Commonplace Book

'Mr Hubert Byrrh was seldom seen in London. He was one of those long, grey, ageless, and sardonic-looking men with slightly projecting teeth who give you the impression that they know a thing or two - two at most - and would very much rather not know any more.'

from Confessions of a Naturalized Englishman, a piece in Babes in the Wood by Michael Arlen

The History of Sir Richard Calmady by Lucas Malet (1901)

Now I can guess why Malet's last two novels were of her shorter, more pointed variety. This one was in the offing as the latest of her broad, sprawling pieces which alternated between the shorter ones, but it was so much longer, double the length of anything she had previously attempted. Presumably this took loads of her brainspace, and much more refining and working up led to the delay; it also has all the hallmarks of a magnum opus, where cumulation was intended to make her points sing at quite a significantly higher pitch. It was so long that it made two volumes in Britain. It is a singular and evocative piece. It starts as the story of a great love in exalted circles just as Victoria is ascending the throne. But the Calmadys are posited as a blighted race, where an ancient misdemeanour has brought ill-luck raining down in the form of early death in the main male line. Richard Calmady the elder is the hero-lover dream of his beautiful young wife, Katherine, herself a scion of an equivalent heritage, the Ormistons, whose main residence is in the north. She and Richard settle at Brockhurst, the family seat in the Calmady homelands, which appear to be concentrated around eastern Berkshire and northern Hampshire. Katherine becomes pregnant, and joy seems all-availing. Then the family curse is realised: Richard is fatally injured in a riding accident. Katherine is devastated and has the horse involved shot on the lawns of the house as a kind of emotional revenge on life. Her son is duly born, and it seems that the curse has visited again. He is severely physically disabled in the sense that his legs are very curtailed. This devastates Katherine a second time, and all of her extreme emotion and need for love is channelled into this younger Richard, who is our man, the eponymous hero. This is a significant fact in itself, a flag that this novel can wave to accord it a place in history. It must be one of the first treatments of disability in a modern sense in fiction, and Richard Calmady is almost definitely the first 'positive' main character to have these traits. We travel with him through an overprotected youth and his emergence into the full inheritance of the title. One of the key experiences of his childhood is a humiliation which comes at the hands of a young girl, friend to a cousin, who is very pretty, quite pert. Helen seems at first to be friendly, and Richard is taken with her, starts to trust her, only to find a little while later that she has none of the fellow-feeling that he was imagining. Her mocking laughter haunts him, and hurts him badly, but he can't help some residual fascination at her prettiness and bright strength, laced with fear though it may be. Later in life, on the verge of Richard's full adulthood, they meet again and achieve an adult rapprochement. Helen, now Madame de Vallorbes, married to a philandering Frenchman, becomes Richard's ideal of enticing womanhood, and she is also taken with him, loving the power she has over him. One night an overprotective Katherine discovers them with Helen draped over Richard, obviously about to consummate their desires. Katherine and Helen have a tough stand-off, and Helen leaves. This keeps Richard fascinated and starts for him a sense of frustration, only too easily encourageable given his physical limitations. Slowly he disengages from his mother, bleak-mindedly believing that he is made to suffer and has been deluding himself with any notion that the world is a good place. Eventually he leaves to pursue wine, women and song via extensive travels on his personal yacht. Four years later, Richard is in Naples, having enjoyed himself to the hilt courtesy of the family's great wealth. He and Helen have kept in touch by letter. She is blasted with boredom by her fatuous French writer lover, and escapes to Italy. She comes to the villa where Richard is staying, and decides that the time has finally come for them to pursue what has been in abeyance for so long. It finally happens, but Richard's response is unusual - I feel a little limitingly so. He turns from her, almost as though her sexual availability has disgusted him. Now, if he had caroused as Malet implies, I think the likelihood of this reaction is a great deal lessened. Yes, I guess she could be an ideal which couldn't survive reality. But, somehow, this plot bend doesn't seem to work. He shuns her, and a major crisis is precipitated in his life. The sensuous life he has lived is proved not to be the answer. He gets dangerously ill at the same time. At a night at the opera, a wildly ego-hurt Helen, now returned to her lover, makes sure that Richard receives a punch which sends him flying. This proves the turning point. His mother comes to Naples, having had word that he may not survive, to nurse him. With her is a fairly constant companion, a toughly independent young woman, a distant cousin or niece, who was Helen's friend in childhood (and into adulthood) and witness to Richard's humiliation. Honoria is a very vital character, 'not the marrying sort', who wants to be understood for her intelligence and capability. Proto-feminist indeed: another pennant added to this novel's flagpole. She has been consistently wary of Richard, fighting between a sense of shying away from his disability and a sense of irritation with his arrogance as an adult. Richard and she have never 'clicked', but, all the same, she has always been of sterling support to Katherine, her special favourite 'aunt', and her feelings are reciprocated. Against all odds, Richard survives. Back at Brockhurst, after years overseas, he locks himself away, completely uninvolved with the running of the estate, which used to be a specially loved skill. In his absence, Honoria has assited Katherine in running things, and now does so again when she can. Richard, led by the family chaplain, starts researching the family curse. The chaplain, Julius March, recognises that something he found in the library long ago, when he first came to the family, must now be revealed. A chap-book relates in medieval verse the 'vulgar story' of family shame, the resulting accursedness, and the prophecy of a 'Child of Promise' that will come to restore the family good. This development is perhaps the novel's weakest juncture; the vulgarity is not explicated, and the superstition somewhat ridiculous. We are clearly meant to understand that Richard, in all his imperfection, is the chosen one - in fact, I'm surprised that this piece wasn't named The Child of Promise; I wonder what led Malet away from that title? Anyway, somehow, we never really understand how, as it's not strictly possible, Richard's mind changes. He begins to think of emergence from his self-imposed exile, and having rejoined the family circle, much to Katherine's delight, begins to think of others, rejecting his former selfishness. A young local lad of the estate is maimed dreadfully by being dragged through a machine, and this terrible event inspires Richard to start a house near one of the villages for all the 'imperfect people' like himself, hoping that its first inhabitant will be this young fellow. The boy dies, but Richard's dream doesn't. In a moment of inspiration and unusual warmth and intensity he shares it with Honoria, who is staying for a few days before she goes off to chaperone a silly young relative who needs a steady hand to avoid disaster. Honoria is astonished that this man from whom she has shied in both disgust and annoyance now shows this unselfishness and human feeling. In a long penultimate chapter of great beauty and very well wound-up spiralling intensity, Malet shows a revolution come over Honoria as she realises that not only can she now respect this damaged, 'damaged' man, but that she can love him. Despite the brilliance of this chapter, and indeed several at heightened moments before it, where Malet is able to pull focus in and pinpoint storms of concentrated feeling in waves of recognisable force, this conclusion finally feels unsupported psychologically. I can't find the place in my mind where Richard and Honoria's personalities could easily meet, and that sense of mutual satisfaction arise which would make this real. So, ultimately I think this is an extraordinary reading experience, mainly as a result of the power of the wordsmithing, though this is a little Jamesian and wordily cluttered sometimes. But this greater power is put to the use of a plot and psychology of character which is not quite so deeply efficacious, and which has occasional strong faultlines; a heady admixture.