Literature in the News: T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the 100th Year Anniversary

It crossed my attention that the great T.S. Eliot poem, The Waste Land, had its 100^th anniversary of its publication this October.  I would like to commemorate the anniversary with two posts actually.  This post, and then I want to post one of my poetry analyses of a section of the poem.  Only a section.  The poem, which is divided into five parts, contains 434 lines, and I would add densely packed lines of meaning.  That’s just too much for one poetry analysis.

So in this commemorative post, I’d just like to summarize the importance of The Waste Land.  A place to start is perhaps from the Yale university site, Modernism Lab, a site devoted to modernist literature.  From their article, “The Waste Land,” by Pericles Lewis.

 

The Waste Land was quickly recognized as a major statement of modernist poetics, both for its broad symbolic significance and for Eliot’s masterful use of formal techniques that earlier modernists had only begun to attempt. The critic I. A. Richards influentially praised Eliot for describing the shared post-war “sense of desolation, of uncertainty, of futility, of the groundlessness of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavour, and a thirst for a life-giving water which seems suddenly to have failed.” Eliot later complained that “approving critics” like Richards “said that I had expressed ‘the disillusionment of a generation,’ which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention.” Nonetheless, it was as a representative of a postwar generation that Eliot became famous. To compare Eliot’s comments on the poem with the way it was received illustrates strikingly the fact that, as William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley put it, “The poem is not the critic’s own and not the author’s (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public.” The Waste Land made use of allusion, quotation (in several languages), a variety of verse forms, and a collage of poetic fragments to create the sense of speaking for an entire culture in crisis; it was quickly accepted as the essential statement of that crisis and the epitome of a modernist poem.

Let me use that passage to highlight the elements and significance of the poem.  The first thing to point out is that the poem had a great influence on subsequent poetry and literature.  It is a difficult poem to read for (1) it’s fragmentary style and (2) heavy use of allusion, often obscure allusions.  I will point out in my future post why both these elements of the poem’s style are important.  On the other hand, it can be an easier poem to understand because the lines are frequently, if not mostly, prosaic.  Concentrated lines that must fit meter, line length, and rhyme scheme sometimes can be difficult to unpack.  Eliot’s individual lines are simpler.  But the frequent dislocations between parts and subparts can leave the reader bewildered.  Modernism was looking for an aesthetic to convey the particular nature of our contemporary life, and Eliot’s poem and James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, both published in 1922, are the two works cited that define Modernism.

Second, the poem captured the disillusionment of an age.  Eliot undercuts that thought in the quote inside that passage, but the central image of a waste land was perfect for capturing the post-World War I life.  It invoked the image of the trench warfare battlefield, desolated from destruction.  The war was devastating to the European nations, and it seemed like such a “waste” of a generation of men that the title rang perfectly true.  People were disillusioned in many ways, from the ideals of the war, from their governments, from life in general.  This disillusionment allowed the elements in the culture that were tearing down tradition (anti-religion, pseudo-psychology, anti-family—the same as now!) to establish themselves as normative.  The worst elements of the Enlightenment were disrupting society, and that causes disillusionment in one’s traditions.  The poem really did capture a disillusionment.  As an aside, it’s no better today, if not worse!

 

Third, the poem shaped literature for the next century, and still does.  There are countless references, allusions, and emulations to The Waste Land in novels, poetry, drama, and even film.  From poets.org, in their review of “What the Thunder Said: How The Waste Land Made Poetry Modern” the legacy of Eliot’s poem is summarized as such:

 

The Waste Land has a double legacy. It’s the milestone that vaulted its author to considerable fame and influence, culminating with the Nobel Prize in 1948. It has held a permanent place in the pantheon of modern poetry since its publication in 1922. It has been an intimidating lump in the syllabus for generations of undergraduates, and a chastening puzzle to graduate students. But The Waste Land is not only a poem; it names an event, like a tornado or an earthquake. Its publication was a watershed, marking a before and after. It was a poem unequivocal in its declaration that the ancient art of poetry had become modern.

 

It would be a major undertaking to detail the legacy of The Waste Land.  Novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Ford Maddox Ford, and more, would have strong allusions to the poem in their works.  Poets such as W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath owe much to the style and themes of The Waste Land.  Indeed, the very opening from traditional poetic forms can be traced to the poem.  In that respect, so much of the 20^th century’s poetry bears a direct influence to Eliot and his poem.  And in drama, let’s not forget that Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot owes much in theme and setting to the 1922 poem.

 

I should also mention that the title is The Waste Land, in two words, not “The Wasteland” as I have been historically prone to write.  Eliot himself was very specific about this.  From the website, T.S. Eliot:

 

The title, by the way, is not 'The Wasteland' but 'The Waste Land'. The only exact translation of the title is one which my French translator, Jean de Menasce, discovered, although alas! too late to use in his version – 'La Gaste Lande'. This is absolutely the exact equivalent as it alludes to the same mediaeval fiction.

 

(Eliot in a letter to Angel Flores, 22 February 1928)

 

Finally, here are some of my favorite passages from the poem.

 

From Part I, “The Burial of the Dead”:

 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.  (ll. 19-30)

 

From Part II, “A Game of Chess”:

 

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

From satin cases poured in rich profusion;

In vials of ivory and coloured glass

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused

And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Flung their smoke into the laquearia,

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam. (ll. 77-96)

 

 

From Part III, “The Fire Sermon”:

 

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

I too awaited the expected guest.  (ll. 215-30)

 

From Part IV, “Death By Water”:

 

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.  (ll. 315-18)

 

 

From Part V, “What the Thunder Said”:

 

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses  (ll. 331-45)

 

 

If you haven’t read it recently (or ever!) you can read it at Poetry Foundation.

 

After reading it, then listen to what I consider the definitive rendition by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins.  Irons reads the male voices and the narrator’s voice while Atkins reads the female voices. 

 

 

 

Shantih, shantih, shantih. 

Sunday Meditation: Stay Awake!

This Sunday we start the new liturgical calendar, and we are now back to Year A in the lectionary cycle, the year emphasizing the Gospel of Matthew.  Paradoxically we start with the end of the Gospel.

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

"As it was in the days of Noah,

so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

In those days before the flood,

they were eating and drinking,

marrying and giving in marriage,

up to the day that Noah entered the ark.

They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.

So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.

Two men will be out in the field;

one will be taken, and one will be left.

Two women will be grinding at the mill;

one will be taken, and one will be left.

Therefore, stay awake!

For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.

Be sure of this: if the master of the house

had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,

he would have stayed awake

and not let his house be broken into.

So too, you also must be prepared,

for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come."

~Mt 24:37-44

 

I always love that “Stay awake” exhortation.  I imagine one staying up all night and watching the dark, night sky waiting for Christ’s second coming. 

These Fr. Geoffrey Plant videos expounding the Gospel readings are wonderful.  He is so thorough.  I don’t know anything about him except that he’s from Australia.  Here he is on this Gospel reading.

 

So will you be the one taken or the one left? 

Faith Filled Friday: Uncover to Bear Fruit for Advent

Since I’ve started my “Sunday Meditations” posts, I have unfortunately not had as many “Faith Filled Friday” posts.  Well, there is only so much I can get in.  This coming Sunday starts Advent, but I wanted to get a pre-Advent post in to focus your thinking and devotions for Advent proper.

This quote comes from a book recommended to me by a friend on Advent written Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal Priest.  She has her own Wikipedia entry, so she must be of some notoriety.  (No I don’t support women priests in the Catholic Church, but who am I to opine on Episcopal Church matters?)  The book, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (currently on sale in Kindle format), is organized around sermons she has given over the years on Advent.  I’m 50 pages or so in, and I’m quite impressed with her literary knowledge—the main reason I think the book was recommended—and her homiletics, if that is the correct word.  Though there might be an item or two we Catholics might have a different way of seeing, for the most part I’m surprised how much we have in common here. 

The quote I want to highlight from her book was from a sermon on “Advent II”—I take that to be the second Sunday of Advent, but I’m not entirely sure—given in 1999, titled “Cover-Ups.”

 

The premier personage of Advent is John the Baptist. When he appears on the banks of the Jordan, the cover-ups come to their appointed end. Two thousand years before all the Watergates, Irangates, and other sordid “-gates,” John came proclaiming God’s imminent judgment on the venality of governments, the corruption of police departments, the greed of financiers, the selfishness of the rich, the self-righteousness of the religious establishment. In the end, he became one of los desaparecidos himself, executed without a trial in the dank dungeon of the local strongman, thus becoming truly the precursor of the One whose way he prepared, the One whose death at the hands of the political and religious ruling classes signified the final judgment of God on all the powers and principalities.

 

There are cover-ups of all sorts. There are families that will not acknowledge the alcoholism that is destroying them. There are people who are making their loved ones miserable but will not go to a therapist. There are secretaries who cover up for bosses, business partners who cover up for each other, colonels for generals, bishops for clergy, parents for children. Advent is the season of the uncovering: “Bear fruit that befits repentance. . . . Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees”! This is the right time to root out the cover-ups in our own lives, as we wait with bated breath for the lights to come on and the announcement of the angel that God is not against us but for us. (p. 42, Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.)

What caught my eye here was the term, los desaparecidos, which my poor Spanish initially took for “the deplorables.”  Perhaps politics has more an influence on my word associations than I think.  Still, despite several years of schooling in Spanish, I decided to look it up.  From Wikipedia:

Desaparecidos are people who were victims of enforced disappearance, who were secretly arrested and killed in Argentina during the "dirty war", between 1976 and 1983 during the military dictatorship of General Videla.

So what started as a specific immoral, political action in Argentina in the late 1970s, took on a more comprehensive definition:

 

The Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, signed in 1994, considers it an imprescriptible crime against humanity and defines it as follows:

 

“Enforced disappearance is the deprivation of the liberty of one or more persons, in whatever form, committed by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons who act with the authorization, support or State approval, followed by the absence of information or the refusal to recognize said deprivation of liberty or to inform about the whereabouts of the person, by which the exercise of legal remedies is prevented and relevant procedural safeguards.

The forced disappearances of people in Latin American countries fall under the term los desaparecidos.  It is a word I want to remember, and perhaps use myself somewhere.  It is unfortunately too common for people in Latin America to just disappear, but frankly as one thinks about it, the practice has to be internationally widespread.  Dictators and criminal organizations have forever made people they had issues with disappear. 

That is Caravaggio's The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.

And Rutledge points out how deep in history this practice is, even foundational in our Christian history.  John the Baptist was “executed without a trial in the dank dungeon of the local strongman, thus becoming truly the precursor of the One whose way he prepared, the One whose death at the hands of the political and religious ruling classes signified the final judgment of God on all the powers and principalities.”  This is certainly something for us to meditate upon.  John the Baptist and Jesus Christ are architypes for all those poor prisoners around the world who have done nothing wrong and are at the mercy of political power.  I am now specifically thinking of those in the underground prisons of China.  They need our prayers.

And Rutledge closes with an exhortation to our personal lives: “This is the right time to root out the cover-ups in our own lives, as we wait with bated breath for the lights to come on and the announcement of the angel that God is not against us but for us.”  What personal sins do we cover up, sins we wish would not be exposed?  I am not advocating we make these open for the world or even our loved ones.  But they become a point for personal reflection.  If we are covering up something from the world, even from ourselves, then it probably is not something wholesome.  This is a time to strive to overcome it, put it to an end.  Advent is here.  Christ is coming.

Come Rack! Come Rope! By Robert Hugh Benson, Post #3

This is third post of a series on the historical novel Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Hugh Benson. 

You can find Post #1 here.  

Post #2 here.  

 

Part 2, Chapters 1 thru 5

Summary

Two years have passed and Robin has been to Rheims for seminary.  Marjorie’s father has passed away and her estate has become a harbor for priests.  Babington comes to her to tell her of eight or nine new priests coming to London.  He tells her of a Fr. Ballard who goes by the name of Captain Fortescue.  He entices her to come to London with his sister to meet him, and to meet Robin who will be joining him.  She agrees.

Marjorie, Anthony Babington, and Alice, Babington’s sister arrive in London where Marjorie, a country girl, is mesmerized by the big city.  They meet Fr. Edmund Campion, a heroic priest and charming man, who is unafraid to work under the noses of the anti-Catholics. 

Fr. Campion shows Marjorie and Alice the famous sites of London.  He takes them though the opposite path of the martyrs, from London Tower where they would be executed to the wharf to Westminster to the palace to St. Margret’s Church.  At the Tower they get a glimpse of Richard Topcliffe, the torturer of the martyrs.  They also catch a sight of Queen Elizabeth herself.

Finally there is a meeting where Marjorie is introduced to the priests that have come from France.  Robin is also with them, as he is an assistant to Fr. Ballard, that is, Captain Fortescue.  Marjorie and Robin have time to talk, and the sense now is that they have settled into their vocations.  There is a discussion among the gathering of whether there should be a violent retaliation to the Catholic persecution, but Fr. Campion is decidedly against it.  Anthony Babington is in silent disagreement.  On Christmas Day, the priests depart for France.

A year later, Babington comes to Marjorie’s home to tell her of sad news: three priests have been hung in London, and one of them is Fr. Campion.  He leaves her letters with the details.  Meanwhile Marjorie’s mother is dying.  She tries to get a priest for last rights but is unable before it is too late.  Though no priest comes, she can feel the presence of Fr. Campion over her mother’s body.  Fr. Simpson finally arrives late and she shares the news of the executions in London.  Marjorie is more determined than ever to use her home as a place of resistance. 

###

Frances Commented:

Didn’t you think Benson’s descriptions of Edmund Campion and Queen Elizabeth were wonderful? Campion seemed alive to me, the charisma, the bravery.

Joseph Added:

The whole journey to London was masterfully done. I actually looked up some pictures of the old St. Paul's Cathedral to get a better idea of the things that they would have seen going about the city in 1580 or thereabouts. I think the other thing that Msgr. Benson does incredibly well is to bring out the spiritual strain during this period, in addition to the social. When he describes how St. Paul's would have had First Vespers of Christmas and then Midnight Mass and people going in and out all night contrasted with its abandoned appearance under the control of Protestants, there's a kind of longing that is excited for that worship which sanctifies time instead of kind of nodding as it passes.

My Reply:

Yes, I thought Benson did a superb job taking us through London through Marjorie’s eyes.

Peej Commented:

Benson exemplifies Campion’s patriotism in these chapters as well, as any true saint loves his nation. He still loves the Queen; but God first, as St. Thomas More personified.

My Reply:

Spot on Peej!

Frances Commented:

Queen Elizabeth II died today [Sept. 8^th]. One of her many titles was Defender of the Faith. What a difference between the two Elizabeths!

My Reply to Frances:

Hmm, QEII was the same faith as QEI. They were both Church of England. And while QEII did not persecute Catholics, a lot of water has gone under the bridge in 500 years. Now if QEII had converted to Catholicism, now that would have been a notable difference. ;)

Joseph Added:

The titled Defensor Fidei was actually given to Henry VIII for his rebuttal of Luther. After he himself apostatized, parliament restored use of the title and it's been used by every English monarch since.

Frances Replied:

Thank you, Joseph. What an important detail!

 

Manny, everything you wrote is accurate and significant, but I can’t imagine Elizabeth II approving of drawing and quartering! She was a woman of integrity and unselfishness. I was impressed to learn that at her coronation she pledged herself to Christ.

 

I’m sorry she didn’t convert to Catholicism, too, but neither did C.S. Lewis; yet they both were exemplary Christians. (I personally would like to see Lewis canonized; there must be a way. . . ) 😊

My Reply:

Look, I admired QEII’s faith too but it’s easy in the 20th century of England to not hang, draw, and quarter Catholics. Like I said, a lot has changed in 500 years. I just don’t think the comparison - contrast in this case - with QEI is apt.

 

I will say that in reading about QEII and Catholics she had a very good record. Here is one article.  

 

Oh here is anotherarticle on QEII, this from Joanna Bogle, a well know Catholic blogger from England. Bogle has been in EWTN frequently. Her article includes a prayer for her soul from England’s Catholic bishops.  

 

There are others. 

###

The passage of these chapters I wish to highlight is the glimpse Marjorie has of Queen Elizabeth while making her way through London.  It’s beautifully drawn and will echo later on in the novel with the glimpse of the other queen.

And then at last, she caught a glimpse of the carriage, followed by ladies on grey horses; and forgot all the rest.

 

This way and that she craned her head, gripping the oak post by which she leaned, unconscious of all except that she was to see her in whom England itself seemed to have been incarnated—the woman who, as perhaps no other earthly sovereign in the world at that time, or before her, had her people in a grasp that was not one of merely regal power. Even far away in Derbyshire—even in the little country manor from which the girl came, the aroma of that tremendous presence penetrated—of the woman whom men loved to hail as the Virgin Queen, even though they might question her virginity; the woman—”our Eliza,” as the priest had named her just now—who had made so shrewd an act of faith in her people that they had responded with an unreserved act of love. It was this woman, then, whom she was about to see; the sister of Mary and Edward, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, who had received her kingdom Catholic, and by her own mere might had chosen to make it Protestant; the woman whose anointed hands were already red in the blood of God’s servants, yet hands which men fainted as they kissed….

 

Then on a sudden, as Elizabeth lifted her head this side and that, the girl saw her.

 

She was sitting in a low carriage, raised on cushions, alone. Four tall horses drew her at a slow trot: the wheels of the carriage were deep in mud, since she had driven for an hour over the deep December roads; but this added rather to the splendour within. But of this Marjorie remembered no more than an uncertain glimpse. The air was thick with cries; from window after window waved hands; and, more than all, the loyalty was real, and filled the air like brave music.

 

There, then, she sat, smiling.

 

She was dressed in some splendid stuff; jewels sparkled beneath her throat. Once a hand in an embroidered glove rose to wave an answer to the roar of salute; and, as the carriage came beneath, she raised her face. It was a thin face, sharply pear-shaped, ending in a pointed chin; a tight mouth smiled at the corners; above her narrow eyes and high brows rose a high forehead, surmounted by strands of auburn hair drawn back tightly beneath the little head-dress. It was a strangely peaked face, very clear-skinned, and resembled in some manner a mask. But the look of it was as sharp as steel; like a slender rapier, fragile and thin, yet keen enough to run a man through. The power of it, in a word, was out of all measure with the slightness of the face…. Then the face dropped; and Marjorie watched the back of the head bending this way and that, till the nodding heads that followed hid it from sight.

 

Marjorie drew a deep breath and turned. The faces of her friends were as pale and intent as her own. Only the priest was as easy as ever.

 

“So that is our Eliza,” he said.

 

Then he did a strange thing. He lifted his cap once more with grave seriousness. “God save her Grace!” he said.  (pp. 115-116, Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition)

I love that one sentence paragraph, “Then on a sudden, as Elizabeth lifted her head this side and that, the girl saw her.”  As a single sentence paragraph, it has incredible power, and Benson wants you to remember it.  He will contrast the other queen’s head later on with this. 

###

Part 2, Chapters 6 thru 10

Summary

One summer evening, Marjorie and her maid ride down to Padley, the property of the FitzHerberts.  She meets with Mr. John FitzHerbert, his son Thomas, his son’s wife, and the family’s patriarch, old Sir Thomas.  Joining them is a young man named Hugh Owen, who delivers a letter of introduction, He is a young carpenter who is skilled at constructing hiding places within homes.  He constructs a hiding hole for future priests at Padley.  On the next day, he constructs an extraordinary hiding closet that can fit two at Marjorie’s home.

Another year passes and Alice Babington has moved in with Marjorie since Anthony Babington is away.  They hear news of more priests being executed.  On a chance encounter Marjorie and Alice meet Mr. Audrey, and in the shock of the moment Marjorie falls off her horse and hurts her foot.  Mr. Audrey helps her to his home and while there has a private conversation with her about Robin being a priest and about a threat to her friends the FitzHerberts. 

Shortly there is news that Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert has been imprisoned and that Topcliffe had come to Derby to personally prosecute Thomas.  Marjorie, Alice, and Mrs. FitzHerbert learn the details of Thomas’s imprisonment.  Marjorie employs a lawyers, William Bassett and John Biddell, to defend Thomas and investigate the situation.  Bassett, a kinsman of Thomas, is confident that Thomas will not betray his fellow Catholics.

Marjorie and Mrs. Thomas are told they can visit Thomas in the prison.  They are allowed into Thomas’s jail room where they see he is gaunt and disheveled.  Thomas implores his wife to pay the jailer a bribe to ease his conditions.  When Mrs. Thomas leaves to do so, Thomas, alone with Marjorie, tells her he cannot bear it any longer in jail. 

A fortnight later, Biddell visits Marjorie to tell her he has heard rumors of Thomas giving in to Topcliffe and apostatizing.  He has heard rumors that Thomas will sell Padley to Topcliffe in exchange for his freedom and his cooperation against the Catholics.  Marjorie will not believe it without evidence.  Biddell sends his clerk to snoop at Topcliffe’s home where he is able to copy a document showing Thomas will sell Padley to Topcliffe and become a spy for the Queen.

###

Celia Commented:

I am reading this book and it has caused so much food for thought. Taught me alot as well about how sinister Elizabeth I was in her treatment of Catholics.

 

I am also reading Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission which describes the Irish Potato Famine.

 

I wish to share this relevant quote about one of the causes of the Famine:

 

"The Irish people’s almost universal dependence on the potato had as much to do with anti-Catholic bigotry as it did with the vegetable’s high yield per acre, its rich supply of vitamins and other nutrients, the minimal care it required during planting and growing, and the numerous ways it could be cooked and eaten."

 

"Crowned as William III, the new king introduced in 1695 the Penal Laws, which banned all public practices of the Roman Catholic religion, stripped the huge Catholic majority in Ireland of their wealth, position, homes, and estates, and rendered most Catholics penniless. Catholics were barred from purchasing land, Catholic schools were closed, churches were shuttered, and no Catholic could vote, hold office, practice law, serve in the army, or carry a sword or gun."

My Reply:

Very good point Celia. The conversion of England to Protestantism had many negative effects on her territory and nearby.

Celia Commented:

TY Manny.

 

Back to the book - our book!!

 

Events in this section are so upsetting. Another man apostasizing and becoming a spy for the Queen? I am appalled but hope that I would not do the same.

Kerstin Replied:

I think it is very hard to imagine what one would do under such circumstances. The pressure was very hard and the consequences dire. If you could ride it out under the radar that was one thing, but if you were part of a prominent family with much to loose and you had to choose sides, that was quite another. The overruling power didn't give you any leeway.

My Reply:

It's not just then. Christians in Africa and Muslim countries face huge persecutions today for their faith. Who knows, even in in this country we may experience a persecution. The media refuses to report all the Catholic Churches than have been vandalized.

###

The passage I highlight in these chapters is the extended dialogue between Marjorie and Robin’s father, Mr. Audrey.  The situation is that Marjorie has hurt her foot while out on horseback and Mr. Audrey comes along to help her.  I believe here they are at Mr. Audrey’s home and that Mr. Audrey has two issues for her. 

 

“I will begin with the second first. It is of my son Robin: I wish to know what news you have of him. He hath not written to me this six months back. And I hear that letters sometimes come to you from him.”

 

Marjorie hesitated.

 

“He is very well, so far as I know,” she said.

 

“And when is he to be made priest?” he demanded sharply.

 

Marjorie drew a breath to give herself time; she knew that she must not answer this; and did not know how to say so with civility.

 

“If he has not told you himself, sir,” she said, “I cannot.”

 

The old man’s face twitched; but he kept his manners. “I understand you, mistress….” But then his wrath overcame him. “But he must understand he will have no mercy from me, if he comes my way. I am a magistrate, now, mistress, and—”

 

A thought like an inspiration came to the girl; and she interrupted; for she longed to penetrate this man’s armour.

 

“Perhaps that was why he did not tell you when he was to be made priest,” she said.

 

The other seemed taken aback.

 

“Why, but—”

 

“He did not wish to think that his father would be untrue to his new commission,” she said, trembling at her boldness and yet exultant too; and taking no pains to keep the irony out of her voice.

 

Again that fierce twitch of the features went over the other’s face; and he stared straight at her with narrowed eyes. Then a change again came over him; and he laughed, like barking, yet not all unkindly.

 

Let me break in here.  We see now the significance of Mr. Audrey’s anger at his son in the early chapters.  He is in an internal conflict.  Expediency has convinced him that it would be best to convert to Protestantism, but he realizes his son is not one to follow expediency.  And he realizes events may lead him to do something that will cause the harm or death of his own son.  I don’t think any of the other characters in the novel struggle with this deep a psychological tension.  Let’s continue with the passage.

 

“You are very shrewd, mistress. But I wonder what you will think of me when I tell you the second matter, since you will tell me no more of the first.”

 

He shifted his position in his chair, this time clasping both his hands together over the back.

 

“Well; it is this in a word,” he said: “It is that you had best look to yourself, mistress. My lord Shrewsbury even knows of it.”

 

“Of what, if you please?” asked the girl, hoping she had not turned white.

 

“Why, of the priests that come and go hereabouts! It is all known; and her Grace hath sent a message from the Council—”

 

“What has this to do with me?”

 

He laughed again.

 

“Well; let us take your neighbours at Padley. They will be in trouble if they do not look to their goings. Mr. FitzHerbert—”

 

But again she interrupted him. She was determined to know how much he knew. She had thought that she had been discreet enough, and that no news had leaked out of her own entertaining of priests; it was chiefly that discretion might be preserved that she had set her hands to the work at all. With Padley so near it was thought that less suspicion would be aroused. Her name had never yet come before the authorities, so far as she knew.

 

“But what has all this to do with me, sir?” she asked sharply. “It is true that I do not go to church, and that I pay my fines when they are demanded: Are there new laws, then, against the old faith?”

 

She spoke with something of real bitterness. It was genuine enough; her only art lay in her not concealing it; for she was determined to press her question home. And, in his shrewd, compelling face, she read her answer even before his words gave it.

 

“Well, mistress; it was not of you that I meant to speak—so much as of your friends. They are your friends, not mine. And as your friends, I thought it to be a kindly action to send them an advertisement. If they are not careful, there will be trouble.”

 

“At Padley?”

 

“At Padley, or elsewhere. It is the persons that fall under the law, not places!”

 

“But, sir, you are a magistrate; and—”

 

He sprang up, his face aflame with real wrath.

 

“Yes, mistress; I am a magistrate: the commission hath come at last, after six months’ waiting. But I was friend to the FitzHerberts before ever I was a magistrate, and—”

 

Then she understood; and her heart went out to him. She, too, stood up, catching at the table with a hiss of pain as she threw her weight on the bruised foot. He made a movement towards her; but she waved him aside.

 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Audrey, with all my heart. I had thought that you meant harm, perhaps, to my friends and me. But now I see—”

 

“Not a word more! not a word more!” he cried harshly, with a desperate kind of gesture. “I shall do my duty none the less when the time comes—”

 

“Sir!” she cried out suddenly. “For God’s sake do not speak of duty—there is another duty greater than that. Mr. Audrey—”

 

He wheeled away from her, with a movement she could not interpret. It might be uncontrolled anger or misery, equally. And her heart went out to him in one great flood.

 

“Mr. Audrey. It is not too late. Your son Robin—” Then he wheeled again; and his face was distorted with emotion.

 

“Yes, my son Robin! my son Robin!… How dare you speak of him to me?… Yes; that is it—my son Robin—my son Robin!”

 

He dropped into the chair again, and his face fell upon his clasped hands.

 (pp. 147-149, Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition)

And so you can see how Benson is striving for that psychological depth.  The twitch of his face earlier in the passage, the uncontrolled anger, the desperate gesture, the collapsing into the chair and clasping his face are attempts to dramatize his internal conflict.  Unfortunately for me it comes across melodramatic, and rather unartful.  I find Benson to be masterly at plotting and pacing, masterly at descriptions, masterly at heightening suspense, and masterly at bringing abstract ideas into conflict in a narrative, but I don’t find character psychological depth to be his forte.  His characters are rather flat, even the protagonists, and when he attempts depth it’s a little amateurish.  I think I mentioned similar when we read his Lord of the World novel.  But don’t get me wrong; I still think this is a fine novel.