Leaven of Malice

The Salterton Trilogy #2

by Robertson Davies

A false engagement announcement, printed in the Salterton Evening Bellman and heralding the impending marriage of a university instructor and a professor's daughter, sets off a chain of misadventures and misunderstandings

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Literary Fiction, Humor, Literature, Classics, Canadian Literature

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The (Mostly) Dead Writers Society Author in Residence program 2022

”I don't find malice so horrible as you, Mr. Snelgrove; perhaps because I see more of it; or perhaps I should say because I recognize it more readily than you do. But it is horrible enough, certainly. In the Prayer Book you will find a special plea to be preserved from it, appointed for the first Sunday after Easter: ‘Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve Thee in pureness of living and truth.‘ The writer of that prayer understood malice. It works like a leaven; it stirs, and swells, and changes all that surrounds it.”

Oh how Davies' experiences in both the newspaper business and the academic world shows in the persons of Gloster Ridley and Solly Bridgetower. He excels at plotting a realistic contretemps in a small community. I met Solomon Bridgetower in Tempest-Tost, where he is in a community theatre production with Professor Vambrace and his daughter, Pearl. They all three have starring roles this time around too.

I think that children of cultures where children are totally beholden to their parents, taking care of them no matter what and being obliged to do things the parents' way rather than their own way, these people will sympathize with Solly and with Pearl to some extent. Solly is absolutely tied to his mother's apron strings and hasn't found the backbone yet to free himself. Pearl has never before considered that she has options and, frankly, her own income. Having her father pitch an ugly fit changes their relationship, actually for the better, when she asserts her autonomy with a haircut and new clothes. Solly and Pearl also have a couple of serious fights that change their perceptions of the situation and each other.

It's fun to watch Davies play with these ideas, of the extent of a child’s responsibility to their parent, with the mischief that causes havoc, of the effects of gossip, the role of the newspaper, among other things. There are hilarious moments as well as serious ones, but they all strike the right note.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaven of Malice, the second installment of Davies' first ("the Salterton trilogy") of four series of interlinked novels, is a comedy of errors that is trying to do a couple of things to set it apart from the rest of the polite, faux-Edwardian crowd. First, it is attempting to present mid-20C Canadian "culture" to the world (once the outer world has paid attention, the Canadian cliché goes, so too can Canadians themselves, who delight in nothing so much as draping a native cultural product in the flag once the Imprimatur of foreigners—especially Americans—has been granted). That culture, alas (at least in Salterton, aka Kingston, Ontario, that most "British" of Canadian cities), combines all the stuffy fussiness of class conscious England from before the Great War (represented here by the pretensions of the elderly ladies who try to control town social life) and the most shallow, banal of trends copied from our neighbours to the south (the standard-bearers of which are the pseudo-psychologist husband-and-social-worker-wife duo Norm and Dutchy Yarrow, who attempt to make stodgy Salterton relevant, "normal" and "up-to-date").

The plot centres/centers around a foolishly livid and officious megalomaniac of a father, Professor (of Classics) Vambrace, who is attempting to sue the Town newspaper over its publication of an erroneous engagement notice between his daughter Pearl and one Solly Bridgetower, son of one of the aforementioned wealthy busybodies, but as I see it the novel is largely an excuse for Davies to interrogate some pet concerns, the first of which is one that will become much more central to the second trilogy: the deep, abiding mysteries of the human psyche. This theme is dealt with in negation here in Leaven of Malice, however, in the person of Norm Yarrow, a man with the spiritual depth of a Twinkie. Calling himself a psychologist and in possession of a PhD in the subject (academics do not generally get an easy ride in these novels, I'm afraid, and are depicted as a cloistered, mostly lifeless lot), Norm is concerned only with making his patients "normal" (using himself and his wife as a standard of comparison. What he knows of the complexities of Freud can be summed up in a sound-bite, and was learned en passant from a chapter in a survey text. Here he is after trying to bully Professor Vambrace into admitting that he has an unhealthy relationship with his daughter:

Norm was by this time sick of the name of Oedipus. A horrible suspicion was rising in his mind that the Oedipus Complex, which he had for some time used as a convenient and limitless bin into which he dumped any problem involving possessive parents and dependent children, was a somewhat more restricted term than he had imagined. The chapter on Freudian psychology in his general textbook had not, after all, equipped him to deal with a tiresomely literal professor of classics who knew Oedipus at first hand, so to speak. Norm had received his training chiefly through general courses and from some interesting work which proved fairly conclusively that rats were squares, circles and triangles.

“Let’s forget about Oedipus,” he said, and smiled a smile which had never failed him in all his career in social work.

“Not at all,” said the Professor, grinning wolfishly. “I am increasingly reminded of Oedipus. Do you not recall that in that tragic history, Oedipus met a Sphinx? The Sphinx spoke in riddles—very terrible riddles, for those who could not guess them died. But Oedipus guessed the riddle, and the chagrin of the Sphinx was so great that it destroyed itself. I am but a poor shadow of Oedipus, I fear, and you, Mr Yarrow, but a puny kitten of a Sphinx. But you are, like many another Sphinx of our modern world, an under-educated, brassy young pup, who thinks that gall can take the place of the authority of wisdom, and that a professional lingo can disguise his lack of thought. You aspire to be a Sphinx, without first putting yourself to the labor labour of acquiring a secret.” (203-4)

In the main, though, psychology yields pride of place in this novel to Davies' concerns with the literary in particular and the artistic in general, in contrast to the more commercial and worldly concerns of journalism, the latter of which Davies (himself once-editor of the venerable Peterborough Examiner!) takes pains to protect from any modern attempts to drape it in false religiosity and nobility. Consider the following speechy speech (<—a bit of a tendency in Davies, but one which I happen to dig) by newspaper Editor Ridley, a man of gruff no-nonsense competence who, if he cannot believe that he has to deal with such trivialities as the nonsensical aforementioned lawsuit will not stand for any talk of the integrity or "nobility" of his "profession":

I don’t like to hear it called a profession. That word has been worked to death. There are people in the newspaper business who like to call it a profession, but in general we try not to cant about ourselves. We try not to join the modern rush to ennoble our ordinary, necessary work. We see too much of that in our job. Banking and insurance have managed to raise themselves almost to the level of religions; medicine and the law are priesthoods against which no whisper must be heard; teachers insist that they do their jobs for the good of mankind, without any thought of getting a living. And all this self-praise, all this dense fog of respectability which has been created around ordinary, necessary work, is choking our honesty about ourselves. It is the dash of old-time roguery which is still found in journalism—the slightly raffish, déclassé air of it—which is its fascination. (138)

Davies tries to take cultural nationalists down a peg, as well. Toiling away in a forgotten corner of the newspaper is Henry Rumball, whose daily work of gathering the local tidbits of "news" hardly quenches his writerly thirst. He has much greater ambitions, and is attempting to write what you might consider to be an oxymoron, The Great Canadian Novel, an epic in prose ("something nobody has ever tried to do in Canada before")—which means, of course, grappling with the effects of the vastness of Canadian geography on the poor white Canuck psyche (cf. Margaret Atwood's seminal Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature). Anyhow, here he is trying to explain his masterpiece to his boss Ridley:

I open with a tremendous description of the Prairie; vast, elemental, brooding, slumbrous; I reckon on at least fifteen thousand words of that. Then Man comes. Not the Red Man; he understands the prairie; he croons to it. No, this is the White Man; he doesn’t understand the prairie; he rips up its belly with a blade; he ravishes it. ‘Take it easy,’ says the Red Man. ‘Aw, drop dead,’ says the White Man. You see? There’s your conflict. But the real conflict is between the White Man and the prairie. The struggle goes on for three generations, and at last the prairie breaks the White Man. Just throws him off.”

“Very interesting,” said Ridley, picking up some papers from his desk. “We must have a talk about it some time. Perhaps when you have finished it.”

“Oh, but that may not be for another five years,” said Rumball. “I’m giving myself to this, utterly.”

“Not to the neglect of your daily work, I hope?”

“I do that almost mechanically, Mr Ridley. But my creative depths are busy all the time with my book.” (24)

Davies has no time for any of this, and wonders why Canada is so obsessed with trying to represent itself to itself in literary form. Does doing so give it, thereby, more of a right to exist as an entity separate and independent from those bullies, America and England, neither of whom harbor (harbour?) any such existential self-doubt:

Why do countries have to have literatures? Why does a country like Canada, so late upon the international scene, feel that it must rapidly acquire the trappings of older countries—music of its own, pictures of its own, books of its own—and why does it fuss and stew, and storm the heavens with its outcries when it does not have them? (169)

If Davies takes such pains to bring the arts down to earth and to skewer any pretensions to false religiosity or any misplaced notions as to their cultural centrality, however, he also makes it quite clear that the arts are the most important aspect of actual human life, spiritual nourishment that bourgeois society pays but meagre lip service to and understands not at all. Music in particular is shown to be at once a mere ornament by those who wield various forms of social power, and to be the thing that makes life worth living for those of a more sensitive nature. Pearl Vambrace, whose father is so dour and so oppressively, like an Old Testament creator, omnipresent, takes refuge in music as a balm, as a refuge from the slings and arrows of that outrageous fortune (the erroneous, perhaps malicious engagement notice). While she had been taught at university to "appreciate" music cerebrally, in a manner "untainted by sentimentalism"(97), when no one is looking she takes a break from her work in the library and "abandon[s] herself to a deplorable form of self-indulgence" dares to nourish "the base [!] side of her nature" by being so bold as to take pleasure in the fallen world of the senses:

Among the very large collection of phonograph records which the Library maintained were perhaps a hundred which Mr. Kelso called his Horrible Examples. These were pieces of music which he despised, sung or played by people whose manner of interpretation he despised. Now and then Mr. Kelso would play one of these, in order to warn his students against some damnable musical heresy. It had taken Pearl a long time to recognize and admit to herself that just as there were times when she had to buy and eat a dozen doughnuts in one great sensual burst, there were also times when the Horrible Examples, and nothing else, were the music she wanted to hear. (98)

It is this marriage between art and the needs of the human body that attracts Davies here, I think, one that deserves to be celebrated over and against the dead, deadening and deadly concerns of those like the music appreciation instructor, who wants to make it an entirely dry, cerebral affair.

Solly Bridgetower, Pearl's ostensible betrothed, finds himself in an analogous situation vis à vis literature, for he is a recent hire in the English department, and is expected to get straight down to work and publish a tenure-track-worthy monograph on some supposed titan of "Can-Am Lit" ("the coming thing", don'tcha know?!), a 19C bore named Heavysege, whom the department Chair has given to Solly, probably to recoup the outlay he's made on some first editions by said author. But though Solly knows that there has to be more to life than this, he feels trapped. Encountering Rumball, the autodidact would-be novelist, he can't help but feel inadequate:

Rumball had approached him with great humility, explaining that he had no education, and wanted to find out a few things about epics. Solly, capriciously, had said that he had more education than he could comfortably hold, and he was damned if he could write an epic. He had advised Rumball to model himself on Homer, who had no education either. He had expressed admiration for Rumball’s theme. God knows it had sounded dreary enough, but Solly felt humble in the presence of Rumball. Here, at least, was a man who was trying to create something, to spin something out of his own guts and his own experience. He was not a scholarly werewolf, digging up the corpse of poor Charles Heavysege, hoping to make a few meals on the putrefying flesh of the dead poet. (170)

The "meal" that follows is that Solly makes a travesty of scholarship, of course—one all too recognizable if we have done any of it ourselves—and Davies deliciously deals out numerous tidbits of the trade for our mirth and embarrassment. But real art insistently calls out to him nonetheless. In a conversation with friend, mentor (and Davies alter ego?) and honest musician Humphrey Cobbler (whose name is suitably down to earth for the best artist in the novel), Solly laments his fate, but Cobbler urges him to follow what Joseph Campbell might have termed (but Robertson Davies surely would have not) his "bliss", by actively unlearning his scholarly habits:

"And why do you bother with Heavysege? Why don’t you write something yourself?”

“Me? What could I write?”

“How should I know? Write a novel.”

“There’s no money in novels.”

“Is there any money in Heavysege?”

“No, but there are jobs in Heavysege. Get a solid piece of scholarship under your belt and some diploma-mill will always want you. Don’t think I haven’t considered writing something original.
But what? Everything’s been written. There aren’t any plots that haven’t been worked to death.”

“You’ve read too much, that’s what ails you. All the originality has been educated out of you. The world is full of plots. (187)

The world is full of plots, but also full of false starts, near misses, coulda-shoulda-beens/never-wuzzers, and Davies delights in seeing both the light and the dark in all matters—but here journalism, academia and above all art and social mores. I will end with a passage on art, and then a few epigrammatic zingers that give you a sense of RD's wit and insight into our souls. This has been a fun four-star summer read, with just enough of the heavy thinky feely stuff for leaven, and, in spite of what the title suggests, hardly any malice to be found.

Too much talk about the nobility of [art], and how the public ought to get down on its knees before the artist simply because he has the infernal gall to say that he is an artist, and not enough honest admission that he does what he does because that is the way he is made. My life,” [Cobbler]declared, rolling his eyes at Miss Vyner, “is a headlong flight from respectability. If I tarted up in a nice new suit and a clean collar, I could spend hours and hours every week jawing to Rotary Clubs about what a fine thing music is and how I am just as good as they are. I’m not as good as they are, praise be to God! As a good citizen, I am not fit to black their boots. As a child of God, I sometimes think I have a considerable bulge on them, but I’m probably wrong. Sometimes I have a nightmare in which I dream that I have gone to heaven, and as I creep toward the Awful Throne I am blinded by the array of service-club buttons shining on the robe of the Ancient of Days. And then I know that my life has been wasted, and that I am in for an eternity of Social Disapproval. Wouldn’t it be an awful sell for a lot of us—all the artists, and jokers, and strivers-after-better-things—if God turned out to be the Prime Mover of capitalist respectability?” His eye was still upon Miss Vyner, who was uncomfortable. (139)

Mr Warboys […] like many people, had a keen sense of the triviality of ambition in others. (212)

Most hearts of any quality are broken on two or three occasions in a lifetime. They mend, of course, and are often stronger than before, but something of the essence of life is lost at every break. (216)

“Oh yes,” said George, “that’s the stuff the public wants. You got to give the public what it wants. And it wants the heart sniff and the funny stuff. This arty stuff is all baloney.” (232)

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Наверное, неправа я все-таки, поставив 4, потому что в определённой степени это ещё один идеальный театральный роман Робертсона Дэвиса, где интрига и сюжет выстроены ровно по законам комической оперы, где есть и фарс, и танцы, и фокусы с переодеванием, и обязательная любовная мелодрама, и оскорбленный отец, таскающий за ухо непослушную дочь, и, разумеется, великолепные монологи и авансцены. Характерные персонажи Дэвиса – это, пожалуй, лучшее, что могла предложить нам литература после Диккенса, а финал осчастливит каждого любителя классической литературы – и оперы, заодно.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe that a book about practically nothing can be so entertaining. I think I loved every character no matter how ridiculous, which might owe something to the fact that I think I've met people just like all the ones in this book. It is a story filled with the hypocrites, prejudices and gossip of a small town and how could you not love the happy ending.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November…

Salterton, Ontario, 31st October 1949. An apparently innocuous announcement of an engagement appears in the Salterton paper The Bellman, but it will function like yeast in dough: once the fermentation process starts the components cannot be separated out. It turns out that ferment indeed is the purpose of the notice, the leaven that instigates the action, but whose is the malice that lies behind it, what is their motivation, and do they truly know how far the mixture will rise?

The second of Robertson Davies’s instalments in his Salterton Trilogy brings in some of the characters from the first, but it works equally well in isolation. We are given a picture of the bourgeoisie of a fictional provincial Canadian Town, one blessed with university, cathedral and an independent press, with most of the cast of characters acquainted with each other by name or in person. In such a seething cauldron the chances of submerged rivalries and hurt egos bubbling to the surface are infinite, and so it proves.

Despite the character list approaching (as I estimate) fifty individuals the main actors in Leaven of Malice are easy to distinguish, and what soon emerges as a comedy of manners manages also to be crime fiction without a murder, a courtroom drama without a court, a romance where dislike doesn’t run smooth, and a Halloween tale where some ghosts are eventually laid to rest.

On the 31st October the Dean of Salterton’s Cathedral is apprised of Halloween shenanigans in the church, instigated by one of the cathedral’s musicians. Gloster Ridley, editor of The Bellman, discovers on the first day of November that the engagement announced in the previous evening’s edition, between Pearl Veronica Vambrace and Solly Bridgetower, not only had the marriage taking place on the impossible date of 31st November but that it was a malicious hoax perpetrated by an unknown individual.

Together these incidents rouse the ire of a number of Salterton’s self-appointed custodians of the city’s morals: the busybody Miss Pottinger, Matthew Snelgrove the cathedral’s chancellor and an established lawyer, and Professor Vambrace, the very aggrieved father of the alleged bride-to-be. Snelgrove and Vambrace aim to take the Bellman to court for libel, and Miss Pottinger has convinced herself of the identity of the guilty party who maliciously placed the advertisement; meanwhile the editor’s attempts to discover who the perpetrator was meet with a blank wall.

As November draws on matters start to get impossibly complicated, drawing in incidental actors from the university, the cathedral, the newspaper, the legal profession and wider social circles in Salterton. Amongst the action two strands constantly hove in and out of view: where does the malice truly reside, in those responsible for the false announcement, or those who pursue personal vendettas while claiming the moral high ground? And the two supposed innocents caught up in the case, why do so few people consider whether they have been libelled, and why? Until the true perpetrator is found the caucus race continues apace.

Apart from a complex but satisfying plot much of the joy comes in the merciless, almost forensic, depiction of character, a dissection almost approaching parodic proportions of small-town personal politics. For example, Matthew Snelgrove

presented, in himself, one of those interesting and not infrequent cases in which Nature imitates Art. In the nineteenth century it appears that many lawyers were dry and fusty men, of formal manner and formal dress, who carried much of the deportment of the courtroom into private life. And Matthew Snelgrove […] seized upon this lawyer-like shell eagerly, and made it his own. Through the years he perfected his impersonation until […] he was not only a lawyer in reality, but also a lawyer in a score of stagey mannerisms…
Chapter Two

Pearl Vambrace, one of the injured party, is having a disagreeable discussion with Solly Bridgetower, the other injured party to whom she has been forcibly but wrongly linked; Solly says to her,

“Didn’t it occur to you that I might want to contradict that notice?”
“Surely I am the one that’s been dragged into this mess.”
“Why you more than me?”
“Because—” Pearl was about to say “because I’m a girl,” but she felt that such a reason would not do for the twentieth century.
Chapter Three

While Pearl develops self-awareness for herself others, such as her pompous and precipitate professor father, may have to have self-awareness forced upon them as the comedy plays itself out.

What particularly helps to make this novel so delicious is the knowledge that the author was fully aware of all the situational comedy he described: with experience of the theatre, of academic life, of newspapers, of literature, and being an enthusiastic student of human nature, he ensured that the ins and outs of his set pieces allow us to suspend any disbelief that so much folly could abound within such frail creatures. Typical of his many jokes is the name of the paper: The Bellman takes its title from the late medieval figure of the town-crier, but it is also a synonym for a gossip. And of course a large proportion of the novel’s machinations can be attributed to the influence of the town’s gossips. Additionally, we are introduced to a certain Bevill Higgin, an English elocution teacher, who though insisting there is no ‘s’ in his surname inevitably brings to mind a certain professor of phonetics in Shaw’s Pygmalion; there, however, the resemblances end.

Preceding this novel is Tempest-Tost in which several of the dramatis personae here are involved in a stormy amateur production of a Shakespeare comedy. While there are no staged theatrics this time Davies has a gentle side-swipes at Victorian poet Charles Heavysege, a Canadian immigrant from Huddersfield on whose work Solly Bridgetower has been considering basing his academic reputation. Though Solly is impressed by Heavysege’s doggerel (such as the example that follows) I can’t help but imagine the author enjoying describing an academic desperately staking his reputation on a writer of turgid poesy.

“Man is a pipe that life doth smoke
As saunters it the earth about;
And when ’tis wearied of the joke,
Death comes and knocks the ashes out.”
Charles Heavysege

Davies followed up this instalment with A Mixture of Frailties, part of which is set in North Wales where, as with Leaven of Malice, he brought personal experience to bear: he came from Welsh stock himself. I shall of course be expecting more wit and insights into the human condition in my reading of this final volume.

[Lise Petrauskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly enjoyable! A friend's review says it's a great book about nothing at all, and that's pretty accurate. How does Davies pull it off? This might be even better than Tempest-Tost, the first book in the trilogy. It is more contained and tight, at least, like some kind of fancy decorative knot that you realize is made up of one piece of cord. He's doing nothing fancy or genre bending, but the damn thing is magic. (And NOT magical realism, just really really got novel writing.)

[Thomas Edmund · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess when I voted for this option in book club, I thought the title indicated something far more dark a sinister. Pleasantly surprising however, was that Leaven presents a funny take on community gossip and interactions, as once both biting and heart-warming. The book was a lot of fun, because it was a club book I dived straight into it (its technically the 2nd book in a trilogy) but I imagine it would be even better having read the 1st.

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite Robertson Davies novel: interesting characters and explorations of all types of themes: truth and fantasy being two of the themes I remembered from so long ago!

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

робертсон девіс — із тих авторів, які люблять своїх персонажів (принаймні з головного складу), навіть якщо ті трошки мудакуваті; і, по-перше, якщо автор любить персонажа, то й читачці це передається; а по-друге, якщо до персонажа ставляться з любов'ю, то він не може бути зовсім пропащий, правда-правда?

well. fuck.

«leaven of malice» (точною біблійною цитатою цю назву можна перекласти як «закваска злоби») — це комедія помилок, у якій свідомі підступи й добрі наміри мостять дорогу до приблизно однакових результатів. газета, яку видає головний герой, одного дня публікує оголошення про заручини двох персонажів — от тільки сім'ї цих персонажів пов'язані давньою ворожнечею, нібито наречений закоханий у зовсім іншу дівчину, а нібито наречена в основному хоче, щоб її лишили у спокої. і зав'язка смачна, і девіс геніальний, і хаотичне повсякдення головного редактора газети, від якого всім чогось треба, — це те, про що я готова читати тисячами сторінок. але книжка вийшла 1954 року, і це видно. окрім чарівного редактора, затишної бібліотеки і двох щойно дипломованих психологів, які щиро вірять, що все знають про глибини душ людських, а тому ненастанно генерують комічний ефект, тут є ще домашнє насильство, яке, схоже, теж покликане генерувати комічний ефект (і сюжетну напругу), але через сімдесят років після першої публікації йому це вже поганенько вдається. ну й фінал цілковито очікуваний.

[Danielfarlow Farlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most delightful books I've EVER read. If you are any of: a pseudo-intellectual, journalist, paper reader, writer, small town person, lover of love, lover of wit, lover of autumn--hell, even a rom-com fan-- I can go on on and on about the many people who would love this book, too, then read it now!!

This book will cure all that ails you! It's perspective is a wonderful antidote to modern life which has sought out, ransacked, and commodified every possible human pleasure except the best one, the one that eludes such treatment- surprise.

"Surprised by joy, impatient as the wind."

Hell, now I start to sermonize.. Anyway, this book is a MUST, all your good goodreads'ers!

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much enjoying this trilogy. Davies is a master at setting up humorous situations, unless he is creating poignant and moving scenes. This is an author who loves and cares about his characters ( much like Anthony Trollope, to whom he is compared), and so the reader cares about them too. This author is funny and wise, a perfect combination. It is also one of the best plots I’ve read in ages.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more of Davies' novels you read, the more absurdly pleasant his general worldview becomes, like a landscape painting where the harmony and attraction of each detail increases the more of the vista you see. As you finish each one it becomes almost aggravating that you can't live in his world: a place of enormous good humor, full of interest and mischief, where every evil has been abolished, vices are merely virtues imperfectly expressed, conflicts stem from lapses in authenticity rather than flaws in character, imperfections are cause for affection instead of disdain, each remark is an apothegm, talents are equal to the levels of dreams, love is an honest quest rather than a tournament of degradation, small towns are comforting without being confining, and each house and church and school can be loved for what it is, whole and complete in itself. Not that bad things don't occur, or that the usual trials of life are absent, but that at some level everything will turn out all right in the end, and that everyone's actions will be revealed as the honest efforts of well-meaning seekers rather than the ineffectual struggles of hapless motes in a storm.

It's easy to get florid about Davies' writing style, because it's a lot of fun to read, and you get the impression, which is sadly rarer than it should be, that he had a lot of fun writing his books. He's kind of like Wodehouse in that way, but slightly less silly. There's a lot going on in his sentences, but they're written so smoothly you almost don't notice, and he never shades into prolixity. However, more appealing than his sentences are his characters. He's got a way of summing people up while hinting at their broader personalities that makes them very appealing. They're like hilarious stock characters that happen to have been made manifest: the haughty professor, the offbeat psychologist, the solemn newspaper editor, the self-indulgent elderly writer, the over-dutiful priest, the officious lawyer, the irreverent church organist (you didn't know that church organist is an archetype? well apparently it is), and so on. And what makes them most relatable is that they're often fully convinced of their own importance, motivated above all by the need to maintain their dignity and avoid looking foolish, and so they act out of amusingly small-minded spite towards each other on typically mistaken premises.

This novel loosely follows after Tempest-Tost a few years later. A false wedding announcement between Solly Bridgetower and Pearl Vambrace has been placed in The Bellman, Salterton's newspaper, by an unknown person. This leads Pearl's father, Professor Vambrace to attempt to sue the paper, managed by editor Gloster Ridley, to salvage his wounded pride, given that he has nursed a long-standing grudge against the Bridgetower family. This dispute, and the efforts to reveal the mysterious perpetrator of the false annunciation, ends up involving many other characters of interest in the town. After many twists and turns, the culprit is uncovered and Solly and Pearl make an important decision. The plot is well-constructed and funny all the way through, but here were my favorite scenes:

- Ridley confronting the old buffoon writer Swithin Shilito ("What about the barber’s chair; might there not be a few buttocks for Shillito?")
- Professor Vambrace acting like a detective to track down Ridley's residence, for legal research purposes
- the aggressively forced humor of the party that Yarrow the psychologist throws
- Solly Bridgetower making fun of Heavysege, the Important Writer he's supposed to write a thesis on
- the final confrontation at the end, leading to the revelation of the mischief-maker's identity

And you have to resist the temptation to quote endlessly, but here were some of my favorite lines:

"This was, perhaps, the voice of the people, and the voice of the people, no editor is ever permitted to forget, is the voice of God. It was a pity, he reflected, that God's utterances needed such a lot of editorial revision."

"Mr. Shillito loved to watch people reading what he had written, and as he did so he would smile, grunt appreciatively, nod and in other ways indicate enjoyment and admiration until all but the strongest were forced by a kind of spiritual pressure to follow his lead. In his way, the old fellow was a bully; he was so keen in his appreciation of himself and his work that not to join him became a form of discourtesy."

"But all the while he was thinking up crushing retorts which he should have made when the opportunity served. There is nothing worse for the digestion than this, and before he went to bed the Dean took a glass of hot milk and two bismuth tablets."

"It would probably be unjust to Miss Laura Pottinger to describe her as a busybody; she preferred to think of herself as one who possessed a strong sense of her responsibility toward others."

"Gin had come to Dutchy like fire from heaven. At the first swallow she was conscious of that shock of recognition with which psychologists and literary critics are so familiar. It was as though, all her life, she had been dimly aware of the existence of some miraculous essence, some powerful liberating force, some enlightening catalyst, and here it was! It was gin! Why be nervous about being a prof's wife, why worry about a party going well, when gin could make the crooked straight and the rough places plain? Dutchy, as Norm laughingly said, had taken to gin as a duck takes to water."

"If every story has to be a love-story, you'll never have any originality, for a less original creature than a human being in love cannot be found."

[Ekaterina Samoilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pure joy!

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

De nuevo volvemos al imaginario pueblo de Salterton, en esta la segunda novela de la trilogía que lleva el nombre de tan singular localidad. Si 'A merced de la tempestad' giraba alrededor del mundillo del teatro, con ’Levadura de malicia’ Davies nos da a conocer lo que se cuece en el mundillo periodístico. Todo empieza con un anuncio publicado en el Evening Bellman en el que se comunica el enlace matrimonial entre Pearl Vambrace y Solly Bridgetower, para el 31 de noviembre, lo que resulta ser una broma, incluida la inexistente fecha.

A partir de este anuncio, empezara a enredarse la trama. Mientras que la pareja directamente afectada parece quedarse al margen, no dándole apenas importancia, las dos familias sienten reavivarse viejas enemistades, e incluso el periódico tiene las de perder, al ser el que inicio todo el embrollo. La intriga de la novela funciona perfectamente, y el lector también intenta averiguar quién puede ser el autor de tan malicioso anuncio. Aunque en realidad esta intriga es lo de menos, porque lo interesante reside, como ya sucedió en la primera novela de la trilogía, y como es habitual en Davies, en los personajes que nos presenta, algunos ya conocidos (Solly, Pear, el profesor Vambrace, la señora Bridgetower, el organista Cobbler) y otros nuevos (Gloster Ridley, director del Evening Bellman, Shillito, Higgin).

A través de las tramas cruzadas y de la fina ironía de que hace alarde Davies, entramos en conocimiento de los aspectos religiosos, el mundo de la abogacía, el periodístico, así como de los cotilleos que se cuecen en torno a todos los personajes, sin faltar escenas divertidas y disparatadas.

De nuevo he disfrutado muchísimo con esta novela de Davies. Es todo un placer degustar su prosa erudita e irónica. Y es que Davies es un acierto seguro.

[Alberto Illán Oviedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué puede ocurrir en la imaginaria ciudad de Salterton cuando se publica, por error, el enlace matrimonial de dos jóvenes de la localidad en un día imposible en un prestigioso periódico local: cotilleos, malentendidos, sobreactuaciones. Todo está servido para pasarlo bien. Robertson Davies nos muestra una divertida y agradable novela, con algunos personajes ya conocidos y otros nuevos, tres años después de los acontecimientos narrados en el primer libro. Davies, en este segundo libro de la trilogía, crea una historia intensa, frenética, muy bien escrita y estructurada, con personajes con personalidades muy desarrolladas, llenas de matices, una historia que se hace corta y que se lee con rapidez, con una sonrisa en la boca, incluso alguna carcajada.

[Blixa McCracken · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness that we may always serve Thee in pureness of living and truth”

- The Prayer Book

Yes, I’m opening with the quote that prefaces the book again, because it has some relevance to the book at hand. I am that deficient in creativity. Anyway, Leaven of Malice is the second in the Salterton trilogy by Robertson Davies, in which a fallacious engagement notice naming Solly Bridgetower and Pearl Vambrace gets published by the ill-fated newspaper The Bellman. Pearl’s father, Professor Walter Vambrace, is so deeply insulted by the notice that he immediately threatens to sue them for libel, and some especially dim-witted Saltertonians take the notice a little too seriously.

Strangely enough, this book functions quite well as a standalone. It doesn’t use the story of Tempest-Tost as a starting point so much as the characters, so the result plays out like a completely different story possessed of characters with an implied shared history. The relation between Solly and Griselda Webster, or more accurately the lack thereof, might be especially strange to newcomers, considering how big a deal is made of Solly’s continued infatuation with a girl who doesn’t bother to come back from England. I’d still recommend reading Tempest-Tost though, if only to get a better sense of the characters’ relationships, and also because it’s a good book. At least, I think it is.

I find this book gives a better sense of Salterton’s culture than the first book did. More time is devoted to the religious customs of the populace, and more is also shown of the traditions the locals indulge, most of which seem to be relegated to the home. As with the first book, the characters are the book’s strongest area, and all everyone who returns remains a point of interest. The new characters are also nice, especially the Bellman’s editor, Gloster Ridley with his neuroticisms and mostly well-founded fear for the future of his publication. It’s Professor Vambrace that especially held my interest, though; the worst we saw of him in Tempest-Tost was that he can be quite pretentious when he wants to be, but he shows a capacity for (mostly misdirected) anger that i didn’t think he had in him. He’s easily the most fearsome of the bunch, but his rage can also provide some comic relief.

Some of the characters’ motivations felt somewhat far-fetched; I have a hard time believing that anyone as perpetually angry and vengeful as Vambrace would be tolerated in academia, and the motive of the culprit who drafted the false engagement notice was also kind of weaksauce to me. Speaking of which, how anyone failed to notice the laughably wrong date November 31 on the notice is beyond me.

Though the characters’ actions and motivations sometimes stretch credulity, I find Leaven of Malice to be an improvement to its antecedent. It reveals more about the traditions and and values of Salterton’s residents, and the premise and the way people react to it lends itself well to comedy. I also find that his more playful early efforts have taken on some new context in light of his more serious and thoughtful future books, but that’s something for a review if A Mixture of Frailties .

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another charming installment in the Salterton Trilogy. Davies managed to surprise me with his bawdiness and bleakness. His settings and characters seem at first glance so much like Mayberry or Leave it to Beaver, but he takes it to some pretty dark places, like the suicide attempt in Tempest-Tost or the seduction scene in this one.

The characters are so lifelike in their neuroses to me, like Gloster Ridley, who suffers from a peculiar strain of social anxiety that makes him embarrassed to eat in front of anyone, or to think that anyone knows that he is eating alone, or to be caught taking a nap. I identify with that; it's this nebulous embarrassment that floats over your physical being; it's kind of gross being a human, a kind of moist, sticky sack of meat with physical necessities.

I think Davies is going to become one of my comfort read go-tos. The only complaint I have is that his chapters can be a bit long and don't fit my stop-and-start reading style, but you know. That's okay. I somehow doubt that Davies will ever hit the five-star mark, but I predict he'll be a dependable four-star read.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the Robertson Davies novels, Leaven of Malice is my absolute favourite, which is to say, Leaven is my favourite novel by my shortlist of favourite novelists. Tackling a review of this book makes me nervous, as though I won't do it justice.

Stripped to its bones, the story centres around a prank that causes unintended consequences for the residents of a small university town. I have read this novel multiple times and still appreciate anew how Davies is able to create a town's worth of characters, a story, a problem, a resolution, and a finale in a tight frame of elegant phrases. Each of Davies' many characters is sketched in a few slashing sentences so that you are both informed and sympathetic to his/her problems as the story evolves.

Reading Davies is like a masterclass in the art of writing.

[Rafa Sánchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leer una novela de Robertson Davies es siempre un gran placer para mí, el estilo de este magnífico narrador te estimula, te divierte y te abre, milagrosamente, nuevos campos de conocimiento, sin perder el gran sentido del humor que transmite en todas sus páginas. La capacidad de crear personajes interesantes, la curiosidad que te despierta por la acción, todo es una delicia aunque la historia no tenga mucho desarrollo. Si quieren leer una historia divertida por el simple gusto por lo bien escrito, no dejen de leer a Davies. Recomendar la lectura de cualquier autor sin conocer los gustos de la otra persona es muy arriesgado y solo se puede hacer, se me ocurre a mí, con un autor como él.

[Jorge Cienfuegos · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Qué maravilla! Me ha gustado mucho más que "A merced de la tempestad". Regresa al pueblecito de Salterton y retoma a algunos de los personajes del primer libro (aunque ambos son completamente independientes), y narra una historia mucho más tierna y con una carga todavía mayor de ironía y humor. Un reflejo en la Canadá de mediados del siglo XX de ese costumbrismo del XIX que tanto me gusta. Me muero de ganas por leer el siguiente libro ambientado en Salterton y continuar con las otras trilogías del autor.

[Lovely Day · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️

Well. I definitely had higher hopes going into this. 🤷🏼‍♀️

The whole thing starts off at a newspaper company, when a disgruntled man storms in enraged that a notice was posted in the paper of his daughter’s engagement to his nemesis. When it’s discovered this posting was an error and submitted as a hoax by a mysterious person, all heck breaks loose!

SUPER brief foreplay between a married couple (like 1 sentence)

Discussion of whether there was physical or sexual abuse going on between a father and adult daughter

Talk of suicide casually

Discussion of incest

Fairly descriptive scene of near seduction

Language: 2 a, 9 abuses of God’s name, 10 d, 10 hell as a swear, 2 ba

[Helen Steward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually have no idea how this book came into my possession but I thought the title promising and started in. It’s cleverly written and occasionally *very* funny - but the comic successes weren’t sufficient to make up for a tone that just didn’t suit my ear. The voice of the author is superior, lofty and snide and I disliked its rather haughty urbanity. The character-based comedy falls into a rather dated genre which I can imagine might have worked well in 1954 - but which is hard to read with much pleasure in 2025. It tells the story of an engagement notice that is put in the announcements column of a local paper - the Bellman - and which turns out to be fake. The plot of the book is based around the mystery of who has placed the announcement and why. A cast of various conceited, pompous and unlikeable characters is introduced variously to be proposed as suspects. Naturally, the couple whose names appear in the announcement end up getting engaged after all. All’s well that ends well, I guess. I don’t think I’ll be reading the other two volumes in the trilogy.

[Taylor Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book by Mr. Davies. In this installment of the Salterton Trilogy we learn about the inner workings of a city newspaper that becomes the target of a potential libel suit when a false adverisement for an engagement is printed. A host of hilarious characters are all riled up as they try to get to the bottom of who perpetrated this prank.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect comic novel, and Davies's overall funniest. It's really a romantic comedy, where two people are eventually brought together by a phony engagement announcement placed in their names by a disgruntled trickster. There are some great set pieces, particularly the party thrown by the overenthusiastic couple Norm and Dutchy ("The Whee! The Whee! Come on, let's hear it! Whee!") and the final confrontation between various lawyers and the culprit behind the instigating announcement.

There's also a good amount of Davies's trademark philosophy. This book is from his first trilogy, so it pre-dates some of his more Jungian and metaphysical sentiments, but it still gets at something of the mysteries and joys of life. Davies's overall thesis here is that the proper attitude toward life is one of amusement, and that the person who can remain amused in the face of judgement, accusations, and threats by the overly serious will always have the upper hand. And while these too-serious characters do fill the mildly villainous roles in this comedy, Davies is still generous enough to grant everyone their moments of humanity and redemption.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished listening to this one on tape. I had heard about this author before, but I wasn't familiar with any of his books until I got this one from the library. It didn't disappoint!

Someone decides to insert a false engagement notice in the newspaper, announcing the upcoming wedding between Pearl Vambrace and Professor Solomon Bridgetower on November 31. The newspaper runs the announcement and then finds itself in the middle of an uproar. The plot contains elements of Romeo and Juliet, with more than a bit of The Tempest thrown in. Much funnier than the plot sounds. Worth looking for!

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way the novels in this trilogy (all his trilogies) are interlinked but stand alone. It's really a testament to what a great writer Davies is that you're not disgruntled to move on to a new story, with a new cast of characters (though some old favourites are always present in more minor roles to provide continuity) but instead get immediately invested in a new plot and protagonist.

What Tempest-Tost did for the Little Theatre, Leaven of Malice does for newspapers and lawyers, making it more Dickensian in it's scope and humour. Loved it.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do wish I hadn't waited so long to read the first trilogy by Davies. I enjoyed his other, later, novels so much that I set aside the Salterton trio "for a rainy day." That gloomy "day" has arrived but Davies, in this series, is not the antidote I hoped. I find something mean and small and smug in Robertson's view of this society he has both created and commented on. If I recall correctly, if time hasn't blunted or blurred my recall, his later novels are generous and kind and open to peculiarities in ways that Salterton just isn't.

[Alan Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

Davies is an elegant writer whose assured handling of characters is a joy to behold. He understands the frailties of people so well and plays them out in his wonderfully imagined world. Leaven of Malice is a simple story beautifully told with a cast of individuals who all have their tale to tell. There is great wit throughout the book but also much wisdom about human nature. A lovely classic comedy. It has the feel of a 50s movie.

[Karla Huebner]

Like Tempest-Tost, not as funny now as it was years ago, but still worthwhile. Also provides a curious picture of what Davies must have done as a provincial newspaper editor in the 1950s, as this aspect of the book seems much closer to what I imagine journalism was like in 1910 than to what it's like now.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Familiar and new Salterton characters display the variety of human weakness and strength of character after a mischievous but harmless public prank is played on a young man and woman. Eventually equilibrium is restored, lessons are learned and for some, the experience provides a route to either growth or self realisation.