Why I Read This Book
After finishing the Flashman
series (for all my Flashman reviews see here), I decided I might as
well knock this book off too.
This book
is not officially part of the Flashman series, but it’s by the same author, and
Flashman is one of the characters. (I had previously characterized Flashman’s role in this book as a cameo, but after having read the book, I think Flashman plays a big enough
role that it is safe to call him one of the supporting characters.)
The Review
Not at all what I expected, but a
wonderful book nonetheless.
I imagine
that, like me, many people track down and read this book solely because of the
Flashman connection. So it’s a little
bit of a surprise to discover how unlike the Flashman series this book actually
is.
The
Flashman books were fast paced, often adventurous or humorous, always
irreverent, mostly exotic, with lots of scandalous liaisons with foreign women
and grizzly deaths. In other words: they’re
pretty low brow.
This book,
by contrast, is much more serious.
But the
biggest difference between this and the regular Flashman series is the
pacing. Flashman usually moved at a
pretty fast clip from one disaster to another.
This book is intent on taking its time.
The slow
pace of the book, and the in depth, blow by blow description of old fashioned
aristocratic parties and social gatherings, reminded me a lot of War and Peace.
I know, it’s
probably sacrilege to compare a Flashman book to War and Peace. And yet it strikes me that even if the two books are
dissimilar in talent, they are at least similar in ambition.
In both
books, the plot is only of secondary importance. The real purpose, in both books, is to describe,
in as much detail as possible, all the aspects of life during a certain time
period.
Both
authors were removed from their subject material by roughly the same amount of
time. (Tolstoy was writing in 1869 to
describe Russia in the early 1800s, Fraser was writing in 1980 to describe
England in the early 1900s.) And
consequently, both were trying to describe a period that had only just gone out
of living memory.
Fraser is
intent on recreating as much of Edwardian England as is possible within the
pages of his book. He recreates
everything from the local taverns, to the political discussions, to the streets
of London , to
the aristocratic parties, to the theater, to the cab drivers.
As with War and Peace, the key to enjoying this book
is be in the right frame of mind. If you
start to get impatient, you’re going to hate this book. But if you just allow yourself to get
absorbed in all the period details, you’ll love this book.
The good
news is that George MacDonald Fraser pulls the thing off. Like Tolstoy in War and Peace, Fraser accomplishes his recreation of the past not
with long boring descriptions, but by recreating scenes of life. And he does it well.
For example in one section Fraser spends
30 pages just describing a party. I know
that sounds pretty boring, but when you actually read those pages, it’s not
boring at all. In fact I was glued to
those pages as I read them. (I’m usually
a pretty slow reader, but I got completely absorbed in this book and couldn’t
put it down.)
Although I
thoroughly enjoyed the Flashman series, this is a whole different side of
Fraser, and it’s apparent he was much more talented as a writer than I had previously
given him credit for.
It’s always
difficult to dissect good prose and determine what exactly makes it work
(especially for us non-literary types), but whatever it is, Fraser has it.
The style
of the book is probably best illustrated with an excerpt. This is from page 14-16, just after Mr.
Franklin has gotten off the boat at Liverpool :
Once outside the Customs shed, Mr Franklin
paused to examine the railway timetable board; there were, he saw, five
companies competing to carry him to London
on Monday. After some deliberation, he decided on London
and North-western, which undertook to convey him to Euston in something over
four hours, via Crewe and Rugby , for 29
shillings first-class. Just under six dollars, in fact. It was the fastest
train, not that that could matter to a man who had not taken the special
vestibuled boat-train for Atlantic passengers which was even now pulling out of
Riverside Station with a shrilling of steam.
His porter was waiting at the cab
rank, and on his inquiring whether the gentleman wish to travel by taxi or
horse cab, Mr Franklin fixed him with a thoughtful grey eye and asked what the
fare might be.
“Cab’s a shillin’ a mile, taxi’s
sixpence a half-mile an’ twopence every sixth of a mile after that,” replied
the porter.
“And how far is the Adelphi Hotel?”
asked Mr Franklin.
This innocent question caused some
consternation among the taxi-men and cab drivers; some thought it would be
about a mile, if not slightly more, but there was a school of thought that held
it was a bare mile by the shortest route. No one knew for certain, and finally
the porter, a practical man who wanted to get back to the Customs shed for
another client, settled the matter by spitting and declaring emphatically:
“It’ll cost you a shillin’ anyways.”
Mr Franklin nodded judiciously,
indicated a horse-cab, and then paid the porter. He seemed to be having some
difficulty with the massive British copper coins, to which he was plainly
unaccustomed, and the tiny silver “doll’s-eye” threepence which he eventually
bestowed; the porter sighed and reflected that this was a damned queer Yank;
most of them scattered their money like water.
This was not lost on the cabby, who
mentally abandoned the notion of suggesting that he take his passenger by way
of Rodney Street —which would have added at
least sixpence to the fare—there to gaze on Number 62, the birthplace of the
late Mr Gladstone. Americans, in his experience, loved to see the sights, and
would exclaim at the Grand Old Man’s childhood home and add as much as a
shilling to the tip. An even better bet was the house in Brunswick Street where
Nathaniel Hawthorne had kept his office as U.S. Consul in the middle of the
previous century, but somehow, the cabby reflected morosely, this particular
American didn’t look as though he’d be interested in the author of Tanglewood and the Scarlet Letter either.
The cab drew out of the quayside gates and
up the long pier to the main street at the top, where the electric trams
clanged and rumbled and a slow-moving stream of traffic, most of it
horse-drawn, but with the occasional motor here and there, slowed the cab to a
walk. The cabby noted that his fare was
sitting forward, surveying the scene with the air of a man who is intent on
drinking everything in, but giving no sign of whether he found it pleasing or
otherwise. For the cabby’s money, central Liverpool
was not an inspiring sight in any weather, with its bustling pavements and
dirty over-crowded streets and he was genuinely startled when after some little
distance his passenger called out sharply to him to hold on. He was staring
intently down the street which they were crossing, a long, grimy thoroughfare
of chandlers’ shops and warehouses; he was smiling, the wondering cabby
noticed, in a strange, faraway fashion, as though seeing something that wasn’t
there at all. He was humming, too,
gently under his breath, as he surveyed the long seedy stretch of ugly
buildings and cobbles on which the rain was beginning to fall.
The book is
heavy on description, but it’s never too much.
There’s just the right amount of eye for detail that absorbs you in the
scene without losing momentum entirely.
And
although it’s not evident in the section I quoted above, there’s also a lot of
dialogue in this book. Much of the
dialogue has little bearing on the plot, but the characters are fun to listen
to, and the dialogue does serve the purpose of creating the scene. Every so often a couple of important plot
points are dropped into the dialogue to pique your interest a little bit more,
but then once the plot is hinted at, the dialogue will go off in another direction,
and the plot of this novel is only gradually revealed.
Because the
book is heavy on description and dialogue, there isn’t much plot in this 585
page book. But what little plot there is, is teased out only gradually, and
part of the pleasure of reading this book is to have the plot gradually
revealed. Knowing too much of the plot
in advance would spoil the book, so for that reason I’ll carry on further discussion about the plot below the
spoiler warning.
SPOILERS (and other
observations)
* Given that the
tone of this book is completely different than the Flashman series, I suppose
the usual detailed Flashman footnotes would have spoiled everything. The footnotes would have taken you out of the
story, and Fraser has done so much work to absorb you into the setting.
But that
being said, I kind of missed the footnotes a little bit. In the Flashman books, Fraser always let you
know how much of the story was based on real history, and what his sources
were.
Since there
are real historical characters and events mixed in with the plot of Mr American, it would be nice to know
where Fraser’s sources come from. How
much of his detailed description of Edward VII, for example, is
based on research, and how much of it is creative license?
* As I said above, there isn’t much plot in this book, but
Fraser does a remarkably good job of creating a lot of interest in a small bit
of story by setting up little mysteries and points of suspense, and then
letting these points simmer for long periods of time as they are only gradually
revealed. Who is this strange American?
Why did he come to England ? How did he get his money? What secrets is he hiding about his past?
And then a
whole other set of questions is created about his relationship with Peggy. Does Peggy really love him? Is she being faithful? What did she really want the money for?
In my
opinion, however, once all the initial mysteries and questions have been
resolved, the book lags a little bit. In
the middle section (the whole section with Pip and the art show, and then the
trial of Helen Cessford), I found I was losing interest in the plot because
most of the mysterious questions had been answered. I wasn’t sure what the point of the book was
anymore, and I had lost my reason to keep turning the pages.
I think in
the middle section Fraser slightly overplays his hand. In the beginning of the book, the plot
unfolds very slowly, but he’s still able to keep interest because the reader
knows he’s setting up a story, and the reader want to see where he’s going.
However
once all the chess pieces are on the table, then the same pacing doesn’t
work. It’s a small complaint, but I
think the book would have been better if the pacing of the story had gradually
speeded up as you went along.
Also I
confess that I just wasn’t that interested in Helen Cessford or her story
arch. (I didn’t care about Helen
Cessford because Fraser didn’t give me a reason to care. Fraser apparently has
a bit of an axe to grind against the suffragette movement, so Helen Cessford
comes across as loud, arrogant, hypocritical, and unlikeable. Although the appearance of Helen’s great
uncle, Flashman, in this section does make up for a lot.)
The good
news is that my interest in the story returned near the end, once the murder
investigation began.
The ending
of the book is slightly disappointing because it’s so anti climatic. And yet, I can’t really complain about it,
because the whole style of the book is so subdued that I had suspected all
along there would be no big climax at the end.
* More War and Peace connections:
I half
suspect that the connections between War
and Peace are not coincidental, and that Fraser may have had War and Peace in his mind as a model
when he wrote this book.
In addition
to the similarities mentioned above, both books integrate historical characters
and real characters, and provide fictional portraits of the ruling monarchs or
their period. Both books are primarily
focused on the lifestyles of the upper-classes, but both books provide portraits
of the privileged class at just a time when their way of life was about to be
turned upside down by a world war.
Fraser even
explicitly states this theme at times, for example in describing the week just
before the outbreak of World War I:
This week like so many others, that
generations would back on with a kind of disbelief and wonder, because it
belonged to a world that no one would ever see again, the last ray of a setting
sun that had risen in some misty, historic time before anyone could remember and
had shone brightly over a gradually changing but still comfortingly consistent
scene, and was now about to go down at last. And what everyone would remember
was how calm and untroubled it had been, with no possible hint of how the gears
of time were about to change for millions of ordinary folk, clashing into a new
and frightening revolution as the human race rushed suddenly into a new dark
age. But in that week nobody knew.
Nobody could possibly know. (p. 518).
Also, the
marriage between Mark Franklin and Peggy Clayton reminded me a lot of the
marriage between Pierre
Bezukhov and Princess Helen. In both
cases, a rich man is seduced into marrying a beautiful woman, and only
afterwards discovers that their relationship is based on money, and that she doesn’t
care for him at all (or in Peggy’s case, only cares for the relationship on her
own terms).
Also, just
as Pierre falls
in love with Natasha Rostova while trapped in his marriage, so Mark Franklin
finds himself intrigued (if not in love) with both Pip and Helen
Cessford.
I thought
Franklin was going to end up escaping from his marriage with Peggy and ending
up with one of these other women as Pierre did in War and Peace, but to my surprise Fraser
went for a different ending.
Another
difference is that Fraser uses the character of an outsider to allow him an
excuse to go into detailed descriptions of Edwardian English society. Mark Franklin, fresh off the boat from America , needs
to learn everything, from how to interact at the local small town pub to how to
behave at a royal party. Tolstoy, of
course, gives us a description of early 1800s Russian society entirely from an
insider’s view.
* Flashman
connections:
This book,
taking place between 1910 and 1914, shows Flashman at age 88 to 92, what I can
only assume is near the end of his life, and is the last chronological appearance
of Flashman in Fraser’s fiction.
However, in
terms of publication order, this book is right in the middle of the Flashman
canon. It was published in 1980, and
Fraser would go on to write 6 more Flashman books before he died in 2008.
Some of the
later books would go on to better flesh out Flashman’s relationship with Edward
VII.
In Mr American, we see that Flashman and
Edward VII know each other (both speak of the other distastefully) but they
hardly seem to have been intimates or have much of a shared history.
In one of
the later books, Flashman and the Redskins, however, Flashman reminisces:
King Teddy's company is something I'd sooner avoid than not, anyway, for he's no better than an upper-class hooligan. Of course, he's been pretty leery of me for forty-odd years (ever since I misguided his youthful footsteps into an actress's bed, in fact, and brought Papa Albert's divine wrath down on his fat head) and when he finally wheezed his way on to the throne I gather he thought of dropping me altogether - said something about my being Falstaff to his Prince Hal.
King Teddy's company is something I'd sooner avoid than not, anyway, for he's no better than an upper-class hooligan. Of course, he's been pretty leery of me for forty-odd years (ever since I misguided his youthful footsteps into an actress's bed, in fact, and brought Papa Albert's divine wrath down on his fat head) and when he finally wheezed his way on to the throne I gather he thought of dropping me altogether - said something about my being Falstaff to his Prince Hal.
In Flashman and the Tiger a
whole chapter of the book is devoted to Flashman helping Edward VII (then the
Prince of Wales) out of the Baccarat scandal (W). (Actually being Flashman, he just ends up
making the scandal worse, but he was supposed to be helping.)
In retrospect
then, it seems a little strange that none of this was mentioned by either party
in Mr American. (Granted this isn’t a hard example of a
continuity error. You could easily just
explain this away by positing that neither Flashman nor Edward VII cared to be
reminded of their shared history with each other. And yet, I’m pretty sure that if Mr American had been written after the
other Flashman books instead of before, Fraser would have included some passing
reference to this history.)
*The politics of
Flashman:
In this
section I rely heavily on inferences, and don’t really know what I’m talking
about, so feel free to skip this last part.
But if you’ve
been following my Flashman reviews, you’ll know that I imagine a shift in political opinion between the early Flashman books and the late Flashman books. The early Flashman books seem
to be anti-interventionalist. However the later Flashman books seem to take a
pro-interventionalist view of the British Empire—the idea that the
world has a lot of problems, and many of these problems are best sorted out by
sending in the British Army.
In terms of
publication date Mr American is one
of the earlier Flashman books, and it seems more in company with the
anti-interventionalist politics of the other early Flashman books, as evidenced
in this Flashman speech:
Mr Franklin….asked the General
[Flashman] what he thought of the war
situation. The old man shrugged.
“Contemptible—but of course it
always is. We should stay out, and to
hell with Belgium .
After all, it’s stretching things to say we’re committed to ’em, and we’d be
doing ’em a favour—and the Frogs, too.”
“By not protecting them, you
mean? I don’t quite see that.*
“You wouldn’t—because like most
idiots you think of war as being between states—coloured blobs on the map. You
think if we can keep Belgium
green, or whatever colour it is, instead of Prussian blue, then hurrah for
everyone. But war ain’t between coloured
blobs—it’s between people. You know what
people are, I suppose?—chaps in trousers and women in skirts, and kids in small
clothes. … imagine yourself a Belgian—in Liege ,
say. Along come the Prussians, and
invade you. What about it?—a few cars commandeered, a shop or two looted, half
a dozen girls knocked up, a provost marshal installed, and the storm’s
passed. Fierce fighting with the Frogs,
who squeal like hell because Britain
refuses to help, the Germans reach Paris ,
peace concluded and that’s that. And
there you are, getting on with your garden in Liege . But—” the General waged a bony finger.
“Suppose Britain helps—sends
forces to aid little Belgium —and
the Frogs—against the Teuton horde? What
then? Belgian resistance is stiffened,
the Frogs manage to stop the invaders, a hell of a war is waged all over
Belgium and north-east France, and after God knows how much slaughter and
destruction the Germans are beat—or not, as the case may be. How’s Liege
doing? I’ll tell you—it’s a bloody
shambles. You’re lying mangled in your
cabbage patch, you’re wife’s had her legs blown off, your daughters have been
raped, and your house is a mass or rubble. You’re a lot better off for British
intervention, ain’t you?” (p. 530)
And on the
following page Flashman continues:
“…I could take all the asses who’ll be waving
flags and cheering and crowding the recruiting office—take ’em all by one
collective arm, and say: ‘Now then, Jack, you know what you’re cheering for?
You’re cheering at the prospect of having a soft-nosed bullet fired into your
pelvis, shattering the bone and spreading it in splinters all through your
intestines, and dying in agony two days later—or, if you’re really unlucky,
surviving for a lifetime of pain, unable to walk, a burden to everyone and a
dam’ nuisance to the country that will pay you a pension you can’t live
off. That, Jack,’ I’d tell ’em, ‘is what
you’re cheering for.’…”
So it seems to me that this book
is much more in line with the earlier anti-interventionalist politics of the
earlier Flashman books, and that Fraser’s views might have changed with the
subject over time.
All that
being said, I must admit that there is a hole in my theory. There was at least one pro-interventionalist
Flashman book published before this one: Flashman’s Lady, published in 1977--which took a positive view of
the British intervention in Borneo (albeit in
that case by James Brooks, a private adventurer and not an official government
representative, but still….)
So, how to
explain that? Well, it could be the
change was gradual. Flashman’s Lady
was at first just an aberration from Fraser’s usual views, but later on these
views became more and more the norm.
Or, it
could be that I’ve been looking at this thing all wrong. I’ve been trying to cram Fraser into my own
ideological lens (which is anti-imperialist and non-interventionalist) and only
analyzing him by the narrow criteria of whether he is for or against my views.
But it
could be that Fraser takes a more nuanced view of war than I do. Perhaps he believes in some wars, he just
doesn’t believe in stupid wars (like the Afghanistan War, the Crimean War and World War I)
.
I may not
even be fairly characterizing him, but let me offer a quick rebuttal to this
point of view anyway:
When
writing historical fiction, Fraser is writing with the full benefit of
hindsight. He’s able to argue against
the stupidity of World War I, because in hindsight everyone knows how stupid
and pointless that war was.
At the
time, however, it was not so clear. At
the beginning of the war this seemed to people like something that was really
important. There was a real sense of
urgency, and people believed the very fate of Western civilization and
democracy were at stake, and this swept up even people who should have known
better (like the Second Socialist International (W) and Kropotkin
(W).) There was also so much propaganda
and misinformation at the outbreak of the War that supporters of the war were
not making fully informed decisions.
And in fact
we’ve seen the same pattern of misinformation at the beginning of the Vietnam War and the most recent Iraq War.
So if you
take the position that war is sometimes justified, sooner or later you’re going
to find yourself supporting a stupid war, and then regretting it.
But like I
said, I may not be even fairly characterizing Fraser’s views.
If anyone
out there knows more about Fraser’s politics, or can put the Flashman series
into a consistent ideological framework, let me
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Link of the Day
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5 comments:
You're correct that "Mr. American" is a novel about a way of life and attitudes in English Society that the First World War was shortly to demolish. Flashman, most concerned about his own well being wasn't an anti-interventionist in his youth, he just didn't care so long as he wasn't involved. One of the great things in this novel is that we see him in the last 6 years of his life, rich, acclaimed as a hero and no longer giving a damn about what he says or does in public. Most importantly, we get to see him through the eyes of others; mainly Mr. Franklin but also his grand niece and a few others. To Franklin he confides his true opinions of war, gleaned from a lifetime of reluctant experience. His sarcastic, at times bitter comments have the ring of truth. Fraser always said that Flash was a combination of his imagination and small bits of himself. He despised all politicians and parties; his last Flash novel "Flashman on the March" was the only one written with an agenda; a way to express his outrage over Britain's involvement in the Iraq/ Afghanistan Wars. He chose the historical event in the book to show why and how Great Powers should get involved in conflicts which really have nothing to do with them. In the brief Abyssinian War, Britain had a limited objective; to rescue some British Citizens from the clutches of a lunatic and then leave, a "surgical strike". For a lot more info on GMF's personal beliefs, I highly recommend his two memoirs "Quartered Safe Out Here" about his service in the WWII Burma Campaign, and "Light's on at Signpost". I also love "Mr.American" though it is unlike anything else GMF wrote; it's a serious, lovely book. Cheers, Thomas Bynes
Thanks for the comment and the clarification. I'm afraid I did make a bit of a muddle of GMF's politics, but at some point I should probably try to track down those books you mentioned. And I agree, it is a very lovely book. Completely different than what I was expecting from the author of Flashman, but utterly absorbing in its own way.
A nice review of the book.
But I have to disagree with your comments regarding the ending. I thought the final 50 pages to be beautifully written, poingnant, profoundly true and meaningful and meaningful to us today, 100 years later.. His dinner with Flashman where they discuss the impending war, the scenes of the crowds joyous in their innocence and misguided patriotism, the train ride where he and some others share a compartment with returning soldiers. Great writing.
Sorry I am so late to the commentary. But Mr. Franklin probably did not get all of his money from a silver mine. I would think that Butch and the Sundance Kid would’ve split up revenues with the rest of the hole in the wall gang. Second at 45, he is a bit old to go to war but he may be there for support. He’s also a bit old for Pip, who would be 25 at this point in the book. Any reader who loves Fraser knows that he plays a lot with history. So this Pip is a new gender of course, but. like the famous young man from Mr. Dickens, if she has great expectations, so to speak, he might be the right guy. Remember all the references to Cassidy…
Thanks for this review, I really enjoyed reading it. What are your thoughts regarding what happens at the end of the book - does Mark go back to Peggy, go to Pip, go with Sampson to Africa?
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