Hugh Armitage (Brian Stimer) and Demelza’s (Angharad Rees) relationship: one of two equals rather than the girl and man (as she was with Ross)
When I am gone remember this of me
That earth of earth or heaven of heaven concealed
No greater happiness than was to me revealed
By favour of a single day with thee.
If for those moments you should shed a tear
Proud I would be and prouder of your sorrow;
Even if no memory beyond tomorrow
In your sweet heart will empty me of fear.
Leave in the sand a heel mark of your crying,
Scatter all grief to silence and to air.
Let the wind blow your beauty ever fair
And leave me thus to occupy my dying.
— a poem from Hugh Armitage to Demelza
Dear friends and readers
Here am I with a ninth blog on the Poldark novels and film series. The first season of films; the first four novels (Ross Poldark, Demelza, Jeremy Poldark, Warleggan), and now this second of the intervening trio (Black Moon, Four Swans, Angry Tide).
The subject of this novel is relationships: all; the different configurations one can draw among the relationships between our primary and secondary heterosexual couples we’ve had so far. Just a few of them:
Ross and Demelza Poldark; Ross and Elizabeth Warleggan; Ross and Caroline Enys; not to omit Ross and Verity Blamey; what could have been Ross and Morwenna Carne, had he understood in time she should have married Drake; Demelza and her suitor-lover, Hugh Armitage, rescued from the French prison by Ross indirectly; Elizabeth and Francis Poldark through Geoffrey Charles; George and Elizabeth Warleggan; Osborne and Morwenna Whitworth; Osborne and Rowella Chynoweth, Morwenna and Drake Carne; Dwight and Caroline Enys (long ago Dwight and Karen Thomas); Sam Carne and Emma Tregirls (Emma and others); Jed and Prudie Paynter
Also political and social arrangements which make for relationships: Francis Basset struggling against Lord Falmouth’s control of the borough, both seeking support from others; the higher vicar come to bully Sam Drake, Demelza’s methodist brother in his methodist meeting house; the starving miners who stage a riot and stealing of miller’s grain deliberately held from them at high prices, especially the man Ross arrested from his bed and hung (John Hoskins), the Rev Mr Choak, Enys’s rival in medicine, bankers, electors.
We see who is executed and why, and witness an election procedure close-up too.
The perspective or theme is the deep one I found articulated by Graham in his memoir:
Even among my nearest and dearest there is no transference — can be no transference — of experience. One can feel empathy for someone suffering, but one cannot feel the suffering. We are all alone — desperately alone. What are we in this world? A conjunction of subjective impressions making up something that is accepted as reality (Bk 2, Ch 3, p 179, Memoirs of a Private Man)
In this novel, the four swans are Demelza, Morwenna, Elizabeth, Caroline. Unfairly omitting Emma, Rowella, Rosina – who are presented in this romantic relationship light. Graham has dismissed Jinny as a central character. And he has marginalized Verity by keeping Captain Blamey at a distance.
These five couples (Ross & Demelza; George & Elizabeth; Dwight & Caroline; the wrongly parted Drake & Morwenna, and kept apart Sam & Emma) cannot enter into one another’s minds or feelings; and the most moving chapters in the book when Ross attempts to tell Demelza of his feelings for Elizabeth and she realizes she cannot tell him of hers for Hugh Armitage are a paradigm of all realities of relationships, at the core of the world’s cruelties, blindnesses and necessary ignorance.
The richness of this middle book of the second trio has emerged slowly from the premises of the characters’s natures, and their evolving situations, some of these going back to the first novel, Ross Poldark and certainly the second, Demelza. This is criss-crossed by an attention to what is happening politically in the larger world and how this is embodied in Cornwall.
We wee what makes choosing to live on worth while. Why people do it and what they get out of life and what they are pushed to deprive themselves of – and the hard and poignant (socially seen) reasons why.
I did love its poetry of birds, landscapes, waters sounding, and wrote about the text each week phase by phase so perhaps this blog will not readily appeal to anyone who has not read Four Swans. On the other hand, I have done my best to explain and convey the experience of this book as I went along. So my advice to you, gentle readers, is borrow, rent, buy these novels and start reading; and then come back here to my blog or get a sense of the books now and then borrow …
Again I’ve supplied an exact outline in the comments; for those interested in the mini-series, Season 2, Parts 6 to 10 more or less correspond to The Four Swans.
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The Four Swans, Bk 1, Chs 1 into 3
Hayle Estuary, Cornwall (four of the novel’s women represented by the swans on Morwenna’s husband’s property, viz., Demelza, Elizabeth, Morwenna, & Caroline)
The Four Swans (Chapter 1) begins with two scenes where George Warleggan accosts people he can scare: Daniel Behenna, a physician who was the doctor in attendance at the birth of Valentine at Trenwith; and Tabb, an old male servant who was fired at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth. We feel the ferocious wrath inside him driving him to question these people and in their answers to him their complete mystification at what he could possibly be getting at. That we know it’s his idea that Valentine is not his son is assumed. And it’s not told in this opening. .
George comes across as an ugly mean-minded cold personality. He threatens as a way of negotiating upfront. Of course Behenna when asked if Valentine was an 8th month baby does suspect that George is suspecting Elizabeth in some way; Tabb seems not to pick up that the suspicion is of Elizabeth. There we see that Ross’s way of getting into Elizabeth’s bedroom from an overhang late at night and his leaving was not noticed by anyone Tabb knew. Elizabeth has become uncomfortable with this husband; again the personality type is real (alien from me): she does not become livid or sad only irritated and knows her position threatened by this continual suspicion. Any emotion she shows in this chapter is about her son, Geoffrey Charles who she is not parted from (he’s at Harrow) and her worry he does not like his stepfather; also that George no longer plays with Valentine who is missing his father.
All we can gather from a third scene where he aggressively cross-questions Elizabeth about Ross is that he suspects her of having a liaison and possibly with Ross. This is one of the strong scenes, with a real frisson as she instinctively answers his intense questioning of how she regards Ross with words that are true: she no longer has any feeling about Ross and indeed looks down on him: “a braggart, a bully, a middle aged man tying to assume the attitude of a young won, someone who once had a clock and sword and does not know they have gone out of date” (p. 28). These “cool destructive sentences” hit George where he lives. They have some truth though as when George remarks that Ross’s great exploit ending up losing more lives than the one he brought home
An odd gap is how Graham continues not to give a hint of Elizabeth’s knowledge Valentine is an 8 month baby and Ross’. We also see that while not kind or good or terribly humane she is decent: she is sorry Tabb was let go and would take him back; she wants to go to Caroline Penvenen’s wedding to Enys George would not, but then Ross would not have gone to the dinner party at Ralph-Allen Daniels in the previous book where he was offered and refused a magistracy but for Demelza.
A conventionality: the woman are the more compliant, the more social, and both described as young, slender and looking virginal. For the second set of values I wonder if this is Graham pleasing his readers.
St Winnow Church, River Fowey where the TV fictional wedding was held
The wedding opens (Chapter 2) out the Poldark world with its description of the place around the church and the group of people who come and meet. It’s here that Graham is rebuilding the world for previous readers and introducing new ones. Very little about Ross inwardly, only his pride seen (handsome, lean, wearing an old coat that was his father’s, he insists Demelza have a new dress (green with silver trim which is how she appeared in the series).
George walking over to Enys remembers how Enys would not succumb to pressure but stayed with the Poldark group. George notices how badly Enys still looks.
Politicking at the wedding shows Demelza is more like Ross than she thinks: when Falmouth comes over to “smooch”, she is quickly alive to saying she does not want Ross to go on any more expeditions. Ross genial with Ralph-Allen Daniels.
The chapter includes Ross’s trip to Harry Pascoe, banker so we see how the banks Warleggan works with are in rivalry with Pascoe and Ross’s and what are the real basis of Ross’s relative prosperity: one small mine. He is going to expand by going into business with Daniels.
Then the couples each in their bedrooms characteristically. George and Elizabeth discussing the coming election. We see how these bought and pressure-point boroughs with few electors work.
The most striking couple moments are of the two other couples at the wedding and then again in ed: Caroline’s great generous heart and Enys’s weakness but his trying hard to do what she wants. She wanted this big wedding and she wanted it earlier than he did. How she teases him they had better or her reputation will be in shreds. They do not make love until their wedding night because of his health, and we see it’s even a strain at the close of the chapter. but the good feeling between them carries them into it and then (as ever) curtain down:
Caroline you talk too much.
I know, I always shall. It is a fault that you have married … (p. 46)
Morwena. She is sickened with nausea and despair as she stands next to Ossie Whitworth and no one but we know at the wedding. The dense pragmatic fool Whitworth doesn’t even know, or it’s that he does not care what goes on in her mind. She is not quite dressed up to par as he is. We are privy to one of their bedroom scenes after the wedding too. He commits his exercise on her and she lies there sore, desperate (pp. 40-44). She is in effect raped nightly and now she’s pregnant.
And we hear the talk and thoughts of others, e.g., Sam that the marriage of this pair is right and Drake and she wrong.
The last pair of characters I’ll mention in this renewal is Drake and Sam (Chapter 3) where Ross offers Drake Pally’s old shop. Sam is brought before us, his mind and how he looks at the world (methodist working) and he is feeling bad because with all his success as a workman and preacher he cannot take Drake with him. Drake carries on being depressed and alienated. We see this. Ross makes a move here: his business proposition to help Drake move out of his state of mind (which Ross sees) and the immediate area.
In Chapter 3 we are with Drake who is not getting over it. He is such another as Bingley in the 2008 Lost in Austen. He is not drinking but he has lost his faith in methodism (“yielding to unbelief”) and is bitter and cannot retrieve himself. Yet we are told this “black cloud’ does not lead to thoughts of suicide, it’s “outside his scope.” The chapter shows us Ross offering this property, Demelza being strongly for it, the trip there and a realistic depiction of a place that’s an utter mess and will take tremendous work to make into a blacksmith shop and farm, and Drake will have to do it alone. Sam does think of going with him, but he has his job in the mine and his thriving church. Another drawback is it’s not really away; it’s close to Trenwith. We then see Ross and Drake at an auction, a realistically depicted scene.
Another thread is that of Sam as preacher trying to do good. One of parishioner, Jim Verney is so broke, it’s something out of Dickens, worse. Verney lies dead by the time Sam gets to the hovel, another body is there. This is common for people in Cornwall. Sam attempts to get aid from Dr Choake whose mistress-housekeepers, Emma Tregirls (sister of Tholly) sneers him off with an ointment, and says when her master comes the family better than 2 shillings. Sam leaves 2 shillings with the widow and left starving children. Enys would have come but he doesn’t know and is himself so frail.
From here we see Elizabeth’s assessment wrong: George is the braggart, bully, middle aged man trying to be what he’s not (aristocratic); Ross is quietly alive to other people’s real feelings and spreading employment, faithful to friends, reaching out a hand to his brother-in-law whose existence he once didn’t want to know about.
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Four Swans, Bk 1, Chapters 4-6: Another offer refused; the Enys marriage, Drake: we cannot but reproach ourselves for unlived lives
Rowella Chynoweth (Julie Dawn Cole) played as an enigmatic hypocrite, very unlike the book
Chapter 4 brings us the arrival of Morwenna’s sisters to the parsonage. One of them, Rowella, is t help her with the children. These are Osborne’s stepchildren (from his first miserable wife) and the coming child. WE are given enough to feel from Rowella’s silence, her presence does not exactly bode well for Morwenna, for it is only Garlanda who sees how wretched is Morwenna and surmises that down the road in time unless Morwenna can get herself to stand up to Whitworth she will be destroyed. She feels for her sister. We are told in indirect thought which includes Graham “It was a pity she was not staying.” Another contrast is the snugness of the parsonage and how Morwenna is comfortable in it. Drake will become a man of property if he makes a go of it (on Ross’s stake and inheritance in effect) but she would have had to live and work in hardship; we are to feel this would not have mattered; on the other hand, a nice house is a nice house — and Rowella sees this. The four swans are four swans in a pond on the parsonage property.
Of interest to me in these costume dramas is how the types and situations not only hark back to say 1970s (upstairs/downstairs was 1970s, no? Ross Poldark is such another hero as the young man in Davies’s modern drama, To Serve Them All My Days) but these speak to us too or can really be like a Victorian novel. Some mores don’t change. A situation in Lost in Austen is so like one in Four Swans, and the utterance that Jane Bennet in Lost in Austen says about it rang home to my heart yesterday — “We must not reproach ourselves for unlived lives” (still grieving as I was over a probably irretrievable decision or action we did last week — though since this is not art but life it may be what we did was the best and also doesn’t matter so much).
An interesting parallel is both ugly mean horrors of men, sycophantic are vicars. Some residual supposed distrust of church officials as utter hypocrites here.
There is of course a profound difference between Graham’s presentation of Morwenna’s forced marriage to Osborne Whitworth and Jane Bennet’s to Mr Collins in Lost in Austen. In LIA, Collins not going to bed with Jane — she remains a virgin. Well that just about cuts out what is the horror — Bingley in the film does not know about this until much later and it’s said to make such a difference. All sorts of objections come to my mind like this is making fucking matter far too much and virginity ludicrously important, only it is true that what is so horrible about Morwenna’s marriage is the nightly rape, her dislike and distaste for this animal of a man and his cruelty: he sees how much she dislikes it and deliberately hurts her. One night he twists her foot until she cries out in terrific pain; we are told he felt sorry he did that but blamed her. Natch. And she’s pregnant
We return to Ross and another coming visit to Sir Francis Bassett (still Chapter 4 and then into 5). To some extent Graham is repeating himself, again Demelza is willing to go. Graham has not found what to do with Ross and Demelza — reminds me of Trollope with the chief Pallisers characters and how for each of the 6 novels he invents a new primary set of characters. Graham had not wanted to do that …
The trip to Sir Francis Basset’s grand mansion is, however, not simply a repeat of Demelza and Ross’s trip to Ralph-Allen Daniel’s estate.
Lanydrock, a magnificent castle in Cornwall, filmed as Tehidy, Bassett’s house
The dinner table has the characters discussing the Directory and again no one else do I come across understanding of how Napoleon would be seen as revolutionary. Who he stood up for. Not in the US at any rate.
This time Ross is offered a seat in Parliament: he has made himself popular (he is very ironic and saturnine about this) by his rescue of Enys from Quimper; he is part of a landed family; Bassett is not keen on the Boscawen crowd to which the Warleggans belong. Again Ross refuses: this time no long philosophical talk about a book (last time it was Paine’s Common Sense) but rather Bassett makes it clear that Ross will have to vote a party line. Ross doesn’t want that, nor does he want to involve himself in the corrupt borough politics of Cornwall. In a way this refusal is much easier to understand quickly because what is required is concrete distasteful behavior. Utterances by Ross: “Human nature is an abomination, even one’s own” (p. 100). But again he’s refused power, refused a place, and left himself vulnerable.
Demelza growing up finds herself the object of more sophisticated flirting and is drawn or feels that someone is drawn to her: Armitage who Ross rescued. They go on a long walk into the landscape: this is filmed in the series. The conversation again brought home to me why I like these books so: I like Graham’s outlook, I share his values and characters he finds likable I do, and Demelza is one of them. (For me it’s ever true that it’s a struggle to read Trollope’s woman as often I neither like nor admire what he thinks I will, and I don’t think his women are sexually real — he’s done it deliberately in part to make them chaste and obedient.)
The description more ornamental, not rhythmic deep flows as in Black Moon. Appropriate for Armitage’s courting and I can see why costume drama would pick precisely this sequence up.
Yet more talk between Bassett and Ross (Chapter 5) where Ross and Bassett come together (Ross agrees there can be no classless society). Trip home: after all Caroline suddenly tells Demelza: “I think our marriage has been a great mistake.” Whoa. She wanted Enys so badly, Ross got him out of hell for her, but now she has him she sees how different they are. She would like to see him hunt, drink, take care of the estate; instead he shows sympathy for the French (she cannot see how he can see the difference between individuals and a group), wants to go out doctoring among the poor again, reads.
There are differences between Ross and Demelza too, real strains, but not this: they talk of her attraction to Armitage; he tries to understand but is intensely roused by jealousy.
Demelza (Angharad Rees) in the book not paid much attention to on the way home (from Bassett or Falmouth’s house); in the film this occurs directly after he has been with Elizabeth at Aunt Agatha’s grave
Back to Sam and Drake (Chapter 6). Drake is doing well in the sense of working all day and making a go of his shop and place. But he goes nowhere and seeks no company, no girlfriend as we’d say. He has a beautiful character — I just love him and Morwena too. The chapter follows Sam’s visits to the abysmally poor again (“Poverty can be endured if it can be endured with Pride”): methodism becomes another face of trynig to find an alternative to the cruelties of an unjust callous order. Tholly Tregirls’s sister, Emma, visits: I do dislike her competitiveness, she is what one comes across as presented as a reactionary feminist — Sarah Palin 18th century housekeeper-kept womaa (of Dr Choak) style. She is after Drake who does not see her; Sam drawn to her is drawn into carrying a heavy load and then to trespass on Trenwith. An enconter with some of Warleggans’ bullies one of whom Emma has gone to bed with. I admit she’s real enough: manipulative, getting back. The language here is true and effective.
Imagery continually of birds: herons, seagulls, birds in the sky, the sound of them against the wind and waters, the night sky.
It’s interesting to me that Graham says that Drake never considered suicide as we’d think of that occurring to him but does not say Morwena never considered killing herself. The juxtaposition of Sam thinking about how he can convert the nasty Emma Tregirls is ironic. Emma Tregirls may be caught up in this phrase that she utters, one which shows she is reflecting the world as she has found it in order to be a survivor: “As I se’n, Sam girl’s only strength be when she have men dandling on a string.” (P. 112).
Sam (David Delve) and Emma Tregirls (unlisted at IMDB): she plays with him
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Four Swans, Bk 1, Chapters 7-9
I really dreaded going on from the last time I closed the book, for I could see that juxtaposed to the scene between Sam and Emma Tregirls was one of Osborne Whitworth. As I wrote, Graham (refreshingly) does not stand up for rapists to the point that he characterizes (quite rightly) Whitworth’s nightly sex with Morwena as frequently rape. She is not afraid for her life, but is made wretched by his ugly demands on her, he is rough, mean, often physically spiteful.
I need not have worried, it was not as bad as I feared. The scene was instead with George Warleggan. Osborne has come to demand that George write a letter on Whitworth’s behalf to secure him another living which has become vacant. George is very irritated because it has become apparent that Morwena is not thriving or happy. This makes George exasperated with her but it seems Elizabeth blames Whitworth. Right. She should blame herself. So George put off by Whitworth’s vulgar displays (George is puritan like in his clothes) says no in a steely tone.
This is not likely to help Morwena’s position. For now she has a respite as the doctor (Chapter 7) has told Whitworth to leave Morwena alone for the next 6 weeks (the last of her pregnancy). He is too heavy. The film presented his rape of her as what occurred after the birth when she was still very weak and in pain and torn, not the way Graham does as what happens all the time. So I know that it’s coming at her again. Meanwhile he has discovered a crack in a wall in the house where he can peer at her sister getting undressed (again the film includes this).
Myself I wonder why Morwenna doesn’t kill herself. I know she doesn’t because the frontispiece material includes a family tree where there are three children by Whitworth attributed to her. Poor woman, poor woman. It is not intended this way but the whole situation makes a parallel to Karen who had the affair with Enys sometime after she married because she was so frustrated, lonely, idle, living in bleak poverty without a window on the sky or sea. If it were, we might hope Morwena will flee, but she has been brought up to be religious and obey. I wouldn’t stay for it, but then they could not have gotten me to marry such a man and this is not an anachronism in me to say this. If married to him, I’d refuse him but I do like Graham consider what’s happening horrible rapes.
Here Ross (Robin Ellis) is told of Drake’s unjust imprisonment by Sam (occurs in Warleggan), irritated and determined look part of his character that comes out here in Four Swans
Ross is trying to create a situation of mining whereby he can make more money by finding more lodes(Chapter 7), but also do the mining in a safer way so there will be no more dreadful accidents with major loss of life. He also has to tell Demelza he refused the place for member of parliament. To his surprise, she supports him in this. She had wanted him to take the Justice of the Peace, a small niche of power. He is a little resentful — strange the way feelings work.
She says she would not want him to take it because “he lives on a knife edge.” His conscience would make him ravage and bleed and cut himself far more in Parliament because he would have to tow a party line. As local Justice he might have done some good, or moderate the bad. She remarks: “you every year get more and more unsatisfied” (p 129).
He says “the real crux is that I am not willing to be anyone’s tame lapdog. I don’t belong int eh world of pretty behavior and genteel fashion.” When Trollope’s Phineas couldn’t bear to follow a party line, it was the issue of Irish tenants’ rights not his own balking against the system itself
Hugh Armitage (who had hitched onto Ross’s boat rescuing Enys from the French prison) is there at home with Demelza when Ross arrives and Ross immediately senses that Armitage is courting her and she is attracted to Armitage. This aspect of their marriage interests me: I feel Graham is reflecting something that happened in his own life: a quietly open marriage? Their dialogue is so appealing: as opposed to the arbitrary anger behavior of males in most books, he is quietly wary but no more and not suspicious of her betraying him; more, he seems not to mind if she does linger and long for someone else — as he does. The lack of possessiveness, lack of anxiety and understanding the two display over this is remarkable even for today. She is much more jealous than he because she really fears he prefers Elizabeth or preferred her and is sufficiently attracted to Caroline to endanger her relationship with him.
I liked this line from Armitage about love too:
“For life is such a trumpery thing at best, isn’t it? A few movements, a few words, between dark and dark. But in true love you keep company with the gods.” (p. 131)
This is how Drake and Morwena felt when they courted, and this is how Ross and Demelza felt it the early phase of their love and marriage. It seems that Enys and Caroline are not up there with the Gods after all.
Chapters 8 and 9 intertwine politics with Morwena’s terrible giving birth; we also have Ross again coping with the money problems of Pascoe.
She has a horrible time; Osborne is irritated because he wanted to join in on the election day and it would look bad. He has to look as if he’s praying for her. He does pray, for himself not to be further burdened. The thought crosses his mind maybe in the next marriage he could get a wife who does not find him so distasteful. The long siege of reports from the doctor are moving but we are not allowed to be there in the birthing room with her. I have rarely seen this dramatized but maybe I don’t read enough very contemporary books. The only one I know of is Byatt’s Still Life and there the description is not that long.
The politics is about the election. Lord Falmouth wanted to impose his candidate onto the borough and there’s an ugly scene between Hick and Nicholas Warleggan and him where they have waited 3 hours to see the big man (reminding me of Trollope’s Mr Harding waiting the long day in London to see Sir Abraham Haphazard, but this is not funny). It takes the nerve of Warleggan to protest this imposition. The next day Falmouth comes into the room and threatens everyone he can with whatever he has to hold against them. Nonetheless, George Warleggan takes it — Nicholas did have a personal interest here. Ross is there and although he tries to be civil and get along with George soon they are bitterly bickering. These are scenes quietly radical, showing how politics works: they make me remember Godwin’s Caleb Williams where in order to show this he has to ratchet up the melodrama. Trollope is as quiet as this as is Meredith (Beauchamps’ Career) but they are on the side of the order, accept it.
George and Ross cannot get along, even in front of Bassett
The scene is followed by a quiet one between Demelza and Ross again discussing the characters of the two men, Ross self-reflexive, both wry: they rehearse the same matter as in Chapter 7, but in a different key. We have Ross and Demelza’s conversation after he comes home from the election where George was chosen to be Member of Parliament over the arrogant threats of Lord Falmouth. This ends with Demelza taking out a second letter she does not show Ross; a poem to her by Armitage, a kind of weak imitation of Byron (end of Chapter 9, pp. 165-70).
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Four Swans, Bk 1, Chapters 10-12: Ross and Elizabeth again
A culminating confrontation scene between Elizabeth (Jill Townsend) and Ross (Robin Ellis)
Chapter 10 brings us Morwena’s continuing failure to get better, to thrive; how Whitworth is now a voyeur of his sister-in-law and how he can’t bear this lack of sexual release and enters his wife’s room and really forces himself on her. This was the scene the BBC chose to film. It’s actually not done with the force or drama of the nightly sex in the earlier part of the book, but it’s “safer” because it seems to condemn the man not for being her husband but not watching out for her health.
Then there are the useless things done by Choak and finally the calling of Dr Enys by Elizabeth who now that George has gone to London is a much freer relaxed woman (Chapter 10). She overrides the stupidity and narrowness of Whitworth who neither likes Enys’s egalitarian ways, connections with Ross Poldark nor his ways of doctoring. Enys orders a modern style regime of decent food, warmth, rest, and forbids more sex. Whitworth is angry but cannot overbear Enys because Elizabeth is there. We are in some of these scenes to feel for Whitworth insofar as he is a man, remembers his first wife (mis-remembers) but I detest him.
Just before George goes Elizabeth again experiences a renewed coldness, bitterness and close surveillance (Chapter 10). Something has re-aroused George’s jealousy. It’s interesting how Graham manages to present her as suffering under this kind of hostility, repression, suspicion but not all that upset; she is so reasonable in herself, herself not the bad person her second husband is. Now relieved to be alone but aware she is under surveillance (Chapter 11).
Her son, Geoffrey Charles, comes home form Harrow, much changed — his “delightful spontaneity” gone, a “smile” with a “new and more reserved charm,” he resembles Francis at his best, and he renews the friendship with Drake. Elizabeth does have a moment of “doubt” but says nothing against it when she sees how happy this makes her son, happier than he’d been in a long time and considers how far Drake is living from the Poldark farm (the other side of Trenwith) and that Drake is now a man of property and there is no “danger” to her family through Morwenna. George would hate it.
She is free to allow things, to visit friends and do some Lady Bountiful visits too. On her way home from one she gets caught in the rain and goes through the property grave yard and comes across Ross. He is there measuring Agatha’s grave for a gravestone he asked George about at the election.
There ensues a powerful scene between the two of them (Chapter 11), including her rage at him, and bitter memories of that night and his not coming back later (for he would not leave Demelza) and in the argument that ensues she accuses Ross of being the person who has somehow spread the rumor Valentine is his. Upon seeing him we know she is attracted as she says that leanness of his, the heavy-lidded eyes, the way he holds his body, an expression on his face. This is the first she has spoken of it. It emerges she is not sure Valentine is his or Ross’s. Ross is immediately aware of how much harm this could do to her boy and tries to advise her to have another (he does) and present it as premature. The dialogue ends with them coming together in a kind of understanding as they talk and before she can go off, he clutches her and kisses her face over and over again. Curtain down. I don’t mean to suggest anything more than this ensues, only that it Graham does this. It’s a convention that leaves what happened suggestive.
A more attentive look at the scene between Ross and Elizabeth at the close of Chapter 11. First it’s been suggested to me the Valentine plot makes Graham’s novels increasingly melodramatic. Well not yet. If anything, Ross’s reaction is understated: “what you tell me is the greater shock. How can we separate — just at this moment.” This is his strongest reaction in words to the news that Valentine may in fact be his and that George suspects this. He says at first: “George is a strange man — given to moods that might give you the wrong impression” They eventually agree “what a pit they’ve dug for themselves” and Valentine. Ross wants to do something and suggests she speak openly to George of his suspicion and try to dispel it, she scoffs at this as just not possible; he could tell him she says; then he says he might end up killing George (as when they come together George needles him and he is a violent man he knows), so then he suggests she challenge George herself and then lie. He insists on how much she means to George, she is his great prize, and Ross, how he never dreamed George had a chance. The conversation turns to her anger again at the night he forced sex on her, and his re-explanation, (mad with jealousy and afterward could not leave Demelza) and when again she wants him to express something from his conscience, he turns to how what she should worry about is the boy, and how her relationship, marriage with George is floundering. She says it’s floundered already — we see from more than just this pregnancy and child. George did not did not take her with him to London — how men were in charge — and at one time he would have wanted to show her off. It’s then on theme of Valentine that Ross suggests she get pregnant again and appear to give birth early; an insect flies over as they talk, he brushes it off her and it’s then she tries to pull away, he pulls her towards him and dissolves in kisses.
What a relief they must be after the arid cold loveless George.
How many insects and a strong sense of life filling the air, sea moving, there is in the book. I had mentioned the birds everywhere, the feel of Cornish air and winds and chills and plant life too.
On this scene too: this love affair of Elizabeth and Ross is structurally across these 7 volumes that make up the design/matter for the TV series. They are a thwarted couple too, and it’s within their overarching continuing story (even if they don’t see or speak to one another for years) that the novel’s other events take their place, are generated in reaction or as parallels. People seeing the film series don’t like to see this; they want Demelza to be the central female and in the series maybe she is. But it makes good sense that the series opens (as the books do not) on Elizabeth’s refusal of Ross when he returns — the books only begin to imagine this in Warleggan fully. That material is brought up front. And also (as I understand it) the series ends on Elizabeth’s death in pregnancy — as does The Angry Tide.
In the first four volumes Demelza is certainly the major figure after or with Ross but as Graham went on, resumed after 20 years, some deeper outline and set of concerns and obsessions in himself about marriage and love make Elizabeth the linchpin. She is no ideal in the way of Demelza with Demelza’s love, kindness, loyalty, acceptance of her status as lower than Ross. In this book Caroline is emerging as a recalitrant presence in a marriage after all, as well as obviously the tragic Morwena. All about marriage as presented (1970s back into 50s) practiced as well as the 1790s for outward customs.
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Part One, Chapters 12-14
Falmouth’s house is much shabbier than Bassett’s in the book; but the mini-series chose an elegant mansion nonetheless
The next chapter is the trip to Tregothowan, another great house and a social gathering for the two couples Enys and Caroline, Demelza and Ross.
Caroline (Judy Geeson) in her element, Demelza on one side, Hugh Armitage the other
I was so relieved to sink back into my favorite book for now: the leisurely pace is part of its pleasures. Graham is exploring four different sets of male-female relationships and their intertwining cross-connections. There’s an acceptance of adultery (ultimately underlying this is the modern notion of open marriage) that fascinates me.
Emma Tregirls visits Sam because he has not been visiting her (Bk 1, Ch 14) and we see that she likes him despite herself, and that he is willing to have a relationship with her were she to try to reform. Indeed the dialogue shows him willing to marry her and saying his parishioners would understand she’s brought in, reborn. She doubts this in wry words. Sam’s innocent nature comes out here, but a glimmer comes out that he does see he might lose his position and she is the merciful one and departs. But there is real sense of loss because there is something there so real. The words come off the page as real voices (pp. 246, 250), Sam “I’ll never say goodbye,” and the better self of Emma: “Honest, Sam,dear. Honest, love. Honest to God. There, I said it! … goodbye comes soon after this). And the chapter ends: “Overheard the seagulls were still swooping, crying and moaning their intermittent litany” P. 250)
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Book Two, Chapters 1-4
Drake (Kevin McNally) at work in his forge
Ross and Demelza seen through their daily lives together: fixing the library, the upstairs, the children, and routines of work and life as they are imagined here (Bk 2, Chapter 1). The dog. Here it’s rhythmic recreation of the core of the Poldark world (pp. 253-60). Here we are in Ross’s thoughts about decent actions by Pitt (p. 254): I didn’t know Pitt wanted a pension scheme — some of this is what Republicans want to destroy today. Playful dialogues.
But later Demelza seens lingering in the landscape over a letter from Armitage (p. 283-84), Sawle Church nearby. The interweaving seen here: Whitworth hungers after this position, nags George, is writing people, Ross has persuaded Bassett to give it to Odgers whom Ross likes.
Two particularly moving moments: when Dwight, now having agreed himself to spend more time the way his wife, Caroline wants, visiting, being a squire, taking care of their property, having rescued her perhaps from an early pine-away and death, sends a letter to Whitworth and Morwenna about how he is going to limit his practice to a smaller area and now that she is well, she no longer needs him. As she sits here reading it, she feels an intense loss of a real friend (Bk 1 Ch 2, p 270). So I remember Morwenna lingering over her four swans in the pond on the property near Whitworth’s chapel where she had considered suicide. Her rereading Dwight’s supposedly reasonable letter.
Morwenna (Jane Wymark) at night
Dwight has had to give this up because his “life” person or partner has insisted he accede to her will. I’ve experienced this myself and seen it happen to others. A real relationship that matter even if it’s categorised as just business (someone like a doctor and patient) is given up to the “family” demands or work. Dwight too who we see at a dinner he sits silently at is losing something too.
What happened is they are drifting apart. Caroline has no interest in books, and he wants to read much of the time. She has little sympathy for anyone really spending their lives doctoring the poor and sick. Worse yet Dwight is not accompanying her on her jaunts as he should, not dressing as he should, and looking weak and ill. He sees the marriage cannot go on this way (Bk 2, Ch 1, pp. 262-67). Their dialogue is as rich in insight into the human condition as Ross’s with Elizabeth over Aunt Agatha’s grave.
“Work is good for a man, Caroline” (p. 262)
He: “What matters it what others have to say?”
She: “It only maters if it is reflected in ourselves.” (for her it is)
He was still unsteady standing and sat on the edge of the table. His narrow thoughtful face was lined this evening. He looked what he was, a sick man with a strong will” (p. 265)
She resents what she perceives as neglect and lets him know it.
“It was not going to be an easy marriage. It never had been yet over the few mohths it had so far run. But she was determined to win it … [however listen to the narrator moving in here] What was in question was what they would make of it” (p 269).
Demelza’s visit to the Poldark graves with a poem from Armitage in her pocket followed by her visit to Jud and Prudie Paynter after a suposedly comic chapter where he as gravedigger gets impatient and goes to beat a dog, the dog bites him, he runs home frantic and a ridiculous tussle with Prudie ensued. Now they are calm, and Demelza comes for a visit where she has been asked to check up on whether anything has been done to put a stone over Agatha’s grave. Alas, Jud lets out that he saw Ross and Elizabeth walking around Aunt Agatha’s grave and the description is of a scene quite different than the one we saw.
George comes home from London to find Elizabeth over at Trenwith, near the sea, and he goes over to her. he and Elizabeth manage to patch it up because he wants her and reasons with himself after much difficulty. He missed her in London; she would have been a help to him, enormously. He stands in admriation of her and she is his prize. He tells himself what does it matter what happened before he married her and that his suspicions are wrong. A scene on horses between the two of them with him scorning Nampara house improvements (by Ross) shows her making a hinting challenge to him and him backing away. She has persuaded her son, Geoffrey Charles to get along with his stepfather and the stepfather to leave the boy visiting Drake. She makes it the boy will tire of Drake as his new associates teach him better. Both of them blame Morwenna for what happened. George of course will have Drake spied on and do what he can to ruin his business; how dare Drake set up his business so close to Trenwith (Bk 2, Ch 3, pp 290-96) The one lie Elizabeth tells George is she’s not seen any of the Trenwith people
Emma (Chapter 3) visits Drake to try to understand Sam better and perhaps also flirt with Drake. The latter gets nowhere but we do have an early history of Sam and Drake and how first Sam was ‘converted’ into his present evangelical state of mind. She persists that Methodists make life worse, and take away from it what joy most people have (pp. 299-305)
So story, plot-design move on but that’s not what holds me What holds me is moments like Drake who we are told spends all his hours working hard, glad of his shop, glad of his custom, feeling his new rank, but wanting nothing else (p. 299). He does send (we are told) a note or message to Morwenna via Geoffrey Charles. It’s not the note, it’s the description of him at his forge going nowhere else.
For rest of novel outlined, see comments.
Ellen
Graham’s Four Swans, Bk 2, Chapter 4-9: First resolutions
This sweep of the book (I read it last night) takes us into the first resolutions of this sixth Poldark novel.
A dialogue in winter between Ross and Demelza (Chapter 4) about larger political world (the new armies, the betrayals, the deaths, the destruction and effect of the new blockade; that Odgers after all did not get Sawle and Ross’s saturnine commentary on now that he refused the MP (and George got it and works it for his advantage) the other plums he might get (pp. 306-9).
Morwenna and Whitworth. He had been committing adultery regularly with Rowella (see first encounter, very sexy scene, pp. 238-40), Morwenna’s treacherous cool sister. It does make him much less exigeant on Morwenna and Dwight begins to think the better of him (p. 261). Graham does enter into Whitworth more sympathetically here: Rowella is as cold, mean and tougher than him, and he is at long last matched in bed, and has himself to sit up and beg (literally) while she enacts stereotypical cat-like roles. He cannot resist her (pp. 274-6 as he listens for her footsteps and remembers the nights) and yet he does want to send her away too. He knows that he will give ammunition to Morwenna if she finds out — weak and bullyable as she is. We see in his thoughts how he leaps to ideas of her as a witch — and how dangerous such conduct in a woman can be therefore.
Now we get powerful sequence between Rowella and Osborne Whitworth where she tells him frantically that she’s pregnant (pp. 310-16); his first response is to disbelieve, then sneer, then say he won’t take responsibility, her threat in reaction, and his knowing she will be believed)
In mini-series Ross’s meeting with Sir Francis Bassett is held at Nampara so the film audience can see Demelza become a hostess
Chapter 5: The de Dunstanvilles come to dinner at Ross and Demelza’s and after a first panic, she does remarkably well. A walk by the sea of Demelza and deDunstanville (ex-Falmouth) where he attempts to pump her to learn about Ross Poldark- George Warleggan feud gets him nowhere but she gets him to translate a line of latin from a poem Hugh Armitage has sent her: “Whatsoever Love has ordained it is not fit to despise.” (pp. 317-25)
Afterward talk, Ross and Demelza (pp. 325-30) in their half-companionable half-at-odds: what she said politically; Ross tells of how George destroying Drake’s property
Chapter 6: riveting sordid negotiations of Rowella with her librarian-suitor (so it seems librarians are not so despicable after all — this chapter makes me realize the nasty despising of librarians I’ve now come across in the US – one of my daughter’s friends wanted to be a librarian and her parents treated it as if it was a cross between prostitution and shoveling shit against the tide) and Whitworth. Mr Solway at first demands a thousand pounds and Osborne seems to offer up something like 100 at most — after the first shock, then a letter she comes up with to a vicar who got a girl with child — and at its end Whitworth has agreed to 500 pounds.
Chapter 7: I loved it. The defeat of Whitworth by Morwenna. After Morwenna’s sister is married, he attempts to demand his ‘marital rights’ again and she faces him down with her knowledge he got Rowella pregnant. A wonderful scene at long last. She is herself though looking terrible now, a “deeper malaise” emerges (which her decent sister, Garlanda sees) — and as she was never before, untidy, emaciated, living utterly inwardly. This is what obeying the world’s values, its conventions have done to her.
What have they done to Drake?
Chapter 8 he comes near death from beating by Warleggan’s henchmen. Warleggan has issued orders to destroy Drake’s business; cut off water and do all they can to create nuisances and prevent his making sales. He has a faith though that Elizabeth Warleggan would listen and treat him more fairly. In his attempt to get there, when she is not there, he is met by Warleggans’ men. They just about throw him into a river to drown. He is described at the end as disfigured in face with his eyes up like a fish. That he doesn’t die is thanks to the Nanfan family who find and take him to Sam. They are unwilling to tell Demelza lest Ross find out and this provoke another battle
But in Chapter 9, the brave young man now sets forth again at Truro — after a conversation with his sister who he is looking bad and she sees him become harder, mature “the ineffable charm had gone.” As Drake has surmized this time getting to a public place, he gets in, Elizabeth at first indignant, after a while hears, listens, and when George interrupts, insultingly, putting Drake out, she nonetheless confronts him.
Another magnificent confroniation, twin to that of Morwenna and Whitworth.
Elizabeth demands he leave Drake alone, this will alienate Geoffrey Charles for good and all; what kind of life can they have among these people and she scorns the details of what George ordered and did not. In the bedroom later it flares again when he accuses her of thinking his dislike of Carne (Drake’s last name) comes from her unacknowledged favoring of Ross Poldark, belief in him. She bursts out with rage at his suspicion and jealousy and without flinching an instant denies all sexual intercourse with anyone in ways we know leave out rape (“I have never, never given my body to any man except to my first husband, Francis and to you”); if he keeps this behavior up, she is going to leave him and tomorrow. She makes him swear on a Bible in turn he will never suspect her again.
She won, even if he gets to put his arms around her and kiss her. How by half-prevaricating
E.M.
The Four Swans: Bk 2, Ch 10, Bk 3, Ch 1: A fulfilling troubling interlude
George Warleggan and Elizabeth Chynoweth Poldark Warleggan: the petty tyrant who has no idea of justice for anyone but to serve his appetites and power; the controlled conventional pretty woman whose complacency is a function of her high rank, wary prudence, shut mouth.
We are to compare the poignant state of Drake and Morwenna; that I’m right about this underlying feel I find seeping through the narrative here is for me demonstrated by the juxtaposition of the next two chapters.
We are to see Demelza as happy and satisfied spending her days bringing up her children; not wanting Ross to go off again but beyond that content. I see this as a masculinist trope in the book: the woman the man comes home to as well. I did not say earlier on in one scene how it was made a joke of by Demelza that Ross should beat her for something; I’ve not forgotten the justifying of Mark Daniel’s murder of his wife Karen in the 2nd Poldark novel. But it is more than this, for there comes to visit her Hugh Armitage and she cannot resist (it seems) agreeing with him to go and see the seals deep in Nampara coves.
Demelza and Hugh playing on the ancient beach, among the stones and crabs
There follows an entrancing interlude — a Tuesday we are later told — between the pair of them — comrades, friends, affectionate, and even tender too. The description of the seashore, the cliffs, the mating habits of these seals, their nervous behavior is delightful. It emerges that he has been discharged from the service because he is going blind. They are in the boat and try to get onto the rocks, but the seals jump away, then they glide into and out of the cave with elderly seals in it, finally having to push away and getting all wet. So they come out and lay on a rock in the sun together, their outer things dying. And slowly slowly he begins to try to urge her to allow him to make love with her because this will be their only time. He utters what didn’t surprise me from the rest of this book a justification of open marriage:
“by giving love you do not diminish it. by loving me you would not destroy your love for Ross. Love only creates and adds, it does not destroy” (p 411).
Her answer is the inadequate one of “what about trust and loyalty” because she does not explain that this really refers to the other person not being willing to accept sexual sharing. But her bringing up these words brings to her mind that she has lately had some feeling that Ross has seen Elizabeth in secret. We know he did at least once and showed he loved Elizabeth still then.
She feels her naked body under her dress and does give in and in the 1970s style Graham pulls down the curtain: she asks him not to speak and he “began to undo the buttons of her frock.”
I was not surprised because all was leading to this and Graham’s novel has a strongly egalitarian sense of sexuality.
(Book 3, Chapter 1): A grim picture of the was of the 1790s, what they are doing to the continent, to the spread of starvation riots and rebellions, to mutinies (there were quite a number at sea in this era), and then drop down to Ross going off to Falmouth on political and economic business he must do and stay with Verity and we are left with Demelza.
We move into a new book and hear Ross was away for several days, and against his real will and judgement led to be one of the magistrates punishing a group of miners who by violence took from the millers of the country grain they had been selling at a huge price. Ross’s sympathies are with the miners, but he dare not show this too openly. He has the unpleasant task of having to arrest them — they have large militia around. And he goes home with a bad taste, glad he did not take the position of justice for he also does not like the ideas that justify riots either – not the vengeful strain of them.
We see him come home and visit Enys. Enys is glad he did not have to be involved, and we see Ross then putting pressure on Enys to give yet more to Caroline, to live yet more the way Caroline wants to keep the marriage going and her spirits up. Ross admits to affection for Caroline and intimates he’s to “blame” for this marriage. So here we have him upholding the established order and urging on a friend not to follow his heart and needs — read, be a doctor, but rather cater to this woman.
Then home again to the children and and we know Demelza is guilty because when she tells him of Hugh’s visit Ross is immediately jealous, somewhat suspicious, but not altogether. She misreads a signal which is only about sympathy for the young man going blind. Revealing for the theme of open marraige in the book, Demelza is much warmer to Ross, and that night shows awakened passion.
Late at night she gets up and goes to a window and tries to understand why when Ross left her for Elizabeth (the night he raped Elizabeth) she did not take her revenge and go to bed with MacNeil and why she went with Hugh now. As she stood by the window of course she realised he has made her what she is. Without him, she’d be an illiterate dolt’s wife at best, maybe long since beaten and diseased, angry; now a lady who can read, write, play the piano, mistress of a household, able to entertain guests, respected, with a name. We see why: she did not know for real, did not love the first and she has much affection and sympathy for the second. She is troubled though in her talk with Ross who is all confidence just now in her, all warmth.
It’s a wonder I ever put these books down I like the tone and attitude of mind so much in them. I’ve not pointed out the relevance to our world. It’s obvious
Ellen
This one attributed to Hugh Armitage again, this time it’s an imitation of Cavalier poetry as it came to be imitated under the polished style of later 17th century poetry:
Hallowed by sea and sand
Beauty was in my hand.
In· taking her I came
Moth to the whitest flame,
Body caressed and turned
Wings of desire unburned.
Lips to my lips unfold
Tale of our love is told.
Yet there can be no end,
In love our lives extend,
And if this day be all
Proud is my heart’s recall
Proud is my funeral pall.
(Bk 3, Ch 1, p. 430)
******
Very dangerous for him to send this to Demelza; in a scene between her and Ross where Ross attempts to tell her all he said (but not quite all he did) the one time he saw Elizabeth, we see how a man and woman cannot understand sexual infidelity in another (cannot endure it out of anxiety and hurt) even when they understand it in themselves. (Bk 3, Ch 3 pp. 455-65)
In content it suggests he does not want this to be a one-day tryst at all. Will not be satisfied with that.
The poem to my mind is good as pastiche (imitation of an older poetic).
Ellen
Four Swans, Bk 3, Chs 2-5: Dislocations and Unease
In his comments on his fiction-writing in Poldark’s Cornwall, Winston Graham says he could not hurry up and produce more Poldark novels for a third season in reasonably quick succession (say a year off again and then back doing films) without resorting to contrivance and that he cared about his characters too much to do anything near that to them. As it was, he had only just finished_The Angry Tide_ by the time filming for the second season had begun, and with just three books they made 16 episodes where for the first season there has been 19.
This rich middle section of this book bears out his sense that a fiction should not be contrived, but the situations and movements emerge slowly from the premises, some of them going back to the first novel, _Ross Poldark_ and certainly the second, _Demelza_. What we have in these chapters are lurches, movements towards unedgy happenings that could destroy the major characters or their relationships, and certainly do destroy a minor one (a kind of tertiary characters)
The feeling is one of life’s dislocations where you can’t quite understand how you are placed wrongly or awkwardly, but cannot seem to right yourself, and unease with someone who you cannot tell your truth to and who cannot (but would like to, in Ross’s case) tells his to you: Demelza. It seems the stronger or more dominating presence in each relationship is longing to or does speaks, and the less secure person keeps his or her own counsel.
Dislocation may seem a mild word for the hanging of a man chosen as an “example” to terrorize (what else is it?) the local population from again rebelling against an establishment’s control of food (in this case but that is one of the threads:
Unease may be seem mild too for the unacknowledged estrangement between Ross and Demelza which his love for Elizabeth and hers for Armitage (in reaction in part) causes. But it’s right because the theme or subject meditated is why having sex with someone else while married is so delerious to a relationship. Demelza’s meditation acknowledges she is not taking anything away from Ross, and that he could be richer and more loving if he is (which she painfully suspects) having some kind of relationship with Elizabeth. The painfully suspects tells us why. Ross in telling or trying to tell once again of his feeling for and meeting with Elizabeth knows it’s somehow worse for the marriage that she does not burst forth in (Ch 3, pp 463-65).
The activity which carries some of the various threads into a woven tapestry (beyond the hanging) is the ratcheting up of an encounter between Drake and Sam Carne and the brutal thug, hanger-on amoral lot that Emma Tregirls hands around with, including Tom Harry. Sam and Drake find themselves watching, buying from a group of fisherman who include this ugly lot. Sam when he meets Drake exults at Drake’s permanently maimed face and Drake cannot resist saying aloud that no, he is no match for 3 against one, and things come to a fist-fight but the women break it up and Sam (by Emma) is needled into agreeing into a wrestling match with Tom Harry on another day. Sam is being brought down by Emma this way, brought down from his stance as a religious man. I was so touched at how Drake stood there in the center silent and also how Sam managed to maintain his dignity. But danger is afoot. Sam is older, and Ross knows this and later offers himself as a wresting partner to practice. One of the pleasure of this chapter is the description of the fishing, how to pack fish, market it, all done swiftly without a sense of being taught. Also the human spite we see in the Tregirls and Tom Harry crowd.
Ross has discovered by this time that one of the very men he took out of their houses at dawn has been chosen to be the one to die by hanging. He “spends” some of his “chits” (so to speak) with Basset in an effort to persuade Basset to show clemency to this man, irritating Basset who wanted to see himself a super-compassionate, judicious (Bk 3, Ch 2, pp 445-54). The man has been a ringleader in stealing grain, sold at high prices by miller’s to feed the starving and near-starving.
Ross also wants to push the others to support the kinds of bills Pitt has promulgated: pensions (!), parish loans, schools of industry. All this takes place in a meeting between the men of prominence in the town of which Ross is one. Of course these other rich men say there’s no money for such things. During the meeting Ross must confront George Warleggan who challenges Ross into betting 100 guineas on Sam and says the 100 will go for charity to the miners. (all the while not approving of this match as Sam is much older than he was when he was a champion)
Ross has agreed or encouraged Demelza to go with Enys and Caroline on a visit to Hugh Armitage — who wrote to ask. It seems Armitage’s father (or uncle) Falmouth wants Enys to be a physician to him. Caroline is agreed — I wonder to myself when we next see Enys from within how he will feel about this. Demelza does go without Ross and in her efforts to divert attention from Hugh’s open feelings for her talks more politics (like talk she had with Lord Dunstanville) maybe perhaps than she ought to have (pp. 465-68).
The book is not sentimental or overmelodramatic for the description of this man’s hanging, while painful (we are shown the family being there, hanging around, trying to reach him at the last moment) and telling how the very populace this murder is meant to terrorize stand around as for a theatrical event they enjoy. The man, John Hoskins has the nerve to voice resentment and tell his full tale before being hung; we are not in his mind before nor as we watch him slowly die from the outside but enough is felt. Ross uses the word “sinister” for his own activities when he thinks about this.
My point is how natural all this feels, how unforced, and quietly real, and how serious the issues then and now.
Ellen
Four Swans, Bk 3, Chs 4-7: ends on poem and Ross’s realization that Demelza has been sexually unfaithful
In these chapters manifesting the ambivalence of human behavior and reactions, and larger social patterns, the hanging of Hoskins seems spontaneously to turn into one of these political display funerals we’ve seen so often in the 20th century. Perhaps they did have them in villages in the 18th. I didn’t know. A false note I think (Graham has them) is brought in in Graham’s insistence on how controlled the family and friends and miserable in the village were, and also having Falmouth (Dunstanville) responsible for not giving clemency join in. Maybe he would have, hard to say, but for once the scene has too exemplary a feel.
Caroline writes a letter to Demelza about her socializing and that gives us another larger picture of the community from the gay lady standpoint. I wish we had Enys’s letters instead — even if the depiction of dinners and life is effective and makes for the larger politics and social life (missing for examlpe in DuMaurier’s fictions of Cornwall)
Momentarily passing us in the night in this section is Whitworth coming back from having sex with a woman in the village and caught, seen. Morwenna won’t have him, and he sees from afar Rowella looking so thin. He has dreams of beating her intensely.
Then comes the wrestling match of Sam and Tom Harry. It’s hard, mean, and tough, and Harry continually pushes Sam to the point of going beyond controlled rules to humiliate and hurt him; I have never read a description of wrestling before which showed me what it’s about is physical humiliation of one man by another. Now I see why coarse people watch it, for I understand for the first time what’s happening. Sam almost wins; at the last moment, he does give in. Why? is it that he’s older, weaker, not a bull, his height not helping him, and him not being a fierce angry animal, no bully like Harry, but a loving man in his religion? Or is it that had he won, Emma would have had to keep her promise and join him as a his beloved and live out a religiously controlled life.
The point is felt at the moment as in his thought directly afterward is the thought what it would have cost him if he won, and the overseer of the church who comes to visit him congratulates him he has not gone on with that woman.
But wait, Emma comes up to Demelza blackberrying and reveals she loves Sam and wants to join him, but Demelza says you can only if you live as he wants you to. Emma fears what this will do to his reputation, and not sure she can. Suddenly (!) we are told she’s a virgin. A bit much. She never went all the way it seems with anyone. This explains her non-pregnancy but is a sudden yielding to convention I am disappointed in.
Graham does not make a fetish of a man owning a woman through making her a virgin and making her only have sex with one man. Demelza we know has had her day long love-making with Hugh. Suddenly Hugh is sick, writes a note they are to come, and Ross sees how deeply engaged she is with Armitage. A bit of satire on doctoring as it’s no longer Enys who lives too far but a Captain Longman, possibly making Hugh much worse with his regime of small tortures.
This is not the thrust though. The thrust is Ross’s discomfort, perplexity and later in the night finding a poem from Hugh to Demelza in her pocket skirt where unless it’s poetic license he reads they have had a sexual encounter. I can’t put into words how distressed and intensely bothered he is to see this — although it happened to him and Elizabeth. He was looking for this unconsciously for he saw how much Hugh means to her.
This second couple reaching a plot-design climax is accompanied by Hugh’s uncle Falmouth, now Dunstanville who so enjoyed Demelza’s dinner again approaching Ross and again pressuring him to become his candidate for election to parliament. Dunstanville is very disappointed in Warleggan, and was embarrassed and felt himself threatened in reputation when he realized Warleggan was using his position to try to fleece and destroy Pascoe’s bank. Still Ross resists because of the Tory politics of Dunstanville, the corrupt way of gaining power. We see him thinking too bitterly about life with comments that came home to me (which I’ll try to find tonight). Why does Dunstanville want him: Ross is popular, but Ross has not said no and then came upon that poem.
The poem is from Armitage to Demelza. Ross and Demelza had come to Falmouth’s house because Falmouth had written that his son was so ill, and asking for her. Ross witnesses Demelza’s unconscious revealing of deep distress and yes tender concern and affection for Hugh. He begins to realize another person has come between Demelza and he, someone she perhaps trusts more, feels more empathy with.
This is the poem Ross finds in Demelza’s pocket. It’s another attributed to Hugh Armitage in Graham’s novel:
When I am gone remember this of me
That earth of earth or heaven of heaven concealed
No greater happiness than was to me revealed
By favour of a single day with thee.
If for those moments you should shed a tear
Proud I would be and prouder of your sorrow;
Even if no memory beyond tomorrow
In your sweet heart will empty me of fear.
Leave in the sand a heel mark of your crying,
Scatter all grief to silence and to air.
Let the wind blow your beauty ever fair
And leave me thus to occupy my dying.
It is after reading this and the shock of his ignorance of what Demelza has been doing and feeling, that in fact she cannot be his paired self, validating him, that he says yes to Falmouth.
The theme of this book is, as I remarked, the impossibility of going beyond our own aloneness, of transferring our experience to another and someone else understanding it.
I’ve made the poem the epigraph to this blog.
E.M.
I should mention that there is an obvious reference to some tryst (“By favour of a single day with thee …”
We are to see Demelza’s love for this young man the romantic young love and courtship relationship or experience with a young man her age she never did get a chance to have when the older Ross rescued her from the wretched existence that would have been hers.
E.M.
From John Ryland:
“His books tended to get better and better, but this is my favorite; the theme is love and love can be hard to keep within the bonds of marriage. The tryst is, of course, the afternoon on the beach. When Ross reads this he knows that Hugh and Demelza’s love had become physical, just as Ross’s love for Elizabeth had become physical. Although the consummation of the latter love began as a rape, it did not end as such. There were other affairs that did not quite take place: the one between the Scottish army officer and Demelza and the other between Ross and Caroline. Caroline admitted that she wanted very much a night of love with Ross, but said that she would have to tell Demelza. It is intereting how fate moves in: if Hugh had not died, Demelza would have carried on her affair with him and destroyed her marriage. Demelza’s love for Ross seemed much different from her love for Hugh. In way, her youth died with Hugh. This is not to detract from the love Demelza has for Ross; it is a mature love for husband, home and family all wrapped up in one.
I must write that I did not like the character of Hugh. I thought him to be predatory and cleverly having his way with her. I also lost much respect for Dwight; it seemed to me that he had lost all his passion and much of his reason.
John Ryland
My reply:
Once again thanks for your remarks. They make it more interesting for me to read. Half teasing: I think you identify strongly with Ross and that’s why you dislike Hugh so much :): he’s the young lover Demelza never had. Ross is at first afraid that Hugh’s death instead of freeing them, will fix her in love forever; but far from it, she does know the limitations of the kind of love she was experiencing and where her real salvation, comfort, safety, life lies.
I seem to like each book most as I finish it.
Ellen
Four Swans, Bk 3, Chs 8-10: How elections really worked; Ross and Demelza’s unshared mutual despair
The action of the conclusion of the novel is quickly told. We see that George expects to win, thinking Falmouth is as hated as he was when George’s father first helped him to win. Falmouth is (theoretically, from a distance, as a powerful pitless man), but George is personally disliked more as he inflicts himself everywhere.
So in the penultimate chapter we watch each individual who can cast a vote in the small borough cast it as a result of personal interest (because they dare not buck George, or owe something to Falmouth or Ross), out of a personal identity image (Ross is popular as the man who fought the French and bought Enys back, never mind that Enys as a doctor is not appreciated), out of a pique, to be difficult, out of irritation with Falmouth. Ross wins by one, it seems because he has offended less people, and yes (as George thinks) it might be he has the looks and feel of the old line Cornish world and has Pascoe on his side (banker who has been decent to others). It’s not clear as people appreciate Warleggan’s trade and valuing of prestige. At any rate what’s clear is who gets the most votes wins and Ross gets one more.
Warleggan is devastated. Elizabeth had even gone on visits for him the night before. We know she had been looking forward intensely to going to live in London with him now they had made up.
The last chapter is Ross coming home and finding that in reaction to Hugh’s death (not actually expected), no Demelza and his rage and grief at this. Sense of betrayal. Helplessness. Cannot find her. What is his life if not with her. He has himself given her everything, married out of his class, taught her:
Together they had had everything and she had flung it all away. Almost without a thought to what she was spoiling and soiling forever. Demelza, whom he had dragged up and loved and worked for devotedly; a man had come and smiled at her and held her hand and she had weakly, sentimentally and wantonly fallen in love. Almost with a token resistance” (p. 574).
We know he’s exaggerating. He worked for himself. He too had weakly thrown away everything the night he was told Elizabeth was to marry George and in rage ran to her house and raped her.
Suspense is built up and we worry that in fact she is out of love with Ross, has fooled herself with this young man’s love. She had liked his talk and herself been so hurt at what she knows and suspects (yet more than is) of Ross’s continuing love for Elizabeth.
But when she returns, she says immediately that she was with Caroline, and we see Caroline was someone she can talk to fully — as she could not Ross. But he does not see this and talks angrily, roughly, “He could have killed her because he loved her.”
She said, “What do you wish me to do?’
‘Leave or stay, just as you wish.’
‘Leave? she said. ‘I don’t want to leave. How could I possibly go away from here — from all, all that we have together?
‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before.’
‘Yes, she said, standing up. ‘Perhaps I should.”
He bent again to stab at the fire.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you want me to go I will.’
The words rise to his lips to say go, but he cannot say them and then the new daughter, Clowance, walks in. She wants to be read to; she looks in her mother’s face and “howls in anguish.” A servant comes in to take her off, and Ross says her mother will be up in a moment.
He then turns to Demelza and asks how she “feels,” and she:
‘What have I to say? I never intended. This crept on me unawares. I never thought – you must know I never thought … I am so sad. For – for all things.’
‘Yes, well … Sit down here a minute and tell me.’ ‘What more is there to say?’
‘Tell me what you feel about Hugh.’ ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She used her sleeve again. ‘How can I say truthfully, when I am not sure myself? I tell you, it came on me unawares. It was the last thing I ever sought. Now my heart feels broken … But not in the way – not like at Julia’s death. Now I weep tears, tears, tears, for so much youth and love buried into the ground … When Julia died I had no tears. They were internal – like blood. Now – now they stream down my face like rain – like rain that I cannot stop. Oh, Ross, will you not hold me?’
‘Yes,’ he said, doing it.
‘Please hold me and never let me go.’ ‘Nor shall I, if you give me the chance.’
‘Not till we die. Ross, I could not live without you …
These – these are not the tears of a penitent – I may have reason to be penitent – but this is not that. I cry – it sounds silly – I weep for Hugh and – and for myself – and for for the whole world.’
‘Set some tears aside for me,’ Ross said, ‘for I believe I need them.’
‘Oh, they are all yours,’ she said and then choked completely and clung to him with great shaking sobs.
They sat for a while, crouched in an awkward attitude that neither noticed. Now and then he would free a hand to thrust it impatiently across his own nose and eyes.
After a long time he said: ‘Clowance will be waiting.’
‘I’ll go in a minute. But first 1 must wash my face.’ ‘Drink this.’
She took a second gulp from his glass. ‘You are very good to me, Ross.’ ‘Good for you, no doubt.’
‘To me … Forgiving … But forgetting? 1 don’t know.
Perhaps it’s a mistake to forget. All 1 know is that 1 love you. 1 suppose that’s all that really matters.’
‘It’s what matters to me.’
She shuddered and put a hand to each eye in turn. ‘I’ll wash my face and then go and read, and then if you want you can have a bite of supper.’
‘I think,’ said Ross, ‘I’ll come and read a while with you.’
They come closer here than they did in the several books that end on their relationship (all do but Book 5, Black Moon which ends on Aunt Agatha’s death). This time Demelza does not think to leave as in Book 4 (Warleggan — he had betrayed her with Elizabeth then for sure and they had not made love for months), yet like Book 3 (Jeremy Poldark) our final utterance is his taking deep satisfaction in his home with her that she has made for him.
What we see here is they have faced up to being alone together, needing one another because of what they are intrinsically (good) and what they have built, but not really understanding one another. George and Elizabeth fool themselves they understand one another (maybe Elizabeth knows better), Morwenna and Drake and Emma and Sam still dream of it. Caroline and Dwight are in this book kept at a distance.
E.M.
[…] of his wife. His tolerance in his novel over Demelza’s adultery with Hugh Armitage (in The Four Swans) can be seen in the broad calm way he does not become enraged and hysterical when his crippled wife […]
I watched the series in the 70’s, read the books available at the time, ordered and watched the series again in the summer/fall on DVD and just finished the 12th book. Now, I’m just plain sad that there are no more books nor will there ever be anymore books as Graham died in 2003. Needless to say, this series really stayed with me over the last 30+ years. You do a great job in analysing these books.
Do you remember which book Ross finally shares/confesses his true feelings regarding Elizabeth with Demelza? It was a turning point, as he confesses to Demelza that she is no longer viewed as 2nd best, but what he really prefers….. He only learns this after bedding Elizabeth and much self introspection.
If you already wrote about this, please point me in the correct direction.
GD
The books are wonderful and I’m steadily making my way through them. They are not individual books so much as one on-going story in different phases with different emphases. The characters and Graham’s tone of mind appeals strongly to me.
I liked the series too, especially Robin Ellis as Ross and the onlocation shooting. Ellen
[…] two women in my life and they have both turned to other men”) brings us back to the ending of The Four Swans where Demelza collapsed in Ross’s arms and they reunited in need and love again. Now we are […]
[…] Adderley results from more than Ross’s anger over Demelza’s love for Hugh Armitage (The Four Swans): it’s a deeper diffuse abiding anger he barely understands […]
[…] read eight book now I feel the strongest books in the series are actually The Black Moon, The Four Swans and <em>The Angry Tide, and especially the last two. The nightly rapes of Morwenna, the […]
[…] Poldark novels. Morwena experiences marital rape nightly in Graham’s Black Moon and Four Swans and it’s sufficiently suggestively describe a few times that we know the man is sadistic, a […]
[…] *************************************** Elizabeth (Jill Townsend) in Poldark Season 2, Part 8 realizing what a monster she has married when she learns George has been paying thugs to set fire to Drake Carne’s house, beat him up, poison his wells supposedly because Drake is Ross’s brother-in-law (from The Four Swans) […]
[…] Century Worlds for each of the 13 episodes of season two (based on the next three, Black Moon, The Four Swans, The Angry Tide), I never wrote a blog. This second series had a hard time gaining the momentum of […]
It seems to me it’s in this book Ross tries to confess his full feelings — both what he loved and how he now recognizes its limitations. Ellen
An Outline:
Four Swans, Cornwall 1795-97
Book 1, October 1795
Chapter 1: Warleggan’s interrogation of Behenna who is made very uncomfortable; then he meets and questions Tabb in the tavern; Elizabeth home from social visiting in Truro is interrogated by George; she wants to go to Caroline’s wedding; is watched by George and hates it; his jealousy and suspicon of Ross emerge and she deflects it by her sincere rejection of what Ross has become
Chapter 2: November 1, 1795 Caroline and Dwight wed, big wedding, everyone came, three other couples: Ross & Demelza in new dress; George & Elizabeth, Whitworth with Mowenna whose revulsion and misery cannot be seen. New characters: Sir Francis Basset and his lady; then Mr and Mrs Ralph-Allen Daniell whose offer of JofP Ross had refused (Warleggan); then Lord Falmouth; Ross and Demelza staying with Harris Pascoe who tells of how Hugh is cousin of Falmouths, mother a Boscawen; George and Elizabeth, George discussing discontent (his) with Falmouth and sense Sir Francis Basset could become — that is, be used — as a cynosure of discontent, that Falmouth disavowed Fox; Whitworth discussing George’s hatred of Poldark, and Morwenna loving Drake; Caroline and Drake his feeble state.
Chapter 3: Ross’s gift of land and house to Drake to make him a blacksmith, ST Ann’s; Drake’s despair (“yielding to unbelief”), Sam’s upset & tries to persuade Drake to forget her, Drake “I know she can’t abide him”; the trip to Pally’s house, Sam’s attempt to persuade Emma
Chapter 4: The coming of Rowella and Garlanda to Whitworth vicarage, sunny February afternoon 1796: even Whitworth knows she doesn’t like him, twists her feet (thus that shuffle), servant sees her vivid and chattering, the swans in the lake; the March invitation to the Bassetts, dinner, Armitage begins to allure Demelza; she means to be friendly and taken the wrong way; Buonaparte talk; the strolls and now Demelza by a lake with Armitage to look at fowl
Chapter 5: Basset’s political views (only recently retreated from Fox’s new positions); Demelza and Hugh Armitage: He says Captain Poldark bestowed on him “liberty and the opportunity of meeting his wife;” Demelza she’s not skilled in this sort of thing; Basset wants Ross to stand for him and PIttite position against Falmouth as MP; ride home Caroline tells Demelza her marriage a mistake; Ross explains his motives to Dwight, cannot be Basset’s creature, tells of Verity’s tale of food riot; Dwight and he agree “Human nature is abominable”
Chapter 6: Sam visiting Hoskins, learns of dreadful misery of poor by experience; around him is forming anger which leads to violent strike; Sam and Emma, and and the hostile talk with Tom Harry; Emma defends materialistic and selfish view of life, Emma’s home, Lobb (Tholly’s son)
Chapter 7: Whitworth told by Behenna he must leave Morwenna alone; allured by Rowella; visits George to urge for Sawle for himelf; Ross’s talk about business with Henshawe, home and comes upon Armitage and Demelza and their talk, where Demelza says she approves of his having refused Bassett’s offer of MP
Chapter 8: Nicholas Warleggan and Hicks, Mayor, forced to wait for Falmouth for hours and then he arrogantly says who he will chose as MP (Mr Jeremy Salter); Morwenna’s terrible childbirth, Whitworth has to miss election where Warleggan mounted a successful resistance against Falmouth’s man and put his son, George
Chapter 9: Ross and Harris Pascoe, how Bassett’s nomination of Warlegggan has made problems for him and so he ended up voting for Salter; Pascoe hates new anti-humane values; Ross and George forced to maintain a minimal civility in tavern in front of Bassett, Ross to Nampara, invitation to Falmouth’s (a Gower); there she has poems by Armitage in pocket
Chapter 10: Rowella’s birthday, Whitworth’s voyeurism, Morwenna does not improve, not thrive, Ossie forces himself on Morwenna; the worldly Champion trying to control Sam; Elizabeth not coming to London with George who is acting badly; Elizabeth now her own mistress at Whitworth’s vicarage insists Dwight be called and Dwight insists Morwenna be left alone
Chapter 11: George gone to London (June 1796(, Elizabeth though realizes that she is still followed, Geoffrey Charles there and changed, strained but goes visit Drake; she meets Ross in church and their powerful dialogue — he advises her to have another child and claim it’s premature. Moment truthfully represented in mini-series. As the novels finally emerged this is in fact a central moment in the central 6th novel
Chapter 12: Ross shocked by George’s suspicions, Now trip to Tregothowan, Lord Falmouth’s, Caroline and Dwight go too; Caroline showing respect as Ross called in; now Ross refuses Falmouth: in dialogue Falmouth hates smuggling (as do Warleggan and Basset) but Ross himself smuggled and sees distance; Ross’s modest objectives, Falmouth wants to obstruct Warleggan’s parliamentary life, Ross refuses, at the same time Armitage and Demelza scenes
Chapter 13: Ross irritable; at first reassured by Demelza, then as they ride home she tells of her girlish liking for Armitage and there is tension, they walk a tightrope he says; Dwight’s visit to Whitworth and Morwenna and Whitworth takes up with Rowella
Chapter 14: Drake and Geoffrey Charles with GC’s dreams when he grows up of owning Trenwith; Sam and Emma’s visit to him and how she needles him but ends with her saying his parishioners would never accept her and thus she must not marry him; part ends on Sam’s grief as he looks at seagulls
Book Two, Summer 1796
Chapter 1: A passing time sequence, politics of larger world again (Pitt’s reforms), Bodrugan, Demelza registers this; then Dwight finds unexpectedly Whitworth not so angry; home Caroline says he is ill, she complains seriously and he acquiesces in doing less and that means not going as far afield as Whitworths
Chapter 2: Morwenna’s loss in losing Dwight; Whitworth’s obsession with Rowella; Jud now gravedigger, comedy over dogs; Demelza’s visit to Sawle the next day, a poem from Armitage in her pocket (p. 285) and he is on the HMS Arethusa; Demelza’s visit where Jud drops information he saw Elizabeth and Ross at the grave of Aunt Agatha (arouses her suspicions affair carrying on)
Chapter 3: George back in Cornwall early August but comes to Trenwith mid-August; he misses Elizabeth in London, could have used her; he cannot resist her sexually; she has urged GC to behave, she cannot stop boy from visiting Drake, angry, now orders Tankard to ruin Drake’s place; George and Elizaberth on the way to Bassets pass Nampara speak of it; Emma to Drake and Drake tells her of a girl Sam loved that died
Chapter 4: A beautiful winter, bath in water Dec 21, 1796; January Ross learns position at Sawle given to Whitworth (he must learn if he wants influence he must do something for it); his dialogue with Demezla; Morwenna’s wish to visit Drake cannot; Rowella’s pregnancy. Solway the librarian for a husband.
Chapter 5: Wider political talk; Bassetts (called Dunstanvilles have dinner at Nampara in February; Demelza carries if off very well; the walks along cliff, Demelza with Bassett he tries to pump her and does not succeed; she is loyal; Ross and Demelza (pp. 325-30) in their half-companionable half-at-odds: what she said politically; Ross tells of how George destroying Drake’s property
Chapter 6: The librarian and sordid negotations.
Chapter 7: Political talk introduced through Ross and Pascoe discussing bank and work; the wedding of Rowella and Solway; Morwenna faces down Whitworth; she will murder the child she does hate
Chapter 8: Drake’s attempt to reach Elizabeth at Trenwith; how Tom Harry nearly kills him; Nanfans find and bring him back, Sam telling Drake to stay away and Drake’s determination to reach the woman he thinks will give him fair play
Chapter 9: Drake’s reaching Truro and telling his story, George’s interruption, he throws the man out, and now he and Elizabeth have it out: to disfigure a young man for life, to make enemies everywhere; he promises to leave the man alone and she at long last brings up his behavior over Valentine, and now swears she has never given her body to any man but Francis and him; the scene ends with them making up: she wins too — as Morwenna did
Chapter 10: A long fulfilling interlude with Armitage, a day in June 1797
Book Three, June 1797
Chapter 1: Where Ross visits Verity, where Basset pressures landlords to round up and punish strikers and violence; he does it as much because he’s irritated at these people as anything; Ross’ going back, his talk with Enys, comes to Demelza and there tells of what he hated doing and did — woke and sent people to jail. Her long meditation. Idea is all are compromising: Dwight must compromise to keep Caroline; Ross beginning to learn he must compromise; she is compromised, poem (p. 430)
Chapter 2: The trial, many let off, but fifteen of leaders held; the pilchard catch, Drake’s bitterness, how Emma needles Sam into accepting challenge from Tom Harry who did have another motive in the beating near death of Drake; dinner at Bassetts where George and Ross must cope with one another, adn Ross tries to persuade men to give men to help poor; instead he is led to bet with George who will win; if George loses he must give his money to charity for miners and he will do the same; after Ross tries to persuade Bassett to be merciful and fails, after all it’s just one man …
Chapter 3: Ross home meets Sam who will go with Peter to support the brother and offers to practice with him; home to Demelza where she shows note from Hugh and wants permission to go; she can of course; to go with Caroline; he tries to confide his feelings about Elizabeth that he no longer does love; Demelza realizes what the scene at the grave was and declines to confide back
Chapter 4: The terrible hanging, the man does speak out but we are not given what he says; Sawle feast day coming; people in church, Ross watching Odgers who has been cowed; Whitworth’s sermon; death; how Geoge persists with suspicions; Drake seeing Morwenna so terribly changed, she him smiles with deep love
Chapter 5: The feast, Caroline’s pregnant, the wrestling match, how Sam gives it over
Chapter 6: Ross pays the debt, Hugh continues the same, Caroline’s party for the gentlemen, Whitworth’s sneaking about, see Rowella, Emma and Demelza’s talk
Chapter 7: Hugh fatally ill, Demelza and Ross to Falmouth’s; Falmouth tells of how Bassett has sickened of George (with his capitalist ways) and again offers job to Ross; Ross not sure, back in the room he discovers Hugh’s poem to Demelza
Chapter 8: George and Elizabeth rubbing along; Morwenna now knows nothing of Rowella, Elizabeth comes to visit and as common knows nothing of what one needs to know superficially; George and Cary deciding who to squeeze and threat to get them to vote right in the coming election for MP
Chaper 9: 14 September 1797: The charade of the election; Ross elected; the death of Hugh, uncle’s tears
Chapter 10: Six o’clock that night. Ross’s outrage, shock, rival dead so beyond his reach; Sam’s hope for Emma still and his announced sense of Ross and Demelza’s mistake; Demelza out on the beach, confides in Caroline, home again, he tells you to leave or stay just as she wishes; he feels like killing her because he loves her too much; she cannot imagine life without hm, is weeping for Hugh and all the world; they come together over reading to the child Clowance
[…] Jill Townsend as Elizabeth Warleggan, taken aback to learn of her cousin Morwenna’s suffering (1977-88 Poldark, Part 7, Episode 2, from Four Swans) […]
[…] Jill Townsend as Elizabeth Warleggan, she turns away having told Robin Ellis as Ross that her husband suspects that Ross is Valentine’s father (1977-78 Poldark, Pt 7, Ep 5, from Four Swans) […]
Have just finished reading The Four Swans.
For me, Demelza falls from her pedestal with a big thud ! I found this storyline not believable. Knowing how much Demelza loves Ross, I don’t think her character would have given in to the persuasive and frankly manipulative Armitage. I found his ‘arguments’ for making love were self seeking, I think Demelza in reality, would have seen through this.
So this has coloured my overall feeling of this book.
Have avidly read the previous books and loved them, but this has taken the joy out of the Saga for me.
FWIW, Demelza is supposed to be a real woman, not an ideal statue on a pedestal. She never had a chance to have a genuine boyfriend who courted her; Ross was her master, she his servant and he married her because he liked her, she was part of his life, a convenience. He learned he loved sex with her, and only after marriage did he fall in love with her. He looked at her as someone to be obedient to him for a long time. She is swept off her feet by romance. Ross also carries on loving Elizabeth as his ideal from afar; he tried to possess her too after Francis died, and when she showed she needed a husband close to her to help her and wanted material things, prestige, and accepted George, he raped her. Demelza was intensely betrayed and over the years has felt she is in an implicit three way relationship even if Elizabeth stays apart. What happens in Four Swans is thus a development out of all that has come before. Graham empathizes as a woman with Demelza and Elizabeth and Morwenna and before them Verity. These are adult characters, complex and ambiguous as real people; they are used thematically in intelligent ways to show us all sorts of realities about ourselves.
Hi and thanks for your good, thoughtful comments above. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that the character of Demelza was akin to a statue, you are right, she is very human ! But she does have such a faithful, devoted nature, it somehow didn’t seem right in her to do what she did.
I guess we wouldn’t have a story if all the people in it were perfect, their imperfections are what creates much of the detail!
Am about to start The Angry Tide, so will see what develops, actions have consequences, will be interesting to see the impact this incident has !
I love her all the more for her humanity; Ross too. And Elizabeth, I find her poignant character finally. You’ll see when you get to the end of The Angry Tide.
I could understand why Elizabeth called Ross a bully, considering what he had done to her in “Warleggan”. From her POV, he behaved exactly as she had described him to George.
What do you think the graveyard meeting meant to Ross? I believe it was a form of revenge because Dem was receiving attention Hugh.
I think that was an element in it. He was very upset, his whole equilibrium and security and assurance disturbed by her affair with Hugh.
[…] of episodes (10, 60 minutes each) they have been given for 2 and 1/2 books (The Black Moon and The Four Swans will be covered this third season), while the older one was held to a strict four episodes of 45 […]
[…] previous Poldarks which are available in good digitialized versions. See my blog on Graham’s Four Swans and The Angry […]
I was going through my imdb watch-list.. i wanted a really good drama series to watch (I’ve almost watched every decent series) … surprisingly imdb didn’t suggest me the Poldark … first two seasons were extremely good but third was roller coaster for me… I completed all three season in three days… you may guess what a turmoil of emotions it was .. .after third season finale I just couldn’t take it … it was like I was going to explode , all the emotions inside … but seriously though I would have certainly wait for next season if I would have watched episodes one by one each every week … for now I was too curious … it was eating me up and I couldn’t sleep … i prefer reading books to television but do you think its a good thing to read first and then watch its tv adaptation … one of them is bound to disappoint in comparison to each other .. thanking you for providing the good analysis and very good outline. …I don’t think anyone could have done better
I love serial drama too and think this is one of the more deeply felt than I’ve watched in a long time, genuine sincerely-felt enactments. They do have a superior source text. I went back and forth. The first time I watched the older Poldark by the time I got to the fourth episode I felt I was missing inner qualities, nuances, all sorts of history, and began to read. Nowadays I like to buy the serials in DVDs so I can watch them at my own rate. Take the film as a reading of the book as well as work of art in its own right speaking to us. I love to compare and in re-watching the new one I’ve felt I’ve been unfair. I was too attached to the older series. These series when beautifully done enter my dream life. Thank you for this appreciation and encouragement; it means a lot to me.
I just finished reading the sixth novel in Winston Graham’s POLDARK series, “The Four Swans”. I just finished reading Elizabeth Warleggan’s encounter with Ross Poldark in the Sawle churchyard.
I found myself recalling Ross and Elizabeth’s meeting in the Sawle churchyard.
I wonder if Ross can be regarded as an unreliable narrator. He never seemed to be completely honest with Elizabeth, Demelza or himself; when it comes to his actions with the former. I had suspected this after reading the fourth novel, “Warleggan”. But the Sawle churchyard scene from “The Four Swans” merely increased my suspicions and made wonder if due to his emotions and his ego, Ross was incapable of being honest when it came to his history with Elizabeth.
It is a pity that the show runners for both the 1975-77 series and the current series were incapable of conveying this. Or perhaps they were blinded by Ross’ role as the saga’s main protagonist. Who knows?
I’m sorry, but I meant to add this about Ross and Elizabeth’s meeting:
Moment truthfully represented in mini-series.
I don’t think so. The rape was never mentioned. And in the mini series, it was Elizabeth who kissed Ross and not the other way around.
[…] provided the equivalent episodes of the older 1970s Poldark to the one aired tonight on BBC: from the conclusion of The Four Swans (1977 Episode 8) and the opening of The Angry Tide (1977 Episode 9) and have provided a couple of […]