Grant Allen (1) (1848–1899)

Well, this novel is, shall we say, comprehensive.
Lois Cayley's stepfather dies. He is her last near relation and she is left penniless, so she quite naturally decides to take a trip around the world. Who wouldn't? Along the way she hunts out new sources of income, or sometimes things find her. By turns she is a temporary lady's maid for a cantankerous old woman, a bicycle racer, a living bicycle advertisement and saleswoman, house sitter, preventer of theft and fraud, tiger hunter (I don't show more like that part), journalist, honored guest of a maharajah, and entrepreneur. In the end she has to turn detective, because her fiance is accused of forging his uncle's will. Turns out the will really is forged, but it's an exact forged copy of the real will. Why would anyone need to forge, unaltered, a copy of a will? I leave it to your imagination (or read the book).
Lois turns out to be a rather comical narrator, and I'm glad that I finally determined that this is not a book to be taken seriously, because it would be impossible. I chuckle when she says things like,
"My employer wrote, 'You are a born journalist.'
I confess this surprised me; for I have always considered myself a truthful person."
And the pictures! Lots of old books of this sort have the occasional sketch scattered throughout, but this one has pictures every few pages, so that you might accurately imagine Lois' latest escapade.

Although there are no noticeable puns or plays on language, I have to say that I think this author is literarily (but not literally) related to P.G. Wodehouse. A similar sense of the ridiculous, and frequently over-the-top, but everything comes right by the end of the episode. Yes, this book is written in episodes, tied together by a few common threads.
Some may want to take note that there are a dozen or so uses of the N-word around the middle of the book, but only out of the mouth of a character you are not supposed to like anyway. Oddly enough, he's not talking about people of African descent, but those from India. show less

Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple

Robin Coste Lewis
(An erasure of Grant Allen’s Recalled to Life)

I don’t believe
I thought

or gave names
in any known language.

I spoke
of myself always

in the third person.
What led up to it,

I hadn’t the faintest idea.
I only knew the Event

itself took place. Constant
discrepancies. To throw them

off, I laughed,
talked—all games

and amusements—to escape
from the burden of my own

internal history.
But I was there

trying show more for once
to see you,

longed so
to see you.

I might meet you
in the street:

a bicycle leaning
up against the wall

by the window. Rendered
laws of my country

played before my face.
Historical, two-souled,

forgotten, unknown
freaks of memory.

The matter of debts,
the violent death

of a near relation,
and all landing

at the faintest conception.
Dark. Blue. And then.

All I can remember
is when I saw you.

It was you
or anyone else.

The shot
seemed to end

all. It belongs
to the New World:

the Present
all entangled, unable

to move. Everything
turned round

and looked
at you. show less

Grant Allen was a Canadian-origin science writer who, at the age of 36, put his heart and soul into his first novel 'Philistia' (1884). It got panned. This did not stop him from becoming a popular writer of 'sensational novels' and speculative fiction for the next fifteen years.

His turn from serious literature towards popular entertainment should not be regretted because he produced some fine genre work that made him at times the contemporary equal of Conan Doyle but this first effort bears show more re-visiting. It is, I think, better than most first novels that I have read.

The main reason that it was criticised stands up. It is a novel of ideas and, I am afraid, too frequently the ideas (while cogently expressed) are too often delivered as lengthy speeches by the protagonists (at least in the first third) but I suspect there was more to the dislike than this.

It is in fact a satire on the high Victorian class system and especially on the upper middle classes that happens to be both cynical and kindly at the same time. It is no accident that this was a colonial with a scientific mind enjoying the hypocrisies and complexities of the English class system.

I suspect some of the satirical strikes - especially at the expense of journalism and popular radicalism more than at the expense of the Church and aristocracy - hit home. There would be something here to displease every reader without a sense of humour.

In fact, while I could not say that this novel should be added to the syllabus of literary studies classes, it could, with profit, be read by anyone interested in high Victorian culture and even history . It could be used as a primer on almost everything that drove the ideology of the day.

The characters also prove to be surprisingly likeable even when they are foolish (which is often in some cases) while the 'hypocrites' and the conventional are allowed to condemn themselves by their speech and actions rather than be tagged by the author.

The 'socialism' in the novel is hidden in plain sight. Although Max Schurz, the old revolutionary, is clearly modelled on someone like Karl Marx, the kindly intellectual is clearly offering us something closer to Christian Socialism with added class struggle.

Indeed, a very British left-wing link betwen traditional Christian values (as opposed to established Church values) and the emerging secular socialism pushing up against the hypocrisies of Victorian radicalism is evident here.

The ambience is unusual - the interface between religious fervour, early idealistic socialism, the workings of the market (specifically journalism) and the idiosyncrasies of all classes which are treated as often the more absurd the higher they are in the pecking order.

The passionate cause of Ernest Le Breton walking out of his job in an aristocratic household - the moral wrongness of shooting pigeons - is a delightful bit of humour. The sharp caricature of the aristocracy sometimes has bite when it comes to the matter of the London slums.

And yet the most attractive and intriguing character is Lady Hilda Tregellis, a society beauty who is determined not to marry an Algy or Bertie or a Montie, has no theoretical ethics whatsoever but does the most practical good in cahoots with the likeable working class origin aesthete Arthur Berkeley.

Perhaps this is the indirect message of the book. Life is about how you deal with the people you care about and who are in your circle, grand ideas are all very well but success in life depends on having 'pals' and love will eventually conquer all.

The women in general are very much treated as interesting characters in their own right with another strong character in Selah, the Hastings lower middle class girl who stands her ground against one reprobate Le Breton brother and marries a nicer one.

Class is everything in this novel. The working classes are treated perhaps too comically or as 'other' but it is the lower middles and the wilful aristocratic woman who triumph and marry for love into the coterie of upper middle class intellectuals around whom the book is built.

Nor is Allen unwilling to shock the reader - a key character very surprisingly dies), The cynical reality of power and patronage and the impossibility of truly 'bucking the system' is made crystal clear. Although happiness breaks out for the deserving, it is quite definitely an authorial 'fix'.

So many aspects of Victorian life and ideas are covered in this novel that it would be tiresome to go much further. It is simultaneously a caricature of that society and a fond reaffirmation of the values of the best of the age - especially a mock-Dickensian compassion, good done through deeds.

No, it is not a masterpiece of English literature but it is amusingly written - only a couple of places removed from Wodehouse at times - and keeps the reader entertained with only very rare quasi-philosophical longeurs. The satire is biting but never cruel. show less

Lois Cayley is the quick-witted, sharp-tongued, stout-hearted heroine of this sweet little novel. She's so clever and masterful that her various triumphs come as no surprise, but her asides are so amusing that her near-perfection is never annoying. The quips and bon mots are hilarious (see my status updates for examples), and the characters memorable. The women are just as capable, full of agency, and rife with both foibles and strengths (including higher mathematics), as the men. The n-word show more pops up a number of times once Lois gets to India, but the main Indian character is far more admirable than most of the other characters, and not "in spite" of his race or creed. (It's disheartening to realize this was printed as early as 1899, and yet over a hundred years later the truths Allen found self-evident are still being argued about.) Everything is handled with a light, airy touch, and the humor has a wonderfully dry tone to it. The plot veers into melodrama at the end, but it's all in good fun.

I wish this was part of a series, because I am loathe to part with the admirable Miss Cayley! Can be found online here. show less