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Beau Geste #1
Beau Geste
French Legionnaires find one of their fortresses manned by dead men. Who could have done it? A flashback unravels the mystery of the three English Geste brothers. A classic, rip-roaring tale of adventure.
367 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
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About the author
P.C. Wren
117 books45 followersPercival Christopher Wren (1 November 1875 – 22 November 1941) was a British writer, mostly of adventure fiction. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much-filmed book of 1924 involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa, and its sequels, Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal.
Born as plain Percy Wren, in Deptford, South London, England, Percy was the son of a schoolmaster. After graduation with a Master of Arts degree from St. Catherine's College, Oxford, a non-collegiate college for poorer students, Percy worked as a boarding school teacher for a few years, during which he married Alice Shovelier, and had a daughter (Estelle, born 1901). In 1903 he joined the Indian Education Service as headmaster of Karachi High School (now Pakistan). While in India, he joined the Poona Volunteer Rifles with the rank of Captain, before his service was terminated in October 1915 after sick leave. He resigned from the Indian Education Service in November 1917. It is presumed that his wife died in India, for no record of her return to Britain has been found; his daughter having died in England in 1910. From there it is claimed that he joined the French Foreign Legion for a single tour of five years though he would have been 42 years of age on enlistment, somewhat older that the usual recruit. He lived out the remainder of his life in England concentrating on his literary career. One of the few photographs of Wren known shows a typical British officer of the Edwardian era with clipped moustache, wearing plain dark blue regimental dress.
Wren was a highly secretive man, and his membership of the Legion has never been confirmed. When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure. It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during his extensive travels in Algeria and Morocco, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in England. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticised, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate. This may however simply reflect careful research on his part - the descriptions of Legion garrison life given in his work The Wages of Virtue written in 1914 closely match those contained in the autobiographical In the Foreign Legion by ex legionnaire Edwin Rosen, published Duckworth London 1910.
Born as plain Percy Wren, in Deptford, South London, England, Percy was the son of a schoolmaster. After graduation with a Master of Arts degree from St. Catherine's College, Oxford, a non-collegiate college for poorer students, Percy worked as a boarding school teacher for a few years, during which he married Alice Shovelier, and had a daughter (Estelle, born 1901). In 1903 he joined the Indian Education Service as headmaster of Karachi High School (now Pakistan). While in India, he joined the Poona Volunteer Rifles with the rank of Captain, before his service was terminated in October 1915 after sick leave. He resigned from the Indian Education Service in November 1917. It is presumed that his wife died in India, for no record of her return to Britain has been found; his daughter having died in England in 1910. From there it is claimed that he joined the French Foreign Legion for a single tour of five years though he would have been 42 years of age on enlistment, somewhat older that the usual recruit. He lived out the remainder of his life in England concentrating on his literary career. One of the few photographs of Wren known shows a typical British officer of the Edwardian era with clipped moustache, wearing plain dark blue regimental dress.
Wren was a highly secretive man, and his membership of the Legion has never been confirmed. When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure. It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during his extensive travels in Algeria and Morocco, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in England. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticised, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate. This may however simply reflect careful research on his part - the descriptions of Legion garrison life given in his work The Wages of Virtue written in 1914 closely match those contained in the autobiographical In the Foreign Legion by ex legionnaire Edwin Rosen, published Duckworth London 1910.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 263 reviews
May 22, 2023
Questions of duty and decency as shield over a loved one are examined in this wonderful novel of adventure and friendship. Michael, Digby and John (the Geste brothers) run away to join the French Foreign Legion in Algeria after the "Blue Water" sapphire disappears and Lady Brandon (the aunt who has raised them) suspects all three. As the brothers become soldiers they learn that not all threats are faced in combat; enemies often hide inside the fort where you think you are safe. David Chase does a fantastic job of vocal characterization for each character - so glad to get this book out of my 'classic bucket-list' - now I will watch the movie adaptations!
August 2, 2014
I've read that a classic is a book that is never finished saying what it has to say. I further define one by it being a great story hidden behind awful, dated writing that has been butchered by Hollywood, & forced upon too-young souls by sadistic English teachers. This book escaped half of the usual criteria.
First & foremost, not one of my sadistic English teachers (I went to a prestigious prep school & had many.) ever forced me to read this book, thankfully. It's taken me years to get over some of the prejudices they helped me form & I still have plenty to go. (What's next? Dickens?!!! No! That's one I cherish...)
This is a GREAT story & will never finish speaking to people. It is a wonderful mystery that defines the best of England's young men; truthfulness, self sacrifice, loyalty, amazing courage, strength, & fortitude, along with the quite understandable romance & idiocy of ideological youth. It's an incredible journey full of hard choices & great characters that made the youthful, ridiculous choices seem perfectly logical - at least in their eyes. Best of all, the story is exceedingly well crafted to bewilder the reader while laying out all the clues to bring it to a stunning, perfectly sensible, & satisfactory conclusion.
The original, superficial mystery of the story seems obvious; the fort being manned by the dead, but that quickly gives way to the main mystery when John tells his story. He & the other characters all seem too good & honest to have done 'The Bad Thing'. He seems to be quite a reliable narrator, too. The majority of the book shows the brothers facing hardship & crisis with perfect moral rectitude & aplomb. So who could have done it? This uncertainty until the very end of the book is a constant spur.
Along the way, I was treated to some of the most vivid scenes. Once the first mystery is solved, the real adventure begins although it takes up far less space in the book, about the last 20%. H. Rider Haggard wrote books about far fewer & lesser adventures than what Wren has John skim through. This understatement, along with the uncertainty of time, makes the journal even more credibly incredible. There are no dates. Only Lawrence gives us an account of time in terms of his life & then only if the reader can recall it from the first part.
Unfortunately, the writing style is one that is guaranteed to put me to sleep instantly when read on the page. The first few pages are frankly impenetrable. Even with an excellent narrator, the first few pages drag, but I managed to get through them & then patiently finished the chapter & the second. While the 2 chapters of Part 1 do contain some important information, they make up about 20% of the book - far too much telling. A synopsis would have been a blessing. It's in Part 2 where the story really pops & grabbed me. After that, I was completely hooked.
Geoffrey Howard's wonderful reading brings the story to life. I envisioned a cross between Michael Caine in the movie The Man Who Would Be King (1975) & Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) telling John's story. Howard epitomized the English voice perfectly capturing the understated courage, loyalty, & humor. Unfortunately, he made cartoon caricatures out of the Americans, although some of that was how they were written. Still, his voice for them went over the top.
Hollywood never ruined this story for me, either. While I know I've seen both the 1926 silent movie & the 1966 remake, I don't think I ever watched either one all the way through. I did watch the 1939 version completely, but that was decades ago, so I retain a few of the most memorable scenes only. Telly Savalas probably did a wonderful job as the deranged sergeant.
This story also captures a different mindset of Colonialism in a pretty perfect way. There is no question of morality in the occupation of the land, but the Gestes do not seem to feel that they are better than the natives as a people. I'm sure some will think the book totally racist since 'nigger' & other pejoratives are used a couple of times, but they're mostly just convenient labels without any derogatory meanings in their minds. The Gestes don't seem to look down on specific races, but to group various peoples according to their lot in life. Race, nationality, & religion have less to do with their judgement than the education, demeanor, & actions of the various peoples they meet. Any prejudice they have seems to be the finest of survival mechanisms as they navigate the labyrinth of tribes & the conundrums that each poses for them. In a short amount of time, at their own expense, they learn the Arabic language, customs, & religion so thoroughly they can disguise themselves as such. This speaks not only of a high degree of intelligence, but honest curiosity & respect.
This is another example of an audio book coming to the rescue. Not only was I able to keep getting chores done, but I was able to really enjoy a book I'd never been able to get through before. As much as I'd like to give this book 5 stars, I can only give it 4 due to the horrible beginning & the caricature of the Americans.
First & foremost, not one of my sadistic English teachers (I went to a prestigious prep school & had many.) ever forced me to read this book, thankfully. It's taken me years to get over some of the prejudices they helped me form & I still have plenty to go. (What's next? Dickens?!!! No! That's one I cherish...)
This is a GREAT story & will never finish speaking to people. It is a wonderful mystery that defines the best of England's young men; truthfulness, self sacrifice, loyalty, amazing courage, strength, & fortitude, along with the quite understandable romance & idiocy of ideological youth. It's an incredible journey full of hard choices & great characters that made the youthful, ridiculous choices seem perfectly logical - at least in their eyes. Best of all, the story is exceedingly well crafted to bewilder the reader while laying out all the clues to bring it to a stunning, perfectly sensible, & satisfactory conclusion.
The original, superficial mystery of the story seems obvious; the fort being manned by the dead, but that quickly gives way to the main mystery when John tells his story. He & the other characters all seem too good & honest to have done 'The Bad Thing'. He seems to be quite a reliable narrator, too. The majority of the book shows the brothers facing hardship & crisis with perfect moral rectitude & aplomb. So who could have done it? This uncertainty until the very end of the book is a constant spur.
Along the way, I was treated to some of the most vivid scenes. Once the first mystery is solved, the real adventure begins although it takes up far less space in the book, about the last 20%. H. Rider Haggard wrote books about far fewer & lesser adventures than what Wren has John skim through. This understatement, along with the uncertainty of time, makes the journal even more credibly incredible. There are no dates. Only Lawrence gives us an account of time in terms of his life & then only if the reader can recall it from the first part.
Unfortunately, the writing style is one that is guaranteed to put me to sleep instantly when read on the page. The first few pages are frankly impenetrable. Even with an excellent narrator, the first few pages drag, but I managed to get through them & then patiently finished the chapter & the second. While the 2 chapters of Part 1 do contain some important information, they make up about 20% of the book - far too much telling. A synopsis would have been a blessing. It's in Part 2 where the story really pops & grabbed me. After that, I was completely hooked.
Geoffrey Howard's wonderful reading brings the story to life. I envisioned a cross between Michael Caine in the movie The Man Who Would Be King (1975) & Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) telling John's story. Howard epitomized the English voice perfectly capturing the understated courage, loyalty, & humor. Unfortunately, he made cartoon caricatures out of the Americans, although some of that was how they were written. Still, his voice for them went over the top.
Hollywood never ruined this story for me, either. While I know I've seen both the 1926 silent movie & the 1966 remake, I don't think I ever watched either one all the way through. I did watch the 1939 version completely, but that was decades ago, so I retain a few of the most memorable scenes only. Telly Savalas probably did a wonderful job as the deranged sergeant.
This story also captures a different mindset of Colonialism in a pretty perfect way. There is no question of morality in the occupation of the land, but the Gestes do not seem to feel that they are better than the natives as a people. I'm sure some will think the book totally racist since 'nigger' & other pejoratives are used a couple of times, but they're mostly just convenient labels without any derogatory meanings in their minds. The Gestes don't seem to look down on specific races, but to group various peoples according to their lot in life. Race, nationality, & religion have less to do with their judgement than the education, demeanor, & actions of the various peoples they meet. Any prejudice they have seems to be the finest of survival mechanisms as they navigate the labyrinth of tribes & the conundrums that each poses for them. In a short amount of time, at their own expense, they learn the Arabic language, customs, & religion so thoroughly they can disguise themselves as such. This speaks not only of a high degree of intelligence, but honest curiosity & respect.
This is another example of an audio book coming to the rescue. Not only was I able to keep getting chores done, but I was able to really enjoy a book I'd never been able to get through before. As much as I'd like to give this book 5 stars, I can only give it 4 due to the horrible beginning & the caricature of the Americans.
April 30, 2022
Another old classic that was offered as “included” with my Audible membership. I just about recall seeing the old Gary Cooper film when I was a kid, but I didn’t remember the plot. Not knowing it increased my enjoyment of the novel.
Beau Geste has a great opening section, with one Major de Beaujolais of the Spahis coming across the French Foreign Legion fort of Zinderneuf, manned entirely by dead men, who still man the walls, rifles at the ready. From there we move to the English country house of Brandon Abbas, and the mysterious disappearance of a valuable sapphire worth an estimated £30,000. On a matter of honour the three Geste brothers, Michael (known as Beau), Digby, and John, leave to try their luck with the Foreign Legion. To avoid spoilers I’ll say no more about the plot.
The scene at Brandon Abbas goes on a bit too long I felt, but the best part of the novel comes after the Geste brothers have joined the Foreign Legion. The descriptions of the Legion’s recruitment process, the roles of the various ranks, and its routines, are all apparently highly accurate in period, so much so that many people thought P.C. Wren must have been a legionnaire himself.
There are some dated racial attitudes, almost inevitable given the setting and the era in which the novel was published. Other than the brothers, there are two other heroic characters among the legionnaires, Americans called (and I kid you not) Hank and Buddy. They are described as former members of the Texas Rangers and are so ludicrously stereotyped in the “Howdy Pard’ner” style you almost feel embarrassed for the author. They are, I suppose, positive stereotypes at least. The class attitudes of the time are if anything even more obvious. Right through the book the Geste brothers, as “gentlemen”, display both intellectual and moral superiority towards the lower orders.
Still, for all of the above reservations the novel is quite a fun read. The plot is cleverly devised and as an adventure story it’s really quite good. It’s absolutely a celebration of the traditional virtues of honesty, courage and self-sacrifice, and I think should be read in that spirit.
Beau Geste has a great opening section, with one Major de Beaujolais of the Spahis coming across the French Foreign Legion fort of Zinderneuf, manned entirely by dead men, who still man the walls, rifles at the ready. From there we move to the English country house of Brandon Abbas, and the mysterious disappearance of a valuable sapphire worth an estimated £30,000. On a matter of honour the three Geste brothers, Michael (known as Beau), Digby, and John, leave to try their luck with the Foreign Legion. To avoid spoilers I’ll say no more about the plot.
The scene at Brandon Abbas goes on a bit too long I felt, but the best part of the novel comes after the Geste brothers have joined the Foreign Legion. The descriptions of the Legion’s recruitment process, the roles of the various ranks, and its routines, are all apparently highly accurate in period, so much so that many people thought P.C. Wren must have been a legionnaire himself.
There are some dated racial attitudes, almost inevitable given the setting and the era in which the novel was published. Other than the brothers, there are two other heroic characters among the legionnaires, Americans called (and I kid you not) Hank and Buddy. They are described as former members of the Texas Rangers and are so ludicrously stereotyped in the “Howdy Pard’ner” style you almost feel embarrassed for the author. They are, I suppose, positive stereotypes at least. The class attitudes of the time are if anything even more obvious. Right through the book the Geste brothers, as “gentlemen”, display both intellectual and moral superiority towards the lower orders.
Still, for all of the above reservations the novel is quite a fun read. The plot is cleverly devised and as an adventure story it’s really quite good. It’s absolutely a celebration of the traditional virtues of honesty, courage and self-sacrifice, and I think should be read in that spirit.
February 21, 2025
I am neither a student nor a philosopher, but I would like some convinced exponent of the doctrine of free will to explain how we are anything but the helpless victims of the consequences of the acts of other people.
So says John Geste when he finds himself swept up into the Mystery of the “Blue Water”. The Blue Water, a huge and very valuable sapphire, is at the center of this adventure novel, set in England and Africa. The sapphire belongs to an English aristocrat, Lady Patricia Brandon, who has three nephews, Michael, Digby and John Geste. The sapphire disappears…the mystery begins.
The story opens, however, with another mystery, just as puzzling, told by an officer of the French Foreign Legion. It is a tale of Fort Zinderneuf, in the African desert, in which every man is dead but still standing at his post, his rifle aimed toward the enemy. There is an officer, obviously killed by one of his own men; a confusing letter; the dead men, who could not have stood themselves at watch; and no one alive within the fort to explain. The two mysteries are inter-connected, and the Gestes are at the heart of both.
To tell anything about the plot of this book would be to spoil it. It is laid out so perfectly that the mystery unravels itself in bits and pieces. Michael (Beau), Digby and John are marvelous characters; the writing is beautifully descriptive, particularly those parts set in Africa; and I would bet no one unfamiliar with the story figures this one out before the reveal.
There is an overwhelming feeling that you are in a world so exotic and primordial that a genie might pop out of a bottle at any moment and surprise no one.
These are the oldest roads in the world and the grim relics that line them are those of yesterday and those of centuries ago. They were ancient when Joseph came to Egypt, and the men and beasts that venture upon them have not changed in fifty centuries.
I first read this book when I was about thirteen years old and also watched the old black and white movie with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston. As I recall, I watched it with my mother, who seldom had time for movies but loved Gary Cooper. It was just the kind of story that captured my imagination then, when I so wanted to see the world and to have something exciting happen to me. As an adventure, it ranked with the best, a treasured book along with The Count of Monte Cristo and The Call of the Wild. I was delighted to find that that young girl still resides inside of me and that I still enjoy crossing deserts with the Legion and witnessing the love of these three brothers for one another.
So says John Geste when he finds himself swept up into the Mystery of the “Blue Water”. The Blue Water, a huge and very valuable sapphire, is at the center of this adventure novel, set in England and Africa. The sapphire belongs to an English aristocrat, Lady Patricia Brandon, who has three nephews, Michael, Digby and John Geste. The sapphire disappears…the mystery begins.
The story opens, however, with another mystery, just as puzzling, told by an officer of the French Foreign Legion. It is a tale of Fort Zinderneuf, in the African desert, in which every man is dead but still standing at his post, his rifle aimed toward the enemy. There is an officer, obviously killed by one of his own men; a confusing letter; the dead men, who could not have stood themselves at watch; and no one alive within the fort to explain. The two mysteries are inter-connected, and the Gestes are at the heart of both.
To tell anything about the plot of this book would be to spoil it. It is laid out so perfectly that the mystery unravels itself in bits and pieces. Michael (Beau), Digby and John are marvelous characters; the writing is beautifully descriptive, particularly those parts set in Africa; and I would bet no one unfamiliar with the story figures this one out before the reveal.
There is an overwhelming feeling that you are in a world so exotic and primordial that a genie might pop out of a bottle at any moment and surprise no one.
These are the oldest roads in the world and the grim relics that line them are those of yesterday and those of centuries ago. They were ancient when Joseph came to Egypt, and the men and beasts that venture upon them have not changed in fifty centuries.
I first read this book when I was about thirteen years old and also watched the old black and white movie with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston. As I recall, I watched it with my mother, who seldom had time for movies but loved Gary Cooper. It was just the kind of story that captured my imagination then, when I so wanted to see the world and to have something exciting happen to me. As an adventure, it ranked with the best, a treasured book along with The Count of Monte Cristo and The Call of the Wild. I was delighted to find that that young girl still resides inside of me and that I still enjoy crossing deserts with the Legion and witnessing the love of these three brothers for one another.
January 6, 2013
Reread Dec 2012, loved again.
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What a fabulous book!! I am SO enjoying building up my reactionary library (see article pasted in below).
Beau Geste was an ultimate boy/man book (to be much enjoyed by women who love real men too:). While I have to admit that there wasn't, perhaps, anything mind-blowingly profound in this book (except maybe that it's so very different from the messages found in most more modern lit), there were a few things I thought made this book one I want the little men I'm raising to learn and emulate.
1. Honesty. Every one of the heroes in this book was a man of strict honesty. His word was bond.
2. A Man's Role as the Protector of Women. Oh boy, that was SO anti-feminist of me. Oh well. I would also spoil the book if I spilled why this was such an important part of the story. Nevertheless, this role isn't acted out in a self-righteous, nasty sort of way, but as a device used to truly protect a much loved and respected woman's honor in her misfortune.
3. Manhood. Like I stated in the beginning--these guys were MEN! Men who didn't go seeking for trouble or fame or honor but who found it and earned it by living up to high standards of conduct and Christian moral ideals.
4. Brotherhood & friendship between men. This is a story of 3 brothers and another set of 2 friends who are as good as brothers. I don't believe I have EVER read a story in which brothers or male friends are ever true, loyal, kind, and non-competetive. It seems we always get some story of jealousy, competition, deception etc. This was a story of three brothers who loved and honored each other so much that they couldn't stand to see one of them blamed for an act they knew none of them did, so they all tried to shift the blame on to themselves instead.
I totally loved this book. Can't wait to get my boy to read it, he'll love it too.
Only problem was that my copy had quite a lot of French and no footnotes. Doggone it, I don't know French!
IT WAS AWESOME!! I enjoyed every single second. I love reading a totally thrilling adventure story where there is not ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of "chagrin" or the feeling that one should probably be ashamed for reading it. Again, that's why I am totally loving my budding "Reactionary Library."
In my review to "Prester John" I put a link to an article entiteled "Adventure Books for Boys." That article references another article that explains that tradition further--I have pasted it below for your enjoyment.
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The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. - book reviews by Digby Anderson
The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, edited, with commentary by William J. Bennett (Simon & Schuster, 873 pp., $27.50)
SOME ten years ago I noticed a copy of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel in a second-hand bookshop. As I picked it up and leafed through it, I remembered just how much I had enjoyed it at the age of ten. What I had enjoyed was not just the adventure but adventure infused with morality. I bought it and read it again expecting to find it nonsense. It is not nonsense. In fact it is all the better today since its genre is so rare. Slowly the names started coming back: not just Baroness Orczy but Rider Haggard, Anthony Hope, Rafael Sabatini, G.A. Henty, Harrison Ainsworth, Conan Doyle, C.S. Forester, John Buchan, P. C. Wren, Percy Westerman, and a dozen others. What had happened to all those books? I suppose I must have thrown them away. Some I never owned but borrowed from libraries or other boys--"You can have my Henty, if you lend me your Buchan."
Anyway, I started to look for replacement copies. And the first point of this personal note is that re-collecting them was hard. There are surprisingly few about. Of course, you can find them if you are prepared to visit countless bookshops and sift through the filth and inanity that fill them--and the unpleasant people one finds in bookshops these days. Of course, you can find them if you are content to wait. But you are not content to wait. Read Greenmantle or She and it's so good you want more now, and not just the well-known ones such as Prester John and King Solomon's Mines, but the many more less well known: The Courts of the Morning and The Prince of the Captivity, Nada the Lily and Moon of Israel. Ten years later I have them--most of them in a tall Victorian bookcase, eight shelves entirely filled with reactionary novels.
Suppose you wanted to do something similar. Suppose you wanted to collect the books that gave you so much pleasure as a child and did so much for your moral formation--not perhaps quite my stories but shorter stories suitable for younger children. Suppose you wanted to do this not for yourself but for your own children. You would face a long and a daunting task to find them. Or you would have done till now. For William Bennett has done all your work for you. In one volume he has collected a wealth of short moral tales and poems suitable for young children. There are 873 pages of them.
They are ordered under the virtues they illustrate and encourage: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, and faith. Each section starts with stories suitable for adults to read to young children or for the young children to read for themselves, then goes on to ones suitable for older children. For instance, "Responsibility" starts with Olive Wadsworth's Mother Toad, the Three Little Kittens, and Orphan Annie, proceeds through St. George and the dragon and Alfred's burnt cakes, through Damocles and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and goes on to Thucydides, Plato, and Jefferson.
Mr. Bennett has created a treasury no conservative parent would want to be without. For conservative parents know the role such stories can play in moral education. The early building of character depends heavily on examples, both in this world and in literature. Children--and adults to some degree-emulate people, net ideas. Modern societies are going through a period of grave social disorder shown in crime, marriage collapse, gender confrontation, community disintegration, and drug abuse. The way back is through the rediscovery of the good, of the virtues. Virtues are taught by good laws, by stern punishments, and by moral tales. What Mr. Bennett has provided, then, is not just a source of enjoyment and literary education, but a contribution to moral literacy and a path back to social order for future generations.
One can always find fault with particular collections. I would have liked sections on courtesy, hope, and service, for instance. The token non-Christian readings are a mistake. This is overwhelmingly a Christian book, and Mr. Bennett should not be afraid to say so. But there are two more general drawbacks--both minor. I was struck by how little it resembles my own reactionary library. This is largely because mine are mostly full-length novels and many are English. But there are few tales in the Bennett collection that have the spirit found in Buchan, Hope, and the others in the Victorian bookcase. The blood-and-morality novels have a moral energy some of his tales lack. I was going to say his are more suitable for little girls than little boys but it is not quite that. There is a slight tendency to preciousness in the new collection. Here's a revealing test. Both sorts of books would infuriate progressive persons, but while Mr. Bennett's would make them retch, the Hopes and Haggards would make them explode.
That is related to the other tendency. The longer stories are edited to bring out their moral parts, the punch line. Each story is preceded by a little introduction which explains its moral point. This plus the collection of so much morality in one volume does make for a sort of earnestness. I can't see how this could be got round but it is unfortunate, because morality should not be earnest. It can be carried, if not lightly, apparently lightly. That is why Sir Richard Hannay, Sir Percy Blakeney, Allan Quatermain, and the other swashbucklers make such good moral heroes: they are good and attractive. And if morality mixed with adventure makes for easier reading, so does morality mixed with humor. Two poems about truth show this well. One shows the rewards of honesty, the other, the fate of liars. But the difference is that the first is flat and earnest, the second, teasing and amusing. The little boy with a curly head and pleasant eye who never never told a lie and therefore had lots of friends (p. 601) is a rather repulsive prig. Belloc does much better with Matilda (pp. 607-8). She, of course, told dreadful lies and called the fire brigade when there wasn't a fire, and so when there was one the fire brigade wouldn't come. "For every time she shouted 'Fire!'/They only answered 'Little liar!'/And therefore when her aunt returned, /Matilda and her house were burned."
It is very important that those who exhibit the virtues in real life and in literature do not exhibit the grim earnestness of their progressive and politically correct opponents. One of the lesser-known titles of Christ was "the attractive one" or "He who attracts." The best stories in this excellent collection are those with characters who are good and fun, good and attractive.
Mr. Anderson is the editor of The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America (National Review Books).
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There is more to this article, a sequel if you will, but it was too long to fit in here. I'll paste it under my review of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan
*********
Note to self:
Joel read this just after I did. He LOVED it! I could hardly get his nose out of it.
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What a fabulous book!! I am SO enjoying building up my reactionary library (see article pasted in below).
Beau Geste was an ultimate boy/man book (to be much enjoyed by women who love real men too:). While I have to admit that there wasn't, perhaps, anything mind-blowingly profound in this book (except maybe that it's so very different from the messages found in most more modern lit), there were a few things I thought made this book one I want the little men I'm raising to learn and emulate.
1. Honesty. Every one of the heroes in this book was a man of strict honesty. His word was bond.
2. A Man's Role as the Protector of Women. Oh boy, that was SO anti-feminist of me. Oh well. I would also spoil the book if I spilled why this was such an important part of the story. Nevertheless, this role isn't acted out in a self-righteous, nasty sort of way, but as a device used to truly protect a much loved and respected woman's honor in her misfortune.
3. Manhood. Like I stated in the beginning--these guys were MEN! Men who didn't go seeking for trouble or fame or honor but who found it and earned it by living up to high standards of conduct and Christian moral ideals.
4. Brotherhood & friendship between men. This is a story of 3 brothers and another set of 2 friends who are as good as brothers. I don't believe I have EVER read a story in which brothers or male friends are ever true, loyal, kind, and non-competetive. It seems we always get some story of jealousy, competition, deception etc. This was a story of three brothers who loved and honored each other so much that they couldn't stand to see one of them blamed for an act they knew none of them did, so they all tried to shift the blame on to themselves instead.
I totally loved this book. Can't wait to get my boy to read it, he'll love it too.
Only problem was that my copy had quite a lot of French and no footnotes. Doggone it, I don't know French!
IT WAS AWESOME!! I enjoyed every single second. I love reading a totally thrilling adventure story where there is not ONE SINGLE INSTANCE of "chagrin" or the feeling that one should probably be ashamed for reading it. Again, that's why I am totally loving my budding "Reactionary Library."
In my review to "Prester John" I put a link to an article entiteled "Adventure Books for Boys." That article references another article that explains that tradition further--I have pasted it below for your enjoyment.
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The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. - book reviews by Digby Anderson
The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, edited, with commentary by William J. Bennett (Simon & Schuster, 873 pp., $27.50)
SOME ten years ago I noticed a copy of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel in a second-hand bookshop. As I picked it up and leafed through it, I remembered just how much I had enjoyed it at the age of ten. What I had enjoyed was not just the adventure but adventure infused with morality. I bought it and read it again expecting to find it nonsense. It is not nonsense. In fact it is all the better today since its genre is so rare. Slowly the names started coming back: not just Baroness Orczy but Rider Haggard, Anthony Hope, Rafael Sabatini, G.A. Henty, Harrison Ainsworth, Conan Doyle, C.S. Forester, John Buchan, P. C. Wren, Percy Westerman, and a dozen others. What had happened to all those books? I suppose I must have thrown them away. Some I never owned but borrowed from libraries or other boys--"You can have my Henty, if you lend me your Buchan."
Anyway, I started to look for replacement copies. And the first point of this personal note is that re-collecting them was hard. There are surprisingly few about. Of course, you can find them if you are prepared to visit countless bookshops and sift through the filth and inanity that fill them--and the unpleasant people one finds in bookshops these days. Of course, you can find them if you are content to wait. But you are not content to wait. Read Greenmantle or She and it's so good you want more now, and not just the well-known ones such as Prester John and King Solomon's Mines, but the many more less well known: The Courts of the Morning and The Prince of the Captivity, Nada the Lily and Moon of Israel. Ten years later I have them--most of them in a tall Victorian bookcase, eight shelves entirely filled with reactionary novels.
Suppose you wanted to do something similar. Suppose you wanted to collect the books that gave you so much pleasure as a child and did so much for your moral formation--not perhaps quite my stories but shorter stories suitable for younger children. Suppose you wanted to do this not for yourself but for your own children. You would face a long and a daunting task to find them. Or you would have done till now. For William Bennett has done all your work for you. In one volume he has collected a wealth of short moral tales and poems suitable for young children. There are 873 pages of them.
They are ordered under the virtues they illustrate and encourage: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, and faith. Each section starts with stories suitable for adults to read to young children or for the young children to read for themselves, then goes on to ones suitable for older children. For instance, "Responsibility" starts with Olive Wadsworth's Mother Toad, the Three Little Kittens, and Orphan Annie, proceeds through St. George and the dragon and Alfred's burnt cakes, through Damocles and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and goes on to Thucydides, Plato, and Jefferson.
Mr. Bennett has created a treasury no conservative parent would want to be without. For conservative parents know the role such stories can play in moral education. The early building of character depends heavily on examples, both in this world and in literature. Children--and adults to some degree-emulate people, net ideas. Modern societies are going through a period of grave social disorder shown in crime, marriage collapse, gender confrontation, community disintegration, and drug abuse. The way back is through the rediscovery of the good, of the virtues. Virtues are taught by good laws, by stern punishments, and by moral tales. What Mr. Bennett has provided, then, is not just a source of enjoyment and literary education, but a contribution to moral literacy and a path back to social order for future generations.
One can always find fault with particular collections. I would have liked sections on courtesy, hope, and service, for instance. The token non-Christian readings are a mistake. This is overwhelmingly a Christian book, and Mr. Bennett should not be afraid to say so. But there are two more general drawbacks--both minor. I was struck by how little it resembles my own reactionary library. This is largely because mine are mostly full-length novels and many are English. But there are few tales in the Bennett collection that have the spirit found in Buchan, Hope, and the others in the Victorian bookcase. The blood-and-morality novels have a moral energy some of his tales lack. I was going to say his are more suitable for little girls than little boys but it is not quite that. There is a slight tendency to preciousness in the new collection. Here's a revealing test. Both sorts of books would infuriate progressive persons, but while Mr. Bennett's would make them retch, the Hopes and Haggards would make them explode.
That is related to the other tendency. The longer stories are edited to bring out their moral parts, the punch line. Each story is preceded by a little introduction which explains its moral point. This plus the collection of so much morality in one volume does make for a sort of earnestness. I can't see how this could be got round but it is unfortunate, because morality should not be earnest. It can be carried, if not lightly, apparently lightly. That is why Sir Richard Hannay, Sir Percy Blakeney, Allan Quatermain, and the other swashbucklers make such good moral heroes: they are good and attractive. And if morality mixed with adventure makes for easier reading, so does morality mixed with humor. Two poems about truth show this well. One shows the rewards of honesty, the other, the fate of liars. But the difference is that the first is flat and earnest, the second, teasing and amusing. The little boy with a curly head and pleasant eye who never never told a lie and therefore had lots of friends (p. 601) is a rather repulsive prig. Belloc does much better with Matilda (pp. 607-8). She, of course, told dreadful lies and called the fire brigade when there wasn't a fire, and so when there was one the fire brigade wouldn't come. "For every time she shouted 'Fire!'/They only answered 'Little liar!'/And therefore when her aunt returned, /Matilda and her house were burned."
It is very important that those who exhibit the virtues in real life and in literature do not exhibit the grim earnestness of their progressive and politically correct opponents. One of the lesser-known titles of Christ was "the attractive one" or "He who attracts." The best stories in this excellent collection are those with characters who are good and fun, good and attractive.
Mr. Anderson is the editor of The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America (National Review Books).
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There is more to this article, a sequel if you will, but it was too long to fit in here. I'll paste it under my review of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan
*********
Note to self:
Joel read this just after I did. He LOVED it! I could hardly get his nose out of it.
June 2, 2022
The opening premise of this classic adventure is quite intriguing and sets this up as more of a mystery than a military action yarn. But once we are introduced to our main heroes, the Geste brothers, I started to lose interest.
There is something about overly romanticized tales about European colonialism and stodgy peered families that can easily get on my nerves. Don't get me wrong, I am fascinated by the life of old money in English country manors, and I love adventures set in foreign lands and cultures. Hell, I've even had fantasies about joining the French Foreign Legion myself. And I am certainly not of an easily offended mold. But somehow P.C. Wren manages to cover all of this ground in the most grating manner possible for me.
For example, a common mistake that authors make regarding their main character is making them a Mary Sue, but an unlikeable one. Michael "Beau" Geste is handsome, brave, perfect at everything. I mean, even his nickname is "Beau," or "beautiful." He was born that way into a family of wealth and privilege, and even in childhood his "lesser" brothers who didn't get all of the perfect genes followed him around like puppies. But in the very first scene featuring the titular character, Wren unintentionally paints a very unflattering picture. We watch him and his brothers playing with toy ships in the lily pond on their estate. Beau has loaded little brass cannons on the ships with grape shot and fuses, and little brother gets shot in the leg. Beau, as "Captain," orders his cousin to remove the pellet with a pen knife, and he remains very bossy and cruel through the whole thing. I know this is supposed to establish that Beau is a born leader and a tough guy, but his general lack of concern for others and recklessness is what became more apparent.
Then there comes the crux of the drama. Aunt Patricia's famous jewel is stolen, and her eight nieces and nephews, including the Geste brothers, are suspects. And of course they are. Because every last one of them does their damnedest to behave more suspiciously than the others. Beau and one of his brothers even go so far as to both try to cover up evidence, presumably because they each suspect the other but are so devoted and noble as to do anything to keep their brother from taking the blame. Well, I don't buy it. It is the stupidest ploy to drag out a scene which already was so overwhelmingly padded with repetitious arguing and musing over whodunnit. And it made me dislike the supposed heroes even more.
None of the other characters in this huge cast fair much better in their development. Almost everyone is a stereotype. For example, there are two American characters named Hank and Buddy, and it is clear that Wren knew as much about Americans as an East Coast politician knows about the Midwest.
Overall, this book just wasn't for me. It proved very popular for decades and has been filmed many times since the 20s. I can certainly understand it's long appeal, but it has not aged well in my opinion. It is a pompous romanticization of privilege and war, full of ridiculous plot contrivances, monotonous narrative padding, irritating stock characters and racial stereotypes, and an unlikeable Mary Sue protagonist. The story has been applauded for it's focus on traditional values of grace, class, bravery, honesty, and dedication, but I don't think many new readers are going to appreciate these themes in such an unsophisticated execution of what is supposed to be the ultimate tale of sophistication. It has it's fun moments and an interesting mystery, but I think it's heyday has long passed and it does not hold water as a timeless classic. Read it as a time capsule of early 20th Century pop culture, but don't take it too seriously.
There is something about overly romanticized tales about European colonialism and stodgy peered families that can easily get on my nerves. Don't get me wrong, I am fascinated by the life of old money in English country manors, and I love adventures set in foreign lands and cultures. Hell, I've even had fantasies about joining the French Foreign Legion myself. And I am certainly not of an easily offended mold. But somehow P.C. Wren manages to cover all of this ground in the most grating manner possible for me.
For example, a common mistake that authors make regarding their main character is making them a Mary Sue, but an unlikeable one. Michael "Beau" Geste is handsome, brave, perfect at everything. I mean, even his nickname is "Beau," or "beautiful." He was born that way into a family of wealth and privilege, and even in childhood his "lesser" brothers who didn't get all of the perfect genes followed him around like puppies. But in the very first scene featuring the titular character, Wren unintentionally paints a very unflattering picture. We watch him and his brothers playing with toy ships in the lily pond on their estate. Beau has loaded little brass cannons on the ships with grape shot and fuses, and little brother gets shot in the leg. Beau, as "Captain," orders his cousin to remove the pellet with a pen knife, and he remains very bossy and cruel through the whole thing. I know this is supposed to establish that Beau is a born leader and a tough guy, but his general lack of concern for others and recklessness is what became more apparent.
Then there comes the crux of the drama. Aunt Patricia's famous jewel is stolen, and her eight nieces and nephews, including the Geste brothers, are suspects. And of course they are. Because every last one of them does their damnedest to behave more suspiciously than the others. Beau and one of his brothers even go so far as to both try to cover up evidence, presumably because they each suspect the other but are so devoted and noble as to do anything to keep their brother from taking the blame. Well, I don't buy it. It is the stupidest ploy to drag out a scene which already was so overwhelmingly padded with repetitious arguing and musing over whodunnit. And it made me dislike the supposed heroes even more.
None of the other characters in this huge cast fair much better in their development. Almost everyone is a stereotype. For example, there are two American characters named Hank and Buddy, and it is clear that Wren knew as much about Americans as an East Coast politician knows about the Midwest.
Overall, this book just wasn't for me. It proved very popular for decades and has been filmed many times since the 20s. I can certainly understand it's long appeal, but it has not aged well in my opinion. It is a pompous romanticization of privilege and war, full of ridiculous plot contrivances, monotonous narrative padding, irritating stock characters and racial stereotypes, and an unlikeable Mary Sue protagonist. The story has been applauded for it's focus on traditional values of grace, class, bravery, honesty, and dedication, but I don't think many new readers are going to appreciate these themes in such an unsophisticated execution of what is supposed to be the ultimate tale of sophistication. It has it's fun moments and an interesting mystery, but I think it's heyday has long passed and it does not hold water as a timeless classic. Read it as a time capsule of early 20th Century pop culture, but don't take it too seriously.
November 12, 2010
Is this book why I named my son Beau? I don't know but I'm pretty sure it was in the back of my mind when it came time to name him. :-) I read this when I was around 13 to 15. I loved it and am planning to read it to my boys as soon as I think they can tolerate the language. A great adventure story with the French Foreign Legion. What could be better? It's not a perfectly crafted novel but is wonderful anyway.
June 21, 2017
I stayed up till a quarter to midnight to finish it, so I think that says something for the blend of mystery and adventure...
September 21, 2014
This is one of those books I've been meaning to read since...well since i was a kid. Gary Cooper is Beau Geste for me. I'll say this...that old movie isn't too far from the book and it captures the book's adventure.
Told from the beginning by a Frenchman (who of course gets the "compliment" that he's like an Englishman) telling the spooky, frightening, foreshadowing/climactic tale of Fort Zinderneuf. He lead the relief column to the fort which he found unfallen with it's gates closed and locked...but entirely manned by the dead.
I suppose the story/plot is familiar to many who'll read this from the movie I mentioned and others (though if the only movie you've seen is "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" staring Marty Feldman you may not have exactly the idea of the plot found in the book). It's a classic story of honor, bravery and self sacrifice.
Why only 3 stars...well, I just couldn't get past the story telling/writing style that is very dated. I felt the same way about The Four Feathers. The story is moving and exciting. The story telling style is more slow and dated than readers today will be used to.
It sort of drove me crazy at times.
I hate to admit that.
So, good story...dated story telling. Enjoy.
Told from the beginning by a Frenchman (who of course gets the "compliment" that he's like an Englishman) telling the spooky, frightening, foreshadowing/climactic tale of Fort Zinderneuf. He lead the relief column to the fort which he found unfallen with it's gates closed and locked...but entirely manned by the dead.
I suppose the story/plot is familiar to many who'll read this from the movie I mentioned and others (though if the only movie you've seen is "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" staring Marty Feldman you may not have exactly the idea of the plot found in the book). It's a classic story of honor, bravery and self sacrifice.
Why only 3 stars...well, I just couldn't get past the story telling/writing style that is very dated. I felt the same way about The Four Feathers. The story is moving and exciting. The story telling style is more slow and dated than readers today will be used to.
It sort of drove me crazy at times.
I hate to admit that.
So, good story...dated story telling. Enjoy.
May 23, 2010
When people talk about running away and joining the Foreign Legion, they're probably referring to this book, even if they don't know they are. Stirring British Empire stiff-upper-lip stuff. There is a fantastic scene near the end which I often think of.
July 3, 2018
The book the helped create the lure of joining the French foreign legion.
A gem disappears and brothers, not knowing who is guilty, go off and join the French foreign legion to try and protect each other and unravel the mystery. Among the cut throats and the insanity, brothers grow close and make a couple of American friends who they owe their lives to over and over again. It's real adventure and told in a way that keeps you wondering how and why up until the very end. If you like swash buckling type adventures and deserts, this is for you. You might discover that you like them more than you realized.
A gem disappears and brothers, not knowing who is guilty, go off and join the French foreign legion to try and protect each other and unravel the mystery. Among the cut throats and the insanity, brothers grow close and make a couple of American friends who they owe their lives to over and over again. It's real adventure and told in a way that keeps you wondering how and why up until the very end. If you like swash buckling type adventures and deserts, this is for you. You might discover that you like them more than you realized.
April 14, 2016
Cleverly-structured and engrossing adventure/mystery story with an intriguing set up for the main story of three brothers joining the French Foreign Legion. Terrific British flair in speech and action carry this story through it's occasional lulls. Wren also uses a lot of French terms and phrases in the book to give an appropriately exotic flavor. While there are no footnotes in the text I read, context clues and being able to "see" the spelling of the words helped in deriving appropriate meanings for them and didn't cause me any undue delay in reading (I would have hated to listen to the book). I was enthralled from beginning to end.
Definitely one I would consider reading again at some point (though there are two sequels to read before that happens).
Definitely one I would consider reading again at some point (though there are two sequels to read before that happens).
September 4, 2008
Amazing story! The beginning is a bit confusing and you have to allow time to get into the flow of the language and the old-fashioned style of the story. But once you do - wow! Brothers Beau, Digby, and John and their friends Hank and Buddy and of course Sgt. Lejaune are characters you will never forget. I understand the 1939 movie version with Gary Cooper was quite good, although the idea of Gary Cooper playing a 20 year old English gentleman is a bit of a stretch!
August 6, 2021
P.C. Wren's 1924 Beau Geste, a seemingly dated novel of mystery and adventure, with settings that range from the comfortable drawing rooms of the landed gentry of an idealized England to the blazing deserts of a savage North Africa whose colonization is presented only with approval, actually remains quite a decent three-and-a-half- to four-star read.
The reader must understand, of course, that this book is not the place to look for modern notions of cultural tolerance, let alone cultural respect, of class, or of writing conventions. Nevertheless, once some of the cuteness of presentation and style is past--for things do get better as the plot moves forward--and so long as one can shrug at the occasional casual bits of racism or classism as being expected in a piece of this era, Beau Geste can be enjoyed for what it is.
Most of us reading this book have been brought to it, I presume, by the rousing black-and-white 1939 film version starring Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, and Ray Milland, along with Brian "Rapid fire, you dogs!" Donlevy. The broad strokes, therefore, are familiar--
When the electricity flickers out at stately old Brandon Abbas one night as Aunt Patricia allows her charges to view the magnificent "Blue Water" sapphire, the great jewel disappears before the lights come back on. 'Tis no mere practical joke, however, and although it is impossible that any of the handful of youth in the room could have stolen the thing, honorable Michael "Beau" Geste lights out for the territories the next day in the hope of taking the scandal upon himself rather than letting others face questioning and the sullying of their names. Soon his brothers Digby and John separately lam out as well so that the blame might be spread, and since all recall their childhood dream of joining the French Foreign Legion, that is where the jolly trio meet again.
Adventure and camaraderie ensue. Villains abound, whether jewel-hungry scoundrels, a commander so sadistic that he had to flee even the notorious Belgian Congo, mutineers suspicious of betrayal, or stereotypical bloodthirsty Arabs of the ululating and sword-waving variety. The three Geste brothers and a few more friends, all of whom hate their commander's unjust and savage ways but hate rising against the apparently glorious "Tri-coloure" even more, reluctantly back the cruel Lejaune during a mutiny, but just as he likely is about to order the rebels executed, Tuaregs swarm over the horizon, and all must defend the desert outpost against the hordes. Whenever a legionnaire is shot, the wily Lejaune props the dead or dying man at the parapet with rifle pointed outward in bluff, until finally Beau is hit, and then...
Well, but we of course know all this, don't we? Indeed, the foreknowledge from the movie makes it difficult, really, for the reader to envisage exactly how the original 1924 reader would have experienced the opening flashback mystery. Before we learn of the supposed jewel theft in England, after all, we see a relief column reach a lonely desert fort to find its besiegers driven off, its garrison all eerily dead at the posts...and yet, despite the apparent lack of life within the walls, there occurs inexplicable funny-business such as finding the snarling commander dead with a French bayonet in his heart while a peaceful-looking man has been laid out beside him, and artifacts having been moved in a supposedly abandoned fort, and the disappearance of an investigating trooper, and finally a spontaneous fire that consumes any possible evidence. These are interesting puzzles, and I wish I could have done justice to Wren's work by recapturing the first response that must have been intended.
The book does start rather slowly, though. The opening pages of third-person narrative belong to a British officer in the Nigerian Civil Service--again, God bless Empire, apparently--who from an old friend in the French military hears the tale of coming upon the fort and its mysteries. The presentation is somewhat cutesy, with an ebullient Frenchman being played off against a phlegmatic Englishman who punctuates the former's Gallic extravagance with laconic little quips and 1920s slang, for example, and the mostly-monologue telling seems to go on forever. Tension is heightened, though, when Beaujolais reveals that the peaceful dead man is one whom they both knew...and whose aunt, married to a spendthrift hunter of worldwide game both four- and two-legged, remains a bit dearer to Lawrence's heart than he quite dare admit.
In any event, once the opening tale closes, the rest of the book is John Geste's first-person narrative giving the backstory of the Geste brothers and their childhood in Brandon Abbas, the disappearance of the jewel, and the brothers' Foreign Legion adventures, right up through Beaujolais' discovery of the fort and its burning, and beyond--to escape across thousands of miles of desert with a pair of hickish but experienced and loyal American comrades in arms. John's tale begins with a jesting, superior sort of style that occasionally wears a tad thin, but the farther we go, the better it gets. The notion of facing death at the hands of mutineers, a ruthless commander, or torturing Arabs can be stared down with a stiff upper lip, eh, what?--but, really, there is good emotion here, too, as in the friendship for the quaint-speaking yet stout Yanks, the agony of losing one brother and then another, and the final selfless search of one of the ex-Texas Rangers for the companion who in his disappearance in the trackless desert most likely gave his life for this companions. At the end, of course, there will be marriages, with both John and Lawrence returning to merrie olde England--Sir Hector fortunately has died of well-deserved cholera, so Patricia is free once more--but I confess that these don't interest me as much as the months and months of travails in the Sahara.
Now, elephant-in-the-room-wise, I suppose I at least should comment a little further on the worldview of the novel. On the one hand, as Brian Stableford notes in the Afterword of my edition, not everything is about race and class here--there are good Europeans and bad ones, the unrefined Americans are noble in their honesty and simplicity, and the sedentary rather than raiding Arabs often are rather decent...though they are not spared from the superior loftiness of the English outlook here and there, of course. Clearly in Wren's picture of the world, white Europeans--namely the English, especially the upper-class English and, perhaps, the country-cousin Americans--are the best, and Arabs and black Africans are the worst, and even other European lands fit into this twentieth-century Great Chain of Being, with the amusing French being a hair lower on the scale than the laudable and complacent English, the plodding Germans being a bit lower still, then sneaky South Europeans such as the Italians, and so on. An occasional racial epithet occurs most casually on occasion, and the portrayal of the Jewish pawnbroker is not necessarily the least slanted piece of writing, shall we say.
Such sociopolitical artifacts of the time of writing are to be expected, though, so the reader who understands what a different world 1924 was should not be too shocked, or even appalled, no matter how appalling some sentiments would be today. More lastingly, the action of Beau Geste, as action, is exciting, as are the intrigues and double-dealings and subplots of the ruffians who menace the amiably joking brothers. What truly lasts here is Wren's investigation of duty: duty to family, duty to friends, even duty to the organization to which one has sworn allegiance--though our post-Nuremberg perspective will find the protagonist's reasoning in this last one not as developed as we would like. Loyalty here is a matter of honor, for it is loyalty to what is right and good rather than selfish...and although some of what the book finds "good" is not, the striving for what is right should not ever go out of style.
The reader must understand, of course, that this book is not the place to look for modern notions of cultural tolerance, let alone cultural respect, of class, or of writing conventions. Nevertheless, once some of the cuteness of presentation and style is past--for things do get better as the plot moves forward--and so long as one can shrug at the occasional casual bits of racism or classism as being expected in a piece of this era, Beau Geste can be enjoyed for what it is.
Most of us reading this book have been brought to it, I presume, by the rousing black-and-white 1939 film version starring Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, and Ray Milland, along with Brian "Rapid fire, you dogs!" Donlevy. The broad strokes, therefore, are familiar--
When the electricity flickers out at stately old Brandon Abbas one night as Aunt Patricia allows her charges to view the magnificent "Blue Water" sapphire, the great jewel disappears before the lights come back on. 'Tis no mere practical joke, however, and although it is impossible that any of the handful of youth in the room could have stolen the thing, honorable Michael "Beau" Geste lights out for the territories the next day in the hope of taking the scandal upon himself rather than letting others face questioning and the sullying of their names. Soon his brothers Digby and John separately lam out as well so that the blame might be spread, and since all recall their childhood dream of joining the French Foreign Legion, that is where the jolly trio meet again.
Adventure and camaraderie ensue. Villains abound, whether jewel-hungry scoundrels, a commander so sadistic that he had to flee even the notorious Belgian Congo, mutineers suspicious of betrayal, or stereotypical bloodthirsty Arabs of the ululating and sword-waving variety. The three Geste brothers and a few more friends, all of whom hate their commander's unjust and savage ways but hate rising against the apparently glorious "Tri-coloure" even more, reluctantly back the cruel Lejaune during a mutiny, but just as he likely is about to order the rebels executed, Tuaregs swarm over the horizon, and all must defend the desert outpost against the hordes. Whenever a legionnaire is shot, the wily Lejaune props the dead or dying man at the parapet with rifle pointed outward in bluff, until finally Beau is hit, and then...
Well, but we of course know all this, don't we? Indeed, the foreknowledge from the movie makes it difficult, really, for the reader to envisage exactly how the original 1924 reader would have experienced the opening flashback mystery. Before we learn of the supposed jewel theft in England, after all, we see a relief column reach a lonely desert fort to find its besiegers driven off, its garrison all eerily dead at the posts...and yet, despite the apparent lack of life within the walls, there occurs inexplicable funny-business such as finding the snarling commander dead with a French bayonet in his heart while a peaceful-looking man has been laid out beside him, and artifacts having been moved in a supposedly abandoned fort, and the disappearance of an investigating trooper, and finally a spontaneous fire that consumes any possible evidence. These are interesting puzzles, and I wish I could have done justice to Wren's work by recapturing the first response that must have been intended.
The book does start rather slowly, though. The opening pages of third-person narrative belong to a British officer in the Nigerian Civil Service--again, God bless Empire, apparently--who from an old friend in the French military hears the tale of coming upon the fort and its mysteries. The presentation is somewhat cutesy, with an ebullient Frenchman being played off against a phlegmatic Englishman who punctuates the former's Gallic extravagance with laconic little quips and 1920s slang, for example, and the mostly-monologue telling seems to go on forever. Tension is heightened, though, when Beaujolais reveals that the peaceful dead man is one whom they both knew...and whose aunt, married to a spendthrift hunter of worldwide game both four- and two-legged, remains a bit dearer to Lawrence's heart than he quite dare admit.
In any event, once the opening tale closes, the rest of the book is John Geste's first-person narrative giving the backstory of the Geste brothers and their childhood in Brandon Abbas, the disappearance of the jewel, and the brothers' Foreign Legion adventures, right up through Beaujolais' discovery of the fort and its burning, and beyond--to escape across thousands of miles of desert with a pair of hickish but experienced and loyal American comrades in arms. John's tale begins with a jesting, superior sort of style that occasionally wears a tad thin, but the farther we go, the better it gets. The notion of facing death at the hands of mutineers, a ruthless commander, or torturing Arabs can be stared down with a stiff upper lip, eh, what?--but, really, there is good emotion here, too, as in the friendship for the quaint-speaking yet stout Yanks, the agony of losing one brother and then another, and the final selfless search of one of the ex-Texas Rangers for the companion who in his disappearance in the trackless desert most likely gave his life for this companions. At the end, of course, there will be marriages, with both John and Lawrence returning to merrie olde England--Sir Hector fortunately has died of well-deserved cholera, so Patricia is free once more--but I confess that these don't interest me as much as the months and months of travails in the Sahara.
Now, elephant-in-the-room-wise, I suppose I at least should comment a little further on the worldview of the novel. On the one hand, as Brian Stableford notes in the Afterword of my edition, not everything is about race and class here--there are good Europeans and bad ones, the unrefined Americans are noble in their honesty and simplicity, and the sedentary rather than raiding Arabs often are rather decent...though they are not spared from the superior loftiness of the English outlook here and there, of course. Clearly in Wren's picture of the world, white Europeans--namely the English, especially the upper-class English and, perhaps, the country-cousin Americans--are the best, and Arabs and black Africans are the worst, and even other European lands fit into this twentieth-century Great Chain of Being, with the amusing French being a hair lower on the scale than the laudable and complacent English, the plodding Germans being a bit lower still, then sneaky South Europeans such as the Italians, and so on. An occasional racial epithet occurs most casually on occasion, and the portrayal of the Jewish pawnbroker is not necessarily the least slanted piece of writing, shall we say.
Such sociopolitical artifacts of the time of writing are to be expected, though, so the reader who understands what a different world 1924 was should not be too shocked, or even appalled, no matter how appalling some sentiments would be today. More lastingly, the action of Beau Geste, as action, is exciting, as are the intrigues and double-dealings and subplots of the ruffians who menace the amiably joking brothers. What truly lasts here is Wren's investigation of duty: duty to family, duty to friends, even duty to the organization to which one has sworn allegiance--though our post-Nuremberg perspective will find the protagonist's reasoning in this last one not as developed as we would like. Loyalty here is a matter of honor, for it is loyalty to what is right and good rather than selfish...and although some of what the book finds "good" is not, the striving for what is right should not ever go out of style.
November 30, 2015
Early Education a la Gerald Durrel
I had a rather unfettered childhood thanks to my psychiatrist father. School I found most repulsive and so I hardly attended. The empty field, near our small bungalow, in Bangalore, provided all the education I desired and a gentle elder sibling nudged books my way when I began to read.
But, while Enid Blyton corrupted my naive years with her adventure stories, I was more strongly drawn to dictionaries. 
The transition to H. Martin, P.C. Wren’s High School English Grammar and Composition was, thus, fairly natural.
Our edition was elegantly hard bound and it was a pleasure to dip into the sample essays and passages by great writers. Scrolling through a PDF version now, I find nothing of the sort. Perhaps our antique edition had gems that later improvements lack. Nevertheless, it was but natural for me to get all excited when I found a novel by P.C.Wren in a local library. The more so since we’d but recently seen the film.
Classic Great White Adventure Story Romance, gallantry, chivalry, betrayals, cruel natives are several of the ingredients that were liberally sprinkled on such works. But, at that age and in that time (the early 70s), it was a thrilling graduation from Ms. Blyton’s blighted slimy blimey balderdash.
CHAPTER I
OF THE STRANGE EVENTS AT ZINDERNEUF
TOLD BY MAJOR HENRI DE BEAUJOLAIS OF THE SPAHIS
TO
GEORGE LAWRENCE, ESQ., C.M.G., OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL SERVICE
"Tout ce que je raconte, je l'ai vu, et si j'ai pu me tromper en le voyant, bien certainement je ne vous trompe pas en vous le disant."
"The place was silent and aware."
Mr. George Lawrence, C.M.G., First Class District Officer of His Majesty's Civil Service, sat at the door of his tent and viewed the African desert scene with the eye of extreme disfavour. There was beauty neither in the landscape nor in the eye of the beholder.
The landscape consisted of sand, stone, kerengia burr-grass, tafasa underbrush, yellow, long-stalked with long thin bean-pods; the whole varied by clumps of the coarse and hideous tumpafia plant.
The eye was jaundiced, thanks to the heat and foul dust of Bornu, to malaria, dysentery, inferior food, poisonous water, and rapid continuous marching in appalling heat.
Weak and ill in body, Lawrence was worried and anxious in mind, the one reacting on the other.
In the first place, there was the old standing trouble about the Shuwa Patrol; in the second, the truculent Chiboks were waxing insolent again, and their young men were regarding not the words of their elders concerning Sir Garnet Wolseley, and what happened, long, long ago, after the battle of Chibok Hill. Thirdly, the price of grain had risen to six shillings a saa, and famine threatened; fourthly, the Shehu and Shuwa sheiks were quarrelling again; and, fifthly, there was a very bad smallpox ju-ju abroad in the land (a secret society whose "secret" was to offer His Majesty's liege subjects the choice between being infected with smallpox, or paying heavy blackmail to the society). Lastly, there was acrimonious correspondence with the All-Wise Ones (of the Secretariat in "Aiki Square" at Zungeru), who, as usual, knew better than the man on the spot, and bade him do either the impossible or the disastrous.
And across all the Harmattan was blowing hard, that terrible wind that carries the Saharan dust a hundred miles to sea, not so much as a sand-storm, but as a mist or fog of dust as fine as flour, filling the eyes, the lungs, the pores of the skin, the nose and throat; getting into the locks of rifles, the works of watches and cameras, defiling water, food and everything else; rendering life a burden and a curse.
The fact, moreover, that thirty days' weary travel over burning desert, across oceans of loose wind-blown sand and prairies of burnt grass, through breast-high swamps, and across unbridged boatless rivers, lay between him and Kano, added nothing to his satisfaction. For, in spite of all, satisfaction there was, inasmuch as Kano was rail-head, and the beginning of the first stage of the journey Home. That but another month lay between him and "leave out of Africa," kept George Lawrence on his feet.
From that wonderful and romantic Red City, Kano, sister of Timbuktu, the train would take him, after a three days' dusty journey, to the rubbish-heap called Lagos, on the Bight of Benin of the wicked West African Coast. There he would embark on the good ship Appam, greet her commander, Captain Harrison, and sink into a deck-chair with that glorious sigh of relief, known in its perfection only to those weary ones who turn their backs upon the Outposts and set their faces towards Home.
Meanwhile, for George Lawrence--disappointment, worry, frustration, anxiety, heat, sand-flies, mosquitoes, dust, fatigue, fever, dysentery, malarial ulcers, and that great depression which comes of monotony indescribable, weariness unutterable, and loneliness' unspeakable.
And the greatest of these is loneliness.
Wonderful as the film was to the young and bizarre girl that I was, the book was far more enchanting. The allure of the French Foreign Legion from which there was no escape. Effectively, a band of White mercenaries. Toss in some good guys.
The good guys are three brothers , orphans brought up by an aunt whom they adore. A situation arises when a jewel goes missing and, to preserve the honour of the aunt, the brothers dash off into the blue yonder.
Alas, in the French Foreign Legion, a sadistic Sergeant Major makes their life hell. If I remember right, most of them die in the end and only one survives, or something of the sort. Immensely satisfactory. Also, this was the first book my son read on his own.
Should you find yourself drawn to this quaint but enthralling read, you can further feed your lust on the sequels:
Beau Sabreur
Beau Ideal
and
Good Gestes.
Racist or not, they’re fun to read and I think it is necessary to read such works to understand how much we absorbed of the mentality of those colonial brigands. Not only us, their victims, who, as a consequence, came to regard each other as filthy natives, but, also, the descendants of the brigands who act like the man from Barcelona in Fawlty Towers who knows nothing.
Of course, there’s more racism for you! But, laughter is the best way to move past stuff and banning things for being racist does zilch to improve the way people behave. It’s better things remain out in the open.
January 19, 2022
Este livro de guerra e aventura conta a história de três irmãos que após o roubo de uma valiosa safira chamada blue water, pertencente à sua tia Patrícia Brandon, fogem da Inglaterra e se alistam na Legião Estrangeira Francesa. Por que os irmãos fugiram e se juntaram à Legião Estrangeira? Como esta decisão se relaciona com o roubo da joia preciosa? Quem roubou a " Blue Water" ?
Os três irmãos serão colocados em um forte perdido no norte da Nigéria, onde o "le cafard", a loucura do deserto devido à inatividade expectante, acaba afetando todo o destacamento.
Honra, Heroísmo e loucura irão tomar conta da vida destes jovens.
O livro tem um final surpreendente!
Beau Geste teve três adaptações para o cinema (a mais conhecida é a de 1939, dirigida por William A. Wellman e estrelada por Gary Cooper) e uma minissérie da BBC.
A edição que li foi traduzida brilhantemente por Monteiro Lobato.
Os três irmãos serão colocados em um forte perdido no norte da Nigéria, onde o "le cafard", a loucura do deserto devido à inatividade expectante, acaba afetando todo o destacamento.
Honra, Heroísmo e loucura irão tomar conta da vida destes jovens.
O livro tem um final surpreendente!
Beau Geste teve três adaptações para o cinema (a mais conhecida é a de 1939, dirigida por William A. Wellman e estrelada por Gary Cooper) e uma minissérie da BBC.
A edição que li foi traduzida brilhantemente por Monteiro Lobato.
July 7, 2015
Beau Geste is pretty much the perfect book. It's more or less about some jewel thieves who flee to the French Foreign Legion to escape capture. Once in the middle of the desert, they find that a psychotic and sadistic commandant wants them dead so he can claim the jewel; a cabal of Mediterranean-types wants them dead so they can claim the jewel; the other Legionnaires want them dead so they can murder the psychotic commandant our heroes our too noble to mutiny against; and the Bedouins want them dead because atrocity is their bread and butter. There's also a "ghost fort" populated with dead men, a childhood spent blowing up toys, ancient ruins, heroic last stands, and cowboys versus bandits in the desert. It would be difficult to improve this book without bringing in dinosaurs.
When it was first published, in 1924, it must have been terrible. You would never guess the book was written in 1924--it reads like something from the 1870s. Presumably more knowledge of the political situation in Algeria than I possess could help someone pinpoint when events take place, but the attitude of the book, and all its characters, is unapologetically high Victorian. One expects a certain amount of casual racism in any book of imperialist adventure, and, indeed, the Bedouins are murderous savages who delight in torture and exist only to massacre and plunder others; they are also ugly--but Beau Geste is perhaps unusual in the extent of its classist assumptions, in its utter contempt for any country situated south of France (cowards and thieves to a man), in an astonishingly overt anti-Semitism (mainly evinced in one long, painful, "humorous" scene featuring a poorly dressed Nosferatu-troll of a pawnbroker who is consistently referred to as a "child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), and in its self-admiration for the phlegm, vigor, and stoicism of the British upper classes. (Americans come in for a few digs, but overall they are cast in a positive, even admirable, light; although they uniformly speak in an American accent so replete with "authentic" slang that I can't make heads or tails of what they are saying.) In 1924 this would probably strike too close to home, and I'd be rolling my eyes so much that the book would be hard to read. But nowadays it just blends in with the innumerable prejudices of the past.
This is the kind of narrative that can only be forgiven in a pre-World War I world, in which violence is glorious, and everyone with, you know, a real job must make way for the Romantic escapades of a privileged few. This is true of most adventure stories: insofar as every adventure is an internal journey projected onto and reified in the external world. There's a certain amount of immaturity in believing the teleological fallacy: that the external world is "for" one's own maturing and growth, and the pathetic fallacy: that the external world can in any way reflect one's one emotional or mental states. There is, therefore something immature about adventures, and they work best in an adolescent context, or, if we are dealing with grown-ups, in the immaturity of the pre-modern world.
When it was first published, in 1924, it must have been terrible. You would never guess the book was written in 1924--it reads like something from the 1870s. Presumably more knowledge of the political situation in Algeria than I possess could help someone pinpoint when events take place, but the attitude of the book, and all its characters, is unapologetically high Victorian. One expects a certain amount of casual racism in any book of imperialist adventure, and, indeed, the Bedouins are murderous savages who delight in torture and exist only to massacre and plunder others; they are also ugly--but Beau Geste is perhaps unusual in the extent of its classist assumptions, in its utter contempt for any country situated south of France (cowards and thieves to a man), in an astonishingly overt anti-Semitism (mainly evinced in one long, painful, "humorous" scene featuring a poorly dressed Nosferatu-troll of a pawnbroker who is consistently referred to as a "child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"), and in its self-admiration for the phlegm, vigor, and stoicism of the British upper classes. (Americans come in for a few digs, but overall they are cast in a positive, even admirable, light; although they uniformly speak in an American accent so replete with "authentic" slang that I can't make heads or tails of what they are saying.) In 1924 this would probably strike too close to home, and I'd be rolling my eyes so much that the book would be hard to read. But nowadays it just blends in with the innumerable prejudices of the past.
This is the kind of narrative that can only be forgiven in a pre-World War I world, in which violence is glorious, and everyone with, you know, a real job must make way for the Romantic escapades of a privileged few. This is true of most adventure stories: insofar as every adventure is an internal journey projected onto and reified in the external world. There's a certain amount of immaturity in believing the teleological fallacy: that the external world is "for" one's own maturing and growth, and the pathetic fallacy: that the external world can in any way reflect one's one emotional or mental states. There is, therefore something immature about adventures, and they work best in an adolescent context, or, if we are dealing with grown-ups, in the immaturity of the pre-modern world.
August 24, 2017
I had wanted to read this novel for several year now and finally took the plunge. I've watched the Gary Cooper movie several times and my remembrance of the film was brought back as I started to read the novel.
It's a wonderful adventure story with a bold mysterious beginning, an adventurous middle and a surprise revelation in the last two pages.
My rating is 4 stars and not 5 mostly because of the leisurely fashion the book begins and the language and punctuation used.
The beginning is told through a French Foreign Legion officer to a British soldier during a long train ride and aboard a ship as it sails to London. The language is very different from the way we speak today and I had to stick with it to make my way through.
The second section is told in the first person by John Geste and it goes to establish the character of the Geste brothers and the mystery that sends them to seek a life of adventure in the French Foreign Legion in the deserts of North Africa. This section is essentially a chamber drama with comedy and budding romance and then the mystery that sends the brothers on their quest.
The book really comes alive as John joins the French Foreign Legion and prepares to be shipped to North Africa. The dialogue here has an authentic ring to it even though it's phonetically spelled and must be examined carefully to understand what is being said. Buddy and Hank, two former Texas Rangers who become fast friends of the brothers are richly drawn and it's easy to imagine how they would sound to upper crust Englishmen.
This is a grand adventure filled with self sacrifice, loyalty and love. The story is famous and deservedly so and deserves a look from any interested reader. Just be prepared for the language and punctuation. There are exclamation points when a question mark would be appropriate and the use of quote marks is inconsistent. It is a look into a time gone by and well worth your time.
It's a wonderful adventure story with a bold mysterious beginning, an adventurous middle and a surprise revelation in the last two pages.
My rating is 4 stars and not 5 mostly because of the leisurely fashion the book begins and the language and punctuation used.
The beginning is told through a French Foreign Legion officer to a British soldier during a long train ride and aboard a ship as it sails to London. The language is very different from the way we speak today and I had to stick with it to make my way through.
The second section is told in the first person by John Geste and it goes to establish the character of the Geste brothers and the mystery that sends them to seek a life of adventure in the French Foreign Legion in the deserts of North Africa. This section is essentially a chamber drama with comedy and budding romance and then the mystery that sends the brothers on their quest.
The book really comes alive as John joins the French Foreign Legion and prepares to be shipped to North Africa. The dialogue here has an authentic ring to it even though it's phonetically spelled and must be examined carefully to understand what is being said. Buddy and Hank, two former Texas Rangers who become fast friends of the brothers are richly drawn and it's easy to imagine how they would sound to upper crust Englishmen.
This is a grand adventure filled with self sacrifice, loyalty and love. The story is famous and deservedly so and deserves a look from any interested reader. Just be prepared for the language and punctuation. There are exclamation points when a question mark would be appropriate and the use of quote marks is inconsistent. It is a look into a time gone by and well worth your time.
February 20, 2025
This story begins with the rather wordy description of the finding of the mysterious French Foreign Legion's Fort Zinderneuf, (known to many of us thanks to Charles Schultz and Snoopy) in North Africa. Then it switches to England to give the background of the three Geste brothers, Michael, called Beau, his twin Digby and their younger brother John, who narrates the rest of the book. The three boys and two female cousins are being raised by their Aunt Lady Patricia Brandon. Lady Brandon's husband isn't good for much and generally does his wife a favor by staying away from home. He has, however, gifted her with the valuable Blue Water sapphire, and it's the theft of this jewel and the honor of the brothers that drives them to join the legion and takes them to Zinderneuf.
This is an old-fashioned story of honorable men who sacrifice themselves for the good of others and of high spirits sometimes disguised by higher ideals. Unfortunately for me I couldn't help thinking there could have been other ways to the same ends, and that their lives were thrown away for a silly reason. It took me "forever" to read this because I mostly didn't find it exciting but frustrating. What a waste of good people! So, though I can see why some would enjoy this story, it didn't hit the spot for me.
This is an old-fashioned story of honorable men who sacrifice themselves for the good of others and of high spirits sometimes disguised by higher ideals. Unfortunately for me I couldn't help thinking there could have been other ways to the same ends, and that their lives were thrown away for a silly reason. It took me "forever" to read this because I mostly didn't find it exciting but frustrating. What a waste of good people! So, though I can see why some would enjoy this story, it didn't hit the spot for me.
August 20, 2011
Let me say that I am a huge fan of old adventure movies, one of my favourites has been Beau Geste (’39 with Gary Cooper, Robert Preston and Ray Milland). The source book has been on the “Get to read list” for a very long time, thanks to my wife’s thoughtful gift of a Nook last Christmas, I’ve been slowly popping off some of the classics on that list.
If you have a Nook or a Kindle, I would advise you don’t get the lowest price version of this classic. The text was so filled with typos it was difficult to determine whether I was reading French (which I neither speak nor read) or some horrendous spelling typo errors. Frankly, it the copy was so bad that it really diminished my enjoyment of the story.
On its own the story is terrific! It was all that I could ask for. Being as familiar with the story as I am, the novel still held surprises for me.
If you have a Nook or a Kindle, I would advise you don’t get the lowest price version of this classic. The text was so filled with typos it was difficult to determine whether I was reading French (which I neither speak nor read) or some horrendous spelling typo errors. Frankly, it the copy was so bad that it really diminished my enjoyment of the story.
On its own the story is terrific! It was all that I could ask for. Being as familiar with the story as I am, the novel still held surprises for me.
September 29, 2011
hello
OH where
is Max Perkins when you need him
wordy slog
adventure story
far too much dead space
nothing nothing is happening
does not age well
see the Gary Cooper movie
its much better than the book
yours truly
mac
OH where
is Max Perkins when you need him
wordy slog
adventure story
far too much dead space
nothing nothing is happening
does not age well
see the Gary Cooper movie
its much better than the book
yours truly
mac
March 15, 2016
Great book, very sad though.
May 28, 2025
Good prose, good characterization, good world building, good story and a theme.
This is a boy's own adventure (and apparently I'm still a boy). A missing gem, honesty and self sacrifice. A ripping yarn.
This is a boy's own adventure (and apparently I'm still a boy). A missing gem, honesty and self sacrifice. A ripping yarn.
October 1, 2023
This was a lot of fun as an adventure. Oddly parts of it were almost like an exercise in moral theology of what to do when all your choices are bad. Although framed as what to do as a gentleman.
April 3, 2015
This is one of those books I have wanted to read since I was in Junior High School. I loved the movie with Gary Cooper that I saw as a kid and have since rediscovered it on DVD and watch it periodically. The book did not disappoint although the beginning dragged on a little and although I knew what was going on having seen the movie I feel it would be a bit unintelligible for someone reading this for the first time and not knowing the story.
The story is "the" classic story of the French Foreign Legion. The idealized notion in boys of "running away" to join the Foreign Legion was still a fanciful daydream for boys when I was young. This story is the epitomy of that as well as the ideals of honor and chivalry.
The story revolves around the relationship of 3 inseparable brothers, Michael (Beau), Digby (his twin), and John Geste. They are orphans raised by their Aunt Patricia at Brandon Abbas (think Downton Abbey). Aunt Patricia's ne'er do well husband, Hector is never home as he galavants around the world on hunting trips and chasing women and spending the family fortune. The fortune is epitomized in their famous "Blue Water" Sapphire which has been appraised at 30,000 pounds. The "Blue Water" is stolen one evening and only 8 people were present at the time who could have stolen it: Beau, Digby, John or their cousins Isobel, Claudia, and Augustus as well as a Chaplain and Aunt Patricia herself. Shortly thereafter Beau leaves a letter stating that he stole the "Blue Water" and disappears, followed shortly by Digby and then John all professing to have stolen the famous Sapphire. They all end up joining the French Foreign Legion. Their adventures in the Legion make up the latter part of the book and it is where the story really takes off. There are battles, treachery, heroes and villains and I agree with many others who have read this book that this is a classic adventure written for boys (or the boy in all of us). It's a romance, a mystery, and an adventure classic. The mystery of the disappearane of the "Blue Water" sapphire does not get answered until the very last page but you are so taken up in the story that it is almost an afterthought to put the finishing touches on this entertaining tale.
BTW the edition I read is attached here and I do not recommend this edition if you can find a better one. The printing is very small and even with glasses it was a chore at times to read more than a few pages at a time.
The story is "the" classic story of the French Foreign Legion. The idealized notion in boys of "running away" to join the Foreign Legion was still a fanciful daydream for boys when I was young. This story is the epitomy of that as well as the ideals of honor and chivalry.
The story revolves around the relationship of 3 inseparable brothers, Michael (Beau), Digby (his twin), and John Geste. They are orphans raised by their Aunt Patricia at Brandon Abbas (think Downton Abbey). Aunt Patricia's ne'er do well husband, Hector is never home as he galavants around the world on hunting trips and chasing women and spending the family fortune. The fortune is epitomized in their famous "Blue Water" Sapphire which has been appraised at 30,000 pounds. The "Blue Water" is stolen one evening and only 8 people were present at the time who could have stolen it: Beau, Digby, John or their cousins Isobel, Claudia, and Augustus as well as a Chaplain and Aunt Patricia herself. Shortly thereafter Beau leaves a letter stating that he stole the "Blue Water" and disappears, followed shortly by Digby and then John all professing to have stolen the famous Sapphire. They all end up joining the French Foreign Legion. Their adventures in the Legion make up the latter part of the book and it is where the story really takes off. There are battles, treachery, heroes and villains and I agree with many others who have read this book that this is a classic adventure written for boys (or the boy in all of us). It's a romance, a mystery, and an adventure classic. The mystery of the disappearane of the "Blue Water" sapphire does not get answered until the very last page but you are so taken up in the story that it is almost an afterthought to put the finishing touches on this entertaining tale.
BTW the edition I read is attached here and I do not recommend this edition if you can find a better one. The printing is very small and even with glasses it was a chore at times to read more than a few pages at a time.
December 5, 2014
Beau Geste
is undeniably my favourite novel: it has mystery, action, adventure, a little romance, and a wealth of eminently likeable characters.
It's a 'Foreign Legion Story' (the first, and arguably the best, in fact); so there's a lot of content relating to the habits and general exploits of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. There are also rather wonderful descriptions of Arab cafés in Sidi; the various peoples encountered on the boys' journey from raw recruits to soldiers at an outpost in the desert; and other interesting places and occurrences.
All three Gestes are very easy to get emotionally attached to - especially Beau and Digby, as John loves them very dearly and they are seen primarily through his eyes. Several other characters are likely to work their way into your heart: the prime examples of this are Hank and Buddy. If you feel that they're a poor representation of Americans (apparently some people do, though I like them more than most Americans I've encountered in either reality or fiction), I would direct you towards Beau Sabreur and Beau Idéal to see exactly how nuanced Wren is capable of making American characters - eg. Otis Vanbrugh.
Wren's writing style is one I adore, but I have friends who've found themselves rather put off by its density. My only advice to people of that opinion is to persevere - once you reach the part narrated by John, you stop worrying about such things.
Reading multiple times is worth the effort, as one notices new points in the story every time. The sequels are also splendid: Beau Sabreur provides information on the fate of and Beau Idéal puts a really painful twist on the story as a whole by revealing (I cried at that development). There's also some more news of the splendid Henri de Beaujolais (the titular 'beau sabreur'), who turns out to be an extremely interesting cove; and of an admirer of Isobel's who goes out to relocate something extremely precious for her. Ripping yarns, both of them.
There are two other books in the series - Spanish Maine and Good Gestes which I have yet to read, although I shall do so as soon as I can.
It's a 'Foreign Legion Story' (the first, and arguably the best, in fact); so there's a lot of content relating to the habits and general exploits of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. There are also rather wonderful descriptions of Arab cafés in Sidi; the various peoples encountered on the boys' journey from raw recruits to soldiers at an outpost in the desert; and other interesting places and occurrences.
All three Gestes are very easy to get emotionally attached to - especially Beau and Digby, as John loves them very dearly and they are seen primarily through his eyes. Several other characters are likely to work their way into your heart: the prime examples of this are Hank and Buddy. If you feel that they're a poor representation of Americans (apparently some people do, though I like them more than most Americans I've encountered in either reality or fiction), I would direct you towards Beau Sabreur and Beau Idéal to see exactly how nuanced Wren is capable of making American characters - eg. Otis Vanbrugh.
Wren's writing style is one I adore, but I have friends who've found themselves rather put off by its density. My only advice to people of that opinion is to persevere - once you reach the part narrated by John, you stop worrying about such things.
Reading multiple times is worth the effort, as one notices new points in the story every time. The sequels are also splendid: Beau Sabreur provides information on the fate of and Beau Idéal puts a really painful twist on the story as a whole by revealing (I cried at that development). There's also some more news of the splendid Henri de Beaujolais (the titular 'beau sabreur'), who turns out to be an extremely interesting cove; and of an admirer of Isobel's who goes out to relocate something extremely precious for her. Ripping yarns, both of them.
There are two other books in the series - Spanish Maine and Good Gestes which I have yet to read, although I shall do so as soon as I can.
January 22, 2014
This is one of the most outstanding adventure novels of all time. My grandmother urged me in the strongest terms over the span of years. When I finally took the book from her library at the age of about 13 I went cartwheeling trough time and space to land headlong in a world of infuriating flies, insufferable heat and and raging sand storms.
Surrounded by mystery and intrigued, I lived in the world of Beau Geste for days, not wanting at all to return to the real world. Everything was real about this tale: the landscape, the characters and even the emotional involvement that was inevitable. I grew to love the characters, despise the villains, and allowed myself to be tortured by the maddening suspicion that surrounded others.
Years later I happened to fly across North Africa. Below me was the world of Beau Geste. I looked down from up high and knew that this timeless story will live for always. Stories involving lost treasure, family scandal and the quest to preserve honour were favourite themes during the times that the book was written. While the ending of the story comes as a complete surprise, the style and nature of the mystery was typical in a Victorian way. And yet, in a world full of books along similar themes, Beau Geste became a timeless novel that still outshines many of the very best that the modern era has come to offer.
No young child with a taste for adventure should ever grow up without reading Beau Geste.
Surrounded by mystery and intrigued, I lived in the world of Beau Geste for days, not wanting at all to return to the real world. Everything was real about this tale: the landscape, the characters and even the emotional involvement that was inevitable. I grew to love the characters, despise the villains, and allowed myself to be tortured by the maddening suspicion that surrounded others.
Years later I happened to fly across North Africa. Below me was the world of Beau Geste. I looked down from up high and knew that this timeless story will live for always. Stories involving lost treasure, family scandal and the quest to preserve honour were favourite themes during the times that the book was written. While the ending of the story comes as a complete surprise, the style and nature of the mystery was typical in a Victorian way. And yet, in a world full of books along similar themes, Beau Geste became a timeless novel that still outshines many of the very best that the modern era has come to offer.
No young child with a taste for adventure should ever grow up without reading Beau Geste.
June 6, 2013
Quite simply one of the finest novels ever created. It is so utterly brilliant, exciting, amusing and emotionally poignant that other books appear as if they are mere newspaper comics in comparison. The characters are so wonderfully detailed, from the charming and sweet Isobel to the lumbering, humorous Hank. Tales like this remind one of how great and noble European Man once was; despair and anger seem to be the only appropriate reactions to his fall.
If I could only read one novel for the rest of my life, it very well may be Beau Geste.
Goodbye, I'm off to join the French Foreign Legion!
If I could only read one novel for the rest of my life, it very well may be Beau Geste.
Goodbye, I'm off to join the French Foreign Legion!
May 31, 2013
I have the good fortune to have access to a great collection of classics from my late father-in-law's 1930s and '40s library. Beau Geste is one of the books I was a long time getting to, and that's a shame. What a read! I know it was made into a movie--maybe more than once, I'm not sure--and so if you watch classic movies you may have seen it. With an exotic setting that features the French Foreign Legion, how could it fail? But I promise that if the opening scene of Beau Geste doesn't grab you, you are hopeless as a reader of clever adventure stories.
February 2, 2018
I remember as a child watching Beau Geste, the ghostly dead men on the fort parapets and the viking fortress. I had not realised what a frolicking good adventure/mystery book that Mr P.C. Wren had penned covering a stolen gemstone, the French Foreign Legion, mutiny, self sacrifice, loyalty and a happy ending. Some very dated language and views but the English men are all gentlemen and that is all that mattered in those days.
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