review: ROYAL MISTRESS by Anne Easter Smith

Title:  Royal Mistress

Author:  Anne Easter Smith
Publisher:   Touchstone
Publication Date:  May 7, 2013
How Acquired:  Through Net Galley

What it’s About:  Jane Lambert, the quick-witted and alluring daughter of a silk merchant, is twenty-two and still unmarried. When Jane’s father finally finds her a match, she’s married off to the dull, older silk merchant William Shore. Marriage doesn’t stop Jane from flirtation, however, and when the king’s chamberlain, Will Hastings, comes to her husband’s shop, Will knows King Edward will find her irresistible.

Edward IV has everything: power, majestic bearing, superior military leadership, a sensual nature, and charisma. And with Jane as his mistress, he also finds true happiness. But when his hedonistic tendencies get in the way of being the strong leader England needs, his life, as well as those of Jane and Will Hastings, hangs in the balance. Jane must rely on her talents to survive as the new monarch, Richard III, bent on reforming his brother’s licentious court, ascends the throne.

My thoughts:  I’ve had a lovely couple of days spending time with my favorite Plantagenets thanks to Anne Easter Smith.  I read and reviewed Anne’s last book QUEEN BY RIGHT about Cecily Neville, the Duchess of York, which I enjoyed, so I was eager to dive back into this world that I have loved ever since I saw THE LION IN WINTER in high school.  Jane Shore, Edward IV’s last mistress, was someone that I had heard of, but knew very little. At first when I started reading the novel, I thought that it was just going to be another harlot with a heart of gold story.  You know, “she sleeps with the King, but she’s a really good person who helps the poor,” type of thing but Jane’s story is much deeper than that.

When the book opens, Jane Lambert is on the verge of spinsterhood.  She’s twenty-two and still unmarried which was highly unusual at that time.  Her father is bit of an asshole; he adores her younger sister Isabel but treats Jane like she’s a nuisance.  He expects absolute obedience, and prefers women to be seen and not heard. Jane however is quick-witted, intelligent and not afraid to speak her mind. There’s a telling scene with her mother Amy who shares her story with Jane, that once she too was outspoken and feisty, until basically Jane’s father beat it out of her.  She tells Jane that one day she too will learn to keep silent.  How awful but also probably how common was that in the 15^th century when educating a woman was seen as a waste of time.  The fact that Jane can actually read makes her something of an anomaly.

She’s also gorgeous, petite with an hour-glass figure, and wavy blonde hair.  She’s the type of woman who men gape at on the street, while their women glare. It’s not Jane’s fault that she’s a pocket Venus but most men don’t see much past her pretty face.   Jane is also a bit of a romantic, she wants true love which she thinks she’s found with Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset until she discovers that he’s not only married, but that he’s lied about who he is.

Since she can’t marry the man that she loves, Jane settles for marriage to William Shore, a much older silk merchant who is eager to get in good with her father.  She’s determined to make her marriage work but William won’t cooperate, or more to the point, a certain part of Will’s anatomy won’t cooperate.  As I read further into the book, I experienced a range of emotions towards Jane.  I liked her enormously for her sense of fun, her optimism, independent, and most of all her loyalty to her friends, her King, and Will Hastings. When she has the opportunity to help her friend Sophie as well as others in her community, she does. On the other hand, Jane was also naïve, stubborn, and headstrong.

The novel details the last few years of Edward IV’s reign as well as the first two years of Richard III’s reign. Although the book is predominantly Jane’s story, it is told in multiple points of view, including Will Hastings, Richard III, Elizabeth of York and Thomas Grey.  Ah poor Edward IV, he comes across as a relatively decent man who started out as a good King but then through boredom, and having to constantly deal with his asshole of a brother George, Duke of Clarence, he’s given full reign to his hedonistic side, spending more time drinking, eating and whoring than he does governing.  You finish the book feeling what a waste of a human life.  To spend all that time fighting to get what you want, the Crown of England, just to turn into a fat git towards the end. When the revelation comes to light in the book about Eleanor Butler, one is not surprised; it is exactly the type of boneheaded move that you would have expected from Edward.

And then there is Richard, my Richard.  For the record, I’m a diehard Ricardian but that doesn’t mean that I believe that Richard III was a saint.  As portrayed by Easter Smith in ROYAL MISTRESS, Richard’s downfall is his inflexibility when he thinks that he is right.  In his own way, he’s as arrogant as Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence.  Like Jane, he is incredibly loyal to Edward IV and by his extension his family, although he loathes the Queen and the Woodvilles as many people did at the time.  One has to wonder if Elizabeth Woodville hadn’t made such a power play after Edward IV’s death, whether or not things would have turned out differently.  Edward IV’s death meant that people stopped playing nice and began to get real.  Easter Smith has an interesting take on the death of the two Princes, it’s a theory that has been tossed about before, but she lends it real weight in her portrayal of the events that lead to their death.

Edward’s death means that Jane is in danger of losing everything.  It’s to her credit that she didn’t demand more from Edward. Her plight illustrates the lack of opportunities available to women in the 15^th century if they are not married.  While the reader may not like Jane’s choices, in the end one understands where she is coming from.  There is a moment towards the end of the book, where she is talking to her close friend Sophie, that is just so self-aware without taking you out of the story.   Jane makes no apologies about the choices that she has made in her life. In the end, after everything that Jane has been through, her unhappy marriage, her relationship with Edward IV, and the punishment meted out to her by Richard III, you long for her to have a happy ending.

My verdict:  A compelling and intimate account of the last days of the Plantagenet dynasty. An utter joy to read and a must for lovers of The War of the Roses.  Now that I have read ROYAL MISTRESS, I will definitely be seeking out A ROSE FOR THE CROWN, DAUGHTER OF YORK and A KING’S GRACE. The only trouble is which one am I going to read first?  Hmm!

The Case Against Florence Maybrick

The story of Florence Maybrick in the late 19th century fascinated Victorian audiences.  Was she a vile poisoner or a Victorian victim? Because she was an American by birth, the case ended up involving the US press as well as the US government, as her lawyers worked frantically to get her sentence either commuted or overturned.

The suspect:

 Name:  Florence Elizabeth Chandler

Born:  September 3, 1862, Mobile, Alabama.

Parents:  William George Chandler, a banker and one-time mayor of Mobile, and the Baroness von Roques.

Background:  Florence’s father died when she was a baby.  Her mother married twice more, the final time to a German baron. Florence grew up in Europe, educated privately by governesses, spoke French and German fluently. She was pretty, vivacious and sophisticated.

 

The Victim:

Name:  James Maybrick

Born:  October 25, 1838, Liverpool England

Parents:  William and Susanna Maybrick. 

Profession:  Cotton Broker.  His business required him to travel regularly to the United States.  In 1871, he settled for a time in Norfolk, VA, to establish a branch office of his company.

 

Background:  In March of 1880, Florence Chandler met James Maybrick on a ship from New York to Liverpool, England.  When the boat docked 8 days later, they were engaged. Florence was 18 and James was 42.  The two were an odd couple. While Florence was petite with dark, wavy hair and big blue eyes, James was portly with florid cheeks, typical middle-aged Englishman.   Despite their age difference, the couple was wed over a year later on July 27, 1881 at St. James Church, Piccadilly in London. For three years, the couple divided their time between Norfolk and Liverpool before settling permanently in Liverpool.

The couple had two children, a son named James Chandler known as “Bobo” and a daughter Gladys Evelyn. They moved into Battlecrease House in a suburb of Liverpool, a huge house that had over twenty rooms.  By necessity (Florence wasn’t going to clean those rooms herself!), they employed a gaggle of servants including two maids, a nanny, a nursemaid, a footman etc. Florence had no close friends in Liverpool, although she led an active social life with parties, teas, benefits, and charity dances.  Her husband’s family was suspicious of her and her mother, considering them to be adventuresses.  Her husband’s ex-fiancée and her two sisters came and went freely from the Maybrick home. 
 
Florence had no idea how to deal with servants or how to run a household.  She and her mother had led a peripatetic existence in Europe and the United States, never settling anywhere for long, because of their finances.  She had no idea how to budget.  When her husband was having financial difficulties, he put her on allowance of £7 a week, out of which she had to pay the bills as well as the servants.  Florence borrowed money from money lenders in order to pay creditors which left her increasingly in debt. She lived in fear of her husband finding out exactly how much money she owed.
 
After 5 years of marriage, Florence discovered that James not only had a long-term mistress, but they also had several children. As soon as Florence found out about Maybrick’s mistress, she stopped sleeping with him.  Lonely and wanting a little romance, Florence began an affair with a businessman named Alfred Brierly but the affair was short-lived. When Maybrick discovered her affair, there was a violent row during which Maybrick assaulted her. Divorce was impossible. While Maybrick would have been able to divorce Florence for her adultery, Florence would have had to prove not only adultery but cruelty, desertion or incest for her to obtain a divorce.   Maybrick might have been able to take her children from her, and if he divorced her for adultery, he was not obliged to support her.

Death:

James Maybrick’s health deteriorated suddenly in April of 1889, and he died fifteen days later on May 11. His brothers were immediately suspicious as to the cause of death and had his body examined. After an inquest, at the age of 27, Florence was arrested for the murder of her husband. Florence was tried at St. George’s Hall, Liverpool before Justice James Fitzjames Stephen, and convicted and sentenced to hang.

Florence’s case is interesting for following reasons:

• Case led to two important changes in the law.  The first was the Criminal Evidence Act of 1898.  For the first time a person accused of murder was allowed to give evidence on their own behalf.
• The second was the criminal Court Appeal Act of 1907.  This came about because of the conduct of Judge Stephen during the trial.  Although he was a well-respected judge, Stephen had suffered a stroke four years because the trial and his mind was clearly befuddled.
• Thirdly, the press had a huge role in the proceedings.  The case was reported on not only in the Liverpool paper, but in all 21 daily papers in London, as well as in several newspapers in New York and the United States.  In the beginning, before the trial started, the press was vehemently against Florence, treating her as an evil murderess.  It wasn’t until the trial started that the press started to write articles in Florence’s favor.
• After the verdict, there was a huge public outcry.  Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary and Lord Chancellor Halsbury concluded that while Florence did give her husband arsenic with the intent to murder him, there were grounds for reasonable doubt as to whether it was the cause of his death.  She was given a reprieve; her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment instead.

 There was never a chance that Florence was going to get a fair trial. The case against her was complicated by intrigue, adultery and drug abuse, and the British establishment was convinced of her guilt.
 

Whether or not Florence is an innocent victim or a cold-blooded killer, she should not have been convicted because:

·         The doctors could not agree on how James Maybrick died.  One doctor thought it was arsenic poisoning, another thought it might have gastroenteritis.

·         Maybrick didn’t have enough arsenic in his system at the time of his death to kill him.

·         She was the victim of the Victorian double-standard.  While her affair was broadcast in court and her letters published in the newspapers, Maybrick’s affairs were given short shrift.

·         Arsenic was everywhere in the Maybrick house, most household cleaners used it as did many medicines at the time.

·         A city chemist testified that he had supplied Maybrick with quantities of arsenic over a lengthy period of time.

·         James was a hypochondriac and drug addict.  He’d become addicted to arsenic and morphine after being treated for malaria.  Both drugs were also considered to be aphrodisiacs in the 19^th century.

·         Florence had very little motive to kill her husband.  In her husband’s will, she and the children were left with very little.  She would have been better off with him alive but legally separated.

·         The infamous double standard was applied to their behavior. While Florence’s affair with Brierly was known and talked about in court, her husband’s affairs were treated lightly as if they were of no consequence. 

The evidence against her:

•  In April 1889, Florence had bought flypaper containing arsenic from a local chemist’s shop which she later soaked in a bowl of water.  She claimed that she had planned to use the arsenic for a beauty treatment (not uncommon at the time).  She even produced the recipe at her trial.
• Shortly afterward, Maybrick was taken ill on April 27, 1889 after self-medicating with a double dose of strychnine.  His doctors were called but his condition continued to deteriorate.
• In May 1889, Florence wrote a letter to her lover Alfred Brierly which was intercepted by Alice Yapp, the nanny who disliked Florence.  Yapp passed it along to Edwin Maybrick, who shared it with his brother Michael.  Michael ordered Florence to be played under house arrest.
• On May 9, a nursemaid reported that Florence had tampered with a meat juice bottle which was found to have a ½ grain of arsenic.  Florence testified that her husband had begged her to administer it to him as a pick-me-up.  However, Maybrick never drank it.
• Many people believed that Florence’s motive was that Maybrick intended to divorce her which would have been social ruin.

 Aftermath:

• Florence Maybrick was finally released in 1904, after fourteen years in custody.  She moved back to the United States, where she lectured protesting her innocence.  Wrote a book called My Fifteen Lost Years.
• In later life, she became a recluse, living in a squalid cabin in CT with only her cats for company.
• She never saw her children again. Died penniless and alone on October 23, 1941 and was buried in the grounds of the South Kent School.  Her only possessions were a tattered family bible, pressed within the pages, was a recipe for soaking flypapers for use as a beauty treatment.
• Her case inspired several novels including Dorothy L. Sayers STRONG POISON and Marie Belloc Lowndes LETTY LYNTON.

 Innocent or Guilty – You decide

Personally I think that Florence was innocent.  She was beautiful but flighty; I don’t think that she was smart enough to come up with a plan to kill her husband.  Although the marriage had gone sour, the two had reconciled before his death.  Florence admitted in court that she had put arsenic in her husband’s meat juice but insisted that Maybrick had asked her to.  There was also way too much arsenic in the house, none of it concealed. Of course it is entirely possible that Florence counted on that fact becoming known.  Unfortunately for Florence, her husband’s family never liked her, and was more than eager to blame her for James’s death.  Maybrick had a long history of abusing drugs and poisons such as arsenic.  It is conceivable and more than likely that his body just couldn’t take it anymore which lead to his death.

Further Reading:

Victoria Blake – Mrs. Maybrick:  Crime Archive, The National Archives, 2008
Trevor Christie, Etched in Arsenic, Harrap, 1968
A.E. Graham and Carol Emmas, The Last Victim, Headline, 1999

Book of the Month: The Creation of Anne Boleyn

Title:  The Creation of Anne Boleyn

Author:  Susan Bordo

Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin

Pub Date:  April 9, 2013

How Acquired:  Bought

What it's about:  Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.

Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto “mean girl,” feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies.

What the critics are saying:

"A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike"
—Kirkus Reviews

"Ms. Bordo offers a fascinating discussion... a strangely tasty book."—The New York Times

"The University of Kentucky humanities chair does a superb job of separating fact from fiction in contemporary accounts of Boleyn’s life, before deftly deconstructing the myriad and contradictory portraits of her that have arisen in the centuries since her death. . . . The young queen has been the source of fascination for nearly half a millennium, and her legacy continues; this engaging portrait culminates with an intriguing exploration of Boleyn’s recent reemergence in pop culture." —Publishers Weekly

About the author:  SUSAN BORDO, Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at University of Kentucky, is the author of Unbearable Weight and The Male Body.

My thoughts:  It seemed fitting that I should choose The Creation of Anne Boleyn on the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution.  When I first picked up this book, I felt a sense of schadenfreude.  This was a book that I wish that I had written but once I started reading it, I felt a sense of kinship with the author.  She gets it! She was just as obssessed with Anne Boleyn as I am! If you were annoyed with The Tudors or you just want to dig deep into the life of Anne Boleyn and how people's perceptions of her have changed over the centuries, I urge you to pick up a copy of this book.  It is must for every Anne Boleyn fan out tehre.

Review: Black Venus

Title:  Black Venus

Author:  James MacManus

Publisher:  Thomas Dunne Books

Pub Date:  May 7, 2013

How Acquired:  From the publicist

What it’s About:  A vivid novel of Charles Baudelaire and his lover Jeanne Duval, the Haitian cabaret singer who inspired his most famous and controversial poems, set in nineteenth-century Paris.

For readers who have been drawn to The Paris Wife, Black Venus captures the artistic scene in the great French city decades earlier, when the likes of Dumas and Balzac argued literature in the cafes of the Left Bank. Among the bohemians, the young Charles Baudelaire stood out—dressed impeccably thanks to an inheritance that was quickly vanishing. Still at work on the poems that he hoped would make his name, he spent his nights enjoying the alcohol, opium, and women who filled the seedy streets of the city.

 One woman would catch his eye—a beautiful Haitian cabaret singer named Jeanne Duval. Their lives would remain forever intertwined thereafter, and their romance would inspire his most infamous poems—leading to the banning of his masterwork, Les Fleurs du Mal, and a scandalous public trial for obscenity.

My thoughts:  I knew very little about Charles Baudelaire before reading this book.  I had read some of his poetry in one of my French classes in college, and I had heard something about Jeanne Duval, but that was all that I knew.  So when I heard that a new novel was coming out about Baudelaire and his mistress Jeanne Duval, I was eager to read it.  First of all, the cover is beautifully rendered; I would have picked up the book just for the cover alone.  There were so many things that I enjoyed about this book, the intimate view of bohemian Paris, that some might be familiar with from the opera La Bohème.  The book starts in 1842, when Baudelaire is about to turn 21; he’s a dandy who spends his allowance on expensive clothes, fine wines and food, and his nights hanging out with his bohemian friends in the cafes and restaurants of Paris. But Baudelaire is different from his friends, he’s aware of the hypocrisy of their lives.   They are not true bohemians; they have warm homes and families that they can retreat to after a night out on the town.  His mother worries about his extravagant lifestyle, that he is determined to ruin himself.  Baudelaire believes that he will be the greatest poet that France has ever seen, although he rejects the Romanticism that has prevailed in literature since the end of the 18^th century.  He wants to write about the reality of life, pain, death, and sex.  Unfortunately for Baudelaire, what sells are poems about nature, flowers and love.

One night on the town, he stumbles into a cabaret where Jeanne Duval is singing.  She’s a mulatto from Haiti, who fled her homeland, hoping that Paris would offer her a better life.  In a way, both Baudelaire and Duval are both outcasts which draw them together.  That and their mutual desire for opium.  MacManus does an amazing job of recreating this world for the reader, not just delving into Baudelaire and Jeanne’s worlds but also the outside world.  Paris during this period is changing, from the monarchy of Louis Philippe to the reign of Napoleon III, from a Paris that has changed little from the middle ages to the modern city of wide boulevards that Baron Haussmann created.

What I found difficult was trying to understand not what drew Baudelaire and Jeanne together but kept them together for 16 years.  As MacManus describes the relationship, Jeanne was not in love with Baudelaire or he with her.   Was it lust? Or their mutual love of opium that kept them together.  Jeanne not only slept with his friends, but she was openly disdainful of his work, believing that he would never be a success as a poet. Once she realizes that Baudelaire no longer has the money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she would like to become accustomed, why does she stay with him? MacManus can’t answer that question.  In fact, he writes that neither Jeanne nor Baudelaire knew what kept them together.  They seem to be two people who can neither live with each other or without each other. That kind of co-dependency can be unpleasant after a while.

Truthfully, I found both Baudelaire and Jeanne not very sympathetic or likeable people.  Although the book is incredibly well-written, it wasn’t easy to spend time reading about people you just want to smack.  I found Baudelaire to be selfish, childish, jealous and petulant.  Jeanne is made of tougher stuff.  She’s smart enough to know that because of her color, she would never be able to launch herself as a courtesan the way Marie Duplessis was able to. 

While Black Venus didn’t fulfill all of my expectations, I did find it a compelling read of an era that one doesn’t often find in historical fiction.

Review: A Spear of Summer Grass

Title:  A Spear of Summer Grass

Author:  Deanna Raybourn
Publisher:  Harlequin/Mira
Pub Date:  April 30, 2013
How Acquired:  Through Net Galley

What it’s About:  The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even among Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. As punishment, Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savanna manor house, Fairlight, until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming—yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Why you should buy it:  I’ve been interested in British Africa between the wars, ever since I saw the film White Mischief.  So when I read that one of my favorite writers, Deanna Raybourn, had a book coming out set in that time period, I couldn’t wait to read it.  I started the book on Saturday on my bus ride to Boston and couldn’t put it down.  From the moment that Delilah set her dainty foot on African soil, I was completely mesmerized.  I read it on the T, at dinner, during intermission at the Lyric Stage Company, before bed, and kept on reading it until I finished it on the bus ride back home to New York.  And then I was depressed, because the book was done and I had to say good-bye to Delilah and Ryder, two of the most interesting characters that I have met in historical fiction in a long time. Not even the knowledge that Raybourn has another book coming out set during the same time period could assuage my grief.  This book made me want to immediately book a safari in Africa but the Abercrombie & Fitch kind with the air-conditioned tents, and four star cuisine. 

What can I say about Delilah Drummond that hasn’t already been said by critics who have universally acclaimed A Spear of Summer Grass? Delilah is spoiled, petulant, impulsive, promiscuous, vain, sarcastic, intelligent, and too stubborn for her own good. It takes her forever to admit what we, the reader already knows, that she has not only fallen in love with Ryder White, but she has fallen head over heels in love with Africa.  Oh, and I have mentioned that she is fiendishly loyal to both ex-husbands and friends?  There times when I wanted to throttle Delilah, particularly when she is being beastly to her cousin Dodo.  But as Delilah grew and changed, so did my feelings towards her.  Delilah is like an onion, the book slowly peels back the layers to reveal the pain underneath.  Like many people, Delilah’s life was marked by the First World War.  She’s been trying to mask the pain by dancing, drinking and shagging the night away. By the time she does an impulsively heroic act towards the end of the book, I wanted to be her best friend.

And then there is Ryder White.  Be still my foolish heart, if it were possible to marry a fictional character, I would want to marry Ryder White.  How can one resist a man who can quote Walt Whitman? A man who can take down a lion with ease but who respects nature, the land and the natives? A man who is also kind and generous as well as being stubborn and proud? Ryder is a man’s man, handsome, brave and a little rough around the edges (all those years living in the Yukon and Africa).  He has been through a great deal of pain in his life but he doesn’t let it define him.  In fact, before you read Spear of Summer Grass, I suggest you read Raybourn’s prequel novella Far in the Wilds for a glimpse of Ryder before the novel starts.  I guarantee you will fall just as madly in love with Ryder as I have.

In fact, all the characters in this book are wonderfully flawed and deliciously quirky, including Tusker, Ryder’s aunt, Kit, the promiscuous self-absorbed artist, Rex and Helen, the long married couple with secrets, and Gideon and Moses.  I could gush all day about the wonderful scenes between Gideon, a Masai warrior who becomes Delilah’s protector and friend, and Delilah.  All these characters have suffered something whether it is loss of a loved one, or the pain of being a spinster.   It is Africa that heals them, that gives purpose and meaning to their lives.  Raybourn doesn’t shy away from describing just how hard life in Africa was, how few modern conveniences, the tensions between the colonialists and the natives, and the differing viewpoints on what direction Kenya or British East Africa should go in.  To the Europeans, Africa was their Wild West, the final frontier.  I do agree with some reviewers who felt that the political situation in Kenya is rather glossed over.  I’m still a little unsure as to what was going on at the time.  And I’m not sure that the novel needed a murder mystery.  It occurred so late in the book, that the denouement seemed rushed to me.  The book is at its best when the focus is on Delilah’s relationship with Africa, and her developing relationship with Ryder.

At first when I was reading the book, I tried to imagine what real life characters that lived in Kenya in the early 20^th century Raybourn might have based her characters on.  After a while I was so entranced by the story, that I started imagining what actors might play what roles in the miniseries (please make this happen).  I definitely see Hayley Atwell (Captain America) as Delilah, Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in Downton Abbey) as Dodo and Judi Dench as Tusker.  Who should play Ryder is the tricky one; I would have said Clive Owen about ten years ago or even Russell Crowe when I still liked him.  If Jonathan Cake were a big enough star, I would say that he would make an excellent Ryder as would Richard Armitage, if he lightened his hair.

The verdict:  A powerful and poignant novel about redemption and the human spirit told by a master storyteller.

The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s - The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

Title:  The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s - The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

Author:  Julie Kavanagh
Publisher:  Knopf
Pub Date:  June 11, 2013
How Acquired:  Through Edelweiss

What it’s about:  The astonishing and unknown story of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who inspired Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, George Cukor’s film Camille, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand. Fascinating to both men and women, Marie, with her stylish outfits and signature camellias, was always a subject of great interest at the opera or at the Café de Paris, where she sat at the table of the director of the Paris Opéra, along with the director of the Théâtre Variétés, and others. Her early death at age twenty-three from tuberculosis created an outpouring of sympathy, noted by Charles Dickens, who wrote in February 1847: “For several days all questions political, artistic, commercial have been abandoned by the papers. Everything is erased in the face of an incident which is far more important, the romantic death of one of the glories of the demi-monde, the beautiful, the famous Marie Duplessis.”  

About the Author:  Julie Kavanagh is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton and Nureyev. She was trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet Junior School, graduated from Oxford, and has been the arts editor of Harpers & Queen, a dance critic at The Spectator, and London editor of both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She is currently a writer and contributing editor for The Economist’s cultural magazine, Intelligent Life.

My thoughts:  One of the first women that I wrote about on the blog way back in 2007 was Marie Duplessis.  Like many of the women that I’ve written about, I’ve long been a little obsessed, ever since I saw the film of Camille with Greta Garbo when I was a teenager.  As soon as I learned that it was based on a novel, of course I had to read it.  Thanks to the helpful introduction, I learned that the novel was based on an actual person, Marie Duplessis or as she was known as a child, Alphonsine Plessis.  Back in high school, there was no such thing as the internet (I know it’s hard to believe.  How did we ever live without it?), so I was never able to do much research on Marie’s life.  I did however read the original play and also Pam Gem’s adaptation.  And who hasn’t seen the movie with Greta Scacchi and a young Colin Firth as Armand? (If you haven’t, it’s available on DVD!).  I had wanted to include Marie in Scandalous Women but unfortunately she ended up on the cutting room floor.  My word count was so short that I had to limit myself to only 35 women.

So I was excited and a little bit jealous that Julie Kavanagh had written a biography of Marie. When I was doing my research on Marie for my post, the only two books that had any real information on her was Virginia Rounding’s The Grand Horizontales and Joanna Richardson’s book Courtesans.  Digging deep into the archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris as well as brushing up on her French, Kavanagh has been able to dig deep into Marie’s past in Normandy to reveal more information about her early life. Born Alphonsine Rose Plessis, her early life was a Dickensian nightmare.  Drunken brute of a father who may have sexually as well as physically abused her, a mother who died young, Marie learned how to take care of herself from an early age.  As soon as she could, she left Normandy for Paris, where she worked in a millinery shop before taking her first tentative steps into the world of the demi-monde. 

Kavanagh does a remarkable job not only of giving the bare facts of Marie’s life but she takes the reader on a journey into Paris in the last years of Louis-Philippe’s reign.  It’s the Paris of Les Miserables, before the sweeping changes made by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann.  In the 19^th century, Paris was the place to be for culture, painters such as Coubert and Delacroix, the romantic ballets Giselle and La Sylphide premiered in Paris, writers such as Hugo, George Sand, Balzac and Theophile Gautier.  Like London, Paris also saw the rise of the bourgeois, men who made their money working as lawyers, doctors, inventors, and industrialists.  No longer was Paris the playground solely of the aristocracy.

The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s is not just a biography of one of the most well-known courtesans of the early 19^th century but also a social biography of a time period in French history that is not often written about compared to the La Belle Époque era or the era of the Impressionists.  One of the hardest things to do in a biography is to give not only a sense of who the subject was but why he or she was so popular during their lifetime. What impressed me the most was how Kavanagh was able to convey that unique something that Marie had that made her unique in Paris, a combination of innocence and sensuality.   Despite her profession, Marie never seemed to be bitter or jaded.  Even her taste for luxury seems more innocent that avaricious.  Kavanagh quotes liberally from both Dumas fils’s novel as well as the biography of Marie written by Romain Vienne, an old friend from Normandy who moved to Paris to work as a journalist at the same time that Marie was making her name as a courtesan, which gives an immediate and intimate look at who she was as a person. 

At one point in the book, Kavanagh draws a parallel between Marie and Lola Montez who was an acquaintance of Marie’s in Paris.  While Lola was brash, bold, and seemingly fearless, Marie was altogether more demure and lady-like.  Yet they came from similar backgrounds and managed to reinvent themselves.  Neither woman had a real Pygmalion figure in their lives that molded them.  Marie learned by watching her betters so to speak.   Not only did Marie have a desire to learn, but being a successful courtesan meant that one needed to be able to carry on a conversation with wit and intelligence.  At the time of her death, Marie’s library contained 200 volumes but one of the books that she read the most was Abbe Prevost’s novel Manon Lescaut, the story of a young courtesan who dies tragically.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Marie’s story continues to fascinate whether in fiction or film or opera is because she died so tragically young of consumption at the age of 23.  She never grew old and suffered the fate of other courtesans such as Cora Pearl.  Like James Dean, she’s forever young.  My only quibble with Kavanagh’s book is that I wish she had taken the book further and written more about Marie’s impact and influence on Dumas fils’s novel and play, the Verdi opera, Cukor’s famous film or even the ballets that have been inspired by Marie’s life.  There is a little bit in the beginning of the book but I found myself wishing for more.

Verdict:  A brilliant recreation of the short, intense, and passionate life of the courtesan who inspired some of the world’s most romantic and tragic literature.

The Many Lives of Beryl Markham

“A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.” – Beryl Markham

 

Two of my favorite writers, Lauren Willig and Deanna Raybourn, have writers have novels set in Kenya during the 1920’s. I have previously written about some of the denizens of the Happy Valley Set (Alice de Janze, Idina Sackville) before but I was all of a sudden inspired to read more about Beryl Markham. Way back in the 1980’s, after OUT OF AFRICA was released, there was a miniseries on CBS called SHADOW ON THE SUN starring Stephanie Powers as Markham. I vaguely remember a scene were Powers as Markham says “I’ve flown the Atlantic” in a really terrible English accent. Born in England but raised in Kenya, Beryl Markham was a notorious beauty. She trained race horses and had scandalous affairs, but she is most remembered for being a pioneering aviatrix. She became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to make it from London to New York nonstop. She also left the world an amazing memoir ‘West with the Night’ which was re-released in 1983, forty years after its initial publication, reintroducing the world to the fascinating life of Beryl Markham.

She was born Beryl Clutterbuck in on October 26, 1902 in the village of Ashwell in Leicestershire, the youngest child of Charles and Clare Clutterbuck. When she was a toddler, her father moved to Kenya, where he had purchased a farm in Njoro. Once he was settled, he sent for Beryl, her mother and her older brother Richard. Beryl was four years old at the time. Unfortunately her mother couldn’t stand the isolation and promptly returned to England, taking Beryl’s older brother with her. Beryl wouldn’t see her mother again until she was an adult. Beryl never forgave her mother for abandoning her; it colored her relationships with women for the rest of her life. Of course, she hero-worshipped her father; he could do no wrong in her eyes. She would compare every man she fell in love with to her father, most of whom were found wanting in the end.

 

With her father busy training and racing horses, Beryl was basically left to raise herself; her only company the African servants who worked on the farm. Left mainly to her own devices, Beryl grew up wild, running barefoot, without the restrictions and conventions of a traditional English upbringing, which she referred to as “a world without walls.” She spent her days in the company of animals and the local tribes. Her first language was Swahili not English. She was the only white woman permitted to hunt with the male warriors, and she was equally adept with both a spear and a rifle. In many ways, her sensibilities were more African than European. She didn’t treat the Africans who worked for her father as inferior. She learned their languages and absorbed their love of the land. Later on, her father hired a governess, a woman named Mrs. Orchardson. Beryl hated her, particularly after her father and Mrs. Orchardson formed a liaison. She preferred to live in a mud hut and later on her own house on the farm, rather than live under the same roof as Mrs. Orchardson. Her dislike didn’t extend to Mrs. Orchardson’s son Arthur, who became a playmate and later on, worked for Beryl as a jockey.

From childhood, Beryl had an affinity for animals, particularly horses. She could calm even the most recalcitrant horses. In her 84 years on the plant, Beryl’s great loves would be her father, horses and Africa. Although she only had 2 ½ years of actual schooling in Nairobi until she was kicked out for being a bad influence, Beryl was always a great reader throughout her life, thanks to both her father and lovers such as Denys Finch-Hatton and Tom Campbell-Black. Her upbringing meant that Beryl would never be a conventional Englishwoman. It also meant that she grew up practicing the art of survival, that “the end justifies the means.” She could be ruthless and amoral, using people and then discarding them. She often took advantage of friends, running up huge bills on their accounts, without guilt. Outwardly confident, she was also deeply insecure. Blessed with abundant charm, it was hard for her friends to stay mad at her for long.

 

As an adult, Beryl was almost six feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed with the figure of a super model. Although she grew up a tomboy, Beryl was also incredibly feminine. She loved perfume, ointments, and lotions. She also had regular manicures and salon appointments all throughout her life. All of her clothes were beautifully cut, trousers that emphasized the length of her legs, worn with silk shirts which became her trademark. She wore a great deal of white which emphasized her tan, and her blonde hair. She was striking more than beautiful, with a vibrant personality. When she walked into a room, heads turned. The first woman to earn a license as a horse trainer in not just in Kenya but England as well, Beryl spent most of her time around men and animals. She had few female friends, but those she did have like Karen Blixen, tended to be more maternal, treating her more like an errant daughter.

Beryl was married three times, none of them successful. She married for the first time just before her 17^th birthday to Jock Purves, an ex-soldier turned farmer, who was twice her age. The marriage like her other two foundered under the weight of Beryl’s infidelities. Beryl didn’t know the first thing about the responsibilities of being a wife, nor did she grow up with many examples of a good marriage. Her father lived with a married woman, her mother remarried while abroad, and all around her Beryl saw casual infidelities. The members of the Happy Valley Sets swapped partners the way other people swapped recipes. Beryl was also fundamentally selfish and too independent to be confined in marriage. Some biographers claim that Beryl’s third husband, journalist and ghost writer Raoul Schumacher, may have been the actual author of her memoir West with the Night, although Mary S. Lovell in her wonderful biography Straight On Till Morning disputes that claim. If it were true, it would be the only thing that he contributed during their short marriage. Nor did motherhood interest her. She gave birth to her only child, a son Gervase, during her second marriage to Mansfield Markham. After he was born, she dropped off with her mother-in-law who essentially raised him. Occasionally she would visit her son, if she happened to be in England. She saw him for the final time soon after he married in 1955. She never saw him again after that, nor did she ever meet her granddaughters.

A clairvoyant once told Beryl that while she would have great success in life, she would never be truly happy. She never forgot it. Beryl treated sex more like a man, as a necessary function like brushing one’s teeth, or eating. Very few of her lovers touched her heart. She had a scandalous affair with Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. The son of George V, Beryl met him when he accompanied his brother, the Prince of Wales on safari. Unfortunately they were not very discreet. When Beryl’s husband at the time, Mansfield Markham found out, he threatened to sue for divorce and name the Prince as a correspondent. In order to keep his name name out of the courts, Prince Henry agreed to put £15,000 into at trust for Beryl, which would pay her an annuity for the rest of her life. The only two men, besides her father, that Beryl ever really loved were Denys Finch-Hatton and Tom Campbell-Black. Both men inspired in her a love of flying and both affairs ended in tragedy. Beryl’s relationship with Finch-Hatton started soon after his affair with Karen Blixen ended, although some of Blixen’s friends believe that Beryl stole him from her. Finch-Hatton introduced her to music and literature, in many ways they were perfect for each other. Neither one had any interest in getting married, or leading a conventional life. Who knows where their relationship might have gone if he hadn’t died in a plane crash.

If anyone could be considered the love of Beryl’s life it would be Tom Campbell-Black. Like Denys Finch-Hatton, he was someone that she had known most of her life. It was he who made sure that she had a thorough education before she took her first solo flight. He made sure that she strip down and repair an airplane engine, how to replace spark plugs, and how to clear jets. She learned how to read maps and to have a thorough knowledge of the instruments. As she did when she was training horses, Beryl kept meticulous records of all her flights. It took 18 months, and a thousand hours in the air; but she soon became the first woman to earn a commercial pilot’s license. From the beginning, flying appealed to her sense of adventure. She ferried people to distant farms, flew mail routes, rescued pilots who had crashed, acted as a spotter for the big game hunters, an an informal air-ambulance service, and could tell from the air where herds of elephants were. This was at a time when air travel was still in its infancy; Beryl often flew with no radio or air-speed indicator, and very few instruments. She was fearless, whether in the air, or riding horses. She even surprised Tom by flying from Nairobi to England solo! While horse racing had been a man’s game, flying was wide open to both men and women. By the time Beryl became interested in flying, several women had already made names for themselves, Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Jackie Cochran and Mary, Duchess of Bedford among them.

In 1936, Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop from east to west across the Atlantic. No one had made a successful non-stop flight from England to North America, and no woman had crossed the Atlantic from east to west. Amelia Earhart had flown successfully solo across the Atlantic, but she had done it from North America, which was considered the ‘easy way.’ Before the flight, Beryl trained like an athlete, giving up smoking and drinking, and exercising daily to build up her stamina. She pored over maps for hours, plotting what the best route was across the ocean. There were so many factors to consider. She needed a grand total of 6 fuel tanks to make it, if the weather cooperated. For inspiration, Beryl would often visit the factory in Gravesend, England to watch her plane, The Messenger, being built.

She left on Friday, September 4, 1936, after waiting several days for the weather to clear. The crossing was rough from the beginning. Headwinds were driving hard against the plane, reducing her speed to only 90 miles an hour. Four hours in, one of the engines quit, and the first fuel tank was empty. She flew blind for nineteen hours before she crash landed in a peat bog in Nova Scotia, leaving the plane badly damaged. She was lucky to walk away from the nose-in crash with only a small head injury. Despite the fact that she didn’t make it to New York, she was feted and lionized for her daring and skill. Beryl Markham was now a hero. Ironically, one of the reasons that Beryl attempted the flight was to impress Tom Campbell-Black who had surprised her by falling in love and marrying another woman while abroad in England. Beryl hoped that her feat would bring him back to her arms. Unfortunately, Tom Campbell-Black was killed in a freak accident before Beryl could make her case.

 

Without Campbell-Black to guide and motivate her, Beryl lost interest in flying. She spent the war years in California, doing some work as a technical advisor on a film entitled Safari. She wrote West with the Night in 1942, but although the critics raved, it was not a popular success. There was interest in making a movie about Beryl’s transatlantic flight, starring Beryl, but her screen test proved to be a bust. Finally, in the 1950’s, Beryl returned to Kenya and her first love, horses. For the next twenty years she had great success training and racing horses, including 6 Kenya Derby winners. Unfortunately for Beryl she spent too much time on the horses, and not enough time on her finances. Beryl had lived her life just assuming that money would turn up when she needed it. By 1980, she was living in squalor with just a few horses. But like the mythical Phoenix that is a symbol of the sign of Scorpio, Beryl rose from the ashes once again. The 1983 republication of her memoir West with the Night brought her new found fame and allowed her to live her remaining years in comfort.

After a brief bout with pneumonia, Beryl Markham passed away on August 3, 1986. She was 83 years old.

For further reading:Mary S. Lovell, Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01096-6

Errol Trzebinski, The Lives of Beryl Markham. New York: W.W. Norton. 1993. ISBN 0-393-03556-5.