Where Warwick Makes the Kings

The last of the barons by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazing book. Definitely 5 stars.

Bulwer-Lytton tells the story here of Richard Nevile, the Kingmaker, known better as Earl Warwick, and his support for King Edward that turned to rebellion against him. There's a huge cast, including the king and his family, Warwick's family and many relatives, the deposed King Henry's family and allies in France, along with many named servants, middle-class merchants, peasants, soldiers, and so on. The most sympathetic characters for me were a poor young woman of noble blood, Sybil, and her scholarly father, along with a goldsmith relative of Warwick's who fell in love with the young woman. Another Nevile in the story is Sir Marmaduke, a rustic warrior who becomes a stalwart defender of Warwick, his relative, and though he's sometimes a figure of fun, he eventually makes himself a hero. (He reminds me of the Sir Duncan character in the Game of Thrones spinoff called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms--honest but dumb. Same guy.) But the bigger story is how Warwick worked to uphold Edward IV's reign until the king dishonored his daughter, turning Warwick against him, leading to the back-and-forth of kings and supporters of York and Lancaster that marked the midpoint in the War of the Roses.

(The ending comes later, about 15 years after the novel, with Edward's brother Richard, known before as Gloucester, and the last of the York lineage falling to the Tudors.)

The prose here is dense, more elevated and complex even than Sir Walter Scott (who I also love), and many years ago I would have passed on this book, but if you can get into the rhythm of this kind of 19th century storytelling, it's great. Here's a typical passage, where a leading rebel from the peasant class lays out the complaints against the government of Edward of York:

With clear precision, in indignant, but not declamatory eloquence, he painted the disorders of the time: the insolent exactions of the hospitals and abbeys; the lawless violence of each petty baron; the weakness of the royal authority in restraining oppression; its terrible power in aiding the oppressor. He accumulated instance on instance of misrule; he showed the insecurity of property; the adulteration of the coin; the burden of the imposts; he spoke of wives and maidens violated; of industry defrauded; of houses forcibly entered; of barns and granaries despoiled; of the impunity of all offenders, if high-born; of the punishment of all complaints, if poor and lowly.

This passage also clarifies one of the major themes of the book, which is that the people suffered under unchecked barons, and they hoped that a more centralized government under a stronger monarchy would rein them in. (It was a pretty dream.) In places, the tone is lighter, even playful, and in others we see characters speaking in the courtly language of the time, with knights trying to win fair ladies or courtiers trying to influence the king. But there's also a lot of direct action, including battle but not exclusively so, forcibly rendered. The last 10% of the book is Edward's campaign to take back his kingdom, which ends with a long, vivid description of the Battle of Barnet in 1471, when the Kingmaker, Warwick, and his brother, Montagu, are both killed, ending the rebellion. (Sorry! Spoilers!)

Bulwer-Lytton famously started another novel with the words "It was a dark and stormy night." That language has made him an object of fun, but anyone who read this book--with its excellent research, scholarly footnotes, and brilliant plotting over the length of about 250,000 words--would maybe reconsider their opinion.

I loved it. Fantastic historical novel. Recommended.

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Where Lady Jane Grey Falls to Queen Mary

The Tower of London by William Harrison Ainsworth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Tower of London, published in 1840, is a medieval romance historical fiction novel set in 1553, and virtually all action takes place at the castle in the title. It is written in the high ornate style of the time, very similar to the tone and style of Sir Walter Scott, and it compares favorably with his writing. I liked it. It's very entertaining, full of lots of surprises, and informative. A great deal of it is fiction (I mean, there are ghosts), but there's a lot of concrete factual information found here, too, and it was an education.

From the title, it is clear that Ainsworth is partly telling the story of a place. In the same way that Hugo, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, incorporated direct instruction into the layout of Paris and especially the famous cathedral, Ainsworth takes pains to instruct the reader in the various towers, throne rooms, dungeons, and other buildings on the site of the Tower of London. In fact, it becomes obvious that some of the action is included just so that he has an excuse to lead us to another interesting chamber. He literally stops telling the story to describe the construction and history of each location, directly addressing the reader. It is less distracting than it sounds; I found it mostly quaint.

His second purpose in the novel is to give us the story of Lady Jane Grey. The story begins with her arrival at the Tower as a new queen and follows her and those around her to the day of her death on the scaffold. (Sorry--spoiler.) The author is a gifted historian but also a gifted storyteller, and he supplies the reader with a lot of speculation, private conversation, intrigue, and invention to fill in the blank parts of the record. In addition to the main story of plotters and ambassadors and soldiers, he tells the story of many lesser characters in the castle, including their drinking and feasting and fighting and laughing. His favorites are three giants (supposedly bastards of Henry the VII) and a little person named Xit who is combative and proud, all of whom the author had enormous affection for. (Xit is like a smaller and even more foolish Falstaff who is more fortunate in his friends than the doomed Shakespeare character and lands on his feet after making a fool of himself, eventually receiving a knighthood.) The feasts are described in probably too much detail, but you know how they love their food in tales of the time.

Lady Jane Grey is made sympathetic, and even though you know perfectly well what's gonna happen to her, it's hard not to hope something will intervene. Queen Mary comes off as, well, bloody and vindictive, though not completely, and Elizabeth is treated as kinda complicit and kinda manipulated--but lucky. The men around these women are all ambitious and don't have enough sense to quit destroying themselves and everyone who loves them. Now, that sounds horrible, but the mix of melodrama and comedy and, here and there, gothic romance keeps the story from being too much of any one thing. Some folks won't like that; I did.

Again, those who liked anything by Hugo or Dumas or Scott are likely to find the writing of Ainsworth--language, plotting, characters, themes--similar enough to see a lot to like in this or another of his novels. Anyway, I did.

Recommended.

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