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Verner's Pride
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- GenresFiction19th Century
270 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1863
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About the author
Mrs. Henry Wood
414 books78 followersEllen Wood (née Price) was an English novelist, better known as "Mrs Henry Wood". She wrote over 30 novels, many of which (especially East Lynne), enjoyed remarkable popularity. Among the best known of her stories are Danesbury House, Oswald Cray, Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles, The Channings, Lord Oakburn's Daughters and The Shadow of Ashlydyat. For many years, she worked as the proprietor and editor of the Argosy.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 19, 2020
“You, my readers, may deem this a rather far-fetched episode in the story; you may deem it next to impossible that any woman should be so ridiculously foolish, or could be so imposed upon; but I am only relating to you the strict truth.“
From time to time, the narrator deems it necessary thus to solicit her readers into following her over all the various plot twists, deus ex machina solutions, and into the eddies of amusing, yet exaggerated side-plots, and as Dickens did now and then, when you do have to rely on coincidence and serendipity in order to keep your plot-lines from drifting apart and eventually ending in the middle of nowhere, she makes a virtue of necessity by referring to the Whisperings of Fate or the Dabblings (and Babblings) of Destiny, as when her protagonist Lionel Verner incidentally steps on board a ship where he finds another clue as to the mystery he is trying to unravel, and our narrator, probably bashful about the strain she puts on the readers‘ credulity, lisps,
“Does anything in this world happen by chance? What secret unknown impulse could have sent Lionel Verner on board that steamer?“
You may feel tempted to say that it was the secret impulse on the writer’s part to keep her story afloat and to throw in some hints she was at a loss to introduce in any other way. Of course, I know that real life is often full of coincidences – but fiction ought to be superior to real life, not only in beauty, but also in its independence from such cheap tricks.
Strangely, though, when coincidences come in abundance, as in this novel, they have their own charm and make for a pleasant reading experience, and so I’ll stop grumbling – for the time being.
The novel, by the way, is Verner’s Pride, and the author is Ellen Wood, who was born in 1814 and married the businessman Henry Wood, with whom she moved to the South of France, where he was active in the shipping and banking trade. In the mid-fifties, however, her husband went bankrupt, and it was then that Ellen Wood started novel-writing, as a means of paying the family’s bills. It happened that novel-writing was a thing Wood was an extremely dab hand at so that she turned out more than 30 rather long novels, and while she is not very well-known any more today, her fame was bright and shining in her own day, especially in the United States and in Australia. Judging her from Verner’s Pride, it is quite understandable that people should have loved reading „Mrs. Henry Wood“, as she styled herself, because in this novel, she shows great skill at creating a complete microcosm of characters and places, and although – in comparison to Dickens, let’s say – her writing style is rather commonplace – there’s none of the originality and prose-poetry of Dickens in her sentences –, she is extremely good at creating characters that interest the reader, and also at weaving a plot that successfully uses conflict and mystery to make us want to go on and start the next chapter.
To put the novel into a nutshell: After the mysterious death of a young servant in the little town of Deerham, Stephen Verner, the owner of Verner’s Pride, suspects his nephew Lionel Verner, hitherto the designated heir to the family place, of having “ruined“ the poor girl, and so he wants to bequeath his property to the two sons of his second wife – stepsons to him. Later, however, he bethinks himself and adds a codicil to his will in which Lionel is re-established into his old rights, but when Stephen dies, the codicil is missing. Oh dear, oh dear! Someone must have had their hand in this!
The ensuing story is full of turns and twists, but Wood also dedicates a lot of time to creating lovable and odious characters. Our protagonist Lionel may be a bit stiff and boring what with his infallible sense of honour, his stickling for decorum and his good looks, but there are lots of characters to make up for him – for example his brother, the plainspoken and pragmatic Jan, who is a doctor that treats the poor and the rich alike – namely as best he can –, or Jan’s factotum (actually his facnihil), the voracious and self-centred Master Cheese, the resolute Mrs. Duff, the obnoxiously self-willed and empty-headed Sybilla West and her two spinster sisters Deb and Amilly, who have hearts of gold, the happy-go-lucky John Massingbird, who is but a boy in a man’s disguise, and the kind-hearted Lucy Tempest. Some chapters into the book, you’ll actually have the impression that these people are next-door neighbours to you, and you will feel a little bit sorry for parting with them, although the end is a little bit protracted after all the mysteries are solved.
This novel entertained me a lot but it also left me wondering how fully-grown men depended on the whims and wiles of testators for their future and their livelihood – even though, if I’m not mistaken, most large properties were entailed so that the family fortune could not be squandered by one rotten apple on the glorious family apple tree nor willed away on a whim. Everything had to be in apple-pie-order, but somehow or other, this was not the case with the Verners, and that’s good because otherwise we couldn’t enjoy this Victorian gem of a novel now.
From time to time, the narrator deems it necessary thus to solicit her readers into following her over all the various plot twists, deus ex machina solutions, and into the eddies of amusing, yet exaggerated side-plots, and as Dickens did now and then, when you do have to rely on coincidence and serendipity in order to keep your plot-lines from drifting apart and eventually ending in the middle of nowhere, she makes a virtue of necessity by referring to the Whisperings of Fate or the Dabblings (and Babblings) of Destiny, as when her protagonist Lionel Verner incidentally steps on board a ship where he finds another clue as to the mystery he is trying to unravel, and our narrator, probably bashful about the strain she puts on the readers‘ credulity, lisps,
“Does anything in this world happen by chance? What secret unknown impulse could have sent Lionel Verner on board that steamer?“
You may feel tempted to say that it was the secret impulse on the writer’s part to keep her story afloat and to throw in some hints she was at a loss to introduce in any other way. Of course, I know that real life is often full of coincidences – but fiction ought to be superior to real life, not only in beauty, but also in its independence from such cheap tricks.
Strangely, though, when coincidences come in abundance, as in this novel, they have their own charm and make for a pleasant reading experience, and so I’ll stop grumbling – for the time being.
The novel, by the way, is Verner’s Pride, and the author is Ellen Wood, who was born in 1814 and married the businessman Henry Wood, with whom she moved to the South of France, where he was active in the shipping and banking trade. In the mid-fifties, however, her husband went bankrupt, and it was then that Ellen Wood started novel-writing, as a means of paying the family’s bills. It happened that novel-writing was a thing Wood was an extremely dab hand at so that she turned out more than 30 rather long novels, and while she is not very well-known any more today, her fame was bright and shining in her own day, especially in the United States and in Australia. Judging her from Verner’s Pride, it is quite understandable that people should have loved reading „Mrs. Henry Wood“, as she styled herself, because in this novel, she shows great skill at creating a complete microcosm of characters and places, and although – in comparison to Dickens, let’s say – her writing style is rather commonplace – there’s none of the originality and prose-poetry of Dickens in her sentences –, she is extremely good at creating characters that interest the reader, and also at weaving a plot that successfully uses conflict and mystery to make us want to go on and start the next chapter.
To put the novel into a nutshell: After the mysterious death of a young servant in the little town of Deerham, Stephen Verner, the owner of Verner’s Pride, suspects his nephew Lionel Verner, hitherto the designated heir to the family place, of having “ruined“ the poor girl, and so he wants to bequeath his property to the two sons of his second wife – stepsons to him. Later, however, he bethinks himself and adds a codicil to his will in which Lionel is re-established into his old rights, but when Stephen dies, the codicil is missing. Oh dear, oh dear! Someone must have had their hand in this!
The ensuing story is full of turns and twists, but Wood also dedicates a lot of time to creating lovable and odious characters. Our protagonist Lionel may be a bit stiff and boring what with his infallible sense of honour, his stickling for decorum and his good looks, but there are lots of characters to make up for him – for example his brother, the plainspoken and pragmatic Jan, who is a doctor that treats the poor and the rich alike – namely as best he can –, or Jan’s factotum (actually his facnihil), the voracious and self-centred Master Cheese, the resolute Mrs. Duff, the obnoxiously self-willed and empty-headed Sybilla West and her two spinster sisters Deb and Amilly, who have hearts of gold, the happy-go-lucky John Massingbird, who is but a boy in a man’s disguise, and the kind-hearted Lucy Tempest. Some chapters into the book, you’ll actually have the impression that these people are next-door neighbours to you, and you will feel a little bit sorry for parting with them, although the end is a little bit protracted after all the mysteries are solved.
This novel entertained me a lot but it also left me wondering how fully-grown men depended on the whims and wiles of testators for their future and their livelihood – even though, if I’m not mistaken, most large properties were entailed so that the family fortune could not be squandered by one rotten apple on the glorious family apple tree nor willed away on a whim. Everything had to be in apple-pie-order, but somehow or other, this was not the case with the Verners, and that’s good because otherwise we couldn’t enjoy this Victorian gem of a novel now.
January 20, 2013
Loved this book! I was captivated with it from the moment I began reading it! I would strongly recommend this to everyone. Excellent book! Great read!
August 20, 2020
Wonderful reading!
At first I thought it was a sort of a mystery novel, because there was a woman found dead and three possible culprits, but then I realized that it was instead a "novel with a mystery".
The plot is not focused on the exposition of the culprit, as in ordinary mystery novels, but on what happens to Lionel Verner, the supposed heir of an estate called "Verner's pride", as a consequence of the death of this woman at the very beginning of the story.
Lionel's uncle believes him involved and so disinherites him. Then, on his death-bed, he changes is mind and adds a codicil to his will that leaves "Verner's pride" to Lionel again. But this codicil disappears...
The story follows even other characters, as the tenants of the estate: an interesting portrait of a country village in 19th century.
And there's a beautiful love story too.
Highly recommended!
At first I thought it was a sort of a mystery novel, because there was a woman found dead and three possible culprits, but then I realized that it was instead a "novel with a mystery".
The plot is not focused on the exposition of the culprit, as in ordinary mystery novels, but on what happens to Lionel Verner, the supposed heir of an estate called "Verner's pride", as a consequence of the death of this woman at the very beginning of the story.
Lionel's uncle believes him involved and so disinherites him. Then, on his death-bed, he changes is mind and adds a codicil to his will that leaves "Verner's pride" to Lionel again. But this codicil disappears...
The story follows even other characters, as the tenants of the estate: an interesting portrait of a country village in 19th century.
And there's a beautiful love story too.
Highly recommended!
January 23, 2016
Per fortuna, un bel romanzo 'laico' di Mrs Henry Wood, dall'intreccio complesso e pieno di personaggi. Come Elizabeth Gaskell (ma senza la sua matura consapevolezza) Ellen Price Wood si sofferma anche sulle vicende dei più poveri, alle quali dedica gran parte della narrazione. Il lettore moderno, impaziente per natura ed abitudine, può essere portato a considerare 'dilatori' alcuni capitoli, specie quelli che riguardano l'impatto esercitato da un predicatore mormone sugli strati sociali più deboli e sprovveduti della variegata umanità che ruota intorno a Verner's Pride, la 'mansion' che dà il nome al libro. La mia impressione, al contrario, è che proprio in questi capitoli risieda la parte più originale di questo splendido affresco.
March 4, 2012
An entertaining read with some interesting and amusing minor character, though the ending was a little protracted.
March 13, 2022
I regret subjecting my book club to this novel because it is over five hundred pages long, but I am glad that I subjected my book club to this novel because it is an endless meander through protracted mystery and drama. Verner's Pride starts out a generation early and ends up liking Jan and Master Cheese so much. I love how Mrs. Henry Wood wrote serials for money. No one in the world nowadays would ever have to write a minor masterpiece like this.
The second son of the original Verner inherits the modern (early 1800s) house Verner's Pride because his older brother is fighting the Sepoy Mutiny and The Verner is uninterested in giving the home to the grandson he barely knows. Second-generation Verner married a widow with two mediocre sons: John Massingbird is nearly packed and off to help colonize Australia and get rich doing it, and Fred Massingbird has a sinister birthmark. The nephew/grandson Lionel Verner turns out to be the protagonist of this novel, but he's barely introduced when dear Rachel Frost is found dead in the Willow Pond. Poor Rachel Frost. She was liked by everyone in the village, even corrupt entrepreneurs like Susan Peckaby, on whose behalf Dan Duff was sent to inquire about the purple silk. Rachel was pregnant when she died. Everyone else in my book club missed this, but "had a reason to drown herself in the Willow Pond" means "pregnant" because no respectable young woman would have any other reason to drown themself in a pond. The two mysteries: who made Rachel Frost pregnant and who killed her, are the backbone of this book, but since no one in the village can figure it out, life goes on. The years of humble village life go by, and Dr. West has his own scandal:
" The scandal, on the whole, tended to the point that Dr. West had misbehaved himself. In what way? What had he done? Had he personally ill-treated them—sworn at them—done anything else unbecoming a gentleman? And which had been the sufferer? The old lady in her widow's cap? or the sickly daughter? or the other one? Could he have carelessly supplied wrong medicine; sent to them some arsenic instead of Epsom Salts, and so thrown them into fright, and danger, and anger? Had he scaled the privet hedge in the night, and robbed the garden of its cabbages? What, in short, was it that he had done? Deerham spoke out pretty broadly, as to the main facts, although the rumoured details were varied and obscure. It declared that some of Dr. West's doings at Chalk Cottage had not been orthodox, and that discovery had followed."
Other tidings develop: Frederick Massingbird goes to Australia to see about his now-dead brother's affairs, Lucy Tempest moves in to Lady Verner's unjoyful home, and a Mormon comes to allure the townsfolk. Verner II finally dies, leaving us with another mystery: Why did he disinherit Lionel? And Lionel, still living at home, inherits anyway because both Massingbirds die in Australia, where the sun is too hot and there are foreigners. Lionel also manages to trap himself into marriage with his ex-step-brother's widow because making googly eyes at the woman he loves is less of a commitment than making an impassioned verbal exclamation, and he's enough of a gentleman to commit himself to a life of misery over it, and his beloved too, and his new wife is also unhappy. The price of honor is an unbelievable amount of clothes from Paris.
Mrs. Henry Wood again showcases her amazing talent for writing emotions like "meh" and "eh?" into her novels, and Lady Verner pops in occasionally to prove that she hasn't been paying any attention and still thinks Lionel should have married his cousin Mary. Jan is the best and most sympathetic character, and the funniest with his cotton umbrella and pedestrianism, and I hope Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a random deep-canon sequel to hang out with him further like she did for Roland Yorke. Master Cheese is Master Cheese. And Deborah and Amily, despite being spinsters over thirty and, consequently, having no hair or teeth, even get a happy ending. Yes to Verner's Pride, although it's not one of Mrs. Henry Wood's absolute best.
The second son of the original Verner inherits the modern (early 1800s) house Verner's Pride because his older brother is fighting the Sepoy Mutiny and The Verner is uninterested in giving the home to the grandson he barely knows. Second-generation Verner married a widow with two mediocre sons: John Massingbird is nearly packed and off to help colonize Australia and get rich doing it, and Fred Massingbird has a sinister birthmark. The nephew/grandson Lionel Verner turns out to be the protagonist of this novel, but he's barely introduced when dear Rachel Frost is found dead in the Willow Pond. Poor Rachel Frost. She was liked by everyone in the village, even corrupt entrepreneurs like Susan Peckaby, on whose behalf Dan Duff was sent to inquire about the purple silk. Rachel was pregnant when she died. Everyone else in my book club missed this, but "had a reason to drown herself in the Willow Pond" means "pregnant" because no respectable young woman would have any other reason to drown themself in a pond. The two mysteries: who made Rachel Frost pregnant and who killed her, are the backbone of this book, but since no one in the village can figure it out, life goes on. The years of humble village life go by, and Dr. West has his own scandal:
" The scandal, on the whole, tended to the point that Dr. West had misbehaved himself. In what way? What had he done? Had he personally ill-treated them—sworn at them—done anything else unbecoming a gentleman? And which had been the sufferer? The old lady in her widow's cap? or the sickly daughter? or the other one? Could he have carelessly supplied wrong medicine; sent to them some arsenic instead of Epsom Salts, and so thrown them into fright, and danger, and anger? Had he scaled the privet hedge in the night, and robbed the garden of its cabbages? What, in short, was it that he had done? Deerham spoke out pretty broadly, as to the main facts, although the rumoured details were varied and obscure. It declared that some of Dr. West's doings at Chalk Cottage had not been orthodox, and that discovery had followed."
Other tidings develop: Frederick Massingbird goes to Australia to see about his now-dead brother's affairs, Lucy Tempest moves in to Lady Verner's unjoyful home, and a Mormon comes to allure the townsfolk. Verner II finally dies, leaving us with another mystery: Why did he disinherit Lionel? And Lionel, still living at home, inherits anyway because both Massingbirds die in Australia, where the sun is too hot and there are foreigners. Lionel also manages to trap himself into marriage with his ex-step-brother's widow because making googly eyes at the woman he loves is less of a commitment than making an impassioned verbal exclamation, and he's enough of a gentleman to commit himself to a life of misery over it, and his beloved too, and his new wife is also unhappy. The price of honor is an unbelievable amount of clothes from Paris.
Mrs. Henry Wood again showcases her amazing talent for writing emotions like "meh" and "eh?" into her novels, and Lady Verner pops in occasionally to prove that she hasn't been paying any attention and still thinks Lionel should have married his cousin Mary. Jan is the best and most sympathetic character, and the funniest with his cotton umbrella and pedestrianism, and I hope Mrs. Henry Wood wrote a random deep-canon sequel to hang out with him further like she did for Roland Yorke. Master Cheese is Master Cheese. And Deborah and Amily, despite being spinsters over thirty and, consequently, having no hair or teeth, even get a happy ending. Yes to Verner's Pride, although it's not one of Mrs. Henry Wood's absolute best.
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