Give us more saintly orphans: Ursule Mirouët and the hazards of good breeding

Ursule Mirouët

By Honoré Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Project Gutenberg

By Comrade Reviewer Marienka


Whenever you encounter a book with an orphan, particularly a saintly one, you can be fairly certain you are on to a good thing. Why? Orphans sell books.  We identify with orphans.  In our childhood, many of us cast ourselves in the leading role of saintly orphan.  Some of us even reach adulthood believing we are saintly orphans. And if we can't quite summon up the necessary assurance that we are saintly orphans, we can turn to excellent literature, not to mention Disney movies, to satisfy our deep inward need to be saintly orphans.


Consider the case of Little Nell of Old Curiosity Shop fame. So saintly and beleaguered was she that droves of demented American fans stormed the harbor when the ship carrying the last installment of The Old Curiosity Shop pulled in—all of them shouting to the sailors, “Is Little Nell dead?”[1]  And that was before the age of midnight media-staged releases of Harry Potter—another orphan of note. The only close competitor to the saintly orphan is the saintly and faithful dog.  Put the two together and you've got midnight madness at the rapidly vanishing bookstores. Even Oscar Wilde, who famously declared, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing,” would probably agree.[2]



Let's face it; almost everyone loves an orphan except the villainous characters in the book who connive with one another as to the best way to destroy the orphan and/or that orphan's saintliness. But whatever the advantages of being a dead saintly orphan are, live saintly orphans are more satisfying, particularly if the villainous characters gnash their teeth in the end and cry “Curses! Foiled again.”


Ursule Mirouët eponymous heroine of Balzac's novel is a saintly orphan of the first order.  A orphan with a complicated history-the legitimate daughter of her godfather's illegitimate brother-in-law, Ursule becomes the ward and goddaughter of her uncle, Dr. Mirouët, a wealthy widower who offers the infant Ursule a home, promptly names her after his saintly dead wife and retires to Nemours, a small provincial town outside Paris where a host of his relatives live-relatives who are neither saintly nor virtuous.  Ursule's arrival upsets their great expectations of inheriting beaucoup d'argent, a fact that makes them gnash what teeth they have and begin plotting.


In the meantime, the good Dr. Mirouët raises Ursule in virtuous and innocent isolation from the evils of the world.  In this task, he is aided by his good friend the Abbé Chaperon, so saintly that his breeches are mostly on the verge of falling down because he has sold the buckles keeping them in place to aid the poor.  “A beautiful naïveté,” the narrator informs us.  Monsieur Jordy, “a Voltairean nobleman and an old bachelor,” joins the good doctor and the abbé in bringing up baby.  All these benevolent gentlemen function as Ursule “three mothers.”


Virtue, piety, and the protection of a wealthy uncle would seem to guarantee an easy life for Ursule, but the vagaries of French law concerning inheritance and illegitimacy and the cursed relatives threaten Ursule's peace . . . or would if she were wicked. 


First published in 1842, Ursule Mirouët is an obscure novel but one that Balzac described as “the finest work [he] had written” thus far.[3] As the omniscient narrator remarks, “Bless them, therefore, and be not envious; seek an Ursule for yourselves a young girl brought up by three old men, and by the best of all mothers-adversity.” Read it and judge for yourself. Remember.  We saintly orphans must stick together.

Works Cited

Schlicke, Paul, ed. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. [1] [2]

Balzac, Honoré de. The Letters of Honoré de Balzac to Madame Hanska. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1900. [3]

Finding the shortest way to Hades

By Sarah Caudwell
Dell, 1995

320 pages

By Comrade Reviewer Marienka

Sarah Caudwell's name is probably a familiar one for those who enjoy witty murder mysteries. However, for rest of you, here’s a brief history of Sarah Caudwell. First of all, she’s dead—she’s been sick for quite a long time as we say in the south. Before she died, she hung out at the Chancery Bar, not to be confused with Chancery’s Bar and Grill, and hobnobbed with all the Lincoln Inn nobs (i.e., barristers). She specialized in tax law and wrote four mystery novels: The Shortest Way to Hades, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, The Sibyl in Her Grave, and The Sirens Sang of Murder.

On my bookshelf, I find only three of the novels listed here. Perhaps the fourth was purloined, or perhaps I have been hanging out at Chancery’s Bar a wee bit too long. Whatever. Yesterday I decided to take The Shortest Way to Hades since many of my Tea Partying neighbors suggested that would be a good place for me to spend my Thanksgiving vacation. Herewith follows my experience.

Based on hearsay, which appears to be reliable in this case, one Hilary Tamar narrates, investigates, and generally provides services as Johnny on the spot in all of Caudwell's novels. When not engaged in the aforementioned, Tamar teaches law or something like that at St. George’s College, Oxford. If you can’t find her there, check all the pubs, bars, and restaurants in the area. Before she died, Caudwell did not see fit to reveal Professor Tamar’s gender; however, based on all available evidence it appears Tamar is either male or female. I myself tend to think of Tamar as male, so I will refer to him as such for the remainder of this epistle. If anyone wishes to take issue with or umbrage at my designation, please feel free to comment. Currently, I can be found at a little cafe in Soho—The Virago Naughty Room—eating figs and hanging out under the name of G. Saunders.

But I digress. On to The Shortest Way to Hades. The charm of Caudwell’s novel lies not in the plot (someone is murdered, a usual occurrence in mystery novels I am told), but in the wit. Professor Tamar is no prude although he does have a slight bias against Cambridge and considers all its graduates educationally deficient. Other than this normal fellow feeling toward a rival university, Tamar is quite likeable and disarming—a talent that serves him well in his investigations, in this case the murder of one Deidre Robinson, who lacks the good fortune of being an heiress, beautiful, or even nice. Her cousin Camilla, who possesses all three charming qualities, affectionately refers to her as Dreary, a nickname that helps remind the reader of Dreary’s shortcomings—useful as she dies shortly after a brief and unpleasant appearance in chapter one.

Since no one has any motive for murdering Dreary, one might conclude that one can pack up the book and head elsewhere. Indeed, early on the wily Professor Tamar informs his less credulous colleagues that no murder has occurred. But murder will out . . . and as my dear readers should have surmised mysterious accidents that bear a distinct resemblance to attempted murder start popping out all over the place. Eventually everyone is nearly murdered except, of course, the murderer. And that is all I can say. Although I do not generally care for mysteries, I give this one my hearty recommendation. I shortly expect to witness the death of Adonis and even as I write I hear sirens singing of murder.

Earnest silliness, high seriousness in Illyria

By Ann Bridge
Virago Press, 1990
353 pages

By Comrade Reviewer Marienka

Setting

Illyrian Spring . . . oh to be in Illyria during this long dark tea time of the soul. Doubtless, some of you are wondering, “where the heck is Illyria?” A good question. Illyria in this particular work refers to the first “Yugo-slavia” or perhaps the Republic of Ragusa, now Croatia (the author uses both terms interchangeably). Most of the action takes place in and around the city of Ragusa or Dubrovnik as it is known now.

So much for setting. On to more important issues, such as time, plot, characters, theme, and symbolism (not discussed here) and anything else inquiring minds want to know.

Time

A little vague. After WWI but before WWII. More about this issue to come.

Plot

Lady Kilmartin, internationally renowned painter and unappreciated wife of Sir Walter Kilmartin an equally renowned economist, decides she has had it with her unappreciative family, kicks up her heels and heads for Greece to paint and consider whether her marriage is over. Before she reaches Greece, she meets Nicholas Humphries, a frustrated painter (his family wants him to be an architect) sixteen years her junior. Things happen. They always do. The denouement is reached and the resolution . . . resolved. But . . . in the meantime, pressing questions arise: Can an attractive older woman and a much younger man with “groggy digestion” find true love? What about Professor Halther, the older sophisticated philosopher and general dispenser of wisdom? Will he become a competitor for the lovelorn Lady K.’s attention? Will Lady K. succumb to “the most insistent feelings of all, those which the body imposes on us whether we will or no”? Will Walter run off with Rose, an extremely intelligent but overweight economist? And that most pressing of all questions, will anyone make it to Greece? If I thought it would be good for you, I would answer these questions that undoubtedly keep the inquiring minds of inquiring readers in a tizzy. However, the Dark Tea Times frowns upon spoilers, so you will either have to read the book or apply your Sherlockian powers of deduction.

I must confess I initially was not a sympathetic reader. In fact for the first three hundred pages of the novel, I wanted to smack the living daylights out of Lady K. She is talented, intelligent, and kind, so why does she let people walk all over her (or snitty readers fantasize about smacking sense into her)? However, the last 100 pages redeemed the first 300 pages. Ordinarily, I do not give redemption much time; but redemption as used in this book  reflects the central arguments taken up in two texts I have read recently: Nocola Humble's The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism and Elizabeth Maslen's Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1958. Both writers deal with roughly the same time period, and both want to restore “neglected women” writers to a position of respect; however, each approaches her subject from a slightly different perspective. After WWI, Humble argues, the old categories of class and gender began to break down. The feminine middlebrow novel provided a safe, comfortable space for women to explore new possibilities about work, family, and gender relations. Additionally, as the old normative notions of class collapsed, these novels provided an education in “good taste” and allowed women a space in which to flirt safely with bohemianism and alternative lifestyles. Maslen takes a slightly different approach, arguing that these novels fall squarely with the modernist project and tackle not only the issues Humble addresses but also more serious political issues such as war and fascism. In this regard, Illyrian Spring seems strangely out of sync with the times. The book published in 1935 curiously offers no hint of the Great War recently passed and only once lightly alludes to the growing fascism in Europe. Illyrian Spring remains suspended in a different time – perhaps one that never existed – an idyllic beautiful place for upper class ladies and gentleman to pass a few pleasant weeks.

So on to the really big question, should you read this book? My answer is mixed. Illyrian Spring is a genteel novel for genteel readers. If you do not fall into this category, exit stage left. If you enjoy cozy novels that begin in flight, proceed to melodrama, end in high comedy - didn’t someone named Shakespeare use this plot a lot?—and include much holding of febrile hands (all that groggy indigestion), passionate kissing of foreheads, and tumescent prose that leaves you at the edge of “the crisis” (an old-fashioned term I will not explain here), then you will like Illyrian Spring.

Of Related Interest

Nicola Humble. The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism. Oxford University Press, 2004. 288 p.

Elizabeth Maslen. Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1958. Palgrave, 2001.