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Told by an Idiot
It is shortly before Christmas in the year 1879, the forty-second year of Queen Victoria's reign, when the curtain rises on the Garden family: on Mr Garden, a clergyman of many denominations, about to lose his faith for the umpteenth time, on his selfless, devoted wife - and on their six children, about to be launched on the adult world. There is Victoria, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty intent on marriage; Maurice, shaking his fist at the injustices of the world; Stanley, a follower of Ruskin ad Morris, doing good as radical fashion dictates; Irving, a lusty young capitalist, and Una, born for happy marriage and maternity. All are watched from the sidelines by their sister Rome. Detached, intelligent, urbane, she observes three generations of her family strut and fret their hour upon the stage. To her their sound and fury signify nothing - but to us the memory of Rome's one brief love affair strikes the final note of truth, defiantly affirming that it is better to have loved and lost ...
336 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1923
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About the author
Rose Macaulay
70 books119 followersEmilie Rose Macaulay, whom Elizabeth Bowen called "one of the few writers of whom it may be said, she adorns our century," was born at Rugby, where her father was an assistant master. Descended on both sides from a long line of clerical ancestors, she felt Anglicanism was in her blood. Much of her childhood was spent in Varazze, near Genoa, and memories of Italy fill the early novels. The family returned to England in 1894 and settled in Oxford. She read history at Somerville, and on coming down lived with her family first in Wales, then near Cambridge, where her father had been appointed a lecturer in English. There she began a writing career which was to span fifty years with the publication of her first novel, Abbots Verney, in 1906. When her sixth novel, The Lee Shore (1912), won a literary prize, a gift from her uncle allowed her to rent a tiny flat in London, and she plunged happily into London literary life.
From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...
From BookRags: http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ros...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
February 10, 2023
What a read! Not a single page is dull in Macaulay’s vibrant storytelling about three generations of the Garden family that span over forty some years (from 1879 through 1923), coinciding with four historical “ages” in England - Victorian, Fin-de-Siècle, Edwardian, and Georgian - which gave the four-folded structure to the novel. The idea is fairly ambitious in that it follows individual stories of a great many characters, the parents (’papa’ and ‘mamma’), no less than their six children (most of whom are named after their papa’s ever-changing religious beliefs of the moment), and grandchildren among whom Imogen takes the central role. At the same time, the novelistic narrative is skillfully interspersed with the social, cultural and literary panorama of each age and even each year with Macaulay’s witty and intelligent commentary, whether as a narrator or by lending a voice to her characters. I don’t know if it was the first attempt in blending the novel with essays, but it surely is an early forerunner in the form favored by many contemporary writers a century later.
To be sure, not all characters are fully developed, the numerous historical events are more iterated and the spirit of the time often humorously commented with intelligence, rather than covered in depth. But that was probably not Macaulay’s intent as telling in two epigrams prefacing the novel, one of which is from Macbeth’s famous last-act soliloquy that gave the title to the novel:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing …
It’s impossible to cover the wide range of themes permeating the lives of the Gardens as well as Macaulay’s story of England as a whole. In my reading, she succeeded the most in two themes - religion and gender politics, so I’ll briefly touch upon them.
Throughout the novel, ‘papa’, a lovely character, is walking through the ever revolving door of religious allegiance, from Roman Catholicism through different variants of Protestantism to the “Higher Thought” (apparently a mystical version of Tibetan Buddhism), amusingly observed by his family, eventually becoming an erudite expert in comparative religion. All the time, however, his spiritual beliefs remain the same, partly if at all satisfied by these various official religions. In this ingenious way, Macaulay subtly and effectively conveys her own skeptical attitudes toward the religious institutions, separating them from the nobility of steady inner spirituality as portrayed in papa.
Several characters served Macaulay’s fine-grained observations about the multi-faceted gender identity of women. While the illusion of a ‘New Woman’ is launched by society in each epoch, differentiated by her appearances, the parallel coexistence of the same types perseveres throughout across time: those who are content with their role of a child-bearing wife with her daily embroidery and other homebound leisures (Mamma, Vicky), a politically engaged activist for women’s rights and all kinds of social causes (Stanley - usually socialist, though she briefly detoured into the pro-imperial jingoistic fervor) at the cost of neglecting her private life, and a young woman with an instinctively divided gender identity in the formative years searching for herself (the memorable little Imogene who dreams as a boy).
Macaulay’s writing strikes me at its best in this pervasive gender theme as if reckoning with her own female identity is reflected in the kaleidoscopic mirrors of these different types. But, above all, she seems to be embodied in Rome. With an observant eye, “Rome contemplated the spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement”, recognizing the sameness in the carnival procession of political follies and passing cultural fads.
A rollicking social satire that defines the phrase “reading pleasure”.
To be sure, not all characters are fully developed, the numerous historical events are more iterated and the spirit of the time often humorously commented with intelligence, rather than covered in depth. But that was probably not Macaulay’s intent as telling in two epigrams prefacing the novel, one of which is from Macbeth’s famous last-act soliloquy that gave the title to the novel:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing …
It’s impossible to cover the wide range of themes permeating the lives of the Gardens as well as Macaulay’s story of England as a whole. In my reading, she succeeded the most in two themes - religion and gender politics, so I’ll briefly touch upon them.
Throughout the novel, ‘papa’, a lovely character, is walking through the ever revolving door of religious allegiance, from Roman Catholicism through different variants of Protestantism to the “Higher Thought” (apparently a mystical version of Tibetan Buddhism), amusingly observed by his family, eventually becoming an erudite expert in comparative religion. All the time, however, his spiritual beliefs remain the same, partly if at all satisfied by these various official religions. In this ingenious way, Macaulay subtly and effectively conveys her own skeptical attitudes toward the religious institutions, separating them from the nobility of steady inner spirituality as portrayed in papa.
Several characters served Macaulay’s fine-grained observations about the multi-faceted gender identity of women. While the illusion of a ‘New Woman’ is launched by society in each epoch, differentiated by her appearances, the parallel coexistence of the same types perseveres throughout across time: those who are content with their role of a child-bearing wife with her daily embroidery and other homebound leisures (Mamma, Vicky), a politically engaged activist for women’s rights and all kinds of social causes (Stanley - usually socialist, though she briefly detoured into the pro-imperial jingoistic fervor) at the cost of neglecting her private life, and a young woman with an instinctively divided gender identity in the formative years searching for herself (the memorable little Imogene who dreams as a boy).
Macaulay’s writing strikes me at its best in this pervasive gender theme as if reckoning with her own female identity is reflected in the kaleidoscopic mirrors of these different types. But, above all, she seems to be embodied in Rome. With an observant eye, “Rome contemplated the spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement”, recognizing the sameness in the carnival procession of political follies and passing cultural fads.
A rollicking social satire that defines the phrase “reading pleasure”.
October 2, 2015
The first lines, to give you an idea of tone:
"One evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our forefathers, being young, possessed the earth, – in brief, in the year 1879, – Mrs Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr Garden’s study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor Papa has lost his faith again.”"
or, later,
"Even Mr W.T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did, but as for the peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones."
I loved this book. Loved its wit, its sadness, its intelligence. I would happily have read another 300 pages.
It is a wonderful mix of essay and novel, and succeeded in making clear to me just how little has changed in the last hundred-odd years. The objects of satire remain identical, and her barbs remain sharp.
"One evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our forefathers, being young, possessed the earth, – in brief, in the year 1879, – Mrs Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr Garden’s study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor Papa has lost his faith again.”"
or, later,
"Even Mr W.T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did, but as for the peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones."
I loved this book. Loved its wit, its sadness, its intelligence. I would happily have read another 300 pages.
It is a wonderful mix of essay and novel, and succeeded in making clear to me just how little has changed in the last hundred-odd years. The objects of satire remain identical, and her barbs remain sharp.
September 23, 2016
If you want to spend time with a supremely witty and intelligent woman, read this book. In keeping with its title, "Told by an Idiot" doesn't bother much with plot. Macaulay follows the fortunes of a family from 1879 until the aftermath of WWI, her central thesis being that stuff just happens to individuals and societies without any generation being markedly different from the previous one. This point she may harp on just a little bit too much, but since people remain unaccountably enamored of classifying things by the decade in which they took place, she was onto something. The patriarch of the family is a deeply religious man who embraces one creed after another in an elusive attempt to find a faith in complete consonance with his conscience. His wife loyally follows suit but keeps her own counsel. Their 6 children are all very different from each other. Maurice is an angry man. Vicky is a well-adjusted matron. Stanley readily espouses social causes. Irving is a money-maker, but not an unprincipled man. Una marries a farmer and finds fault with nothing. By far the most interesting character, in my view, is Rome, a charming cynic who tries to get through life without engaging with it. She's the type who never explains and never complains. Content with taking people and events as they come, she sees life as a spectacle, sometimes amusing, sometimes gruesome, but can't imagine why others get so agitated about it. In the third generation, Macaulay picks out Imogen, a dreamy, sensual girl who, at the end of the book, sails to the South Pacific in an unfocused quest for beauty: "And still the thought of coral islands, of palm and yam and bread-fruit trees, with the fruits thereof dropping ripely on emerald grass, with monkeys and gay parakeets screaming in the branches, and great turtles flopping in the blue seas, with beachcombers drinking palm-toddy on white beaches, the crystal-clear lagoon in which to swim, and, beyond, the blue, island-dotted open sea, - even now these things tugged at Imogen's heart-strings and made her feel again at moments the adventurous little girl she had once been, dreaming romantic dreams. But more often this bright, still world beyond the mists seemed like the paradise of a hymn, a far, unnatural, brilliant, alien place, which would make one sick for home." I have a hunch that Rome and Imogen represent facets of the author herself, so much more fully realized are they than the other characters. Be that as it may, this deliberately undramatic family saga, full of satirical but never acerbic comments on the fashions and follies of the time-span it covers, was for me a real page-turner.
Read
September 13, 2022So happy to have discovered Macaulay's witty yet sensitive book, only to realise how little our world has changed in the past 150 years. Brilliant, brilliant writer.
Read
August 15, 2011This 1923 novel invites comparison with Virginia Woolf. However, except for a short, delightful chapter where two children ride the London Underground on a Sunday afternoon, Macaulay doesn't show the interest in London, or in characters' inner lives, that Woolf does in Mrs. Dalloway, which focuses on one day in 1923. Macaulay is more interested in showing the sweep of time from 1879-1923 through the lives of one family as well as through narrative commentary: her characters live through a succession of monarchs, the Boer War, the Great War, and all kinds of technological and social change, but the more things change, the more events repeat. The old keep being horrified by the new doings of the young, the daughter who cares about injustice keeps speaking on platforms, politicians keep failing to do anything significant, and papa keeps losing his faith. Still, even considering the title's allusion to Macbeth, Macaulay's wit keeps it all from being depressing.
October 13, 2018
As the novel opens, Mama and Papa Garden live in their comfortable London home with their six children, the eldest Vicky is already twenty-three – the youngest Una a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.
“One evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our forefathers, being young, possessed the earth, – in brief, in the year 1879, – Mrs Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr Garden’s study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor Papa has lost his faith again.””
Mr Garden changes religion like people of today change their mobile phones, from Anglicanism to Ethicism, to Catholicism to Christian Science – and everything in between. The family are well used to it – and his long suffering, ever supportive wife embraces whatever the latest thing is – no matter what her own private thoughts.
It is their children however who are at the centre of this novel, and in 1879 and the 1880s they are what is seen as the modern generation. Conventional Vicky’s younger sisters Stanley and Rome (here again Macaulay’s unusual androgynous names for women) and their brother Maurice at Cambridge are the epitome of late Victorian modernity. Stanley is passionate for a social cause, Rome is charming, urbane and cynical, she tries not to engage too fully with anything, taking life as it comes, and finding so much of life highly amusing.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
“One evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our forefathers, being young, possessed the earth, – in brief, in the year 1879, – Mrs Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr Garden’s study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor Papa has lost his faith again.””
Mr Garden changes religion like people of today change their mobile phones, from Anglicanism to Ethicism, to Catholicism to Christian Science – and everything in between. The family are well used to it – and his long suffering, ever supportive wife embraces whatever the latest thing is – no matter what her own private thoughts.
It is their children however who are at the centre of this novel, and in 1879 and the 1880s they are what is seen as the modern generation. Conventional Vicky’s younger sisters Stanley and Rome (here again Macaulay’s unusual androgynous names for women) and their brother Maurice at Cambridge are the epitome of late Victorian modernity. Stanley is passionate for a social cause, Rome is charming, urbane and cynical, she tries not to engage too fully with anything, taking life as it comes, and finding so much of life highly amusing.
Full review: https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
March 1, 2025
The story of a family from Victorian times to the aftermath of the Great War.
I made the post-processing of this book for DistributedProofreaders and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
I made the post-processing of this book for DistributedProofreaders and Project Gutenberg will publish it.
June 18, 2014
It’s a shame that so much of Rose Macaulay’s work is out of print in the United States. I think the only title readily available today is The Towers of Trebizond. It’s a fine book, but it’s also a late book and not, perhaps, entirely representative of the work by which she made her name in the 1920s and ‘30s. WWII took a toll on Macaulay (see The World My Wilderness, which I consider a failed novel). She had recovered somewhat by the time she got to Towers, but back in the decades before the war, the woman had wit, and snark, and eloquence beyond her share. Crewe Train, for example, is a gem. Told by an Idiot is too, though the story if more dispersed, since it concerns a large number of characters in a single family. Still, it works wonderfully. I couldn’t help thinking of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks while reading it. There are obvious similarities. There’s the multi-generational cast of characters, the changes in customs and mores over decades, the question of decadence, and when and whether and in which ways that bogey does or doesn’t really appear. The tone of the two books, however, couldn’t be more different. Worthy in its way, Mann’s book is essentially a work of pessimism. Macaualay's, by comparison, is a big affirming embrace of even our human failures and foibles.
As Ms Macaualay puts it:
“The brief pageant, the tiny, squalid story of human life upon this earth, has been lit, among the squalor and the greed, by amazing flashes of intelligence, of valour, of beauty, of sacrifice, of love. A silly story if you will, but a somewhat remarkable one. Told by an idiot, and not a very nice idiot at that, but an idiot with gleams of genius and of fineness. The valiant dust that builds on dust – how valiant, after all, it is. No achievement can matter, and all things done are vanity, and the fight for success and the world’s applause is contemptible and absurd, like a game children play, building their sand castles which shall so soon one and all collapse; but the queer, enduring spirit of enterprise which animates the dust we are is not contemptible nor absurd.”
As Ms Macaualay puts it:
“The brief pageant, the tiny, squalid story of human life upon this earth, has been lit, among the squalor and the greed, by amazing flashes of intelligence, of valour, of beauty, of sacrifice, of love. A silly story if you will, but a somewhat remarkable one. Told by an idiot, and not a very nice idiot at that, but an idiot with gleams of genius and of fineness. The valiant dust that builds on dust – how valiant, after all, it is. No achievement can matter, and all things done are vanity, and the fight for success and the world’s applause is contemptible and absurd, like a game children play, building their sand castles which shall so soon one and all collapse; but the queer, enduring spirit of enterprise which animates the dust we are is not contemptible nor absurd.”
June 10, 2016
This is not an intimate family story spanning generations. It is a surface skidding, describing everyone in relation to their time of life and time in history. Since I usually like personal details and conversations, I was surprised that I read this book on through, with only a few distractions. Some of the things she wrote could as well apply to modern life, especially her contrasts between political and social liberals and conservatives. Though she criticizes the tendency to describe people as belonging to specific generations, such as our more modern "millennials" and "generation x" and "baby boomers", the entire book is nevertheless based on the premise that it is useful to do this.
I don't think it's the kind of book I will re-read, but, after I write down a few of my favorite quotes, I will unfold the page corners and bring it to a local book box to share with neighbors.
I don't think it's the kind of book I will re-read, but, after I write down a few of my favorite quotes, I will unfold the page corners and bring it to a local book box to share with neighbors.
September 4, 2018
As I was reading this book, I started marking pages because of clever sentences I read. I kept marking more and more pages. But it is not until the very final chapter titled, you guessed it, “Final”, that I fully realized how good Rose Macaulay’s writing is. “Human beings surely tend to overrate their own importance. Funny, hustling, strutting, vain, eager little creature that we are, so clever and so excited about the business of living, so absorbed and intent about it all, so proud of our achievements, so tragically deploring our disasters, so prone to talk about the wreckage of civilization, as if it mattered much, as if civilizations had not been wrecked and wrecked all down human history and it all came to the same thing in the end.” How nicely it ended and how I wished there would be more. When I looked back to pages I marked, I could not remember – why did I mark these pages? Reading the final chapter wiped clean all those previously clever marks.
The book covers the entire life of Garden family for three generations. All six children have very different ways to approach life. Except for Rome, all get married and two get divorced. There are so many things to consider but in spite of all the life-changing events, there isn’t really a plot or storyline to the book. The plot and the characters in this book function in supporting role to the author. Throughout the book, one becomes completely aware of the author’s presence. Among six Garden children, Rome and Stanley have the most developed characters. Even when they interact with the readers, you get a clear feeling that it is the author’s voice we hear.
In the final page of “Final” chapter, the author looks at each of Garden family members, parents and the six siblings, and gives a concise summary of “how variously they had all taken life”. As I reading through the page, I caught myself trying to figure out where I belong. Is it mama who is “…too gentle to be called cynical, too shrewd to be deceived by life”? Is it Vicky who “…skimmed gracefully over life’s surface like a swallow….had plunged frequently, ardently, and yet lightly, into life”? Is it Maurice who “…had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed it, treated it as an enemy in a battle”? Is it Stanley who “…embraced it like a lover…believed in life, that it was or could be splendid and divine”? Is it Irving and Una who “...both accepted it calmly, cheerfully, without speculation, as a good enough thing”? Or is it Rome who had rejected life, “…without opposition and without heat, (she) had refused to be made an active participant in the business, but had watched it from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertaining show”? Sadly I see the most of myself in Maurice, particularly when I was young. I understand what it is like to fight life like an enemy in a battle. But as I become more experienced in the show of life, I see myself becoming more like Rome. If I had made certain choices, would I then “…have been forced into some closer, some more intimate spiritual relationship with the show?” I am glad to hear the (sort of) answer; “ Possibly. Or possibly not. Life is infinitely compelling, but the spirit remains infinitely itself”.
I love Rose Macaulay.
The book covers the entire life of Garden family for three generations. All six children have very different ways to approach life. Except for Rome, all get married and two get divorced. There are so many things to consider but in spite of all the life-changing events, there isn’t really a plot or storyline to the book. The plot and the characters in this book function in supporting role to the author. Throughout the book, one becomes completely aware of the author’s presence. Among six Garden children, Rome and Stanley have the most developed characters. Even when they interact with the readers, you get a clear feeling that it is the author’s voice we hear.
In the final page of “Final” chapter, the author looks at each of Garden family members, parents and the six siblings, and gives a concise summary of “how variously they had all taken life”. As I reading through the page, I caught myself trying to figure out where I belong. Is it mama who is “…too gentle to be called cynical, too shrewd to be deceived by life”? Is it Vicky who “…skimmed gracefully over life’s surface like a swallow….had plunged frequently, ardently, and yet lightly, into life”? Is it Maurice who “…had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed it, treated it as an enemy in a battle”? Is it Stanley who “…embraced it like a lover…believed in life, that it was or could be splendid and divine”? Is it Irving and Una who “...both accepted it calmly, cheerfully, without speculation, as a good enough thing”? Or is it Rome who had rejected life, “…without opposition and without heat, (she) had refused to be made an active participant in the business, but had watched it from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertaining show”? Sadly I see the most of myself in Maurice, particularly when I was young. I understand what it is like to fight life like an enemy in a battle. But as I become more experienced in the show of life, I see myself becoming more like Rome. If I had made certain choices, would I then “…have been forced into some closer, some more intimate spiritual relationship with the show?” I am glad to hear the (sort of) answer; “ Possibly. Or possibly not. Life is infinitely compelling, but the spirit remains infinitely itself”.
I love Rose Macaulay.
July 20, 2019
[1923] So much funnier than I thought it would be. Tracking the years of the loving Garden family from 1879 to 1920. Six kids are followed from childhood to old age, through marriage, relationships, children, divorce, wars. Six personality types: the social justice warrior, the traditional mom, the entrepreneur, the simple country girl, the antiestablishment, the wise independent. This book did a great job of establishing the characters of each as children and keeping it consistent through adulthood: "Give me the child until he's seven and I'll show you the man." Lots of political and social commentary, lots on the women's suffrage movement. Very forward thinking. Several observations about the times, how it is to move from one century to the next, how eras are somewhat arbitrary as defined time periods, the sameness of each generation of young people. That really made me smile.
October 16, 2018
I wanted to like this but as the tone is one of "there is nothing new under the sun," it necessarily has an air of humorous weariness about it. Because she is such a marvelous stylist, it will not keep me from attempting other works of hers, however.
October 10, 2019
Told By An Idiot chronicles highlights and changing attitudes in the Garden family across nearly 30 years of time, from the 1880's to the years immediately following WWI, and is utterly delightful. The focus is on the six young adults of the family (Rome (female), Vicky, Maurice, Stanley (female!), Una and Irving) and their children, with the de facto protagonists being the three elder women and, overwhelmingly in the second half, Vicky's eldest daughter, Imogen. Well-educated, liberal and active, the Gardens traipse through the wild political and artistic activity of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, with the lion's share of the action taking place in the 1890's and 1900's. Macaulay's structure alternates character scenes with third-person narration, with Macaulay looking back at the period of what was her own youth with wonder and nostalgia, though not blind to any trials and horrors of the day that a Brit of the time would reasonably know about. While the characters all come from the same family, Macaulay allows them to have remarkable variation in temperament, political outlook and life trajectories, and the long timespan shows how bright, headstrong people shift with the times as much as anybody else.
Each Garden is finely realized and likable, even when doing ugly things, through the grace of Macaulay's warm, sympathetic eye. The value of taking life by the horns, and forever searching, is a key lesson, exemplified by Aubrey, the grandfather, and his lifelong study of (and conversion to, in turn) comparative religions, and by Stanley throwing herself into every attractive political and social cause she can, well into her 50's and beyond. The most interesting character overall is Imogen, who grows up to be the protagonist of the "Edwardian" and "Georgian" sections. Temperamental and stubbornly individual, Imogen becomes the most free intellect of the group, but on an interior basis, imagining adventure stories where she turns herself into a young male adventurer (frequently a Naval officer) to escape the blase confines of what the British upper middle class of her day offers women. Macaulay's detailed and earnest realization of this character becomes the soul of the narrative, a contradictory and wholly real person in a roaring river of societal change.
The overarching questions of the book as a study of the times are what it meant, and will mean, to be a "modern woman", and the value of youth and its adventuring and passion. The story takes us just over the finish line of Women's Suffrage in the UK, and believes that there was a consistent trend for the "modern woman" throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and that while Suffrage may have been inevitable, if sadly delayed, it didn't reap immediate rewards for anybody, and society still had a long way to go in terms of sexual equality. "Modern women", in all the decades of the book, were simply women who broke with social conventions of crippling modesty and deference, and all of the main women of the narrative are modern in this fashion, in one way or another, and for the better. The great love Macaulay has for youth is part of a bigger lust for life, a celebration of the potential of humanity to live as much as they can, and allowing for variation and disagreement as long as one lives honestly and allows others to do the same. The historical incidents and social conventions of the story are certainly in the past, but the sentiments and characters are still fresh and universal.
The book does have its flaws, though they are minor in the scheme of things. Because of the habit of retroactively referring to the 1880's and '90's as being "Victorian", the 1900's being "Edwardian", and the 1910's and onward as "Georgian", the characters do the same for themselves in a way that seems anachronistic and a bit annoying. They seem terribly delighted to be part of what the author thinks of as important times, and the author's narration occasionally breaches the detached third-person contract at times to emotionally comment on events. This latter issue extends to her referring to us, the reader, being squarely in the early 1920's, like she was when she wrote the book, so at points the narrative takes the air of a humorous article looking back at the past rather than serious fiction. Macaulay put great stock in the writers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, so if you hate the idea of lists of books published in given years being part of a wide-ranging historical narrative, consider yourself warned. Too many of the Gardens attempt to be writers for reasonable statistical purposes, but that could be just to show that they are frivolous and self-absorbed in some aspects. The final chapter also has a pedantic, overwrought closing narration that goes on for a few pages.
As I said before, these issues are minor, and the book is wonderful on the whole. The story of the Gardens is warm, perceptive, richly detailed and wholly human. I wanted to hug all of them, especially Imogen, who became one of the most likable and memorable young people I've seen in a book from this era. Highly recommended for fans of fine British literature, and to everybody else, too.
Each Garden is finely realized and likable, even when doing ugly things, through the grace of Macaulay's warm, sympathetic eye. The value of taking life by the horns, and forever searching, is a key lesson, exemplified by Aubrey, the grandfather, and his lifelong study of (and conversion to, in turn) comparative religions, and by Stanley throwing herself into every attractive political and social cause she can, well into her 50's and beyond. The most interesting character overall is Imogen, who grows up to be the protagonist of the "Edwardian" and "Georgian" sections. Temperamental and stubbornly individual, Imogen becomes the most free intellect of the group, but on an interior basis, imagining adventure stories where she turns herself into a young male adventurer (frequently a Naval officer) to escape the blase confines of what the British upper middle class of her day offers women. Macaulay's detailed and earnest realization of this character becomes the soul of the narrative, a contradictory and wholly real person in a roaring river of societal change.
The overarching questions of the book as a study of the times are what it meant, and will mean, to be a "modern woman", and the value of youth and its adventuring and passion. The story takes us just over the finish line of Women's Suffrage in the UK, and believes that there was a consistent trend for the "modern woman" throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and that while Suffrage may have been inevitable, if sadly delayed, it didn't reap immediate rewards for anybody, and society still had a long way to go in terms of sexual equality. "Modern women", in all the decades of the book, were simply women who broke with social conventions of crippling modesty and deference, and all of the main women of the narrative are modern in this fashion, in one way or another, and for the better. The great love Macaulay has for youth is part of a bigger lust for life, a celebration of the potential of humanity to live as much as they can, and allowing for variation and disagreement as long as one lives honestly and allows others to do the same. The historical incidents and social conventions of the story are certainly in the past, but the sentiments and characters are still fresh and universal.
The book does have its flaws, though they are minor in the scheme of things. Because of the habit of retroactively referring to the 1880's and '90's as being "Victorian", the 1900's being "Edwardian", and the 1910's and onward as "Georgian", the characters do the same for themselves in a way that seems anachronistic and a bit annoying. They seem terribly delighted to be part of what the author thinks of as important times, and the author's narration occasionally breaches the detached third-person contract at times to emotionally comment on events. This latter issue extends to her referring to us, the reader, being squarely in the early 1920's, like she was when she wrote the book, so at points the narrative takes the air of a humorous article looking back at the past rather than serious fiction. Macaulay put great stock in the writers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, so if you hate the idea of lists of books published in given years being part of a wide-ranging historical narrative, consider yourself warned. Too many of the Gardens attempt to be writers for reasonable statistical purposes, but that could be just to show that they are frivolous and self-absorbed in some aspects. The final chapter also has a pedantic, overwrought closing narration that goes on for a few pages.
As I said before, these issues are minor, and the book is wonderful on the whole. The story of the Gardens is warm, perceptive, richly detailed and wholly human. I wanted to hug all of them, especially Imogen, who became one of the most likable and memorable young people I've seen in a book from this era. Highly recommended for fans of fine British literature, and to everybody else, too.
March 7, 2014
Rose Macaulay has not been given a bright enough light in our contemporary lists. Yet she is a brilliant, idiosyncratic writer who has given me hours and hours of pleasure. Towers of Trebizond (novel, Pleasure in Ruins (historical travelog) and now Told by an Idiot. Her Victorian family, the Gardens, are the brackets that span 1880 to 1914: Victoria to King George, just before the war. Much history, tongue in cheek, repeating the conventional wisdom (annually) of how the young people are MODERN--girls riding bikes, marching for the right to vote, working! There are so many lists--the books being read, the plays attended, Mr Garden losing his faith and changing his religion about every 18 months, Anglican, Quaker, Roman Catholic, Ethicist, taking great solace in hearing messages from his his dear wife, until someone outs Miss Smythe and her seances were pilloried in the press. The stories of the six children: Victoria, Stanley (female), Maurice (male), Rome (female), Irving (male), Una (female), are told with enough detail to build real characters, not just placeholders. Each has his or her own charm; Maurice, less, Rome, more to carry the reader through the chronology. A magnificent achievement. Really.
January 28, 2020
This is the first book I've read by Rose Macaulay and purchased it simply because the author lived in Rugby, where I've also lived for the past twenty years. I have to say I was a little disappointed. I didn't like her prose style, finding it much too 'tell-y'. The novel follows the fortunes of the eccentric Garden family from 1879 through to 1920. It is split into eras - Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian. Macaulay comments on the social, political and economic status of the times as well as on art and literature. It is difficult to identify with any of the characters, as the author doesn't spend long enough getting up close and personal with any of them. The female characters are probably the strongest, from Stanley, the political activist to Imogen, the dreamy and imaginative daughter of Vicky, who hadn't 'any clear idea of what women ought or ought not to be'. My favourite scenes are those featuring Rome and her affair with the married, Mr Jayne. Oh, those Russians! What appeals to me most about this novel is the fact that it so accurately reflects what is happening in the world today, and that every generation thinks their world is new, but we continue to repeat the same cycle each time.
January 17, 2019
I had read several of Tremain's travel books, and enjoyed them: so when afriend (Charlotte) recommended this, I gave it a go. To start with I enjoyed it ... but the whimsical charm wore off very quickly. I found the technique of interpolating chunks of gossipy-style British history - used more and more as the book progresses - became very wearing; the characters are not fully rounded; and the idea that "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" is repeated to the point of boredom.
January 17, 2022
This novel was first published in 1923 and then republished as part of the Virago Modern Classic series. It’s set in England between 1890 and 1914, more or less, and it’s something more than a novel. It’s a commentary on the times, with an emphasis on the fact that nothing really changes in human life, from one age to the next.
It’s divided into three parts, according to who was ruling England, with the Victorian, the (short) Edwardian, and the Georgian periods. It centers around a family, the Gardens, with six children. In these pages, they grow up, and have children and grandchildren. Victoria is a breezy socialite, Maurice a disaffected radical, Rome a detached cynic, Stanley a true believer in various causes, Irving a practical and predatory businessman, and Una a country woman to the core. One of Victoria’s children, Imogen, is also featured, and she’s an incipient writer who passionately wants to be a boy and join the navy.
The novel begins with Papa, as he is called throughout the book, losing his faith. This is something that happens periodically, and Mamma always supports him. Papa believes wholeheartedly in one faith for a period of a few years, begins to question and to doubt, and then finds another to believe in. In this way, he makes his way through every religion available to him, always becoming active in each, sometimes becoming a minister or clergyman. Sometimes his loss of faith means that the family has to move. His children accept this quirk, since it's just his way, even when it's inconvenient.
There’s constant clever commentary from the author about the world they’re all living in. My main complaint is that I didn’t follow all the late 19th century references. Some of them I could look up in Wiki, but some were too obscure to be found anywhere. But the novel is sharp, pointed, often funny, sometimes eloquent.
Some quotes:
< From Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, from Catholicism to Quakerism, from Quakerism to Unitarianism, Positivism, Baptistism (yes, they had once sunk, to Vicky’s shame, as low as that in the social scale, owing chiefly to the influence of Charles Spurgeon) and back to Anglicanism again – through everything, mamma, silent, resigned and possibly ironic, had followed papa. >
< And her talk about platonic friendships and women’s rights and social revolution and bringing beauty into common life. The New Girl. If Vicky was one kind of New Girl (which may be doubted), Stanley was another, even newer. >
< And had the young, both men and women, always believed that they alone could save the world, that the last generation, the elderly people, were no good, were, in fact, responsible for the unfortunate state in which the world had always up to now been, and that it was for the young to usher in the New Day? Well, no doubt they were right. The only hitch seemed to be that the young people always seemed to get elderly before they had had time to bring in the New Day, and then they were no good any more, and the next generation had to take on the job, and still the New Day coyly refused to be ushered in. >
< Strange books and pamphlets littered papa’s study table. He met and dined with Mr. George Russell (the Irish poet, not the English churchman). He admired and liked Mr. Russell so much that for his sake he attended the lectures of madame Blavatsky, and perused the works of Colonel Olcott, Mr. W. Q. Judge, and Mrs. Besant. A feeling of expansion took him, as if the bonds of rigid orthodoxy, which had restrained him for the last nine years, were being forced asunder… It was, with papa, the eternally recurrent springtime of his soul’s rebirth; he was in travail with a new set of ideas, and their pressure rent him cruelly. Then one day, “I have seen his star in the east,” cried papa, and became a Theosophist. >
< He found life an excellent affair, though he had his grievances, one of which was that motor-cars were not allowed on English roads without a man walking with a flag before them. >
< So the Diamond Jubilee would be a great day for the queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87, the Empire, or anyhow, the sense of Empire, had grown and developed. Imperialism was now a very heady wine, to those who liked that tipple. To others, such as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic. >
< There is seldom any need to believe modern, or any other, writers. What they seem sometimes to forget is that Victorian parents were like any other parents in being individuals first, and that the sovereign who happened to reign over them did not reduce all Victorians to a norm, some good, some bad, as the Poet Laureate of the day had put it, but all stamped with the image of the Queen. You would think, to hear some persons talk, that Victoria had called into existence little images of herself all over England, instead of being merely one very singular and characteristic old lady, who might just as well have occurred today. >
< These strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would spring forth and grip her, turning the daedal earth to magic, at any lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems came. >
< A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to fragments. >
< It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906 composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through. Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let something through, just to show that things could get through, as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling value which can be fairly ringed and won, just to show that the thing can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw them away. >
< The first Georgian years, the years between 1910 and 1914, are now commonly thought of as gay, as very happy, hectic, whirling, butterfly years, punctuated indeed, by the too exciting doings of dock and transport strikers, Ulsterman, suffragists, the Titanic, and Mr. Lloyd George, but, all the same, gay years. Like other generalisations about periods, this is a delusion. >
< The post-war period swung and jolted along, like a crazy, broken-down charabanc full of persons of varying degrees of mental weakness, all out on an asylum treat. >
< And so, with the French firmly and happily settled in the Ruhr, their hearts full of furious fancies, declaring that it would not be French to stamp on a beaten foe, but that their just debts they would have, with Germany rapidly breaking to pieces, drifting towards the rocks of anarchy or monarchy, and working day and night at the industry of printing million-mark notes, with Russia, damned, as usual, beyond any conceivable recovery, with Italy suffering from a violent attack of Fascismo, with Austria counted quite out, with a set of horrid, noisy and self-conscious little war-born States in the heart of Europe, all neighbors and all feeling and acting as such, with Turkey making of herself as much of an all-round nuisance as usual, with Great Britain anxiously, perspiringly endeavouring both to arrest the progressive wreckage of Europe and to keep on terms with her late allies, and with Ireland enjoying at last the peace and blessings of Home Rule, Europe entered on her fifth year since the Armistice. >
It’s divided into three parts, according to who was ruling England, with the Victorian, the (short) Edwardian, and the Georgian periods. It centers around a family, the Gardens, with six children. In these pages, they grow up, and have children and grandchildren. Victoria is a breezy socialite, Maurice a disaffected radical, Rome a detached cynic, Stanley a true believer in various causes, Irving a practical and predatory businessman, and Una a country woman to the core. One of Victoria’s children, Imogen, is also featured, and she’s an incipient writer who passionately wants to be a boy and join the navy.
The novel begins with Papa, as he is called throughout the book, losing his faith. This is something that happens periodically, and Mamma always supports him. Papa believes wholeheartedly in one faith for a period of a few years, begins to question and to doubt, and then finds another to believe in. In this way, he makes his way through every religion available to him, always becoming active in each, sometimes becoming a minister or clergyman. Sometimes his loss of faith means that the family has to move. His children accept this quirk, since it's just his way, even when it's inconvenient.
There’s constant clever commentary from the author about the world they’re all living in. My main complaint is that I didn’t follow all the late 19th century references. Some of them I could look up in Wiki, but some were too obscure to be found anywhere. But the novel is sharp, pointed, often funny, sometimes eloquent.
Some quotes:
< From Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, from Catholicism to Quakerism, from Quakerism to Unitarianism, Positivism, Baptistism (yes, they had once sunk, to Vicky’s shame, as low as that in the social scale, owing chiefly to the influence of Charles Spurgeon) and back to Anglicanism again – through everything, mamma, silent, resigned and possibly ironic, had followed papa. >
< And her talk about platonic friendships and women’s rights and social revolution and bringing beauty into common life. The New Girl. If Vicky was one kind of New Girl (which may be doubted), Stanley was another, even newer. >
< And had the young, both men and women, always believed that they alone could save the world, that the last generation, the elderly people, were no good, were, in fact, responsible for the unfortunate state in which the world had always up to now been, and that it was for the young to usher in the New Day? Well, no doubt they were right. The only hitch seemed to be that the young people always seemed to get elderly before they had had time to bring in the New Day, and then they were no good any more, and the next generation had to take on the job, and still the New Day coyly refused to be ushered in. >
< Strange books and pamphlets littered papa’s study table. He met and dined with Mr. George Russell (the Irish poet, not the English churchman). He admired and liked Mr. Russell so much that for his sake he attended the lectures of madame Blavatsky, and perused the works of Colonel Olcott, Mr. W. Q. Judge, and Mrs. Besant. A feeling of expansion took him, as if the bonds of rigid orthodoxy, which had restrained him for the last nine years, were being forced asunder… It was, with papa, the eternally recurrent springtime of his soul’s rebirth; he was in travail with a new set of ideas, and their pressure rent him cruelly. Then one day, “I have seen his star in the east,” cried papa, and became a Theosophist. >
< He found life an excellent affair, though he had his grievances, one of which was that motor-cars were not allowed on English roads without a man walking with a flag before them. >
< So the Diamond Jubilee would be a great day for the queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87, the Empire, or anyhow, the sense of Empire, had grown and developed. Imperialism was now a very heady wine, to those who liked that tipple. To others, such as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic. >
< There is seldom any need to believe modern, or any other, writers. What they seem sometimes to forget is that Victorian parents were like any other parents in being individuals first, and that the sovereign who happened to reign over them did not reduce all Victorians to a norm, some good, some bad, as the Poet Laureate of the day had put it, but all stamped with the image of the Queen. You would think, to hear some persons talk, that Victoria had called into existence little images of herself all over England, instead of being merely one very singular and characteristic old lady, who might just as well have occurred today. >
< These strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would spring forth and grip her, turning the daedal earth to magic, at any lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems came. >
< A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to fragments. >
< It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906 composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through. Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let something through, just to show that things could get through, as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling value which can be fairly ringed and won, just to show that the thing can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw them away. >
< The first Georgian years, the years between 1910 and 1914, are now commonly thought of as gay, as very happy, hectic, whirling, butterfly years, punctuated indeed, by the too exciting doings of dock and transport strikers, Ulsterman, suffragists, the Titanic, and Mr. Lloyd George, but, all the same, gay years. Like other generalisations about periods, this is a delusion. >
< The post-war period swung and jolted along, like a crazy, broken-down charabanc full of persons of varying degrees of mental weakness, all out on an asylum treat. >
< And so, with the French firmly and happily settled in the Ruhr, their hearts full of furious fancies, declaring that it would not be French to stamp on a beaten foe, but that their just debts they would have, with Germany rapidly breaking to pieces, drifting towards the rocks of anarchy or monarchy, and working day and night at the industry of printing million-mark notes, with Russia, damned, as usual, beyond any conceivable recovery, with Italy suffering from a violent attack of Fascismo, with Austria counted quite out, with a set of horrid, noisy and self-conscious little war-born States in the heart of Europe, all neighbors and all feeling and acting as such, with Turkey making of herself as much of an all-round nuisance as usual, with Great Britain anxiously, perspiringly endeavouring both to arrest the progressive wreckage of Europe and to keep on terms with her late allies, and with Ireland enjoying at last the peace and blessings of Home Rule, Europe entered on her fifth year since the Armistice. >
April 5, 2025
This is not so much a novel as a history of England from 1879 to the mid-1920’s. Macaulay uses a family named Garden, their six children representing different aspects of their age, to explore fads and events such as Aestheticism, Theosophy, Christian Science, The Boer War, The Suffragette Movement, and Irish Home Rule. If you are interested in British History, it’s a neat little summing up of the period with Macaulay’s spin on both the events and on the role of history in shaping a person. There is not a lot of character development as the Garden parents and children are more representative of types than living beings. By the Edwardian Age, it becomes a bit tedious, and the author often gives up on plot and character development to pontificate on events of the period. The next generation, the six Garden’s children, are even less interesting, and one is glad by the 1920’s that it is all over.
April 22, 2017
I really liked it - a wry romp, tracing a late Victorian (then Edwardian, then Georgian), somewhat absurd family, mostly in broad brushes, from 1870s to just past WW1. Although it does delve into two or three character's minds deeper, I was surprised how distinctive personalities emerged, and that I cared about them. One of the themes is how we're prone to generalisations, but paradoxically, those broad brushes (almost generalisations) produced individuals... Anyway, it's written in a fairly experimental style, often times feeling like a diary, sometimes as a series of essays of social and cultural commentary -name checking novels, political parties, parliament, patriotism, suffragettes, Liberals, Tories, Socialists...
Macaulay also observes that we like to think, especially when young, that our generation as modern and new - progress; but really we've far more in common with older generations than we care to admit. It struck me true - I've been thinking a lot lately how we can be prone to think we're more advanced than people of way back; but, really, at heart, we haven't changed much. You could easily shift this novel a century into the future, to now, and not have to change it that much. An example is how often the concept of the New Woman, or New Girl, or Modern Woman, emerges all through history, time and time again.
One of the characters is described as a "sentimental cynic", and that might describe Macaulay as well. The world will always be organised along hypocritical lines; a bumbling, incompetent order will always be (re)establishing itself, even after the shock of WW1 (altho' her certainty wobbles there). Its dispiriting, but in part the message seems to be embrace it, its absurd, and we're likely not going to last too long on this globe, so enjoy and find what meaning you can, that's right for you. Maybe even write!
Macaulay also observes that we like to think, especially when young, that our generation as modern and new - progress; but really we've far more in common with older generations than we care to admit. It struck me true - I've been thinking a lot lately how we can be prone to think we're more advanced than people of way back; but, really, at heart, we haven't changed much. You could easily shift this novel a century into the future, to now, and not have to change it that much. An example is how often the concept of the New Woman, or New Girl, or Modern Woman, emerges all through history, time and time again.
One of the characters is described as a "sentimental cynic", and that might describe Macaulay as well. The world will always be organised along hypocritical lines; a bumbling, incompetent order will always be (re)establishing itself, even after the shock of WW1 (altho' her certainty wobbles there). Its dispiriting, but in part the message seems to be embrace it, its absurd, and we're likely not going to last too long on this globe, so enjoy and find what meaning you can, that's right for you. Maybe even write!
Then why write of what should, instead, be lived? Wasn't the marvellous heritage, the brilliant joke, the ghostly dream, of life enough? Nevertheless, one did write, and was, inexplicably, praised for it. Black marks on paper, scribbled and niggled and scrawled, and here and there the splendour and the joke and the dream broke through them, like sunshine flashing through prison bars, like music breaking through the written notes.
February 10, 2021
Good background reading for literary Modernism. Turn-of-the century upper middle class life described from the point of view of the Garden family, living in the London area. The father, a churchman, is interested religious themes.
Dad encourages his children, and later his grandchildren, to follow various professional career tracks and literary interests - including editing newspapers, and writing books and poetry, attending theatre productions and furthering the cause of political agitation (suffragette movement).
The family is depicted as living out their lives against a wider current of political affairs including the Boer War and, a little later, closer to home, World War One. The futility of war is very discouraging for the family and society; political irresponsibility, death, injury and destruction, alienation and meaningless.
Political unrest brings into focus the impact (difficulties) of religious beliefs set against the hard realities of peoples' lives. Living can often be distressing even if one is wealthy, but is often doubly so for many others including soldiers, refugees and the working class.
One of the Garden daughters, finishes out her life dying of an illness, as did the mother towards the end of her life. Divorce is common among her acquaintances and family; her romantic interest is lost in a tragic relationship entanglement.
This book is along the lines of Virginia Woolf's The Years but stylistically less technically innovative, where the daily life of the characters, say Mrs. Dalloway, takes precedence over the political background.
In Rose Macauley's book there are specific references to current affairs. Anatole France is quoted and there are references to other authors, politicians, and political organizations and events of the eras covered - Victorian, fin-de-siecle, Edwardian and Georgian.
The title refers to Willian Shakespeare's verse on the nature of the human condition: Life ... it is a tale Told by an idiot full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
The poetic lines ties into some of the scientific discoveries at that time and the changing views about the meaning (and nature) of the world we live in.
Dad encourages his children, and later his grandchildren, to follow various professional career tracks and literary interests - including editing newspapers, and writing books and poetry, attending theatre productions and furthering the cause of political agitation (suffragette movement).
The family is depicted as living out their lives against a wider current of political affairs including the Boer War and, a little later, closer to home, World War One. The futility of war is very discouraging for the family and society; political irresponsibility, death, injury and destruction, alienation and meaningless.
Political unrest brings into focus the impact (difficulties) of religious beliefs set against the hard realities of peoples' lives. Living can often be distressing even if one is wealthy, but is often doubly so for many others including soldiers, refugees and the working class.
One of the Garden daughters, finishes out her life dying of an illness, as did the mother towards the end of her life. Divorce is common among her acquaintances and family; her romantic interest is lost in a tragic relationship entanglement.
This book is along the lines of Virginia Woolf's The Years but stylistically less technically innovative, where the daily life of the characters, say Mrs. Dalloway, takes precedence over the political background.
In Rose Macauley's book there are specific references to current affairs. Anatole France is quoted and there are references to other authors, politicians, and political organizations and events of the eras covered - Victorian, fin-de-siecle, Edwardian and Georgian.
The title refers to Willian Shakespeare's verse on the nature of the human condition: Life ... it is a tale Told by an idiot full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
The poetic lines ties into some of the scientific discoveries at that time and the changing views about the meaning (and nature) of the world we live in.
March 18, 2018
An amusing family saga, which blends reflection on history and religion with solid character portraits. I particularly enjoyed the story of 'papa', the man who has faith but also doubts with the result that he changes religion every few years, attempting with mixed success to take his family with him. Several passages made me chuckle, including the reflections on how every generation critiques the young people of the day, and I appreciated the way that the set up of the family with multiple sisters allowed the author to develop them all as independent and very different women. Stanley the suffrage campaigner and Rome the detached spinster were my favourites among them.
January 13, 2021
The first half of the novel was amazing: full of in-depth character descriptions, beautifully written. In one word: descriptive. I leapt it up. I could picture every single one of the main characters. It was a joy to read! 4.5-5/5
Second half: Increasing amount of historical and political facts, less about the characters, gloomier and grimmer, negative, grey. People are getting older and more disillusioned. The world is moving toward and past WWI.
All in all, an enjoyable read. The last 100-150 pages were a bit of a drag.
Perhaps in a few years I'll think differently, and appreciate the historical aspects more- but for now it's a 3/5.
Second half: Increasing amount of historical and political facts, less about the characters, gloomier and grimmer, negative, grey. People are getting older and more disillusioned. The world is moving toward and past WWI.
All in all, an enjoyable read. The last 100-150 pages were a bit of a drag.
Perhaps in a few years I'll think differently, and appreciate the historical aspects more- but for now it's a 3/5.
October 5, 2018
Macaulay is great at opening lines and the Rev. Garden's continual loss of faith and need to change religions is a hoot, a send-up of the seriousness of Victorian faith. It seems aimed at such works as Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere. The wife's dry comment that father has lost his faith again is just wonderful. This rapid overview of the Victorian to WWI period as exhibited by the characters over three generations is structured a bit like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, but one might also think of Woolf's The Years; written in 1923, Macaulay predates both works.
June 3, 2021
I have loved the other two novels that I have read by Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond and The World my Wilderness, but this one I didn't.
I thought it would be a family saga and, to a small extent it was, but what it really is is a history of England in the years 1880 - 1920. Particular emphasis is placed on the politics of that time period which I found tedious and a struggle to get through.
Unfortunately not as enjoyable as I had hoped.
I thought it would be a family saga and, to a small extent it was, but what it really is is a history of England in the years 1880 - 1920. Particular emphasis is placed on the politics of that time period which I found tedious and a struggle to get through.
Unfortunately not as enjoyable as I had hoped.
July 26, 2018
This is a book of two stories. The first story is a rich history of England. I learned about the rich history of the Victorian and Edwardian era in England. Embedded in this history is a great story of the Gardner family. No matter how successful, happy, or miserable their individual lives were the end is always the same. It is the end we all have, death.
November 26, 2016
What a joy to pick up a Rose Macaulay again. Eccentric characters, entirely their own people, leap at one from the pages and the reader can delight in their world and should that be needed or appropriate escape from the tiresome beings one has to deal with in real life
August 14, 2022
Rather dense at times but overall witty and wise. It’s hard to believe sometimes that it was written in 1923 when the things written echo what is heard so often today: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
March 11, 2017
Thank God for Rose Macaulay.
August 20, 2023
I have read four of Macaulay’s works to date (Towers of Trebizond; Dangerous Ages; Potterism; Keeping Up Appearances)...this is my fifth... and this one I liked the least. If you want to hear Macaulays’ views about this, that, and the other thing for 315 pages of this small-print re-issue by Virago Modern Classics, you’ve come to the right place. I only finished this so I could write a review. Well, also because when I was despairing about how much I disliked the book I went to Goodreads and cursorily read favorable reviews. Well, and also because sometimes I am delightfully mistaken in that a book I dislike early on becomes a book, overall, that I like a lot because it got a whole lot better after a while. Not this one. 🙁
Macaulay is described on the back cover of this book as one of the most popular satirists of her day. I can vouch that she is a satirist. But a whole book where she is sarcastic gets really old (and annoying) after a while, at least to me. 🙁
And apparently I am not the only one who thinks this. This comes from a review of the book in The Atlantic Monthly in 1924 from when it was hot off the presses in 1924:
• Obviously, Miss Macaulay has attempted something very big in Told by an Idiot. Her undertaking is so large that she has not always been entirely successful, and the book is much better in its details than as a whole. Miss Macaulay, the satirist, impedes Miss Macaulay, the novelist, yet one has at times the feeling that she is writing the outline of a tremendous Tolstoyan novel to follow, laying out a gigantic skeleton to be later covered with living flesh. (Katharine Sergeant Angell) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
The book covers the family of the Gardens from 1879 to the early 1920s, covering three eras of English royalty (Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian) and their eras. There are six children that we follow over the years...this is a synopsis of the book from the back cover of my Virago Modern Classics re-issue:
• ”Shortly before Christmas in the year 1879 the curtain rises on the Garden family. Mr. Garden, the clergyman, his selfless wife, and their six children, whom we watch grow up, fall in love, marry—and take on the world. First published in 1923, this is Rose Macaulay’s panoramic tour de force, revealing through three generations of one extraordinary family the social, political, and religious fortunes of England from the age of Victoria to the 1920s, There is Victoria, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty intent on marriage; Maurice, shaking his fist at the injustices of the world; Stanley, a follower of Ruskin and Morris, doing good as radical fashion dictates; Irving, a lusty young capitalist; and Una, born for happy marriage and maternity. All are watched from the sidelines by their sister Rome. Detached, intelligent, urbane, she observes her family: to her, their sound and fury signify nothing –but to us the memory of Rome’s one brief love affair strikes the final note of truth, defiantly affirming that is it better to have loved and lost.”
I think one of the problems is with me. I know next to nothing about the history of the world in the late 1800s and the first two decades of the 20th century. So that’s on me. I think if I knew the political leaders and different events that then were important to the world I would have appreciated the novel more.
One good thing I can say about the novel is that she makes the point that each generation thinks theirs is the best, the ones with the newest ideas, and that past generations were not as good. Reminds me of the biblical adage from Ecclesiastes— What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.....
Note:
• The title of the book comes from Shakespeare (Macbeth): Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing...
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
• https://gallimaufry.typepad.com/blog/...
Macaulay is described on the back cover of this book as one of the most popular satirists of her day. I can vouch that she is a satirist. But a whole book where she is sarcastic gets really old (and annoying) after a while, at least to me. 🙁
And apparently I am not the only one who thinks this. This comes from a review of the book in The Atlantic Monthly in 1924 from when it was hot off the presses in 1924:
• Obviously, Miss Macaulay has attempted something very big in Told by an Idiot. Her undertaking is so large that she has not always been entirely successful, and the book is much better in its details than as a whole. Miss Macaulay, the satirist, impedes Miss Macaulay, the novelist, yet one has at times the feeling that she is writing the outline of a tremendous Tolstoyan novel to follow, laying out a gigantic skeleton to be later covered with living flesh. (Katharine Sergeant Angell) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
The book covers the family of the Gardens from 1879 to the early 1920s, covering three eras of English royalty (Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian) and their eras. There are six children that we follow over the years...this is a synopsis of the book from the back cover of my Virago Modern Classics re-issue:
• ”Shortly before Christmas in the year 1879 the curtain rises on the Garden family. Mr. Garden, the clergyman, his selfless wife, and their six children, whom we watch grow up, fall in love, marry—and take on the world. First published in 1923, this is Rose Macaulay’s panoramic tour de force, revealing through three generations of one extraordinary family the social, political, and religious fortunes of England from the age of Victoria to the 1920s, There is Victoria, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty intent on marriage; Maurice, shaking his fist at the injustices of the world; Stanley, a follower of Ruskin and Morris, doing good as radical fashion dictates; Irving, a lusty young capitalist; and Una, born for happy marriage and maternity. All are watched from the sidelines by their sister Rome. Detached, intelligent, urbane, she observes her family: to her, their sound and fury signify nothing –but to us the memory of Rome’s one brief love affair strikes the final note of truth, defiantly affirming that is it better to have loved and lost.”
I think one of the problems is with me. I know next to nothing about the history of the world in the late 1800s and the first two decades of the 20th century. So that’s on me. I think if I knew the political leaders and different events that then were important to the world I would have appreciated the novel more.
One good thing I can say about the novel is that she makes the point that each generation thinks theirs is the best, the ones with the newest ideas, and that past generations were not as good. Reminds me of the biblical adage from Ecclesiastes— What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.....
Note:
• The title of the book comes from Shakespeare (Macbeth): Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing...
Reviews:
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2018/...
• https://gallimaufry.typepad.com/blog/...
July 18, 2024
Having recently read and enjoyed Dangerous Ages , I decided to asl my local library for a couple of Rose McAuley’s books which are stored in the County Reserve
The book follows a family from 1878 to 1923
Very little of any drama happens to any of the family - some marriages are unhappy , some successful, one tragic love affair- but mainly it is a social history of those decades and the changes that occur
Very well written but I found myself becoming bored towards the end
I am still planning to read other books by Roses MacAuley as I am aware that she wrote books in different styles and subjects , rather than always writing the same style of book
The book follows a family from 1878 to 1923
Very little of any drama happens to any of the family - some marriages are unhappy , some successful, one tragic love affair- but mainly it is a social history of those decades and the changes that occur
Very well written but I found myself becoming bored towards the end
I am still planning to read other books by Roses MacAuley as I am aware that she wrote books in different styles and subjects , rather than always writing the same style of book
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