A Sparkling Comedy of Manners

The blurb on the back describes Love's Shadow, by Ada Leverson, as 'a wry, sparkling comedy of manners' and, just for once, the blurb is quite right – the novel, a social satire on well-to-do Edwardian life, is light, witty, humorous, and very enjoyable. It's another of those forgotten classics published in The Bloomsbury Group series. As I've said before, I really love these books: they have fabulous, covers featuring a period design, and a wonderful, wonderful Ex Libris page, upon which you can inscribe your name. I am a great fan of Ex Libris stickers – you come across them in old books, and I'm always curious about the owner, and why they chose that particular design, and whether they liked the book. If I could draw, which I can't, I would design my own, in full-blown art noveau style (Mucha or Beardsley I think) as ornate as possible,with books spilling out of a carved, medieval, wooden trunk, and a woman with trailing tresses, reading.


Anyway, as usual I have got sidetracked, so back to the book. I hadn't heard about Ada Leverson until I discovered these Bloomsbury Books, so I Googled her and discovered she was born in 1862 and died in 1933. Her wealthy family opposed her marriage to Ernest Leverson when she was only 19, and the couple eventually split up in 1905, when he moved to Canada. Ada began writing in the 1890s, initially producing articles for publications like Punch and The Yellow Book, before turning her hand to novels. She moved at the centre of a sparkling literary and artistic circle, and her friends included Max Beerbohm, the Sitwells, William Walton, Walter Sickert, Aubrey Beardsley, Mrs Patrick Campbell and Oscar Wilde, who called her 'the wittiest woman in the world'.


The title of Love's Shadow, published in 1908 is, presumably, a reference to some lines from Shakespeare's 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', which are printed at the start of the novel, giving us a clue that the theme of the book is about the nature of love, and the way people chase what they cannot have. And even when they gain what they think they want, happiness  may be illusory.
Love like a shadow flies
Where substance love pursues;
Pursuing that which flies,
And flying what pursues.

Here we have disparate couple Edith and Bruce Ottley, who live in a 'very new, very small, very white flat in Knightsbridge – exactly like thousands of other new, small, white flats'. She is young, pretty, bored, and much more intelligent than her husband, a pompous, lazy, stupid hypochondriac, who has an unspecified job in 'the office' but rarely seems to do any work, and is always falling out with his friends, family and colleagues. And he has no sense of humour. And he always blames everyone else for his own shortcomings. And he's vile to Edith, always putting her down. You can tell, I think, that I don't like him. In fact, I would go so far as to say he is a character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and how on earth poor Edith ever came to marry such a rude, ignorant lout I cannot imagine. They have a young son, Master Archie, who rarely seems intrude on their sterile white flat, or their sterile white lives, and they are constantly in debt, but nevertheless, manage to employ a nanny and a cook.

Ada Leverson

The one bright spot in Edith's life is her friendship with old schoolfriend Hyacinth Verney, who is rich, beautiful and charismatic. Everyone, it seems, is in love with Hyacinth – apart from man-about-town Cecil Reeve, who is desperate to engage the affections of widowed Eugenia Raymond, an older woman whose interest in him is purely platonic, and who yearns after Hyacinth's guardian Sir Charles Cannon, who is in love with his young ward, and only married  his well-upholstered wife due to a misunderstanding on her part, and he wasn't brave enough to put her right. 


Confused? Well, pay attention, because things get even more complicated. Hyacinth, whose heart has hitherto remained untouched by the attentions of the many young men who adore her, promptly falls head over heels in love with Cecil, largely because she thinks he doesn't like her, which is pretty contrary really. Then there is her companion, AnneYeo, 'who made every effort to look quite forty so as to appear more suitable as a chaperone, but was in reality barely 30'. Anne is a curious character (possibly the most interesting in the book) who is obviously in love with Hyacinth, and goes out of her way to make people dislike her by appearing as peculiar as she can, presenting a kind of mask to the world. She wears odd clothes (favouring a mackintosh, driving-gloves and golf-cap when out walking), and speaks her mind in forthright manner. Hyacinth is either blissfully unaware of Anne's feelings, or wilfully ignoring the situation. And let's not forget Cecil's uncle, Lord Selsey, who takes a close interest in the two women in his nephew's life...


Characters may lack emotional depth, but the story is well paced, the prose is bright and sparkling, and the portrayal of what is considered to be acceptable behaviour is very entertaining - especially when it comes to meetings between a young man and a young woman!  By the end of the novel, relationships are settled to the satisfaction of all, largely through the efforts of poor Anne Yeo (who I think deserves a novel to herself). Whether or not everyone lives happily ever after is another matter entirely, and I suspect the Ottleys continue to torment each other in their restrained, middle-class way. I gather that their story continues in 'Tenterhooks' and 'Love at Second Sight', so I can find out what happens to them, and whether the dreaded Bruce gets his come-uppance, or whether he turns over a new leaf.

Love, Housework and Happy Endings

My 1996 Penguin edition of The Rose
Revived, with its lovely cover painted
by Pamela Kay

There are those who dismiss Katie Fforde because she is a writer of romantic fiction, but all I can say is, they don’t know what they’re missing. And I’m not going to describe her as a guilty pleasure because firstly, it’s such a contradiction in terms, and secondly, one should never, ever feel guilty about reading. If you enjoy a book, that’s fine, no matter who the author is, or what the genre. And the same applies in reverse: just remember there’s no rule which stops you hating a book, even if it is written by a highly acclaimed modern novelist, or a great classic author.

Anyway, I digress. Fforde’s The Rose Revived is the final book in my loosely themed ‘housework’ quartet, and it may not be ‘great literature’, but it is very enjoyable. Desperate for cash, and emotionally fragile, May, Harriet and Sally meet when they find work at Quality Cleaners, but quickly discover their boss (‘Slimeball’) has conned them, so they set up business on their own, despite their lack of experience.

The only member of the trio who knows anything about housework is single-mother Harriet, brought up by her repressive grandparents, who not only refuse to let her pursue a career as an artist, but are also denying her access to her 10-year-old son at the boarding school they pay for. Sally, obsessed with her looks and weight, is an aspiring actress, whose relationship with her controlling boyfriend is on the rocks, while May, the chief  protagonist,  is an independent feminist, who bought her boyfriend’s share in their narrowboat home(the Rose Revived) when he left – then realised he had not paid the mooring fees.


Her efforts to keep her home are a key feature in the novel, and at one stage it provides a refuge for May's two friends (as well as Sally's bags of clothes), and having once lived on a boat myself I know Fforde's descriptions are spot-on, and am aware of just how cramped space can be, how precious the onboard water is, and how friendly the boating community are. 

Traditional canal boat paintings of roses, from
www.chester canalheritagetrust.co.uk

As their friendship flourishes, they all discover talents they never knew they had and, of course, they each meet a man... There is Leo, the artist with past, who lives in some squalor in a flat which Harriet cleans; Sally falls hopelessly in love with cash-strapped farmer James, and May  spars with Hugh, a hot-shot lawyer who is the brother of the head of Harriet’s son’s boarding school, and a friend of one of her clients.

The course of true love, as in all romantic tales, does not run smoothly, and there are  bumpy rides all round before misunderstandings are ironed out ready for the obligatory happy ending.  Each girl (they are in their mid-twenties, and I should refer to them as women, which is politically correct, but girls is much more apt) ends up with the partner and lifestyle that is right for them (even if it takes them a while to realise this), enabling them to fulfill their potential, and become the person they were always meant to be, developing their skills, and establishing relationships on equal terms.

I took this picture of boats reflected in the canal
at Birmingham's Gas Street Basin last month, and
I'm sure there are similarities with London's canals. 

They all find their niche, which in some ways, I think, echoes the themes in my last 'housework' book, The Home-Maker. The story is told with wit and humour, and is nicely constructed, with just the right amount of dramatic tension. Fforde is an intelligent writer, who creates sympathetic characters, well-drawn settings, and a credible plot that romps along at a nice pace. This particular edition, published by Penguin in 1996, has a great cover – a reproduction of a proper painting, Hannah with Teacup, by Pamela Kay, which gives it a feeling of gravitas lacked by modern editions with their branded wishy-washy pastel images. 

Love and Secrets of a King and his Mistress

Sex, love, murder, revenge, betrayal, ambition and hidden secrets are key components of all good sagas about feuding families – and England’s Plantagenet Kings provide enough drama for an entire library of such books. So here’s a round-up of three, which I haven’t got round to writing about before now.  All are set in the turbulent 14th century, with much of the action taking place during the reign of Edward III.

King Edward II

First up is The Wheel of Fortune, by Susan Howatch, in which she uses her trademark technique of taking historic characters and re-interpreting their story in a different time and place. In this case she recreates Edward III as Robert, the head of an upper-class family living on the Gower in Wales. She follows their fortunes as they scheme and quarrel, seeking control of Moonacre, the beautiful old family home (a representation of the English throne), until Hal (aka Bolingbroke) finally restores order. Howatch sets her story in the period between the end of the 19th century and the 1960s, with various sections written from the viewpoint of different people (another of her regular devices). The great figures of the day are all there, though it has to be said some are not easy to spot, because they are very different to the way I imagined them, and to their historical context.

Writers have always taken old stories and given them a new twist, but personally I didn’t find this particular tale very convincing, and while it is interesting to see the action from different perspectives, you are never with any one character for long enough to feel you know them, and they don’t develop to the point where you begin to understand the reasons for their actions. On several occasions I had to flick back through the pages to check who people were, and refresh my memory about their relationship with others. And I was puzzled as to why some historical characters kept their own, or very similar, names while others were renamed. I thought it was unnecessarily confusing. 

Geoffrey Chaucer pictured as a pilgrim
in  the Ellesmere Manuscript, an
early edition of Canterbury Tales. 
(Huntington Library, California). 

Emma Campion’s The King’s Mistress and Vanora Bennett’s The People’s Queen both focus on Alice Perrers, who was the mistress of Edward III towards the end of his life, and was blamed for many of the country’s ills. Traditionally, she is portrayed as a woman who was not particularly good-looking, but had an attractive voice and magnetic personality, and used her sexual powers to manipulate the aging king – she was even accused of using witchcraft to enslave him.

But recent research has uncovered new information, which both these authors have used to throw fresh light on her character, presenting a strong, intelligent, independent woman who secured a good life for herself at time when few options were available to women. According to them she amassed – and managed – a huge portfolio of property, some of which she kept after her fall from grace, and she did return to court eventually, and was on friendly terms with Edward’s successor, Richard II.

Central to Campion’s story is the theory that Edward II was not killed, but lived in exile. Sadly, however, it was one of those books where the idea is more intriguing than the end product. She is an experienced writer (having published other medieval novels as Candace Robb), and has written some fascinating pieces about her inspiration and research for this novel, but it remains stilted and never quite comes to life.

Bennett’s book was by far and away the best, and was very enjoyable. Her Alice seizes life with both hands and emerges as selfish, feisty, intelligent, brave, kindly, humorous – and surprisingly likable. The booked is packed with detail about medieval food, clothes, medicine and home décor: you can almost smell the wet wool and the sour wine. Bennett touches on the role of medieval women, corruption at court, financial scandal in the city and the political unrest of the day. I’m not sure I bought the friendship between Alice and Wat Tyler, but it was in keeping with character Bennett has created, and she was the only author who successfully placed her characters in a credible context for their time.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

Campion and Bennett both have Geoffrey Chaucer as a friend of Alice – plausible, since they moved in the same circles. Many other characters appear in both these books (and some in all three) but the treatment varies from author to author. Curiously, however, the dominant figure in each novel, although he is never the central character, is John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III. In all three books he is charismatic, devious and shrewd, with a complicated personal life – two wives died before he eventually married his long-time mistress Katherine Swynford. He remains an enigma: the motives for his actions are never clear. But with each book it was he who remained in my memory long after I’d read the final page.