Book description
I> that wars tumultuously both with his ideals as an artist and his
love for the lion-couraged social reformer, Elizabeth. It is between
Godfrey's reckless urges and Elizabeth's purity that truth must
ultimately lie. And in working out this conflict of opposites, the
story, though placed in an age whose fixed moral structure contrasts so
forcibly with our permissiveness, has a meaning for today. Here are
'scenes from Victorian life' that will not be quickly forgotten. There
are vignettes of the elegance of the upper side, as ornately formal in
its social routines as in the sheer magnificence of its horses and
carriages and opulent settings. There is the underside with its
appealing sexuality, violence and open putrescence. There is, above all,
the mingling of the two in a brilliantly brought to life picture or the
whole rich, riotous, bawdy assembly of a Victorian Derby Day. It is
compulsive story-telling, handled with the cool detachment and lucidity
which in other fields have brought H. R.F. Keating a wide readership.
This novel, set in Victorian London in its heyday, presents a picture,
both horrific and authentic, of the 'underside' of life in the first
city of the world. It tells of Godfrey Mann, a young painter, who has
access to the golden world of privilege and yet is possessed by a
compelling sexual drive towards the hidden squalor and darkness below, a
nostalgie de la boue<
I> that wars tumultuously both with his ideals as an
artist and his love for the lion-couraged social reformer, Elizabeth.
It is between Godfrey's reckless urges and Elizabeth's purity that
truth must ultimately lie. And in working out this conflict of
opposites, the story, though placed in an age whose fixed moral
structure contrasts so forcibly with our permissiveness, has a meaning
for today. Here are 'scenes from Victorian life' that will not be
quickly forgotten. There are vignettes of the elegance of the upper
side, as ornately formal in its social routines as in the sheer
magnificence of its horses and carriages and opulent settings. There
is the underside with its appealing sexuality, violence and open
putrescence. There is, above all, the mingling of the two in a
brilliantly brought to life picture or the whole rich, riotous, bawdy
assembly of a Victorian Derby Day. It is compulsive story-telling,
handled with the cool detachment and lucidity which in other fields
have brought H. R.F. Keating a wide readership. This novel, set in
Victorian London in its heyday, presents a picture, both horrific and
authentic, of the 'underside' of life in the first city of the world.
It tells of Godfrey Mann, a young painter, who has access to the
golden world of privilege and yet is possessed by a compelling sexual
drive towards the hidden squalor and darkness below, a nostalgie de
la boue<
