If those eyes of yours were bed-winches and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me

A month ago I reviewed the first 50 or so pages of Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. (I believe it is in fact common practice for reviewers to read only the first 50 pages. Who has time for novels, after all?) Today I shall finish what I started.

WARNING: I'm going to spoil the plot wantonly. For good measure, I'm going to spoil the plot of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. (I figure if you haven't gotten around to reading it yet, you probably aren't.) Plus the plot of Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, for good measure.

I want to talk about a sense of an ending. This should complement my earlier discussion of beginnings. 'Once upon a time' - it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Also, unusually long, even for me, with too many long block quotes. In a sense the following is just notes for a possible essay. Possibly quite wrong-headed. You tell me. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

I concluded part I of my review with a question mark:

Will our author simply start repeating herself? Will she frustrate us ... by dawdling in drawing rooms when she should be shooing her characters out of doors, where they can engage in epic battles? Will the characters, once out of doors, make the drawing room look so small we will wonder what business we ever had in it?

Gentle reader, I must tell you the answer is: epic battles. And the drawing room comes to feel a bit close, although not uninhabitable.

Let me just spoil away, then we'll see what we've got. We examine with special attention to - how to put it? - a kind of  'love of the land, loyal servantry - my nation, my station and its duties' theme.

There are two significant loyal servant characters in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The first is Norrell's dogsbody (as Henry rightly terms him), the enigmatic Childermass. His attachment to Norrell is an effective literary strategy precisely because it could so easily seem like a simple mistake, but Clarke manages to convince us (without actually giving much evidence) that it is not. Why would Childermass place himself in the service of this authoritarian pedant when, as Jonathan Strange reasonably points out, he is patently more temperamentally suited to be working for - or side by side with - Jonathan Strange, Norrell's enemy? The answer is that, in an odd sense, it turns out Strange and Norrell aren't enemies, despite the latter's crimes against the former. So, by working for Norrell, Childermass is not working against Strange at any rate.

Childermass always feels like he is playing a deep game, even when he is obviously genuinely confused about his next move - like everyone else. For example, the scene where he submits to having his face cut by the odious Lascelle, for his own strategic reasons. One comes away with a sense that Childermass is a sort of proof by example that accepting what looks like an unduly humble station, submitting to a narrow set of duties, is not necessarily so constraining of the true self as one might suppose. Childermass is neither secretly running the show nor a rebel. He is a schemer but fundamentally loyal to his master. As pure literary effect, Childermass' attachment to Norrell works well to convince us there is a lot of thick back-story we aren't getting. Something makes this master-servant arrangement make sense, we trust; we can't imagine exactly what, so we get the satisfactory feeling that this fictional world contains whole unexplored quarters.

The other major servant character is Stephen Black, the loyal, mild and competent negro manservant of Lord Pole, whom our sinister fairy villain - the gentleman with the thistledown hair - would raise up from his humble station and place on the throne of England. Stephen does not know his 'true name', the name his mother whispered to him before she died on the slave ship. The gentleman, by magical means, proposes (among other things) to right the grave historical unjustice of Stephen's miserable birthright, restoring to him his true name.

"After thirty or forty years, all that was left of your mother was four things: her screams in childbirth, which had sunk into the planks of the ship; her bones, which was all that was left of her, once the flesh and softer parts had been devoured by fishes ..."

"Ah!" exclaimed Stephen again.

"...her gown of rose-coloured cotton which had passed into the possession of a sailor; and a kiss which the captain of the ship had stolen from her, two days earlier. Now," said the gentleman (who was clearly enjoying himself immensely), "you will observe with what cleverness and finesse I traced the passage of each part of her through the world, until I was able to recover them and so divine your glorious name!"

If I were inclined to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as a parable of politically conservative wisdom, I might read our thistledown-haired gentleman as a parodic reductio ad absurdum of Jacobinism run to its mad extreme. Ingenious proposals for ideal realms to be made a part of our world; heartless and insincere, fundamentally self-centered proposals to right wrongs. The proverbially delusive beauty of faeries, who seem so much more perfect than humans. Their attempts to prey on resentments in the hearts of those who, admittedly, have cause for complaint. A basically inhuman mind, the faery mind. More on Jacobinism in a moment.

There are also anxieties ... about the immigrant problem, if you will. Too many ways into this England, our England.

After the birds the next thing to haunt Mr. Norrell's imagination were the wide, cold puddles that were thickly strewn across every field. As the carriage passed along the road each puddle became a silver mirror for the blank, winter sky. To a magician there is very little difference between a mirror and a door. England seemed to be wearing thin before his eyes. He felt as if he might pass through any of those mirror-doors and find himself in one of the other worlds which once bordered upon England. Worse still, he was beginning to think that other people might do it. The Sussex landscape began to look uncomfortably like the England described in the old ballad:

This land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by

For the first time in his life Mr. Norrell began to feel that perhaps there was too much magic in England.

John Uskglass, the Raven King, the original unnamed slave, is a character whose complexities exceed the scope of the present post. But the climactic scene of the novel is, in effect, due to a case of mistaken identity regarding Stephen and Uskglass. The scenes that triggers that climactic scene show off Clarke at her politely stylish best. Strange and Norrell set aside their rivalry to work together to summon the King back to his country.

"Good," said Strange, "And what spell do you recommend? Are there any in Belasis?"

"Yes, three."

"Are they worth trying?"

"No, not really." Mr. Norrell opened a drawer and drew a piece of paper. "this is the best I know. I am not in the habit of using summoning spells - but if I were, this is the one I would use." He passed it to Strange.

It was covered with Mr. Norrell's small, meticulous handwriting. At the top was written, "Mr. Strange's spell of summoning."

"It is the one you used to summon Maria Absalom," explained Norrell. "I have made some amendments. I have omitted the florilegium which copied word for word from Ormskirk. I have, as you know, no opinion of florilegia in general and this one seemed particularly nonsensical. I have added an epitome of preservation and deliverance, and a skimmer of supplication - though I doubt that either will help us much in this case."

"It is as much your work as mine now," observed Strange. There was no trace of rivalry or resentment in his voice.

"No, no," said Norrell. "All the fabric of it is yours. I have merely neatened the edges."

So England needs men like Strange to provide the fabric and men like Norrell ... just to neaten the edges. But neat edges are very important for making right little, tight little England. At this point Clarke supplies one of her better footnotes (the book is thick with them) to explain the terminology.

"Florilegium", "epitome" and "skimmer" are all terms for parts of spells.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries fairies in England were fond of adding to their magic, exhortations to random collections of Christian saints. Fairies were baffled by Christian doctrine, but they were greatly attracted to saints, whom they saw as powerful magical beings whose patronage it was useful to have. These exhortations were called florilegia (lit. cullings or gatherings of flowers) and fairies taught them to their Christian masters. When the Protestant religion took hold in England and saints fell out of favour, florilegia degenerated into meaningless collections of magical words and bits of other spells, thrown in by the magician in the hope that some of them might take effect.

An epitome is a highly condensed form of a spell inserted within another spell to strengthen or enlarge it. In this case an epitome of preservation and deliverance is intended to protect the magician from the person summoned. A skimmer is a sprinkling of words or charms (from a dialect word of North English, meaning to brighten or sparkle.) A skimmer of supplication encourages the person summoned to aid the magician.

Lots of florilegia - e.g. this very footnote - epitomes and skimmers through Clarke's own very enchanting work. Her epitomes include little snatches of poetry, moody incantations to evoke the power of the soil of England: "Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water." It is stuff like this that tugs most perilously against the indoor drawing room Austen material. Skimmers of various sorts abound - e.g. in the sometimes brittle, sometimes plummy dialogue - conjuring up the spirits of past authors like Austen and Dickens. More on the latter in a moment.

Strange and Norrell, having summoned the king, regard it as politic to instruct the land itself to welcome him back by placing itself in his power. There are difficulties scrying out the returned 'nameless slave' in Norrell's silver bowl, however.

"There!" exclaimed Strange, triumphantly. "All our anxiety was quite needless. He is still there."

"But I do not think that is the same person," interrupted Norrell. "It looks different somehow."

"Mr. Norrell, do not be fanciful, I beg you! Who else could it be? How many nameless slaves can there possibly be in Yorkshire?"

This was so very reasonable a question that Mr. Norrell offered no further objections.

"And now for the magic itself," said Strange. He picked up the book and began to recite the spell. He addressed the trees of England; the hills of England; the sunlight, water, birds, earth and stones. He addressed them all, one after the other, and exhorted them to place themselves in the hands of the nameless slave."

But the nameless slave in Yorkshire is Stephen, not Uskglass. The spell is efficacious, so this servant - this recent immigrant - with no cause to love England, finds himself endowed with power over England's very soil.

"Wait!" he thought wildly. "I am not ready for this! I have not considered. I do not know what to do!"

But it was too late. He looked up.

The bare branches against the sky were a writing and, though he did not want to, he could read it. He saw that it was a question put to him by the trees.

"Yes," he answered them.

Their age and their knowledge belonged to him.

Beyond the trees was a high, snow-covered ridge, like a line drawn across the sky. Its shadow was blue upon the snow before it. It embodies all kinds of cold and hardness. It hailed Stephen as a King it had long missed. At a word from Stephen it would tumble down and crush his enemies. It asked Stephen a question.

"Yes," he told it ...

Stephen chooses to use his new power on behalf of English folk, against the gentleman, giving up forever the prospect of learning his true name, to enable Mrs. Strange to escape from captivity in Faeirie and out through a mirror - where good, solid, reliable English folk are waiting to aid her.

With a frantic look she surveyed the unknown room, the unknown faces, the unfamiliar look of everything. "Is this Faerie?" she asked.

"No, madam," answered Flora.

"Is it England?"

"No, madam." Tears began to course down flora's face. She put her hand on her breast to steady herself. "This is Padua. In Italy. My name is Flora Greysteel. It is a name quite unknown to you, but I have waited for you here at your husband's desire. I promised him I would meet you here."

"Is Jonathan here?"

"No, madam."

"You are Arabella Strange," said Dr. Greysteel in amazement.

"Yes," she said.

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Aunt Greysteel, one hand flying to cover her mouth and the other to her heart. "Oh, my dear!" Then both hands fluttered around Arabella's face and shoulders. "Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed for the third time. She burst into tears and embraced Arabella.

Fantastic names - Lancelot Greysteel, father of Flora - combine with all these tears and fluttering dove hands of femininity very effectively. All very sentimental, of course, but delightfully staged. Also, the scene in which their loyal servant, Frank, responds to an insiduous offer by properly kicking the "venomous cowardly backguard" Drawlight into the water supports my general thesis of the book being significantly about the virtues of loyal servants.

Let me, however, share with you a contrary judgment on the Greysteels. John Clute writes:

Around about here, Clarke almost drops the ball. After the apparent death of his wife, Strange has gone to Venice, where on page 568—very late to introduce significant characters—he meets an entire family named Greysteel, who turn out in fact to have absolutely no function in the story that could not have been conveyed otherwise, through other eyes and hands, in a paragraph or two. But Clarke can't leave them alone, even though her huge prologue of a novel is begging to have to end. I think, once again, it is the trap of the style: It is so much fun to write the Greysteels, to explore their Englishry in Clarke's unstoppably impeccable Austenese, that nobody cared to tell her to scissor them out completely, nobody seems to have cared that she almost loses her novel right here, because of her virtues. Virtue is not enough. ... But finally the Greysteels do traipse offstage, in the end, when there is no way to retain them any longer. The story bales itself of them. They sink into the lagoon. Bye-bye.

Oh, but those hands and eyes are essential, say I. They were introduced at great cost in terms of pages - but what are pages? - so they could flutter and weep Englishry on cue at the moment Arabella steps on the rim of the mirror.

Now the Dickens connection. I am thinking of the roles of the heroic servants in A Tale of Two Cities. Jerry Cruncher but, above all, Miss Pross. My point is going to be that there are similiarities with what Clarke has done, but Clarke has renovated certain Dickensian tropes that, to put it kindly, simply cannot, without renovation, be ... recalled to life.

But before I get to masters and servants let me indicate something you may have forgotten about Dickens' novel. Two Cities is eerie, with its theme of resurrection. Lost true names. Live burial. 'Resurrection-men'. The mad revolutionaries. Desperate escape to England from a hostile alien land that borders it. Even a kind of heroic changeling self-sacrifice. (Far, far better thing I do.) I'll quote a few bits I like. Very atmospheric they are.

All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry - sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration - the old inquiry:

`I hope you care to be recalled to life?'

And the old answer:         

`I can't say.'

As creepy a call and response as any in ghost story. And, as our heroes are fleeing a nightmare land:

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.

The revolutionaries are - to push a point - like child-snatching fairies, malignantly obedient to their own inscrutable imperatives as they wreck human lives:

`See you,' said madame, `I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to me. But, the Evrémonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father.'

`She has a fine head for it,' croaked Jacques Three. `I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up.' Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.

Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little. `The child also,' observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment of his words, `has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight!'

Of course, Defarge has her reasons. But, having concocted them, Dickens goes out of his way to dismiss them as non-explanatory. She's just plain inhuman: "they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself."

On to the servant question.

I couldn't possibly not quote Orwell from "Charles Dickens". (Really, I know he's not right about everything. In fact he just makes it up a lot of the time. But this seems on target):

But what is curious, in a nineteenth-century radical, is that when he wants to draw a sympathetic picture of a servant, he creates what is recognizably a feudal type. Sam Weller, Mark Tapley, Clara Peggotty are all of them feudal figures. They belong to the genre of the ‘old family retainer’; they identify themselves with their master's family and are at once doggishly faithful and completely familiar. No doubt Mark Tapley and Sam Weller are derived to some extent from Smollett, and hence from Cervantes; but it is interesting that Dickens should have been attracted by such a type. Sam Weller's attitude is definitely medieval. He gets himself arrested in order to follow Mr. Pickwick into the Fleet, and afterwards refuses to get married because he feels that Mr. Pickwick still needs his services. There is a characteristic scene between them:

‘Vages or no vages, board or no board, lodgin' or no lodgin', Sam Veller, as you took from the old inn in the Borough, sticks by you, come what may...’

‘My good fellow’, said Mr. Pickwick, when Mr. Weller had sat down again, rather abashed at his own enthusiasm, ‘you are bound to consider the young woman also.’

‘I do consider the young 'ooman, sir’, said Sam. ‘I have considered the young 'ooman. I've spoke to her. I've told her how I'm sitivated; she's ready to vait till I'm ready, and I believe she vill. If she don't, she's not the young 'ooman I take her for, and I give up with readiness.’

It is easy to imagine what the young woman would have said to this in real life. But notice the feudal atmosphere. Sam Weller is ready as a matter of course to sacrifice years of his life to his master, and he can also sit down in his master's presence. A modern manservant would never think of doing either. Dickens's views on the servant question do not get much beyond wishing that master and servant would love one another. Sloppy in Our Mutual Friend, though a wretched failure as a character, represents the same kind of loyalty as Sam Weller. Such loyalty, of course, is natural, human, and likeable; but so was feudalism.

The Sam Weller problem is, of course, the Sam and Frodo problem - hence, a perennial one for fantasy fiction and its feudal fixations. (Homosociality is not homosexuality, but still.) But let me just remind you about the servant-master pairs in Two Cities. Jarvis Lorry-Jerry Cruncher, Lucie Manette-Miss Pross.

In the first case, there are marvellous visual contrasts worthy of Mervyn Peake. The ancient banker wearing a dome of glass, his dogsbody in a crown of spikes.

Cruncher's wreath of black hair around his bald head: "It was so like smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over."

Lorry: "He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass."

Of course, there is the requisite loyalty relation. Here Lorry explains how Cruncher is the best choice for a bodyguard as he ventures back into France for the sake of recovering Tellson's precious paperwork: "Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master." (Yes, Jerry is a part-time resurrection-man. But this is still largely true.)

Lorry and Cruncher are an endearing couple. But the really tremendous scene comes when Pross shows her mettle against Defarge. Of course, Dickens cannot resist making ridiculous fun of his twin Horatios at the bridge, standing with self-sacrificing nobility - because they are, after all, just servants, covering the retreats of the upper class characters.

`My opinion, miss,' returned Mr. Cruncher, `is as, you're right. Likewise wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong.'

"I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures," said Miss Pross, wildly crying, "that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are YOU capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?"

`Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss,' returned Mr. Cruncher, `I hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o' mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o' two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis?'

`Oh, for gracious sake!' cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, `record them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man.'

`First,' said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, `them poor things well out o' this, never no more will I do it, never no more!'

`I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher,' returned Miss Pross, `that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is.'

`No, miss,' returned Jerry, `it shall not be named to you. Second: them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!'

`Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,' said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, `I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence. - O my poor darlings!'

But finally evil fairy queen Defarge appears and Pross gives fierce battle. Here I'm just going to do an odd thing and cut and paste most of III, chapter 14, "The Knitting Done". My reason for quoting the whole thing, apart from laziness and perversity, is that the sheer weirdness of the dialogue, even by Dickensian standards, has to be appreciated in its entirety. Both characters speak to themselves in bizarre soliloquys. The conceit is that neither can understand the other because of the language barrier. But such strangely unnatural combat loquacity is not equalled again until Stan Lee starts writing tin-horn dialogue to accompany Kirby productions. (I ask you to read again the title of this post. Stan Lee might have blushed to write such insane stuff.)

Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.

The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had come to meet that water.

Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, `The wife of Evrémonde; where is she?'

It flashed upon Miss Pross's mind that the doors were all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.

Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.

`You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,' said Miss Pross, in her breathing. `Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.

Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of Miss Pross's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the family's devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge was the family's malevolent enemy.

`On my way yonder,' said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, `where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I am come, to make my compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her.

`I know that your intentions are evil,' said Miss Pross, `and you may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them.'

Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.

`It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment,' said Madame Defarge. `Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?

`If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,' returned Miss Pross, `and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match.'

Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught.

`Woman imbecile and pig-like!' said Madame Defarge, frowning. `I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!' This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.

`I little thought,' said miss Pross, `that I should ever want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it.'

Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes. Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross first became aware of her; but she now advanced one step.

`I am a Briton,' said Miss Pross, `I am desperate. I don't care an English Two-pence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!'

Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.

But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. `Ha, ha!' she laughed, `you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that Doctor.' Then she raised her voice and called out, `Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evrémonde! Child of Evrémonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Defarge!'

Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the expression of Miss Pross's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.

`Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look.'

`Never!' said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answer.

`If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and brought back,' said Madame Defarge to herself.

'As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do,' said Miss Pross to herself; `and you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.'

'I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,' said Madame Defarge.

`We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling,' said Miss Pross.

Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round tile waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.

Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. `It is under my arm,' said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, `you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I'll hold you till one or other of us faints or dies!'

Madame Defarge's hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone - blinded with smoke.

All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground.

In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.

By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of griping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways

In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.

`Is there any noise in the streets?' she asked him.

`The usual noises,' Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect.

`I don't hear you,' said Miss Pross. `What do you say?'

It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could not hear him. `So I'll nod my head,' thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, `at all events she'll see that.' And she did.

`Is there any noise in the streets now?' asked Miss Pross again, presently.

Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.

`I don't hear it.'

`Gone deaf in a hour?' said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed; `wot's come to her?'

`I feel,' said Miss Pross, `as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.'

`Blest if she ain't in a queer condition!' said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. `Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her courage up? Hark! There's the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?'

`I can hear,' said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her,`nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.'

`If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey's end,' said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, `it's my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.'

And indeed she never did.

After all that, let me get back to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

The comparative point I am getting at is that in both cases the climax of the action involves a servant - a humble character - called upon to stand against the terrible malignant force, be it fairy gentleman or Madam Defarge. (There is also the precise parallel of servants doing so to cover the escape of upper class women.) Much of the pathos of the scenes is a function of this contrast between the figures, the humble one suddenly invested with unanticipated strength. And the battle needs to fundamentally scar or change the humble defender. Anyway, that's how you rig these things. If you like this sort of thing.

That said, you just can't go and write a damn ridiculous fight scene like Dickens did. Not today. Honestly, you'd die of mortification. You certainly can't treat servants with such comic disrespect as Dickens does. One possible solution is to refuse the whole Sam-Frodo dynamic as intolerable. It would be quite funny to write sort of a cross between The Lord of the Rings and The Remains of the Day, in which the Sam character is dutifully following his Frodo, only to have it emerge that - far from being on some heroic quest - the master is up to something wrong and idiotic, and now the servant has wasted his life in service to moral error. Not only does he not get the girl, who has sensibly refused to wait. Maybe he finds that he has also turned into a Nazgul or something for his pains. Some cruel punishment for being such a good dogsbody.

The alternative is to retain something of the original while investing characters like Childermass and Stephen with more dignity and fullness than Cruncher and Pross have. To be in favor of democracy, against the loathsome likes of Lascelle, without instituting democracy in your story. I think Clarke pulls it off. I should add that I can perfectly well see that treating your servant characters with dignity isn't exactly the toughest trick in the literary book. For one thing, you can have them both safely out of servant harness by the end of the book. I guess I'm just sort of amused to think of Stephen Black as a literary descendent of Miss Pross, which is otherwise highly counter-intuitive. 

You might object that Stephen is much more of a central character than Pross, but actually - if you think about it - he doesn't really do anything much until the end. He has an excuse, of course, being under the gentleman's spell.

One last point about Stephen. The symbolism of him wearily going about his duties in Lord Pole's household, while the gentleman is lavishing gifts on him while charming everyone else into not noticing, is quite brilliant. So Stephen ends up with all the finest treasure of Europe in his humble bedroom, while remaining the servant he has always been. The idea of the servant with his rich life no one else can see - ordinarily an inner life, as in Remains of the Day - but here a sort of outer life. A cruel sort of rich inner/outer life. As Dickens famously opens chapter 3 of Two Cities:

Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, if some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.

As a final note, since this post obviously isn't long enough and needs fleshing out, preferably with long block quotes, I think another descendant of Miss Pross is, oddly enough, Granny Weatherwax, in Terry Pratchett's witch books. She's blunt but oddly prudish, sensible but headstrong. Of course, Granny isn't anyone's servant. That part of the Dickens dynamic has to go. She isn't exactly English either, but she's like a down-to-earth Englishwoman taking the fancy foreigners to task for their lofty, airy la-di-da ways. Also, just as Pross invokes her four-poster English oaky nature against Defarge's sinister French bed-winch nature, so Granny makes it clear that she is strong because the land itself is on her side - as it is on Stephen Black's side. like Pross, a lot of the satisfaction of Granny scenes comes from the weird lectury battle soliloquys. Pratchett, like Dickens, just can't stop cracking jokes. But then all of a sudden he gets all serious and way too sentimentally dramatic when the shooting starts. (Way too sentimental unless you have a sweet tooth for this stuff, as I do.) Just to keep the fairy-story element moderately constant, here is Granny's final face-off with the evil Fairy Queen in Lords and Ladies. The queen is trying to convince our heroine she is just too old and plain, whereas the queen is eternally young and beautiful and therefore destined to be victorious.

"Go back," said Granny. "You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard."

The Queen struck wildly.

The rebounded force of the mental blow knocked Nanny Ogg to her knees. Granny Weatherwax blinked.

"A good one," she croaked. "But still I stand, and still I'll not kneel. And still I have strength - "

An elf keeled over. This time the Queen swayed.

"Oh, and I have no time for this," she said, and snapped her fingers.

There was a pause. The Queen glanced around at her elves.

"They can't fire," said Granny. "And you wouldn't want that, would you? So simple an end?"

"You can't be holding them! You have not that much power!"

"Do you want to find out how much power I have, madam? Here, on the grass of Lancre?"

If that's the only Pratchett you ever read, you'd quite reasonably conclude he is a preposterous third rate writer. (An elf keeled over? An elf keeled over, you say? You call this literature?) I've lost track of that old quote from Cynthia Ozick about how Pratchett is one of the few great comic writers in English since Dickens. But it's true. And if the only Dickens you ever read was the fight between Pross and Defarge you'd probably conclude Dickens was sort of crappy, too. But he isn't, not even when he's writing Pross versus Defarge.

These silly scenes work oddly well within the overall context of the books they inhabit, hopelessly hoky as they seem. But it's delicate stuff and curdles quickly. Susannah Clarke has managed to tap into this wellspring of sentimental pathos - the whole loyal servant thing, the whole soil and trees thing - in a surprisingly moving and effective way.

OK, post got way out of hand.
 

 

Comments

[Another Damned Medievalist]

I think you're right -- Pratchett may not work best out of context, but generally, he's simply brilliant. And what woman doesn't wish she were just a bit more like Granny Weatherwax?

[Jonathan Goodwin]

I haven't yet read this book, but I wonder if an allusion to the Wyndham Lewis novel, which you should read if you haven't, is intended.

[jholbo]

Dear ADM, thanks for reading the whole post, apparently, if you got to the Granny stuff. Jonathan, I haven't read much Lewis - a little - but just googled around in response to your comment and discovered the man wrote a novel called The Childermass, which indeed I had not known, let alone read the thing. Not that I'm trying to weasel out of doing my required reading, but is the import of the allusion clear? Some thematic point? Or could it just be affectionately borrowing a cool-sounding name?(It does sound rather an interesting novel.)

[Jonathan Goodwin]

A chapter of my dissertation is about The Childermass, and it is a fine anatomy indeed.

I just started a blog and posted some comments on Gene Wolfe's short fiction. As I've read your comments on Wolfe with considerable interest, I thought I'd ask you for comments.

[C Mas]

I really wish Terry Pratchett didn't feel the need to crank out a book every other week or so, because while he's prolific, he's not consistently great. I like Small Gods, I like Hogfather, I like some of the stuff with Rincewind in it. I've never been a fan of the witches. I "get" his joke with the wizards but I don't think it's all that funny, or at least, funny enough to warrant endless repetition (my, those academics sure are funny old fuddy-duddies! still!). The Ankh-Morpork guard have never been funny or interesting.

My biggest problem with Pratchett, as opposed to, say, Douglas Adams (to whom he is frequently compared), is that he's not so much trying to be funny as he is trying to be clever, and being around someone who's constantly trying to be clever (and very often failing, I think) just gets on my nerves after a while. When I accept that Pratchett isn't really going to be funny, I can enjoy him when he's willing to do something interesting with his setting or with standard fantasy tropes (which is why I like Hogfather and Small Gods - they actually play around with some ideas, if only a little bit). Otherwise, many of his books seem to involve endless re-examinations of characters that aren't terribly interesting. Why should I read a book about the next damn thing that Inspector Carrot does? For that matter, why am I reading goofball police procedurals in the middle of a fantasy setting which, one would think, lends itself to a lot more interesting story possibilities than the goofball police procedural?

And don't get me started on Neil Gaiman, the talentless hack. Every single god, goddess, dwarf, or birthday clown Gaiman writes has attended the Star Trek Energy Blob School of Higher Beings - you know, the one where they teach you to talk in dialogue that sounds like: "Oh ho ho. That may appear to be a butt-plug to YOUR limited perception, mortal. But in fact it is the Crystal Butt-Plug of Inscrutablon, and you will need to insert it for The Old Ones, as the ancient rites attest." God I hate Neil Gaiman. What were we talking about?

(I should note for John's sake that I skipped almost all of his post because I haven't finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell yet and I don't want to spoil it)

[C Mas]

(...and yet the mention of Terry Pratchett made me irrationally fly off the handle. The Neil Gaiman thing was purely gratuitous; quite clearly some lobe in my brain associates Terry Pratchett with Neil Gaiman.)

[jholbo]

C Mas, your reaction to Pratchett is curiously at odds with mine. We agree about Small Gods. That one's great, no question. (I use it when I teach the Euthyphro.) Hogfather is great, too, but the ending has all the over-the-top problems that apparently irritate you about Gaiman, so I'm puzzled that you would cite it as good Pratchett. I myself have never really gotten the Rincewind thing, apart from appreciation in the abstract that a hero who only ever just runs away is a funny idea. I love the witches. Apart from the guards - I could read about Carrot on and on - the witches are the best. I do agree that the wizard jokes gets repeated to much. The wizard books get thin quick. Unlike the witch books, which are perfect.

It is not unnatural to associate Pratchett and Gaiman. They have a lot in common. No need to get that lobe of your brain cauterized away.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Thank goodness, there's another geek on the planet who thinks Gaiman is overrated. I borrowed a copy of American Gods from the Border's I worked at when it first came out and absorbed it in a day, having heard so much about its brilliance and creativity. I kept waiting for it to get really, really good. And what I got was...another book that's all about setting and set-up, with a weak ending that's something out of The Wicker Man, only not as fun or surprising because Gaiman insists on larding on the Elder Gods Speak Your Fate tones. Sandman was often good; American Gods was average, at best.

[C Mas]

It's not that I like Rincewind. He's abysmally one-note, like the others. On reflection, I like a couple of the books that happen to have him in it (in particular, "Eric," I think? Is that the Faust one? I don't think I can exactly justify liking that one by my previously-stated uppity standards, but I was working my first office job when I read it, so the description of Hell clicked for me). I'll also concede that of all of Pratchett's regular returning characters, the witches work best, and are least reducible to one-note gags.

As far as Hogfather, I liked Tooth Fairy Land, and in particular his explanation for why a tooth fairy should exist (convoluted though it was), and that Pratchett made a pretty creepy tooth fairy (which took me a bit by surprise, given that even Death in Discworld is a bit on the warm and fuzzy side). The book definitely has its faults - not least of which is the inclusion of Death's granddaughter and the absurd villain that I think I was supposed to find impressive on some level but instead simply found annoying - but I appreciated it for trying to have some broader scope in relation to its world than, for instance, a whole book on what happens when you invent rock music... in Discworld!

[Kip Manley]

I've not read any Pratchett aside from Good Omens, which is pleasant, and has Gaiman.

Gaiman, overrated? Well, yes: American Gods is an odd lump of leftover ideas for Sandman that sits uncomfortably in the lap of a half-baked Stephen King novel; they eye each other uncertainly. And oh my goodness is Neverwhere not worth either your time or trouble: the novel is just eh; the television series fit fare, I suppose, for those raised on a diet of BBC's bog-standard sausage.

But also, no: it's easy to underestimate just what he did with Sandman and how much of an impact it had. Read the whole shaggy mess start to stop, if you get the chance; it's a revelation. Starts slow and falters, wanders off into entirely too many digressions, and if one can excuse Gaiman's penchant for trusting narration too often rather than imagery (his capital crime in comics) by noting he was at the mercy of a not-entirely-to-his-liking industry protocol in assigning the artists who would work on each piece, well, one can also note that he got the better end of the deal more often than not; there's some lovely cartooning here and there amidst the dross. But it's still a single, coherent work, starting at a beginning and working its way through interesting and unexpected stages out to an end that doesn't come from Marketing or the latest whizkid in Editorial determined to mark their territory in the company's continuity. Kudos, then, for that, if nothing else.

All of which starts to sound like I'm pleading comics as a special case or something, and that he succeeded there while not in more stringent elsewheres. I actually think he's a better proseur than comics scripter; it's just he's done his best work in comics, I guess. Although actually, and not having read Coraline, about which one hears so many good things, I think his best work is Stardust. Not the novel version, but the heavily illustrated novelette he did with Charles Vess. Lovely. --Violent Cases and Mister Punch coming in a very close photo-finish second.

Jonathan Strange? Mr Norrell? Now I want to go read Tale of Two Cities. (My Dickens is sadly lacking; I blame modern education. Who wouldn't?)

[C Mas]

I'll say this for Gaiman: his kids' books are fantastic (although this is as much Dave McKean as anything else), in part because Gaiman always talks down to his readers, and talking down to your reader in a kids' book tends to be expected rather than annoying. The Day I Traded my Dad for Two Goldfish and Wolves in the Walls are both excellent. Coraline comes in a bit behind these, but is still pretty decent - again, Gaiman's natural pomposity is tempered by the fact that it's not so out of place writing for a younger age group.

As far as Sandman: it was the first Gaiman I read, and I have a tendency to treat it better than, say, American Gods or Neverwhere - in part because it was before I read his other stuff and came to the conclusion that he has about four or five characters that he dresses up in different clothes. I also found myself consistently liking his standalone stories for the series much better than anything that actually involved the Sandman himself (or god forbid, the Endless, who managed to be utterly flat and boring throughout, and mostly "gotcha!" characters. Death is a cute little girl! Gotcha! Desire is a nasty narcissistic bitch! Gotcha!). The whole "games of gods and men" thing loses me if there's nothing beyond the notion of "here's some gods and men playing games."

That said, some of those standalone stories are pretty great, and the collected paperbacks which focus solely on them are definitely worth checking out (like "Fables and Reflections"). But when it comes to the supernatural in comics I much prefer Moore's Swamp Thing, or even Ostrander's run on The Spectre, to Sandman as a whole.

[jholbo]

Kip, "Two Cities" is, indeed, lots of fun. I probably overemphasized its eeriness in the post, to make the point. But I do think that novel can be helpfully regarded as a relatively unsung ancestor of some contemporary fantastic fiction. Dickens is sometimes criticized for his absurdly cartoonish portrayal of the revolutionaries as devils, devils! This is regarded as political naivete. Without getting into all that - I would plead the charge down to misdemeanor naivete at worst - I prefer to think that the man was positively drawn in by the prospect of writing a kind of fantastic fiction. It isn't full-blown, but it peeps out of the corners and leers through the windows.

If my blog can actually get people reading Dickens then I'll be rather proud of myself. So by all means read this fine novel. (Not that there's anything wrong with getting people to read SF and comics and watch Buffy. But that's more like falling off a log.)

[Cala]

While I agree with most of the rest of the Pratchett fans that Small Gods is the strongest of the Discworld, I am surprised that Vimes is not listed among the reasons to enjoy the Watch books. Carrot is entertaining, but his good-natured literal-mindedness can only carry so much of a story. Vimes, while barely more than an archtypal tarnished cop, is still very appealing ( Night Watch being my second-favorite Discworld book). And Reaper Man has to be up there somewhere.

I agree about the wizards. Tenured faculty are rather dull. ;-)

[Another Damned Medievalist]

I thought Good Omens, the Gaiman-Pratchett dual endeavor was great fun. But then I like Gaiman (although I wasn't gripped by AG, either). As for Pratchett -- Soul Music was just fine, thanks. I think John's right -- the witches are the best. Vimes is a close second -- how could you not love someone who can best Lord Vetinary? Oddly, carpe Jugulum which has the witches AND Vimes has drawbacks.

John, I think part of the lure of the Rincewind books is the secondary characters, not least the Luggage.

Anyway, I think Pratchett is generally very funny and for better than lots of the dreck out there today.

[Cala]

Not only due to the secondary characters: the best Rincewind books, Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic introduce the entire Discworld and all the complexity of a universe driven by the imperative of narrative and the need for a joke... by the time we get to Interesting Times his one-note cowardice has worn out.

[William S]

A question because I am lazy: does Rincewind ever use the spell?