Crossword 260: Double Duties

Edmund Blair Leighton, Duty

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Duty is an important value with us here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender, as it was with the Victorians themselves; so this week’s puzzle, which concludes the website’s fifth year, is a cruciverbal Ode to Duty, just like Wordsworth’s, except that it’s a puzzle made up of crossed words rather than a poem..

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260-Double-Duties.puz

260-Double-Duties.pdf

260-Double-Duties (2 pages).pdf

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260 Double Duties

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A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal; another appears Friday, November 18, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Novel 260: William Edward Norris, Marcia (1890)

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A woman behaves badly as wife and mother.

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Here is another novel by the great W.E. Norris, for whom see Novels 002, 054, 104, 156, and 209.

“Few novelists of Mr. Norris’s fertility proceed from good to better.  But it is a fact that in Marcia he has reached what is so far his greatest effect in art. . . .  Never has Mr. Norris been in better form; never has he been so acute and observant; never has he employed his really admirable convention to better purpose. . . .  The style is smooth and equable without being monotonous and fatiguing, and almost every page contains some remark which, though it may not have the sting or the bite, has more than the veracity and charm, of most epigrams.” National Observer, December 20, 1890

“The book strikes us as one of the cleverest which Mr. Norris has yet produced, though, until towards the end, hardly the most agreeable.  The study of every-day people which it contains is so good as to be rendered painful during the first two volumes by its very excellence; for the men and women are so like to life, that they bring home to one the pettinesses and unworthinesses of human nature with disagreeable force. . . .  Fortunately, however, the third volume makes amends.” Spectator, January 17, 1891

A somewhat contrasting view:

It is “more readable than many of the current novels, but it is not up to the author’s standard.  It is dragged out by the introduction of a multitude of petty details which do not add to the interest of the story in the least.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 1891

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/marcia01norr

v.2 https://archive.org/details/marcia02norr

v.3 https://archive.org/details/marcia03norr

Crossword 259: Results Are Trickling In

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Next Tuesday is Election Day here in the U.S.A.!  So here’s a puzzle for the occasion, as the polls close, and this candidate leads by that margin while we await those precincts, and the television personalities holler in front of their multi-colored maps, and the pundits speculate and explain, and the portentous election-day music plays, and the garish election-day graphics swirl, until the wise voter unplugs everything and retires to bed with a Victorian novel, content to read the results in tomorrow’s paper.

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259-Results-Are-Trickling-In.puz

259-Results-Are-Trickling-In.pdf

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259 Results Are Trickling In

Novel 259: Bithia Mary Croker, Married or Single? (1895)

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A boarding-school pupil-teacher, abandoned by her father and compromised by her jealous employer, is rescued by a poor young barrister.

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Here is another novel by Croker, for whom see Novels 013, 073, 129, and 183.

“Mrs. Croker is always a lively and spirited writer. . . .  There are passages of natural humour and also of pathos here to hold the reader’s attention.” Academy, January 8, 1896

Some more or less contrasting views:

“The human nature in the book is wrong from the beginning to end. . . .  But if you can get over the utterly false psychology, the bare outline of the tale as given here will show you that there is incident enough to make a lively story.” Bookman, February 1896

The heroine is in “a fine situation, possessing unlimited possibilities, possibilities which would weigh heavily on the mind of a conscientious young author; but they sit lightly on Mr. Croker, and he canters ahead untroubled by the claim of subtleties, for which we are grateful, judging his power from the display he makes of it in the story.  Mr. Croker writes in an undistinguished, not to say common, style, and the three volumes show no artistic merit whatever.  But he is not pretentious, and he is not dull, and though we are not dying to read another of his novels, we did read this one right through without wanting to stop.” Saturday Review, March 14, 1896

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/marriedorsingle00crok

Crossword 258: Ghostracized

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Why should ghosts be traditionally associated with aversion and fear?  I’d love to encounter one, and thereby disprove to myself the seeming probability of personal annihilation.  So if you know any ghosts, please send them my way; or at least try to gather and pass on to me any tips they might be willing to share as to posthumous survival.

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258-Ghostracized.puz

258-Ghostracized.pdf

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258 Ghostracized

Novel 258, Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, The Professor’s Legacy (1905)

George Goodwin Kilburne, A Young Woman at a Piano

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A wealthy English scientist is appointed guardian to his late German collaborator’s beautiful daughter, who is otherwise at the mercy of a scheming aunt.

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Here is another novel by Sidgwick (see Novels 082, 142, 200), vivid and well crafted as usual.

“Reticent and light of touch as our author is, you are never allowed to forget how deep are the depths of passion that lie beneath this humorous, shrewd surface-play.  ‘The Professor’s Legacy,’ in fact, is one of the most interesting and well-told novels of the season, and it should be one of the most popular.” Academy, October 28, 1905

“The tale is a good one in its quiet way, told with much humor and much excellent character study.  The scenes too, shifting from a German university town to a country place in England, afford an opportunity for varied pictures of life and manners.” New York Times, November 25, 1905

“Her sharply contrasted and clear-cut portraits of various social types are done with admirable verve.” Spectator, December 15, 1905

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/professorslegac00sidggoog

Crossword 257: Unqualified

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We’ve been having more labor trouble here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender.  The new hires are sadly unqualified.  One of them crossed the name of a little-known actor with the name of another little-known actor.  We had to “let him go.”  Another crossed a Star Wars character’s name with a Star Trek character’s name.  We fired her too.  But there’s only so much one scrappy little crossword maker can do.  The same kind of thing is happening everywhere. Standards throughout the industry have grown ever more lax, degrading the entire crossword labor pool.

And meanwhile, what about the millions of desperate solvers who have turned to crosswords as a last resort—to stave off dementia, or addiction, or trauma, or boredom?  We cannot fail them!  We need national standards, a system of certification and licensure, and a well-trained enforcement arm, and we need them now!

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257-Unqualified.puz

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257 Unqualified

Novel 257: Robert Grant, The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl (1880)

William Merritt Chase, Portrait of Miss Frances V. Earle

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A New York heiress is courted by various young men.

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Robert Grant (1852-1940) wrote some fifteen novels, of which the last appeared in 1931.  This was his first, a light-hearted representation of the sad quandaries facing a fashionable young woman of the period.

“Mr. Grant writes without affectation, and appears to know New York society well; his book is decidedly attractive and lively.” Athenaeum, October 29, 1881

“The naïve account which the young lady gives of her triumphs is exceedingly amusing. . . . Very lifelike and amusing are her incidental sketches of the four gentlemen who specially honour her by their preference.” Spectator, November 5, 1881

A contrasting view:

“It is a long time since we met with a book—if, indeed, this is not entirely by itself—which credited our fair American cousins with so much vulgarity and so many little petty intrigues.” Academy, February 26, 1881

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/confessionsoffri00gran

Crossword 256: Think Ahead

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Think ahead!  Don’t be caught unawares—plan for every contingency!  What about tomorrow, next year, ten years from now?  In twenty years, you’ll be twenty years older.  In seventy years, you’ll be seventy years older—or, probably, dead!  In two hundred years you and everybody who remembers you will be dead!  In five billion years the earth will be an empty cinder!

Well maybe, instead of thinking ahead, you should just do this crossword.

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256-Think-Ahead.puz

256-Think-Ahead.pdf

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256 Think Ahead

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A crossword of mine appears Monday, October 17, in Universal Crossword; another appears Thursday, October 20, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Novel 256: Lucy Clifford, The Dingy House at Kensington (1881)

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A virtuous young lady has two lovers and a miserly father.

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Sophia Lucy Jane Clifford turned to fiction to support herself after the death of her husband.  She published several successful novels under her married name (Mrs. W.K. Clifford); this one makes up for its lovers’-misunderstanding plot with its excellent style and interesting characters.

“Character forms the main interest. . . . Despite crude and ineffective passages, it repays perusal.” Spectator, October 29, 1881

“The chief charm of the tale lies in the character of the heroine, one of the most natural girls with whom recent fiction has made us acquainted. . . . The author possesses a lively style, keen observation, considerable powers of description, and a decided turn for epigram.” Athenaeum, November 11, 1881

The “chief incident on which the story turns is both feeble and improbable; but, for all that, The Dingy House at Kensington is a very good novel.” Saturday Review, December 17, 1881

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014733351

Crossword 255: New Replacements

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Does the phrase “new replacements” seem redundant to you?  It doesn’t to us here at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender!  A while ago some of our workers were threatening to form a union and bargain with us for a living wage.  We tried to explain that the annual earnings of the average crossword constructor wouldn’t keep a small dog alive through a mild winter—to no avail.  So of course we had to fire them all and hire replacements.  One of this new group did some research and discovered that we’d mentioned the NRA in some crosswords—not favorably, of course, but still.  They quit en masse, claiming they felt unsafe.  So now we’ve hired some new replacements.

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255-New-Replacements.puz

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255 New Replacements

Novel 255: James Payn, A Confidential Agent (1880)

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A frustrated inventor is unhappy in his job as jeweler’s agent.

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Here is another novel by Payn (see Novels 011, 081, 211), who is as entertaining as ever.

Payn “relieves the artifice of his stories with a good deal of human nature, generally of the genial kind, and is gifted with humour of the irrepressible order.” Spectator, November 13, 1880

“Mr. Payn’s fertility of invention and freshness of style are wonderful.” Saturday Review, November 27, 1880

“A well contrived story, full of incident, and sufficiently intricate to mystify the reader.” Athenaeum, December 11, 1880

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/aconfidentialag03payngoog/

v.2 https://archive.org/details/aconfidentialag02payngoog

v.3 https://archive.org/details/aconfidentialag00payngoog

Crossword 254: Seeking Adventure

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Are you seeking adventure, daring solver?  You’ve come to the right place!  You’ll find it in the attached puzzle!—that is, if  you redefine the word “seeking” (dividing it into two parts and interpreting the first part as a homophone), and apply the result to common phrases so as to arrive at new phrases having to do with things like carpet installation and insurance.  And if that doesn’t sound like adventure to you, well, maybe you haven’t come to the right place after all.

Speaking of C-kings, that’s the future Charles II at the knee of Charles I in this week’s painting; and here’s a timely bonus question for you: who is Charles II’s brother’s daughter’s cousin’s cousin’s second-cousin’s son’s grandson’s son’s brother’s niece’s son’s son’s son’s brother’s daughter’s eldest son?

(This week’s crossword, and the post introducing it, have been much improved by generous solver Charles Montpetit. Any genealogical miscalculations are, however, my own.)

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254-Seeking-Adventure.puz

254-Seeking-Adventure.pdf

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254 Seeking Adventure

Novel 254: Annie Thomas, Called to Account (1867)

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Three couples question their mutual commitments.

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Annie Thomas (1838-1918) wrote some 70 novels in 40 years and became perhaps the most critically vilified of all Victorian novelists.  Referring to her routinely by her married name, Mrs. Pender Cudlip (as though they scorned to be taken in by her title pages), the reviewers excoriated her twice yearly for her supposed outrages against style and morality.  “The English is slipshod and the story uninteresting, . . . the whole tone is petty, coarse, and vulgar throughout,” said The Academy of  A Narrow Escape (1875); “Two as worthless volumes as we have read for some time,” said The Athenaeum of The Maskleynes (1875); “There is certainly no pleasure, and we cannot think there is any profit, in reading a novel of this kind, it is so thoroughly cynical in conception and execution,” said The Spectator, of Blotted Out (1876); and so on, for novel after novel, year after year.  This one appeared early in her career, before the pattern was established; in fact its reviews were fairly positive—and well deserved: its representation of the ambivalence of several of its characters toward each other is subtle and convincing.

“The characters being real, the reader will find his interest powerfully excited.” Spectator, June 15, 1867

“There is a lightness of touch, a delicacy of finish, and a general refinement which makes this novel pleasanter than its predecessors. . . . The merit of the book consists in the interest turning upon the play of character rather than incidents.” Athenaeum, July 6, 1867

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003EB68#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-772%2C-128%2C3009%2C2543

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004223A#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-764%2C-127%2C2983%2C2521

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003EB6E#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-778%2C-125%2C2949%2C2492

Crossword 253: Heart’s Ease

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Heart’s ease!  It’s a purple flower!  It’s an Elizabethan song!  It’s a Victorian novel! (Novel 003) And now, at last, it’s a crossword puzzle! As Shakespeare puts it:

When griping grief the heart doth toss,
And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
Then puzzles made of words that cross
With speedy help do lend redress.

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253-Heart's Ease.puz

253-Heart's Ease.pdf

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253 Heart’s Ease

Novel 253: Harriet Jane Trelawny, Sister (1879)

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An unselfish young lady tends her alcoholic father, comatose mother, and three younger sisters.

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Harriet Jane Trelawny (1821-1879) published only one novel, this one, just before her death in her late fifties. It’s a pity she didn’t start earlier or live longer, as this is a very good novel, in its quiet way, even if, like last week’s, it features that durable Victorian type, the self-sacrificing sister.

“It is a domestic story of a superior kind. . . .  The language is pure, and this is the more satisfactory because the narrative is not stiff and awkward, but has the freedom too often secured at a sacrifice of grace, if not correctness. . . .  The author . . . can reproduce the natural manner, expressions, acts, and expedients of ordinary men and women.” Athenaeum, October 25, 1879

A contrasting view:

“Sister is by no means an ill-meant effort, and shows a good deal of misdirected cleverness.  The author has unfortunately tried to copy two bad models at the same time—the garrison-flirtation novel and monster-of-self-sacrifice old-maid story.” Academy, December 6, 1879

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v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_000000032AE4#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1102%2C-126%2C3668%2C2518

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_000000032AEA#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1097%2C-125%2C3630%2C2493

Crossword 252: Sad Partings

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Everything must come to an end, dear solver—the world, today’s crossword, even this sentence. . . .

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252-Sad-Partings.puz

252-Sad-Partings.pdf

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252 Sad Partings

Novel 252: Isabel Goldsmid, ’Tis an Old Tale, and Often Told (1839)

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A virtuous young lady, engaged to one man, falls in love with another.

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Isabel Goldsmid wrote two brief books—this one in 1839, and a Christmas story, “Shadows and Sunshine,” in 1850.  The latter begins “Christmas!—hallowed Church, blessed home festival!”—and so it would seem unlikely that its author is the Isabel Goldsmid (1788-1860) who married her first cousin, Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a leading banker and social reformer known among other things for advancing the cause of Judaism in Victorian England. But I haven’t found any traces of any other Isabel Goldsmid.  The novel offers a first-person narrator (introduced by a censorious editor) who oddly combines romantic sentiment and detached amusement.

“The single volume before us has many claims to our indulgence. . . The tale is  a boná fide love-story, feelingly told.” Literary Gazette, March 23, 1839

“The subject chosen by our authoress . . . is as old as the world itself . . . yet the handling and the general arrangement evince an original genius.  There is a quiet humour and shrewd observation in many parts which speak of an acquaintance with varied society, and the power of turning opportunities to account.  That important social qualification, good-humoured satire, appears to be her leading characteristic, yet there is much of real feeling touchingly expressed.” Morning Post, April 2, 1839

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

“The incidents . . . are hackneyed, but the authoress has wisely kept clear of all the clap-traps of superhuman generosity, and impossible reconciliations.  She has painted life, not exactly as it is, but that portion of it to be found in the vale of tears and shadows.” Athenaeum, April 2, 1839

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https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014598204

Crossword 251: I Recycle

John William Godward, The Mirror

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That’s right!  I recycle!  I separate cans, bottles, and paper.  I break down the boxes and I tear the labels off the cans.  I even tear the little plastic windows off the business envelopes and the pasta boxes.  And, like other people who use yard signs, bumper stickers, banners, tee shirts, and other such means to announce their possession of basic virtues, I thought everybody would be glad to know this about me.  You are glad, aren’t you? Of course. So here’s a crossword for you, in my honor.

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251-I-Recycle.puz

251-I-Recycle.pdf

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251 I Recycle

Novel 251: Margaret Agnes Paul, Dorothy (1856)

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A self-willed girl faces adversity.

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Here is another novel by Paul (see Novels 025, 136, 198), featuring as usual carefully realized scenes of ordinary life.

“A pleasant, graceful book, written moreover in an earnest spirit.” Examiner, January 5, 1856

“A good and agreeable specimen of this kind of story; with sufficient variety of interesting occurences and well-drawn persons, a knowledge of society if not of life, and an unhackneyed moral.” Spectator, January 5, 1856

A (slightly) contrasting view:

“‘Dorothy’ is an excellent little story.  There are no exciting incidents nor highly-wrought sentiments, but a great deal of excellent delineation of character. . . .  A little more dash and vivacity and a greater variety of incident would be desirable in the author's future stories.  ‘Dorothy’ is too still and uneventful to interest the general reader as much as the talent it displays merits.” Athenaeum, January 26, 1856

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014184126