The Good Comrade

by Una Lucy Silberrad

With an introduction by Kate Macdonald

The Polkingtons are clinging on to the last shreds of Edwardian middle-class respectability. Want of money, and even greater want of a moral compass, mean that their social standing is constantly under threat. Advantageous marriages seem like the only way out for the Polkington daughters; Julia, the middle daughter, is neither pretty nor biddable, and much too clever to lose her independence. Instead, she takes advantage of a family financial crisis to escape her social circle entirely. Working as a housekeeper in the Netherlands, Julia schemes to repay a debt of her father’s by stealing a bulb of the rare, precious blue daffodil. Instead, she gets caught up in a scandal that threatens not only her respectable name but also her ability to repay her debt of honour. Julia’s bravery, intelligence and humour charm the reader into willing her to succeed in her sometimes dubious plots and adventures.

Una Silberrad (1872-1963) wrote over 40 books, spanning historical and contemporary fiction. The Good Comrade (1907) questions class structures and boundaries, gender roles and the power of the family, in a story that encompasses rebellion, love, romance, domesticity and espionage, and creates a thoroughly engaging heroine.

Genres: Fiction, Classics

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 1907

About the author

Una Lucy Silberrad was a British author and novelist. She was the sister of Oswald Silberrad (1878- 1960), the research chemist.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

Jo Walton liked it a lot:
"Gosh this was delightful. Recommended to me by friends, and free on Gutenburg, this is the beautiful and satisfying story of a young woman who escapes her rackety and pretentious family through her own competence and resourcefulness. Well written, fun, and unexpected in detail. Contains blue daffodils, secret formulas, honour, respectability, and rascals. But better than that, it has very real affection. An absolute delight, I am smiling to myself now thinking about it.

I liked it a lot, and I am sorry Silberrad’s other forty-nine novels are not available—they’re deeply out of print, and out of copyright. If anyone could get hold of them and make them into ebooks I’d be very grateful. It’s interesting to think about a lovely book like this from a century ago and a writer’s whole successful career that’s just vanished, returned to the sands."

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reviewing this one for Shiny New Books and so I can't say too much.

Except that

- It's a very good book.

- I thought that - like Margaret Kennedy's Lucy Carmichael - Julia could, maybe should, have been a Virago heroine.

- The introduction and the additional material in the new Victorian Secrets edition is excellent.

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had downloaded this Project Gutenberg ebook at some point to my ereader and then mostly forgotten about it. I'm very glad I read it! It was published in 1907 and is set at around the same time, but it somehow has the feel of much earlier books. It's a very enjoyable read.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not, as you might assume from the title, a socialist novel.

The "Good Comrade" is the name given to the McGuffin, a rare blue daffodil, but it's named by the heroine in honour of the three men who love her, and one of them also independently thought of her by the same title. The book is a reflection on the nature of relationships, mostly between men and women, but also in families, and between unrelated people with no romantic connection. Being English, it also has a strong theme related to social class, that most English way of people relating to other people.

I picked it up from Project Gutenberg a while ago on the recommendation of a fellow member of the Codex writers' forum. That forum is for speculative fiction writers, but it isn't spec-fic, or my other main reading genre, mystery/thriller; if anything, it's a romance, but a very unusual one. The big strength of the book, as of its heroine, is that it's unexpected and not like others. (Authentically not like, rather than "not like other girls".)

The heroine, Julia, comes from a family that has fallen into relative poverty from its already very minor social status because of the father's gambling problem. He was encouraged to leave the army with the rank of captain, which he still uses. In English literature, a retired army officer only having made captain often indicates that he was either unpromotable or terminated his career early for probably dodgy reasons, and in this case it's both. (Christie's Captain Hastings is an exception.)

The family, however, do everything they can to put up a good front and conceal their fall. Their drawing room, for example, is better furnished than the rest of the house, since that's the part visitors see. Julia, the middle daughter, sees this for the trumpery it is, and is the only one who has much gumption or tries to do anything other than marry for (relatively minor) advantage. She's not as good-looking as her two sisters, but I found it fully plausible that several men fell in love with her anyway, because she's such an interesting person - intelligent and not overly bound by convention (including, it's remarked by one of her admirers, the conventions of the usual unconventional person, the bohemian - she doesn't have that pose either).

This is probably why she goes on a day's walk in his company. They've become friends, non-romantic, and enjoy each other's company - they are "good comrades," in fact. This occurs in the Dutch village where Julia is working as a paid companion in the house of a bulb grower, a prosperous merchant who loves his trade for its own sake, as does his son, rather than purely for the money they can make from it. The pair, Julia and her male friend, get lost on their walk when a fog comes down, and spend the night outside together, perfectly innocently - but her Calvinistic Dutch employers are obliged to treat her as having compromised herself utterly and dismiss her without a reference. (This is 1907.)

The plot doesn't follow convention much more than Julia does, though it's not experimental; it just doesn't go in the expected directions, and is mostly unpredictable, though I did spot what Julia's next move was likely to be after her dismissal. She competently and daringly steals a chemical formula that she has inferred her male friend was trying, and has failed, to steal for the British government from a local Dutch chemist, and sends it to him anonymously, but he, of course, knows instantly that nobody else could have known about his mission or done this.

There are some great character observations, of Julia's father, of his friend, of Julia's several suitors, and of course of Julia herself. Her character develops and is revealed through the choices she makes, and she's an admirable person without being perfect at all. Also, various characters take action and are inspired by each other, or their ideas about each other. The characters and their relationships are the great strength of the book.

Its weakness is that the author's style is patchy. She can convey a sense of place wonderfully, but she doesn't write beautiful prose for the most part, and is difficult to quote because her well-observed points tend to be a paragraph or two long rather than a sentence. She's also rather given to comma-splicing. That kept the book off the Platinum tier of my annual list, but it's certainly worthy of five stars as far as I'm concerned.

According to Wikipedia, Silberrad was thought of as a "middlebrow" writer, who steered a course firmly between the conservatism that stood for the way things currently were and the radicalism that wanted to burn it all down, aiming along what would actually be the trajectory of the 20th century: gradual improvement in various social measures, particularly the equality and freedom of women. That's probably why I like her book. I myself concluded long ago that, as well as being middle-aged and middle-class, I'm also middlebrow; no point in denying it, might as well embrace it. And my own politics are neither radical nor reactionary. Julia is just the kind of intelligent (though not necessarily highly educated), capable and determined character I enjoy reading about, and I recommend the book unreservedly.

[Claire Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating book! Part romance, part heist, part tiny family tragedy, part comedy. Blends Victorian and modern sensibility to give us characters who are lively and not always likeable, moral questions that aren't always answered, and a heroine and hero who fall in love but need to find their own way to a happy ending that isn't entirely conventional.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good with a surprising amount of psychological depth to the characters--Julia of course but also the secondary characters like her family and the Dutch household. The happy ending feels well=earned, unlike so many romances, old and new. And it's full of fascinating detail, about the bulb growing business and how to live above your means and what living in a cottage would really be like. I hope more of her books are brought back.

[Leah Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. Think Pride and Prejudice, if instead of marrying rich Lizzie decides to go into international larceny and espionage. The romance was compelling, and everyone got their just deserts.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like the way this author wrote. Complex characters in unusual situations facing complex, moral issues. In the case of this book, I thought the ending dragged on maybe a little longer than it should, but I enjoyed it overall.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this one up on recommendation from Jo Walton’s monthly book list. This is a book distinctly set in a foreign past, but with a sympathetic heroine who is allowed to be far more independent than the average Heyer protagonist, for instance. Julia’s family is desperately clinging onto shabby gentility that they can ill afford in hopes that they can marry off their three daughters before the gambling father drives them all to ruin. A proper Austenesque setup– but Julia is from a century later and has considerably more freedom, enough for her to leave the country on her own in a desperate attempt to acquire a rare daffodil bulb that she hopes will able to pay off her family’s debts of honor.

This book is a curious relic of the times in some ways– Julia’s fixation on paying off her father’s gambling debts as a point of honor, and her family’s desperate facade of upper-middle class are distinctly Edwardian. But Julia herself is a delight, with more competence and financial sense than the rest of her family combined.

In short, an excellent old book about honor, appearances, and the value of truth. It’s a shame these books aren’t better known– but at least this one is completely free on Project Gutenberg here.