The Cardboard Crown | Martin Boyd #CCspin

This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either.

At the centre of this scintillating and immensely readable novel is Alice Verso, whose unexpected marriage to Austin Langton not only brings financial stability to the Langtons but founds an Anglo-Australian dynasty. But when her grandson finds her diaries and begins to uncover her story he chances on an intricate web of deception and reveals the complex fate of his family over three generations.

I don't often start with a blurb about the book I've just read, but I figured that many of my readers may never have heard of The Cardboard Crown or Martin Boyd. 

The Langton Quartet (there are three more books in the series) have been compared to the Forsyte Saga, and Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time as an Australian example of a family epic across time and place.

Boyd (10th June 1893 – 3rd June 1972 - how frustrating to get so close to one's 80th birthday and just miss out!) was part of the well-known à Beckett-Boyd family of Melbourne. Various members of the family made their names in the judiciary, art, literary and publishing worlds. To name a few of this creative extended family we have Merric Boyd, Helen à Beckett Read, Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, David Boyd, Mary Nolan, Robin Boyd and Joan Lindsay.

Martin actually spent most of his adult life in Europe, but The Cardboard Crown and it's follow up books A Difficult Young Man (1955), Outbreak of Love (1957) and When Blackbirds Sing (1962) were written thanks to a brief period of his life when he returned to Australia with a dream to restore the old family home. 

During this time (1948-1951), he rediscovered his grandmother's diaries where he read about her previously unknown convict heritage. Her father, John Mills, the founder of Melbourne Brewery, was an ex-convict. It was his money that had funded the extended family for several generations. In 1950's Australia though, a convict past was decidedly frowned upon. So Boyd changed the family scandal in his books to that of an adulterous affair, or as Brenda Niall says in her Introduction, he 'reinterpreted a century of family history'.

Boyd had a brief stint in a seminary (followed by a lifelong search for the place of religion in his life) before enlisting in the Royal East Kent Regiment during WWI. After the war, he returned to Melbourne, but no longer felt like he fitted in there. He returned to Europe, wandering around from place to place. After his final stay in Australia, he moved to Rome to write. He converted to Catholicism in his dying days and is buried in the Rome Protestant English Cemetery near Keats and Shelley.

Like the characters in his semi-biographical quartet, Boyd never felt at home in Australia or England. Throughout The Cardboard Crown the tension between being English and being Australian is a constant pull. As is the sad and slow decline of a once well-off, well-connected family moving down the social ladder. 

It did not occur to anyone until after the 1914 war that there was any obligation to work unless it was necessary.

I can see why this book may have fallen out of favour for a while. Aristocrats, inherited money and gentlemen of leisure don't really hold much truck with the average Australian. Ignoring our convict heritage may have been de rigueur in the early part of the nineteenth century, but by the 1970's, with its sudden surge in family history research, having a convict or two in your past, became not only acceptable but something to be proud of, especially if you could claim a First Fleeter on your tree. It's a shame that Boyd didn't feel that he could tell that story.

They had brought out with them their English style of living, but it was tempered by a pleasant colonial informality. They had to satisfy no one but themselves. They did not follow the social pattern, they set it.

The story of Alice Langton, is told by her grandson Guy de Teba Langton. We see her as he remembers her, but we also get a more first hand, personal account of her life through her own diaries. Boyd/Langton enjoys the disparity between the two and spends many musing moments comparing these two women, these two images of the same woman. 

It did not seem only to contain the ghosts of the dead from whom we spring, but also the ghosts of the living, of the child I was.

She was quite an extraordinary woman - self-made, strong and capable. She spent her life searching for home and for love, constantly juggling and handing over money to prevent the entire family from going under. 

Alice only wanted to fill properly the position in which circumstances had placed her, and to see that her children had and used all the opportunities available to people of their kind.

But Guy/Martin also explored class consciousness and the workings of democracy. He compares the two countries, he compares East St Kilda and Toorak, he compares town and country and he compares Europe and England. There's a snobbish attitude towards the middle class, but a curious link is made between the landed gentry and the rural working classes,

The aristocracy lives from the land, the peasant lives from the land - they are akin. Their blood is nourished red from nature, and the flesh and the spirit are one.

The colonial emigrant experience is a big part of this story. The disconnect and confusion about belonging and home reflected the reality of many nineteenth century Australians who still called England 'home'. It was an odd situation to be in. In England, where their hearts lay, they were small fish in a very old pond. In Australia they had the opportunity to be big fish with a lot of political and social clout, but it was only in Australia, on the other side of the world from where all the important stuff was actually happening. It almost felt like play-acting at being important. Living in the now, and being happy where you are, was not something that these Australians found easy to do. Their eyes were always on the horizon and they were constantly trying to superimpose an English way of life onto this alien Australian environment.

Needless to say, the story was filled with a curious mix of nostalgia, pride and divided loyalties.

My one difficulty with this book was the large paragraphs written in French. I spent one Sunday afternoon typing them all into my google translate app, to only discover that most of the sentiment within these paragraphs was conveyed, by Boyd, in the sections around them. But I needed to know for sure. Once upon a time, Boyd's readers would have been schooled in basic French, but no longer. All I could do was pick out random words I knew.

I was thoroughly engaged with this multi-generational story, seeing an older Melbourne through nostalgic eyes and a Europe still innocent of two world wars. When I finished I wasn't sure if I would continue the journey with the other three books. But as time has gone by, between reading and reviewing, I now also feel a sense of nostalgia for this time and this place and this family and I'm very curious to see what happens next.

I guess I'll be adding A Difficult Young Man to my next CC Spin!

Excellent Women | Barbara Pym #ComfortRead

I'm struggling to write reviews at the moment (my Covid Chronicles posts are the writing exception), but I am slowly reading through a few books. One that I've just finished is Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym. It was her very first book published in 1950. I was curious to see what I had to say about her other books, that I had read quite a while ago. 

Turns out it was seven years ago!

I posted my first Barbara Pym review on the 4th June 2013. It was for Excellent Women, her second novel published in 1952. I give you a revised peek into a gorgeous book and a beautifully conceived reading week below.

I am a recent convert to the charming world of Pym.
By recent, I mean just 3 days ago! 

Barbara Pym has been on my radar for a while though. But it wasn't until I joined in The Classics Club Their Eyes Were Watching God sync reading two months ago that I made the first move. 

My copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the designer collection put out by Virago Modern Classics. I loved it so much (book and cover) that I researched to see what other titles were still available in the range.
Excellent Women was one of them...so I snapped it up.

It has been sitting on my bedside table for two months now tempting me with it's delicious cover by Orla Kiely. When I saw that Thomas at My Porch and Amanda at Fig and Thistle were hosting a Pym reading week in honour of her 100th birthday I saw it as a sign to finally give in to temptation. 

I'm so glad I did. 

Excellent Women has turned out to be a charming, drawing room period piece full of grace and at times, quite biting humour. 

I've seen many references that compare Pym's writing to Jane Austen.
As a long-time Austen fan I can see the similarities - the humorous observations, the details describing the lives of women in the particular period that the two women wrote of. But Austen's ability to weave her plot lines, dialogue and characters into such tight, dare I say, perfect stories is a stand out difference. 

Perhaps Mildred is the post war Charlotte Lucas with a choice of two Mr Collins'. Except Mildred, unlike Charlotte, has more options - Mildred does not have to accept Julian or Everard (if they ever make an offer that is). Mildred can work, she can be independent, she need never be a burden on siblings or nieces and nephews. 

I see Pym's gentle, everyday stories of 'good' women fitting more into the Anita Brookner and Alice Munro writing style.

All four authors share the ability to show us the quotidian events that affected their characters in the times that they lived. 

I keep coming back to this point, because I often read reviews that complain about the lack of feminist rhetoric in Austen and Pym in particular. But that's not the world their characters lived in. Their women were strong, intelligent (mostly) and loving (usually). Their opinions and ideas were based on the world they lived in. They accurately reflected their class, their education and their experiences. 

Mildred's gentle, loving church upbringing meant that she was never going to be one of the bra-burning generation. Some of the most poignant moments in Excellent Women are when Mildred is forced to come face to face with more modern ideas and people. She is the classic fish out of water. 

Mildred was part of that large group of women who remained unmarried after WWII due to the tragic loss of so many (marriageable) men. She worked, lived independently, dreamed her romantic dreams, but ultimately developed a pragmatic, busy and self-contained life to disguise any loneliness or despair that might have crept in. She accepted her lot in life with grace and forbearance.  

I lived a single, fiercely independent life for 18 years (before finding my very own Mr Knightley/Captain Wentworth). I know the joys and freedoms of single life and I also know it's downsides. I know the private deals you make with yourself.

Mildred's experience is authentically drawn by Pym. My heart aches for Mildred - her determination to make the best of things is heart warming and heart breaking in the same breath. 

There is definitely more Pym on my horizon.

And indeed there was!

An Academic Question on the 8th June 2013
Jane and Prudence on the 8th July 2013

Carol by Patricia Highsmith

Usually, I prefer to read the book before I see the movie, but in this case, our long hot summer got the better of my good intentions.

I recently escaped the heat by watching Brooklyn and Carol back to back in our local cinema.

Both movies were fabulous for very different reasons and I came away determined to read both books as soon as possible. I decided to use this experience to test the movie-before-the-book theory.

It has taken me a month to get both books read but I can now confidently say that I preferred the movie of Brooklyn a little more than the book.
Really!

I engaged with the movie characters far more than I did with their book versions and I experienced a wider range of emotions. The book, of course, had more detail and back story which was interesting, but the movie had a heart and soul that won me over in the end.

The movie of Carol was tremendous and very moving, but quite different from the book which made the reading experience almost like discovering the story anew.

Carol was a good title choice for the movie because it really was all about Carol. Carol as observed by Therese (and us). Perhaps this evolved during the filming thanks to Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Carol. Blanchett is such a dominating presence on screen, that like Therese, we're a little in awe of her splendidness.

In the movie we never really feel like we get into or under Therese's skin. There's a vague sense of Carol as the older, experienced cougar-like woman seducing the younger, innocent ingenue. The movie really delved into the devastating impact of Carol's sexual choices. The happy ending came at a very high cost.

The book, originally titled The Price of Salt in 1952 and published under a pseudonym, showed us a much more informed and nuanced Therese. She was clearly very aware of how she was feeling and what she was hoping for with Carol. She gained several personal insights along the way about why she had such a strong fascination for the older, glamorous woman.

The ending of the book, was not only a happy one, but one that allowed the reader to see that the new relationship forged by Carol and Therese would be one based on a more equal footing. It was actually Therese's coming-of-age story.

This theme was reinforced by Highsmith's choice of reading material for Therese when she first visited Carol - James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.
Goodreads tells us that:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represents the transitional stage between the realism of Joyce's Dubliners and the symbolism of Ulysses, and is essential to the understanding of the later work.

The novel is a highly autobiographical account of the adolescence and youth of Stephen Dedalus, who reappears in Ulysses, and who comes to realize that before he can become a true artist, he must rid himself of the stultifying effects of the religion, politics and essential bigotry of his background in late 19th century Ireland.

This was obviously an important clue about Therese that Highsmith left for her readers to tease out for themselves.

Carol turned out to be one of those rare cases where the book and movie were both fascinating but for rather different reasons.