel. Highly recommended, but as usual, no substitute for the book.

The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

2011-11-03T21:07:00.003+11:00

All right, enough about film. Let's talk about books.

The King Arthur legends, also known as the Matter of Britain, seem to have taken their place as the dominant legends of England. It's been told and retold many times over the years: by Geoffrey of Monmouth (one of the earliest versions of the myth), by Thomas Malory (the most famous English retelling), by Chretien de Troyes (most famous French retelling), by forgotten Inkling Charles Williams (most brilliantly, allusively confusing) and by many others.

One of the most recent versions of the legend is by Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate to Queen Victoria. His Idylls of the King is a collection of long poetry in blank verse centred around one great theme: a high and noble enterprise—the building of Logres, God's kingdom on earth—bearing within itself the seeds of a mighty destruction. The introduction to my 1922 version reads-- “--the overthrow of Arthur's great constructive scheme and of his high ideals appears as the direct result of the sin of her who should have been his most powerful helper.” At first, the guilty love of Guinevere and Lancelot is barely a note; as each of the poems moves the story forward, however, the note becomes one huge theme that brings all of Logres crashing down.

Although the cycle of poems covers decades, each poem takes place within a specific season: the foundation of Logres and the wedding of the King in spring, the tales of adventure in high summer, the Quest of the Grail—with forebodings of destructing—in autumn, and the death and desolation of Logres in darkest winter.

The poems contained in the Idylls are as follows:

The Coming of Arthur, telling how Arthur became King and won Guinevere for his wife:

“What happiness to reign a lonely king,

Vext—O ye stars that shudder over me,
O earth that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? For saving I be join'd
To her that is the fairest under heaven,
I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will nor work my work
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm
Victor and lord. But were I join'd with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it,
And power on this dead world to make it live.”
Gareth and Lynette, a retelling of the story originally invented by Malory.

“--O mother,
How can ye keep me tether'd to you?--Shame.
Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
Follow the deer? Follow Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King--
Else, wherefore born?”
There's a cute twist at the end of this one. Tennyson refers to Malory right at the end, where he gives Sir Gareth not the sister who he rescued, but the sister who guided him into adventure:
And he that told the tale in older times
Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lyonors,
But he that told it later says Lynette.
The Marriage of Gereint comes from the Mabinogion and Chretien de Troyes and has always been one of my favourite stories.
Gereint and Enid finishes off the story begun in The Marriage of Gereint.
Balin and Balan tells one of the few really tragic substories from the cycle.
Merlin and Vivien casts the enchanter as a fool and the fay as a vicious power-mad schemer—rather unusual, but thought-provoking.
Lancelot and Elaine provided the inspiration for the famous episode in Anne of Green Gables where our heroine nearly gets drowned “floating down to Camelot”.
The Holy Grail is a particularly metaphysical version of the original legend.
Pelleas and Ettare, adapted from Malory, is a sad story of unrequited love and disillusionment.
The Last Tournament is the beginning of the end.
Guinevere is a particular favourite of mine—on the eve of his last battle, the King visits his wife in the nunnery where she has fled, crippled by remorse—and forgives her.
Finally, The Passing of Arthur is the telling of the last battle, and the departure of the King into the West.

The Idylls of the King is well worth reading to anyone interested in good stories and good poetry. Tennyson's retelling of the story takes the main focus off the story of the Holy Grail, in most versions central to the story; instead, the main theme is the King, his knight Lancelot, and their love for the Queen. The Holy Grail, as argued by Charles Williams in The Figure of Arthur was originally the indispensable apex of the Arthurian myth: I myself would say that its achievement is a symbol of the embodiment of the Kingdom of God in the Kingdom of Logres. But in Tennyson, the Grail is a very unsubstantial thing; only Galahad attains it; it is separated from the narrator Percivale by unfathomable distance and surreal imagery and it contributes much to the breaking of the fellowship of the Table. The real spiritual and emotional heft of Tennyson's story depends on the slow dissolution of glorious Logres: one sin, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, slowly works its way through the whole of Logres until in Pelleas and Ettare and The Last Tournament Logres has almost become a parody of itself—discourteous, adulterous, disillusioned.

The telling of this story is profound and masterful—but in some ways somewhat unlike the Arthur legends. The Idylls are very much a product, not of real medievalism, but of the Victorian medievalist revival. A thought-provoking, haunting, beautiful work and a pleasure to read.

Vintage Movies: El Cid

2011-10-29T17:11:00.002+11:00

You will soon be a King: you must start to think like one. Any man can kill. Only a King can give life!

What is heroism?

What place does mercy, let alone Christianity, have in war?

Where can I find a really good movie about people hitting each other with giant swords?

If you find yourself asking any of these questions, chances are that El Cid is just the movie you need to see. Forget Braveheart—El Cid is the knight-in-shining-armour-standing-up-against-tyrants-and-foreign-oppressors movie.

The movie is based on the life of Rodrigo Diaz, a Castilian knight and Spanish folk hero who successfully waged war on the Moors in Spain for many years, although dogged by Spanish infighting and betrayal. Charlton Heston plays Rodrigo, a man devoted to ideals bigger than himself. Convinced that fighting won't settle the disputes between Moors and Spaniards, Rodrigo frees an emir he has taken captive raiding a Christian village. This act wins him the Moor's respect, but lays him open to a charge of treason at the court of King Ferdinand and puts a stop to his wedding to the beautiful Jimena (Sophia Loren). It takes a hard-fought single combat to redeem his name and rise to fame as the King's own champion. But after King Ferdinand's death, Castile becomes the bait in a power struggle between the three unscrupulous heirs while a fresh invasion from Africa threatens to snuff them out altogether. Can Rodrigo fight off the Moors, earn Jimena's forgiveness, and serve a King of dubious morality with honour and loyalty? It might look difficult to anyone else, but for El Cid, integrity, honour, and bravery is all in a day's work.

This remarkable movie has been called the best ever on the subject of knights. It's a grand, sprawling epic with a somewhat episodic plotline, as all stories tend to have which cover an entire life. I wouldn't call it particularly historically accurate—the siege of Valencia, for example, did not play out in the way the movie depicts—and there are a couple of jarring attempts at multiculturalism. But these are not serious flaws and if the movie is mostly fiction, it's fiction that does what fiction does best: makes you love the truth. There are plenty of wonderful moments in this two-and-a-half-hour celebration of genuine heroism, from the feeding of Valencia to the oath in the town square to the wonderful little moment where El Cid defeats fourteen men single-handed and then explains that, if God is on his side, four hundred would not be too many.

A stirring tale of chivalry, love, war, and honour—El Cid is one of our favourite vintage movies and should not be overlooked. By way of parental advisory, I note that there is some medieval-style violence, handled discreetly, which may make the movie unsuitable for very young children.

Vintage Movies: The General

2011-10-28T13:32:00.002+11:00

There were two loves in his life: his engine and...

The silent era was a great time for physical comedy. Since the movies at that time were purely visual, with audio cues provided only by the soundtrack, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for witty banter. You couldn't crack a joke, but you could certainly fall off a horse.

Buster Keaton is still fondly remembered as one of the best of the old physical comedians—right up there with Charlie Chaplin. The General, the only thing I've seen him in, is wonderful. Buster Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a train engineer during the Civil War. The Union Army hatches a villainous plan to steal “The General”, Johnnie's train. In the process, they also unexpectedly steal Annabell Lee, Johnnie's estranged sweetheart. The Union spies set off helter-skelter for their own lines and safety, but they reckoned without Johnnie.

This movie is a masterpiece of understatement. Buster Keaton executes every mishap and pratfall with a quiet, dogged, almost despairing look on his face; the great deadpan that made him famous. But it's not just him. Nobody in this movie appears to know that they are in a comedy. When a group of important Union generals having an important strategic meeting on the back of a stopping and starting train fall over for the third or fourth time, they look as serious and businesslike about it as if they really are important generals. The effect is, perversely, even funnier than if it was mugged up for the camera.

There are some brilliant special effects in this movie, including the business with the (real, live) cannon and the crash at the end, but these difficult and expensive set-pieces are treated with laconic indifference by the cameraman and editor. The whole movie is an extension of Johnnie's (or Keaton's) deadpan understatement. The result is, again, tactfully hilarious.

The General is a rara avis: physical comedy that still manages to come across as refined and tasteful. One of the really great movies.

Vintage Movies: The Lady Vanishes

2011-10-27T18:01:00.003+11:00

Iris Henderson: Well, I don't see how a thing like cricket can make you forget seeing people.

Charters: Oh, don't you? If that's your attitude, there's nothing more to be said! Come, Caldicott. "A thing like cricket!"

One of the biggest names in movies from the first half of the 1900s was, of course, Alfred Hitchcock. He had a long and varied career, with most of which I am entirely unacquainted and with some of which I am unimpressed. The Lady Vanishes, on the other hand, is extremely good.

It's a snowy night in the little mountain country of Mandrika and a little village hotel is stuffed to the rafters with people trying to get back to England and points west. The train is delayed, so its passengers are forced to try to find a room to themselves: Iris Henderson, an American socialite returning home; Gilbert, a young musical eccentric who won't take any nonsense; Miss Froy, a sweet little Miss-Marple-type who won't stop chattering about her governessing jobs; Caldicott and Charters, two Englishmen very disgruntled about possibly missing the next big cricket game; and many others.

Nothing odd happens right away. But the next morning, on the train, Iris wakes after a nap to find that the friendly Miss Froy has vanished without a trace. Even more disturbing is the fact that every other person on the train denies having ever seen her. Is Iris surrounded by conspirators, or has she gone mad?

The Lady Vanishes is another excellent vintage movie, full of humour and mystery. Or to put it another way: spies, secret messages, an excellent demonstration of why you should never get into a fight in a moving vehicle filled with magician's contraptions, and wit:

I never think you should judge any country by its politics. After all, we English are quite honest by nature, aren't we?

As usual with this kind of movie, it's relatively family-friendly as long as half the family doesn't get some of the jokes.

Vintage Movies: The Quiet Man

2011-10-26T19:27:00.003+11:00

Is this a courting or a donnybrook? Have the good manners not to hit the man until he's your husband and entitled to hit you back.

Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to his native Ireland after spending most of his life in the US. He buys back his childhood home White O'Morn from the Widow Tillane and, after a vision of a red-headed beauty (Maureen O'Hara) on the hillside, even consults the village matchmaker. But the path to home and happiness is not to be smooth for Sean Thornton. After a life spent in Pittburgh, he has little patience for the ceremonies of Irish village life, and the local bully Red Will Danaher—who happens to be the lovely Mary-Kate's brother—takes a violent dislike to him. It'll take more than money and a smile for the community to accept Sean Thornton.

This is a hard movie to review. There are plenty of things to like about it, and a few things I'm not so keen on. Generally, however, I recommend it.

One of the best things about this movie is the richness of its themes.Yes, yes, it looks pretty, the scenery is lovely, the acting is fantastic, it's an updated Taming of the Shrew, you'll laugh a lot. But most importantly, you'll also think a lot.

First and most obviously, The Quiet Man is a movie about Ireland, or some kind of Platonic Irelandishness that never existed, but in which the physical Ireland is able to participate in its good moments. Confused yet? Well, in this Ireland, everyone is friendly, the pub is jolly (and the centre of village life), the clergy are benificent, the train is always late, the sun's always shining, the grass is always green, the fish are always shy, the women are either shawl-clad old biddies or gorgeous redheads, the men are either immense prizefighters or tiny alcoholics, and everyone attends the horse-races. In this Ireland, Catholics and Protestants get on so well that they almost share the same congregation and even the IRA wear bland smiles and carry fishing-rods.

Second and more importantly, the movie is about tradition. (Some plot details follow). After growing up in Pittsburgh, Thornton doesn't understand the Irish traditions. While courting Mary-Kate, he starts off with the correct formalities, but soon it becomes obvious that his heart isn't in it:

Thornton: I don't get this. Why do we have to get [the matchmaker] along? Back in the States, I'd drive up, honk the horn, the gal'd come runnin'...
Mary Kate Danaher: Come a-runnin'? I'm no woman to be honked at and come a-runnin'!

In one of my less-favourite scenes in the movie, Sean and Mary-Kate run away from their chaperone to ca-noodle in a graveyard. Mary-Kate objects at first. After all, there is a sequence to be observed:

Mary Kate Danaher: Well, we just started a-courtin', and next month, we, we start the walkin' out, and the month after that there'll be the threshin' parties, and the month after that...

But Thornton doesn't relish the idea of a long courtship. As they kiss—thereby skipping several months ahead—a thunderstorm breaks out, suggesting some kind of Divine displeasure.

If God and village custom disapprove of this iconoclastic wooing, the movie certainly plays it for all its worth. However, as the movie goes into its second act, the culture clash escalates and in the end, tradition has its way.

Specifically, one tradition that most people today would call the least romantic thing on earth: the idea of the dowry, or bride-price, which becomes a bone of contention between Mary-Kate and Sean. Mary-Kate insists that she won't be properly married without it. Thornton, on the other hand, thinks she is just mercenary and because he refuses to take action, Mary-Kate begins to lose all respect for him.

Although the movie never explains the reasoning behind a dowry, it's downright fascinating to see a culture depicted in which its benefits are simply taken for granted (along with the need for respect and leadership).

As I said, there is plenty to like and plenty to think about in this delightful movie. As usual, despite the G rating, I'd be inclined to advise parents to use their own discretion with this one. They sure could—and did--do a lot with a G rating in those days.

Vintage Movies: The Thin Man

2011-10-25T10:31:00.001+11:00

Hey, would you mind putting that gun away? My wife doesn't care, but I'm a very timid fellow.

The old black-and-white days saw quite a variety of genres that have now nearly vanished. So far we've looked at examples of two those genres, the swashbuckler (with The Mark of Zorro) and the screwball comedy (Bringing Up Baby). Another example of a genre which seemed to lose all its shine with the advent of colour and the vanishing of the Hays Code was the film noir. These movies, as made by Alfred Hitchcock or the famous Bogart & Bacall pairing, used the chiaroscuro of black-and-white movie-making to great effect in their world-weary stories of crime and passion. Think hard-boiled detectives, femmes fatale, and gangsters. Film noir was the dark side of the swashbuckler.

Strangely, it was the fusion of this cynical genre with light domestic comedy that spawned one of the longest-running franchises in film history. The Thin Man was adapted from a darkly comic book by Dashiell Hammett, brightened up considerably, and given two winning stars in the persons of William Powell and Myrna Loy.

The Thin Man is Clyde Wynant, millionaire inventor, who vanishes one winter leaving his severely dysfunctional family not particularly worried—apart from daughter Dorothy Wynant, who is getting married soon and wants her father there to give her away. She tries to enlist the help of retired detective Nick Charles, who is holidaying in New York with his new wife Nora. Despite the entreaties of Dorothy and the enthusiasm of Nora (and various journalists) Nick refuses to have anything to do with the matter.

I haven't the time. I'm much too busy seeing that you don't lose any of the money I married you for.

But as odd circumstances (not to mention bodies, one of them nearly Nick's own) keep piling up, will he be able to resist?

It's not the murder mystery that makes The Thin Man memorable. It's Nick and Nora, and their relationship. There are all too few stories about married couples fighting crime (or, indeed, doing anything) together. The sourness that pervades the rest of the movie, especially around the blighted Wynant family, just manages to set off the cozy, alcoholic Charles home, where barbed wit barely hides real affection.

Nora Charles: Take care of yourself
Nick Charles: Why, sure I will.
Nora Charles: Don't say it like that! Say it as if you meant it!
Nick Charles: Well, I do believe the little woman cares.
Nora Charles: I don't care! It's just that I'm used to you, that's all.

The Thin Man is technically a fantastic movie, with plenty of wit, excitement, and great acting. But take the film noir label seriously when considering younger viewers. Despite the happy marriage enjoyed by the main characters, there's infidelity, adultery, and bigamy going on in the supporting cast. Although the movie came out before the Hays Code was put in place, this is treated with a very light hand and will probably shoot over the heads of smaller viewers.

If you enjoyed The Thin Man, there's a whole string of sequels, gradually declining in quality (although After the Thin Man is also quite good).

Vintage Movies: Bringing Up Baby

2011-10-24T14:19:00.003+11:00

There's a leopard on your roof and it's my leopard and I have to get it and to get it I have to sing.

It is the day before his wedding, and the life of absent-minded paleontologist Dr David Huxley (Cary Grant) is about to become very complicated.

Not that it isn't complicated enough already. The last bone to complete his brontosaurus skeleton is due in the post at any moment. Wealthy Mrs Carlton Random means to give the museum a million dollars and it's up to David to clinch the deal, and if that's not enough, his fiancee and secretary Miss Swallow is already showing the steel hand inside the velvet glove.

Enter the flighty heiress Susan Vance (played by Katherine Hepburn). In a few brief moments she's accidentally disrupted his business meeting, appropriated his golf ball, and nearly run off with his car, all with a gay and carefree insouciance. By the next morning, she's ruined his hat and jacket, convinced Mrs Random's lawyer that he's as mad as a hatter, and enlisted him to transport her pet leopard to Connecticut. Hilarity continues to ensue as the characters run into a grande dame aunt, a scatterbrained big game hunter, a thieving dog, and a severe case of mistaken identity...

Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments.

Bringing Up Baby is probably the funniest movie I've ever seen. It's filled with brilliant acting, zany characters and unforgettable lines (“I've got my head, I've lost my leopard!” “I'll be with you in a minute, Mr Peabody!” and, of course, “Oh, David...you've torn your coat”) that make it, for my money, the best of the old screwball comedies.

If you liked Bringing Up Baby, you might also enjoy His Girl Friday, You Can't Take It With You, and the more macabre Arsenic and Old Lace.

Vintage Movies: The Mark of Zorro

2011-10-23T15:05:00.004+11:00

One cannot talk about vintage movies without mentioning the great swashbucklers! Actors like Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone, and Olivia De Havilland shot to superstardom in melodramatic pictures sprinkled liberally with fancy dresses, swordplay, and witty banter.

Of all the old swashbucklers we've seen, the favourite in our home is an unassuming little picture from 1940: The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Basil Rathbone. Tyrone Power plays Don Diego Vega, the son of the alcalde of California who is sent to Spain to complete his education. On his return, he finds California changed since he went away: the peasants seem afraid, the new alcalde is spoken of with fear and hatred, and his evil henchman Captain Esteban Pasquale (Basil Rathbone) is bent on squeezing every last penny out of the taxpayers.

Don Diego can see that something must be done. By night he is the bold and daring Zorro, terror of evildoers. By day he becomes the effete and foppish Don Diego, an inveterate flapper of lace-edged handkerchiefs and languid suitor of the alcalde's enchanting niece Lolita (Linda Darnell). Will he dislodge the evil alcalde from California, or does discovery, disgrace, and death await him?

This movie is wonderful; a movie to savour. It stays on a low simmer throughout with witty dialogue and thousands of hilarious little character moments. Although the plot is not complex, not a single opportunity is missed. Some of the funniest moments in the movie occur as Don Diego's parents, together with the local priest, bewail their son's shallowness:

Fray Felipe: To think that the boy that I helped to raise, the boy that I taught to hold a firm wrist behind a true point, has turned into a puppy!

There's so much to like about this movie. It is set in a world that is the right way up; in other words, a world where fathers, mothers, and the Church are loved and respected; where true nobility and leadership means protecting the poor, not preying on them; and where the heroic happy ending means putting the sword up, like Diego does, and saying--

Don Diego: We're going to follow the customs of California...we're going to marry and raise fat children and watch our vineyards grow.

There are some objectionable overtones to every book or movie, and The Mark of Zorro is no exception. However I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for all audiences. Like many old-fashioned movies, everyone from little children after a simple good-versus-evil story to grown-ups who enjoy well-made classic cinema full of wit and excitement will enjoy The Mark of Zorro.

If you enjoy The Mark of Zorro, take time to sample the other great swashbucklers of cinema. Captain Blood is one of the very best, of course; but don't miss the Ronald Colman The Prisoner of Zenda, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea-Hawk, or the hilarious Court Jester. Swashbucklers are now a lost art, but some recent attempts haven't been too bad: older viewers might like to try Cyrano de Bergerac or The Mask of Zorro.

Feature Week: Vintage Movies

2011-10-23T14:48:00.001+11:00

In the first half of the twentieth century, just as there were many worthwhile books to read, there were also many worthwhile movies to see. Many of the reasons I read older books also apply to movies. As with books, the limits of the respectable meant a higher overall moral standard—so while older movies do tend to be laced with double-entendre, they do not tend to include anything worse. Also in the age before gigantic special effects, movies needed to rely on drama and wit to keep people interested; so they also tend to include little in the way of violence and gore. And, of course, we now have the benefit of time and perspective. Movies that haven't stood the test of time have faded into obscurity.

Unfortunately, many of the good movies are also at risk of fading into obscurity. This is a blog for vintage novels, not vintage movies, so I cannot possibly mention all the worthwhile vintage movies in one short week!. I will, however, have the opportunity to discuss some of my favourites, showing particular regard for more obscure movies.

The Swallows and Amazons Series by Arthur Ransome

2011-10-19T21:48:00.002+11:00

Here I am, back from five very busy weeks in New Zealand! I'm sorry for leaving you all without book reviews for so long, but things seem about ready to return to normal.

Today I'd like to review a famous children's book series—the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. These tell the stories of a group of children in the English Lakes District and other regions as they go sailing and camping in the school holidays. An eclectic mixture containing irreverent humour and wild flights of imagination together with more facts about camping, gold-mining, and (of course) sailing than you can poke a stick at, it's hard to imagine a childhood without them.

There are twelve books in the series, mainly revolving around the six original characters: the four (later five) Walker children, John, Susan, Titty, and Roger; and the two piratical Blackett sisters, Nancy and Peggy. There's Nancy and Peggy's uncle, known mainly as Captain Flint; there's little Walker sister Bridget; there are the birdwatching twins Dick and Dot Callum who constitute the brains of the party.

Swallows and Amazons opens with the Walker children petitioning their father, in the navy, to let them camp on an island in a lake, with their beloved sailing-dinghy the Swallow. The telegram they receive in answer is the kind of thing that would get a modern British parent hauled in for criminal negligence, bad parenting, and failure to sort garbage: If the children aren't duffers, they won't drown. And if they are duffers, they're better off drowned. The peace of the Walkers' island is soon shattered by the arrival of the infamous pirate sisters—the Amazons Nancy and Peggy, who have a ship of their own and fancy that they have a prior claim to the island. And so war is joined...

Swallowdale takes place the following summer. When the Swallow is damaged, her intrepid crew is forced to make camp in a hidden valley at the lakeside. Meanwhile the “natives” are restless: Nancy and Peggy's tyrannical Great-Aunt insists on them being home for meals.

Peter Duck is the old sailor who accompanies the Swallows, the Amazons, and the infamous Captain Flint on an imaginary treasure-hunting expedition to the Caribbean.

Winter Holiday and a frozen lake means no sailing...unless a sail could be rigged on a sled? With the help of newcomers Dick and Dot, the Swallows resolve to try it. This was my second-favourite book in the series.

Coot Club tells of Dick and Dot's sailing experiences in the Norfolk Broads. Meanwhile a local boy's efforts to protect birdlife from noisy motorboaters results in a minor feud...

In Pigeon Post, the Swallows, Amazons, and D's take to the high plain. Their beloved Captain Flint has been prospecting for gold in South America and failed to find anything, so they start their own mining operation, hampered by a sinister rival, Squashy Hat, a phantasmal armadillo, and the threat of wildfire.

We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is hands down my favourite of the books. On the eve of their father's return from duty in the Orient, the four Walkers strike up a friendship with young Jim Brading, captain of the cutter Goblin and are given permission to sail the Stour estuary with him—as long as they don't go out to sea. Then one day Jim doesn't return with fuel from his shoreside errand, a bank of fog drifts in, and the Walker children suddenly realise that they are adrift...In real danger from fog and storm, the Walkers face their biggest test yet.

Secret Water tells how the Swallows' camping trip with their beloved father is threatened when he is called away on duty again. Instead, he maroons them on an island with a dinghy and tells them to map the area before he returns. The Amazons soon turn up to complete the party. Exploration and war, naturally, follow.

The Big Six returns to the Norfolk Broads, where the D's and their Norfolk friends are faced with a mystery: Someone is vandalising boats, and the D's friends are being blamed for it. Can they catch and expose the real vandal before the young Death-and-Glories are banned from sailing?

Missee Lee is the pirate queen who captures the Swallows, Amazons, and Captain Flint on their imaginary trip to the East Indies. The other pirate lords think the Swallows and Amazons should lose their heads, but Missee Lee (who would much rather be studying in Cambridge) thinks they should become her captive Latin students instead. Caught between death and a fate even worse, the Swallows and Amazons plot their escape.

In Picts and Martyrs, the Ds' holidays with the Blacketts is threatened by the advent of the Great-Aunt.

In Great Northern, the Walkers, Blacketts, and the D's go on a cruise of the Hebrides with Captain Flint. Dick is fascinated by the possibility of spotting a rare bird on one of the islands and eventually finds himself battling to protect it from an unscrupulous collector.

There are many, many things to like about this series. The major theme of the series is that of children and young teenagers taking on the responsibilities of adults. In every book, the characters show maturity and initiative when it matters. Meanwhile the books are chock full of information on sailing, birds, mining, mapmaking, navigation, and goodness knows what else.

There are also things to be aware of—some evolutionary content, and I was always quite disturbed by the depiction (even in play) of human sacrifice in Secret Water. Perhaps the most egregious fault is the counterpoint to the independence and capability of the young characters: authority figures (with the notable exception of the Walker parents) are often disrespected.

Although flawed, the Swallows and Amazons series is well worth reading and enjoying—especially We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea.

The Skeleton by GK Chesterton

2011-10-04T12:57:00.002+11:00

The Skeleton by GK Chesterton

Chattering finch and water-fly

Are not merrier than I;

Here among the flowers I lie

Laughing everlastingly.

No; I may not tell the best;

Surely, friends, I might have guessed

Death was but the good King's jest,

It was hid so carefully.

Rest in joy, Craig Smith, pioneer homeschooling father. I have been privileged to be with the Smith family here in New Zealand for the last four weeks. Two months ago today Mr Smith was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. On Friday night God took him home. It's a terrible loss to everyone who knows him but we live in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection!

A Marriage Song by GK Chesterton

2011-09-13T05:19:00.004+10:00

A Marriage Song
by GK Chesterton

Why should we reck of hours that rend

While we two ride together?

The heavens rent from end to end

Would be but windy weather,

The strong stars shaken down in spate

Would be a shower of spring,

And we should list the trump of fate

And hear a linnet sing.

We break the line with stroke and luck,

The arrows run like rain,

If you be struck, or I be struck,

There's one to strike again.

If you befriend, or I befriend,

The strength is in us twain,

And good things end and bad things end,

And you and I remain.

Why should we reck of ill or well

While we two ride together?

The fires that over Sodom fell

Would be but sultry weather.

Beyond all ends to all men given

Our race is far and fell,

We shall but wash our feet in heaven,

And warm our hands in hell.

Battles unborn and vast shall view

Our faltered standards stream,

New friends shall come and frenzies new.

New troubles toil and teem;

New friends shall pass and still renew

One truth that does not seem,

That I am I, and you are you,

And Death a morning dream.

Why should we reck of scorn or praise

While we two ride together?

The icy air of godless days

Shall be but wintry weather.

If hell were highest, if the heaven

Were blue with devils blue,

I should have guessed that all was even,

If I had dreamed of you.

Little I reck of empty prides,

Of creeds more cold than clay;

To nobler ends and longer rides,

My lady rides to-day.

To swing our swords and take our sides

In that all-ending fray

When stars fall down and darkness hides,

When God shall turn to bay.

Why should we reck of grin and groan

While we two ride together?

The triple thunders of the throne

Would be but stormy weather.

For us the last great fight shall roar,

Upon the ultimate plains,

And we shall turn and tell once more

Our love in English lanes.

**

Congratulations to my dear friends Josh and Charmagne Downes! The wedding in New Zealand was an amazing day of love--not just the pure love of two faithful young Christians, but also the all-encompassing love of God and His Church in giving Charmagne and her family a joyful day of feasting, dancing, and celebration. More here.

Poem: Against the Dark by James McAuley

2011-09-08T08:05:00.003+10:00

Today I go to New Zealand for two weeks! I do not know whether I will have time to post more reviews, so apologies to my faithful readers (...all two of you...).

One other thing I must mention is that In Which I Read Vintage Novels is now a year old, as of yesterday! Yes, it was back on the 7th of September, 2010 that I finally gave in and decided that it was so much trouble giving each of my friends the same lengthy set of book recommendations that I really must do something for the public in general.

It's been a fantastic year and to all my readers, thank you so much for your attention and particularly for your comments.

Today I want to post a poem by the marvellous Australian poet James McAuley. This is one of my favourites so far:

Against the Dark
Life to be understood turns into legend:
At last we recognise
The tales we always knew, of loss and finding:
I read them in your eyes.

The impossible task is finished before cockcrow,
The key turns in the door,
The withered garden flowers in the first springtime
That no-one could restore.

For what we are can only be imagined;
The story never lies:
It is our truthfulness in love it measures;
I read it in your eyes.

Jane Eyre (2011 film)

2011-09-06T21:54:00.004+10:00

(Originally posted on Facebook.)

This is the third Jane Eyre I've seen, and the only one that is a movie, not a serial. Watching this one reminds me why, all these years later, Jane Eyre is enjoying such popularity. You've got the independent heroine making her way in an unfriendly world, beset by moodily magnificent men who want to marry her, with a constant backdrop of windy moors and possibly haunted mansions. If that sounds silly, it's because Jane Eyre is silly. It's a silly melodrama and the romantic lead is frankly unbelievable and a man of low moral fibre.

It took Charlotte Bronte a lot of work to make Jane Eyre, in spite of itself, a great book. The problem with adapting it to film is that you've got to shoehorn some poor man into tight breeches and ask him not to look too silly saying Rochester's lines. (TIMOTHY DALTON: Am I handsome, Jane? JANE: Not at all, sir. VIEWERS: Oooo-kay).

This Jane Eyre also has to work hard to be a Serious Drama...but not too hard, because then it might lose the steampunk vampire romance novel crowd (and this movie certainly has an eye fixed on them). The result is something not entirely faithful to the book—but a superbly-made movie.

There were a lot of things to like about this particular Jane Eyre. Obviously the theatrical-film format had to result in a lot of material being left out and streamlined, but this is handled very well by opening the movie with Jane's flight from Rochester and then showing brief flashbacks to her childhood before diving more thoroughly into her time at Thornfield. This keeps the plot moving along nicely, although certain things get left out—they don't explain how Jane lost her valise and her time at Lowood is left very sketchy, with none of the gradual improvement that in the book eventually made it a less grim place, no kind Miss Temple, and no explanation that Jane became a teacher there.

The movie is perfectly sumptuous to look at. Neither of the main characters could really be called plain (although they did try with Jane). The costuming is wonderful. From a clothing point of view, it's all about the bonnet at the end. The picture up on the screen is really lovely: the camera drinks in as much picturesque scenery as it can, including a wonderful red sky at one point and a beautiful sepia shot with Jane silhouetted against a window. You could freeze-frame a number of shots and hang them on your wall with no questions asked.

In the book, Jane unexpectedly finds some living relatives with whom to share her life. People have pointed out how unlikely this is, and funnily enough the movie leaves that out altogether—the characters still show up, but this time Jane adopts them as relatives, rather than recognising them as truly her cousins. Cute move on the scriptwriters' part!

The acting is good, especially Rochester. This is the third Jane Eyre I have seen and it is the first in which I did not have the urge to laugh at him. Dalton, for instance, was hilarious, while I just felt sorry for Stephens in the 2006 miniseries. Here, scriptwriters and the actor conspire to produce a Mr Rochester you don't want to send to bed without dessert for being sulky. I was amazed—I couldn't believe it could be done. And the rest of the acting is just as good.

The script is likewise extremely good. It can be hard to tell without a copy of the book by your side, but if I am correct much of the dialogue was rewritten to speed up the pace or flesh out the characters. Normally this is somewhat obvious, but with only one or two missteps the scriptwriters have smoothed over seams in the story with authentic-sounding dialogue. There is a speech of Jane's, not entirely from the book, probably inserted to make her seem like a proto-feminist heroine; but because it is couched in the right language, I could almost imagine Jane really saying it:

I wish a woman could have action in her life, like a man. It agitates me to pain that the skyline over there is ever our limit. I long sometimes for a power of vision that would overpass it. If I could behold all I imagine... I've never seen a city, never spoken with men and I fear my whole life will pass...

Other elements that have been invented and added include a speech given by little Adele on or near Jane's first day:

Sophie told me there is a woman who walks the halls of this house by night. I have never seen her, but people say she has hair black as ebony, white skin like the moon, and eyes like sapphires. She can also walk through walls. They say she comes to suck your blood. (slurp)

Yes, this is the up-to-date Jane Eyre, deftly modernised so that you would hardly notice it unless very familiar with the book. Just a touch more edgy. Just a touch more frightening and moody. And it works. It works. But is that a good thing?

Charlotte Bronte's book had something that made it worthwhile after all: a rock-solid moral foundation. In Jane Eyre there are good Christians, misguided Christians, and thorough-going hypocrites, but while the book castigiates hypocrisy and criticises denseness, it emphatically promotes true piety. It isn't perfect; Mr Rochester is too much of a cad and his repentance comes too late, after too much fun and games and burning passion (and houses) to make the book really positively edifying. However, in the book at least even Mr Rochester is required to deliver an edifying speech at the happy ending:

“Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.”

I am sorry to say that none of this has ever made its way into any of the three Jane Eyre adaptations I've seen, including this one, which may be the least satisfactory, because the most abbreviated, of all. You see, unless Rochester repents, Jane actually doesn't gain anything from her flight. Everything may now become legal; but she is just a mistress with a ring, and Rochester is still a rank opportunist now taking advantage of the fact that Jane's morals now allow her to do what they forbade her doing before.

A lot of things were left out of this particular Jane Eyre: specifically, most of the moral fibre that drives Jane's actions-- “self-respect” is her stated reason for leaving Thornfield. Combined with the other things that are not explained—for example, the fact that Mr Borcklehurst of Lowood is shown up as the hypocrite he is and removed from office—the picture of Christianity in this Jane Eyre is sinister or anaemic. In the absence of true Christianity, Jane's religion appears to be some vague proto-hippie spiritualism—something not entirely absent in the novel, but firmly anchored there in context of the Faith.

To sum up, this Jane Eyre is quite a rarity—it's well-made, well-acted, entirely believable, beautifully-shot, deftly updated, and most enjoyable. It's all so well done, in fact, that it's hard to turn around and say, And yet wrong...I don't like it when people update stories, when strong feminine characters are given more feminist lines, when madwomen become, even in local legend, vampires. It's bad enough when it's jarring, but this new skill, this ability to mesh it in seamlessly with the original, seems worse. It doesn't belong in Jane Eyre, however well it is camouflaged.

Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling

2011-09-04T19:14:00.005+10:00

One midsummer evening, Dan and Una are down by the river acting out scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream when they meet "a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person" who introduces himself as Puck of Pook's Hill, the last of the People of the Hills--or elves.

The children get on well with Puck, and he starts telling them stories--or bringing people, strange people in old clothes with queer modes of speech, to tell them other stories. There's the one about Weland the Smith, who used to be a god before he was dethroned, and then had to go on making an honest living anyhow, and forged a mighty sword in thanks to the young novice that freed him. There are the ones about Hugh's adventures when England was conquered by the Normans, and later when he sailed to Africa and found treasure. There are the stories of Parnesius, the young Roman centurian manning the Wall of Hadrian against Pict attack, and the emperor Magnus Maximus. And of course there's the story of the moneylender whose secret mission takes him searching for the lost treasure of Pevensey.

That's Puck of Pook's Hill--a loose collection of short historical stories with an occasional fantasy tinge, tied together by the story of the Magna Carta. It was followed a few years later by a sequel, Rewards and Fairies, in much the same vein--short stories told by historical people from the autocratic lady known only as "Gloriana" to the dying girl who witnesses the invention of the stethoscope. Both volumes also contain copious amounts of poetry, including the famous If-- and one of my favourite Kipling poems, Cold Iron.

There's a peculiar charm to these books. To begin with, Rudyard Kipling was a talented writer, a wielder of words that could crash and glitter.

'Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again.'

The fantasy elements are used in just the right way, too: not to provide a getaway from reality, but to remind us that this green earth is "a mighty matter of legend," as Tolkien said. The stories are not in chronological order, especially in the second volume; they are more like a treasure-chest where everything is jumbled up and you hardly know what will come out next. The characters are so vividly drawn, too, with such broad, energetic strokes, that you really do feel as if you are meeting different people from different parts of history. Gloriana particularly is hilarious.

'Hm! Hm! Hm! Philip writes as ever most lovingly. He says his Gloriana is cold, for which reason he burns for her through a fair written page.' She turned it with a snap. 'What's here? Philip complains that certain of her gentlemen have fought against his generals in the Low Countries. He prays her to hang 'em when they re-enter her realms. (Hm, that's as may be.) Here's a list of burnt shipping slipped between two vows of burning adoration.'

When I think of these two books, I imagine a series of brilliant miniatures, almost like windows onto past times. Don't get me wrong: they are not brilliant, they are not vivid, because they are accurate. They are vivid because they are memorable--well-told, gripping. Now I don't believe historical accuracy is opposed to memorableness--I merely mean that probably Philip never sent Elizabeth I such a letter at all; but Kipling uses it to draw out a true picture of who she was and what difficulties she faced.

We live in a time when people have managed to kid themselves into thinking that religion isn't important. This can result in such silly things as books and movies set during the Reformation, or earlier in the medieval period, in which religion doesn't influence the characters' actions at all. Kipling thoroughly avoids this pitfall. However even as a child I found his theology a little worrying. For example--

They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things. But what was the result? Men don't like being sacrificed at the best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their farm-horses. After a while, men simply left the Old Things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they could. Some of them took to hanging about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o' nights. If they groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter for them. I remember one Goddess called Belisama. She became a common wet water-spirit somewhere in Lancashire. And there were hundreds of other friends of mine. First they were Gods. Then they were People of the Hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn't get on with the English for one reason or another.

I tend to think Kipling was a bit of a heathen himself. For example, in one story in Rewards and Fairies--"The Conversion of St Wilfrid," it's called, a pagan Saxon named Meon is converted and later addresses his people as follows:

"Listen, men! Two days ago I asked our Bishop whether it was fair for a man to desert his fathers' Gods in a time of danger. Our Bishop said it was not fair. You needn't shout like that, because you are all Christians now. My red war-boat's crew will remember how near we all were to death when Padda fetched them over to the Bishop's islet. You can tell your mates that even in that place, at that time, hanging on the wet, weedy edge of death, our Bishop, a Christian, counselled me, a heathen, to stand by my fathers' Gods. I tell you now that a faith which takes care that every man shall keep faith, even though he may save his soul by breaking faith, is the faith for a man to believe in. So I believe in the Christian God, and in Wilfrid His Bishop, and in the Church that Wilfrid rules. You have been baptized once by the King's orders. I shall not have you baptized again; but if I find any more old women being sent to Wotan, or any girls dancing on the sly before Balder, or any men talking about Thun or Lok or the rest, I will teach you with my own hands how to keep faith with the Christian God."

This is all very well and good, happy ending, important lesson about keeping faith...and no more. For Kipling, religion isn't about salvation, defeating evil, or cosmological warfare. It's more a code of ethics; it's more about manly conduct. And Kipling approves of Christianity, I feel, because of its good track record of manly conduct--not necessarily because it's truth and salvation.

Those concerns noted, I highly recommend these books.

Puck of Pook's Hill Gutenberg etext and Librivox recording
Rewards and Fairies Gutenberg etext and Librivox recording

The Savoy Operas by Sir WS Gilbert

2011-08-31T21:04:00.003+10:00

This is a bit of an odd one to review. It's not a novel by any means—it's a collection of librettos. And librettos without their music! It's a testament to Gilbert's skill that they still manage to be readable.

The operettas produced by WS Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan at the Savoy Theatre in London between 1875 and 1896 were sparkling comic gems set to unforgettable tunes. It wasn't a perfect partnership—Gilbert and Sullivan didn't get on, and Sullivan's real ambition was always to compose real masterpieces, not frothy comic operettas. Yet their names, now almost inseperable, have come to mean something really important, both culturally and artistically. You see, the Savoy operas were good as well as popular.

Sullivan's undeniable musical genius was of course a large part of the partnership's success. But as that doesn't lend itself well to being read out of book for fun and profit on a Sunday afternoon, this review is going to focus on Gilbert. Like so many of the great men of letters, Gilbert was in fact a lawyer before he turned his hand to writing. Like so many lawyer-writers, he then became extremely good at it, in a distinctively legal manner. Indeed he could rightly be dubbed the poet laureate of the legal profession. His songs are peppered with legal jokes, and usually there's a plot twist that depends on some kind of legal quibble. There's plenty of satire, plenty of obscure cultural references, and plenty of daft British humour.

Most of Gilbert's librettos were collected in one volume under the name of “The Savoy Operas” in 1926 and are, I believe, still in print. It contains thirteen operas, containing all the lyrics and hilarious banter, of which the most famous are HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, and The Mikado. The plots are really not important, generally involving obstacles thrown up in the path of true love by the zany supporting cast. For example, in Iolanthe, the half-fairy hero's engagement is disrupted by the attentions of the entire House of Lords, the fact that she's a ward of Chancery, and the fact that she witnessed him kissing his mother, who as a fairy appears to be a pretty girl of about nineteen. Or in The Mikado, where Prince Nanki-Poo's grand love for Yum-Yum appears to be hopeless, seeing that her guardian Ko-Ko (Lord High Executioner) intends to marry her himself, and that the fearsome lady Katisha intends to marry Nanki-Poo. Shenanigans, naturally, result.

This book is a must-have for any fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, and not a bad investment for just about anyone else who likes good music and a bit of a laugh.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

2011-08-24T22:10:00.002+10:00

This was one of my favourite books when I was little—one I read many times. I knew it well because it was among my mother's favourite books when she was small. Thinking about it these days, I must wonder if it is so well-known these days. I so rarely hear people talking about it.

The book was originally written in German by the Swiss Johanna Spyri. It's the story of little five-year-old orphan Heidi, who is left to live with her reclusive grandfather after her grandmother dies. The Alm-uncle, as her grandfather is called, is full of bitterness because of his son's early death, but when Heidi comes to live with him, he begins to thaw.

Heidi makes friends with Peter, a shepherd-boy, and his blind grandmother. But then one day her Aunt Dete comes back to collect her. Dete has work in Frankfurt as a maid in a big house, where there is a lame little girl who needs a companion. Before she knows it Heidi has been whisked away to live in a gilded cage.

I haven't read this book for quite some years now. I remember it being a perfectly delightful, heartstring-tugging story. Now as I look back through it I wonder if it might not be a little cliched, a little sentimental (after all, just how many stories of plucky little orphan girls melting hard-hearted guardians are there?) but I really think there's more to Heidi than that. There's a lot of...well, you might call it moralising, but I really think it's more theologically sound than that. For example, the most memorable part of the whole book when I was little, was this:

“But if somebody thinks that nobody knows about a wicked deed, he is wrong; God always knows it. As soon as He finds that a man is trying to conceal an evil he has done, He wakens a little watchman in his heart, who keeps on pricking the person with a thorn till all his rest is gone. He keeps on calling to the evildoer: 'Now you'll be found out! Now your punishment is near!'”

I have always thought of the conscience as a little man with a pointed stick in consequence of this passage! And indeed, Heidi isn't without a good spice of humour, ranging from the worst case of bad conscience the Alps have ever seen, to the Sesemann family servants sitting up late to catch their ghost.

Heidi is a great little book—a beguiling story, wonderful descriptions of Switzerland, and an eager desire to edify. Recommended for little girls of all ages.

Project Gutenberg etext

Librivox recording

Books for Girls

2011-08-22T20:37:00.004+10:00

Following on from my post on Books for Boys, another friend asked for some girls' book suggestions. Once more I should reiterate that I don't believe in segregated bookshelves, with the girls having to read the books over here, and the boys getting to read the books over there. Girls need to read boys' books. And if a gentler, sweeter book is any good at all, then a boy ought to get some profit out of it as well. Let's hear it for "mixed reading"!

Still, there were a few books that I left out of my list of reading for boys. So for those who want some more distaff-friendly reading, here's a very brief supplementary list:

* Anything by Beatrix Potter
* The Milly-Molly-Mandy books by Joyce Lankester Brisley
* Grimm's Fairy Tales
* A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (and I recommend The Secret Garden if you want to have a good talk about Eastern mysticism in Victorian literature)
* Heidi by Johanna Spyri (if your little girl doesn't want to move straight to Switzerland and sleep in a loft after this book, she isn't human. An absolutely wonderful book)
* Anything by Patricia St John, but especially The Tanglewood's Secret, Treasures of the Snow, or Star of Light
* Anything by Edith Nesbit, but especially The Railway Children, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Enchanted Castle. Discussion points: Fabian socialism.
* Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield. I haven't read others of hers, such as Thursday's Child, but really loved Ballet Shoes and would be surprised if the others weren't also good.
* Smoky-House or The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, which are tailor-made for little girls.
* The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, The Light Princess, and The Wise Woman/The Lost Princess by George MacDonald
* Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
* Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
* Seven Little Australians and sequels by Ethel Turner
* What Katy Did and What Katy Did at School by Susan Coolidge
* The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
* The Bridge, Crown and Jewel, and The Two Collars by Jeri Massi. This fantasy/adventure trilogy for girls is published by Bob Jones University Press and gets exponentially better with every book: The Bridge is a light fantasy romp, Crown and Jewel is a more epic adventure, and The Two Collars is heartrending, profound, and magnificent--even as a twelve-year-old who hated sad endings, I could tell it was worthwhile.
* Anne of Green Gables and the rest of the series by LM Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside, the last book, is one of the best WWI books I have ever read)
* Watch for a Tall White Sail by Margaret Bell (sweet coming-of-age story in the Alaskan wilderness)
* The Dove in the Eagle's Nest by Charlotte Yonge
* To Have and To Hold by Mary Johnston
* The Man in the Brown Suit, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, The Seven Dials Mystery, N or M?, The Secret of Chimneys, and many more by Agatha Christie
* Coronation of Glory and Captain, My Captain by Deborah Meroff--two fantastic fictionalised stories about two remarkable real women, Lady Jane Grey and Mary Patton. Also contain lashings of romance and tear-jerking tragedy. Really good!
* Everything by Jane Austen, naturally.
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
* The Rosary and others by Florence L Barclay
* The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin
* The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery (possibly the best thing she ever wrote)

There are a few books I would only recommend with very high reservations. The Secret Garden is one. Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter is another; its main effect on your little girl might be to convince her that she can solve all the grown-ups' problems by being cute enough, after which you'll have endless trouble. Little Women and everything else by Louisa May Alcott should be approached with great suspicion, I believe. One lady on the internet commented about Alcott:

I am still unlearning her attitudes toward boys and men (I got really into them and read everything short of her thrillers). Boys do not like being treated with her condescending sentimentality and “your heart is your stomach.” That said, stick to Little Women, Eight Cousins, etc and ignore her sequels.
Eventually, Alcott said that she was “tired of writing moral pap for the young,” which tells you how much of her moralizing was actually sincere. ("Heather D" commenting on Femina)

And of course there are all the great books I haven't mentioned at all in either of these lists, from Winnie-the-Pooh to Anthony Trollope. Oh, well!

I Am Not Going to Be a Lawyer

2011-08-20T11:54:00.002+10:00

My sisters and I have started a little personal blog over at Three Chicks and a Hen. Crafty suggestions from Elizabeth; musings on life, books, and sewing from me; and maybe even the odd homeschooling and childrearing tips and hints from Mum.

I bring it up because in the few months since I started In Which I Read Vintage Novels, my thinking has undergone a surprising change with regards to what I'm going to do with my life. I started this blog nearly a year ago (already!) as I was getting to the end of full-time legal study, looking for a job, moving out of home...

I Am Not Going to Be a Lawyer

I did move to Melbourne for a while to look for work, and found the prospect depressing. Meanwhile I had time and enough of an internet connection to catch up on some interesting-looking blogs. One thing led to another and before long I was researching a relatively recent movement among the Calvinist homeschooling large-family Rushdoony-reading lovables I call my friends. The (very unofficial) figureheads among this movement, Anna-Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, call it “visionary daughterhood”. It’s more widely known among detractors and supporters as “stay-at-home daughterhood”. I still remember the day early in November last year that I realised I was thinking seriously about it. I had first heard of it way back in 2009, and thought it was a pretty crazy, legalistic sort of idea. Now, somehow, I was considering it for myself.

Read More

Friday Poem: The Strange Music by GK Chesterton

2011-08-19T16:16:00.002+10:00

GK Chesterton is definitely among my top 5 favourite poets--as you probably know by now! This is one of my absolute favourites. Sappy of me? You decide...

THE STRANGE MUSIC
by GK Chesterton

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon my back,
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,
Still, my hope is all before me; for I cannot play it yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall,
In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;
Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,
Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light
Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;
Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,
Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,
Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them - no by God, I will not fear,
I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.

The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

2011-08-17T21:09:00.002+10:00

This was a quick Sunday-afternoon reread of an orthopraxic classic. CS Lewis is always a pleasure to read—he was a fine stylist, and his prose would be interesting even on the label of a can of baked beans. That Screwtape Letters—stuffed with some very fine philosophical points—is as readable as it is is quite an achievement.

It's been a few years since I first read the book, and found it pretty useful and enlightening this second time around. If you haven't read it, go and do so—it's witty, engaging, and very edifying. It's part epistolary novel, part discussion of the Christian walk; but it takes the form of letters from a senior devil (Screwtape) to a junior tempter on his first assignment (Wormwood). The Patient: a new Christian, a young man living through the early years of World War II and his first true love. It's Wormwood's mission to make sure the Patient never makes it to Heaven—instead being swallowed into Hell to provide delicious suffering for the sustenance of demons. In a bizarre, morally-reversed world in which God is The Enemy and Satan known as Our Father Below, Screwtape ponders at length the uses, kinds, and effects of sins and temptation.

There was one thing about the book which really niggled at me this time. I think I barely noticed it last time I read the book. But I have just returned from a very nice prolonged visit with some very good friends of mine, a highlight of which was a long-running series of discussions on the doctrines of grace; I, of course, pro, and they generally con. I was thinking like a Calvinist, and like a particularly sharp and aggressive Calvinist at that, when I re-read Screwtape Letters.

The thing I kept coming back to was the fact that Lewis does not appear to believe in the perseverance of the saints. Granted, he is writing strictly from a demon's perspective, with all sorts of misguided ideas (played for comedy), but nevertheless his assumption seems to be that a Christian can lose his salvation—that life, for a Christian, is lived on the brink of the Pit and only death can render a Christian 'safe'. Indeed, Screwtape does say at one point, vis-a-vis the Christian “patient”, that “the safest path to hell is the gradual one”.

Am I saying that there's no such thing as spiritual warfare? Well, no—although as a postmillenialist, it might be more accurate to say that we're enforcement, not shock troops. But let me put it this way—in most wars, the battle isn't about trying to get the combatants to change sides. It's about winning the field and planting the flag. It's about who gets to make laws—who gets to be King. This war is no different; sure, hearts are the most important battleground, but not the only battleground. And the Christian life isn't about staying out of Hell and getting into Heaven. It's about bringing Heaven to earth, about glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.

In such a view, devils just aren't all that important. Flies to be swatted away. Maybe even thorns in the flesh. But not a threat to our salvation.

That leads to something else about The Screwtape Letters. Lewis says a lot about sin—a lot of good things. For example, that many people go to Hell on a flood of “tiny” sins, believing themselves to be good people. Quite true, but as an Arminian, Lewis doesn't have the full picture. Sins—in the sense of law-breaking—don't damn anyone. A state of rebellion against God, and refusal to give glory to Him—that's what damns you. That state of rebellion, that total depravity, is what makes you sin. I believe it was RC Sproul who said, “We aren't sinners because we sin—we sin because we are sinners.” It's not a trickle of minor infractions that take you to hell, any more than it's one or two big ones.

Reading The Screwtape Letters might be calculated to make one more paranoid than holy—might make one fear that sin might snatch one away from salvation. Happily, to a Calvinist, it's a flawed but still worthwhile discussion of many different areas of the Christian life. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Dragon and the Raven by GA Henty

2011-08-14T14:32:00.003+10:00

Last week I had the pleasure of re-reading a favourite GA Henty book, The Dragon and the Raven. What a trip down memory lane! This was the very first GA Henty book I ever read--in fact, my mother read it aloud to us--and while this must be at the very least the fourth time I've read it, I found it just as good this time around.

Of course I wanted to read this because I'd just finished with Ben Merkle's The White Horse King, and I hadn't had quite enough of thinking about that great king, Alfred. I already knew something about Alfred, mainly from this book and another, The Namesake, by C Walter Hodges, which I didn't enjoy much.

The Dragon and the Raven refers to Alfred's Golden Dragon standard, and the standard of the Danish kings, which was a raven. The story opens in the year 870 in the marshes of East Anglia, where an Anglian ealdorman, his kinsman Eldred, and his son Edmund have been driven in an attempt to hide from the Danes. The Danish advance is resisted one last time by an East Anglian army led in part by Edmund's father, but the resistance is crushed and Eldred and Edmund fly south, to Wessex. But even Wessex, the last Saxon kingdom, won't defy the Danes forever...Ever mindful of his homeland's fall, young Edmund determines to fight his hardest against the brutal, bloodthirsty Danish invaders. From the marshes of Athelney, to the heart of Danish territory, to the siege of Paris and even the invasion of Sicily, Edmund and his good ship the Dragon fearlessly sail in search of adventure. Throw in a pretty Danish girl, her honourable (if piratical) father, and her wicked suitor, and you have everything else you need for a gripping yarn.

The subtitle of this book is Or, the Days of King Alfred. Strictly speaking, it's an accurate title: the book is less about King Alfred than about the time in which he lived, the wholesale onslaught of the Danes against the entire civilised world, from England to France to the Mediterranean. Unusually for a Henty book, most of the memorable bits of the story are not based on history at all; though if you're paying attention you will hear all about the battle of Ashdown, the battle of Ethandune, and the great invasion of 893.

At first I thought this was an unusual way of doing things--Henty usually spends far more time on historical detail than he does here--but I believe his intention was to give the reader the biggest picture possible. It wasn't just England that tottered before the heathen attack. It was Europe. The Vikings plundered, pillaged, slew, and sacked from the Orkneys to Palestine and everywhere in between, using rivers to strike quickly into the heart of Italy, France, and Spain as well as England. One of the most interesting parts of the book is Henty's detailed account of the year-long siege of Paris in 885.

It would have been nice, though, to get a little more historical detail. For example, here's one throwaway paragraph:

Another party of Danes in twenty-three ships had landed in Devonshire. Here the ealdorman Adda had constructed a castle similar to that which Edmund had built. It was fortified by nature on three sides and had a strong rampart of earth on another. The Danes tried to starve out the defenders of the fort; but the Saxons held out for a long time, although sorely pressed by want of water. At last they sallied out one morning at daybreak and fell upon the Danes and utterly defeated them, only a few stragglers regaining their ships.

However, according to Ben Merkle, this siege actually went something more like this: When Ealdorman Adda saw that defeat was certain, he gathered his men together and they all decided that on the whole, it was better to have the desperate last stand outside the fort, where it would be over quickly and they would have the chance to strike one last blow at the enemy. It wasn't so much about winning as it was about how best to die. The hilarious thing was that they won--because the Danes didn't expect an all-but-defeated garrison to do something that crazy!

If GA Henty misses an opportunity here or there in The Dragon and the Raven, he picks up opportunities in other places. One thing that comes up again and again (and again) in the book is the fact that small bands of Saxons and other Christian warriors were consistently able to totally defeat armies twice their size or more. The reason was probably that, although the Danes were professional warriors, the Saxons were fighting for home and hearth and freedom--not, like the Danes, for easy plunder.

Another little historical detail Henty makes the most of: Edmund determines to join King Alfred on the swamp isle of Athelney for Dane-repulsion purposes. Arriving at the tiny island, he asks a local whether said local knows the whereabouts of the King. Oh, the Saxons, says the local. An idle, thriftless lot. No good at all.

"Ah!" Edmund said, "you do not know here how cruel are the ravages of the Danes; our homes are broken up and our villages destroyed, and every forest in the land is peopled with fugitive Saxons. Did you know that you would speak less harshly of those here. At any rate the man I seek is young and fair-looking and would, I should think"--and he smiled as he remembered Alfred's studious habits--"be one of the most shiftless of those here."

Oh, says the man. That one! He's so useless, I don't know how my neighbour puts up with him. Three doors down, on the left.

I was laughing already, but then Edmund and his chums turn up at the cottage just in time to catch the famous burnt-cakes episode--the dame scolding, the King looking sheepish, the whole thing having been worked up to high comic effect!

As for the rest of the story, it's mostly adventure on the high seas, with plenty of danger and derring-do as Edmund chases Sweyn Left-Hand (why Left-Hand? Well, ask Edmund about that...) around the seas in pursuit of his lost love. One more exciting and informative adventure story from GA Henty.

Gutenberg etext

The Dream of the Rood

2011-08-07T14:38:00.003+10:00

Recently I've been reading Ben Merkle's book on King Alfred the Great – The White Horse King. Alfred was a truly remarkable man; it's hard to imagine a man facing worse odds than he did; and reading about him has reminded me once more why I love the Anglo-Saxons so much.

Thinking about Alfred inspired me to go back and reread an Anglo-Saxon religious poem, The Dream of the Rood. One of the reasons why I'm so keen on reading is that it is the best way to travel back and experience the thoughts, worldview, and flavour of an earlier time. Beowulf, for example, may not be an intensely factual description of Anglo-Saxon life – but it will teach you more about their character than any history book.

As the Venerable Bede records in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the Anglo-Saxons were among the Proud Warrior Races that came from the Germanies after the fall of Rome. After the withdrawal of Roman forces from Britain, the Saxons invaded and pressed the Celts and remaining Romans deep back into Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, nearly extinguishing the spark of Christianity that remained. The Saxons had a reputation for cruelty, ferocity, and barbarism and they ruled England with an iron hand.

Then something strange happened. Beginning in the kingdom of Kent, the seven Saxon kingdoms were evangelised. One by one they fell to Christianity. Over the next few centuries, something truly wonderful emerged from savage Saxon England: a culture of learning, literature, songs, bravery, and nobility. England became so safe that it was said a woman could travel alone across the country with a purse full of gold in perfect safety. One of my favourite stories tells about a king who married a young princess from a neighbouring kingdom. It was the ambition of this girl's life to remain a virgin and join a nunnery. Even though the succession and security of his kingdom was at stake, the king agreed and allowed her to go into the nunnery. Even though I think the princess was a silly goose, I love that story because it shows how Christianity had turned the Saxons into a kind—though far from a weak—people.

The Dream of the Rood is an excellent example of how these remarkable Christians viewed their faith. The narrator tells how the cross of Christ appeared to him in a dream to recount the story of the Crucifixion. Unless you've made an in-depth study of the Saxon people, the first thing you'll probably notice about this poem is the strangeness of how the Saxons viewed the same faith that you celebrated in church this morning.

Some of the theology is a little hazy. For instance, the part where the narrator “prayed to the cross with friendly spirit”--that sounds unusual to us modern-day Protestants, and that's as it should be.

However the most obvious point of difference between modern religion and The Dream of the Rood is probably the contrasting view of Jesus. After all, in the last hundred or so years, we've had Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild; we've had Radical Revolutionary Jesus, we've had Hell, What's That? Jesus, we've had Wise Human Teacher Jesus, and we've had Only Wants Your Personal Fulfilment Jesus.

Well, this is Anglo-Saxon Jesus:

The young hero stripped himself then (that was God Almighty)

strong and resolute. He ascended onto the high gallows,

brave in the sight of many there, since he wished to release mankind.

Warrior, Mighty King, Lord of the Heavens, Wielder of Triumphs--this is what the Dream of the Rood calls Christ. The Anglo-Saxons, coming from the cold hard myths of the North into Christianity, probably could not help seeing Christ as the epitome of what was honourable and good in their own eyes: the self-sacrificing warrior-king who will enjoy fellowship in the mead-hall of heaven with his faithful thegns. Even after “the King's fall” the poet speaks of the dead Christ in terms that hint at more to come:

They laid him down there, weary-limbed; they positioned themselves at his body's head,

there they gazed at the Lord of heaven, and he rested himself there for a while,

weary after the great battle.

Strangely, I've heard criticisms of this particular view of Christ as the conquering King. Now it's perfectly true: Christ is also the prophet and the priest, also the sacrificial Lamb, and there was certainly defeat in His triumph. But can anyone say this view of Christ is wrong? Incomplete—maybe. But was it meant to be complete? Can you fault the Anglo-Saxons for their delight in one aspect of Christ that so often goes overlooked? Can we not rather say that the Saxons had a much healthier, a more full-orbed idea of kingship than we have?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism has one marvellous question that addresses this issue well:

Q. 26: How doth Christ execute the office of a king?

A. Christ executeth the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.

Christ the King was the particular joy of Anglo-Saxon Christians. We're embarrassed by the idea these days. It makes Christianity seem so...well, so manly. Or even worse – such a view might lead one to think that God hasn't planned on the Church's ultimate failure...that maybe, after all, Christ won the decisive battle on the Cross and the rest of history is just cleanup.

And you'd have to be crazy to believe that, right?

Modern English translation of The Dream of the Rood

Favourite Novelists: GK Chesterton and What He Taught Me

2011-07-31T22:07:00.001+10:00

This is a difficult one, because there is so much to learn from GK Chesterton. What about the part in Heretics where he gave a tightly-reasoned argument for the fact that bigots are those without clear beliefs? What about the part in The Napoleon of Notting Hill where he made a strong case for religious wars as the only defensible kind of war there is?

There are just two things I’d like to focus on for now, though. I still vividly remember the first time I read a GK Chesterton novel. It was The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and it began, “The human race, to which so many of my readers belong…”

I had not been expecting that sentence. It caught me completely by surprise. Chesterton took it for granted that the world was bigger and friendlier than the human race. That “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.” A large part of Chesterton’s stylistic genius was this constant prompting that life is both stranger and more wonderful than we think it is. The colours in his writing are always violent and vivid. The gestures and words of his characters have a barely-restrained grandeur. And above all, his stories take place against a backdrop of nature that scarcely conceals the underlying reality of the world—God. Everything his characters do has theological weight. Nothing in creation is taken for granted. A street might stop deciding to go to St Pancras Station and decide to go to Heaven – for justice – instead. An apple-tree at any moment might stop producing apples and start producing tigers. And water flows downhill because it is bewitched. At any moment the spell might break and the precious, fragile order of creation might devolve into chaos. The only thing which prevents this happening is the hand of God holding all things together.

Chesterton’s writing is full of wonder at things we take for granted. It reminds us what a strange world we live in, and how we should give thanks for it; it reminds us how amazing it is that every blade of grass is green, and prompts us into a life of service and obedience as the only way of giving thanks.

The second thing I learned from Chesterton is that it is possible—no, necessary—to believe and hope and fight evil with all our hearts and strength…without ever becoming shrill about it. Chesterton’s heroes fight for what they believe. They believe they are right. They believe the enemy is wicked, so wicked as to destroy the very souls of men. They will die or even kill to defeat the enemy.

Chesterton’s heroes are not limp-wristed and compromising. They fight. But they do it without being shrill or embittered. They face evil with high spirits. With laughter. They are steadfast and deadly serious, but their joy bubbles over all the time. They do not take offense. They do not groan and complain.

The medieval historian Montaigne tells a story of the Hundred Years’ War. Edward the Black Prince had consigned the citizens of a certain city to be slain without mercy. He left, ignoring the screams of the women and aged as they grovelled for mercy. But then as he went on he came across three French knights—still fighting, even though the battle was long over and they were vastly outnumbered. The knights didn’t care about the battle being lost—their aim was to defy the English as long as they still had two legs and a strong right hand, and that’s what they were doing. Moved by their bravery, the Black Prince granted quarter first to them and then to the whole town…what was left of it.

This is the kind of bravery that GK Chesterton’s heroes show. Bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, bravery that even wins the respect of enemies. No complaints—just actions. It’s the medieval ideal of chivalry CS Lewis spoke of in The Last Battle: gentle words or hard knocks as the only language of a true knight.

I know it’s hard when people attack you, to remain both gracious and uncompromising. I know it’s hard when everyone seems to be compromising, when everything seems to be getting worse. And that’s why we all need Chesterton. We need to face evil with fearless laughter, with mockery, with an unshakeable joy; not with groans of distress or shrill cries of paranoia.

I think this is an incredibly important lesson to learn. It’s not good always to be serious and dull. Even less is it good to give in to despair. I know a lot of conservatives whom I respect very much, who are making titanic efforts to combat evil in society. But I wish I could see more joy in their lives. More laughter. More…more swashbuckling, and I mean in outlook not in actually challenging Hugh Hefner to a duel, although that is something I’d give most of my body parts to witness.

It may seem cheeky for me, a very young person, to be saying this. But you know that it’s the joy of the Lord that is our strength. And for what that looks like, GK Chesterton is a great example.

Favourite Novelists: Edmund Spenser and What He Taught Me

2011-07-30T23:11:00.005+10:00

If you do not appreciate Edmund Spenser, you cannot appreciate CS Lewis. If you do not understand Edmund Spenser, you cannot understand CS Lewis. The two are tied together in many ways; though they lived four hundred years apart and had vastly different careers, beliefs and aims, they speak together, almost in unison, on some of the most contentious matters of modern fantasy.

Lewis was neither a Calvinist nor a Puritan. Edmund Spenser was both these; in fact, the very greatest Puritan poet that ever lived—and Puritans were famous poets, and produced practically everything of note that was written in Great Britain between the 1500s and the 1700s (save perhaps for the plays of Shakespeare; and there is evidence that the Earl of Oxford, who may have written under that name, had at least some Puritan sympathies).

I was surprised when I heard that CS Lewis is looked at askance in some circles for his use of pagan Greek imagery. He portrays wise centaurs, argue these critics, which were in the Greek myths lawless and lustful. What business had they in this supposedly Christian work?

But if you ask that, you must dig further back, and ask Edmund Spenser, who also used pagan imagery. If you ask why Christians should write fantasy at all, Edmund Spenser stands in your way. If you ask how it is possible to redeem pagan imagery, from Elves to satyrs, Edmund Spenser is waiting for you. Why write? Why tell stories? Why such gaudy tales of passion and fantasy? Your road, inquirer, leads to Edmund Spenser, and though his voice is muted by the grave, it is full beauty and authority. Edmund Spenser wrote the epic of the Reformation, the greatest Puritan literary work. He cannot be discounted.

Until I read Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward, I did not fully understand why Lewis chose to use the pagan imagery he did. I understand now, and learning the reason behind his choices has raised some new and tricky questions. It would be easy to say that Lewis made a few unwise literary decisions…if it weren’t for Edmund Spenser.

Edmund Spenser is why Lewis chose to include pagan imagery in the Narnia books. The medieval times, before the fall of the first Christendom to the so-called Enlightenment, were perhaps the highest and greatest expression of Christianity that has ever been. The Reformation was not a rebellion against the medievals; it was the fulfillment of it, the pouring-out of grace upon a Christendom that had begun well but lost its way. The Puritans were not creatures of the Enlightenment; they were creatures of medievalism. In many ways they were the culmination of medievalism. And Edmund Spenser was in many ways the culmination of the Puritan poets. Medievalism, Christendom I, was rolled up, refined, reformed, and given to us again in the person of Edmund Spenser.

Fittingly, he was always stuck in the past. Even the Elizabethans would have found his language archaic, and the firearm had already begun to make knights redundant. In this language, with these knightly characters, Spenser sat down to write his fantasy-allegory. It was a celebration of the English Reformation; it cast the heroes of the Reformation as faithful knights serving God, Queen, and lady. Its subject matter was radically Calvinist and Protestant. The very first canto was about the knight of Holiness protecting the fair lady Truth from the vile beast Error. Spenser's story was not exactly vague about its allegiances.

I have said that Spenser, besides a Puritan, was also a medieval. Like all good Christians, he loved his Father first, and his mother the Church second. He came—much more immediately than we do—from a great Christian civilisation, however marred and imperfect. Like all medievals, he understood the vital importance of metaphor, which was why he wrote an allegory, and not a Realist Novel. The novel, though invented by Daniel Defoe, the successor of Puritan poets, gained much of its importance during the Enlightenment. Modernity was born during the Enlightenment, and nothing is such an anathema to the modernist cult of Reason as is metaphor. The Enlightenment could only tolerate realist fiction. It killed the epic, and it tried to kill metaphor.

We who live on this end of the Enlightenment may find it difficult to understand the importance the medievals gave to metaphors, to parables and yes, to fantasy. Modernism believes only facts; but metaphor is an attempt to get at the truth.

The imagination of Edmund Spenser had not been crippled by modernism. He sprang directly from the medievals, and his use of metaphor and allegory is far richer than anything we could—or would—use.

It’s also a little more daring. What about those Elves, for instance? All or most of his heroes are referred to as Elves, and their good Queen, Gloriana, is definitely the Faerie Queene of the title. But what are Elves? They were creatures of Germanic legend, nature spirits perhaps similar to the Greek dryads and naiads. In the original legends, Elves might act as the servants of greater deities, but more often they were simply chaotic neutrals, good or evil depending on mood or tribe. Later, when legends came under Christian influence, it was said that the Elves were caught between Heaven and Hell, forced to sacrifice one of their number to Hell on the night of Hallowe’en.

So what is a Christian poet doing, writing about Elves? Edmund Spenser never stops his epic to explain. Spenser’s Elves, however, are much different to the Elves of Teuton legend: they are beings of grace and bravery who serve with all their hearts and strength the King of Heaven. They expect to go to Heaven when they die, and they are emphatically neither chaotic nor neutral. Spenser is using Elves as a symbol of all that is best about redeemed man. He redeems what is bad about the Elves of legend by putting them into the service of Heaven, and grabs everything that is good about them—their reputation for ethereal beauty and artistry.

Spenser’s ultimate aim in using this pagan legend was probably to redeem it and use it to the glory of God rather than of pagan gods. Instead of being the attendants of a Teutonic god, the Elves would now serve the Lord. Only the most superficial reading would suppose that Spenser’s Elves have hijacked his narrative, turning it into something pagan. Instead, the story has hijacked the legend and turned it in a different direction. In the free edition of the Faerie Queene on Gutenberg, a footnote notes:

"The difference between Spenser's elves and these Teutonic elves shows how he perverts Fairy mythology in the same way as he does Classical myths.—Percival.”

Perverts is a strong word. Percival—whoever he was, but he bears the name of another great knight—saw Spenser's work as a radical alteration of the original legends; an alteration in some way deeply disrespectful to the originals. Spenser's use and redemption of these legendary beings was not syncretism, but conquest.

To illustrate: think of Santa Claus. A thousand years ago we would have been speaking of St Nicholas, who among other great charitable deeds once saved three maidens from disgrace by anonymously throwing gold into their drying stockings, and who travelled to the Council of Nicaea in order to sock the heretic Arius on the nose. But this is not what Santa Claus means these days. Instead he means the secular materialist spirit of Christmas, dressed in red felt and white faux fur, intensely repellant to all right-thinking people. St Nicholas has undergone over a hundred years' worth of severe distortion. He is no longer who he once was.

This is what the medievals did to the pagan gods; but they redeemed them, resulting in a happier fate than that of poor St Nick. And this is why Edmund Spenser was able to use them.

Then in the Enlightenment we lost those strata of redeemed imagery and metaphor. Stories were out, science was in. Miracles were gone; empiricists had come. It was no longer possible to believe that an angel might inhabit the Sun, simply because we had proved, by a trick of logic, that nothing exists unless you can touch it or measure it. CS Lewis, however, yearned to recapture what had once been lost—and perhaps half of what had been lost was Edmund Spenser and everything Edmund Spenser stood for. It is entirely arguable that Narnia was Lewis's attempt to write a Faerie Queene for the next generation. At any rate it was his whole-hearted purpose to reverse some of the damage done by the moderns.

People always said how daring it was for Lewis to include pagan imagery in his fantasy, as if it had never been done before. I knew better. I had read Spenser.

I have spent a long time talking about Edmund Spenser vis-a-vis CS Lewis. That is not as it should be. Spenser was remarkable on his own account.

He was a Puritan among Puritans—which is to say literate, passionate, joyful, and giving glory to God. His theology was, as far as I know, impeccable. He wrote with pagan imagery, but not with pagan attitudes. Achilles or Hector, upon failing as miserably as Redcrosse does in Book I, might fall upon his sword, believing that only blood wipes out dishonour. But when Redcrosse is tempted to the same thing by the monster Despair, he finds himself up against gentle Lady Truth, who for once hauls off and lets him have both barrels:

Which when as Una saw, through every vein

The curdled cold ran to her well of life,

As in a swoon: but soon revived again,

Out of his hand she snatched the cursed knife,

And threw it to the ground, enraged rife,

And to him said, 'Fie, fie, faint-hearted knight.

What meanest thou by this reproachful strife?

Is this the battle, which thou vauntst to fight

With that fire-mouthed Dragon, horrible and bright?

Come, come away, frail, seely, fleshly wight,

Nor let vain words bewitch thy manly heart,

Nor devilish thoughts dismay thy constant sprite.

In heavenly mercies hast thou not a part?
Why shouldst thou then despair, that chosen art?

Where justice grows, there grows also greater grace,

The which doth quench the brand of hellish smart,

And that accursed hand-writing doth deface.

Arise, Sir Knight, arise, and leave this cursed place.'

Besides The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser also wrote the Epithalamion, a twenty-four-stanza poem celebrating his wedding-day, and much other poetry.

Edmund Spenser became one of my favourite authors when, one day (after many years of hearing his name and trying to get his works) I picked up Book I of the Faerie Queene and started reading. I had read various epics by then, and I expected Spenser to be hard work. I found that this was not so. Spenser is compulsively readable; his story is fast-paced and thrilling. It takes a good grip of sin and virtue to write a really good book, and Spenser's moral compass is rock-solid. I was glued to the page, scared for sweet Una alone among villains—scared for silly Redcrosse in the clutches of the terrible Duessa. I was reading a version with footnotes explaining some of the imagery, and it was a wonderful experience, like listening to grand music with the volume turned way up. I couldn't put the book down. But it was the last few cantos of Book I that did for me: the part where Redcrosse finally gets around to fighting the dragon.

(Spoiler Warning. Yes, I am putting a spoiler warning on a 500-year-old epic poem.)

He battles the dragon all day, with Una off to the side watching him, and her parents and their people waiting on the battlements of their castle for deliverance. And he loses. He is beaten down and falls beneath a tree and lies there all night, sore wounded; but overnight dew from the tree falls on him (it is the Tree of Life) and he rises to fight the next morning. All day he fights the dragon, and his blood runs upon the ground, and when the sun sets he falls exhausted into a stream (it is the Water of Life) and lies all night with Una praying above him; and on the third morning he rises and takes his sword and kills the dragon. Then there is much rejoicing, and the country is freed of the dragon, and Redcrosse is married to Una.

(End spoilers).

The imagery is extraordinarily rich and distinctively Christian. Although Redcrosse is the saviour figure, however, he is not Christ and not perfect. The dew from the tree, the Water of Life, are wonderful acts of divine grace; all the more incomprehensible and humbling since they are given to a chap who has, until now, behaved like a perfect chump.

The thing that Edmund Spenser taught me was that sin is serious. Some of the later medieval writers thought sin was a bit funny, or not all that bad. A little bit of it in everyone, no need to panic. God liked virtue, they thought, but He didn't get all that worried about sin.

Edmund Spenser was a Puritan, and when his characters sin, they risk their lives, their souls, and their quests. Sin destroys—especially sexual sin. If you've read as many different stories from as many different time periods as I have, you know that sexual sin is the venial sin. The OK sin. After all, if you love someone, it's alright. Not like one of those really awful, selfish sins. It is somewhat telling that in Dante's Inferno, the highest (and least terrible) circle of hell is reserved for the lustful, while the lowest (and worst) circle is for political traitors. In today's media, it's especially maddening that people who are heroic and virtuous in almost every other way don't seem to think it odd, or bad, or downright despicable, to sleep with someone they aren't married to.

Sleep with a witch, says Spenser, and you will die unless God takes mercy on you. When sin—of any kind—happens in the Faerie Queene, it imperils everything. The only way out is repentance and grace.

Don't, however, get the impression that Spenser is all about sin. The Faerie Queene is, in fact, about different virtues, each symbolised by a specific knight. Redcrosse is the Knight of Holiness, Guyon of Temperance, Britomart of Chastity, Arthegall of Justice, and so on. Because these knights must face different tests and quests designed to build up or display their virtue, sin is not just a wayside peccadillo; it threatens their very reason for existence. And those of you who know the first question-and-answer of that other great Puritan work, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, you cannot deny that this is true.

Favourite Novelists: PG Wodehouse and What He Taught Me

2011-07-29T22:03:00.004+10:00

G.K. Chesterton died yesterday. PG Wodehouse is now the greatest living master of the English language.

--TH White

It's so hard to talk about Wodehouse, because he was a strictly comic writer. His books contain absolutely nothing intended to give offence or even to approach it. The list of subjects he avoided is probably longer than the subjects he touched upon. He handled everything deftly, lightly, with a disarming charm. Everyone loves Wodehouse: when Douglas Wilson, Reformed theologian, went on a debate tour with Christopher Hitchens, bigoted atheist, they found common ground in this writer. The lowbrow love him and the highbrow do not exclude him from the canons of greatness on account of his popularity. Communists love him. Libertarians love him. The Americans love him, the British revere him, and the Indians go crazy for him.

Only one other author I know of—Jane Austen—enjoys such popularity long after contemporaries have faded into oblivion. And like Jane Austen, it can be tempting to believe that the only reason Wodehouse is so universally popular is that he is universally harmless. After all, the man who tries to please everyone usually ends up losing his soul in an attempt to pander to every taste. And yet nobody who had read him would accuse Wodehouse of this.

I know almost nothing about what the great Plum believed, beyond the scanty clues he has dropped in his works. He kept his own personal hopes and fears to himself; he must have been a private, even a shy, kind of man. But a man's books are his fruit, and by a man's fruit it is possible to know him.

It has long been my firm belief that Wodehouse's books are as much a product of Christendom as is Westminster Cathedral—and in much the same tradition. There are clues everywhere. Kindly clergy. Benificent bishops (addressed by the plucky young curate-hero as “Bish”). Rollicking revival meetings. Sweet young Salvation Army officers. Bertie Wooster's Bible Knowledge prize and the resultant proliferation of quotes from the Authorised Version of the Bible. The Reverend Harold “Stinker” Pinker, a lovable curate who must be seen to be believed on the rugby field. Even the interior decorating of Wodehouse's country estates is Biblical in tone:

I could see that she was looking for something to break as a relief to her surging emotions ... and courteously drew her attention to a terra-cotta figure of the Infant Samuel at Prayer. She thanked me briefly and hurled it against the opposite wall. --The Code of the Woosters

Plot points and jokes from Wodehouse's works further anchor his books within Christendom. Engagements and marriages end each successful romance, all of which are squeaky clean. When a girl turns up to stay at Bertie Wooster's lonely country cottage at midnight, the unfortunate but chivalrous Bertie tries to get a rest first in his motor-car and then in his garden-shed. When Monty Bodkin's prospective father-in-law refuses to let his daughter Gertrude marry a young man who doesn't work for a living, the independently wealthy Bodkin immediately gets a job as a secretary, anxious to qualify properly. Although not all of them are very bright, Wodehouse's young men are often physically courageous and always, always scrupulously chivalrous and honourable. Masculine Christianity (such as the Rev. Stinker's) is favourably compared with melting, emotional sentimentalism (such as Madeline Basset's, whose theology fails to extend beyond a firm belief that the stars are God's daisy chain). And the delightful subplot to The Mating Season tells the touching story of a devout housemaid separated from the man she loves by his staunch atheism.

Though an all-round great, Wodehouse's main strength lies in the area of metaphor and simile. His figures of speech are joyous, startling, hilarious, and regular—two to three per page.

And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other at the dog races.

I’d always thought her half-baked, but now I think they didn’t even put her in the oven.

She gave a sort of despairing gesture, like a vicar's daughter who has discovered Erastianism in the village.

I started back to the house, and in the drive I met Jeeves. He was at the wheel of Stiffy's car. Beside him, looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin, was the dog Bartholomew.

Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.

A sort of gulpy, gurgly, plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men drinking soup in a foreign restaurant.

One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crêpe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is.

Even Wodehouse's brilliant wordplay displays a theological presupposition: that simile and metaphor can be used at all to transmit meaning. As I have mentioned before, it was the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and the advent of modernism that attacked Christ, the Word, by stripping language of much of its meaning. Metaphor suffered greatly through this linguistic reductionism. Wodehouse's use to simile—vivid, colourful, loud, and joyously funny simile—shows a deep respect for words and the way they can be used to communicate far more than appears on the surface; that and a consummate craftsmanship.

But one of the most interesting aspect of Wodehouse's writing is the setting. His books take place in an idyllic, almost an Edenic, idealised version of 1930s-1950s England. It isn't that there is no sin or no conflict in his stories, or that his characters are perfect. But the tone that pervades all his books can only be described—to quote Wodehouse quoting some other fellow—as God being in His Heaven and all right with the world. Evelyn Waugh, the great Catholic novelist, saw it too:

For Mr. Wodehouse there has been no fall of Man; no "aboriginal calamity." His characters have never tasted the forbidden fruit. They are still in Eden. The gardens of Blandings Castle are that original garden from which we are all exiled.

I'm not sure if I agree with Waugh. Wodehouse's writings strike me more as taking place in some blithe eschatalogical future. But here's what I think is going on. Most people will tell you that story requires conflict. What does that mean for storytelling in the eschaton, when swords have long been beaten into ploughshares? Will we be limited to historical fiction, since conflict would be anachronistic in the New Jerusalem?

Or is conflict anachronistic in the New Jerusalem? Can a good story exist in a world without sin? I wander perilously close to realms of unsupported speculation here, but I think the answer might be yes, and I call the works of PG Wodehouse as primary witness.