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The Namesake by Cyril Walter Hodges

Mar18

Alfred the Great (in this book) at Stonehenge: “I like to come here, because among these stones I know that I am standing where other men like me have stood and thought the same thoughts as I, a thousand years before I was born, and where others like me will stand likewise after I am dead. This place is like Memory itself, turned to stone, and Memory was given to us by God to make us different from the animals. . . . Every man is a part of the bridge between the past and the future. Whatever helps him feel this more strongly is good. By feeling this, God gives us to know for sure that we are not beasts and do not die as the beasts die.”

I watched the BBC/Netflix television series, The Last Kingdom, based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories series of novels. I haven’t read Cornwell’s novels, and I don’t really recommend The Last Kingdom, although it was enthralling. It was much too violent and had too much sexual content for my tastes. Nevertheless, aside from the sex, the story was probably true to the times. It was a violent and bloody time in ye olde Wessex.

Anyway, the TV series inspired me to read more about Alfred, and a bit of fiction to fill in the gaps in the heroic saga between battles and kingly decrees, is in order. In The Namesake, Alfred is just beginning his reign in Wessex and just beginning his long fight to unite England and drive out the invading Danes.

The title refers to the narrator of most of the story, a young boy who has lost one of his legs in a Danish incursion and whose name happens to be Alfred, just like the king. This happy coincidence, along with a rather mystical vision that that the boy has, both serve to form a connection between peasant and king that lasts through battles and sickness and captivity among the Danes and eventually ends in the boy’s becoming a scribe to King Alfred.

The story is not as fast-paced as modern readers might be accustomed to, but it does have a lot of battles and exciting adventures. Fans of the books of G.A. Henty, when they have exhausted that author’s copious number of novels, would probably enjoy this story about a boy in the time of Alfred the Great of Wessex. (Did Henty write about Alfred the Great in any of his novels?) There is a sequel to The Namesake, called The Marsh King, which I would like to read. I assume the title refers to Alfred’s time in exile, a time spent hiding from the Danes in the marshes of Somerset.

Author and illustrator C. Walter Hodges was born on this date, March 18th, in 1909. In addition to this book about King Alfred the Great, Mr. Hodges illustrated three of the Landmark history series books: The Flight and Adventures of Charles II, Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, and Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theater. According to the author bio in my copy of The Namesake, Mr. Hodges once said that he wished to “continue to the end of his life in the peaceful occupation of an illustrator.” Instead, he became an author as well as an illustrator, and readers are well-served by his decision to do so.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens, again

Jan22

I finished reading Bleak House this afternoon, and although David Copperfield is still my favorite among the works of Mr. Dickens that I have read, I must say that Bleak House is quite a story. It’s a fog-infused novel, fog throughout being the sign and symbol of the people in the story and their lives as they are caught up in the fog of a very complicated and never-ending lawsuit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

“The lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s about a will and the trusts under a will — or it was once. It’s about nothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.”

It’s Shakespeare who wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” as a halfway joking solution to the country’s problems. But Dickens must have had the idea in mind when he wrote such an indictment of the damage that being caught up in the system of law and courts and chancery can do to a man’s or woman’s soul, mind, finances, and health. Several characters fall victim to the vicissitudes of the courts and of lawsuits, while others manage to hold themselves above and at least somewhat untouched by the fog and snare of placing their hopes in a successful settlement of Jarndyce and Jarndyce or any other interminable lawsuit.

“In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.”

This double narrative echoes the many double or contrasting characters in the novel as well as the divided pairs that appear throughout the story. As I’ve already noted, the irresponsible, uncaring Skimpole is a contrast to the extremely passionate Mr. Boythorn, a butterfly versus a bull. Timid, balding, and generous, Mr. Snagsby is the opposite of the grasping, greedy opportunist, Mr. Smallweed. Mrs. Jellyby neglects her home, her husband, and her children while she spends all of her time and energy trying to care for the natives far-off Borrioboola; Her daughter Caddy Jellyby acquires a father-in-law who neglects his responsibilities by focusing on himself and his own comfort and “deportment”. Mr Jarndyce, Ester Summerson’s guardian, refuses to pay any attention the lawsuit that carries his name, but Richard, another party in the suit, becomes so obsessed with Jarndyce and Jarndyce that he loses his money and his health worrying over it. Sir Leicester Dedlock has a “family of antiquity and importance” and is said to “always contemplate his own greatness” while the poor, illiterate orphan boy Jo habitually answers any inquiry made to him with the words, “I don’t know nothink.”
Lady Dedlock is rich, bored and unhappy while Esther Summerson is relatively poor, busy, productive, and generally content. I could go on, but if you read the book you will have fun finding more contrasts between the various characters.

And what are these contrasting and complementing characters supposed to teach us? Maybe we can learn that we all run the risk of going to extremes, of our best qualities turning us into caricatures and even exaggerated hypocrites or immoderate fools. Passion is good, but too much passion about everything looks foolish (Mr. Boythorn). Charity begins at home. Good deportment or manners is less important than a good heart. Taking care of business is good, but immersing oneself in the ever-changing circumstances of a business over which one has no control (like the stock market) is a recipe for anxiety and depression. None of us really can say that we know everything or that we know “nothink”.

The contrast between Esther and Lady Dedlock says something different; it’s not about moderation as much as it is about the difference between a “good woman” and a bad one. Is there really much difference between Esther and Lady Dedlock? Is one perfect while the other is a classic fallen woman? Or are they both just women who are trying to make the best of their own circumstances, women who have been molded by the past and their own upbringing, and who make the best choices that they can make in a Victorian society/sinful world?

I’m definitely curious now to watch the miniseries, Bleak House. Since I know the basic plot of the story, I can watch for more contrasts in the TV version as well as looking to see how the actors, writers and TV producers characterize the various people in the novel. The Perfect Esther and the Ever-Generous Mr. Jarndyce as well as the Evil Mr. Tulkinghorn and the Sponging Skimpole may have more nuance and subtleties to their character in a televised production.

Well done, Mr. Dickens.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Jan15

I’m reading Bleak House by Dickens, finally. Partially inspired by the BBC TV show Dickensian, I am about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I thought I’d capture some thoughts here before they escape into the ether.

Bleak House is an odd book. One of the oddities occurs in almost the exact middle of the 740 page novel, when one of the ensemble of characters dies in a particularly weird and spectacular way: he spontaneously combusts. Spontaneous human combustion, or SHC, is a rare and controversial phenomenon in which a person catches fire and burns to death without an “apparent external source of ignition.” I thought maybe it was a Victorian superstition, but when I looked on Wikipedia there were recent reported cases cited of SHC from 2010 and 2017.I guess it’s a thing, although the explanations for the phenomenon vary.

Then, there are the characters who don’t catch on fire and turn into a pile of fat and ashes. They are odd, too. Dickens tends to use his characters to show the extremes of human personality. I’m also reading Karen Swallow Prior’s new book, On Reading Well, and she points out in her first chapter on prudence that “prudence, like all virtues is the moderation between the excess and deficiency of that virtue.” So, in Bleak House, Dickens has one character, Skimpole, who cares too little about his life, his livelihood, and his responsibilities. SKimpole is depicted as a childlike, carefree (or care-less) man who languishes about, happy and imperturbable, sponging off his friends, while sometimes being upbraided or even jailed by creditors. None of this bothers Skimpole who is content to live without any visible means of support and without caring from where the invisible means of his support, his friends, derives.

Enter Mr. Boythorn, another friend of the family at Bleak House, who has the opposite problem from Skimpole: Boythorn cares too much. He makes bombastic, exaggerated speeches throughout the book about how he would like to deal with anyone who inconveniences him. He “would have the necks of every one of them wrung, and their skulls arranged in Surgeons’ Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession.” Or he breathes “such ferocious vows as were never breathed on paper before” as to his intentions in this or that. Both men, Skimpole and Boythorn, are afflicted with a vice, an excess or deficiency of passion, but neither is very effectual in the world at taking care of his own affairs. Skimpole does nothing to take care of himself or anyone else, and Boythorn makes fantastic, exaggerated claims, threats, and promises that can’t possibly be carried out in real life while calmly feeding his bird and again, doing nothing effectual.

Neither man has the prudence that Ms. Prior defines in her book: “Prudence is the love that chooses with sagacity between that which hinders it and that which helps,” or “the perfected ability to make decisions in accordance with reality.” Mr. Skimpole lives in a fantasy world where money, and possessions, and responsibilities are inconsequential and beneath his notice, while Mr. Boythorn cares deeply about anything and everything but lives in another kind of fantasy where words and threats make reality change and get better, the louder and more violent the threat the better. I have certainly been guilty, and seen others enjoy, both kinds of fantasy, to our joint detriment, although I think the passionate speechmaker is something closer to real prudence than the sponging dilettante. At least Mr. Boythorn has a house and pays his own bills.

More on Bleak House tomorrow.

Christmas on board the Susan Constant, Thames River, England, 1607

Dec1

Young David Warren, an orphan, is sailing before the mast on His Majesty’s Ship, the Susan Constant, bound for Virginia to start a new colony, Jamestown:

“Christmas Eve, they were still wind-bound in the Thames, but David had found his sea-legs. When the cook asked for his help, he swaggered to the galley.
‘Hungry, lad?’ the cook asked.
‘Yes!’ David declared. ‘And I can eat anything that holds still!’
The cook was roasting a pig for the gentlemen aft. Even the fo’c’s’le would have baked hash and steamed pudding with raisins.
From some hiding place the crews brought out holly and evergreens to decorate the ships. That night battle lanterns flared in the riggings and fiddlers played. The men on the Discovery began to sing ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’ David heard Jem’s voice rise, high and clear. The others stopped singing, and Jem finished the song alone.
Captain Newport lifted his trumpet and hailed the pinnace. ‘Have that man sing again!’
Jem’s voice, with a more piercing sweetness than David had ever heard before, began ‘The Coventry Carol.’
‘Lul-lay, Thou little tiny Child . . .’
Blindly, David turned and edged his way aft to a place of hiding in the shadow of the high poop. He crouched there, shuddering. All the Christmas Eves he had ever known, all his memories of his father, tore at his throat. He heard footsteps, and fought to stifle his sobs. He bit his hand until he tasted blood.”

from This Dear-Bought Land by Jean Latham.

The Royal Rabbits of London by Santa and Simon Sebag Montefiore

Oct16

Royal Rabbits suffers from being somewhat cliche-ridden, with Hallmark greeting card dialog being thrown around like popcorn, but it definitely has its moments. For instance, the Queen’s corgi dogs aka The Pack, who are the Royal Rabbits’ rivals and nemeses, are named for infamous women of the past: Agrippina, Messalina, Livia, Lucrezia, Imelda, Lady Macbeth, Jezebel, Moll, and Helmsley. (Why are they all females?) And the rats are named Baz, Grimbo, and Splodge. Good naming, huh?

Caught between The Pack and the Ratzis, their other ancient enemies, the Royal Rabbits must protect the Queen of England and her royal family at all costs. Can Shylo, a small, simple country bunny, help the Royal Rabbits protect their queen from the evil machinations of the paparazzi Ratzis? This story reads like a Disney romp, complete with a chase scene, greasy rat villains, a small but brave hero (Shylo), and even a Disney-esque pep talk for Shylo at about midpoint in the story:

“Shylo, you found your way here, didn’t you? I don’t see the weary little rabbit who stands before me, but the brave Knight you may one day rise to be. My brother saw something in you, otherwise he would not have sent you on the dangerous journey to find us. I see it, too. Courage, my dear bunkin, courage. You’re braver than you know.”

Santa Montefiore and Simon Sebag Montefiore are husband and wife, parents to two children for whom they made up the stories of the rabbits who lived under Buckingham Palace. Simon is a well-known historian and novelist. I can definitely see this book made into an animated feature film. So, it’s a perfect match for fans of Disney and Disney-esque storytelling. And for real fans, there are three more Royal Rabbits books: Escape from the Tower, The Great Diamond Chase, and Escape from the Palace (January, 2019).

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book also may be nominated for a Cybil Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Coot Club by Arthur Ransome

Aug14

This book is Swallows and Amazons, Book #5, but it contains none of the original Swallows or the Amazons. So, if you’re looking for Swallows John, Susan, Titty, and Roger or for Amazons Nancy and Peggy Blackett, you’ll have to skip this book. But don’t.

In Coot Club, The D’s, Dick and Dot learn to sail. In Winter Holiday the D’s were introduced, and they were able to have some grand adventures on the ice, but no sailing. In this book, Dick and Dot go to visit a family friend, Mrs. Barrable, on her boat in the north of England, downriver from Wroxham on the River Bure.

“Arthur Ransome visited Wroxham in the 1930s. In his book Coot Club (1934) he describes the busy scene on the river at Wroxham Bridge with numerous boats – a wherry, punts, motor cruisers and sailing yachts – jostling for a mooring.” ~Wikipedia, Wroxham.

When they arrive at Mrs. Barrable’s boat, the Teasel, the D’s, who were expecting to spend their visit sailing up and down the river, find out that Mrs. Barrable has invited them strictly to keep her company, not enough crew for sailing a boat the size of the Teasel. The disappointment is crushing, especially since Dorothy and Dick were hoping to return to the Lake District and the Swallows and Amazons as seasoned sailors. Nevertheless, Dick and Dot determine to make the best of their visit, and DIck is particularly interested in bird-watching. At the beginning of the story, on the train, they meet a local boy, Tom Dudgeon, and they soon find that he is the key to all sorts of adventures. Tom has a small boat of his own, the Titmouse, and even more importantly, Tom is a member of the Bird Protection Society aka the Coot Club, and he and his friends Port and Starboard, along with three boys nicknamed “The Death and Glories”, are particularly concerned with the birds called coots who are nesting along the river.

When Tom and the twins Port and Starboard and the Death and Glories all get together with Dick and Dot and Mrs. Barrable, sailing becomes not only possible but absolutely necessary since Tom has gotten into trouble while protecting the coots nest from a bunch of Hullabaloos, rude and careless holiday boaters, reminiscent of characters out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. The Hullabaloos are searching for the boy who cast their boat adrift in the night. Tom is in hiding from the Hullabloos and their noisy boat with its incessant phonograph playing pop hits of the 1930’s. Dick and Dot simply want to learn to sail. And Mrs. Barrable turns out to have an adventurous spirit, too, despite her age.

If you’ve read other Swallows and Amazons adventures and if what appeals is the sailing and the “simply messing about in boats”, then Coot Club has that aspect in spades. It’s also got Port and Starboard to stand in for the Blackett girls, Dick with his knack for coming up with inventive ideas, Dot and her stories, and a new hero, Tom, who’s the classic plucky English schoolboy adventurer.

I’ve already read number six in this series of books, Pigeon Post, which features Dick and Dot together again with the Swallows and Amazons, but again no sailing. So, my next book is #7, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea.

Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome

May3

After my Little Britches binge-read, I returned to the other series that is capturing my heart, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons adventures. In Winter Holiday, the Swallows—John, Susan, Titty, and Roger Walker—and the Amazons—Captain Nancy and First Mate Peggy—are joined by two new companions, Dick and Dorothea, aka The D’s. Dick and his sister Dot are from the big city, but they have come for a visit to the Dixon farm during the winter holidays.

The Lake District is all abuzz because it looks as if, for the first time in many years, the lake is going to freeze completely to allow for skating and winter sports all up and down the lake that is usually the site of the children’s summer sport of sailing. In spite of mumps and miscommunications and an imminent date of return to school, the children manage to have a grand adventure as they pretend to be Arctic explorers on an expedition to the North Pole.

Their role model is said to be someone name Nansen, an explorer of whom, in my ignorance, I had never heard. I looked him up, and he is a real Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, who led an expedition across Greenland in 1888-89 and also attempted an expedition to the North Pole in 1895, reaching a farther north latitude than anyone else had done at the time. Nansen’s ship was called the Fram, and the children in Winter Holiday name their Arctic vessel, borrowed from Uncle Jim/Captain Flint and frozen in port, The Fram also.

Winter Holiday is a great adventure story, and it will make even those of us who are not acclimated to real winter weather and icy adventures wish for a little bit of ice and snow to build an igloo or mount an expedition to the Pole, either North or South. It made me think of winter fondly, for a little while anyway.

Captain Nancy really comes into her own in this book as the leader of this gang of explorers and adventurers, even though she’s somewhat sidelined for most of the book. You can’t keep a good man—or woman—down, and Captain Nancy is still bossing and pushing and imagining new exploits and adventures, even when she’s physically removed from the action in the story. I also liked being properly introduced to the D’s, even though I read the stories out of order and had already met them in Pigeon Post. Dreamy, scientific Dick and imaginative writer-to-be Dorothy make good additions to the already established cast of characters.

Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransome

Apr17

Pigeon Post is the sixth in the twelve book series of novels about a group of adventurous British children who call themselves the Swallows and the Amazons (and later the D’s are added). The children–John, Susan, Titty, and Roger (the Swallows); Peggy and Nancy Blackett (the Amazons); and Dorothea and Dick (the D’s)—are living what has most recently been named a “free-range childhood.” Their parents are responsible and supervising from a distance, but the children are allowed to camp, cook outdoors, sail boats, pretend, explore, hike, and climb with only minimal adult interference. The negotiations the children go through with their parents and other adults to enable them to do these things are an important and interesting part of the story.

In this installment of the Swallows’ and Amazons’ adventures, the children have decided to form a prospecting and mining company to find gold on the nearby High Topps, a stretch of high moors called “fells” in the book. Because of drought conditions and the danger of fires, the children must go through some extensive exploration and negotiation before they are allowed to actually camp near the High Topps instead of in the Blacketts’ garden, but once they actually make camp on the edge of the fells and begin to explore old, abandoned workings or mines for gold, the story really becomes exciting. The “pigeon post” comes into play because the children use three homing pigeons to stay in touch with their parents at home and send daily status updates to keep the adults informed and happy.

The book contains a lot of mining, engineering, and chemistry information. These children are adventurous children, but they are also studious and quite industrious. In this article at a website called allthingsransome.net, The Chemistry of Pigeon Post, a fan of Ransome’s books writes about the chemistry that is explicated and illustrated in the book. Of course, even the article contains a warning, as should the book itself, probably.

“An important caution: chemistry experiments can be very hazardous and shouldn’t be performed except under well controlled and supervised conditions and preferably in a well equipped laboratory. Reading about Dick making up aqua regia and pouring it on to his unknown powder in Captain Flint’s study makes me quiver! Things were certainly different back then when it came to chemical safety!”

I don’t know what the exact balance between freedom to explore and protection should be for children, but if our children nowadays are over-protected then Ransome’s children may well have been not protected enough. They certainly do some rather dangerous things in the book and manage to survive anyway.

Pigeon Post was the book that won for its author the first Carnegie Medal. The British Library Association presented Ransome with the inaugural Carnegie Medal at its annual conference in June 1936. I thoroughly enjoyed Pigeon Post, and I think my next Ransome read will be Winter Holiday, the fourth book in the series, which is also the book that introduces Dick and Dorothea Callum. (Yes, I’ve managed to read the books out of order.) I’ve already read: Swallows and Amazons, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, and Secret Water.

William Wordsworth, b. April 7, 1770

Apr7

April is National Poetry Month.

Wordsworth on poetry: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Spontaneous, powerful, emotional, and tranquil—all at the same time? I’m not sure I could do all that together, which is probably one reason I’m not a poet. One of many.

Wordsworth on The Poet: “What is a Poet?. . . He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

Wordsworth on nature study: “Come forth into the light of things,/Let Nature be your teacher.”

William Hazlitt on Wordsworth: “He is in this sense the most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared: for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not read them; the learned, who see all things through books, do not understand them; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule them: but the author has created himself an interest in the heart of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die.”

As for me, I used to call him “Wordswords” because I thought him much too high-flown and wordy. I still rather think so, but I’m not so sure that it’s a deficit in Wordsworth that I don’t appreciate his poetry more. Maybe it’s a deficit in my ability to appreciate good poetry. Anyway, here’s one that I do rather enjoy, about looking out upon the sleeping city of London:

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

And another: Lucy II.

The Stranger from the Sea by Winston Graham

Jan19

This eighth installment of the Poldark Saga begins with King George III and his final descent into madness in 1810, and it ends with a marriage proposal for one of the Poldarks, refused, in 1811. Ten years have passed since the ending of the seventh book in the series, The Angry Tide. The growing-up years of Ross and Demelza’s children—Clowance, Jeremy, and little Bella—have been largely happy and uneventful. The Ross Poldark family are neither immensely rich nor poor, neither socially active nor reclusive, and finally comfortable and happy. Ross and Demelza are comfortable in their marriage; the enmity between George Warleggan and Ross Poldark has moved into a phase of distant truce, after the death of Elizabeth Warleggan at the end of The Angry Tide. Ross’s tin mine produces an adequate living, but not too much.

George Warleggan continues in this book to be rich, although he nearly loses his fortune in a bad investment decision. Ross Poldark continues to be idealistic and somewhat eccentric. Demelza is still salt of the earth and beautiful and commonsensical, all at the same time. In fact, all of the old characters from the previous seven novels make an appearance, each one playing his part. But the focus has shifted in this book to the younger generation: Ross and Demelza’s children, Valentine Warleggan, Geoffrey Charles Poldark, the progeny of the Sawle villagers, and other turn of the century young adults who are now coming of age and making their own decisions about love, friendship, and business.

Then, there’s the “stranger from the sea”, one Stephen Carrington, rescued from drowning by Jeremy Poldark and friends. It’s a bit odd that the book is named for Stephen Carrington, and I wonder who had the authority to give titles to these books, the author or the publisher? If Mr. Carrington were not the eponymous “stranger” of the title, he would not be nearly so important a character in the book as he seems, given the reference. Stephen Carrington is certainly mysterious throughout the book; I never did know whether to believe a word he said, even though he was a likable, perhaps harmless, liar. But the story is really about Jeremy and Clowance, not Carrington or any one of the other suitors attracted to Clowance, and certainly not either of Jeremy’s erstwhile flames. Jeremy is really more in love with steam engines than with with girls, although he manages to have loved and lost (a girl) by the end of the book.

I find the history woven into these novels—the Napoleonic wars, the madness of King George, the political maneuverings of Whigs and Tories, the Industrial revolution—by Mr. Graham to be fascinating, and the picture Graham draws of a society in the midst of upheaval and change is excellently well done. I recommend all of the Poldark Saga novels that I’ve read so far, and I plan to read the next one, The Miller’s Dance, post-haste in hopes of finding out what will happen to Miss Clowance Poldark and Master Jeremy Poldark as they come into adulthood.