Signa, Folle-Farine and Sir Galahad's Raid

by Ouida

This contains three of Ouida's books, Signa, Folle-Farine and Sir Galahad's Raid: an adventure on the sweet waters.

Genres: Fiction, British Literature

815 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1889

About the author

Ouida was the pen name of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la Ramée).

During her career, she wrote more than 40 novels, children's books and collections of short stories and essays. She was an animal rights activist and animal rescuer, and at times owned as many as thirty dogs. For many years she lived in London, but about 1874 she went to Italy, where she died.

Ouida's work went through several phases during her career. In her early period, her novels were a hybrid of the sensationalism of the 1860s and the proto-adventure novels dubbed "muscular fiction" that were emerging in part as a romanticization of imperial expansion. Later her work was more along the lines of historical romance, though she never stopped comment on contemporary society. She also wrote several stories for children. One of her most famous novels, Under Two Flags, described the British in Algeria in the most extravagant of terms, while nonetheless also expressing sympathy for the French—with whom Ouida deeply identified—and, to some extent, the Arabs. This book went on to be staged in plays, and subsequently to be turned into at least three movies, transitioning Ouida in the 20th century.

Jack London cites her novel Signa, which describes an unschooled Italian peasant child who achieves fame as an opera composer, and which he read at age eight, as one of the eight reasons for his literary success.

Reviews

[Dorcas · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW...

This is an amazing book. I can't do it justice or even put into words how good it is.

As the title suggests, this is a story of Signa, an illigitimate orphan boy who is saved from death during a flood when he is about one year old. His two uncles find him clinging to the breast of his dead mother, and, afraid that the villagers might accuse the two brothers of murder, (its a long story), they let the floodwaters take her body away and tell everyone they found the unknown baby alone in the field.

The boy is raised by his Uncle Lippo's family who mistreat him. But bruises can do no lasting harm to Signa for his head is in the clouds where the very angels whisper sweet music to him. He hears it in the wind, in the rustling apricot trees, the grapevines and the hills.

While singing his songs or playing his lute he is content. Then one day he sees an old violin for sale in a shop window and asks to hold it ....

Call him a protege, a genius, an artist, it makes no difference; for music is the very lifeblood and soul of Signa. But his kind uncle Bruno is deaf to Signa's genius. To him it is merely child's play and so Bruno slaves for nine years, building Signa a future there in the Tuscan hills, farming. When Signa kindly rejects his uncle's plans for him, Bruno stomps on Signa's prized violin, destroying it.

There is so much more to this story. There are his childhood playmates, one kind and good peasant girl named Palma and her beautiful but selfish sister Gemma (whom Signa loves). Palma grows up, slaving for her father and idle brothers, never complaining, while Gemma runs away at age 10, seeking a life of luxury ...

The story covers about 25 years so you learn what comes of all these characters and how their lives intertwine for good and for bad as well as the extremely high cost of fame.

In many ways this book feels like an opera put into novel form and has an almost tragic fairytale cadence. Its beautifully poetic and emotive and while it doesn't neccesarily have a HEA, the story had some surprising twists and turns that were brilliantly thought out and I was ultimately satisfied. It really could only have ended in the way it did. Its opera, afterall.
And I love it.

Recommended for lovers of chunky, old fashioned, flowery, melodramatic reads.

* Signa is available for free on Openlibrary but I suggest paying the $2.99 for this particular version on Amazon. The Openlibrary epub version is so riddled with typos it is almost unreadable.
If buying the antique book (have fun with that!) be careful you're buying the complete 512 page book as it was often split into three volumes.

[Tweety · Rating 4 out of 5]

(I only read the first story, Signa)

I really love the style and charm of this book, Signa is in a class of its own. Flowery, elegant and maybe a bit melodramatic, but that just adds to it's fun. I like the characters and the plot. It's a bit of a "tragic opera" for some, and I suggest you expect the unexpected. All in all I loved it, but I couldn't quite give it the five it deserves because I personally wasn't prepared for what I got. I still recommend it, and I will be reading more by this author.

On the characters, my favorites were Palma and Bruno, I liked Signa too but couldn't bring myself to care for Gemma. Palma is sweet and good, Gemma is pretty and spoiled, Signa is oblivious and a genius to boot. Bruno is a brute with a heart of gold. You'll have to read the book to see if they all get their just deserts. I'm satisfied for the most part.

This is truly a story of what happens when you live for yourself vs when you live for the others, and how both are two extremes.

[Laura]

Jack London cites her novel Signa, which describes an unschooled Italian peasant child who achieves fame as an opera composer, and which he read at age eight, as one of the eight reasons for his literary success.

Free download available at UPenn-HathiTrust

Another good book to be proofread for Project Gutenberg.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am sure that I have written before that I have yet to read a novel from Ouida that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. Her characters and plots never fail to keep me entertained. I will confess, however, that even though the novel Signa did not make the top five of my favorite Ouida books list, I still found it to be nothing less than exquisite in terms of its use of language and its interlacing of theme and allegory. I am in no way a literary scholar, but having read a great deal of the scholarly literature on this author’s works, I am certain that this particular title could benefit from further academic investigation.

The book tells the story of a boy genius born to relative poverty and obscurity, and it follows him through his meteoric rise and fall at the hands of society and love, thus making the story at once reminiscent of the central theme of Rousseau’s Emile and also of the book of Genesis in the Bible. Although the book is named mutually after the character of Signa and the region in which the majority of the plot is set, the story really has the relationships between the central characters as its protagonist, that is, insofar as relationships in and of themselves can be viewed as being the driving forces in a work of fiction. Hence, we really get dual narratives of Signa and his uncle, Bruno, who is also his guardian, as their stories diverge and intersect. The central story of this uncle/nephew (surrogate father/son) relationship, then, is augmented by the additional stories of the book’s supporting characters in Lippo and Nita and Gemma and Palma, each of whom contains their own subplots and thematic dimensions.

As the story opens, we encounter first the miraculous voice of the boy Signa, a bastard child of the Lastra a Signa community and a maternal relation of Marcillo family. Signa was found by his uncles in a flood clutching his dying mother. The brothers quickly come up with a scheme to raise the child, mostly out of a sense of guilt that the older brother Bruno feels for his treatment toward his sister, Pippa, the boy’s mother. The boy, Signa, is a born genius who can hear the music of the angels in the environment all around him and translate these sounds into beautiful music for his entire village to enjoy. He is virtually gifted at playing every instrument that he touches, and he sings with a pure and angelic voice as well. Signa must spend the first part of his life being starved and abused in the care of another uncle, Lippo, and Lippo's wife, Nita, who is the more abusive of the two. Eventually, he receives the dual emancipation of obtaining the instrument of his desires, in this case, a violin (the “Rusignuolo”), and, also, the guardianship of generous and self-sacrificing Bruno. Through Bruno’s hard work and faith in his nephew's abilities, Signa is able to formally study music as a young adult and subsequently compose and release a full-scale opera. All seems as if the hero will begin to taste his dream of becoming a great composer. Signa’s true weakness, however, is his unrequited love for a village coquette turned adventuress. This love waits patiently, germinating the seeds of corruption until it can destroy all that he and his uncle have built together, as the powers of deception eat away at the music of truth. Signa loves his music entirely, but it appears that he is also willing to compromise everything that he believes in for a single person, Gemma, the girl he adores. Gemma is a fair skinned and vain beauty that is as egotistical and conniving as Lippo is opportunistic. She grows up to become the famed, ironical “Innocence” that represents the Achilles’ heel for Signa’s future happiness, and thusly, Bruno’s redemption.

This book sent me through a spectrum of emotions as I read it. It felt mostly warm throughout the main body of the story, with Ouida’s rich descriptions of the Italian countryside which are really second to none in the English language. However, one still felt the undying faith of Palma as she prayed and toiled for those she loved, the tortured temptation of Signa as he fought always to stay true to his uncle, and the flaming, indignant rage of Bruno as he battled all those who would come between the happiness of his beloved nephew. These emotional dynamics were, at points, powerful enough to bring me to tears, especially given the gorgeousness of Ouida’s word craft.

Many readers have grouped this book with Ouida’s other novels set in Italy (In Maremma, Pascarel, In a Village Commune, etc.) and that is entirely appropriate I think. Nevertheless, I would also view the work in conjunction with Tricotrin, Folle-Farine, and In Maremma, primarily in the sense that they each involve the rearing and moral development of an abandoned child. Firstly, all four of these Ouida novels have a child at the center of their plot, a child that at first is abandoned, and then gets adopted and raised by new guardians. In some cases these guardians are selfless, providing a moral core for the character (i.e. Tricotrin, Grand Mere, Jocanda, and Bruno), but, in other cases, they are exploitative, selfish, and abusive. Secondly, in each of these novels, the parentless child grows into maturity and must contend, at some point, with the tensions between great love, a powerful devotion, and the corruption of society. I feel that reading this novel with these other three in mind makes for a more substantive engagement with the text. I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as I did.

[Moira]

Jack London: 'I consider the great factors of my literary success to be: Vast good luck. Good health; good brain; good mental and muscular correlation. Poverty. Reading Ouida's 'Signa' when I was eight years of age....' http://www.calliopewriters.org/Issue_... Well, that's fascinating. Of course it's the ONE BOOK by her Gutenberg doesn't have, hi ho, off to archive.org, altho their Kindle versions of books are truly sketchy.

[Craig Hipkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a lot of books. Most of the books I read are from authors long dead. Authors moldering in their graves for decades or even centuries. Their voices muted but not wholly extinguished. One of these authors of yore was a prolific writer in the late 19th century. Maria Louise Ramé AKA 'Ouida' as she preferred to be called, was the author of numerous novels and short stories. I was familiar with a few of her stories. When I was a young boy, I read A Dog of Flanders. I had almost forgotten about her and indeed it had been many years since the name 'Ouida' had even crossed my mind. It came back to me when I came across her once again while reading about one of my favorite writers, Jack London. I have read a good portion of London's work and read that one of the reasons he decided to become a writer was after reading Ouida's book Signa. I had never heard of this book, but since London thought it was such a great novel, I decided to give it a try. I was not disappointed!

Signa was published in 1875 while Ouida was living in Italy. It tells the tale of a young genius named Signa who listens to the sounds of nature and sings at the country church. Signa plays the lute and has a melodious voice. Though he is a peasant, he is unlike the other young people in the town. He cares nothing about toiling the land. He would rather sing with the birds and dream of the music that forms in his head. He lives with his opportunistic uncle, Lippo and his wicked aunt Nita who thrash and abuse him on a daily basis. Signa seems to accept his lot in life until one day he sees a violin in a shop window and becomes obsessed in obtaining it.

Signa's origins are unknown to him. At a year old, he is found by his uncle's Bruno and Lippo during a flood next to his dead mother, Pippa who had tragically fell to her death off a cliff. Lippo, of course, is married and has a brood of children while his older brother, Bruno lives alone on a hillside farm, sulking in misery, years after the death of the woman he once loved. Most of Signa's life is harsh and brutal except for the time he spends with his uncle Bruno who makes it his life's quest to do right by the boy. Bruno is a solitary man who spends his days working the farm and doting on the boy who becomes a sort of obsession to him. Bruno lives for Signa, but Signa lives for his music.

Signa is also friends with Palma and Gemma, two sisters who live in the village. Palma is a plain hardworking girl and who secretly loves Signa, but the boy's affections are directed at the selfish and beautiful Gemma who makes him do things (like stealing) that are otherwise foreign to his character. One day, Bruno takes Signa to the city where a painter hears the boy sing and paints his picture, telling him that one day he will be famous. He gives Signa the money that he needs to buy the violin that he has longed to possess. However, when Lippo and Nita find out that he has spent the money on what they consider a toy, they are furious. Nita attempts to beat Signa but the boy finally fights back and injures Nita who swears revenge. Signa knows that if Bruno finds out that Lippo and Nita have been beating him that Bruno will kill his brother. In order to protect Bruno, Signa runs away, taking the opportunistic Gemma with him. Bruno finds out that Signa has gone and is devastated. He goes after them and eventually finds them about to embark on an ocean voyage under the insidious enticement of a scoundrel that uses children for his own monetary benefit. Signa willingly returns with Bruno as long as he promises to not hurt Lippo. Bruno then shelters the boy from his brother and as the years roll on Signa becomes restless. After an argument with Bruno, the man destroys his beloved violin in an act of rage. Bruno almost immediately regrets what he did and makes up for it by sending the boy to study music in the city. Eventually, Signa becomes famous for his operas. His travels back to Bruno and the farm become less frequent. The ending is a classic tragedy in the vein of a Shakespeare play.

The novel is written in a stylish prose that was common for the time but this in no way takes away from the story. In fact, it is the descriptive scenes of peasant life and nature that add to the novel's mystique. The character development in this book is beyond exceptional, especially Bruno who carries the novel and is one of the great personas of literature. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story and rank it as one of the best books that I have ever read. It ranks up there in my estimation with Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Daphne Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn as one of my favorite novels. It is hard to believe that this timeless book is almost forgotten today. In fact, there are very few reviews of Signa that I can find online. If you get a chance give it a try.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and beautiful characters in the setting of the gorgeous Italian countryside.
Fun fact - this is the book Jack London credits for inspiring him to become a writer.