John Bowe as Ross Poldark grown older (The Stranger from the Sea, 1996 Poldark
Mel Martin as Demelza and Kelly Reilly as Clowance
Dear friends and readers,
The second to the last Poldark novel did not disappoint me. The epigraph of the novel is from Pslam 22, Verse 20: Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. It is a powerfully anti-war novel; it must be one of the first novels to portray accurately and sympathize with an autistic hero — thought useless and called an idiot by those around him, jeered at, dismissed until Dwight Enys takes up his cause and by the close of the novel due to the decent way a few people are beginning to treat him living a life of dignity, self-respect with his gifts developing through use. We have a moving portrait of the love of Ross and Demelza, as an older couple and how they deal with the devastating death of Jeremy, their oldest son. Clowance, their daughter learns the basis for lasting love must include truth-telling and genuine mutual respect, and she is seeking to build thought-out independent values as the basis of her life at the book’s close.
This one is not set in an unusual but important battlefield, Peninsular war, sometimes called Napoleon’s Vietnam (the opening sequences of the 8th one are set in The Stranger from the Sea), but one of the heroes (Geoffrey Charles) and the novel’s main figure (Ross Poldark) fought in Portugal, and are part of the central group of interlocking characters at Waterloo. It’s a novel which dramatizes Paris just as the Bourbon king’s regime was beginning to crumble, the experience of Napoleon’s return from Elba and Waterloo from the point of view of people caught up in the chaos and then the battlefield and Europe. It reminded me of Fanny Burney’s later 1815 diary-journal letters and Anne Radcliffe’s 1794 Summer Tour through Europe, where both travel through the affected areas, Burney during the war and Radcliffe during an earlier phrase of the wars. As the other novels based on thorough research, this time one of the central sources a long chapter in Keegan’s Face of Battle.
*****************************************
Graham’s The Twisted Sword, Book 1, Chapters 1-3
Travalls Port Bawden, Cornwall
1815. Back to Cornwall. One of the immediate differences between this fiction and the 19th century historical fiction by Graham I just finished (Cordelia) is how deeply atmospheric Graham is here (and not in Cordelia). The opening chapter immerses us in the rains of mid-January off the coast of Cornwall, in the workings of the mines in such a time.
The story opens with what was slowly begun in the previous novel: Ross has been asked to become a sort of spy for Lord Liverpool in Paris. We don’t begin with him but Demelza confronted with this difficulty: she had failed to cope in London, how will she do in Paris? (I had the thought maybe she’s better off not knowing the language.)
We get the usual brief rehearsal of what has gone before in the last couple of novels to situate us – though it is really expected we will have read the previous books. These are continuation novels.
We are again made to feel that Demelza is no longer in good health or strong. They want their two friends, Caroline and Dwight Enys to accompany them — this is a bit artificial; it’s that Graham wants to take all four of his favorite characters to Paris in 1815.
Clowance discovers that Stephen Carrington is 37 (not 34) and had another wife who died and has a living son. He is now working for George Warleggan as he is a sort of pet of Harriet’s – especially since the estrangement of George from Valentine
Jeremy in Belgium A momentary lull or peace in the war there.
*****************************************
Graham’s The Twisted Sword, Book 1, Chapters 4-11
Paris, Port-au-ble (18th century)
Ross and Demelza arrive in Paris and we get scenes between Ross and more “minor” historical personages who he is working for, and we do see him begin to network as we call it and begin to gain information on attitudes towards the Bourbon king, the war, Napoleon. He thinks to himself maybe he is wanted in Paris because his working for a radical agenda (he’s against the Corn laws) in Parliament is not much appreciated.
This is another book where the intensity of the first 7 has worn off and if you are not involved with the characters before you begin, might not carry on. I am, so do. We get Demelza’s early doings getting used to the angle of Paris she sees; also that the baronetcy now given Ross to make him more viable is a problem to her. She begins to take French lessons.
We see George’s real understandable dissatisfaction with his wife, his bitterness that Ross is getting on (because liked really) and he not, getting a baronetcy now. His loneliness in a way. Teh moral lesson here might be, This is one of the things one has to deal with when one marries not for affection or love at all. The other person will not care for you either. He too remains an interesting character to me, a riveting moment of intensity and reality.
In Cornwall Clowance and the disabled Music Thomas come across an animal on the inside of George Warleggan’s fenced in property and discover it’s one of Harriet, his wife’s favorite beloved dogs. They work hard to loosen it from a terrible trap and bring it back to the house in order to try to save its life. This is the best thing in the book thus far, these moments.
Stength comes from the continual returns to Cornwall and its landscape, rhythms, descriptions of the sky, seas, movements of land
It’s also striking that Graham keeps up putting this minor semi-disabled character before us. He is not appreciated by most of the people he works for, gets along so minimally but we are made to see how much talent and humanity he does have. I do think he’d be see as someone along the autistic spectrum; by someone in the book he’s called an idiot (shades of the people on Victoria).
Hints we are to worry about Jeremy in Belgium, even if the war is said to be over. News of many deaths in New Orleans after the treaty there is signed. Graham too anti-war, showing its absurdities though he himself has a conventional physically courageous duelling type (Ross) hero at the center. We do care about Jeremy at this point and also Clowance who is looking worn, dark eyed, thinner. We are (mildly) to worry once again lest Ross be driven to duel because he gets jealous of Demelza for example. Mildly is the atmosphere around Ross and Demelza and this is the core problem with this as other later Poldark novels. Graham is too distanced and too careful of his central original characters. He couldn’t be mild over Morwenna and truly I think kept to the idea such a person does not heal, does not get over what happened entirely and cannot go back to scenes she so suffered in or met the people in them, so he dismissed her to the margins of the books after Book 7.
.
Now Ross and Demelza tour Paris. It gives Graham a chance to depict what was going on in Paris in the year Napoleon was on the island of Elba. One of the interesting perspectives is that of the bitterness of those who had been active on behalf of Napoleon, had worked hard in France during dangerous periods, sometimes on one side and sometimes another. What immediately began to happen (cut off by Napoleon’s return) was the old aristocrats started to return with their ancien regim attitudes of mind utterly unchanged. Many of them had learning very little only that the world was more dangerous than they had thought and they didn’t repress enough. They are beginning to get the plums, the patronage because the Bourbons real allegiance is to these emigres.
Also depictions of stuff stolen and put in the Louvre or on top of an Arc de Triomph. Little ironies of this sort.
Demelza is learning French. I assume Graham read French with no trouble.
Graham’s conceit for bringing his hero into Paris is as an informer. Since Ross is not betraying his own side, but spying for them, that’s all right, but we do see how spying is an outgrowth of networking and how all of it helps to keep one afloat financially.
Demelza now goes to a salon and see and hears Madame de Stael speak.
The story line does grow ominous when George Warleggan gets his first evidence that one of the three men who stole such a large amount of money and treasures from his bank may have been Stephen Carrington who is even now trying to become a lucrative business partner. Stephen is too daring; he ought to have stayed away for its Stephen’s lack of his eyetooth on the left that is the mark noticed. We do begin to realize Jeremy is not so safe as Napoleon first lands, is dismissed at as laughable and merely to be rounded up, but then attracts huge numbers of men, is not himself attacked and begins to march on Paris.
I left off at “Lyon has fallen.”
*****************************************
Graham’s The Twisted Sword, Book 1, Chapters 12-16: Napoleon’s march on Paris from Elba
Napoleon Bonaparte (by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1796)
The narrative takes on a charge and I found myself peeking ahead in anxiety, reading on as Napoleon begins to gather people, troops and then important men on his side and approaches Paris. Ross has left to see someone outside the region, still under the impression from reports (misinformation) that Napoleon is getting nowhere and soon will be recaptured. Demelza finds herself having to take the offer of a place in a carriage with a friend, a French aristocrat who asks Demelza to present herself as the English lady of the coach, with this woman as her servant. This is romance, traveling together she discovers a man with them has in his case, “the crown jewels” (or some of them). Silly stuff. But the narrative is otherwise of interest: we see that there was collusion, Napoleon had powerful supporters who wanted to get rid of the Bourbon king because he was giving plums and spoils to these old line aristocrats. Some English were complicit, then Fouche and the like began to join.
Characteristic (as Richardson would call them) letters from Clowance and Jeremy fill us in on what’s happening in Brussels just then and Cornwall.
In Chapter 15 an effective description of societies suddenly falling apart as people in drove flee before Napoleon, those who cannot or will not flee, trying to hide themselves, or put out signs changing sides, the mayhem among those fleeing in the various places. This is done most effectively through Ross who, finding that Napoleon is successfully marching to Paris, attempts to return, and finds himself continually frustrated. The axle of the coach he gets into breaks. There is no axle to replace it with. The people disperse to where they are told to wait and it will be coming. He manages to get a promise of a horse, the young man said to have the horse doesn’t show for another day and it’s a bad horse. Nonetheless, he buys it and makes his way back to Paris. Finds the apartment he left his wife in locked, so he must find someone to tell him where she is. He does find their contact and her letter, but if she did go with Mlle de la Brach is not clear so where she went is not clear.
It reminds me of Fanny Burney’s description of her flight across Europe to join her husband.
Less effective is the description of Demelza as there Graham idealizes and romances more. We are asked to believe in the coach, in Demelza’s getting people to believe that the man with her is no one important and not to break open the case. We are asked to believe no one rapes anyone, much less her daughter. But it is brought up that such things are threatened at least and why everyone is fleeing and that she is lied to about who she was going with and where. We are aware she is not on her way to get to Calais.
*****************************************
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 2, Chapters 1-5: parallels with politics today
Nicolas Greaves as Stephen Carrington (in a good mood)
In London now Demelza goes to Lord Liverpool to try to persuade him to do something effective to free Ross. The way he stonewalls her reminded me of an experience I had had earlier in the afternoon where I called two different women from two different agencies, both of which had done nothing of what they promised, nor had they intended to, had I not called the supervisor of one and complained and protested vigorously to the other, calling her at least by implication a liar (which she was). I don’t know that I got them to do what they are supposed to do. The same kind of behavior is seen in this scene and Demelza knows it. She knows the man is not going to do anything as it’s not in his interest right now or anyone else’s.
With Warleggan calling in all the loans of Carrington, he is going to be bankrupt and not go to jail only because one bank he has used has previously guaranteed some of his loans. So Clowance, not admitting this to herself, goes to visit Harriet, who is grateful to her for saving the dog. At first Clowance is unwilling to say why she’s there and unhappy but by rough rude methods of her aristocratic background (come to think of it contrasting with Demelza’s weak behavior), Harriet finds out what George is doing. She insists both before a visit and dinnner they are having and afterwards that George tell her why. She won’t take his “I don’t truth or like Carrington anymore,” and she does get George’s suspicions and wrath out and how much of the case now rests on Carrington’s lacking a left eye tooth. The scene between them is as interesting as Demelza with Liverpool and much stronger and passionate. It emerges that she is pregnant. Whether George will stop calling in the loans is not clear when the chapter finishes, but it seems he might.
A loving cup is mentioned by George, one we know is sitting on the mantelpiece in Nampara.
War is heating up at Brussels despite its being only in a very few individuals’ real interest (again the parallel of how politics works is made). Russia, Prussia and Austrian leaders have trouble keeping their own population quiescent. Belgian and Dutch troops are sympathetic to Napoleon himself as one of them. Bourbons were unpopular except with the emigres returning. England delays and delays in doing anything. How fascinating that nonetheless there was this ousting of the man — it matters which individuals have the fervent interest and how many they can get to obey them who are in significant positions.
A touching letter from Demelza to Clowance. I wish Graham were also not such an idolater of his hero and heroine. Ross is now Sir Ross and Demelza Lady Poldark. (Yuk on these names, I like to think they are Graham’s tasteful concession to his duller readership.)
Ross put in prison by old enemies, really people he never curried favor from enough, but he is not tortured — Graham can’t bear to do that I suppose. Demelza makes it home to Cornwall. Enys and Caroline had set out for Paris and she doesn’t know where they are.
I like imagining Hans Matheson as Ben Carter
Carrington has been pushed into bankruptcy by Warleggan (who suspects Carrington of robbing him so soundly) and clearly blames Clowance as she is a Poldark; she clearly is not happy with him in any case. Having been awakened sexually she realizes she is attracted to Ben Carter and his obvious decency for the first time appeals. She is learning the hard way what to value.
*****************************************
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 2, Chapters 6-10
Ross in Cornwall at the close of the novel
Graham seems to be able to “hit the spot” with me. Although Demelza could not persuade — or bully (as Lady Harriet seems so able to do) — anyone with power to act to help Ross, Brigadier Rougiet, the one friend he made does visit him; Rougiet discovers that Ross is kept in this prison from the spite of a high up police man (someone just below Fouche) and finds he cannot effect much either, but after his visit Ross discovers he has better food, more light, and more important, the closeness of his confinement is relaxed. He can walk about and he begins to understand the layout of the prison, how to escape if he could, where the stables are. Then late one night a guard finds him missing from his cell and the local guard bound and gagged. There seems to be a delay in this Corporal Lemere reporting Ross gone missing. Lemerre we are to remember is one of Rougiet’s clients.
What then ensues is Ross’s escape through France trying to get to Calais. What’s interesting is it doesn’t go fast, but slowly and peeking ahead (anxious lest he be re-captured, or wounded or whatever) I see about 3/4s more of the book will be Ross’s wanderings through war-torn France as an outsider. He gets himself an old pony. His ankle bothers him (he is somewhat lame since his time in America.) His problem is finding food and drink and staying hidden. His clothes give away his origin and he could be shot, but very Don Quixote-Sancho Panza like one dawn he is surprised by someone who is dressed under his cloak in a British army uniform. Of course it emerges this man was in Spain during the Peninsula war like Ross: Coluuhoun Grant. They hit it off, and Grant advises Ross either to follow him as far as Chimay and then by himself make for Ghent where there is the Bourbon court, or come with him to where Wellington is gathering people. Ross of course decides the latter and now we have a traditional pair of males, only not master and man in this vast chaotic dangerous place.
I like this. The outsider again.
Stephen Carrington discovers that after all Warleggan is not going to drive him to bankruptcy but he sees the terms offerd as hard and no longer trusts Warleggan — as he was told not to. He still does not conceived that Warleggan suspects him of the robbery. He decides to return to the smuggling business with his son, much to Clowance’s dismay. She cannot stop him.
Clowance on the beach
So we have two adventure stories going on: the sea story of smuggling, the war story of walking through the land. And two woman’s stories: Demelza reaches home and now determines no matter how enjoyable was Paris for the few days, she will go out of Cornwall no more, and Clowance’s growing realization of what her choice means to her life.
*****************************************
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 2, Chapters 11-13, Book 3, Chapters 1-4
Ioan Grufford as Jeremy Poldark (when young and fresh, as seen in the 8th novel filmed, The Stranger from the Sea, 1996 BBC Poldark)
This novel has a long powerful sequence of chapters where the author imagines the battle of Waterloo from the point of view of two men serving the British side in middling ranks. It’s superlatively well done, controlled so as not to be a rant against war, but rather a sober exposure of its insanities. Among the foci are the horses who are killed senselessly; Graham has time to make us feel how horses in this period were driven to the ground in the first three years if they didn’t go to war, and how if they did, they were subject to hideous exposure and death. He again and again pictures the muddy battlefield filled with horses and corpses, and how gradually they are looted. We get the full sense of what’s called “the fog of war” from the point of view of combatants who don’t know what is over the hill or why they are doing what they are doing. How important spies were for the leaders to make their decisions and how one decision to put one group of men here rather than there can and often did lead to the deaths of so many. He registers what this new effective weaponry meant — in 16th century people did not die on the field this way but often from disease afterward. He tells us of the famous Duchess of Richmond’s ball but for once that is not the focus. Rather that it rained over the three days. I’ve read that before and he imagines what this meant.
The scene of Jeremy being killed is strong out in-between chapters of Ross’s wanderings, but when it comes it is brief and very moving. And book 2 ends.
Graham does not dwell at length on this hero’s death because he wants us to see him as one among many who died so wastefully. And to see the larger picture too. For example, George Warleggan makes a killing trading stocks. He watches the Rothchilds and others and buys a set of stocks very cheap and they go soaring up when the battle by the Allies is won. The French defeated you know you will be able to trade as you once did and as the Bourbons and Prussians and Austrians and English were setting up. So as Jeremy dies, George grows rich.
We see Stephen out smuggling and by chance winning the day. It is an adventure story and we get him attacking a French sloop without realizing a French frigate was nearby. Outnumbered he and his men frantically cut away the chains used to bring the ships together, but he loses his son in the fight and (like Ross) determines to rescue him in a daring stunt that he is almost killed in. He does win out and the sloop too and brings it all back to Bristol — not Falmouth as he does not trust Warleggan and fears Warleggan will try to prosecute him for smuggling. But he brings quietly some of the goods, and changes his bank account to another bank and hires people. Of course what you are shown (not told) is how smuggling was central to the economic minimal prosperity of these people.
Clowance is glad to see him alive but no longer in love with him.
And deep grieving scenes of Demelza having lost her boy, her son, her darling companion of so many years. Some of this told through letters. She walks the beaches over and over. I really did begin to cry at times then. The book evokes tears in me for more than Jeremy but all these wasted lives, all this havoc made more grim by keeping Warleggan’s activities in mind (he’s a magistrate too).
*****************************************
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 3, Chapters 5-8
Demelza and Fiona Victory as Caroline Enys in Nampara kitchen
I had not mentioned Ross’s home-coming which occurs at the opening of Book 3, Interestingly (to me) this novel brings Dwight Enys to the fore again; he has not appeared much before this. In these chapters he is called in repeatedly for psychological as well as physical problems. Valentine Warleggan makes good his account of himself to his wife, Selina, is unfaithful and not nice to her at all, and she slits her wrists. She does not die as it takes an intense desire to die to kill yourself this way (you must slice pretty deeply apparently); and in the talk and visits, Valentine questions Enys for the first time on the circumstances of his birth. We see that Valentine remembers a great deal, and probably has heard the rumors not only that he is not George’s son but that he is Ross’s, but this is not clear and perhaps no one has had the nerve to say this to him. Valentine remembers his boyhood with bitterness, and still mourns the loss of his mother. His rakishness is a cruel foul twisting of the self but it is thorough and he’s not changing. He can win women over we are told as Selina is said to forgive him, at any rate live on with him.
While dare-devil behavior can through luck win out sometimes, sometimes not. And finally Stephen’s runs out. He seeks out, meets and has a semi-encounter with Harriet Warleggan (in a hut on Warleggan property). He doesn’t care if she’s older or pregnant; she eludes and they race on horses. Even pregnant, she is a more powerful controlled horsewoman and jumps a huge ditch successfully; he not and is thrown from his horse and appears to be paralyzed from the waist down. Not much fun for Clowance. Before this we have seen how little he does feel for others: he doesn’t really mind Jeremy’s death (Graham remarks the young often don’t mind the deaths of others), and is bored by her parents, but has been polite. Now he will himself be dependent on others it seems. His business as a smuggler, the new effective men he has found will now be no good to him unless they remain loyal which is not very likely we are led to surmize.
Among the wounded has been Haverlog who was courting Isabella-Rose who despite her youth, 13, seems to be attractive and adult in some ways. He lost a leg and is no longer such good husband material 🙂
Demelza keeps up her friendship with Mlle de la Brache through letters.
To me the most unexpected story of a character has been that of Music Thomas, an autistic character, called “village idiot” — now Graham involves him in a pregnancy of Katie Carter, the daughter of Jinny and Jim Carter who believes herself pregnant by a man who deserted her and whom she is too proud to chase. Dwight here tries to play match-maker and brings her to agree to marry Music. Alas, we see how pathetically grateful he is, and how this makes her despise him all the more. He readies his cottage for her – – reminding me of Mark Daniels’s attempts to please the wandering amoral hard actress, Karin from the second novel. In the event Katie’s pregnancy is declared hysterical and she drops this young man. It’s a piece of real compassion where the autistic young man is shown to have many talents, only not social ones. Dwight has been his friend and ally, a rare one.
A touching supper between Dwight and Caroline and Ross and Demelza is described as a moment of comfort amid a dark world.
Andrew Readman as Dwight Enys grown older
For the conclusion, see comments.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 3, Chapters 8-9
The book is winding down but not before some climactic semi-resolutions of stories begun a couple or few novels ago. Graham’s technique is to build real slow :).
So, it does appear that Stephen is dying and does not know it. He is bleeding internally and the doctors, including Enys, have no technique for trying to stop that. Nowadays (I know from my own real experience) there are drugs that can stop internal bleeding if it’s not massive and you get to it in time, but these are post-mid-20th century. As he lays there, paralyzed not quite from the waist down, but with one leg useless and swollen (perhaps it would be severed if he lived), Clowance and his son, Jason, start to talk and it’s emerging that Stephen lied about Jason’s mother. Clowance now so distrusts Stephen that she even thinks Jason’s mother might be alive. Apparently not, but what I think is going to emerge is Stephen married Clowance bigamously; that is, he had married Jason’s mother clandestinely and when he married Clowance, this woman was not yet dead. We are returning to memories of what transpired in Stranger from the Sea and the stories Stephen told to explain his history then.
Valentine comes for a visit to Ross. A bad moment because Ross is forcing himself to go down to the mines where Jeremy had done so much work. Ross had not realized how much the mines now reflected Jeremy’s engineering capabilties, Jeremy’s machines, Jeremy’s ideas, and literally signs of Jeremy’s hard work. It is hard to look at for him and cope with. He must though as one of them is running out of tin and copper at one level and they need the general overall manager. Comes to him Valentine who he never liked. We see Valentine from Ross’s point of view as unlikable and egoistic, dense, amoral, but the scene for once moves on longer (as did one between Enys and Valentine where Valentine distastefully justified his behavior to his wife, his infidelities) and we begin to sympathize with Valentine or at least understand one reason he is such a resentful cold man is he has not had any father for real. Valentine tells of how cold and mean George was to him as a boy, how he was treated in such a way as to rouse distrust in him for anyone. Part of what happened is due to Ross’s behavior. Ross never took any responsibility. Valentine begins to question Ross on his mother’s pregnancy with him, his birth, broaches the subject of George’s suspicions and jealousies, and the way he does it, by asking if his mother could have had a lover, allows Ross to weazle out just the way Elizabeth did: of course not, how dare Valentine, she never took a lover. To be raped is not to take a lover. Ross threatens to kill Valentine if he spreads such rumors and says George might too. But Valentine persists, and finally asks if Ross is his father and Ross does not deny it. Now we are back at Black Moon and Angry Tide. A moment of half-affection or understanding occurs. We see that Valentine actually is better for knowing.
Family politics indeed.
Last: Music Thomas. Thomas is so grieved and hurt at how he has been treated. Enys tells him he must accept the way Katie just threw him off. We see that Katie somehow doesn’t think Music has the same depth of feeling or thought she does. Enys knows he does, but also tells him that he has to accept others will not know and maintain his own self-respect through self-control because he will only make things worse for himself if he allows his distress and complaint to show, to influence his behavior. All the while we are made to see what an autistic person suffers. This is in 1990s folks. 20 years ahead of the faint progress that has been made. It is very faint progress, as it’s apparent I was resented on Victoria for pointing out the denigrating cruel language used for mentally disabled people was ugly — they are on Victoria aware they must not use sexist language, must watch out for racist, classist language. But the disabled: they are idiots still. In the UK these people are being brutally cut off aid and in the US they never got any and still get no help today — because no money is funded as they are considered objects open to scorn just the way Music Thomas is in this novel – with the exception of Enys and for a short while Katie (because she thought she needed his name to avoid shaming).
Ellen
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 3, Chapters 10-11, Book 4, Chapters 1-2
Jeremy’s now pregnant wife, Cuby, and her “plainer, quieter, gentler” sister come to stay at Nampara and the grief is hard to cope with in the sense that all the people in the rooms – and the reader is made to feel this — are continually aware that Jeremy is not there. To speak his name breaks a sort of taboo that they manage a few days later and then they begin to talk more. As the fiction is a hopeful one, Demelza and Cuby begin to get along. Clowance holds back — the family feels or knows that Jeremy joined the army originally to escape his memories of Cuby.
But he also joined because he felt a noose around his throat when he thought about his fellows, Stephen Carrington and Paul Fellowes, spending the money and a strong sense they must eventually be caught. His machines were not doing as he’d hoped too.
We watch Stephen Carrington die. He does not know he is dying and is planning away as he grows weaker and weaker. He dies from internal bleeding. Today he would have lived. The death comes hard. Clowance humors all his dreams including the absurd name for the house he would have or was building, Tranquillity.
Then a new book opens. Jeremy died at the close of Book 2, so Stephen at the close of Book 3.
Jeremy’s letter to his mother opens Book 4 so he’s not gone: he tells her as far as he dares about the robbery and his sense of shame that he did this and puzzle why he did it. (Hatred of George Warleggan is one.) A letter from George Canning (Himself) to Ross filling him in on political news and sending sympathies for the death of Ross’s son, urging Ross to remain in public life. This reminds me of the close of Trollope’s The Duke’s Children where the Duke of Omnium, aka Plantagenet Palliser, is urged to stay in public life. At the close of To Serve Them All My Days, the hero is now firmly ensconced in school public life. A certain type becomes the hero of these 20th century novels and he must we see engage in meaningful public life — of course it’s meaningful, yes yes. Who could doubt it? (I hope my irony comes out.)
A long moving chapter — after all Katie decides to marry Music Thomas. What happened was on the wedding day he went and got drunk — imitating Ben Carter on the day Clowance married Carrington. Poor man leaving the inn is followed by a bunch of lowlifes who jeer and mock him and put him in the stocks and proceed to throw small stones at him. What a painful scene. Here is where we are face-to-face with the novel’s curs.
One difference between Graham and Twain is there’s a scene like this in Twain where the bullied person is drowned. Of course Katie comes along and rescues him. This leads to her taking him back to his beautified cottage, caring for him and yes saying yes.
All her relatives are against it but her mother who’s not keen. No one but the mother shows up. Dwight Enys insists to her after he hears of her new decision that Thomas will grow better and better as he’s treated better and better. He played the fool because that’s what the community would allow. And what happens? the worst types decide to come to the wedding and throw shit at them. The plan is afoot and this is intended to make the reader very anxious. It did me.
Luckily a wreck is seen offshore. Well wrecks are money. Dwight worried about just such an incident spreads the word of the wreck, people are planted at the church who have some authority, Ross gets some help if it’s needed and the marriage comes off peacefully.
IN fact we see the community worst types are indignant the man will not play the fool, will not be their toy and scapegoat. They are angry. How dare he?
The curious sexuality angle so often found turns up: Music does not dare have sex with Katie. She goes to bed upstairs. Again and again marital sex is presented in unorthodox ways, with the man in the weak position before the woman; or with the man forcing himself on his wife.
Last Harriet gives birth and we watch and wait with George who half-hates her for treating him so hatefully during her pains. He can’t stand that she obviously was flirting with Stephen — he doesn’t mind that Stephen has died, rather irritated he cannot punish him for the theft. He wants a son, yearns for one. He has now cut Valentine off. It’s twin girls.
Ellen
Graham’s Twisted Sword, Book 4, Chapters 2-4: Finis, Christmas time on the beach
The book comes to a slow moving end and like the first and second Poldark novels closes on a Christmas ritual time. Very sad this time. Clowance asks to be excused; she’s not up to pretending even. She tells her parents the next time she’ll marry for position and money. This is not quite the lesson I had hoped she would pick up, but it is real enough (resembles the lesson Elizabeth Chynoweth took away from her marriage to Francis Poldark who she did partly love). Three suitors waiting for a possible sequel who we’ve met before are mentioned ironically by her parents to one another. Cuby gives birth to a baby girl and we are shown that at least Demelza and Bella are alive to the result that the growing boy, Henry will now have “the title” — as somethig that counts. A confusing moment for her, among these Poldarks, strangers, no Jeremy to validate. Much of this is anti-war implicitly.
Graham has George come to visit Clowance to assure her of his and Harriet’s support were she ever in need. There are strong hints he’s attracted to her and that’s been the cause of his lack of rigor towards her all along.
Music Thomas and Katie turn up to a community event and are clearly supportive of one another It’s working out.
The book ends with a walk on the beach between Ross and Demelza, an ending of resignation yet assertion of moving forward. So common in these books. Reading at the same time Wilkie Collins’s Rambles Beyond Railways, I realized Graham set quite a number of his key scenes on unusual highly striking Cornish landscapes, seacoasts, a lot so many I can’t quite number them. For now just three: Morwenna Chrynoweth (governess) and Drake Carne’s first falling in love; Demelza Poldark’s liaison and love-making with Hugh Armitage among the rocks and sands in one of the flats (near crabs), and walks on the beach; the scene between Ross and Demelza that ends Twisted Sword where Demelza throws to the sea the cup that she snatched from Jeremy’s robbery of Warleggan bank.
E.M.
Demelza doesn’t throw the cup into the sea, she places it gently into a wishing well in a cave entrance nol doubt because she found it in the cave where the stash from the robbery was hidden.
Part of what happened is due to Ross’s behavior. Ross never took any responsibility.
How can Ross take responsibility for Valentine’s upbringing? Legally, the latter is George’s son.
In the era there were men who would acknowledge paternity and pay whatever social price was necessary; they could then at least try to provide money as well as listened-to advice about schooling, tutors. He could have an influence if he had had the courage to “come out.” Partly he didn’t want to upset Demelza who we see could never accept the idea that Valentine was her husband’s son and thus by extension her step-son. She remained deeply resentful of his love for Elizabeth and any extensions of that in her life and what she regarded her family circle. She would not let Valentine in.
Cuby gives birth to a baby girl and we are shown that at least Demelza and Bella are alive to the result that the growing boy, Henry will now have “the title” — as something that counts.
Why was that so important to Demelza? Why was it more important to her that Henry should inherit Ross’ baronetcy, instead of a son conceived by Jeremy and Cuby. The title would still go to a Poldark male who is a direct descendant of Ross’. This attitude of Demelza’s that the title should go to her younger son, instead of the offspring of her older son makes no sense to me. Nor could I see how it was “fitting” that Cuby had given birth to a daughter.
It was very common that women would want their own son to have a title. Perhaps the daughter was fitting because Jeremy loved a female and gave up all for her. I don’t know.