he was but the ruin of a man

Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton

I read Ethan Frome on my kindle, and finished it on a sunny day. Part of it I read while walking down the street. It was dazzlingly bright and warm, hot even. I meant to buy a bottle of water on my way to the station, and suddenly realised I’d walked past the shop. Looking up I was momentarily surprised to find it wasn’t dark, wasn’t cold. That’s a cliché, but it’s still true.

My first Edith Wharton was Age of Innocence, and I absolutely recommend that as a first novel to try by her. It’s an incredible book. It naturally formed my image of her writing, and my impression is that it’s not too false an image – a novelist of blighted and frustrated lives choked by propriety and convention; of the constraints of the upper middle classes of late 19th Century New England and New York.

In a sense all that is true of Ethan Frome, save the class element (the characters here are mostly the rural poor). This though is a more gothic tale, eschewing strict realism for a mood of fear, horror, even loathing. As I read it I found it created a near overwhelming sense of dread, and all without a single supernatural element. The ingredients here are ice, isolation, long-held secrets, disfigurement, ruin and death.

The story comes with a framing device, where an unnamed narrator takes an interest in a poor farmer by name Ethan Frome. Frome is a solitary, lame figure crippled by some terrible accident. He is tacit, private, and people prefer not to speak of his misfortune. The narrator though is invited to Frome’s home to shelter from a storm, and from there is able to piece together Frome’s history.

“That’s my place,” said Frome, with a sideway jerk of his lame elbow; and in the distress and oppression of the scene I did not know what to answer. The snow had ceased, and a flash of watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope above us in all its plaintive ugliness. The black wraith of a deciduous creeper flapped from the porch, and the thin wooden walls, under their worn coat of paint, seemed to shiver in the wind that had risen with the ceasing of the snow.

Years before Ethan Frome was a young man married to an invalid wife, Zenobia. Zenobia had nursed Frome’s mother as that woman lay dying, and upon their marriage had promptly fallen ill herself. Ethan and Zenobia had little money but even so had taken responsibility for a destitute cousin of Zenobia’s, who now helps out around the home. Zenobia, “though doubtful of the girl’s efficiency, was tempted by the freedom to find fault without much risk of losing her”. 

The cousin is Mattie, a pretty girl full of all the life that Zenobia is lacking. Frome’s marriage is a pitiful thing, dogged by poverty and his wife’s constant complaints regarding ailments which appear more psychological than real. Mattie comes into this wasteland like a blaze of colour, red scarfed, red ribboned, and of course red lipped and cheeked.  She laughs, and her laughter is a miracle in Ethan’s life long burdened by illness and care.

Starkfield, Ethan’s home town, spends six months a year surrounded by snow and winter. It is a hard place with a puritan past. Red then is the colour of life, but it’s also in this context the colour of shame, perhaps even of adultery. Mattie’s life stands in vivid contrast to Starkfield itself, where the barren silence of Ethan’s home is echoed in the bleak landscape surrounding him, penetrating him. Ethan is frozen, early ambitions for education and escape long since abandoned. Mattie though gives hope of life.

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded lane, where Ethan’s saw-mill gloomed through the night, and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields. On the farther side of the hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely under the stars. Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless trees. Here and there a farm-house stood far back among the fields, mute and cold as a grave-stone. The night was so still that they heard the frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.

I won’t reveal what happens, though this isn’t really a novel capable of spoilers (it opens with Ethan long crippled, and it’s swiftly obvious too what kind of accident crippled him). The key here is mood, description, the unfolding of a grim inevitability. The writing is absolutely beautiful. So much so that at times it’s almost a difficult read: wintry and steeped in despair. It’s that writing though which makes this so persuasive a book. The plot is arguably a little too neat, a little too deterministic (though Greek tragedies are deterministic and neat in that sense, which doesn’t diminish them any), but the writing makes it true.

The winter morning was as clear as crystal. The sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far-off forest hung like smoke.

Edith Wharton is a beautiful writer. It’s easy here to pull apart the elements, tear open the symbolism (images of death, a watchful cat, a red pickle dish which was given as wedding gift but never used, the book is crammed with symbolic elements), but in doing so you’d kill it in the way academic examinations of books can so easily kill them. This is a classic school text, and I’m glad I didn’t read it in school because sitting in a room with thirty other kids crawling between words and discussing layers of meaning suffocates a book. It’s useful, it’s how I learned myself to analyse literature and that’s a skill I value, but the price one pays for that skill is the ruin of the books one learns it with.

Ethan Frome is a slighter affair than The Age of Innocence, but it’s absolutely still worth reading. There’s an old debate about what makes fiction count as literary fiction, as opposed to some other kind. The answer of course is the prose. Few authors write even nearly as well as Edith Wharton.

“Now!” he cried. The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ.

‘Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.” “She’s terrible deep, then.”

Under the Greenwood Tree, by Thomas Hardy

Romcoms get a bad press. They’re often seen as nothing but megaplex filler, Saturday night entertainments for the undemanding. Mostly of course that’s true.

As with anything though there are exceptions. Steve Martin’s LA Story is for me a thoroughly likeable film that’s easily borne several viewings, even though I hate every English character in it (including the female romantic lead). It’s a romcom, but it’s a good romcom. They do exist.

Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree isn’t of course a romcom (it predates cinema for one thing). Except, well, it sort of is. Boy meets girl. The path of true love proves bumpy. Will the boy and girl end up together in the final reel/chapter? All this against a backdrop of the impact of social change in mid-19th Century Britain as seen through the declining fortunes of a traditional church choir, facing replacement by new technology in the form of the church organ.

Hardy is a writer with a formidable reputation, perhaps for many readers too formidable as his classic status can be offputting. Some years ago my wife persuaded me to read The Mayor of Casterbridge which she was convinced I would love, and as so often she was right. The Mayor of Casterbridge is, quite simply, brilliant and utterly deserving of the word classic (and, as is true of so many classics, it’s actually not a difficult book to read at all).

More recently Emma of Book Around the Corner and Guy of His Futile Preoccupations have both been singing Hardy’s praises, and their reviews made me want to give him another try. Where better than at the beginning, with Under the Greenwood Tree, his first Wessex novel?

And, even though I didn’t read this edition but because it’s the best cover for it I’ve seen, here’s how the Oxford World Classics version looks:

The clue to Under the Greenwood Tree lies in its subtitle, “A Rural Painting of the Dutch School”. To draw analogies from another media again this is a pastoral, a romanticised and somewhat nostalgic depiction of an imagined country life.

It’s easy when reading a nineteenth century novel today to think of it as being contemporary fiction of its time, but Under the Greenwood Tree isn’t. It was written in 1872, but is set in (as best I can tell) the 1840s and it deals with the passing of country traditions that at the time of writing must already have been lost for a generation. It’s not therefore, strictly speaking, a realist novel. What it is though is a delight.

The village of Mellstock, in Hardy’s fictional county of Wessex, has a new vicar and that means change. The old vicar, much loved by all, was a respectful man who didn’t bother you if you didn’t attend church and who would never have dreamt of visiting his parishioners as they went about their business. He kept to himself, and kept church for Sundays.

The new fellow, by contrast, is always calling on people to see how they are and making an effort to get to know his flock. That’s strange enough, but much worse is that he plans to abolish the ancient Mellstock Quire (choir) – a collection of locals who sit in the upper gallery in church and play music for the congregation, as well as going round at Christmas time to everyone’s homes and playing carols whether those inside want to hear them or not.

The quire by the way play string instruments, as god surely intended:

“I can well bring back to my mind,” said Mr. Penny, “what I said to poor Joseph Ryme (who took the treble part in Chalk-Newton Church for two-and- forty year) when they thought of having clar’nets there. ‘Joseph,’ I said, says I, ‘depend upon’t, if so be you have them tooting clar’nets you’ll spoil the whole set-out. Clar’nets were not made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at ‘em,’ I said. And what came o’t? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account within two years o’ the time I spoke, and the old quire went to nothing.” “As far as look is concerned,” said the tranter, “I don’t for my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar’net. ‘Tis further off. There’s always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle’s looks that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in making o’en; while angels be supposed to play clar’nets in heaven, or som’at like ‘em, if ye may believe picters.” “Robert Penny, you was in the right,” broke in the eldest Dewy. “They should ha’ stuck to strings. Your brass-man is a rafting dog–well and good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye–well and good; your drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker–good again. But I don’t care who hears me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi’ the sweetness o’ the man of strings!” “Strings for ever!” said little Jimmy. “Strings alone would have held their ground against all the new comers in creation.” (“True, true!” said Bowman.) “But clarinets was death.” (“Death they was!” said Mr. Penny.) “And harmonions,” William continued in a louder voice, and getting excited by these signs of approval, “harmonions and barrel-organs” (“Ah!” and groans from Spinks) “be miserable–what shall I call ‘em?–miserable–” “Sinners,” suggested Jimmy, who made large strides like the men, and did not lag behind like the other little boys. “Miserable dumbledores!” “Right, William, and so they be–miserable dumbledores!” said the choir with unanimity.

At the same time, the village has a new schoolmistress, Miss Fancy Day, daughter to a wealthy local farmer. As the quire perform their annual Christmas carrolling one of its youngest members, Dick Dewy, sees her and falls immediately in love. She’s pretty, spirited, has some measure of refinement and is every inch the desirable catch. So desirable in fact that Dick isn’t the only one with an eye on her. There’s another farmer who has considerably more money and position than Dick, and who is therefore a better match, and that new vicar is in need of a wife too. Can Dick win Miss Day’s heart, and if so can he keep it? It doesn’t help that Miss Day turns out to be something of a flirt…

The romance is at the forefront of the novel, but the looming obsolescence of the choir is never far away either. Miss Day you see will be the new organist. The vicar and Miss Day are modern, forward looking, bringing new ideas and new fashions (some shocking – a hat in church!) to Mellstock. Against that what chance have a group of old men with their fading traditions and battered instruments?

Looking at what I’ve written what strikes me is how dark this novel could have been. It isn’t at all. The quire make their case for survival, but they understand that times change and they’re not resentful men. Dick has rivals better placed than him to win Miss Day, but he’s a sound lad and not daunted. Miss Day hasn’t perhaps the most constant of hearts, and is perhaps overprone to vanity, but there’s no real harm in her. This is an extraordinarily affectionate work in which there is drama, yes, but a very gentle drama. Things may change, are changing, but Mellstock will remain.

Part of what makes Under the Greenwood Tree such a joy is Hardy’s slyly humorous prose. Dick is a young man “consisting chiefly of a human skeleton and a smock-frock, who was very awkward in his movements, apparently on account of having grown so very fast that before he had had time to get used to his height he was higher.” After he falls in love with Miss Day:

It followed that, as the spring advanced, Dick walked abroad much more frequently than had hitherto been usual with him, and was continually finding that his nearest way to or from home lay by the road which skirted the garden of the school.

There’s some lovely character humour within the quire, as well as comic interplay between wives and husbands. I loved too a throwaway line when a man is late for his wedding due to some honey bees suddenly swarming – “Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment; but a swarm o’ bees won’t come for the asking.” Everything is a chance for comedy, from the quire’s debate with the vicar as they argue for more time to a country dance where Dick desperately tries to get as many dances with Fancy as propriety permits (and certainly more than his main rival).

Finally, it almost goes without saying that Hardy is a master at portraying nature itself. The novel follows the seasons, from Winter through to Winter and on to Spring again (and if you’re reading this because you’ve been set this book at school and found this blog looking for something to crib off, do look at how Hardy uses seasonal and weather imagery to underline the progress of the plot and character emotions, easy marks). Here’s one final quote:

The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves;

Isn’t that lovely? The whole book’s lovely, though with sufficient notes of melancholic ambiguity to prevent it becoming oversweet. If you find yourself, as I did when I picked this up, in need of a book that’s well written but in which nothing bad can truly happen (and however robust we may be, we all at times need a little escape) this couldn’t be a better choice. My wife (naturally), Emma, and Guy were all right. Hardy deserves reading.

Update: Emma of bookaroundthecorner posted a review of this the same day I did (unfortunately I accidentally deleted her pingback). Her review is, as ever, excellent and well worth reading - particularly for how it brings out the novel’s musical themes. Emma’s review is here.

a singular air of reluctance or compulsion

Three Ghost Stories, by Charles Dickens

I’ve always had a rather mixed view of Charles Dickens. He can create memorable characters, make a story rattle along, bring scenes to vivid life, but he’s also frequently maudlin and I’ve read more than one book by him that could have used a severe editorial pruning. When I reviewed Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger I described it as Dickensian, that wasn’t wholly a compliment.

A little while back though Sarah at A Rat in the Book Pile reviewed Dickens’ short story The Signal Man. It’s a story I already knew from a BBC Christmas adaptation, but Sarah made a good case for the original and I’m a sucker for a good ghost story. And after all, was there ever a better time and place for spooks than Victorian England?

One of the advantages of owning a kindle is easy access to classic fiction. I downloaded Three Ghost Stories, and recently wanting a lighter read thought it the perfect time to indulge in these frock-coated frights.

There are (as the title rather suggests) three stories in this collection. The Signal Man, The Haunted House and finally The Trial for Murder. Sarah was right. The Signal Man is a great short story.

The Signal Man draws on a classic piece of folklore, the premonitory haunting: a spirit which brings forewarning of death or calamity. A retired traveller comes across a railway cutting, “as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw”, and shouts a greeting to the signal man working down below. The signal man starts in fear, but eventually calls his visitor down to join him where he explains what it was that made him so frightened by a cheery greeting.

Here the visitor descends almost literally into the underworld:

On either side a dripping wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky: the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in which massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.

I won’t give too much away. The signal man thinks himself haunted by a figure that appears to him presaging disaster on his line – a rail crash, a terrible accident. Only he can see this figure, and so only he receives these dire and useless portents. What can you do with the knowledge that something awful will happen, but no knowledge of what exactly it will be?

Dickens leaves open the possibility of psychological explanation, but for me this worked best in a more literal fashion. Premonitory apparitions are a big feature of the folklore of the British isles. One example that springs to mind are washer women seen by travellers, who on greeting are discovered to be washing blood out of clothes and the sighting of whom foretells a death in the traveller’s own family. The signal man is cursed with valueless prophecy.

Of course the figure reappears. What disaster is it foretelling this time? For that you’ll need to read the story, and it’s worth reading because it’s an absolute gem and I agree with Sarah entirely that it shows none of the faults of Dickens’ longer works.

Where The Signal Man showed all Dickens’ strengths and none of his weaknesses, The Haunted House balanced the books by showing him at his worst. It starts promisingly enough, with a narrator whose “health required a temporary residence in the country” – doesn’t it always in these tales? There’s a nice bit of satire as the narrator travels by train to the house where the mystery will unfold and while travelling meets a spiritualist who boasts of his high connections in the unseen world:

There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.” Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. “I am glad to see you, amico. Come sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio!” In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, “Bubler,” for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.

When the story gets to the actual haunted house though it wanders off in endless and very laboured comic digressions, ultimately sputtering out in a dismally sentimental conclusion. One of the other advantages of the kindle is you can make notes directly against the text. At the end of this one I wrote “flabby and dull”, after deleting my initial comment which was a lot ruder.

Finally comes The Murder Trial, which is a predictable and uninteresting story of how a jury foreman finds himself the only man at a trial who can see the murder victim’s ghost, attending and influencing events. I don’t have any quotes from this one, the whole thing was too dull for any to stand out.

So, three ghost stories. The second story is terrible, the third just utterly mediocre, but the first wouldn’t be out of place in an MR James collection and when it comes to supernatural short stories there simply isn’t higher praise.