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The Wounded Name
An historical romance on the first consulate period in France 1799-1815
477 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1922
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34 people want to read
About the author
D.K. Broster
65 books15 followersDorothy Kathleen Broster (1877 - 1950) produced 15 popular historical novels between 1911 and 1947.
The Yellow Poppy (1920) about the adventures of an aristocratic couple during the French Revolution, was later adapted by Broster and W. Edward Stirling for the London stage in 1922. She produced her bestseller Scottish historical novel, The Flight of the Heron, in 1925. Broster stated she had consulted eighty reference books before beginning the novel. She followed it up with two successful sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile. She wrote several other historical novels, successful and much reprinted in their day, although this Jacobite trilogy (inspired by a five-week visit to friends in Scotland), featuring the dashing hero Ewen Cameron, remains the best known.
The Flight of the Heron was adapted for BBC Radio twice, in 1944, starring Gordon Jackson as Ewen Cameron, and again in 1959, starring Bryden Murdoch as Cameron. Murdoch also starred in radio adaptations of the book's sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile.
The Yellow Poppy (1920) about the adventures of an aristocratic couple during the French Revolution, was later adapted by Broster and W. Edward Stirling for the London stage in 1922. She produced her bestseller Scottish historical novel, The Flight of the Heron, in 1925. Broster stated she had consulted eighty reference books before beginning the novel. She followed it up with two successful sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile. She wrote several other historical novels, successful and much reprinted in their day, although this Jacobite trilogy (inspired by a five-week visit to friends in Scotland), featuring the dashing hero Ewen Cameron, remains the best known.
The Flight of the Heron was adapted for BBC Radio twice, in 1944, starring Gordon Jackson as Ewen Cameron, and again in 1959, starring Bryden Murdoch as Cameron. Murdoch also starred in radio adaptations of the book's sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 30, 2010
[These notes were made in 1985:]. By the end of this book, I was in a pleasant state of emotional exhaustion. This is Brosterism in its essence: tho' not homosexual, homoerotic, and firmly grounded - as the title suggests - in the idealism of Honour. Aymar's family motto is "sans tache." It is, too, about hero-worship and loyalty. There is the standard sprinkling of believe-it-or-not-as-you-please supernaturalism, in this case a garter woven of reeds supposed to confer invulnerability on its owner. This element is not nearly so well handled as it would be three years later in Heron. Plot: Laurent, a young French nobleman educated in England by his English mother during the Revolution years, is preparing to go to his homeland for the first time in 1814, Napoleon apparently being defeated. A striking Frenchman who appears on the other side of a trout-stream, and who plunges in in an (unnecessary) attempt to save Laurent from drowning, proves to be the daring young hero L'Oiseleur (Aymar de la Rocheterie), leader of Chouans (again! see Yellow Poppy, Sir Isumbras). Months later, having briefly met Aymar in Paris, and learned of his two lady-cousins - one good, one bad - Laurent is sent on a mission in the 1815 campaign and takes advantage of the opportunity to try to join forces with Aymar. To his horror, he finds himself joint prisoner with him; A is at the point of death, and branded as a traitor for having sent information to the enemy, and subsequently having been shot by his own men. On a purely literal level, both of these last statements are true; and much of the rest of the book keeps Laurent as well as the reader wondering how they could possibly be so, especially after we see Guitton - a relative of Major Guthrie, methinks - trying and failing to press information out of Aymar; in fact, much of Heron is a subtler reworking of this book. (It turns out that the sending of information was part of a military ruse which misfired, complicated by the fact that Aymar was trying at the same time to rescue his beloved cousin Avoye from what he believed to be a threat of death). The activity of Aymar in this painfully interesting central section where all is explained provides a relief from his enforced passivity in the rest of the book. For Laurent is given - and openly delights in - a situation generally supposed to be particularly dear to the female heart; the hero he so greatly admires becomes utterly dependent on him physically and emotionally, to the point where Aymar would have committed suicide had Laurent condemned his actions. Compare this to his reaction when his lady-love, Avoye, does condemn his actions (on insufficient evidence, and having been lied to.) Hurt though he is, there's no talk of suicide here. And this is indicative of the lack of equilibrium between the masculine and feminine loves in the novel; an equilibrium better handled in Mr. Rowl and Heron, where the lady is not brought into direct and detrimental comparison with the friend. The ending is uneasy: Laurent is openly anxious, almost envious, at the reunion of the lovers; no matter how much they accept him, we cannot help feeling that the only conceivable resolution of such a build-up of emotion is some sort of ménage-à-trois, a concept so foreign to the conventional sensibilities of the novel that one immediately rejects it. In Mr. Rowl, the friend was older and presented no sexual threat; in Heron, he is killed. But what is to happen here? - the homoeroticism has been just too gloriously dwelt upon! Avoye loves him less than Laurent does - that has been the message, and the conventional resolution cannot be accepted with equanimity. And yet, I cannot bring myself to wish it hadn't been written - emotionally it was what I had been looking for.
January 6, 2023
Laurent is a young Frenchman raised in England. Following news of Napoleon's defeat, he returns to France where he encounters Aymar, a hero of the Royalists. Aymar saves his life; Laurent promptly falls in love with him. Then Napoleon returns to France and it's in the midst of the conflict that Laurent is taken prisoner and finds Aymar a prisoner too. But it's a defeated, broken Aymar, young hero no longer, accused of betraying his men to the Bonapartists.
I've only read two Brosters but already I feel like gosh, she really has her trademarks. Someone called this something like 'Flight of the Heron but with less plot and more emotional bonding' and it's so true! Some things in common with Heron include two young men who save each other, a supernatural or superstitious sign (herons, in the other book, here a lucky amulet), the prolonged and tender nursing through illness! If you like h/c you are in luck, for Laurent is nursing Aymar for what feels like a good half of the book.
This one goes further than the Heron in laying on the emotional bond between the two, like they are in LOVE love. Aymar gets to go through the emotional wringer SEVERAL times in fact, just lay on the pain why don't you. Highly enjoyable if you enjoy this sort of thing.
I've only read two Brosters but already I feel like gosh, she really has her trademarks. Someone called this something like 'Flight of the Heron but with less plot and more emotional bonding' and it's so true! Some things in common with Heron include two young men who save each other, a supernatural or superstitious sign (herons, in the other book, here a lucky amulet), the prolonged and tender nursing through illness! If you like h/c you are in luck, for Laurent is nursing Aymar for what feels like a good half of the book.
This one goes further than the Heron in laying on the emotional bond between the two, like they are in LOVE love. Aymar gets to go through the emotional wringer SEVERAL times in fact, just lay on the pain why don't you. Highly enjoyable if you enjoy this sort of thing.
October 15, 2024
I first read this book in the 1960s, when I was about fourteen. It was one of a jumble of volumes on our English teacher's windowsill that pupils could borrow at will. ("The Flight of the Heron" had previously been a prescribed home reader, and I had fallen for it like a ton of bricks.) I fell for this even harder, I think, in a rush of teenage romanticism. I'm now seventy years old, and decided to read it again. It had lost none of its impact and (unusually for these days) I read it through obsessively.
The other two reviews here are correct, it is a close precursor to "The Flight of the Heron", but Broster seems to have toned it down for the later book. What she puts Aymar de la Rocheterie through here makes Ewen Cameron's sufferings look like minor irritations. The themes are similar though. An understated thread of the supernatural that makes convenient coincidences seem like the hand of fate rather than plot contrivance. (Sadly, there is no such excuse for the wildly improbable coincidences that prop up the story of "The Gleam in the North".) A hero who has done something dishonourable, or that he perceives to be dishonourable, about which he is eating himself up to the edge of insanity. And of course the male bonding thing.
Homoeroticism is absent from "The Flight of the Heron", despite Broster frequently mentioning Ewen's rather spectacular build and good looks. The core of that story is Keith Windham's journey from a cynical young man, bitter and disillusioned before his time, to a man who understands that to give one's heart freely without counting the cost is the better way in life. The catalyst for this transformation is his exposure to Ewen, who loves Alison, his extended family, the Jacobite cause and (probably most of all) the very landscape of his home without reservation. Keith, despite himself, comes to want friendship from Ewen, but that's all.
"The Wounded Name" is a different matter. It's a less well-constructed book, in part because Aymar doesn't become the viewpoint character until about half way through, and at first all we have of him is Laurent de Courtomer's instant hero-worship. I didn't pick up on this aged fourteen, but it really is obvious that Laurent is in love with Aymar pretty much from the beginning. And yet, there's nothing erotic about it, and it's certainly not reciprocated, Aymar being deeply in love with his cousin Avoye. (That in itself seems well dodgy, with Aymar and Avoye, orphans of the Terror, having been brought up by their grandmother as brother and sister.) Nevertheless, for a mainstream novel in 1922, it's daring.
Laurent becomes Aymar's saviour, champion and close friend, as he nurses Aymar back from the brink of death from extreme blood loss, before the days of transfusions. (Incidentally, Broster's description of someone suffering circulatory collapse subsequent to severe haemorrhagic anaemia, and his slow recovery, is medically very well done, perhaps drawing on her WW1 nursing experience.) As this progresses, the reader, with Laurent, is drip-fed the story of how Aymar came to be in that plight. Just what has he done that he most emphatically doesn't want to talk about, and why? Finally, all is revealed, but the story is far from over.
Rather than come clean to Avoye about his actions, and the reason for them (which he has by then fully explained to Laurent), Aymar proceeds to lie his head off to her, with disastrous consequences. In this part of the book Broster shows us very clearly that hiding the truth from the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is no basis for a relationship, and by the end Aymar has learned that too, the hard way.
Of course it all ends happily, it's that sort of book (in stark contrast to "The Flight of the Heron"). But unlike that book, we hear no more about Aymar, or Avoye, or Laurent. What happens once the final page has been turned? War and conflict often lead to very intense friendships between men, but once peace returns, these can never be the same again. Normal life resumes, with wives and families and acquaintances. Aymar has Avoye, but who does Laurent have? Broster doesn't tell us. He's only twenty-four, young enough for that intense hero-worship to burn itself out, but we're left with only our own speculations.
I've long been of the opinion that Broster's early books are her better ones, and this is an early one. Whatever its deficiencies (mainly in the early chapters) it packs an enormous emotional punch that can leave the reader feeling almost guilty for having been so deeply immersed. This, though, is Broster's skill. It's only a pity that she seemed to lose it towards the end of her career.
The other two reviews here are correct, it is a close precursor to "The Flight of the Heron", but Broster seems to have toned it down for the later book. What she puts Aymar de la Rocheterie through here makes Ewen Cameron's sufferings look like minor irritations. The themes are similar though. An understated thread of the supernatural that makes convenient coincidences seem like the hand of fate rather than plot contrivance. (Sadly, there is no such excuse for the wildly improbable coincidences that prop up the story of "The Gleam in the North".) A hero who has done something dishonourable, or that he perceives to be dishonourable, about which he is eating himself up to the edge of insanity. And of course the male bonding thing.
Homoeroticism is absent from "The Flight of the Heron", despite Broster frequently mentioning Ewen's rather spectacular build and good looks. The core of that story is Keith Windham's journey from a cynical young man, bitter and disillusioned before his time, to a man who understands that to give one's heart freely without counting the cost is the better way in life. The catalyst for this transformation is his exposure to Ewen, who loves Alison, his extended family, the Jacobite cause and (probably most of all) the very landscape of his home without reservation. Keith, despite himself, comes to want friendship from Ewen, but that's all.
"The Wounded Name" is a different matter. It's a less well-constructed book, in part because Aymar doesn't become the viewpoint character until about half way through, and at first all we have of him is Laurent de Courtomer's instant hero-worship. I didn't pick up on this aged fourteen, but it really is obvious that Laurent is in love with Aymar pretty much from the beginning. And yet, there's nothing erotic about it, and it's certainly not reciprocated, Aymar being deeply in love with his cousin Avoye. (That in itself seems well dodgy, with Aymar and Avoye, orphans of the Terror, having been brought up by their grandmother as brother and sister.) Nevertheless, for a mainstream novel in 1922, it's daring.
Laurent becomes Aymar's saviour, champion and close friend, as he nurses Aymar back from the brink of death from extreme blood loss, before the days of transfusions. (Incidentally, Broster's description of someone suffering circulatory collapse subsequent to severe haemorrhagic anaemia, and his slow recovery, is medically very well done, perhaps drawing on her WW1 nursing experience.) As this progresses, the reader, with Laurent, is drip-fed the story of how Aymar came to be in that plight. Just what has he done that he most emphatically doesn't want to talk about, and why? Finally, all is revealed, but the story is far from over.
Rather than come clean to Avoye about his actions, and the reason for them (which he has by then fully explained to Laurent), Aymar proceeds to lie his head off to her, with disastrous consequences. In this part of the book Broster shows us very clearly that hiding the truth from the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is no basis for a relationship, and by the end Aymar has learned that too, the hard way.
Of course it all ends happily, it's that sort of book (in stark contrast to "The Flight of the Heron"). But unlike that book, we hear no more about Aymar, or Avoye, or Laurent. What happens once the final page has been turned? War and conflict often lead to very intense friendships between men, but once peace returns, these can never be the same again. Normal life resumes, with wives and families and acquaintances. Aymar has Avoye, but who does Laurent have? Broster doesn't tell us. He's only twenty-four, young enough for that intense hero-worship to burn itself out, but we're left with only our own speculations.
I've long been of the opinion that Broster's early books are her better ones, and this is an early one. Whatever its deficiencies (mainly in the early chapters) it packs an enormous emotional punch that can leave the reader feeling almost guilty for having been so deeply immersed. This, though, is Broster's skill. It's only a pity that she seemed to lose it towards the end of her career.
December 17, 2021
This book is boring and far too long!
Luckily I didn’t pay for it,
Luckily I didn’t pay for it,
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews