Wedlock

Wedlock by Wendy Moore

Subtitled, How Georgian Britain's Worst Husband Met His Match.

And my word, he was indeed Georgian Britain's worst husband! I was drawn to this book by its eye-catching cover, and as my current writing project covers a period from Georgian to mid-Victorian times, I thought it would count as research. Plus I like a bit of biography now and again.

This book was unputdownable - it read like a novel. Mary Eleanor Bowes (an ancestor of the Queen) was Britain's wealthiest heiress when her first husband died, and became prey to a fortune-hunting Irish ex-army captain. He managed to charm her, then tricked her into marrying him by fighting a sham duel in her honour, and being apparently on his deathbed persuaded her to grant the last wish of a dying man. He was carried to the altar to make his vows, then made a miraculous and swift recovery. He then proceeded to abuse Mary, physically and mentally, for the ensuing eight years while he did his best to gamble his way through as much of her fortune as he could get his hands on. Eventually she, with the help of trusty maidservants, managed to escape and whilst in hiding, began divorce proceedings against him. In those days it was more or less impossible to divorce, and even if you did, you could not remarry. The law was biased in favour of the husband, and a divorced woman would certainly not be granted custody of any children. But Mary had a good case, and it all looked hopeful, when her husband found out where she was living and managed to abduct her, and take her on the run. She then endured appalling abuse which nearly killed her, before she was rescued. Her husband was convicted of abduction and later of non-payment of debts, but through contacts, charm and money managed to live quite comfortably while supposedly in prison. Poor Mary died before him, though she was able to live her last years peacefully and safely - interestingly for me, her last abode was within a mile of my home!

This book was completely brilliant. Fascinating and well-written, I did not want it to end. The author has written another biography - of Georgian surgeon John Hunter (who is a bit-part player in Wedlock) - and I have just ordered that too.

Holiday reading

Had two weeks camping in Spain, and read the following books:

Sweet Thames - Matthew Kneale
I enjoyed English Passengers so much I had to try something else by the same author. This one is set in Victorian London, and is all about the development of the sewers. Sounds like a delightful topic, no? It's a great book, though not a patch on English Passengers. Well written unusual story which rattles along nicely. Young Joshua Jeavons has married the daughter of his boss, but she has refused his attentions since they married. When she goes missing he has to go searching, and it turns his life upside down as he finds himself among the low-life of London. The sewers run through the novel in more ways than one.

The Hearts and Lives of Men - Fay Weldon
I'm a long term fan of Fay Weldon so when I spotted this one at the community centre bookstall I had to snap it up. Very enjoyable and written from an arch omniscient point of view. It begins in the sixties, in the world of artists and art-dealers, and spans the following twenty years. Clifford and Helen fall madly in love, marry, have a child, and divorce. It takes them a while but eventually they remarry. Their child, meanwhile, becomes a tug of love child and is lost presumed dead in a plane crash. But she survives (aged 4) and undergoes several adventures before finally being reunited with her parents as an adult. A great book with a happy ending, and worth reading as an example of stylish omniscience.

The Legacy - Katherine Webb
I was once a member at YouWriteOn.com and still get their newsletters, which is where I heard of this book, published following rave reviews at YWO. They were well-founded - I loved this book. It reminded my of Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum - repressed childhood memories and a historical story unwinding side by side with the current day story. Erica and Beth have inherited their grandmother's house. Erica's fascinated by the past and is trying to uncover distant secrets of her grandmother and great-grandmother. Meanwhile, being in the house where they spent summer childhoods is uncovering more recent secrets - what happened to their cousin Henry who disappeared there one summer?

Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
This is the tale of Mary Anning, the fossil-finder of Lyme Regis, and her middle-class spinster friend Elizabeth. Lyme Regis is just down the coast from me, and fictionalising the lives of real people is a literary idea close to my heart at present... Plus I've loved previous novels from Tracy Chevalier so this was a must-read for me. It didn't disappoint. It starts when Mary is just a girl, who has 'the eye' and can spot the fossils on the beach and in the cliff. She and her family are scraping together a living selling them. When she befriends Elizabeth Philpot, the older woman helps her sell the larger specimens, but both, as women, struggle to gain recognition for their efforts. They become rivals in love but ultimately are reunited. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Basil - Wilkie Collins

This was Collins's second published novel. I'm reading a lot of Victorian novels at the moment, both those written in that era and those about that era. Collins is always good to read for research, as he wrote about social issues of the time. Basil, though not as good as his better-known novels - The Woman in White, or The Moonstone - is enjoyable and also educational about just how shocking adultery and marrying outside your class were considered in the mid 1800s.

A young man from a rich and noble family falls in love at first sight with a tradesman's daughter. He marries her in secret, but is forced by her father to agree not to live as man and wife for a year. Just as he's about to claim her she is unfaithful, and hence starts a tragic chain of events.

This book gave me an insight into just how serious class issues were at that time. Basil's father cuts him out of the family completely when he finds out about the marriage. He'd have preferred almost any other form of bad behaviour from Basil than this. His reaction shocks today's readers probably in a similar way to how the depiction of adultery shocked the novel's first readers in the 1850s.

The Rose of Sebastopol

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon

I bought this one for 10p from a community centre book sale, and what a bargain it turned out to be! I'm immersing myself in novels writtten during or about the Victorian period at the moment, and this one was a cracker.

Set during the Crimean war. Repressed Mariella is engaged to doctor Henry Thewell. He, and Mariella's cousin captivating and headstrong Rosa go separately to the Crimea, to lend their services in the hospitals there. News arrives that Henry is sick, and has come back as far as Italy. Rosa's letters cease. Mariella and a maid, Nora, go first to Italy and then find themselves drawn to the war in search of Rosa. Mariella has to face uncomfortable truths as she realises Henry has fallen in love with Rosa. She uses her impressive sewing skills to make herself useful in the Crimean hospitals, and continues the hunt for Rosa. During this time she changes from being a shallow, ineffectual young girl to a strong, determined woman. She finds love, she finds Rosa, but the real story is that she finds herself.

I very much enjoyed this novel, and will certainly search out more by this author.

Historic Worthing - the Untold Story

By Chris Hare

Read this to add to my family history research. As with the other book of Chris's I read, it's entertaining and well-written. I learned so much - who would have thought that staid old Worthing, home to thousands of retirees, was once a hotbed of rioting every Bonfire Night? And I never, ever imagined that the following three words would be used together in a section heading: Salvation Army Riots.

To find out more, track down a copy of the book! I bought mine second hand at a Family History Fair. In Worthing, of course.

Pins

Pins by Christine Todd


One of my support-a-small-press purchases, which I heard about first on Sally Zigmond's blog (again). Molly finds concrete evidence her husband's been playing away, and buys voodoo dolls of him and his lover to stick pins in. Next morning her husband wakes up dead of an aneurysm.

Molly's guilt-ridden, and worried when the handsome detective seems to take quite an interest in her. As the months pass she finds hubby had a string of lovers, and had been undermining her ad agency business. She rebuilds her business as she rebuilds her life, and eventually realises the detective's interest in her is personal rather than professional. A year on, there's hope for her future.

It's a novel about finding yourself, being who you need to be rather than who someone else expects you to be. Why did her husband keep hurting her like that? Well, says the wise funeral-director character, probably because he wanted to.

I enjoyed this novel - it's written in first person present tense and has a snappy style. It's quite American in places (set in Chicago; the author is English but lived for years in the US) and there's plenty of humour. Couple of small points didn't work for me - Molly had a secondary career as a non-fiction writer and had this career to get back on track as well which seemed unnecessary. (Why do writers so often make their characters writers as well?) Related to this, she was writing gardening articles but preferred to sell her marital home with a big garden and look for a high rise condo which she felt was more 'her'. I'd have had the properties the other way round.

Overall a good read and definitely recommended.

Talking to the Dead

Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore

I bought this for 10p from the community centre book stall. Beautifully, poetically written. The setting is an old country house, during a very hot summer. You feel the oppressive heat, and almost long for the inevitable storm to clear the air.

Nina is helping her sister Isabel after a difficult birth. She becomes attracted to Isabel's husband and they begin an affair. Nina and Isabel have always been close, and you start to think, maybe too close. The presence of the baby, who Nina doesn't seem to relate to as you'd expect her to, brings back memories of the girls' brother who died from cot death. Or so the story goes. Nina begins to have different recollections of her childhood days.

Isabel's a delicate character - she has an eating disorder and is agarophobic. But we begin to learn what might have caused her problems as she struggles to regain her health after the birth.

The storm, when it comes, is shocking and upsetting. This is not a cheery read, but it's a beautifully written book and I'd recommend it to fans of Dunmore.