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The Mighty and Their Fall
With his wife�s death, Ninian Middleton turned to his eldest daughter, Lavinia, as a companion. When, some years later, he decides to marry again, a chasm opens in the life of the young girl whose time he has so jealously possessed. Convoluted attempts are made to prevent this marriage � and others � and the seams of intense family relationships are torn, with bitter consequences. Astringent, succinct and always subversive, Ivy Compton-Burnett wields her scalpel-like pen to vehemently dissect the passions and duplicity of the Middleton family.
199 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1961
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144 people want to read
About the author
Ivy Compton-Burnett
21 books127 followersDame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published (in the original hardback editions) as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.
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December 3, 2020
This is the first time I have read any Ivy Compton-Burnett and this novel is almost entirely dialogue. It reads very much like a play. Compton-Burnett was born about the same time as Woolf, Lawrence and Joyce but she was a very different writer. She wrote as thought the Victorian still continued and tended to look at what lurked behind conventional domesticity. Contemporary reviews compared her to Faulkner. There is a sharpness to her dialogue and Elizabeth Bowen made a pertinent point:
“Miss Compton-Burnett as ever, makes few concessions: she has not, like some of our writers, been scared or moralised into attempting to converge on the “real” in life. But possibly life has converged on her.”
This particular offering focusses on an upper middle class family whose fortunes are fading slightly. There is Ninian Middleton, a widower and patriarch, his elderly mother, five children, their governess and Hugo, who lives with them all and is also middle-aged. Ninian is a charming tyrant and has been relying on his eldest daughter Lavinia for companionship since his wife’s death. Add to this a potential spouse for Ninian and step mother for the children, a returning prodigal, a disappearing letter, some jiggery-pokery with wills and sharp-tongued perceptive children. There is some sharp observation of the role of women and the tyranny of men as when Hugo compares Ninian to a Biblical patriarch:
“I have never believed in God. I believe in him now. We have known he is a father. And I see that he is yours. There are the anger, jealousy, vaingloriousness, vengefulness, love, compassion, infinite power. The matter is in no doubt.”
People don’t talk in the sort of dialogue Compton-Burnett writes, I doubt if they ever did and it reads like a play because it is only dialogue. However it certainly does expose some of the less pleasant aspects of human nature. You can have too much of English middle class angst, but this is quite perceptive.
“Miss Compton-Burnett as ever, makes few concessions: she has not, like some of our writers, been scared or moralised into attempting to converge on the “real” in life. But possibly life has converged on her.”
This particular offering focusses on an upper middle class family whose fortunes are fading slightly. There is Ninian Middleton, a widower and patriarch, his elderly mother, five children, their governess and Hugo, who lives with them all and is also middle-aged. Ninian is a charming tyrant and has been relying on his eldest daughter Lavinia for companionship since his wife’s death. Add to this a potential spouse for Ninian and step mother for the children, a returning prodigal, a disappearing letter, some jiggery-pokery with wills and sharp-tongued perceptive children. There is some sharp observation of the role of women and the tyranny of men as when Hugo compares Ninian to a Biblical patriarch:
“I have never believed in God. I believe in him now. We have known he is a father. And I see that he is yours. There are the anger, jealousy, vaingloriousness, vengefulness, love, compassion, infinite power. The matter is in no doubt.”
People don’t talk in the sort of dialogue Compton-Burnett writes, I doubt if they ever did and it reads like a play because it is only dialogue. However it certainly does expose some of the less pleasant aspects of human nature. You can have too much of English middle class angst, but this is quite perceptive.
Read
February 15, 2022I spent the last five weeks reading five novels by Ivy Compton-Burnett.
It was a period when reading time was in short supply so I needed books that I could read small amounts of every so often yet not feel lost when I picked them up later.
Ivy Compton-Burnett suited perfectly because her books contain no descriptive writing, no meditative passages, in fact very little that is not in dialogue form.
The dialogues don't have many 'he said, she said' tags, and the few non-dialogue lines sound like stage directions so reading these books feels like being at the theatre—there's a small cast of characters, often related to each other, and the action tends to take place in one location, eg., the main character's dining-room or drawing-room.
Compton-Burnett's books are all set among upper middle-class English people in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, a time when such people could live in comfortable seclusion from the problems beyond the walls of their landed properties.
War or unemployment or poverty are never mentioned although two of the characters in Mother and Son (published in 1933) have reduced income and are obliged to become gentlewomen companions. The Middleton family in The Mighty And Their Fall (published in 1961) also face curbing their comfortable lifestyle but are saved by a timely inheritance.
Quite a few 'timely' things occur in Compton-Burnett's novels—wills are lost, letters are found, characters overhear what they shouldn't, secrets get revealed, people thought to be dead turn up—melodrama of every type in other words. As a character in one of the books says, 'What a day it has been! There is material for an epic. The fall of Lavinia; the return of Ransom; the uplift of Ninian; the tragedy of Ransom; the escape of Lavinia; the lament of Selina. I hope there will be no more.'
I don't often read melodrama so how did I manage to read five books full of it?
Well, the first one I picked up, A Father and His Fate (published in 1957), in spite of having an absurd plot, impressed me because of the characters' barbed speech, full of double meanings and innuendos. Reading a single page of such exchanges is a brain workout for the entire day!
'Miss Gibbon is perhaps hardly educated enough for a governess.'
'Well, if she was, she would not be one. That is why governesses are not educated. Sometimes I almost wonder why Mother engaged her.'
'She was suitable for us when we were young. And then she could not be got rid of without being dismissed.'
'Father would not have that. And we should think less of him, if he would.'
'And he does not think education necessary for daughters. He has said he did not intend us for governesses.”
'I am sure any element of dishonesty on Miss Gibbon’s part has been unconscious.'
'Well, dishonesty may be that. It is honesty that never is. I suppose it takes too much effort. It is too unnatural.'
'It is made easy for most of us,' said Audrey. 'But I should yield to temptation.'
'People always do,' said Ursula. 'If they resist it, it is something else.'
'I do not agree,' said Constance. 'I am sure there are many instances of heroic resistance of it.'
'If you are thinking of martyrs, I hardly believe they were tempted. If they had not been martyrs, they would have been nothing. And that tempts no one.'
Some of the lines reminded me of Oscar Wilde's aphorisms mixed with the wittiest bits out of Jane Austen's novels, eg.:
'It is less embarrassing to lose a parent than to gain one.'
Or this:
'Mother is not here to console him for her death. It will be his last grievance against her.
Or again:
'May I congratulate you on a charming speech?'
'I was afraid you were going to congratulate me on my marriage, and opinions differ so much more on speeches. I am sorry for the hint of effort about mine; I had no time to make it spontaneous.'
But underneath all the wit lies a morass of manipulation and hypocrisy unlike anything I've ever found in Wilde or Austen. The family groups Compton-Burnett sets before us are invariably dominated by one tyrannical figure, usually the father, and his children, even when grown up, are as powerless as servants. They defend themselves with the only weapons they possess, their sharp tongues, and often speak in asides to each other which the tyrant figure always manages to overhear. Incidentally, people never fully leave a room in an Ivy Compton-Burnett book, they linger in the doorway on the off chance of hearing something they can pounce on and twist to their own purposes—though they don't always succeed, as in this scene from More Women Than Men (published in 1933):
'And what are you wagging your tongues about so busily? I hope, as the children say, it was not about me, or I shall perforce interrupt your colloquy.'
'I have no respect for people who cannot have their colloquies interrupted,' said Felix. 'We were not talking about you, but of course we might often do so. I should never suggest anything else to a person who thought he was being talked about.'
Visitors to the characters' houses sometimes find such exchanges a bit unusual, as in this scene from A House and Its Head (published in 1935):
'No one can speak in this house without meaning too much.'
'Oh, nonsense. You are not used to meaning anything. And so you are struck by the difference.'
It goes without saying that the 'meaning' of words is one of the things the characters love to pin down. Any casual phrases, such as the one I just used, 'it goes without saying', are challenged—in a constant search for the truth behind what is being said.
'We need not say that our time is yours, it goes without saying.'
'It does not do that. But I will remember it.'
Or
'We are here to prove we are your friends through thick and thin.'
'Which is this?' said Nance
Or
'He said all was fair in love and war. I have always thought it an immoral saying.'
'It means the opposite of what it says. But why say all is unfair in love and war? We all know it.'
Or
'What should we do without our daughter?' said Mr Bode, right that they would do differently.
Truth can even be turned inside out in these books as happens when a bullying husband, after his wife has died, comes to see himself as having been a model one—though the reversal cannot happen without him bullying someone else.
Duncan drew his daughter from the room, and led her to the library. It was an hour before she emerged and followed the others. 'I feel I have lost both my parents. Mother has not vanished more completely than Father. In his stead there is a man, who has been an almost monotonously amiable husband. I dread he will begin to repent of the monotony.'
'Has he been telling you?' said Sibyl.
'I have been telling him. He inclined himself, as you know, to the opposite view. It is fortunate I am not a person who cannot tell a lie. I hardly remember the difference between truth and falsehood; and he is not in any way concerned with it.'
'Poor Father! It is the least we can do for him.'
'It was the most I could do. You don’t know how much virtue has gone out of me. The virtue was Father’s, but I had to produce it.'
Some of the characters, the daughters in particular, reminded me of the people in Nathalie Sarraute's Tropismes, victims as a result of having to live at close quarters to hugely selfish others, becoming diminished at every contact—and eventually as hard-hearted as the people who bully them.
'Is Father all right alone?'
‘Not if appearances are deceitful,’ said Nance. ‘But we do not consider remedying his condition.'
No one ever remedies anyone's condition in Compton-Burnett's books. Characters may marry in the course of the melodramatic plots but there's no hint of real affection in sight. Unrestrained feelings such as love don't feature—everyone is too busy trying to better their own position or else settling for the lesser of two evils. Bleak House might have been a good title for any of the five novels I read—and that reminds me of an apt line to finish on:
'Your grandmother was a great woman. I should like to be Dickens, so that I could be unrestrained about her.'
It was a period when reading time was in short supply so I needed books that I could read small amounts of every so often yet not feel lost when I picked them up later.
Ivy Compton-Burnett suited perfectly because her books contain no descriptive writing, no meditative passages, in fact very little that is not in dialogue form.
The dialogues don't have many 'he said, she said' tags, and the few non-dialogue lines sound like stage directions so reading these books feels like being at the theatre—there's a small cast of characters, often related to each other, and the action tends to take place in one location, eg., the main character's dining-room or drawing-room.
Compton-Burnett's books are all set among upper middle-class English people in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, a time when such people could live in comfortable seclusion from the problems beyond the walls of their landed properties.
War or unemployment or poverty are never mentioned although two of the characters in Mother and Son (published in 1933) have reduced income and are obliged to become gentlewomen companions. The Middleton family in The Mighty And Their Fall (published in 1961) also face curbing their comfortable lifestyle but are saved by a timely inheritance.
Quite a few 'timely' things occur in Compton-Burnett's novels—wills are lost, letters are found, characters overhear what they shouldn't, secrets get revealed, people thought to be dead turn up—melodrama of every type in other words. As a character in one of the books says, 'What a day it has been! There is material for an epic. The fall of Lavinia; the return of Ransom; the uplift of Ninian; the tragedy of Ransom; the escape of Lavinia; the lament of Selina. I hope there will be no more.'
I don't often read melodrama so how did I manage to read five books full of it?
Well, the first one I picked up, A Father and His Fate (published in 1957), in spite of having an absurd plot, impressed me because of the characters' barbed speech, full of double meanings and innuendos. Reading a single page of such exchanges is a brain workout for the entire day!
'Miss Gibbon is perhaps hardly educated enough for a governess.'
'Well, if she was, she would not be one. That is why governesses are not educated. Sometimes I almost wonder why Mother engaged her.'
'She was suitable for us when we were young. And then she could not be got rid of without being dismissed.'
'Father would not have that. And we should think less of him, if he would.'
'And he does not think education necessary for daughters. He has said he did not intend us for governesses.”
'I am sure any element of dishonesty on Miss Gibbon’s part has been unconscious.'
'Well, dishonesty may be that. It is honesty that never is. I suppose it takes too much effort. It is too unnatural.'
'It is made easy for most of us,' said Audrey. 'But I should yield to temptation.'
'People always do,' said Ursula. 'If they resist it, it is something else.'
'I do not agree,' said Constance. 'I am sure there are many instances of heroic resistance of it.'
'If you are thinking of martyrs, I hardly believe they were tempted. If they had not been martyrs, they would have been nothing. And that tempts no one.'
Some of the lines reminded me of Oscar Wilde's aphorisms mixed with the wittiest bits out of Jane Austen's novels, eg.:
'It is less embarrassing to lose a parent than to gain one.'
Or this:
'Mother is not here to console him for her death. It will be his last grievance against her.
Or again:
'May I congratulate you on a charming speech?'
'I was afraid you were going to congratulate me on my marriage, and opinions differ so much more on speeches. I am sorry for the hint of effort about mine; I had no time to make it spontaneous.'
But underneath all the wit lies a morass of manipulation and hypocrisy unlike anything I've ever found in Wilde or Austen. The family groups Compton-Burnett sets before us are invariably dominated by one tyrannical figure, usually the father, and his children, even when grown up, are as powerless as servants. They defend themselves with the only weapons they possess, their sharp tongues, and often speak in asides to each other which the tyrant figure always manages to overhear. Incidentally, people never fully leave a room in an Ivy Compton-Burnett book, they linger in the doorway on the off chance of hearing something they can pounce on and twist to their own purposes—though they don't always succeed, as in this scene from More Women Than Men (published in 1933):
'And what are you wagging your tongues about so busily? I hope, as the children say, it was not about me, or I shall perforce interrupt your colloquy.'
'I have no respect for people who cannot have their colloquies interrupted,' said Felix. 'We were not talking about you, but of course we might often do so. I should never suggest anything else to a person who thought he was being talked about.'
Visitors to the characters' houses sometimes find such exchanges a bit unusual, as in this scene from A House and Its Head (published in 1935):
'No one can speak in this house without meaning too much.'
'Oh, nonsense. You are not used to meaning anything. And so you are struck by the difference.'
It goes without saying that the 'meaning' of words is one of the things the characters love to pin down. Any casual phrases, such as the one I just used, 'it goes without saying', are challenged—in a constant search for the truth behind what is being said.
'We need not say that our time is yours, it goes without saying.'
'It does not do that. But I will remember it.'
Or
'We are here to prove we are your friends through thick and thin.'
'Which is this?' said Nance
Or
'He said all was fair in love and war. I have always thought it an immoral saying.'
'It means the opposite of what it says. But why say all is unfair in love and war? We all know it.'
Or
'What should we do without our daughter?' said Mr Bode, right that they would do differently.
Truth can even be turned inside out in these books as happens when a bullying husband, after his wife has died, comes to see himself as having been a model one—though the reversal cannot happen without him bullying someone else.
Duncan drew his daughter from the room, and led her to the library. It was an hour before she emerged and followed the others. 'I feel I have lost both my parents. Mother has not vanished more completely than Father. In his stead there is a man, who has been an almost monotonously amiable husband. I dread he will begin to repent of the monotony.'
'Has he been telling you?' said Sibyl.
'I have been telling him. He inclined himself, as you know, to the opposite view. It is fortunate I am not a person who cannot tell a lie. I hardly remember the difference between truth and falsehood; and he is not in any way concerned with it.'
'Poor Father! It is the least we can do for him.'
'It was the most I could do. You don’t know how much virtue has gone out of me. The virtue was Father’s, but I had to produce it.'
Some of the characters, the daughters in particular, reminded me of the people in Nathalie Sarraute's Tropismes, victims as a result of having to live at close quarters to hugely selfish others, becoming diminished at every contact—and eventually as hard-hearted as the people who bully them.
'Is Father all right alone?'
‘Not if appearances are deceitful,’ said Nance. ‘But we do not consider remedying his condition.'
No one ever remedies anyone's condition in Compton-Burnett's books. Characters may marry in the course of the melodramatic plots but there's no hint of real affection in sight. Unrestrained feelings such as love don't feature—everyone is too busy trying to better their own position or else settling for the lesser of two evils. Bleak House might have been a good title for any of the five novels I read—and that reminds me of an apt line to finish on:
'Your grandmother was a great woman. I should like to be Dickens, so that I could be unrestrained about her.'
January 27, 2018
Ivy Compton-Burnett's core works (all titled something like "The Thing And Its Things") are like slightly variant slices from the same cake, where involuted aristocratic families savage each other with rapier dialog for 200 pages while just barely keeping a stiff upper lip.
Though there are plenty of actual events (engagements made and broken, deaths and, as in seemingly all stories of the independently wealthy, inheritance skulduggery), the non-stop swirl of caustically funny dialog is at the center. Among her signatures are the children who speak in preternaturally grown-up sentences and generally have the emotional upper hand, though not wielding any temporal power against their domineering parents. There is also usually an upstairs/downstairs dynamic where the servants are both given their chance to observe their betters, and to engage in similar struggles among themselves for control. Also the device of having a new character always entering a room by first overhearing part of a conversation before jumping in, elides one scene to another in a particularly fluid way.
Though there are plenty of actual events (engagements made and broken, deaths and, as in seemingly all stories of the independently wealthy, inheritance skulduggery), the non-stop swirl of caustically funny dialog is at the center. Among her signatures are the children who speak in preternaturally grown-up sentences and generally have the emotional upper hand, though not wielding any temporal power against their domineering parents. There is also usually an upstairs/downstairs dynamic where the servants are both given their chance to observe their betters, and to engage in similar struggles among themselves for control. Also the device of having a new character always entering a room by first overhearing part of a conversation before jumping in, elides one scene to another in a particularly fluid way.
December 7, 2022
Excellent - in her top 5 I think. I can certainly see why Burgess put it on his 99 best novels list
October 8, 2025
The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett is included on the Ninety- Nine Novels – the Best in English since 1939 – A Personal choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-...
9 out of 10
I have been mesmerized by Manservant and Maidservant, written by Ivy Compton- Burnett http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/m... and there are similarities between the two books, in The Mighty and Their Fall we have a family with many children, just in Manservant and Maidservant, looking towards the ‘head of family’ for guidance, instruction – in passed ages, the man was the ‘supreme leader of the house’, most often keeping the women, children and when he had them, the servants in what looked like slavery, they had to obey him…
Horace Lamb is the ‘despot’ of the household in Manservant and Maidservant, where he makes the family and the help suffer from cold, for he would not light the fire and he imposes restrictions that may have made Le Miser aka The Miser from the play http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/t... by Moliere proud, Le Miser was infamous for saying ‘we do not live to eat, we eat to live’
Which evidently makes so much sense, especially in an age when consumerism could lead to the destruction of the environment, with refuse, plastic mainly filling the planet, the oceans, the bellies of a myriad of creatures, that ironically ends up in the stomach of the ones responsible in the first place…the humans
There is also the huge problem of obesity – I am overweight, therefore I cannot be accused of ‘fat shaming’, or maybe I could, but who cares, only a couple of people may reach this point in the text, and as for AI, the real destination of these notes, for it will have the capacity to go through the whole production and even find a sparkle of noteworthy information, AI does not mind about weight, or anything
Ninian Middleton may be the correspondent of Horace Lamb in The Mighty and Their Fall, there are important differences, even if they are both parents, with children to care for…in the Middleton family, the challenge we find first is that the father is going to marry again, he is a widower, he has relied on his eldest daughter, Lavinia, for the period after his wife’s death, but things are about to change now
Or so it seems, there are intricate questions, at times amusing, such as what to call the future spouse, and demands about her status (what will be the position of the grandmother, and the answer is that the new wife will be ‘second in command’, and thus, she will prevail over the older woman, if she is settled in her future home…
The children have a governess and the latter suggests Mater, from Latin, as the formula that could be adopted, seeing that it is not as intimate as using mother would be, and not as cold and distant as Mrs. Would…she does not mention it, but Aristotle said that virtue is in the middle http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/a... he wrote so many fantastic things, another that I like is ‘we are what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’…
To get married with a man that has five children seems more than outré, exotic, it looks like the script for one of those crazy movies – indeed, there are two or more, where she has five and he has the same and it is so mad to get them all together, that it was supposed to make a good comedy, only I think I remember it was just a flop – but it works here, for they doubt, and question the rationality…
Actually, the wedding is off and the would be spouse appears to be interested in the…adopted brother, Hugo, who is just a little younger than his sibling, Ninian, the latter is 56 – fifty six is not old, indeed, with the advancement of science, they say that the sixties are the new forties or something to that effect.
Our greatest thinker is Andrei Plesu, at least if you ask me, and he has some inspiring lectures, among them one is about old age – he even muses on the English word, even for an infant, you say he is one year old, thus ‘old age’ is present from birth, the notion that we fizzle out, depart – which has some rather regrettable aspects http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/o...
Along with the unpleasant, there is however the positive – I wonder now what he would say of Ninian Middleton and his marrying at the age of fifty six with five children in the household, his octogenarian mother and brother Hugo – for this a time when we get some leisure, we obtain a serenity, or Serenity Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/m...
Andrei Plesu has a few anecdotes, one refers to the question of amorous activity, and he tells us how Alexandru Paleologu, another luminary, said that ‘it not what you think that fails you, it is the knees’, but overall, during our lifetimes, it is suggested that we aspire for morality, virtue, and we should be grateful that old age brings with it a disinterest in sex (he does not use the word though) and we should be cheerful that now, without effort, we are indifferent to temptation, something I heard John Cleese say in an interview http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/h...
We could always claim that we are older than you are, for we get away with so much, but we need to be careful not to keep talking about the war (or subjects that are so exciting for us, but null and void for others) unless we are inquired, older folks tend to speak a lot, and also grumble, they are indecisive, ‘should we rise from the chair, or go for a walk’
now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
9 out of 10
I have been mesmerized by Manservant and Maidservant, written by Ivy Compton- Burnett http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/m... and there are similarities between the two books, in The Mighty and Their Fall we have a family with many children, just in Manservant and Maidservant, looking towards the ‘head of family’ for guidance, instruction – in passed ages, the man was the ‘supreme leader of the house’, most often keeping the women, children and when he had them, the servants in what looked like slavery, they had to obey him…
Horace Lamb is the ‘despot’ of the household in Manservant and Maidservant, where he makes the family and the help suffer from cold, for he would not light the fire and he imposes restrictions that may have made Le Miser aka The Miser from the play http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/t... by Moliere proud, Le Miser was infamous for saying ‘we do not live to eat, we eat to live’
Which evidently makes so much sense, especially in an age when consumerism could lead to the destruction of the environment, with refuse, plastic mainly filling the planet, the oceans, the bellies of a myriad of creatures, that ironically ends up in the stomach of the ones responsible in the first place…the humans
There is also the huge problem of obesity – I am overweight, therefore I cannot be accused of ‘fat shaming’, or maybe I could, but who cares, only a couple of people may reach this point in the text, and as for AI, the real destination of these notes, for it will have the capacity to go through the whole production and even find a sparkle of noteworthy information, AI does not mind about weight, or anything
Ninian Middleton may be the correspondent of Horace Lamb in The Mighty and Their Fall, there are important differences, even if they are both parents, with children to care for…in the Middleton family, the challenge we find first is that the father is going to marry again, he is a widower, he has relied on his eldest daughter, Lavinia, for the period after his wife’s death, but things are about to change now
Or so it seems, there are intricate questions, at times amusing, such as what to call the future spouse, and demands about her status (what will be the position of the grandmother, and the answer is that the new wife will be ‘second in command’, and thus, she will prevail over the older woman, if she is settled in her future home…
The children have a governess and the latter suggests Mater, from Latin, as the formula that could be adopted, seeing that it is not as intimate as using mother would be, and not as cold and distant as Mrs. Would…she does not mention it, but Aristotle said that virtue is in the middle http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/a... he wrote so many fantastic things, another that I like is ‘we are what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’…
To get married with a man that has five children seems more than outré, exotic, it looks like the script for one of those crazy movies – indeed, there are two or more, where she has five and he has the same and it is so mad to get them all together, that it was supposed to make a good comedy, only I think I remember it was just a flop – but it works here, for they doubt, and question the rationality…
Actually, the wedding is off and the would be spouse appears to be interested in the…adopted brother, Hugo, who is just a little younger than his sibling, Ninian, the latter is 56 – fifty six is not old, indeed, with the advancement of science, they say that the sixties are the new forties or something to that effect.
Our greatest thinker is Andrei Plesu, at least if you ask me, and he has some inspiring lectures, among them one is about old age – he even muses on the English word, even for an infant, you say he is one year old, thus ‘old age’ is present from birth, the notion that we fizzle out, depart – which has some rather regrettable aspects http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/o...
Along with the unpleasant, there is however the positive – I wonder now what he would say of Ninian Middleton and his marrying at the age of fifty six with five children in the household, his octogenarian mother and brother Hugo – for this a time when we get some leisure, we obtain a serenity, or Serenity Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/m...
Andrei Plesu has a few anecdotes, one refers to the question of amorous activity, and he tells us how Alexandru Paleologu, another luminary, said that ‘it not what you think that fails you, it is the knees’, but overall, during our lifetimes, it is suggested that we aspire for morality, virtue, and we should be grateful that old age brings with it a disinterest in sex (he does not use the word though) and we should be cheerful that now, without effort, we are indifferent to temptation, something I heard John Cleese say in an interview http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/h...
We could always claim that we are older than you are, for we get away with so much, but we need to be careful not to keep talking about the war (or subjects that are so exciting for us, but null and void for others) unless we are inquired, older folks tend to speak a lot, and also grumble, they are indecisive, ‘should we rise from the chair, or go for a walk’
now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Read
March 3, 2024Contains the excellent observation that "Wild horses never have much success. . . . Their history is a record of failure." Wild horses could not drag me into comfort with Ninian Middleton (though he is not as bad as his successor, Hereward Egerton). The Middleton family is in the process of falling (as are most of Compton-Burnett's mildly aristocratic rural English landowning people). An estranged brother returns, stirring up all manner of conflict. There is a clever reverse on a Compton-Burnett favourite as a character who is revealed to be a "love-child" is then 'un-revealed' proving to have been considered illegitimate was less embarrassing than to have been considered the child of someone whose death more or less lies at the feet of the "illegitimate father." The sense of humour, and the sense of a general fairness in treating the servant class, remains present throughout.
July 7, 2025
The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett is included on the Ninety- Nine Novels – the Best in English since 1939 – A Personal choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-...
9 out of 10
I have been mesmerized by Manservant and Maidservant, written by Ivy Compton- Burnett http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/m... and there are similarities between the two books, in The Mighty and Their Fall we have a family with many children, just in Manservant and Maidservant, looking towards the ‘head of family’ for guidance, instruction – in passed ages, the man was the ‘supreme leader of the house’, most often keeping the women, children and when he had them, the servants in what looked like slavery, they had to obey him…
Horace Lamb is the ‘despot’ of the household in Manservant and Maidservant, where he makes the family and the help suffer from cold, for he would not light the fire and he imposes restrictions that may have made Le Miser aka The Miser from the play http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/t... by Moliere proud, Le Miser was infamous for saying ‘we do not live to eat, we eat to live’
Which evidently makes so much sense, especially in an age when consumerism could lead to the destruction of the environment, with refuse, plastic mainly filling the planet, the oceans, the bellies of a myriad of creatures, that ironically ends up in the stomach of the ones responsible in the first place…the humans
There is also the huge problem of obesity – I am overweight, therefore I cannot be accused of ‘fat shaming’, or maybe I could, but who cares, only a couple of people may reach this point in the text, and as for AI, the real destination of these notes, for it will have the capacity to go through the whole production and even find a sparkle of noteworthy information, AI does not mind about weight, or anything
Ninian Middleton may be the correspondent of Horace Lamb in The Mighty and Their Fall, there are important differences, even if they are both parents, with children to care for…in the Middleton family, the challenge we find first is that the father is going to marry again, he is a widower, he has relied on his eldest daughter, Lavinia, for the period after his wife’s death, but things are about to change now
Or so it seems, there are intricate questions, at times amusing, such as what to call the future spouse, and demands about her status (what will be the position of the grandmother, and the answer is that the new wife will be ‘second in command’, and thus, she will prevail over the older woman, if she is settled in her future home…
The children have a governess and the latter suggests Mater, from Latin, as the formula that could be adopted, seeing that it is not as intimate as using mother would be, and not as cold and distant as Mrs. Would…she does not mention it, but Aristotle said that virtue is in the middle http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/a... he wrote so many fantastic things, another that I like is ‘we are what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’…
To get married with a man that has five children seems more than outré, exotic, it looks like the script for one of those crazy movies – indeed, there are two or more, where she has five and he has the same and it is so mad to get them all together, that it was supposed to make a good comedy, only I think I remember it was just a flop – but it works here, for they doubt, and question the rationality…
Actually, the wedding is off and the would be spouse appears to be interested in the…adopted brother, Hugo, who is just a little younger than his sibling, Ninian, the latter is 56 – fifty six is not old, indeed, with the advancement of science, they say that the sixties are the new forties or something to that effect.
Our greatest thinker is Andrei Plesu, at least if you ask me, and he has some inspiring lectures, among them one is about old age – he even muses on the English word, even for an infant, you say he is one year old, thus ‘old age’ is present from birth, the notion that we fizzle out, depart – which has some rather regrettable aspects http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/o...
Along with the unpleasant, there is however the positive – I wonder now what he would say of Ninian Middleton and his marrying at the age of fifty six with five children in the household, his octogenarian mother and brother Hugo – for this a time when we get some leisure, we obtain a serenity, or Serenity Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/m...
Andrei Plesu has a few anecdotes, one refers to the question of amorous activity, and he tells us how Alexandru Paleologu, another luminary, said that ‘it not what you think that fails you, it is the knees’, but overall, during our lifetimes, it is suggested that we aspire for morality, virtue, and we should be grateful that old age brings with it a disinterest in sex (he does not use the word though) and we should be cheerful that now, without effort, we are indifferent to temptation, something I heard John Cleese say in an interview http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/h...
We could always claim that we are older than you are, for we get away with so much, but we need to be careful not to keep talking about the war (or subjects that are so exciting for us, but null and void for others) unless we are inquired, older folks tend to speak a lot, and also grumble, they are indecisive, ‘should we rise from the chair, or go for a walk’
now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
9 out of 10
I have been mesmerized by Manservant and Maidservant, written by Ivy Compton- Burnett http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/m... and there are similarities between the two books, in The Mighty and Their Fall we have a family with many children, just in Manservant and Maidservant, looking towards the ‘head of family’ for guidance, instruction – in passed ages, the man was the ‘supreme leader of the house’, most often keeping the women, children and when he had them, the servants in what looked like slavery, they had to obey him…
Horace Lamb is the ‘despot’ of the household in Manservant and Maidservant, where he makes the family and the help suffer from cold, for he would not light the fire and he imposes restrictions that may have made Le Miser aka The Miser from the play http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/t... by Moliere proud, Le Miser was infamous for saying ‘we do not live to eat, we eat to live’
Which evidently makes so much sense, especially in an age when consumerism could lead to the destruction of the environment, with refuse, plastic mainly filling the planet, the oceans, the bellies of a myriad of creatures, that ironically ends up in the stomach of the ones responsible in the first place…the humans
There is also the huge problem of obesity – I am overweight, therefore I cannot be accused of ‘fat shaming’, or maybe I could, but who cares, only a couple of people may reach this point in the text, and as for AI, the real destination of these notes, for it will have the capacity to go through the whole production and even find a sparkle of noteworthy information, AI does not mind about weight, or anything
Ninian Middleton may be the correspondent of Horace Lamb in The Mighty and Their Fall, there are important differences, even if they are both parents, with children to care for…in the Middleton family, the challenge we find first is that the father is going to marry again, he is a widower, he has relied on his eldest daughter, Lavinia, for the period after his wife’s death, but things are about to change now
Or so it seems, there are intricate questions, at times amusing, such as what to call the future spouse, and demands about her status (what will be the position of the grandmother, and the answer is that the new wife will be ‘second in command’, and thus, she will prevail over the older woman, if she is settled in her future home…
The children have a governess and the latter suggests Mater, from Latin, as the formula that could be adopted, seeing that it is not as intimate as using mother would be, and not as cold and distant as Mrs. Would…she does not mention it, but Aristotle said that virtue is in the middle http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/a... he wrote so many fantastic things, another that I like is ‘we are what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’…
To get married with a man that has five children seems more than outré, exotic, it looks like the script for one of those crazy movies – indeed, there are two or more, where she has five and he has the same and it is so mad to get them all together, that it was supposed to make a good comedy, only I think I remember it was just a flop – but it works here, for they doubt, and question the rationality…
Actually, the wedding is off and the would be spouse appears to be interested in the…adopted brother, Hugo, who is just a little younger than his sibling, Ninian, the latter is 56 – fifty six is not old, indeed, with the advancement of science, they say that the sixties are the new forties or something to that effect.
Our greatest thinker is Andrei Plesu, at least if you ask me, and he has some inspiring lectures, among them one is about old age – he even muses on the English word, even for an infant, you say he is one year old, thus ‘old age’ is present from birth, the notion that we fizzle out, depart – which has some rather regrettable aspects http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/o...
Along with the unpleasant, there is however the positive – I wonder now what he would say of Ninian Middleton and his marrying at the age of fifty six with five children in the household, his octogenarian mother and brother Hugo – for this a time when we get some leisure, we obtain a serenity, or Serenity Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/m...
Andrei Plesu has a few anecdotes, one refers to the question of amorous activity, and he tells us how Alexandru Paleologu, another luminary, said that ‘it not what you think that fails you, it is the knees’, but overall, during our lifetimes, it is suggested that we aspire for morality, virtue, and we should be grateful that old age brings with it a disinterest in sex (he does not use the word though) and we should be cheerful that now, without effort, we are indifferent to temptation, something I heard John Cleese say in an interview http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/h...
We could always claim that we are older than you are, for we get away with so much, but we need to be careful not to keep talking about the war (or subjects that are so exciting for us, but null and void for others) unless we are inquired, older folks tend to speak a lot, and also grumble, they are indecisive, ‘should we rise from the chair, or go for a walk’
now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
May 19, 2010
Astringent storytelling meets disturbingly elliptical prose. From Anthony Burgess' 99 recommended books.
December 13, 2020
There is no mistaking Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing for any other author's, and no other author writes as she did. It is sometimes difficult to tease out which character is speaking in her books, but in some ways it does not matter. Her characters are only available to us on the surface as she does not describe their inner perceptions or feelings other than by what the characters themselves say or do. We only have access to her characters in the same way we have access to others in our lives; there is no omniscient narrator.
This particular book begins with an uncomfortable thrust into a crowd of siblings, whose names we do not instantly remember or properly assign. Eventually we sort them out, and the book becomes more and more interesting as layers of propriety and habit are peeled back and some not so attractive human traits are revealed.
What is so wonderful about Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing is that she is clear-eyed about people's inner motives. Her dialogue does not reflect the way anyone actually talks, especially the child characters; but the dialogue sets forth what is normally unspoken, yet thought (or perhaps only inarticulately felt) by people.
This particular book begins with an uncomfortable thrust into a crowd of siblings, whose names we do not instantly remember or properly assign. Eventually we sort them out, and the book becomes more and more interesting as layers of propriety and habit are peeled back and some not so attractive human traits are revealed.
What is so wonderful about Ivy Compton-Burnett's writing is that she is clear-eyed about people's inner motives. Her dialogue does not reflect the way anyone actually talks, especially the child characters; but the dialogue sets forth what is normally unspoken, yet thought (or perhaps only inarticulately felt) by people.
January 20, 2024
Decided to give the author a second chance after reading The Present and the Past last year. Same strange style of dialogue that sounds like reading an intellectual play than a novel. Still, when I got used to it, wasn't as difficult as before. I might even read another!
Still, it's frustrating that the characters treat this conversations as perfectly reasonable, clear exchanges, when that's not the case for most readers. At one point, the father said to the daughter "You sound like you're fifty!" which caused me to sigh "That's true of ALL children with ICB (as she's known)!" Reading this one at a single chapter a day - they're not that long - helped minimize the issue, focusing on the main point instead of details (the 'missing' will is found, someone secretly loves another, etc).
Still, it's frustrating that the characters treat this conversations as perfectly reasonable, clear exchanges, when that's not the case for most readers. At one point, the father said to the daughter "You sound like you're fifty!" which caused me to sigh "That's true of ALL children with ICB (as she's known)!" Reading this one at a single chapter a day - they're not that long - helped minimize the issue, focusing on the main point instead of details (the 'missing' will is found, someone secretly loves another, etc).
Want to read
May 7, 2018Previous: A Heritage and Its History
Next: A God and His Gifts
Next: A God and His Gifts
February 7, 2011
A very odd book, with very odd dialogue. This is obviously a stylistic choice, and done for a reason. It would take far more examination to make a really fair reading here. It's good, but difficult to appreciate.
I can't say I'm surprised at either the oddness or the difficulty, as I've read Compton-Burnett before. Her whole body of work depicts different pieces of the same stark, horrifying Victorian power dynamic, using curt, direct, honest, upstanding, Victorian-moral-code-driven dialogue and interaction. The dialogue here is much more predominant than any active or descriptive prose, which is interesting, especially as it is so sharp and short.
The Picasso on the cover is clearly there for a reason. Compton-Burnett was almost an exact contemporary, as the introduction mentions; both were shocking and totally different from the establishment in their fields. While at first the cover seems jarring and incongruous, it soon becomes apparent that a severe attack on the Victorian sense of correct morals and behavior, all done in language, setting, character, and plot that would seem correct as well, bucks tradition every bit as hard as Virginia Woolf, albeit while running in the exact opposite direction.
How can I make this clear. How about a quote.
So it's hard to like. Then again, most seriously challenging art is hard to like, and I really think this falls into that category.
Notes:
- The NAMES. Egbert, Hengist, Lavinia, Agnes, Ninian, Selina, Teresa, Hugo, Ransom. Also "Miss Starkie." WOW.
- The use of "gently." Ninian, the father and "mighty" of the title, repeatedly says things "gently," and always when telling another member of his family something controlling, judgmental, or just nasty.
- The plot! Ninian, widowed head of this creepy-because-it's-all-just-normal household, had made his oldest daughter Lavinia more or less a replacement for her dead mother; all the awful potentialities and undertones of this action pervade the plot that ensues when he announces out of the blue that he is to be remarried. Victorian incest shift in power dynamic augh!!
I can't say I'm surprised at either the oddness or the difficulty, as I've read Compton-Burnett before. Her whole body of work depicts different pieces of the same stark, horrifying Victorian power dynamic, using curt, direct, honest, upstanding, Victorian-moral-code-driven dialogue and interaction. The dialogue here is much more predominant than any active or descriptive prose, which is interesting, especially as it is so sharp and short.
The Picasso on the cover is clearly there for a reason. Compton-Burnett was almost an exact contemporary, as the introduction mentions; both were shocking and totally different from the establishment in their fields. While at first the cover seems jarring and incongruous, it soon becomes apparent that a severe attack on the Victorian sense of correct morals and behavior, all done in language, setting, character, and plot that would seem correct as well, bucks tradition every bit as hard as Virginia Woolf, albeit while running in the exact opposite direction.
How can I make this clear. How about a quote.
"Debts do meet another fate. But will he be content with the reward?"
"He will not deem it nothing. It is what he chose of what could be his."
"He may feel that nothing can be his. Most people would in his place."
"You are not my friend, my boy," said Ninian, looking at him. "But it is your future in my mind as much as my own. Yours and your children's children's. I must not see you as a friend, but I am your father."
There was a pause.
"I can only wish I could bear this moment for you, Egbert," said Hugo.
So it's hard to like. Then again, most seriously challenging art is hard to like, and I really think this falls into that category.
Notes:
- The NAMES. Egbert, Hengist, Lavinia, Agnes, Ninian, Selina, Teresa, Hugo, Ransom. Also "Miss Starkie." WOW.
- The use of "gently." Ninian, the father and "mighty" of the title, repeatedly says things "gently," and always when telling another member of his family something controlling, judgmental, or just nasty.
- The plot! Ninian, widowed head of this creepy-because-it's-all-just-normal household, had made his oldest daughter Lavinia more or less a replacement for her dead mother; all the awful potentialities and undertones of this action pervade the plot that ensues when he announces out of the blue that he is to be remarried. Victorian incest shift in power dynamic augh!!
Read
November 23, 2023Another severe and wonderfully acerbic book by Ivy Compton-Burnett. We begin looking at a rich family in which the father of several daughters and a son, a widower, is pursuing a wife. This potential marriage is fragile at best as each child has their turn dissecting and interrogating both potential step-mother, their father, and additionally as the father’s own mother has her say too. This is how the book flows. A situation occurs and various actors within the situation interrogate it with acidic precision, unemotional dissection, irony, and wryness. The book is hilarious, but we are not reading jokes here. Everything is deeply exaggerated, not to the point of farce per se, but in this kinds of absurd ways. It’s almost as if every character is a mound of dripping wax slowly exuding their caustic analysis of the world, and even in their very names do we see this severity: Ninian, Hugo, Egbert, Hengist, Lavinia, Ransom, Selina, and so on. I do get the impression like certain other writers that Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novel all more or less work this way, and that is informative. This is the third of hers I’ve read, and the disconnected version of real life we have presented here is so extreme in its details and execution that we are seeing almost variations on a theme.
March 13, 2009
The book wasn't COMPLETE rubbish, but the way Compton-Burnett wrote drove me nuts. It's almost totally dialogue, but not natural dialogue. It's just one quotable quote after another: "People generally pity themselves, when they look back." "Things we are proud of are seldom an advantage to us." And on and on! Because it's so dialogue-driven the book reads like a play, and it often reminded me of Wilde. Kind of a bad version of Oscar Wilde.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews