Jude Morgan: The King's Touch and Passion
Two reviews written a while ago, which I hadn't gotten around to posting yet, about two historical novels by the same author I enjoyed a lot, set in two very different periods.
The King's Touch is one of these novels which are about character A while being told by character B, who, of course, is also an important part of the story. In this case, our Watson is one James ("Jemmy"), later Duke of Monmouth, oldest illegitimate son of Charles II., while Holmes is of course Charles himself. If you know a bit about Restoration history you'll realize this is a promising constellation because Jemmy, while being Charles' favourite son, also ended up rebelling against him, thus allowing for both an affectionate and critical narrative. Not without flaws - for example, I don't buy that Jemmy in the last third of the book is self aware enough to realise that were he to make it to the throne, he'd be a mere figurehead ruled by parliament, but that the time for absolute kings should be over; this smacks a bit of making his ambition look selfless instead of, well, ambitious, and at any rate isn't necessary, because the novel makes it quite clear what a disaster his uncle, the future James II, was going to be as king (which is accurate enough, and really was obvious during Charles' reign as well). But these flaws are more than balanced by the virtues. Firstly, Morgan manages a great sense of place and period, whether it's the money-scraping exile period for the Stuarts while Cromwell ruled and they were the unwanted poor relatives in France and the Netherlands or the Restoration itself. Secondly, he's great with the characters and their relationships, whether it's a character who only shows up for a few pages (like Cardinal Mazarin in France), a popular favorite like Nell Gwyn, a usually overlooked one like Jemmy's mother Lucy Walters, or, of course, the two main characters themselves. Charles - famously summed up by Rochester with the doggerel "God bless our good and gracious king,/ Whose promise none relies on;/ Who never said a foolish thing,/ Nor ever did a wise one", to which, quick-witted as he was, he replied, proving in a way Rochester's point, "That is true; for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers" - is in many ways the exception among the Stuarts: as opposed to his father, grandmother and brother an intelligent survivor, more interested in living well than dying nobly, with an appealing lack of fanaticism in an age of religious warfare and a frustrating laziness (unless pressed to a wall), with popular presentations tending to waver between complete cynic and lovable rogue. Morgan goes for "enigmatic and mercurial", and pulls off a feat noticable in the other novel I'm reviewing as well - he writes the dialogue so that the famous quotes, whethere they're “I always admired virtue - but I could never imitate it” or "Brother, I am too old to go again to my travels” (which would be Charles speak for "James, you idiot, you'll get us exiled again"), flow naturally and don't stand out, not least because Morgan is good with that Restoration quintessential, witty dialogue. As for his narrator, the one caveat mentioned above aside Jemmy - as opposed to his father openly emotional, without restraints and with a mixture of insecurity (due to the illegitimate status) and possessiveness, strikes one as plausible characterisation. An enjoyable novel.
Passion goes for a very different approach; set during the Romantic age, in the early 19th century, it offers multiple point of views, telling as it does the stories of Mary Shelley, Augusta Leigh, Caroline Lamb and Fanny Brawne, and through them of the poets they were involved with. Let's start with the flaw; the Fanny-Keats parts feel very disconnected to the rest, and one can skip them while still enjoying the novel. I'd have left them out completely. On the other hand, the Mary, Caroline and Augusta storylines feel interwoven even when, Byron aside, there aren't many direct connections between them, and it works beautifully. I have to confess here that I have some very detailed background knowledge, and feel somewhat absurdly possessive about several of these characters the way fanfiction writers do about characters of shows or films they love. Which means I'm more than ready to cry "unfair!" or "out of character!". Which I didn't do here once. Morgan manages to write these very different women, giving each of them a distinctive voice that feels true to what we (can) know of them: Mary is an intellectual, Caroline (niece of last year's film heroine, the Duchess of Devonshire) is an aristocrat whose emotional energy and vitality becomes increasingly warped (and the fact this comes across as tragic is a credit to Morgan, who, Stoppard or no Stoppard, is the first one to really make me sympathize with Caro Lamb), and Augusta's mixture of kindness, eternal optimism and acceptance makes for the great paradox of her life as she, at first glance the most conventional of them, was the other half of the biggest scandal of the time. In many ways, the depiction of Augusta is the most remarkable achievement Morgan pulls off in this novel, because to write someone good-natured and quiet and to make this person interesting when the competition are mostly rebels who are all intellectually superior is no mean feat. Admittedly I'm an Augusta partisan anyway. She used to get dismissed by many a patronizing Byron biographer as dumb and spineless, with said biographers voicing their incomprehension at Byron's passionate love for her. Now Augusta was no genius and definitely prone to compromise, but she had an eternally gambling, completly irresponsible husband and seven children, one of whom turned out to be handicapped and all of whom she had to support well into their adulthood; which she did without breaking down or losing her faith in humanity. After Byron married (which meant their sexual relationship ended, which was Augusta's idea, not his), she did her best to be a good friend to her new sister-in-law and always defended her against her brother. (More on that later.) After the catastrophic end of Byron's marriage and when the big scandal erupted, she remained with him until he left England, though they were shunned in public. And through it all she never hated anyone, and kept her sense of humour. I'd say that this was a woman who deserves some respect.
Now, these women aren't the only females important in the novel. Arguably as important als her relationship with Shelley was Mary's tense relationship with her stepsister Claire (a name she adopted; she was originally plain Jane) Clairmont, and I found the depiction here very believable and interesting. Morgan's Mary resents Claire basically form the moment the little girl arrives with her thoroughly despised mother, the second Mrs. Godwin, and she most certainly resents having Claire a third party in her relationship with Shelley from the get go, but Claire is also her only ally during her childhood, and sometimes the element that keeps the Shelleys going. It's the other sibling relationship of the novel, if you like. (Also, Claire herself, despite Mary's exasparated point of view, comes across as sympathetic, with Morgan again performing that sleight of hand he showed in The King's Touch of the viewpoint character not always making reliable judgments.) Introduced in Caroline Lamb's part of the novel is Lady Melbourne, Caroline's mother-in-law and one of the enigmas in Byron biographies. She was one of the leading women of the Georgian age, openly of the opinion that you owend your husband precisely one child of his own and then your affairs were your own business, and depending on the biographer in question an older version of the Marquise de Merteuil or a wise matriarch. The actions to interpret are the way she defused Caroline's brief but tempestous affair with Byron by becoming his confidante, and the fact she tried to marry him off to her niece Annabella twice (first during the Caroline affair, unsuccessfully since Annabella declined, and the second time after Augusta which was when Annabella said yes) despite the awareness that these two were spectacularly unsuited to each other (seriously; if ever there was someone you wouldn't want your serious, well meaning but self-righteous and completely unexperienced niece to marry, it's Byron, unless you're Barbara Cartland, which the worldly Lady Melbourne most emphatically was not). Morgan's Lady Melbourne is a manipulator (who should be played by Glenn Close) but one with her own side of the story, and if one doesn't like her, one is nonetheless fascinated. The most important female supporting character, however, is Annabella Milbanke, the later Lady Byron.
I once read a review where the reviewer (who wasn't familiar with the story) thought Annabella was unfairly treated (by the author; that she was unfairly treated by Byron is a given), and I don't think that's the case. (I would say that, though; I've read her letters.) The best recent non-fiction book on Annabella and Augusta, A Kindness of Sisters, made the point that Annabella was very much an Austen character turning into a Dickens one, and that's definitely the interpretation Morgan is going for. She started out by playing by the rules, very earnestly first declining Byron's rather half-hearted proposal and later accepting the second one with the declared intention of reforming his character. In other words, she completely fell for the "virtuous woman saves soul of Byronic hero" narrative; in fact, Annabella was probably the only person in his life who really believed Byron to be his literary persona, and interacted with him accordingly, which was her small contribution to the disaster that was their marriage. His, much larger, contribution started with the fact he hadn't married her out of love to begin with, went on with the way he took out on her his resentment that his relationship with Augusta didn't continue post-marriage the way it had before while simultanously playing the Byronic hero for her when he noticed she took serious every single thing he told her, and culminating in relentless hostility and psychological tyranny. It's very easy to feel sorry for Annabella during her marriage. The part where she becomes chilling is in the years and decades post-marriage, not towards Byron (who was first far away, on the continent, and then dead) but towards Augusta, and later towards both Augusta's daughter Medora (the one of Augusta's seven children Annabella assumed was Byron's daughter as well) and her own daughter Ada. Ada, a gifted mathematician and one of the mothers, or perhaps grandmothers, of modern computer lore, died at 36 (same age as Byron, incidentally), of cancer, and the fact that Annabella could write while her daughter screamed in pain that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to Ada because it broke Ada off her wild pursuits and gave her a chance for proper repentance summs up the later Annabella for you. It's not a period covered in the novel, but some of Annabella's campaign to restore Augusta to "a proper spirit of humility and repentance" (a phrase she used in a letter to Augusta's friend Therea Villiers) is, which started as soon as Byron had left England.
Augusta and Annabella: due to Annabella's inability to throw any letter she ever received away and the fact she made copies of the letters she wrote herself, her grandson was more than surprised to find out after her death that during the year of Annabella's marriage, it had been Annabella, not Byron, and not Augusta herself, who had invited Augusta to come and visit them again and again, asking her for help and advice, lamenting when she left, calling her her only comfort, best friend and so on. Who even explicitly asked Augusta to stay with Byron after she herself had left (because she said she still wanted to know how he was doing). Originally this started because Byron during their honeymoon had said Augusta could laugh him out of anything and understood him best, which prompted Annabella to write, but after they met the attachment grew genuine. What Annabella kept changing her story about in her later recollections (written for her lawyers, and then in the decades to come for posterity) is when she started to suspect about an incestous past, and it's not discernable from the letters; Annabella sometimes said she suspected as early as the honeymoon and sometimes that she didn't have a clue until Caroline Lamb told her after she had already left Byron, and sometimes in between. Morgan goes for a mixture; she doesn't really want to know until she has made up her mind to leave. The idea for a punishment/saving project starts after Byron has left England. First Annabella wanted a confession. She also recruited one of Augusta's few remaining friends, Mrs Villiers, as her spy (the correspondance between them is the one where the "restore her to that state of humility and repentance which is desirable from a Christian point of view" comes from, and Morgan works it into the novel, too) because after she got a confession, it wasn't enough, she also wanted a promise Augusta would not follow Byron to the continent. Then she wanted Augusta to acknowledge that Byron was her enemy. Then she wanted the letters, and always with the threat to withdraw her protection in society if Augusta didn't comply, which would have meant financial destituation for the Leighs who were dependent on Augusta being a lady in waiting old queen Charlotte. Then she went back to wanting another confession, and so forth, until it got to the breaking point. (Though they didn't see each other again after Byron's death with one exception, and before that only twice post- marriage break-up, with correspondance going on intermittendly, it never really ended. Five weeks before Augusta died, she saw Annabella one last time, which was a last attempt at reconciliation on her part and a last attempt at yet another confession on Annabella's, who had brought a reverend with her to witness and protocol the whole thing. At that point, Annabella had rewritten the past in her had so she was convinced Byron would have returned to her, repentant, if Augusta hadn't somehow stopped him from afar, and wanted Augusta to admit that. (The irony is that Annabella's own letter-keeping habits prove this wasn't the case, not to mention the fact that the younger Annnabella would not have been willing to rejoin Byron, quite sensibly so given what their marriage had been like.) Which Augusta didn't, and so that last meeting ended by Annabella furious and still demanding more complete repentance yet again. Those notes on the meeting are quite chilling to read.) Morgan ends Augusta's part of the novel after Byron's death, which at once saddens and liberates her as it ends her dependance on Annabella and allowed to her to admit to herself what she felt without even trying for repentance; it's a sad yet hopeful note and only heartbreaking if you know what was yet to come.
The men of the novel are all vividly drawn, with one exception. There are some sharp pen portraits, like William Godwin, Mary's father, and the way she goes from hero-worshipping him to disillusioment is a miniature novella in itself early on, or George Leigh, Augusta's cousin and husband (who isn't malicious, just entirely useless in his spendthrift, well-old-girl-you'll-manage-won't-you way. Then there's Caroline Lamb's husband William (in biographies, it's always odd to think that he ended up as Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister and mentor in his old age; even his most famous biographer kept Regency!William and Victorian!Lord M. apart in two volumes), whose relationship with Caroline is far more important than the brief one she has with Byron, and more complex; William loves Caroline and stands by her while his family loathes her and increasingly regard her as crazy, but he's also quite callous towards the son they have because said son is slow. As far as the big three are concerned, Keats shows up late and as I said, that entire plot thread could have been cut, though the characterisation is fine. Shelley is the type of well meaning idealist you increasingly want to slap. I hasten to add that the Shelley sections manage to get across the excitement of ideas in the Romantic age very well; but also Shelley's complete cluelessness as to what actually goes on emotionally with Mary, or Claire, for that matter. As for Byron, Morgan manages to capture what many a fictional representation loses sight of, his wit (that ability again, to write dialogue that uses famous quotes in a natural-feeling way because the rest of the conversation goes similarly), along with that curious mixture of egotism and genuine desire for the world to change, the ability to be simultanously a good friend and a catastrophic husband. I've already talked about the marriage; the affair with Caroline is depicted as genuine on both parts but pretty obviously destined for failure from the start, too; and the paradox of his relationship with Augusta is that this, the great taboo-breaker, is in many ways the least histrionic and most comfortable he had with a woman, not least because their ability to laugh at each other and at life. They had different mothers and hadn't grown up together, not meeting until he was a teenager and she nearly an adult, and then only rarely, though they corresponded a lot, until she was thirty, which was when it turned incesteous. The casual way in which this happens is a counterpoint to the dramatics elsewhere, though Morgan doesn't ignore the fact they must have been aware of the enormity eventually. (Hence Byron telling Lady Melbourne about it, and Augusta disastrously deciding they need to end it by him marrying.) Lastly, what Morgan also impressed me with is the utterly non-romantic (there isn't even UST) but extremely interesting relationship between Mary Shelley and Byron, where you get the impression of two first class fencers never quite letting down their guards with each other, occasionally dealing out blows, but also seeing each other somewhat more clearly than the man who connects them, Shelley, does. It makes for some great dialogues. Mary, of course, is the only one of the women who doesn't just survive but survives to success (as opposed to Caroline's state which depending on interpretation is genuine insanity or the Lambs succeeding at last in locking her up, and Augusta who has just a break between family tragedies). As the prologue of the novel describes the fate of her mother, Mary Wolstonecraft of early feminist fame, it's fitting that she concludes it.
The King's Touch is one of these novels which are about character A while being told by character B, who, of course, is also an important part of the story. In this case, our Watson is one James ("Jemmy"), later Duke of Monmouth, oldest illegitimate son of Charles II., while Holmes is of course Charles himself. If you know a bit about Restoration history you'll realize this is a promising constellation because Jemmy, while being Charles' favourite son, also ended up rebelling against him, thus allowing for both an affectionate and critical narrative. Not without flaws - for example, I don't buy that Jemmy in the last third of the book is self aware enough to realise that were he to make it to the throne, he'd be a mere figurehead ruled by parliament, but that the time for absolute kings should be over; this smacks a bit of making his ambition look selfless instead of, well, ambitious, and at any rate isn't necessary, because the novel makes it quite clear what a disaster his uncle, the future James II, was going to be as king (which is accurate enough, and really was obvious during Charles' reign as well). But these flaws are more than balanced by the virtues. Firstly, Morgan manages a great sense of place and period, whether it's the money-scraping exile period for the Stuarts while Cromwell ruled and they were the unwanted poor relatives in France and the Netherlands or the Restoration itself. Secondly, he's great with the characters and their relationships, whether it's a character who only shows up for a few pages (like Cardinal Mazarin in France), a popular favorite like Nell Gwyn, a usually overlooked one like Jemmy's mother Lucy Walters, or, of course, the two main characters themselves. Charles - famously summed up by Rochester with the doggerel "God bless our good and gracious king,/ Whose promise none relies on;/ Who never said a foolish thing,/ Nor ever did a wise one", to which, quick-witted as he was, he replied, proving in a way Rochester's point, "That is true; for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers" - is in many ways the exception among the Stuarts: as opposed to his father, grandmother and brother an intelligent survivor, more interested in living well than dying nobly, with an appealing lack of fanaticism in an age of religious warfare and a frustrating laziness (unless pressed to a wall), with popular presentations tending to waver between complete cynic and lovable rogue. Morgan goes for "enigmatic and mercurial", and pulls off a feat noticable in the other novel I'm reviewing as well - he writes the dialogue so that the famous quotes, whethere they're “I always admired virtue - but I could never imitate it” or "Brother, I am too old to go again to my travels” (which would be Charles speak for "James, you idiot, you'll get us exiled again"), flow naturally and don't stand out, not least because Morgan is good with that Restoration quintessential, witty dialogue. As for his narrator, the one caveat mentioned above aside Jemmy - as opposed to his father openly emotional, without restraints and with a mixture of insecurity (due to the illegitimate status) and possessiveness, strikes one as plausible characterisation. An enjoyable novel.
Passion goes for a very different approach; set during the Romantic age, in the early 19th century, it offers multiple point of views, telling as it does the stories of Mary Shelley, Augusta Leigh, Caroline Lamb and Fanny Brawne, and through them of the poets they were involved with. Let's start with the flaw; the Fanny-Keats parts feel very disconnected to the rest, and one can skip them while still enjoying the novel. I'd have left them out completely. On the other hand, the Mary, Caroline and Augusta storylines feel interwoven even when, Byron aside, there aren't many direct connections between them, and it works beautifully. I have to confess here that I have some very detailed background knowledge, and feel somewhat absurdly possessive about several of these characters the way fanfiction writers do about characters of shows or films they love. Which means I'm more than ready to cry "unfair!" or "out of character!". Which I didn't do here once. Morgan manages to write these very different women, giving each of them a distinctive voice that feels true to what we (can) know of them: Mary is an intellectual, Caroline (niece of last year's film heroine, the Duchess of Devonshire) is an aristocrat whose emotional energy and vitality becomes increasingly warped (and the fact this comes across as tragic is a credit to Morgan, who, Stoppard or no Stoppard, is the first one to really make me sympathize with Caro Lamb), and Augusta's mixture of kindness, eternal optimism and acceptance makes for the great paradox of her life as she, at first glance the most conventional of them, was the other half of the biggest scandal of the time. In many ways, the depiction of Augusta is the most remarkable achievement Morgan pulls off in this novel, because to write someone good-natured and quiet and to make this person interesting when the competition are mostly rebels who are all intellectually superior is no mean feat. Admittedly I'm an Augusta partisan anyway. She used to get dismissed by many a patronizing Byron biographer as dumb and spineless, with said biographers voicing their incomprehension at Byron's passionate love for her. Now Augusta was no genius and definitely prone to compromise, but she had an eternally gambling, completly irresponsible husband and seven children, one of whom turned out to be handicapped and all of whom she had to support well into their adulthood; which she did without breaking down or losing her faith in humanity. After Byron married (which meant their sexual relationship ended, which was Augusta's idea, not his), she did her best to be a good friend to her new sister-in-law and always defended her against her brother. (More on that later.) After the catastrophic end of Byron's marriage and when the big scandal erupted, she remained with him until he left England, though they were shunned in public. And through it all she never hated anyone, and kept her sense of humour. I'd say that this was a woman who deserves some respect.
Now, these women aren't the only females important in the novel. Arguably as important als her relationship with Shelley was Mary's tense relationship with her stepsister Claire (a name she adopted; she was originally plain Jane) Clairmont, and I found the depiction here very believable and interesting. Morgan's Mary resents Claire basically form the moment the little girl arrives with her thoroughly despised mother, the second Mrs. Godwin, and she most certainly resents having Claire a third party in her relationship with Shelley from the get go, but Claire is also her only ally during her childhood, and sometimes the element that keeps the Shelleys going. It's the other sibling relationship of the novel, if you like. (Also, Claire herself, despite Mary's exasparated point of view, comes across as sympathetic, with Morgan again performing that sleight of hand he showed in The King's Touch of the viewpoint character not always making reliable judgments.) Introduced in Caroline Lamb's part of the novel is Lady Melbourne, Caroline's mother-in-law and one of the enigmas in Byron biographies. She was one of the leading women of the Georgian age, openly of the opinion that you owend your husband precisely one child of his own and then your affairs were your own business, and depending on the biographer in question an older version of the Marquise de Merteuil or a wise matriarch. The actions to interpret are the way she defused Caroline's brief but tempestous affair with Byron by becoming his confidante, and the fact she tried to marry him off to her niece Annabella twice (first during the Caroline affair, unsuccessfully since Annabella declined, and the second time after Augusta which was when Annabella said yes) despite the awareness that these two were spectacularly unsuited to each other (seriously; if ever there was someone you wouldn't want your serious, well meaning but self-righteous and completely unexperienced niece to marry, it's Byron, unless you're Barbara Cartland, which the worldly Lady Melbourne most emphatically was not). Morgan's Lady Melbourne is a manipulator (who should be played by Glenn Close) but one with her own side of the story, and if one doesn't like her, one is nonetheless fascinated. The most important female supporting character, however, is Annabella Milbanke, the later Lady Byron.
I once read a review where the reviewer (who wasn't familiar with the story) thought Annabella was unfairly treated (by the author; that she was unfairly treated by Byron is a given), and I don't think that's the case. (I would say that, though; I've read her letters.) The best recent non-fiction book on Annabella and Augusta, A Kindness of Sisters, made the point that Annabella was very much an Austen character turning into a Dickens one, and that's definitely the interpretation Morgan is going for. She started out by playing by the rules, very earnestly first declining Byron's rather half-hearted proposal and later accepting the second one with the declared intention of reforming his character. In other words, she completely fell for the "virtuous woman saves soul of Byronic hero" narrative; in fact, Annabella was probably the only person in his life who really believed Byron to be his literary persona, and interacted with him accordingly, which was her small contribution to the disaster that was their marriage. His, much larger, contribution started with the fact he hadn't married her out of love to begin with, went on with the way he took out on her his resentment that his relationship with Augusta didn't continue post-marriage the way it had before while simultanously playing the Byronic hero for her when he noticed she took serious every single thing he told her, and culminating in relentless hostility and psychological tyranny. It's very easy to feel sorry for Annabella during her marriage. The part where she becomes chilling is in the years and decades post-marriage, not towards Byron (who was first far away, on the continent, and then dead) but towards Augusta, and later towards both Augusta's daughter Medora (the one of Augusta's seven children Annabella assumed was Byron's daughter as well) and her own daughter Ada. Ada, a gifted mathematician and one of the mothers, or perhaps grandmothers, of modern computer lore, died at 36 (same age as Byron, incidentally), of cancer, and the fact that Annabella could write while her daughter screamed in pain that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to Ada because it broke Ada off her wild pursuits and gave her a chance for proper repentance summs up the later Annabella for you. It's not a period covered in the novel, but some of Annabella's campaign to restore Augusta to "a proper spirit of humility and repentance" (a phrase she used in a letter to Augusta's friend Therea Villiers) is, which started as soon as Byron had left England.
Augusta and Annabella: due to Annabella's inability to throw any letter she ever received away and the fact she made copies of the letters she wrote herself, her grandson was more than surprised to find out after her death that during the year of Annabella's marriage, it had been Annabella, not Byron, and not Augusta herself, who had invited Augusta to come and visit them again and again, asking her for help and advice, lamenting when she left, calling her her only comfort, best friend and so on. Who even explicitly asked Augusta to stay with Byron after she herself had left (because she said she still wanted to know how he was doing). Originally this started because Byron during their honeymoon had said Augusta could laugh him out of anything and understood him best, which prompted Annabella to write, but after they met the attachment grew genuine. What Annabella kept changing her story about in her later recollections (written for her lawyers, and then in the decades to come for posterity) is when she started to suspect about an incestous past, and it's not discernable from the letters; Annabella sometimes said she suspected as early as the honeymoon and sometimes that she didn't have a clue until Caroline Lamb told her after she had already left Byron, and sometimes in between. Morgan goes for a mixture; she doesn't really want to know until she has made up her mind to leave. The idea for a punishment/saving project starts after Byron has left England. First Annabella wanted a confession. She also recruited one of Augusta's few remaining friends, Mrs Villiers, as her spy (the correspondance between them is the one where the "restore her to that state of humility and repentance which is desirable from a Christian point of view" comes from, and Morgan works it into the novel, too) because after she got a confession, it wasn't enough, she also wanted a promise Augusta would not follow Byron to the continent. Then she wanted Augusta to acknowledge that Byron was her enemy. Then she wanted the letters, and always with the threat to withdraw her protection in society if Augusta didn't comply, which would have meant financial destituation for the Leighs who were dependent on Augusta being a lady in waiting old queen Charlotte. Then she went back to wanting another confession, and so forth, until it got to the breaking point. (Though they didn't see each other again after Byron's death with one exception, and before that only twice post- marriage break-up, with correspondance going on intermittendly, it never really ended. Five weeks before Augusta died, she saw Annabella one last time, which was a last attempt at reconciliation on her part and a last attempt at yet another confession on Annabella's, who had brought a reverend with her to witness and protocol the whole thing. At that point, Annabella had rewritten the past in her had so she was convinced Byron would have returned to her, repentant, if Augusta hadn't somehow stopped him from afar, and wanted Augusta to admit that. (The irony is that Annabella's own letter-keeping habits prove this wasn't the case, not to mention the fact that the younger Annnabella would not have been willing to rejoin Byron, quite sensibly so given what their marriage had been like.) Which Augusta didn't, and so that last meeting ended by Annabella furious and still demanding more complete repentance yet again. Those notes on the meeting are quite chilling to read.) Morgan ends Augusta's part of the novel after Byron's death, which at once saddens and liberates her as it ends her dependance on Annabella and allowed to her to admit to herself what she felt without even trying for repentance; it's a sad yet hopeful note and only heartbreaking if you know what was yet to come.
The men of the novel are all vividly drawn, with one exception. There are some sharp pen portraits, like William Godwin, Mary's father, and the way she goes from hero-worshipping him to disillusioment is a miniature novella in itself early on, or George Leigh, Augusta's cousin and husband (who isn't malicious, just entirely useless in his spendthrift, well-old-girl-you'll-manage-won't-you way. Then there's Caroline Lamb's husband William (in biographies, it's always odd to think that he ended up as Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister and mentor in his old age; even his most famous biographer kept Regency!William and Victorian!Lord M. apart in two volumes), whose relationship with Caroline is far more important than the brief one she has with Byron, and more complex; William loves Caroline and stands by her while his family loathes her and increasingly regard her as crazy, but he's also quite callous towards the son they have because said son is slow. As far as the big three are concerned, Keats shows up late and as I said, that entire plot thread could have been cut, though the characterisation is fine. Shelley is the type of well meaning idealist you increasingly want to slap. I hasten to add that the Shelley sections manage to get across the excitement of ideas in the Romantic age very well; but also Shelley's complete cluelessness as to what actually goes on emotionally with Mary, or Claire, for that matter. As for Byron, Morgan manages to capture what many a fictional representation loses sight of, his wit (that ability again, to write dialogue that uses famous quotes in a natural-feeling way because the rest of the conversation goes similarly), along with that curious mixture of egotism and genuine desire for the world to change, the ability to be simultanously a good friend and a catastrophic husband. I've already talked about the marriage; the affair with Caroline is depicted as genuine on both parts but pretty obviously destined for failure from the start, too; and the paradox of his relationship with Augusta is that this, the great taboo-breaker, is in many ways the least histrionic and most comfortable he had with a woman, not least because their ability to laugh at each other and at life. They had different mothers and hadn't grown up together, not meeting until he was a teenager and she nearly an adult, and then only rarely, though they corresponded a lot, until she was thirty, which was when it turned incesteous. The casual way in which this happens is a counterpoint to the dramatics elsewhere, though Morgan doesn't ignore the fact they must have been aware of the enormity eventually. (Hence Byron telling Lady Melbourne about it, and Augusta disastrously deciding they need to end it by him marrying.) Lastly, what Morgan also impressed me with is the utterly non-romantic (there isn't even UST) but extremely interesting relationship between Mary Shelley and Byron, where you get the impression of two first class fencers never quite letting down their guards with each other, occasionally dealing out blows, but also seeing each other somewhat more clearly than the man who connects them, Shelley, does. It makes for some great dialogues. Mary, of course, is the only one of the women who doesn't just survive but survives to success (as opposed to Caroline's state which depending on interpretation is genuine insanity or the Lambs succeeding at last in locking her up, and Augusta who has just a break between family tragedies). As the prologue of the novel describes the fate of her mother, Mary Wolstonecraft of early feminist fame, it's fitting that she concludes it.