Stream of consciousness late night baby feeding review 2022: (the series continues!)
While I continue to find Trollope’s authoritative authorial voice Stream of consciousness late night baby feeding review 2022: (the series continues!)
While I continue to find Trollope’s authoritative authorial voice charming and soothing, I liked this one the least of the Barchester series so far. I think it’s due to three factors.
1- the pacing problems evident at the end of Doctor Thorne & Towers we’re even more pronounced here. For ex: The renewed bills that were renewed and then weren’t but then were went on for literally hundreds of pages and filled far too many of them, and had no suspense because we know it’s never gonna happen to the hero. 2- no one here makes me look forward to their plot reappearing. Even my fav Miss Dunstable was somehow more boring in this- tho I appreciated the time taken for her to get her HEA! I also hated the reappearance of a problem from Doctor Thorne which was that the romantic heroine- Lucy in this case, Mary in that- started off as awesome and witty and ironic and interesting, but then as soon as the lurrrrvvvee plot commenced she got all martyr-y and boring. Why did Trollope do this to his best ladies?! 3- the societal commentary was far less interesting here than in the first two. This felt like a a scold-y story about never maxing out your credit cards or forgetting that the house always wins at the casino. Like undoubtedly good life lessons but he also pulled his punches at the end so they didn’t land and again so much repeating himself.
This took me forever to listen to despite Timothy West’s excellent narration- I found myself listening to podcasts instead. I might take a break before book five/six so I can appreciate the end of the chronicles much more- pushing through four in a row may have been too much of a good thing! ...more
This is a book about 19th century cancel culture and Trollope’s position that we should feel bad about the questions it mOne line baby feeding review:
This is a book about 19th century cancel culture and Trollope’s position that we should feel bad about the questions it makes Nice White Men ask themselves.
The eat the rich of faerie tales. This one focuses on a maid who is very good at stitching and a faerie who is not very good at helping. Together theyThe eat the rich of faerie tales. This one focuses on a maid who is very good at stitching and a faerie who is not very good at helping. Together they both try to help each other through a deal where the faerie helps her marry a gentleman she’s in love with and where she embroiders the world’s most beautiful coat in return. But only because a faerie must ask for something in return you see! He wouldn’t otherwise- because he wants to learn how to be virtuous. Really virtuous, human style. Unfortunately his attempts cause many mishaps and hjinx ensue. And he is wholly charming at it!
I honestly just found this too preachy to be as absorbing or lovely as the first one. I felt lectured to and hectored rather than swept away - especially as the story went on. There’s something stern about it’s morality. Stern and self-approving and hard backed chair Protestant which my Catholic raised soul has never responded to. It dissipates when Blackthorn the faerie is about, or in the Lady Hollowvale scenes and the ones with the lovely neighbor guy- Mr Jessen I think his name was- that I wished we’d had a book about instead. I’d loved to have read his and Lydia’s story. I just… I dunno, I agree with the politics in theory I just can’t take it that far up into my face.
Ah well- perhaps the magic will return in 3?...more
Gothic popcorn from the first to the last. And I’m pretty sure that was the point, if my understanding of Wilkie Collins’ deal is correct. Ghosts and Gothic popcorn from the first to the last. And I’m pretty sure that was the point, if my understanding of Wilkie Collins’ deal is correct. Ghosts and murders and spies and arson and street fighting and doomed love, oh my! The promise of all that was the string that reeled me in at first (and boy did it deliver!), but it was the narrative structure that made me stay. I loved the passing of narrators and different document forms as we went, and how that became part of the story itself and made it feel as close to a documentary as possible (or as much as you can with the amount of cloaks and daggers and Drama involved here.) I loved how good he was at altering the narrator’s voice so truly none of them sounded the same- as anyone who follows me knows, I love a good in charge narrator.
And some of these characters! Oh some were the cardboard gothic cutouts you think they will be (Laura is a notable and unsurprising- annoyingly unsurprising-example). But others are wonderfully well done. Count Fosco, at least for most of it, twirled his mustache *and* felt frighteningly intelligent and menacing (I just wish he hadn’t undone all of his work on that at the end). Mr Fairlie the viciously selfish invalid. Gilmore the at-the-end-of-his-rope lawyer. Mrs Catherick the crawling up by her bootstraps small town witch and a half. And Marian! My glorious, glorious Marian! The true hero of this novel- something the main character himself closes the book admitting. She’s too fucking good for the lot of them. I wanted to scream with frustration by the end about what became of her. Did anyone else tear their hair out a little every time Walter and Marian talked about Laura and managed her like the helpless child she was, then had Walter sing Marian’s praises to the sky, then turn around and go weak at the knees for the lady-child Laura again? I mean I didn’t need them to get together because Marian is too good for him too, but ughhhh there must be good feminist as well as LGBT readings of this book out there. I feel like Wilkie had her talk about being “just a woman,” so often just to calm people down that she knew her place- she’d be threateningly independent and intelligent otherwise. I guess it’s like in Middlemarch where people love Dorothea and say she should have been better known and more people been acquainted with her awesomeness- before Eliot tells us “but no one could say exactly how that should have happened,” and then the novel just ends on that note. Just “Here’s your HEA, or is it?!? Enjoy this extremely uncomfortable fly in your ointment, where it will and should keep showing up forever.” Probably not a coincidence that this was written around the same time.
My one thing was that I think the bit at the end with Fosco and the societies and all that nonsense was where it jumped the shark for me. I was fine with him running off into the sunset- I didn’t need international conspiracies/secret spy jujitsu in our finale. I know it was one of the 19th century bogeymans in the newspapers at the time tho, so maybe it was a big crowd pleasing banger when this came out. I’d buy that. I bet serialized versions of this appeared alongside accounts of assassinations and new nation states saber rattling.
Super fun though! I did it half audiobook, half on paper, and it was excellent both ways. A great leisurely evening read....more
This was really really lovely and I really really liked it so much. I thank everyone who recommended this one, and look forward to reading the next onThis was really really lovely and I really really liked it so much. I thank everyone who recommended this one, and look forward to reading the next one when I’m in need of a bit of soothing. My only disappointment is that given the ending- as lovely as it is- I’m not sure I can hope to spend more time with Dora and Elias and I wish I could. I wish this was a trilogy or one of those family saga romance series just so I could watch them interact more. One of the more genuine relationships I’ve read in awhile, where I felt like I truly got why it worked. And on top of all it’s gentleness and earnestness, it even had time for nuance with Vanessa and Albert. Just lovely. Really well done. I can’t believe Amazon had it for only $3! ...more
As the election approached, and then dragged on... and on... and the school year of distance learning began and then dragged on.. and on... and as theAs the election approached, and then dragged on... and on... and the school year of distance learning began and then dragged on.. and on... and as the holidays approached and we found out we couldn’t spend them with anyone again.. and again...
Well. Somehow I found myself reading 20+ romance novels through it all. Worked my way through the entire Wallflower-Hathaway-Ravenel Kleypas series and then topped it off with Eloisa James’s fairy tale series, and a re-read of several of the Bridgerton books as the Netflix series approached. I was like a woman possessed- kind of like earlier this year when the pandemic first hit and I devoured 15 books in a cozy mystery series night after night long past the point where I couldn’t see any flaws, long past the point of being annoyed with the main characters and the author, and yet somehow couldn’t stop reading.
Yeah I had another wave of that from late October to winter break. I dunno what it is about this pandemic and my reading that does this to me. It’s finally thrown me up and out on the shore of it again, as it did with the first wave when that was over sometime in May.
Grateful for these absolutely formulaic, problematic, sometimes indistinguishable tales. Grateful for them providing just the right amount of interest to get absorbed in or skim through while keeping my mind off of other things. Grateful for them helping me to sleep so I could get up the next morning with less terrifying, slightly more real smile for my job. I’ve had more and more trouble sleeping lately- so if I stay up late at least I have these to keep me company until I can make myself pass out. Yes, yes, again, I am aware there are some problems with these and I know I should write about that but I’m sure someone else on another review has. (As you can tell this isn’t really a review of the book and if you couldn’t tell that by now don’t yell at me in the comments about not reviewing the book. Come on.)
I’m certainly not going to review all twenty of these. I picked this one to stand for them all because I found the hero quite charming, and the heroine one of those competent take care of the family ones I like. I like that she also has significant relationships with people other than the hero, and especially her effed up brother. As for the series as a whole, verdicts are: -hated the first Ravenel book lady, the deeply effed book about the sick Hathaway sister that follows this one, and the Winterbourne guy from the second Ravenel book who I liked from book 1 and then became awful. Leo, the Hathaway brother & his bride also annoy the crap out of me. Also the first Wallflower lady- Annabelle? Ugh, what a snot of a person. -liked Pandora & her husband- Ravenel #3. Husband has a nice well rounded character- one of the few. -loved Beatrix, the final Hathaway sister & her PTSD soldier. Probably the best of the bunch. -liked West and his bride (fourth Ravenel book) -Daisy and Lillian, the second and third Wallflowers, were ok! Daisy way better than Lillian. I don’t believe Lillian’s husband would be that into her. -St Vincent & Evie also make no sense and become totally different people from previous Wallflower books to make it work. But after they become those different people- sure why not? Works great. -liked Cassandra’s husband. Good firm characterization. Poossibly autistic? Def neurodiverse anyway. Found Cassandra herself rather cloying. Ugh that kid she got obsessed with. Women proving how great they are by caring for kids and making men prove themselves by doing the same is one of my least favorite romance novel tropes. -I think I liked Daisy’s husband?
Anyway. Thanks for getting me through months six, seven and eight of quarantine and the hardest part of the school year, books!...more
Updated Review at End of Year: Definitely the best textbook for AP European History, if I've got any prospective Euro teachers looking at this review.Updated Review at End of Year: Definitely the best textbook for AP European History, if I've got any prospective Euro teachers looking at this review. It's universally voted as the favorite of most AP Euro teachers due to its readability, primary sources and the AP-aligned questions at the end of each chapter. There are strong advocates for a few other options, but this is the majority choice. And after teaching with it for a year, I do see why. It's not perfect (Spielvogel has himself some questionable OPINIONS), but I found I agreed with all the reasons listed above that people had given me for why to get it. Note: I have the 9th AP edition, and appears not worth it to upgrade to the 10th- not enough changes. Am waiting for 11th edition to see if there are substantial changes based on the College Board's realignment of the units/question types in 2019-2020. *** Original Notification-PS- This thing is the reason why my book count is so much lower this year. I'm teaching an AP class for the first time this year and I'm reading this whole thing along with the kids to make sure my lessons are targeted, in addition to finding/reading many primary source excerpts and scholarly articles to supplement it. Gonna just leave this here until June as my excuse for why there's often not another currently-reading book on here!...more
Re-read from my HS/college years while I was sick with a 101 degree fever yesterday- I LOOOOOVED this series then, must have re-read this half a dozenRe-read from my HS/college years while I was sick with a 101 degree fever yesterday- I LOOOOOVED this series then, must have re-read this half a dozen times in my late teens. Its melodramatic overwrought terrible prose and retrograde statements from a supposedly feminist-esque feisty heroine absolutely don’t hold up now but I still love the Knight fam as a concept and Lucien and Robert are still hot AF. ...more
I have always found Charlotte Bronte’s anger to be subversive. The rage that drives the machine, her understanding of the particular being so needlepoI have always found Charlotte Bronte’s anger to be subversive. The rage that drives the machine, her understanding of the particular being so needlepoint sharp that it becomes universal.
But she hasn’t got it yet. Not here. It’s all the same material, the same sentiments we’re used to, but she is at once wearing too many masks to be truthful and speaking with the memory of slights too raw for them to be useful. She can’t quite name and point to the root of her anger yet- whether that’s because her publisher made her pull her punches (as is suggested in the forward) or because she isn’t there yet as a writer, I don’t know. But this felt like the thinly veiled diary of a particularly smart teenager who is still reliving her anger rather than being able to reflect on it and use it.
I found her use of a male mask to be particularly debilitating here. Her young professor, William, is not generally believable as a man in any way. It is, for instance, clear to me that she has not much idea of how men interact with each other (which of course is reflective of her own experience of the world). And beyond him, most of the rest of the cast are mere shadows of what’s to come, in Jane and Lucy. I enjoyed Hunsden, deus-ex-smug-jackass that he was. It was also an interesting commentary that Bronte tried to resist using him that way, but couldn’t do so and then deny the reality of what would have happened to William without him or someone equally unlikely coming along. Frances really came into her own with a few speeches just at the end that were glimmers of Lucy, though it had to peek out from behind lines like “it pleased her to make me the master in all things,” after describing in detail her competence and utter lack of need for the protagonist to be any such thing. (PS on this theme though the “you’re the master” stuff between them that’s repeated just a litttttlllee too much and goes just a litttttleee too far for me not to read some kink into it, especially given the letters we *know* she wrote to that teacher she had a crush on. Don’t @ me with your charges of anachronisms.)
I think we also have to mention that you’ll need to endure a good deal of racist judgment of various ethnicities present during the character’s stay in Brussels, with particular emphasis on the “Popish morals” of any character who happens to be Catholic (complete, I swear to God, with a line along the lines of “I’m the last person to be a religious bigot, but....”). I think it is not an accident that the woman our protagonist gets together with is ultimately Protestant and half-English. It’s not just once, either. When I saw her start to describe new characters I’d sometimes flip a few pages ahead to when I thought she might have done with her thoughts one the national character of the Flemish. (The Flemish come in for the most insults by far, for some reason.) There’s some attempt to indicate opposition to these views by both Frances and Hundsen late in the novel, so it may not be entirely editorial position, but it was rather too little, too late to fully convince me. While of course we know time and place, these sections made me think less of the young Charlotte. I don’t remember any of this in Jane Eyre or Villette (other than the standard shorthand of “French lady” for “questionable morals” that is eyerollingly common for this period of Brit lit.)
The writing is earnest, the plot is just almost charmingly straightforward, it’s all just... nice but not there yet. And I think Charlotte herself would have agreed. She’s a fantastic example of the idea that writers often really only tell one story. They just get better at it.
Unless you are a completionist, hie thee to Villette and don’t look back. You’ll thank me later....more
I can’t, I just simply cannot, please pardon me, with Margaret Hale. She’s like an indignant maidenly gasp incarnate. She’s a character most of the tiI can’t, I just simply cannot, please pardon me, with Margaret Hale. She’s like an indignant maidenly gasp incarnate. She’s a character most of the time and when she’s a person, I don’t much like her. Thornton is annoying, but I get it and I can work with it. But Margaret! Oh and her father, who I want to shake until his ears ring...! It’s a good job the writing is solid, it made me pause in groaning at her long enough to go “Ooh, nice phrasing!” and re-engage with the story again. That’s why I finished. Oh, Victorian ideals, you ruined another one. ...more
I re-read this for the first time since high school in preparation for teaching it to my own class of high schoolers for the first time. All I had takI re-read this for the first time since high school in preparation for teaching it to my own class of high schoolers for the first time. All I had taken with me from my first read was a general impression of "the horror, the horror!" that I think everyone leaves with- that sense, that feeling that pulls you back in just thinking about the book. I felt it again while reading the second time, too. This book is truly a black hole with a powerful gravity well that can suck you right in and pull you along with its tide in one gulp if you let it.
But this time I will also take more away from it than that. It's also a fantastic feat of writing craft that I couldn't really get the perspective to appreciate the first time around* (his ability to induce that terror was so effective), it's got a sense of horribly dark gallows humor at times, there's hints of the type of existentialism and fatalism seen in the reaction to modernization/industrialization all over literature, the sort of thing that lead to the cheering crowds, the eager volunteers that greeted the declarations of the start of WWI (a reminder to never, ever, take a classic out of the context of its time, however much it might transcend it).
In the end, this thing is a ghost story. I never realized it before- but that's exactly what it is. Its basic form and structure, it's manner of telling, the descriptions- it's Turn of the Screw, but Dickensian in its sense of *what* terrifying is, the substance of it. The beast stares also into you, personified.
*It makes total sense to me that Virginia Woolf was an admirer of his, which I just found out she was. I suppose that doesn't make sense on first glance, but sit with it for a minute, and it makes all the sense in the world. I must find her essay on him.** **Although its possible he wouldn't have been of hers. I gotta say, the continuous misogyny/idealization of "pure" women was just a stunning lapse throughout the book that is perhaps even more illustrative of what goes on here than anything....more
Perfectly competent. I’m sorry that that’s the best I can say of it after 400+ pages, but there it is. She did, at least at first, capture the rhythmsPerfectly competent. I’m sorry that that’s the best I can say of it after 400+ pages, but there it is. She did, at least at first, capture the rhythms of 19th century prose in a way that deeply reassured me. She has clearly done research and gotten many historical details right. There is no prose or moment here that is ridiculous or out of left field- but you know how Lizzy tells Darcy when they’re talking about character faults he might have that they can make fun of and he tells her that he’s unforgiving of people- and she responds, “that is a flaw indeed, but I cannot laugh at it”? I feel like that about this book. There are flaws, and many of them, but out of respect for the seriousness with which she clearly took this, and the clear understanding on display, I can’t make a funny review out of it.
But this isn’t the book I wanted at all. After awhile, this read like a reporting out of the facts of his life, a fitting in of puzzle pieces, rather than an explanation of his character. We don’t pause very often to live important moments alongside him, to feel how he must have felt. She just tells us what happens and moves on. And if we do pause there is far, far too much telling on the narrator’s part. There are a few exceptions to this- which are the parts that cover his experiences with Bertha after marriage and his awful encounters with her family- which tells you what she cares about, which is absolving Rochester as much as possible for his sins. I’m on board to a certain extent, but she went way way too far. I started to fight back against it mentally bc it was too much to be believed. And my God, it was slow. I don’t care about plot AT ALL and it was slow because we didn’t get the character moments and interactions to make up for it. I understand she was essentially trying to fit two books into the space one should go so she had to keep moving but I think she overestimated how much she needed to explain every little last thing. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to spend time with the Rochester who drew me so magnetically in JE, not to hear a list of facts about his life. The person he is presented as at the start of the events of JE has very little connection with the man we see before in terms of personality. For example, he speaks super differently out loud- both in terms of diction and content-between one page and the next one that has actual Bronte dialogue, which is jarring. His behavior around Blanche doesn’t make sense for the sainted person she keeps insisting he is before that. I also wish she had made more of the opportunities to tell a different story in Jamaica, Jean Rhys style or at least giving other voices their own story style. I half hoped that’s what we would get, and there were whispers of it, but only for a few pages here and there. I also wish she had felt comfortable complicating Bertha more than she did- she did take one step in that direction, but then seemed to feel honor had been satisfied and withdrew to justifying Rochester again. Alt-perspectives aren’t just for validating the other person all the time.
So I am sorry but I found this dispiritingly dull, with magic and life and most truth drained of it and a plausible background left there in its place....more
This probably deserves a three overall, but I can't bring myself to do it, which probably says something. Worth it and I really hope I get to review tThis probably deserves a three overall, but I can't bring myself to do it, which probably says something. Worth it and I really hope I get to review this soon. ...more
This was atmospheric, compelling, and well-earned my emotions from the very start. Full review up in a roundup of wonderful recent books I've read on This was atmospheric, compelling, and well-earned my emotions from the very start. Full review up in a roundup of wonderful recent books I've read on my blog: https://shouldacouldawouldabooks.com/......more
This is not the first time that I've read Daisy Hay, nor is it the first time I've read about Disraeli. Both of those experiences made me want to read more, so this was a pretty fortunate confluence of book events for me- very grateful that Hay's research lead her to this topic. This book is a natural outgrowth of her previous work in Young Romantics. In that book, Hay looked at the Byron-Shelley generation and attempted to break down the stereotype of the loner, the misunderstood Romantic genius flourishing in isolation in favor of emphasizing how none of these people would ever have become who they were without their repeated encounters with each other.
So it is fitting that her next book continues to insist upon the importance of relationships and connections in the lives of Great Men. This time, it is not Byron we focus on, but one of his most ardent disciples: Benjamin Disraeli. While many connections are covered, Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli specifically focuses on the connection that changed Disraeli's life- that with his wife, Mary Anne. In this book, Hay does not even have to make an argument that this connection is important- it is proven and accepted by history. No, here the task is much harder and more delicate: to complicate and question the very popular Victorian love story of this couple, a story in which both participants, and eventually the wider public (including the Queen) were heavily invested.
[image] Before he met Mary Anne, Benjamin Disraeli was a dreamer of a young man, the son of the writer Isaac D'Israeli, and, honestly, a bit of a feckless waste of space for the first twenty-four years of his life. He had an unsurprisingly anti-Semitic experience at school* and never went to university**. He seemed to mostly prefer bumming around obsessing about Byron much of the time and writing occasionally. He eventually tried his hand at writing popular "silver fork" novels (read: chick lit/aspirational fantasy) of the 1830s and got laughed out of town on his first attempt (literally out of the country, actually- he fled to Europe to do a Byronic Grand Tour to escape his humiliation). He had some successive novels that did moderately well when his ego recovered a few years later, and his assumption of leadership of the "Young England" group of writers made his reputation grow a bit (these writers were, as far as I can make out, sort of vaguely for reform, but mostly about the importance of giving people heroes and arguing that writers would make amazing statesmen). However, his attempts to parley this into political success were similarly at first unsuccessful. By his mid-thirties he was also deeply in debt to the tune of thousands of pounds and perhaps about to be thrown into jail by his creditors- that this didn't happen is only thanks to his first electoral win, in which Parliamentary privilege prevented him from being prosecuted. Which is how he met Mary Anne.
When she met Disraeli, Mary Anne was Mary Anne Lewis, a poor sailor's daughter who had had had the good fortune to become the wife of Wyndham Lewis, a wealthy businessman and eventual Conservative MP. Mary Anne was a popular figure, who, in lieu of the children she never had, devoted much of her life to hostessing, socializing, and political campaigning. Her popularity and tireless work was undeniably a large factor in getting her seemingly rather taciturn and unimpressive husband elected (in his career in Parliament, Lewis rose to speak only eight times). She also had a long career as a flirt behind her, with many cisibeos and hopeful lovers still clustering around her, even in her mid-forties- Mary Anne loved to be adored, and at times walked the line of reputation-ruining gossip to get what she wanted. Disraeli entered the picture when Lewis' district became so strongly Conservative that the party wanted to put up a second candidate- Disraeli had been on the short list of go-to possible candidates for years, despite his losses, and this time Lewis could put up the money to support him getting the votes he needed***. Mary Anne campaigned for both him and her husband, and they grew close during that time. As it happened, Wyndham Lewis died not long after this, leaving his very wealthy widow (and unusually independently so, by the way) for the taking, and Disraeli as her husband's best-placed successor.
As Hay points out, it would be easy to tell the cynical story that must be positively leaping into your mind right now: Disraeli swooped in on the much older wealthy widow and lied his bad-poem-writing pants off to get her money, and Mary Anne jumped at maybe her last chance to be a pretty princess at a vulnerable moment in her life with a rising star in politics. And that's exactly what some snotty people in Disraeli's most successful years did think- and sometimes actually had the balls to say- when they met his wife, who many of them at first considered vulgar, overdressed, frivolous, and not smart enough for Disraeli.
But you know what's incredible? Nobody did think that by the end. Absolutely nobody at all. In fact, the Disraelis became celebrated for their marriage, and the Disraeli's great love story was a huge part of their popular appeal. Over the course of their twenty-five years of marriage, their family, their friends, Disraeli's colleagues and the public came to know their relationship as a true, chivalrous, old-fashioned romance, thoroughly devoted, a true partnership. And you know who believed in it the most, after all, in the end? Mary Anne and Dizzy themselves.**** Which is, considering everything, the most remarkable part of the whole thing.
This is Hay's real interest: discussing how this couple created a fictional fairy tale for themselves that they both came to believe. The Disraelis spun a romance out of some very unromantic circumstances. And then they made it happen. Just because they said so.
It was fascinating. From the beginning of their courtship, you can see the importance of stories to them and especially their sensitivity to the character part they have been cast in. Both of them insist upon ideals, dreams, to be heroes and heroines. And that's how they spoke to each other- in poetry and jealousy and longing. But even in spite of these instincts, the cynical story underlying it all tested them early on. Their marriage almost failed before it started. Disraeli really did urgently need her money to stave off his creditors and tried to rush her into marriage less than a year after her husband died- with ardor being the excuse, of course, and pushed too hard and too obviously (though he barely acknowledged these reasons to himself). Mary Anne didn't want to be rushed into remarriage, and was kind of enjoying the attention old admirers were giving her as a wealthy widow. She didn't want the gossip around them to even seem to be true (even though she was sleeping with him by this point- she would have been fine with just doing that for awhile). The story almost fell apart due to its actors not playing their roles very well. But ultimately, when she confronted him with his possible (definite) fortune hunting openly, she caused a huge dramatic storming-out-of-the-house fight. Disraeli pushed back wildly, indignantly and at length: Mary Anne had stepped outside the romantic narrative and he would not stand for it. For the only time, he addressed his less than noble motives openly, basically saying that yeah, he initially was interested in her money, but it wasn't as much as he thought in the first place, and he still loved and adored her, SO THERE. He was ready to give her up rather than be the gold digger in the marriage, no matter how desperate he was:
Now for your fortune: I write the sheer truth. That fortune proved to be much less than I, or the world, imagined. It was, in fact, as far as I was concerned, a fortune which could not benefit me to the slightest degree, merely a jointure...Was this an inducement for me to sacrifice my sweet liberty, and that indefinite future, which is one of the charms of existence? No; when months ago I told you one day, that there was only one link between us, I felt that my heart was inextricably engaged to you, and but for that I would have terminated our acquaintance. From that moment I devoted to you all the passion of my being...
...dramatic declarations of parting follow, I need hardly tell you. He wanted to be thought the ideal lover or nothing. Mary Anne decided she'd rather have the white knight too, no matter what the reality was. And there it was, the deal that lasted a lifetime. From that point on, neither of them backed away from that story, no matter what came up. This story lasted through Disraeli's continual lies about debts (and even when Mary Anne discovered them), through prolonged physical separation and Disraeli's rise in prominence and power. It lasted through Mary Anne's aging much earlier than he did, through his deep and sometimes even stronger confiding relationship with his sister, through her occasional failures to impress where he would have liked her to, through his years of opposition, through possible affairs with handsome young men***** and through family troubles on both sides.
Sometimes this fiction was best maintained at a distance. Sometimes they spent many silent evenings in different parts of the house so as not to break the story. Sometimes it threatened to become a necessary fiction rather than voluntary one, since Disraeli had long since turned the story of their devoted marriage into one of his greatest public assets (much like the Queen and Albert did, and much as many, many politicians would do after his example, as Hay points out). But the farthest Disraeli would go towards admitting imperfections would be to write coded messages in his yearly birthday poems to her, hoping for reconciliation, or in the absence of any poetry to her at all (which, considering the quality of some of it, some of us may think was actually a real sign of love). And he never broke loyalty to her publicly, not once in nearly thirty years.******
[image] And in the end, it seemed, after twenty years, it was real. They got old, and the last five years of their marriage was everything they pretended it was for years before that, everything Mary Anne had ever wanted and only sometimes got from him, everything Disraeli wanted to be and only sometimes had the focus and time to follow through on. When offered a peerage during these years, Disraeli asked that it go to his wife instead, so she proudly became Viscountess Beaconsfield, able to look down her nose at her detractors at last. At this time, Disraeli would write her just because he missed her. Once, when they were both ill, they wrote back and forth to each other in their sickbeds on separate floors because they were too ill to be moved- Disraeli, by the way, had become ill after sitting up at her bedside for many days. And his last note to her, in the midst of her final illness, is quietly moving in its revelation of how truly he had become attached to her:
My dearest darling,
I have nothing to tell you, except that I love you, which I fear that you will think rather dull...Natty was very affectionate about you and wanted me to come home and dine with him; quite alone; but I told him that you were the only person now whom I could dine with and only relinquished you tonight for my country.
My country, I fear, will be very late; but I hope to find you in a sweet sleep.
Your own, D.
Despite everything ranged against her, her age, her class, her personality, her preferences, her money, Mary Anne made herself beloved, both of Disraeli and the country. In one of her last final illnesses, there were bulletins in the newspapers reporting on the state of her health and vigils outside her front door, like scenes out of Evita. The Queen had come to admire her almost in spite of herself, and the country went into virtual national mourning when she eventually did die in 1872. But Disraeli refused a grand funeral, refused display and attention. For one of the few times in his life, and also one of the few times people would have preferred he hadn't, he deliberately chose obscurity- something he chose again when he himself died. He could have been buried in Westminster with a public funeral and celebrity, and he chose a quiet grave in the country next to Mary Anne.********
As you can probably tell, I loved this. It touched me. Despite Hay revealing the cracks in this marriage- no, actually because of that, I found it very compelling. Ultimately, and much less dramatically, this is as revealing a portrait of marriage as Madame Bovary was for me, perhaps even more so in its way. Lucidly, Hay shows how most marriages are stories that the participants choose to believe in, no matter what evidence is arrayed against them. They are idealistic stories that are never, never what they seem or what the participants want them to be- at least not for more than fleeting moments, just enough to keep the dream alive. Marriages end when people opt out of these stories, don't live up to their end of the tale, or want a different story in the end after all and don't agree on what that is. But if both people choose to believe hard enough, if both people keep choosing to try to be the people they agreed they would be and act up to it enough times- well, that may truly be the last utopia.
*Disraeli's grandfather seems to have been the last practicing Jewish member of the family- his father broke with the synagogue over an argument and had Benjamin baptised as an Anglican at the age of 13- which is lucky since Jews were prevented from holding public office until the mid 1850s. Disraeli's career would not have been possible without this happening. There's a fascinating little story later in the book about how Louis Rothschild was elected to the House of Commons around that time and then provoked a crisis by refusing to swear his oath on the New Testament, which then caused the reform to be passed.
**(Something he was bitter about for the rest of his life- mostly because of the lost potential connections and status implications- it certainly didn't help that his younger brothers were sent to upper class schools where they learned all the class mannerisms that Disraeli had to try desperately to figure out from the outside- it gives his idolization of Byron a whole other spin when you think about it in terms of class, actually.)
***Oh man, the stories about how much money it cost to bribe people to vote for you were pretty incredible, actually. It makes being in Parliament sound like the sort of expensive status symbol that, I dunno, Apple Watches and Ferraris are now. Sort of your sign you could afford to flush enormous amounts of money down the drain and still keep your wife in diamonds, you know?
****Is there a more humanizing, bring-you-down-to-earth nickname that a Great Man could have than "Dizzy"? I submit to you there is not.
*****Never proven, but there are some racy letters that make me believe something was going down at least on Disraeli's side, even if it wasn't physical. Hay reminds us that dudes were much more comfortable expressing love for each other at this time, and Platonic friendships were a thing in this Greek and Roman worshiping age, but man, even so. I put money on some unexplored same sex attraction- that or its the most desperate need to be looked up to as an authoritative daddy figure I've ever seen.
******He was famous for it. There's several stories about it, but the one I remember is about how the Countess of Derby was rude to Mary Anne at a dinner party at her home, after Disraeli had been angling for an invite to that house for years. Mary Anne was hurt, and Disraeli politely, but firmly, refused to ever set foot in that house again, no matter how useful it would have been to him politically. This struck me because Disraeli was all about power and advancement and getting into the highest circles, and he was willing to give up one of his first breaks in that wall for her.
*******Even though after she died, he became attached to another woman a few years later and contemplated marrying again (her sister, she was already married) to be near her. He was also famous for his courtly relationship with the Queen- she knew he was buttering her up, and ate it up. Another woman who chose to believe in the best of Disraeli. Despite all of this, he still chose Mary Anne in the end. As he always, always did....more
This is a really tough project to have been blessed with, I think.
On one hand, for the second time , Reiss has been lucky enough to stumble into a fasThis is a really tough project to have been blessed with, I think.
On one hand, for the second time , Reiss has been lucky enough to stumble into a fascinating subject for a biography. Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Palleterie's (aka "Alex Dumas'") life is enthralling in its own right, even told in a straightforward encyclopedic way. The son of a ne'er-do-well French aristocrat and one of his black slave mistresses (whom he seems to have taken up with while in hiding from his family and his creditors both), Thomas-Alexandre was briefly sold into slavery by his own father. Quickly redeemed, he was taken from the island life he knew and taught to lead the dissolute life of a noble Parisian dandy by his reprobate father for years afterwards, until a rift between them lead him to enlist in the army. From there, like many of the major figures of late eighteenth century France who survived anywhere past the Terror of 1794, his life is a series of attempts to stay in favor and alive through the various changing regimes. While this was difficult enough for anyone with noble blood and any political or military involvement whatsoever, Alex Dumas' attempts were complicated by being a person of color and having the dubious fortune of coming far too frequently into contact with a Napoleon the rise. It's got inherent drama, tension and all the sorts of anticipatory questions you want in the heads of people who are probably somewhat familiar with this era: What's going to happen next? How's he going to get past x thing or y person? When will he run up against blah? How is this thing going to square with that thing I know is coming? So far, so good.
Furthermore, as with any biography worth its salt, Reiss takes a wide-angle view on his subject's life that fills us in on what's going on around him rather than the simple events of his own life. Given Alex Dumas' unique experience, there are a lot of details about French life at the time that are treated extensively when they might be tangential or footnoted at best anywhere else. For example, I had no idea how much France's colonies were worth at that time (particularly the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue, which could produce such wealth that they could be almost literally king-making). It was also fascinating to learn about the rather, by the standards of the time, liberated lives of the "mulatto" and free-black population of the island and especially their larger effect on the cultural life of the colonies. Jeremie, one of the growing towns of the island had a:
"growing role as a mixed-race cultural mecca. While distancing themselves as much as possible from enslaved blacks and poor whites, free people of color learned to dance, ride and fence like the white colonists, whom they often surpassed in sophistication and snobbishness... Fashion wars broke out between white and black hostesses to see who could throw the most impressive balls. The femmes de coleur nearly always won, Moreau reported.... Largely as a result of this kind of aspirational mixed-race society, Saint-Domingue and the other French colonies became cultural capitals of the New World, excelling in the performing arts... Saint-Domingue was home to the world's first black superstars, the mulatto opera singers Minette and Lise."
I also don't remember the last history of 18th century France that I read that so much as mentioned the changing racial policy of the revolutionaries, never mind monitored it in such detail. The racial policies and the opportunities available for people of color at each stage of the revolution was an interesting and revealing reflection of the constantly shifting liberal, conservative and terrified-in-between place that categorized a lot of the policy during this time. It helped to clarify some important things for me. For instance, there is a pretty much never-ending debate in France over when the Revolution technically "ended" (the Terror, the Directory, the coup d'etat of Napoleon or his coronation, the Congress of Vienna, 1848, Louis-Napoleon... not yet?), a debate on which I've never been able to come to a firm opnion. But Reiss' discussion of Napoleon's conservative, repressive and even eerily 20th-century type racial policy helped to pull me personally in the direction of those who choose the coup d'etat as the turning point. As Napoleon consolidated his power, he slammed shut the doors of opportunity that had opened to so many men and women during the Revolution, but it fell the hardest on any person of color in the army, especially and unfairly, on those who, like Alex Dumas, had wildly succeeded. All senior officers were put out of the army or simply not given any more commands. The only work on offer was in "Black Pioneer" regiments that did dirty, exhausting advance work for the army (some officers, previously proud heads of regiments and armies, were reduced to begging for work in these regiments). Interracial marriages (like Alex Dumas', who married the daughter of a prosperous French innkeeper) were outlawed and he barely escaped, unlike many others, being actually deported from the country due solely to the color of his skin. While the revolutionaries had not found a way to justify the continuance of slavery, given that their power was propped up, supposedly, by ideals that, if not adhered to, could get your head cut off, Napoleon's power came from quite another source. It was not long before he sent a brutal invasion force to reconquer Saint-Domingue, barely bothering to cover its purpose with any veneer of revolutionary dogma.
All of this was absolutely worth reading about, and as I said, I gained at least one great new insight on the period that I would not have had otherwise.* Moreover, as another point in his favor, Reiss was lucky enough to find some primary sources to do with the general that had been locked up in a safe in a village in rural France for god knows how long. He had the safe broken open, with only hours to photograph and digest as many of the hundreds of letters, dispatches and other documents he found that may or may not have had to do with the general. That's a thrilling experience for any historian of whatever kind. I completely understand his need to share the results of what he found there.
However. However. When one is blessed by finding a topic such as this, with so many attractive qualities, I think that there can be some unintended consequences that result. This topic is SO GOOD that I think that he probably developed infatuation with it to the point that he was willing to gloss over a lot.
For a start, Reiss has clearly discovered some valuable primary source documents that illuminate the character of the general. However, he also just as clearly does not have enough material to tell the kind of story that he wants to. Reiss is a big fan of the same sort of history I love- the narrative sort, with story arcs and character development and Thackeray-style commentary by arch, all-knowing narrators. But he just doesn't have enough material to fill in exact dialogue and exchanges, to justify how people are feeling or what their faces look like in any detail. So he makes it up. There are a really unacceptable amount of recurrences of the phrase, "he must have felt x emotion when...." when he was describing his characters' experiences. " He let his own imaginative projections fill in for the gaps in his research far too often.
Partly as a result of this, some of Reiss' analysis is ridiculously facile. We're going to analyze a meeting between Napoleon and some of his officers, including Dumas, (which we have confirmation of, but very little confirmable information on) by saying that Napoleon must have acted the way he did partly because he was feeling really intimidated by the tallness of the men he was speaking with? Really? We're also going to speculate that maybe Dumas' jailer in Italy started being nice to him because he was possibly motivated by "a kind of southern Italian enjoyment of defying authority- of thumbing his nose at his fancy-pants boss from here in his drafty provincial fortress"? I know that Reiss can do better than this because I saw him do it at many other points in the book (there are a couple great zingers in his analysis for sure). But these are not the only times where this comes up, either. This sort of thing happened when Reiss REALLY wanted to know what happened in a room, especially a room with a person of any importance that Dumas ran into. It's a sign of his excitement of about his subject, which is nice. But it's also excitement carried too far.
Thirdly, and this is a challenge of anyone working in the Revolutionary era, Reiss sometimes had difficulty balancing the amount of the story devoted to the "life and times of" Alex Dumas with the story of Dumas himself. Part of the problem is that so many things that happened to people in this era are perfectly bewildering if you don't understand the minute politics of which minister was currently on the rise and which other had just had his head chopped off, which means that one can devote a dozen pages to a background explanation and one to the actual event in a person's life. This can make it hard to keep track of the thread of the subject's life. It's also really hard to not get sidetracked and start telling the story of the Revolution rather than your subject. There are a couple people for whom the story is nearly one and the same (Talleyrand is a great example of this, which is another reason why that Cooper biography was so great), but for most people, they're going to fall on and off the map and you've got to fill in enough to get is from Point A to Point B without wandering too far. And honestly, sometimes I think he didn't tell us enough, either! For someone who knows a bit about the era, sometimes he rushed through a basic recounting of events and left out pretty important details about the way things happened in order to get back to the general's story. The problem with a generalist history like this is that I'm bothered by the thought that people who are picking this up and don't have familiarity with the Revolution will think that that's actually how it happened. And, given some of the very basic relation imparted about events, I'm pretty clear that this is a book written to cater to those with very little expertise.
Finally, speaking of overshadowing, for all that Reiss is attempting to bring out the importance of the father, let's all agree that it was probably REALLY hard for him not to overuse the son. Alexandre Dumas' writing (the one generally referred to as pere, but in this case fils) is charismatic enough that it seems like Reiss was sometimes really tempted to be drawn into his web of father hero-worship. Sometimes he stated his independence of it and his recognition of Dumas' , but he used his memoirs a lot anyway, however biased they were. Why? Because they're good goddamn stories, that's why. It took away another smidge of credibility to see how often Reiss would be like, "you know what, I have no certain evidence of whether or not this is true, but you know what, it sounds true, so I'm going to tell you the story anyway." I mean, it's totally understandable, and Dumas-the-son's version was way more satisfying anyway. I get it! And given, as I mentioned above, his apparently insufficient amount of primary source material, it makes sense that he would want to use this fill in whenever possible. There was only one time that I recall where he seemed to have enough documents to compare the son's version of events to his father's version to an independent, third party official version and then dismiss the son's version as hopelessly embellished. But even after that he kept using the material extensively. It makes it even tougher to trust him after that.
In the end, while I agree with all the reviews that praise the fascinating and unique topic of this biography, I'm not sure that I agree that it deserved a Pulitzer from the perspective of the writing. The story of the research is stronger than the research itself, and Reiss' imagination is sometimes obviously more at work than the primary source materials themselves. Each time these faults showed themselves they made me trust him a little less, which lessened my enjoyment of the ultimate product. I would recommend it, but I would also recommend that any reader keep their eye out for the sort of thing I'm talking about and make sure that you keep a healthy dose of skepticism intact.
*Despite all this,I also want to credit Reiss with several other interesting subjects he discussed as well, that people should definitely be aware that they will enjoy when reading this: a discussion of Mameluke soldiers and the French Army in Egypt, interracial schooling in Paris and the fate of the son of Henri-Christophe of Haiti, the awful experience of being a POW in 18th century Italy with no functioning government to help you, a discussion of the French concept of citizenship and all the interesting figures who flocked to Paris to fight in the revolutionary armies and why. I want to do him justice enough to let you know that there are plenty of interesting tidbits that await you, even if I have some reservations about the writing of the main subject.* ...more
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