Tower of London 2

Hopefully this will go quickly, as I am not as fired up to write about this book as I was last week. On the other hand, I have been having a lot of problems with computer 'errors' and so on in the field where you write these posts which is hindering my effort so far this week.

I am going to skip over a bunch of passages regarding architectural details of the tower, the inscriptions left on the walls by numerous of its doomed inmates, including the Duke of Northumberland, many of which can still be seen today, and numerous poignant thoughts that might effect a sensitive tourist while wondering the grounds, particularly at certain times of the day. I found them to be not unenjoyable, however.

On Lady Jane, preparing her soul for her imminent execution: "...anxious as she was to obtain the queen's forgiveness, she could not purchase it at the price of her salvation...", i.e., by renouncing Anglicanism for Rome. Not that it does not make perfect sense that the Church of England is the surest way to the Christian Heaven while there is no greater abomination to the same than professing adherence to the teaching of Catholicism.

p. 208, a prisoner thrown into a pit is devoured by rats in an especially gruesome scene. When I was in New York City in April, my unfortunate wife had a large and muscular rat brush against her leg as it rushed past while sitting on a bench in Central Park. It was, I gather, a feeling equally gross and disturbing, and I think it put a damper on the trip for her.

"Ever brooding upon the atrocious action he was about to commit, he succeeded in persuading himself, by that pernicious process of reasoning by which religious enthusiasts so often delude themselves into the commission of crime, that it was not only justifiable, but meritorious." Refers to a character who attempted to assassinate Queen Mary.

While Ainsworth was, at least as far as the most serious people are concerned, a failed author, he seems not to have been a failed person. The persona and mind that he reveals in his book are, if not unique or great, at least seem capable and worthy of participating in and appreciating many of the better aspects of human existence. Most people cannot even get to that level.

"In swordsmanship, horsemanship, and all matters connected with the business of war, he was, as may be supposed, eminently skilful." Sir Thomas Wyat of Allingham Castle in Kent, the son of the poet. A man worthy of emulation, by all appearances.

p. 282 "But that which imparted the almost angelic character to her features, was their expression of perfect purity, unalloyed by any taint of earth. What with her devotional observances, and her intellectual employments, the mind had completely asserted its dominion over the body; and her seraphic looks and beauty almost realised the Catholic notion of a saint." I was momentarily carried away with emotion, and scribbled in the margin: "Oh Lady Jane! How we wanted you at SJC and shall never get your like!"

The manipulations of manifold insidious Catholics were skillfully written, enough to make me hate them too.

"I know Elizabeth too well to believe for a moment she could abandon her faith". Lady Jane is beginning to resemble my wife in the extent of her dedication to defying popery.

"'My project once carried, and Philip united to Mary,' he muttered to himself, 'we will speedily cudgel these stubborn English bull-dogs into obedience.'" Sinister Renard!

The importance of romance in political affairs during aristocratic eras is beneficial for artistic plotting and themes.

On a related note, I always love it in this class of novels when people step out from behind the arras after eavesdropping on a secret and vital conversation. This trick is used on several occasions in this book. It provides some kind of dopamine rush, replenishing our sense that we are engaging with the mainstream of old European literature and history, which we like, and I suspect the author had enough sense to know this. This is why it is for me not bad to read such books as this on occasion.

"Her courage never for one instant forsook her, and her spirit and resolution sustained the wavering minds of her adherents." Queen Mary. This guy does like to suck up to royalty.

The scene where the giants/rebels are throwing their enemies off bridges and parading around with heads on stakes was rather gruesome.

It is all fun because we are so knowing where religion is concerned. And I am in that knowing group, whether I really want to be or not.

I'll have to check out making a visit to Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, which received an odd personal plug in the middle of the headlong rush to the climax ("...still in the possession of his lineal descendant, the present Sir Henry Bedingfield, and one of the noblest mansions in the county"). I wonder what homage Ainsworth owed Sir Henry.

Oxburgh Hall is currently a National Trust affiliated property. 

"Renard followed, and beheld the fugitive speeding across the nave of Saint John's Chapel, and without regarding Wolfytt, who was lying on the floor, bleeding profusely, he continued the pursuit." Renard himself had set Wolfytt on the fugitive. Needless to say, Renard is the best character in the book.

"Here, besides the ill-fated and illustrious lady whose history forms the subject of this chronicle, was confined the lovely and, perhaps guiltless, Anne Boleyn." I like the "perhaps".

"'Do not question the purposes of the Unquestionable, Angela,' replied Jane, severely." I have to admit I have never liked this literary custom of chastising people who express sorrow over your imminent death for ostensibly religious reasons, especially when the person you are addressing is obviously simple-minded. If you are surrounded by your supposed philosopher friends, whom you have put to many rigorous tests for the purpose of rooting out mush-headedness over the years, a la Socrates, maybe that is a different story.

Though a less than stellar novel, it is still one of those books where it was a little sad when the characters' stories began to be wrapped up. Every somewhat personable book finished past a certain age--around 33 in my case--takes on the character of a bunch of mini-deaths, especially when you know you will never read them again. Of course this relates to all manner of other things, cities, restaurants, activities, as one's experiences with them clearly begin to wind down or perhaps are a one time occasion. I did not feel this way about things when I was in my 20s. I knew when I graduated from a school or had to return home from overseas that a certain part of my life was coming to an end, but I expected that other things equally important, and in which I would be more important than I had been theretofore, still awaited me. Needless to say I do not feel this anymore.

I end by giving you an excerpt from the charming song that the executioner sings:

"Queen Catherine Howard gave me a fee,--
A chain of gold--to die easily:
And her costly present she did not rue,
For I touched her head, and away it flew!"

Even though I have been to London 3 times in my hilarious life, I have never visited the Tower, which has a fearsome reputation for being expensive, crowded, and woefully uncool to boot, but I think if I ever go back I will have to confess my colossal unimaginativeness to the world and go see it.

The Tower of London--William Harrison Ainsworth (1840)

I am still intending to catch up on my reading list without wasting all of my marvelous notes. I now have a set of five mostly little-remembered English novels from approximately 1820-1850. I thought to dash these all off in one post, but I seemed to have a lot to to say about the first of these books, the prolific William Harrison Ainsworth's historical novel The Tower of London, which was concerned with the saga of Lady Jane Grey and Mary Tudor, though of course so much time has passed (I began the book March 18, 2009) that I don't remember much of the story, which was 455 pages and probably took me at least a month to read.

Ainsworth wrote 40 novels, and was one of the best selling writers of the Victorian period. He was good friends with Dickens and worked with or was well-known to most of the cosmopolitan literary figures of the time. He threw a dinner party to celebrate the success of the Tower of London that still is considered a noteworthy event in the social history of English literature. The Tower has usually been considered his best book, followed perhaps by Old St Paul's: A Tale of the Plague and Fire of London, which came out the following year. He was 35 and 36 at that peak, though his career would continue for another forty years. Other titles include Windsor Castle (1843), and "The Lancashire novels", The Lancashire Witches (1848), Guy Fawkes (1841), and Preston Fight, or The Insurrection of 1715 (1875). Also notable was Mervyn Clitheroe (1857) in which, according to the introduction to the 1909 Everyman edition "Mr W.E.A. Axton says that (Ainsworth) has left...an accurate picture of the life of the ('famous old Manchester Grammar School') at that time." His fame and his books were already falling into obscurity within a few years of his death, though the authors of the GRE Literature exam are at least familiar enough with him to list one of his titles as a possible (though wrong) answer on their practice tests.

I enjoyed the book reasonably enough at the time I read it, though Ainsworth was subject to almost all of the conventional characteristics and attitudes held by the writers of his day, and lacked any distinctive strengths. As I say, I remember hardly anything of the book, though I am going to go over my copious notes and see what I had to say at the time:

1. "The austere course of life prescribed to, and pursued by, the fathers of the Reformed Church, had stamped itself in lines of unusual severity on their countenances." Page 5. A typical sentence. I noted that 'I hope this is supposed to be comedy'.

2. On page 8 we get our first sinister foreigners, a couple of French ambassadors who pepper their discourses with "Mortdieu!"s and "Pardieu!"s.

3. The speculation that Edward VI was poisoned by Lady Jane Grey's father, the Duke of Northumberland, was naturally incorporated into the story. I had not been familiar with this theory previously, which is well known among people who approach English history from the romantic standpoint, though I do not have the impression that it holds much weight or interest with real historians.

4. "Jane mentally ejaculated...'Whatever betide me, Heaven grant that that noble pile may never again be polluted by the superstitious ceremonies and idolatries of Rome!' Talking about the old (pre-fire) St Paul's Cathedral. Also another characteristic sentence.

5. p. 42 "Can it be possible you are the same Jane whom I left--all love, all meekness, all compliance--or have a few hours of rule so changed your nature that you no longer love me as heretofore?" You got it, dog.

6. The book is full of real men who not merely escape confinement, but burst chains in rage at the thought of another man possessing their lovers.

7. p.66 Another lament about the loss of Old St. Paul's ('the heaviest...sustained by the metropolis in the great fire"). It would be the topic of his next book as well.

8. p. 81 A tour of the bodies deposited in the grounds of the tower brings up Thomas More, of whom we are told "his body was afterwards removed, at the intercession of his daughter, Margaret Roper (played by the delectable Susannah York in the film A Man For All Seasons), to Chelsea." The consensus in the case seems to be that Margaret rescued her father's head, which by custom would have been pitched into the river after its ------cision from the body, and had it buried with herself in Chelsea Old Church, though both Margaret's remains and St Thomas's head have since been removed to St Dunstan's in Canterbury. The specific location of the rest of Thomas More's body is unknown but is assumed to be within the Tower grounds, and there is a memorial to him now in the Church of St Peter-ad-Vincula therein. The details of the remains of very ancient famous people especially are a subject of great matter with me. The reasons for this have to do with feelings and my sense of estrangement from everything, history, the physical world, learning, etc, and are not interesting. One's head must have some facts and dim line of thought to follow in it.

9. The book does not really explain why Popish Mary was so wanted by most of the populace, including the influential classes. I presume it was to avoid wars of legitimacy.

10. p.128 "Though a contrary opinion is generally entertained, Mary was not without some pretension to beauty."

11. pp. 129-30 Assessment of Elizabeth's hotness (with a further note by me in parentheses. 'Michele?' What does that mean?). "In personal attractions the Princess Elizabeth far surpassed her sister. She was then in the bloom of youth, and though she could scarcely be termed positively beautiful, she had a very striking appearance, being tall, portly, with bright blue eyes, and exquisitely formed hands, which she took great pains to display."

12. p.133 "The sun poured down its rays upon the ancient fortress, which had so lately opened its gates to an usurper, but which now like a heartless rake had cast off one mistress to take another."

13. p.143  M. Dulaire, quoted, in his description of the Grand Chatelet at Paris: "every old building, the origin of which is buried in obscurity, is attributed to Caesar or the devil." The witty French.

14. In 1241, the 'citizens of London' protested expansion of the Tower/prison. They weren't fools, but of course they were stearolled anyway.

15. "Edward the Second commanded the sherriffs of London to pay the keeper of his lions sixpence a-day for their food, and three half-pence a day for the man's own diet..."

16. The citizens protest the gallows erected by Edward IV, circa 1465. He was also all business, however.

In keeping with my goal of posting at least something every week, I will stop here and break this edifying visit into the romantic past into multiple parts.