Love's Shadow

All three novels contained in The Ottleys are portraits of marriage or deep friendships. The three novels, published four years apart follow the relationship of Edith and Bruce Ottley. In Love's Shadow Edith acts as a punching bag for her husband's criticism. She takes the blame for things she did not do. She is often ridiculed for not being smart. Occasionally, Edith with participate in verbal sparing with her husband - only her jabs fall short of making any lasting impact of Bruce. Confessional: I found Bruce Ottley to be a detestable creature. He is even worse when his hypochondria acts up. There are other romances in Love's Shadow that are just as ridiculous as Edith and Bruce. Edith's friend Hyacinth has eyes for Cecil, who in turn show more desires the older, widowed Eugenia.
Levenson is a master at delivering sly humor. The subject of aging, "all men are good for, at a certain age, is giving advice" (p 89). Levenson's insults are pretty clever, too. "You're full of faults, and delightfully ignorant and commonplace" (p 147). show less

Ada Leverson was an author known for her wit and friendship with Oscar Wilde. He stayed with the Leversons when he went on trial for his homosexuality, as no hotel would accept him, and Ada was there to greet him when he was released from prison. Love's Shadow is her first novel, and the first in a trilogy known collectively as The Little Ottleys.

Edith Ottley is married to the pompous and boring Bruce. His self-absorption and self-importance make for some very funny scenes, with more than a touch of social parody. Edith's friend, Hyacinth, is in love with the handsome Cecil, who is infatuated with the older, widowed Eugenia. Hyacinth's guardian has more than a passing affection for his ward, as does her ladies companion, Anne. Filled show more with witty dialogue and tongue-in-cheek humor, this was a light, but not frivolous, romp. My favorite character was Anne, with her unrequited, unseen love for Hyacinth and her no nonsense manner. show less

I went through several changes of opinion as I read, beginning & ending by being charmed. (The initial charm was borrowed: seeing that it's in a series with Rachel Feguson's "The Brontes Went to Woolworths" was a minor thrill.) Leverson's breezy, comic irony begins as a delight. Soon, though, for me, the repartee becomes tiresome: the characters talk as if they had been left out of bad, early drafts of Oscar Wilde plays. If I hadn't rec'd the book as an Early Reviewer, I would have stopped 40 or so pages in.

I'm glad I persevered. Either the bad Wilde talk stops or I stopped noticing it, but the atmosphere of Wilde remains (the back cover quotes him in praise of Leverson). The gender play is right out of "The Importance of Being show more Earnest." Confirmed bachelors and single women in mackintoshes have their troubles but remain independent. Heterosexually married characters, on the other hand, live in several kinds of suffocating nightmare. I smiled even as I read about the most nigtmarish pairing, the Ottleys (titular characters in a later Leverson book). I'm torn between my furor on behalf of Mrs. Ottley & delight with Leverson for creating her & Mr. Ottley.

All is done with a gentle humor. A partner in a marriage of convenience (they seem to be acting as each other's beards) describes her husband as having "the disposition of an angel and the voice of a gazelle." She amends this, realizing gazelles aren't known for their song. But the word "gazelle" is lovely & the sentiment sounds as if it should be meaningful. This space between appearance & actuality is representative of much of the book. All is done decorously, all seems correct, even if characters are discussing financial distress, or in love with those they can never marry.

Stylistically the book itself is a sort of singing gazelle, covering issues of real pain and readerly discomfort with its veneer of light wit: Mrs. Ottley is treated horribly by her husband; Anne, in love with a woman, is exiled from England; Hyacinth, the book's main character, is utterly trivial. All of this detracted from my pleasure. But then I put on my English professor hat: Someone could have quite a bit of fun writing an essay on this book's parodic repetition (in Judith Butler's sense) of hetero norms. Considering it alongside Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" could be interesting, too. I'd love to hear about how this book is read in an upper level or graduate class. And so, tho I end as I began, charmed, it's more with the book as a literary artifact than as a great read.. show less

If it weren't for Bruce Ottley, I would have given it 5 stars. It's light and very funny; in the vein of An Ideal Husband, even sharing the description of a certain piece of jewelry - I don't wonder that they (Leverson and Wilde) shared it on purpose. Bruce Ottley must be the most exasperating character ever drawn. If such a man exists I hope I never meet him. I'm liable to smother him to death in his sleep or poison his food without the least compunction. I was looking forward to reading the two sequels, but I'm not sure how much more of Mr. Ottley I can take. I will read them, however, and continue to hope that Bruce comes to a violent end.

Hyacinth is young, beautiful and popular with her London social set. So why does she fall in love with Cecil, who is in love with Eugenia, on older, plain widow? And why does Eugenia want to marry Cecil's uncle, since she admits she doesn't love him any more than she loves Cecil? And how does Hyacinth's friend Edith stand her arrogant prig of a husband, Bruce? Actually, it seems that no one can stand Bruce.

I had never heard of Leverson but the blurb on the back cover of Oscar Wilde calling her the wittiest woman in the world convinced me that I had to try this and I wasn't disappointed. This book moves quickly with short chapters, characters all bumping into each other and gossiping about what each has seen and heard and showing the show more ridiculous lengths people will go to attract their 'ideal' and the unhappiness that success can bring. Here's a brief dialogue between husband and wife:

Bruce: "Odd. Very odd you should get it into your head that I should have any idea of leaving you. Is that why you're looking so cheerful-laughing so much?"
Edith: "Am I laughing? I thought I was only smiling." show less

Many readers of Ada Leverson first approach her as a "friend of Oscar Wilde," and so she is denoted on the back cover and the in the "note on the author" in this reissue of her early novel Love's Shadow. My interest in her was instead initially fueled by knowing her to be the acrostic dedicatee of Liber Stellae Rubeae, and a sometime mistress of Aleister Crowley, who described her in print as "easily the daintiest and wittiest of our younger feminine writers." (She was thirteen years his senior.) In fact, her relationship with Crowley was at or around the time she was writing Love's Shadow, but there are no conspicuous Crowley characters in her novels. This book may translate some elements of Crowley's relationship with Leverson into show more the love of young Cecil Reeve for the older Eugenia Raymond. Cecil is 34; Crowley was in his early thirties when he was involved with Leverson.

Although the book is in no sense a roman a clef, readers interested in the biographical penumbrae of the novel will want to know that Hyacinth Verney is doubtless based upon Leverson's friend Kitty Savile-Clark (later Mrs Cyril Martineau), while Edith Ottley is almost certainly an attempt at retrospective self-portraiture. I shudder to think that Leverson actually endured twenty-one years of marriage to anyone like Bruce Ottley, but hopefully his character tremendously exaggerates the faults of Ernest Leverson.

The Bloomsbury Group 2009 edition of this 1908 novel is attractive and conveniently packaged--a small trade paperback that fit in my coat pocket. But it preserves a handful of errors from earlier editions. For example: "I don't think you'll look you're best tonight." (p. 33)

On its own literary merits, Love's Shadow does have droll characterizations and clever dialogue; a fair amount of plot, and yet seemingly little story. The apparent weakness of the ending may be mitigated by the two volumes to follow in the "Little Ottleys" trilogy. Those who enjoy comedy of manners should find some value in it. show less

I first knew of Ada Leverson as “Sphinx,” a good and loyal friend of Oscar Wilde’s, who took him into her home in the middle of his trials, and was the first to greet him on his release from prison. I’d heard of her “little Ottleys” novels, but knew mostly that they were about marital discord, which didn’t have me rushing to the nearest used and antiquarian bookstore to find a copy. In fact, Love’s Shadow (1908) does center on marriages (some unhappy, others still with their possibilities), but with a wit reminiscent of her famous friend. But as Leverson was herself a contributor to The Yellow Book in the Nineties, as well as the author of six Edwardian novels, it seems clear that this is her own voice, not merely an show more attempt at copying.

At the center and, and yet, almost on the sidelines of the novel are Edith and Bruce Ottley, a charming and sensible woman and her self-involved Foreign Office clerk of a husband. Bruce pays less attention to his job than he ought, overspends, is hypochondriac, is thoroughly and blindly selfish in his relationships with others, and yet somehow it is all Edith’s fault. He is a comic masterpiece and yet there is just enough truth reflected there that many readers may look at their partners and say “No, nothing like . . . well, maybe just a little bit . . . “ The Ottleys provide a backdrop and a counterplot to the remainder of the novel, but they come into the fore in the remaining novels in the series, which I will certainly read now.

The novel’s real protagonist is Edith’s glamorous school friend Hyacinth Verney, beautiful and sought-after and thus hopelessly in love only with the one man who seems uninterested, Cecil Reeve. Cecil is far more interested in an older woman, Eugenia Raymond, who is completely immune to his charms. Edith’s companion, Anne Yeo, who is determined to turn herself into a caricature spinster, is a wonderful character, but her plot deserves more development than it gets – or perhaps, as an independent woman, she just interested me more than some of the others. Finally, there is Sir Charles Cannon, Hyacinth’s guardian, married to the sort of unbearable grand dame who is “upholstered” into her velvet evening dresses, and would be played by Margaret Rutherford in old movies.

I made the crucial mistake of taking the book on a long train trip. The plot itself, dealing as it does with romantic and marital misunderstandings, is slight, and Hyacinth, like the dear friend who phones up constantly to talk about her romantic woes (I have both been and had this friend), grows a bit tedious, taken in large doses. This is a novel to be read and enjoyed it small bites, but with that caveat, I do recommend it. show less