I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.
Author Note:
George Meredith was an author with his own highly original style, more poetic than prosaic, and at times confusing and even obscure. (Oscar Wilde said of him, “Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.”) He never attracted the general reader as did his contemporaries Dickens and Thackeray, and Diana of the Crossways, published in 1885, was his first novel to have great popular success. He became in his later years a respected poet and critic, at least respected by others in the field of literature.
Characters:
Diana Antonia Warwick–the heroine of the novel.
Emma Dunstane–Diana’s most intimate friend.
Mr. Redworth–Diana’s admirer and later, her husband.
Mr. Warwick–Diana’s estranged husband.
Mr. Percy Dacier–Diana’s admirer and friend.
Lord Dannisburgh–Diana’s friend.
Arthur Rhodes–a young poet, Diana’s admirer.
Quotations:
Diana: “The worst of a position like mine is that it causes me incessantly to think and talk of myself. I believe I think less than I talk, but the subject is growing stale.”
“Moral indignation is ever consolatory, for it plants us in the Judgement Seat. There, indeed, we may, sitting with the very Highest, forget our personal disappointments in dispensing reprobation for misconduct, however eminent the offenders.”
Diana: “What the world says is what the wind says.”
Perceiving the moisture in her look, Redworth understood that it was foolish to talk rationally.” (Yes, a male author could write such a thing back in 1886.)
She had come out of her dejectedness with a shrewder view of Dacier; equally painful, for it killed her romance and changed the garden of their companionship in imagination to a waste.
Emma: “Any menace of her precious liberty makes her prickly.”
Diana: “Expectations dupe us, not trust. The light of every soul burns upwards. Of course, most of them are candles in the wind. Let us allow for atmospheric disturbance.”
I think, if I am remembering correctly, the Austenites among us might enjoy Diana of the Crossways. It was published almost a century later than Ms. Austen’s novels were, but it has the same flavor of restrained courtship in polite society. However, if you decide to try it out, please do allow for atmospheric disturbance and for the lapses in memory that are attendant on my advanced years.
My Books by Francis Bennoch
