Cat's Cradle

by Maurice Baring

This sophisticated and intricate novel, based on true events, takes place in the late nineteenth century and begins with Henry Clifford, a man of taste and worldly philosophy, whose simple determination to do as he likes and live as he wishes is threatened when his daughter falls in love with an unsuitable man. With subtle twists and turns in a fascinating portrait of society, Maurice Baring conveys the moral that love is too strong to be overcome by mere mortals.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature, Novels

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Maurice Baring OBE (27 April 1874 – 14 December 1945) was an English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent, with particular knowledge of Russia. During World War I, Baring served in the Intelligence Corps and Royal Air Force.

Reviews

[Fonch · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a sad book, but very powerful and Beauty. It is a beautiful remembrance of the England of the 19th century, and the England of the beggining of the 20th century. With marevellous characters Tremoustre, Rendall and others. Blanche is a femme fatale despite not to wanting to be. With all this heroine concluded to conquer the hearts of the readers. Virginia Woolf commited a mistake. Maurice Baring is not a superficial writer. He is really deep. Without Baring we would not be able enjoy of Evelyn Waugh of "Brideshead Revisited" (in fact i would recomend to the fans of tv series like Downton Abbey). He was a pioneer of the excellent English catholic fiction with the permison of the father Robert Hugh Benson. One advice dear potential reader of this novel. In case you are going to read this novel reflect in it.
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Es un libro triste, pero muy poderoso y hermoso. Es una bella evocación de la Inglaterra de la Belle Poque del siglo XIX, y principios del XX. Con brillantes personajes como Walter Tremoustre o el padre Rendall, aunque hay muchos. Blanca a su pesar es una femme fatal a pesar de no querer serlo. Con todo esta noble heroína termina conquistando el corazón de los lectores. No es fácil leer esta historia, que a ratos me recordaba a Balzac, y en otros a François Mauriac, porque es una historia de pasiones. En ocasiones amargas. Los personajes sufren mucho, por elecciones equivocadas en sus vidas.
Virginia Woolf se equivocó. Baring no es un escritor superficial. Por el contrario. Pienso que es mucho mejor escritor que ella. Maurice Baring es un escritor muy profundo, y sabio, gran conocedor de la naturaleza femenina. Sin él (uno de los precursores de la ficción católica con el padre Robert Hugh Benson) no podríamos haber disfrutado del Evelyn Waugh de "Retorno a Brideshead". Un consejo querido lector, si decides leerla, meditala.

[Mihaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minunată relatare a vietii unei familii de burghezi prin care sesizăm lumea la sfârșit de secol XIX si început de secol XX.
Excepțională scriere si descriere a societății cu o frazare elegantă, aerisită, cursivă si fermecătoare.
Constructiile frazelor te învăluie blând într-un mister diafan iar ritmul si tonalitatea cuvintelor te mângâie catifelat creând stări memorabile.
Atmosfera calmă si liniștită ce decurge din modul în care autorul înțelege să relateze destinul acestei femei si familia ei de-a lungul timpului, este întreruptă de zguduiri inerente vieții dar care sunt redate în aceeași notă a bunului simt si esteticii unei realități care nu are nevoie de exagerari inutile.
Este un roman ca o poezie.

[Oana · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book may have been much more interesting if the author would have considered describing more events and not just parties and fancy dinners. This is what most disturbed me, that I had to read about 500 pages with parties descriptions. I did not liked the main character and I am disappointed to see that Baring did not include almost anything besides the descriptions of the social life.

[Steve Vetsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book with lots of strong character portrayals with many weaknesses and faults. It causes the reader to reflect on how our decisions and selfishness can haunt and hurt us and those we love.

[Luiza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charming novel with lot of unexpected situations and romance. I recommend it. Is an excellent and disruptive lecture. Despite this, I need to admit that I am a little bit disappointed by the ending.

[NDH · Rating 3 out of 5]

MB seems to be the (un)Official Chronicler of upper-class British society at the end of the 19th century, and this novel certainly has some historical interest on that score. Truth be told, however, the comings-and-goings between London, country estates, Paris, Rome, Davos and other such destinations as well as who sat beside whom at another Christmas party starts to get a bit tedious rather quickly. It seems this novel was ‘based on true events’ so one may conclude that MB more-or-less observed all he recounts, but for me, the novel just doesn’t quite hit the mark. It opens around 1870, when the central character (beautiful Blanche) makes her debut in society, and it takes us up to the literal eve of WW1, which, to my mind overshadows everything that went before, reducing the trials and tribulations of MB’s characters to essential insignificance. The book came out about 1925.) in fact, I’m beginning to think that WW1 was a good thing, in the sense that it gave the British upper classes something worthwhile to do.

Having ‘discovered’ MB as an early-20th-century (1909) convert to Catholicism, I was also drawn to him on account of his close association with GKChesterton and Hillary Belloc. Baring seems to have been an early “Catholic novelist”—a topic that interests me—and I think some of his portrayals of “Catholic stuff” are quite exquisite. I liked his depiction of the ‘trigger event’ for Blanche’s conversion to Catholicism, specifically the scene involving a priest in the darkened back streets of Rome urgently taking the Viaticum to an anonymous dying old man, and how the people stopped to pray as he passed or held lanterns from their windows so he could better find his way. This is one of those scenes from a world ‘gone with the wind’ that one never glimpses today. In any case, I don’t agree with those critics who complained that MB ruined his stories by “always dragging religion into it.” I think he’s at his best in such scenes.

Overall, however, this novel is more of a miss than a hit. I don’t buy Blanche’s self-indictments and self-flagellation for various imagined failings, while having her die of a broken heart (when the best medical minds of the day were giving her heroin!) seems lame. Blanche was guilty of nothing more serious than making, under great pressure and at a very young age, a Bad Choice (marriage to Prince Guido). Her only alternative at the time looked to any rational person like a ‘Losing Proposition’, so what’s a girl to do? She married the stinking rich guy with a psycho controlling bitch for a mother, so Blanche was unhappy. But it’s not like she committed a Mortal or even Venial Sin. And, if she’d only deferred her decision to convert to Catholicism, she could have gotten out of her failed marriage in an acceptable fashion, (I think there’s a sound argument here against the Catholic prohibition on divorce, a detail that MB breezes past…)
Are we to believe that if only she followed her heart and married the penniless soldier she’d have lived happily ever after? I feel like, whatever she did or didn’t do, she would damn herself. Was this obsession with sin and heaven’s retribution a common feature among Christians of the era? Kind of unhealthy if you asked me.

As for MB’s role as chronicler of the age, I think he has some competition in Henry James. I need to read more of the latter. “Portrait of a Lady” should make for an interesting comparison of the two authors’ views about females. As for the craft of writing, HJ apparently said that one should “evoke” rather than “describe”, and unfortunately MB does a lot of the latter, along with endless narrating of seemingly pointless details. I’m curious (although not eager) to see how James does things.

This is my fourth MB book, and I think I’ve had enough for a while (although there are a couple of titles by him I may seek out. “C” is apparently his best book.) I also think I need to read-read Evelyn Waugh, another Catholic novelist/chronicler of a later generation of upper-class Brits (about whom I really care not at all.)

Final comment: this is much better than (and nothing like) Kurt Vonnegut’s 1970s novel of the same title.