Charles Garvice (1850–1920)
Auteur de Her ransom, or, Paid for!
A propos de l'auteur
Notice de désambiguation :
(eng) Charles Garvice also wrote under the pseudonym Caroline Hart.
Œuvres de Charles Garvice
A wasted love 6 exemplaires
The earl's heir (Adelphi library) 6 exemplaires
For her only 5 exemplaires
Edna's secret marriage, or, Love's champion 3 exemplaires
A life's mistake, or, Love's forgiveness 3 exemplaires
A Martyred Love (Eagle Series, #257) 3 exemplaires
In Exchange for Love 3 exemplaires
Lorrie or Hollow Gold (No. 85 Eagle Series New Edition) 3 exemplaires
Passion flower 3 exemplaires
So nearly lost, or, Springtime of love 2 exemplaires
The usurper, or, Her humble lover 2 exemplaires
The Marquis 2 exemplaires
A jest of fate 2 exemplaires
Olivia, or, Was it for her sake? 2 exemplaires
Love the tyrant 2 exemplaires
A love comedy 2 exemplaires
Woven on fate's loom 2 exemplaires
staunch as a woman; or love's woe 2 exemplaires
A coronet of shame 2 exemplaires
So nearly lost 1 exemplaire
The Spider and the Fly; or, An Undesired Love 1 exemplaire
Leola Dale's fortune 1 exemplaire
Creatures of Destiny, or, Where Love Leads 1 exemplaire
Linked by fate 1 exemplaire
The verdict of the heart 1 exemplaire
Wild Margaret 1 exemplaire
When love meets love, or, Cynthia's reward 1 exemplaire
Hearts of Fire 1 exemplaire
The other woman 1 exemplaire
Love and a Lie, or, the Heart of the Other Woman 1 exemplaire
The Call of the Heart 1 exemplaire
Gold in the gutter 1 exemplaire
Erfðaskráin 1 exemplaire
Jeanne : barriers between 1 exemplaire
Leslie's peril 1 exemplaire
The eyes of love (Eagle series, no. 347) 1 exemplaire
Love of a lifetime 1 exemplaire
Edna's secret 1 exemplaire
Her humble lover 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom légal
- Garvice, Charles Andrew
- Autres noms
- Gibson, Charles
Hart, Caroline - Date de naissance
- 1850-08-24
- Date de décès
- 1920-03-01
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- UK
- Lieu de naissance
- Stepney, England, UK
- Cause du décès
- cerebral haemorrhage
- Courte biographie
- Charles Andrew Garvice was born on 24 August 1850 in or around Stepney, England, UK, son of Mira Winter and Andrew John Garvice, a bricklayer. On 1872, he married Elizabeth Jones, and had two sons and six daughters. He got his professional start as a journalist. On 1875, his first novel, "Maurice Durant" was published in serialized form, but when was published as a novel, it did not sell well. He concluded it was too long and too expensive for popular sales - this early experience taught him about the business side of writing. On 1910, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910, he was ‘the most successful novelist in England’. He published novels selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914, and since 1913 he was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Despite his enormous success, he was poorly received by literary critics. He published over 150 romance novels, and also signed some of his novels under the female pseudonym of Caroline Hart.
He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on 21 February 1920 and was in a coma eight days until his death on 1 March 1920. - Notice de désambigüisation
- Charles Garvice also wrote under the pseudonym Caroline Hart.
Membres
Critiques
Stella's Fortune par Charles Garvice
I enjoyed this in spots, but the dramatic climaxes just felt ridiculous to me!!! And I have a decent tolerance for melodrama. I particularly dislike, though, when a person plays right into the hands of someone they know they shouldn't trust. In this case the girl turns on her fiancé without even giving him a chance to explain himself, all because of what the rival suitor, whom she intensely dislikes, tells her. Manufactured, pointless tension born from failure to communicate sends a book way down on my list.… (plus d'informations)
Celia, a well-born girl who has come down in the world since her parents' death, lives in a boarding house where she makes the acquaintance of two of her neighbors: an elderly, impoverished gentleman named Mr. Clendon, who is the ultimate in kindness, and a young, desperate and mysterious engineer who tries to take his own life, until Celia steps in and prevents him. That one act sets in motion the whole story. The young man, whose name Celia doesn't know, stands accused of forgery and is willing to take the blame for it. Celia is certain that he is innocent, and he admits to her that he is. She helps him to get away from pursuing authorities. How he thereafter gets to South America and back, and how she loses her job and gains another with a wealthy family who has lots of skeletons in the closet, are the plotlines that lead them back to each other...and to Mr. Clendon.
Nice minor character is Reginald Rex, a blossoming mystery novelist who prides himself on his ability to find out things and speak straightforwardly. He also subscribes to the theories of physiognomy, a branch of "science" that was very popular in the 19th century, that says that you can immediately tell what kind of character a person has based on their facial features, measurements, physical proportions, etc. This is why some novelists of that era devote so much space to describing what kind of forehead a person had or how their eyes were positioned, etc. (You can find instances of this way of thinking in many MANY books, Jane Eyre for one.)
Anyway, a pretty fast and enjoyable read.… (plus d'informations)
Nice minor character is Reginald Rex, a blossoming mystery novelist who prides himself on his ability to find out things and speak straightforwardly. He also subscribes to the theories of physiognomy, a branch of "science" that was very popular in the 19th century, that says that you can immediately tell what kind of character a person has based on their facial features, measurements, physical proportions, etc. This is why some novelists of that era devote so much space to describing what kind of forehead a person had or how their eyes were positioned, etc. (You can find instances of this way of thinking in many MANY books, Jane Eyre for one.)
Anyway, a pretty fast and enjoyable read.… (plus d'informations)
I'm not sure whether I didn't like this or whether I've just gotten used to the genre and am finding it too predictable, but I do get impatient when selfish meddlers and miscommunication keep a couple apart for a huge chunk of the story.
Stafford Orme goes to visit his father's new house in the countryside (incidentally, the descriptions of the landscape are rather delicious!), and he meets Ida, a neighbor girl who is managing her father's farm. He has never been attracted to anyone before, but of course he falls in love with her at first sight, which means it must be The Real Thing.
Other people... happen. Things get messed up and people get miserable, but of course hero and heroine will always rise above, act nobly, and be rewarded. I have no problems with a good old-fashioned melodrama, but in this case it felt too much like the author was ticking off boxes on his checklist.… (plus d'informations)
Stafford Orme goes to visit his father's new house in the countryside (incidentally, the descriptions of the landscape are rather delicious!), and he meets Ida, a neighbor girl who is managing her father's farm. He has never been attracted to anyone before, but of course he falls in love with her at first sight, which means it must be The Real Thing.
Other people... happen. Things get messed up and people get miserable, but of course hero and heroine will always rise above, act nobly, and be rewarded. I have no problems with a good old-fashioned melodrama, but in this case it felt too much like the author was ticking off boxes on his checklist.… (plus d'informations)
I remember trying to read this when I was fourteen andsnowed up in North Wales (my mother attended lots of auctions to buy Victoriana and got stuck with a lot of job lots of books along with other stuff). At that time, I found it too ridiculous to read properly, 'skim' reading it instead. It certainly wouldn't have been fair to review it on that basis.
Remembering this as an example of an old novel on the tired theme of 'Disgraced Lord Turned Outlaw is Framed for Murder by Conniving Cousin Who is Also a Rival in Love' which I have used for my latest, the spoof historical romance 'Ravensdale', I decided to re-read it.
I found it even more ridiculous this time round; while I love a melodramatic read full of cardboard characters and absurd co-incidences, as for instance, Vulpius' 'Rinaldo Rinaldini',somehow, I couldn't enjoy this, absurd as it was.
I am also in a quandry; if this was a modern author, I would mark down as a matter of course to a one star rating anyone who displayed such awful anti Semitism and snobbery; but as one has to judge writers by the time in which they lived and unfortunately, a good deal of otherwise good writing of the late nineteenth century was marred by these ugly features - I am being generous, and awarding it a two and a half star rating (which will show up as a three). Unfortunately, besides having these defects this isn't good writing either- it's purely dreadful and sometimes not even grammatical.
Ms Matter in her fascinating article on Garvice, 'Pursuing the Great Bad Novelist' is kind enough to say that he'endured more ridicule than any decent human being should'. I have to say that having read this, I fully understand why. The tone is not only sententious, but arrogant.
If this man just wrote sentimental romantic rubbish, with cardboard characters and improbable drama, that would be fine - but though he splits his infinitives (regarded as shocking in those days)and writes the most hackneyed, lurid prose and has created almost an ideal type of Marty Stu hero and a Mary Sue heroine, he actually says:-
'Eva...was full of spirit and wit,and by no manner of means at all like the fool of the ingenue one...reads of in the impossible modern novel'. He speaks scornfully of his contemporary fellow writers in a few such thrusts, and I can see that he would arouse antagonism amongst critics.
Eva, in fact, does make one witty remark in the whole novel (not needless to say, at the expense of the hero, who is obviously never ridiculous, even when staggering round drunk with a bashed head dressed as a coster) but apart from hanging on to the reins of her bolting horse she shows very little spirit at all. Instead she goes pale as she sacrifices herself for her father, drops her head on her arms and occasionally, faints.
However, everybody worships her; she gives the Wicked Lord, Heriot Fayne one sympathetic look (actually, I think, two) and he is struck by a desperate urge to become worthy of asking for her hand. The Conniving Cousin, the nasty, manipulative Stannard Marshank, falls in love with her at first sight. With regard to the names,I can only suppose that Garvace, who regularly produced twelve novels a year, was running out of names to come up with such a pair as Stannard Marshbank and Heriot Fayne.
Eva's two cousins distinguish her from 'Ordinary girls like ourselves'; that's the spirit, minor characters - know your place! Her father and the hero's father compliment her on her Christian attitude of sympathy towards the Outcast Lord Heriot Fayne but nobody sees anything amiss in her coldness to the young girl she thinks has been debauched and deserted by him.
Needless to say, I did.
Also, when the Conniving Cousin makes a (nearly full) confession of his murder and dies, she does not say a kind or comforting word to this unwelcome fiance, though he is very considerately leaving her alone at last and worships her. Though he is obviously unrepentant about the murder, she makes no effort to turn his thoughts to higher things. I must admit I found this very unappealing.
Lord Fayne is, as I say, an ideal type of a Marty Sue. He is: '...superbly made...his head in shape and poise like that of a Greek statue, was set upon a straight, columnar neck. His eyes, of a dark brown hue, flashed with daring reckless gleam'. But - horror of horrors- this aristocrat goes about dressed like a costermonger in cords and a cap,this not because he has sympathies with the working class - his views are oddly conventional for an outcast - but because he wishes to shame and disgrace his family, and likes brawling in music halls.
Eva's flaccidly cynical father has said why he does this: ' His brother was the pink of perfection, every inch an Averleigh - the eldest son was worshiped, pampered, feted, idolised; this second, this Heriot Fayne, neglected...it raised the devil that must have been sleeping in him...'
Oddly enough, though this older son has had such an effect on the development of Heriot Fayne's character, and his rift with his widowed father and his Aunt, we never hear more about this son, even his name, and never are told what the neglected younger son thought of him.
Of course, Victorian understanding of character strikes us as being very primitive, but this is just one of the many odd blanks in the text. Another is why Lord Fayne suddenly tuns up lying on the heather near his father's estate when we last saw him flaked out in his London apartments. One assumes it is meant to be connected with his concussion. Eva mistakes him for a tramp, but this is not depicted as being amusing. A note of humour, of ironical detachment, would actually have rendered these characters and their situation far more appealing, but Garvice was no more capable of such a subtlety than Richardson.
Anyway, I gather from Ms Matter's articles that this Hero Concealed in the Heather in Readiness to do a Rescue is a favourite device of Garvice, and he places Heriot Fayne there to rescue Eva when her horse bolts.
On the question of the text, by the way, I would probably have found this harder to read if I hadn't roughly remembered the plot from before; this digitally enhanced version is very poor with scrambled sentences on every page.
Heriot Fayne has contradictions in his character beyond the ones for which the author allows; for instance,he is supposed to be 'wild and reckless but incapable of a mean act' but he does several mean things.
In the first few pages, after the 'row' at the music hall (in which somebody hit his head with a decanter, leaving him clearly concussed, though Heriot Fayne is far too macho to be seriously discommoded by that, let alone disgracing himself by vomiting), he returns home and encounters his drunken friends (unconvincing costers and prize fighters, I think) and a Jewish money lender:
'" Sorry to trouble you, my lord, but that little bill..." Lord Fayne smiled, gripped him by the shoulder, and forced him over to the window. "Your bill's all right, Levy; bother me just now and out you go.'
Lord Fayne, you see, has an air of 'indefinable authority' and 'indescribable breeding and command'. He only need order 'finish the bottle and clear' to these sycophants, and they hurry to obey him.
Then, when Heriot Fayne finds out that his cousin has seduced the daughter of one of is father's tenants, he says, 'I have never deceived a confiding, innocent girl' but we gather that he has treated other women rather badly: 'Women had been, to him, fair game; to be hunted, beguiled, deceived; his heart had never quailed until now; Love! He had laughed at it...'
These, of course, must have been bad, naughty women who had done bad, naughty things with him; not pure girls like Eva, who doesn't even seem to have a body.
He promises Eva he will reform, throws his whisky and soda into the fire, tears down his prints of racehorses and prize fighters and sets off as an itinerant fiddler, mingling with farm workers. This is rather odd; his associating with the urban poor is seen as a sign of his degraded character, but his associating with country commoners apparently cleanses his soul.
I suspect that this may have been because at this time, costermongers were notoriously 'Chartists to a man' according to Henry Mayhew, unlike the nice, forelock tugging rural population, who knew their rightful place.
Garvice's sentimental view of rural people is all in line with the whole tone of this novel.
I haven't yet stressed that Marty Stu as he is, Heriot Fayne is not only 'one of the best lightweight boxers of his age' but also a brilliant violinist, pianist, singer,sailor, athelete and horseman and he only need pick up a fork and 'Darned if you don't handle a fork a'most as well as a fiddle-bow, my man...'
One can only suppose the older son who so eclipsed this paragon was super human.
Soon, Heriot Fayne is reformed, one of the side effects of the country air, it seems: - 'He was a new man, softened by contact with and sympathy for the rural poor, and the simple minded, honest country folk. Wherever he went he was made welcome, not only on account of his wonderful violin playing and the musical voice, but by reason of his handsome face and frank, kindly manner.'
I would like to add here that I am a great believer in the redeeming power of love - but not from a sentimental viewpoint; Heriot Fayne's change of heart and mind is portrayed in excessively sentimental terms, and us both arbitrary and unconvincing.
Of course,even in his debauched days he always impressed people with his patrician air of command, not to mention his Greek statue appearance, but now he is obviously developing into a worthy successor to the aging Lord Averleigh - everyone loves and admires him, from the ailing little Lily on the isolated ranch where he gets temporary employment, to whom he provides songs and stories on long journeys, , to her phlegmatic father who nurses Heriot through his bout of malaria 'as gently as a woman' knowing his worth. He says he hasn't met an English gentleman before, but if Heriot is anything to go by, they are an admirable lot. He even wins over the hardened detective Jones who bursts out on seeing him during his short (and of course, stoically borne) imprisonment when charged with the murder done by the dastardly Stannard Marshbank, 'You're a brick, Sir! Sorry...'
The Connniving Cousin, by contrast, has 'pale eyes' and is small. A successful opportunist politician, he has no friends, and acts dishonourably throughout, deliberately leading Eva's father into financial ruin so that he can obtain power over her through him, seducing an innocent girl, murdering the man who threatens to betray him to Eva and finally, plagued by nightmarish visions and addicted to 'chloral', falling into the copper mine into which he pushed his own victim, thus sustaining mortal injuries.
It is never explained why he hates Heriot Fayne so much - jealousy, presumably, must play a big part - but this is only one of many gaps in the story.
Heriot Fayne sacrifices himself for Eva, believing that she loves Stannard Marshbank - not as if anybody does, everybody seems to blame him for being short with pale eyes - but the misunderstanding is all sorted out. This is done partly through the investigations of a tough but fair detective. After a series of absurd co-incidences - in one Marshbank just happens to come on a malaria suffering Heriot Fayne in a remote ranch in Argentina - all ends happily, with the reformed Lord Fayne slipping his ring on Eva's finger and reconciled with his father and aunt.
Overall, 'The Outcast of the Family' is one of the worst books I have ever read. I certainly should have given it a lower rating, but I must be in a charitable mood today. Too much fresh air, I think, making me feel benevolent. Plus, I do hate awarding low star ratings to books. Where's my whisky and soda?
I finally quote some fascinating comments from Laura Sewell Matter's stimulating article on Charles Garvice: -
'The question that concerned the critics was not whether Garvice's work was high art - it patently was not - but whether he was a calculating businessman who condescended to write for the newly literate feminine masses or a simpleton who believed in the sort of twaddle he peddled. A fool or a cormorant. Either way, he was damned. I began to collect Garvice's novels - On Loves Altar , His Love So True , A Relenting Fate. I could never get through any of them, other than The Verdict of the Heart. Little beyond the particulars of the heroines hair color differentiates one from another, and without seaweed stuck to the pages, the stories were stripped of mystery. They bored me….
'Those critics who would rather rend his pages and toss them into the drink than sit on the beach reading them have had their way in the end. The formula that Garvice so successfully exploited - virtuous heroines overcoming numerous obstacles to attain happiness - is a predictable one, which any author might employ. His readers are now dead, and their Garvices - if they exist at all - molder in the attics of the Western world while books much like them, by authors who have learned the same lessons and applied the same patterns to their fiction, are being read on the beach today...'
But...
'What Garvice knew and honored, are the ways so many of us live in emotionally attenuated states, during times of peace as well as war. Stories like the ones Garvice wrote may be low art, or they may not be art at all. They may offer consolation or distraction rather than provocation and insight. But many people find provocation enough in real life, and so they read for something else. One cannot have contempt for Garvice without also having some level of contempt for common humanity, for those readers - not all of whom can be dismissed as simpletons - who may not consciously believe in what they are reading, but who read anyway because they know: a story can be a salve...'… (plus d'informations)
Remembering this as an example of an old novel on the tired theme of 'Disgraced Lord Turned Outlaw is Framed for Murder by Conniving Cousin Who is Also a Rival in Love' which I have used for my latest, the spoof historical romance 'Ravensdale', I decided to re-read it.
I found it even more ridiculous this time round; while I love a melodramatic read full of cardboard characters and absurd co-incidences, as for instance, Vulpius' 'Rinaldo Rinaldini',somehow, I couldn't enjoy this, absurd as it was.
I am also in a quandry; if this was a modern author, I would mark down as a matter of course to a one star rating anyone who displayed such awful anti Semitism and snobbery; but as one has to judge writers by the time in which they lived and unfortunately, a good deal of otherwise good writing of the late nineteenth century was marred by these ugly features - I am being generous, and awarding it a two and a half star rating (which will show up as a three). Unfortunately, besides having these defects this isn't good writing either- it's purely dreadful and sometimes not even grammatical.
Ms Matter in her fascinating article on Garvice, 'Pursuing the Great Bad Novelist' is kind enough to say that he'endured more ridicule than any decent human being should'. I have to say that having read this, I fully understand why. The tone is not only sententious, but arrogant.
If this man just wrote sentimental romantic rubbish, with cardboard characters and improbable drama, that would be fine - but though he splits his infinitives (regarded as shocking in those days)and writes the most hackneyed, lurid prose and has created almost an ideal type of Marty Stu hero and a Mary Sue heroine, he actually says:-
'Eva...was full of spirit and wit,and by no manner of means at all like the fool of the ingenue one...reads of in the impossible modern novel'. He speaks scornfully of his contemporary fellow writers in a few such thrusts, and I can see that he would arouse antagonism amongst critics.
Eva, in fact, does make one witty remark in the whole novel (not needless to say, at the expense of the hero, who is obviously never ridiculous, even when staggering round drunk with a bashed head dressed as a coster) but apart from hanging on to the reins of her bolting horse she shows very little spirit at all. Instead she goes pale as she sacrifices herself for her father, drops her head on her arms and occasionally, faints.
However, everybody worships her; she gives the Wicked Lord, Heriot Fayne one sympathetic look (actually, I think, two) and he is struck by a desperate urge to become worthy of asking for her hand. The Conniving Cousin, the nasty, manipulative Stannard Marshank, falls in love with her at first sight. With regard to the names,I can only suppose that Garvace, who regularly produced twelve novels a year, was running out of names to come up with such a pair as Stannard Marshbank and Heriot Fayne.
Eva's two cousins distinguish her from 'Ordinary girls like ourselves'; that's the spirit, minor characters - know your place! Her father and the hero's father compliment her on her Christian attitude of sympathy towards the Outcast Lord Heriot Fayne but nobody sees anything amiss in her coldness to the young girl she thinks has been debauched and deserted by him.
Needless to say, I did.
Also, when the Conniving Cousin makes a (nearly full) confession of his murder and dies, she does not say a kind or comforting word to this unwelcome fiance, though he is very considerately leaving her alone at last and worships her. Though he is obviously unrepentant about the murder, she makes no effort to turn his thoughts to higher things. I must admit I found this very unappealing.
Lord Fayne is, as I say, an ideal type of a Marty Sue. He is: '...superbly made...his head in shape and poise like that of a Greek statue, was set upon a straight, columnar neck. His eyes, of a dark brown hue, flashed with daring reckless gleam'. But - horror of horrors- this aristocrat goes about dressed like a costermonger in cords and a cap,this not because he has sympathies with the working class - his views are oddly conventional for an outcast - but because he wishes to shame and disgrace his family, and likes brawling in music halls.
Eva's flaccidly cynical father has said why he does this: ' His brother was the pink of perfection, every inch an Averleigh - the eldest son was worshiped, pampered, feted, idolised; this second, this Heriot Fayne, neglected...it raised the devil that must have been sleeping in him...'
Oddly enough, though this older son has had such an effect on the development of Heriot Fayne's character, and his rift with his widowed father and his Aunt, we never hear more about this son, even his name, and never are told what the neglected younger son thought of him.
Of course, Victorian understanding of character strikes us as being very primitive, but this is just one of the many odd blanks in the text. Another is why Lord Fayne suddenly tuns up lying on the heather near his father's estate when we last saw him flaked out in his London apartments. One assumes it is meant to be connected with his concussion. Eva mistakes him for a tramp, but this is not depicted as being amusing. A note of humour, of ironical detachment, would actually have rendered these characters and their situation far more appealing, but Garvice was no more capable of such a subtlety than Richardson.
Anyway, I gather from Ms Matter's articles that this Hero Concealed in the Heather in Readiness to do a Rescue is a favourite device of Garvice, and he places Heriot Fayne there to rescue Eva when her horse bolts.
On the question of the text, by the way, I would probably have found this harder to read if I hadn't roughly remembered the plot from before; this digitally enhanced version is very poor with scrambled sentences on every page.
Heriot Fayne has contradictions in his character beyond the ones for which the author allows; for instance,he is supposed to be 'wild and reckless but incapable of a mean act' but he does several mean things.
In the first few pages, after the 'row' at the music hall (in which somebody hit his head with a decanter, leaving him clearly concussed, though Heriot Fayne is far too macho to be seriously discommoded by that, let alone disgracing himself by vomiting), he returns home and encounters his drunken friends (unconvincing costers and prize fighters, I think) and a Jewish money lender:
'" Sorry to trouble you, my lord, but that little bill..." Lord Fayne smiled, gripped him by the shoulder, and forced him over to the window. "Your bill's all right, Levy; bother me just now and out you go.'
Lord Fayne, you see, has an air of 'indefinable authority' and 'indescribable breeding and command'. He only need order 'finish the bottle and clear' to these sycophants, and they hurry to obey him.
Then, when Heriot Fayne finds out that his cousin has seduced the daughter of one of is father's tenants, he says, 'I have never deceived a confiding, innocent girl' but we gather that he has treated other women rather badly: 'Women had been, to him, fair game; to be hunted, beguiled, deceived; his heart had never quailed until now; Love! He had laughed at it...'
These, of course, must have been bad, naughty women who had done bad, naughty things with him; not pure girls like Eva, who doesn't even seem to have a body.
He promises Eva he will reform, throws his whisky and soda into the fire, tears down his prints of racehorses and prize fighters and sets off as an itinerant fiddler, mingling with farm workers. This is rather odd; his associating with the urban poor is seen as a sign of his degraded character, but his associating with country commoners apparently cleanses his soul.
I suspect that this may have been because at this time, costermongers were notoriously 'Chartists to a man' according to Henry Mayhew, unlike the nice, forelock tugging rural population, who knew their rightful place.
Garvice's sentimental view of rural people is all in line with the whole tone of this novel.
I haven't yet stressed that Marty Stu as he is, Heriot Fayne is not only 'one of the best lightweight boxers of his age' but also a brilliant violinist, pianist, singer,sailor, athelete and horseman and he only need pick up a fork and 'Darned if you don't handle a fork a'most as well as a fiddle-bow, my man...'
One can only suppose the older son who so eclipsed this paragon was super human.
Soon, Heriot Fayne is reformed, one of the side effects of the country air, it seems: - 'He was a new man, softened by contact with and sympathy for the rural poor, and the simple minded, honest country folk. Wherever he went he was made welcome, not only on account of his wonderful violin playing and the musical voice, but by reason of his handsome face and frank, kindly manner.'
I would like to add here that I am a great believer in the redeeming power of love - but not from a sentimental viewpoint; Heriot Fayne's change of heart and mind is portrayed in excessively sentimental terms, and us both arbitrary and unconvincing.
Of course,even in his debauched days he always impressed people with his patrician air of command, not to mention his Greek statue appearance, but now he is obviously developing into a worthy successor to the aging Lord Averleigh - everyone loves and admires him, from the ailing little Lily on the isolated ranch where he gets temporary employment, to whom he provides songs and stories on long journeys, , to her phlegmatic father who nurses Heriot through his bout of malaria 'as gently as a woman' knowing his worth. He says he hasn't met an English gentleman before, but if Heriot is anything to go by, they are an admirable lot. He even wins over the hardened detective Jones who bursts out on seeing him during his short (and of course, stoically borne) imprisonment when charged with the murder done by the dastardly Stannard Marshbank, 'You're a brick, Sir! Sorry...'
The Connniving Cousin, by contrast, has 'pale eyes' and is small. A successful opportunist politician, he has no friends, and acts dishonourably throughout, deliberately leading Eva's father into financial ruin so that he can obtain power over her through him, seducing an innocent girl, murdering the man who threatens to betray him to Eva and finally, plagued by nightmarish visions and addicted to 'chloral', falling into the copper mine into which he pushed his own victim, thus sustaining mortal injuries.
It is never explained why he hates Heriot Fayne so much - jealousy, presumably, must play a big part - but this is only one of many gaps in the story.
Heriot Fayne sacrifices himself for Eva, believing that she loves Stannard Marshbank - not as if anybody does, everybody seems to blame him for being short with pale eyes - but the misunderstanding is all sorted out. This is done partly through the investigations of a tough but fair detective. After a series of absurd co-incidences - in one Marshbank just happens to come on a malaria suffering Heriot Fayne in a remote ranch in Argentina - all ends happily, with the reformed Lord Fayne slipping his ring on Eva's finger and reconciled with his father and aunt.
Overall, 'The Outcast of the Family' is one of the worst books I have ever read. I certainly should have given it a lower rating, but I must be in a charitable mood today. Too much fresh air, I think, making me feel benevolent. Plus, I do hate awarding low star ratings to books. Where's my whisky and soda?
I finally quote some fascinating comments from Laura Sewell Matter's stimulating article on Charles Garvice: -
'The question that concerned the critics was not whether Garvice's work was high art - it patently was not - but whether he was a calculating businessman who condescended to write for the newly literate feminine masses or a simpleton who believed in the sort of twaddle he peddled. A fool or a cormorant. Either way, he was damned. I began to collect Garvice's novels - On Loves Altar , His Love So True , A Relenting Fate. I could never get through any of them, other than The Verdict of the Heart. Little beyond the particulars of the heroines hair color differentiates one from another, and without seaweed stuck to the pages, the stories were stripped of mystery. They bored me….
'Those critics who would rather rend his pages and toss them into the drink than sit on the beach reading them have had their way in the end. The formula that Garvice so successfully exploited - virtuous heroines overcoming numerous obstacles to attain happiness - is a predictable one, which any author might employ. His readers are now dead, and their Garvices - if they exist at all - molder in the attics of the Western world while books much like them, by authors who have learned the same lessons and applied the same patterns to their fiction, are being read on the beach today...'
But...
'What Garvice knew and honored, are the ways so many of us live in emotionally attenuated states, during times of peace as well as war. Stories like the ones Garvice wrote may be low art, or they may not be art at all. They may offer consolation or distraction rather than provocation and insight. But many people find provocation enough in real life, and so they read for something else. One cannot have contempt for Garvice without also having some level of contempt for common humanity, for those readers - not all of whom can be dismissed as simpletons - who may not consciously believe in what they are reading, but who read anyway because they know: a story can be a salve...'… (plus d'informations)
Listes
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 86
- Membres
- 237
- Popularité
- #95,614
- Évaluation
- 2.5
- Critiques
- 5
- ISBN
- 26