1870s

A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy

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I’ve read four Hardy novels in my time, and three of those have been for book groups – which appear to be making a united effort to get me through his oeuvre. My experience with him is a bit chequered – I like Tess of the D’Ubervilles, really liked Jude the Obscure, and loathed Return of the Native. Along the way I also somehow stopped reading The Mayor of Casterbridge halfway through, without really giving up. How would I feel about A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)?

Well, it battles out with Jude the Obscure for my favourite Hardy novel – and that’s probably because it’s the funniest one I’ve read. Don’t get the wrong idea – it still has its miserable moments – but there is also an irony and wit to the narrative that he seemed to gradually squeeze out of his writing over the years.

The main character is called Elfride Swancourt, which was almost enough to make me stop reading after the first two words. What an absurd name – and too close to Eustacia Vye for comfort. But I persevered – and learned that she is a clergyman’s daughter in Cornwall, new to adult life and very naive. The novel essentially tells of her romantic exploits – something of a love triangle, though not quite that simple – and how the decisions she can or can’t make in her youth are likely to follow her.

Her first suitor is Stephen Smith – who comes to work on the church as an architect. Their relationship is rather unconvincingly deep after they’ve talked to each other for about five minutes, and he mentions her blue eyes – which is about the only time they get a mention in the book; it seems a very odd title to me. They come very close to marrying – but she gets cold feet on the train to London. They part, promised to each other but not properly engaged.

In his absence, though, Elfride writes and publishes an historical romance (sure, why not) which gets savaged in a review by one Henry Knight. Who, naturally, comes along to visit – he is witty, artistic, and not easily offended by her frostiness. He is, to my mind, the most engaging character in the novel. Alongside his louche city ways, though, he is also at heart a naive innocent. Do they fall in love? Well, yes…

I never felt that I particularly cared about the characters, so I wasn’t sad or happy when bad or good things happen to them – but I still really enjoyed reading about them. They are perhaps too heightened to generate empathy in the reader (or at least this reader) but that doesn’t stop them being entertaining. There are even elements of sensation fiction, including one particularly absurd cliffhanger scene that I can only imagine Hardy writing with gritted teeth. In some ways, though, the novel is also a prototype of Tess of the D’Ubervilles, particularly in its discussions of hypocrisy about the different moral standards for men and women. It’s a real mixed bag.

The ending was a bit silly, in a different way, and doesn’t pack the emotional punch Hardy clearly wanted. Indeed, we came up with a much better solution in our book group. But we’ll let him off because it’s so much more entertaining beforehand. He’s not a completely different writer, of course; there are still very, very Hardy lines – like this:

Then Stephen put his hand upon Knight’s arm, and they retired from the yellow glow, further, further, till the chill darkness enclosed them round, and the quiet sky asserted its presence overhead as a dim gray sheet of blank monotony.

It was cloudy; we get it. But I jest – his writing is reliably good, and not too histrionic. I don’t know where this one stands with Hardy aficionados, but I would guess rather low, since it doesn’t get mentioned as much – but for Hardy newbies, it’s an enjoyable and pacy read.

Hardy hard? Hardly…

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Quite often you’ll see Harriet and I write about the same books around about the same time. That’s because we’re in the same book group in Oxford… and usually she is much more prompt than me at actually getting around to writing about the things. Today’s post is no different – I’m writing about Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, and she did so here.

I thought I’d cracked Hardy, last year. I made my second attempt with Jude the Obscure, and loved it – it even ended up on my Top Ten of 2010. And so I was excited when Harriet suggested that our book group read The Return of the Native – I wanted to get some more Hardy under my belt, now that I’d discovered that I loved him.

Hmm. Well, that didn’t pan out quite as expected. You’ll have to forgive my post title – I put it in because it amused me, not because it was true. Whilst I’d been surprised that Jude swept me along like a modern page-turner, I found The Return of the Native something of a slog.


The novel kicks off with a few pages describing Egdon Heath, which are apparently famous and much-loved. Well, you know me and descriptions of landscape – I was flicking past these pages before too long. And we come to a group of yokels discussing and dancing on the hillside. This crowd did give for a moment or two of something I didn’t expect at all – humour!Want of breath prevented a continuance of the songs; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached to him.That occasioned a little chuckle, and I liked this next bit from later in the novel so much that I went and read it aloud to my housemate:
“Strange notions, has he?” said the old man. “Ah, there’s too much of that sending to school in these days! It only does harm. Every gateost and barn’s door you come to is sure to have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young rascals: a woman can hardly pass for shame some times. If they’d never been taught how to write they wouldn’t have been able to scribble such villainy. Their fathers couldn’t do it, and the country was all the better for it.”(In my village, I must say, the local vandals tended towards the pictorial.) None of these characters end up being particularly important, however, and it’s all a rather lengthy introduction to some of the novel’s main players – Eustacia Vye and Damon Wildeve. Eustacia is all flashing eyes and passionate proclamations; Damon is all wry comments alternating with romantic gestures. Awkward, then, that he’s about to marry someone else – a girl so virtuous and accepting that I can’t even remember her name.

Naturally everyone is in love with everyone else. Throw the reddleman Diggory Venn into the mix (a reddleman being someone who transports sheep-dye around the countryside, and is covered head to toe in the stuff), and the ‘native’ himself Clym Yeobright, and we’ve got a love-hexagon or -septagon or somesuch going on. To be honest, it all felt a bit like a watered down version of Jude the Obscure, even though that novel came later. All the partner-swapping, and going back and forth between people; false promises and broken vows; wild and amorous announcements followed by bitter renouncing, etc. etc. This excerpt is fairly representative:
She interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger seemed an equally possible issue, “Do you love me now?”

“Who can say?”

“Tell me; I will know it!”

“I do, and I do not,” he said mischeviously. “That is, I have my times and my seasons. One moment you are too tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another I don’t know what, except – that you are not the whole world to me that you used to be, my dear. But you are a pleasant lady to know, and nice to meet, and I dare say as sweet as ever – almost.”This sort of histrionics does occasionally result in humour where I imagine Hardy didn’t intend it. The following is possibly my favourite quotation from Victorian literature, and one I intend to put to good use in moments of over-dramatic angst:
“Your eyes seem heavy, Eustacia!”

“No, it is my general way of looking. I think it arises from my feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that I ever was born.”Well, quite, Eustacia. It comes to us all.

I can’t decide whether The Return of the Native really is much worse than Jude the Obscure or if I was simply not in the mood for Hardy. And I wasn’t, especially since I had to speed-read the second half for book group… to which only one other person came!

Perhaps I’m not being fair, and I have enjoyed ripping into Hardy a bit – it somewhat makes up for the slog I had reading it. I’d love (as I always love) someone to come along and disagree with me – there must be someone who loves this novel? Maybe I would if I read it in a different mood. As it is… I’m back to the drawing-board with Thomas Hardy.

Persephone Week 3: The Runaway

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I don’t know about you, but I’m really enjoying Persephone Reading Week. Do keep popping over to Paperback Reader and The B Files to catch up on what’s going on across the interweb, and I do hope you’ve felt encouraged to pick up your own Persephone book. Our Vicar’s Wife has promised to cook something from her copy of Good Things in England by Florence White, to celebrate the week, so hopefully I’ll be able to treat you to a picture of whatever it is, later in the week.


I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep up to one Persephone a day, since I was out at the theatre tonight (seeing Spike Milligan’s Hitler: My Part in His Downfall – for free, because I’m under 26 – hurrah!) But I was speedy, and the book was quick, so I can add Elizabeth Ann Hart’s The Runaway to my list for the week. A children’s novel originally published in 1872, and reprinted in 1936 with over sixty wood-cuts specially made by the sublime Gwen Raverat, The Runaway has become one of my very favourite Persephones.

Both text and illustrations are quite, quite wonderful. It’s impossible to imagine them separated, and I pity the children between 1872 and 1936 who had to make do without – but more do I pity myself and all other children who didn’t get this read aloud to them in their infancy. The protagonist is Clarice, an imaginative fifteen year old (who acts more like a modern day ten year old – whether that is a sign of the times, or simply Clarice alone, I’m not sure) who regrets that her father is not the army, and in the opening line, redolent of Emma, is described: ‘Clarice Clavering – young, ardent, and happy -‘. Longing for adventure, she finds it in the form of Olga, hidden amongst the thicket. The eponymous Runaway, she persuades Clarice to allow her to hide in the house. The plot is about whether or not Olga will be discovered; whether or not she is telling the truth about her origins; what the consequences of her running away will be for all.

But, for me, the plot is less significant than the lively characters. Clarice is a fairly typical good, obedient Victorian child, but without the slightly sickening edge that certain members of the March family have for me(…) Her spirited eagerness for adventure set her apart from her less attractive compatriots. And then there is Olga! What a delight – airy, impetuous, irrepressible, and vibrant, she reminded of nothing so much as Clarissa from Edith Olivier’s The Love Child. And anybody au fait with my 50 Books You Must Read will realise what a compliment that is.


Had the text been printed alone, this would be a lovely book – but Gwen Raverat’s wood-cuts take it to the next level. I didn’t really know what wood-cuts were before I started reading Persephone Books six years ago, but now I love them. Often featured in the early Persephone Quarterlies, an article by Pat Jaffe in PQ 4 speaks of the ‘bookish, talented, visual twentieth-century women [who] have taken such delight in the intimate, intricate craft they were at last allowed to learn.’ Each of Raverat’s must have taken so long, and they are enchanting. Not twee (though personally I never find a touch of twee goes amiss) but as spirited as Olga herself.

Any parents or grandparents out there, I do encourage you to get a copy of this for your child. If you catch them at the right age, I suspect The Runaway will become a favourite for years to come. And, like all the very best children’s books, it’s one which you’ll have to buy a copy of for yourself too.

Return! A plethora of books

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I am back from a week in Northern Ireland and a weekend in Warwickshire, and hope some of you are still around – will try and pop into most of the blogs tomorrow to say hello and catch up, but too late to do that tonight. Instead, will give a round-up of three books I’ve read recently… that’s right, leave me alone for a week and I have to burst with bookish things. None of these three books would make my top ten of the year, but each was worth writing about – and that might be where the connections end. We’ll see if any more come up as I write…

Capuchin Classics kindly sent me another of their reprinted novels – Tom Stacey’s The Man Who Knew Everything, which was published as Deadline in 1988. If you’re thinking ‘Oh, wasn’t that a film with John Hurt and Imogen Stubbs?’ then I’ll stop you there – Stacey’s foreword to this slim novel makes it clear that he has no wish to be associated with that film. Despite talented actors, ‘the director and editor went to ground for three months to emerge inexplicably with an edited version, not readily intelligible, which re-shaped the story as a tragedy of love’. So, if it is not a tragedy of love, what is it? Granville Jones is an aging newspaper correspondent in the 1950s Gulf, writing occasional dispatches and mostly idling towards the end of his life, reflecting on the two women who have played significant roles therein. He is there when a coup threatens the island’s leader, also a personal friend, and must report on it – and must meet the journalistic deadline before anyone else gets there.

In some ways it’s a pity Stacey had to lose the title, as it lends the narrative an urgency which can’t always be felt by those who, like me, haven’t lived the journalist’s life. It doesn’t help that Granville isn’t a particularly likeable character (I felt more than a little sympathy for his abandoned family) but he does come into his own when in conversation with the island’s leader, the Emir. ‘We have grown old together, Jonas. You and I are too old to fear to die.’ All in all, an interesting novel with some touching moments, but requires a mind with a greater political bent than mine possesses.

Piccadilly by Laurence Oliphant was also a reprint, but my copy is a 1928 reprint of the 1870 original. Victorian literature forms too large a gap in my reading, which I decided to rectify with the shortest Victorian novel I owned. Piccadilly is described as a satire on London politics of the 1870s – well, I’m not particularly clued up on the political scene of that era, or indeed any era. No matter, I continued regardless. The hero, Frank Vanecourt, decides to launch himself on a life of selfless charity, and to write a book:

‘I shall tell of my aspirations and my failures – of my hopes and fears, of my friends and my enemies. I shall not shrink from alluding to the state of my affections; and if the still unfulfilled story of my life becomes involved with the destiny of others, and entangles itself in an inextricable manner, that is no concern of mine’.

It might not astonish you to learn that the story of his life does become involved with the destiny of others – specifically his noble (and quite lovable) friend Grandon; the woman Grandon loves, Lady Ursula; and Ursula’s mercenary mother Lady Broadhem. What unravels is a complex and often amusing plot of secrecy and blackmail and love and much introspection and expostulation from Vanecourt – presumably mocking a vogue for novels of this ilk. Some rather unsavoury, but perhaps inevitable, racism occasionally spoils what is quite a witty work, but I can’t help feel I’d appreciate Piccadilly more if I’d read any of the sort of novels which it mimicks.

Finally, a collection of short stories by Mathias B. Freese, Down to a Sunless Sea, which I was sent to review. Full marks on the title – I do like quotations in titles, as I might have mentioned before. Vulpes Libris are kicking off a week on short stories over on their blog, and very interesting I’m sure it will prove to be – whilst they’re at it, perhaps someone could answer a query. Why does the short story so often attract the macabre? I thought (and wrote!) quite a lot about the Victorian short story for a dissertation at university, but the macabre didn’t pop up nearly so often… Freese’s collection has large doses of it, and wasn’t always my cup of tea, shall we say. I did want to mention one story, though, which seemed head and shoulders above the rest – ‘Young Man’. It’s a little like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves in style, but communicates some sort of mental illness, in an atemporal confusion. If I could remember Genette’s Narrative Discourse, then all sorts of terms would be appropriate. This is part of it:

One day his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
One day his wife said, “Someday it will be all right.”
One day he asked himself, “Is this it?”
Again his daughter asked him, “What’s on TV for children tonight, Daddy?”
“Watch me, instead,” he replied

Russian Around Hesperus

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Isn’t this the most wonderful thing for Hesperus Week? Thank you so much Peta (aka The Bookling) for emailing it to me. I’m not sure of its provenance, but thank you to anyone else if Peta wasn’t the creator, and thank you to Peta if you were!

There is still plenty of time to enter the draw for a free Hesperus book of your choice, but Hesperus Week continues with a foray into Russian territory. It was one of my most shameful literary lackings that I hadn’t read any of the Russian writers – it’s possible I skimmed a Chekhov once, I don’t recall, and I might have read a modern Russian (or perhaps Hungarian…) but I’d not read any of the Russian Master Novelists, and that was very remiss. So when Ellie from Hesperus sent me a little bundle a while ago, I was delighted to see she included The Eternal Husband by Fyodor Dostoevsky. How did you first enter the Russian world? Or are you a stranger to it too?

Oh yes, this is what I’d always thought the Russians would be. They leap out of their chairs, they leap back as quickly – everything is exclaimed and announced, and mood swings come quicker than a pregnant acrobat. And with names like Alexei Ivanovich Velchaninov and Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, for what more could I ask?

I jest. Beneath these flourishes, and indeed through them, lies a touching and well-told tale of intrigue and mistrust, love and malice, innocence and memory. Velchaninov keeps noticing a man in a crepe hat following him (or is it vice versa?) and the first few chapters create an increasingly taut and haunting tension as to what this mysterious figure could want. Don’t read the next paragraph if you want to keep it all a secret.

He eventually reveals himself as the husband of Velchaninov’s ex-lover, and brings with him a small child. The rest of this novel/la (short only by Russian standards) presents a wavering web of the emotions between these figures, and the absent lover Natalya Vasilyevna. (On a side note, someone asked the other day for the definition of ‘novella’ – good question! More or less a short novel – but without the strutural singularity and unity which characterises the short story. But it is a norotiously difficult term to place.)

Occasionally frenetic, The Eternal Husband is also a thoroughly psychological.work. The blurb puts it best – Dostoevsky is ‘engaging with his favoured themes of tortured minds and neurosis, and treating them in a captivating and highly revelaing way.’ I didn’t always find this an easy book to read, by any means, but I think it’s a good ‘way in’ if, like me, the Russians are foreign territory for you.