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HEROES AND HEROISM
IN BRITISH FICTION
SINCE 1800
Case Studies
Edited by Barbara Korte & Stefanie Lethbridge
Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction since 1800
Barbara Korte • Stefanie Lethbridge
Editors
Heroes and Heroism

in British Fiction
since 1800
Case Studies
Editors
Barbara Korte Stefanie Lethbridge
English Department English Department
University of Freiburg University of Freiburg
Freiburg, Germany Freiburg, Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-33556-8 ISBN 978-3-319-33557-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955189
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Cover image © SOTK2011 / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume originates from the context of the collaborative research cen-
tre on “Heroes, Heroizations and Heroisms” (SFB 948) at the University
of Freiburg funded by the German Reserach Foundation (DFG). We
thank our colleagues there for inspiring discussions and support. Special
thanks are due to Charlotte Jost for her help in getting this book ready
for publication.
v
CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
Notes on Contributors xi
1 Introduction: Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction.

Concepts and Conjunctures 1
Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge
2 Negotiating Modernity, Modernising Heroes:

Heroes and Heroines in Gothic and Sensation Fiction
of the Long Nineteenth Century 31
Stefanie Lethbridge
3 Potentially the Noble Creature? Picturing Heroism

in Henry Rider Haggard’s She 47
Alison E. Martin
4 The Fate of Heroism After Industrialisation:

The Working-Class Male in the British
Nineteenth-Century Realist Novel and Beyond 67
Ralf Schneider
vii
viii CONTENTS
5 Death of the Hero? Heroism in British Fiction

of the First World War 85
Ann-Marie Einhaus
6 “A Courage Steadfast, Luminous”: Christopher Caudwell

and the Communist Hero 101
Anindya Raychaudhuri
7 Unspeakable Heroism: The Second World War

and the End of the Hero 117
Lucy Hall and Gill Plain
8 Constructing and Deconstructing the Fantasy Hero:

Joe Abercrombie’s “First Law” Trilogy 135
Jochen Petzold
9 An Unlikely Hero for the War-on-Terror Decade:

Patrick Neate’s City of Tiny Lights 151
Nicole Falkenhayner
10 The Heroic in British Young Adult Fiction:

Traditions and Renegotiations 169
Kristina Sperlich
11 Victims and Heroes Get All Mixed Up:

Gender and Agency in the Thriller 183
Barbara Korte
Index 199
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 3.1 The Casket. Haggard, She (1888). 55

Fig. 3.2 Up above them towered his beautiful pale face.
Haggard, She (1888). 57
Fig. 3.3 “Come!” Haggard, She (1888). 59
Fig. 3.4 “I saw the fire run up her form.” Haggard, She (1888). 60
ix
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Ann-Marie Einhaus is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature

at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her research interests cover
writing about the First World War from 1914 to the present day, particularly short
fiction, as well as British magazine culture in the early twentieth century and ten-
sions between modernist and mainstream writing. She has published on authors as
diverse as P.G. Wodehouse and Wyndham Lewis, and her monograph, The Short
Story and the First World War, was published in 2013.
Nicole Falkenhayner is a research associate at the English Seminar of the
University of Freiburg, Germany. She was previously at the Centre of Excellence
“Cultural Foundations of Integration” (University of Konstanz), where she worked
on the representational history of British Muslims (Making the British Muslim,
2014) and the epistemological perspective of “analytical idioms” (co-ed., Rethinking
Order: Idioms of Stability and Destabilization, 2015). Her current research focuses
on the cultural use of surveillance camera images in news, fiction and art, as well as
on negotiations of heroism in British television series.
Lucy Hall is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of St Andrews specialising in
Second World War and post-war literature and culture. Her research looks at writ-
ing, art and film of the Second World War period in the context of a gothic literary
tradition, examining how gothic themes and tropes are appropriated in order to
articulate social anxieties which surface during wartime. She has a particular inter-
est in middlebrow fiction and critically neglected authors such as Rumer Godden,
Elizabeth Taylor and Patrick Hamilton.
Barbara Korte is Professor of English Literature and British Culture at the
University of Freiburg, Germany. She is deputy speaker of the collaborative research
centre on “Heroes, Heroizations and Heroisms” (SFB 948) and is working on
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Victorian periodicals in this context. Other areas of interest are travel writing
(English Travel Writing: From Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations, 2000), the
First World War and representations of history in popular media.
Stefanie Lethbridge is Senior Lecturer for English Literature and Culture at the
University of Freiburg, Germany. She is a member of the collaborative research
centre on “Heroes, Heroizations and Heroisms” (SFB 948). She has published on
British poetry anthologies since the Renaissance, on eighteenth-century and
Victorian print culture, on sensation fiction and on representations of the heroic in
popular culture.
Alison E. Martin currently lectures at the University of Reading (UK), having
previously worked at the University of Kassel and the University of Halle-
Wittenberg. She specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travel writing
and narratives of exploration, as well as gender, literature and science. A central
focus of her work is on publishing history and translation. Her post-doctoral thesis
examined the reception of Alexander von Humboldt in Britain. Her current book
project explores the international circulation of British modernist literature, taking
as its case study the translation and reception of Vita Sackville-West’s writing in the
German-speaking world from the 1920s to today.
Jochen Petzold is Professor of British Studies at the University of Regensburg,
Germany. His main research interests are divided between contemporary South
African fiction in English and Victorian popular culture, particularly juvenile maga-
zines and adventure fiction. Especially in the latter field he has frequently dealt with
questions concerning heroes and heroism, and he has on occasion worked on
fantasy fiction.
Gill Plain is Professor of English Literature and Popular Culture at the University
of St Andrews. Her publications include Women’s Writing of the Second World War
(1996), Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (2001), John Mills and British Cinema:
Masculinity, Identity and Nation (2006) and Literature of the 1940s: War, Postwar
and ‘Peace’ (2013). She is developing a project on narrative reconstructions of
masculinity in the aftermath of the Second World War, and editing two collections,
Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn
and Postwar: British Literature in Transition, 1940–1960.
Anindya Raychaudhuri is a lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews.
His primary research interest is in the cultural representation and collective mem-
ory of war and conflict. He is also interested in Marxist theory, postcolonial and
diasporic identities and cultures. He is the author of two forthcoming monographs:
Narrating Partition: Agency, Memory, Representation (2016) and Homemaking:
Radical Nostalgia and the Construction of a South Asian Diaspora (2017). He is
currently working on the first full-length critical biography of Christopher
Caudwell.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Ralf Schneider is Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at Bielefeld

University, Germany. He has published on the theory and analysis of literary char-
acter, cognitive narratology, the Victorian novel including popular fiction, and a
variety of topics in British literary and cultural history, including the cultural mem-
ory of the First World War, war and British identities, popular poetry anthologies
and masculinities in nineteenth-century prose fiction. He is currently working on
the narrative representation of migration in the contemporary British novel and on
a handbook of British literature and culture of the First World War (co-edited with
Jane Potter).
Kristina Sperlich is currently working on her Ph.D. thesis on “The Heroic in
Contemporary British Fiction for the Young” at the University of Freiburg,
Germany, where she is also a member of the collaborative research centre on
“Heroes, Heroizations and Heroisms” (SFB 948).
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Heroes and Heroism

in British Fiction. Concepts
and Conjunctures
Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge
The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions for ‘hero’: “A man
(or occas. a woman) distinguished by the performance of courageous or
noble actions, esp. in battle; a brave or illustrious warrior, soldier, etc.”,
and “A man (or occas. a woman) generally admired or acclaimed for great
qualities or achievements in any field.” In both these senses the hero has
gained new topicality in the twenty-first century, although, for western
cultures at least, the present has often been identified as a post-heroic age.
However, military and civil heroism are currently appraised in the media,
just as superheroes abound in popular culture. The new relevance of the
hero has obvious connections with the anxieties raised by terrorism and
war since the 9/11 attacks, but it also seems to be linked to more unspe-
cific needs for orientation and re-enchantment in the postmodern world.
With all its topicality, the current attention must be seen in connection
B. Korte () • S. Lethbridge ()

English Department, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
e-mail: barbara.korte@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de;
stefanie.lethbridge@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

B. Korte, S. Lethbridge (eds.), Heroes and Heroism in British
Fiction Since 1800, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5_1
2 B. KORTE AND S. LETHBRIDGE
with earlier representations and negotiations of the heroic that have been
handed down through the centuries. It is this diachronic dimension
which this volume intends to trace, with a focus on fictional literature
and an emphasis on conjunctures (in Fernand Braudel’s understanding)1
and temporal layers of the heroic in British literature. To date, the re-
emergence of the heroic in the twenty-first century has been discussed for
some aspects of American popular culture, in particular comics and super-
hero films, but rarely for British culture where it is just as conspicuous
and has a long history of literary representation. Indeed, heroes may only
exist in real life because they are pre-figured in literature (Bohrer, 2009,
p. 942). Until cinema arrived in the twentieth century, literature was the
most important source for creating a cultural imaginary of the heroic,
and it has retained its power to represent heroes and inspect their cultural
meanings. Since the literary history of the heroic has only been sporadi-
cally addressed,2 this volume aims to bring together the various existing
strands with new interpretations in an attempt to provide an overview of
the manifestations and explorations of the heroic in narrative literature
since around 1800. It traces the most important stages of this represen-
tation but also includes strands that have been marginalised or silenced
in a dominant masculine and upper-class framework; the studies include
explorations of female versions of the heroic and they consider working-
class and ethnic perspectives.
The volume starts from the assumption that a heroic imaginary and the
(real and fictional) figures by whom it is embodied, fulfil important social
and cultural functions in specific historical environments.3 The heroic
imaginary is the result of ongoing processes of heroisation and deheroisa-
tion in whose course certain types of heroes and heroisms are abandoned
or reconfigured within changing social contexts and changing contexts
of representation. Such processes are not always explicit or conscious. In
some cases, however, heroes and their counter-figures have been deliber-
ately constructed in order to fulfil specific functions. For the purpose of
cultural analysis, historical manifestations of the heroic and the specific
forms in which they are enunciated can serve as a lens that focalises cul-
tural and societal constellations and phases of social reorientation.
Conceptualisations of ‘the hero’ are not fixed, as the dictionary defini-
tions cited at the beginning might suggest, but dynamic and fluent. They
oscillate between extraordinary and more ordinary varieties: between
views of the hero as model of perfection and the hero as outlaw or criminal
made good; between transcendent, transgressive and more domestic types.
INTRODUCTION: HEROES AND HEROISM IN BRITISH FICTION 3
Romanticism had a penchant for the rebellious hero; Victorian Britain val-
ued both the hero of imperialism and the ‘moral’ hero in ordinary life; the
twentieth century has mainly been associated with hero-scepticism, while
the twenty-first seems to hover between the diagnosis of post-heroism and
a revival of the heroic. Basically, however, intersections between affirma-
tion and scepticism determine the negotiation of the heroic in all periods.
Different understandings of heroes typically co-exist, and they are at all
times open to shifting interpretations and evaluations, especially because
heroes never stand alone. Even as outsiders, they are usually part of com-
prehensive figurations in which they stand side-by-side, or overlap or mix
with other social types through which cultures express their values and
assumptions: anti-heroes (whom we understand to have a distinctly unhe-
roic status either through lack of agency or morality),4 outlaws, rogues,
villains and other kinds of counter-heroes, scapegoats or victims.5 Such con-
stellations can cause significant ambivalence because the status of the hero
as hero also essentially depends on perspective, the viewer’s cultural loca-
tion and need: “What insiders revere as the embodiment of the sacred
is considered by outsiders as ridiculous, crazy, mad or even horrible and
demonic. Viewed from the outside, the heroic revolutionary, the martyr,
the suicide bomber is a terrorist, a madman, a criminal” (Giesen, 2004,
p. 18).
Despite changeful and ambivalent semantics, this volume requires
a basic definition of the hero and one that is more sophisticated than
those given in a dictionary. While it is habitually stated how difficult it is
to define the terms hero and heroism, approaches offered by historians
and sociologists prove fruitful also for the analysis of cultural production.
Geoffrey Cubitt defines the hero as
any man or woman whose existence […] is endowed by others, not just with
a high degree of fame and honour, but with a special allocation of imputed
meaning and symbolic significance—that not only raises them above others
in public esteem but makes them the object of some kind of collective emo-
tional investment. (2000, p. 3)
Cubitt and Warren’s collection of critical articles (2000) is primarily con-

cerned with “exemplary”, admirable heroes who embody established cul-
tural values and serve as inspiration for the non-heroic mass. Nevertheless,
Cubitt’s definition is broad enough to encompass adventure heroes
that defend basically conservative value systems, or heroes that represent
entrenched cultural values, as well as rebellious heroes who violate the domi-
nant standards and ideologies of their societies rather than embodying them.
The social functions of heroes emphasised here can be defined in terms
of boundaries of the social order that heroes and their actions mark,
stretch and overstep. Cubitt sees heroes as “products of the imaginative
labour through which societies and groups define and articulate their val-
ues and assumptions, and through which individuals within those societies
or groups establish their participation in larger social or cultural identi-
ties” (2000, p. 3). In this view, figures that are deemed heroic crystallise
the ideals and norms of a society, or groups within a society (who may
be conformist or oppositional) and they can contribute to the building,
maintenance or destruction of communities. Heroes are intricately linked
with communities that benefit from their heroic actions and that recognise
and admire them as heroes (Reichholf, 2009, p. 835). But the transgres-
sive agency of heroes can also pose a risk to a community because the lim-
its of the existing order are destabilised. Rebels, who often have a strong
charismatic effect on their followers, may have a long-term impact that
is far greater, or at least more dramatic, than that of socially compatible
heroes. In any case, heroic figures can be analysed as sounding boards for
dominant, resistant and emerging ideologies and in the wider context they
always also intersect with major social orders of gender, class and ethnicity.
Apart from social functions, heroes have been attributed with an anthro-
pological function in so far as they mark a capacity to go beyond the limits
of ordinary human existence: “The very image of man is bound up with
that of the hero”, states Victor Brombert, who also declares the hero to be
“the poetic projection of man as he unavoidably faces the meaning or lack
of meaning of life” (1969, pp. 11f). Robert Folkenflik claims that “we can
hardly do without heroes of some sort, for the idea of heroism is a mirror
of an age’s very conception of itself at its best” (1982, p. 16). This echoes
Jenni Calder’s assertion that heroes “are not only enjoyable, they are nec-
essary. The hero has often been rejected, exaggerated, exploited, scorned,
but the idea remains, the idea that there are heights to be reached in cour-
age and commitment which are admirable and inspiring” (1977, p. ix).
Such assessments have recently been rephrased in a cognitivist vocabulary.
Allison and Goethals claim that “human beings do have mental lists or
models, or images, of heroes, and also of villains”, so that we “react emo-
tionally to charismatic people” whose appeal “attracts us and entrances us”
(2011, p. 7, 65).
This attraction also explains the cultural significance of heroes, the way
they respond to cultural sensibilities and desires. “The hero”, as Judith
Wilt remarks, offers “an invented/invested space ‘between’”—between
man and god, between real and utopian. He occupies “a middle ground,
a mediating/mystifying function both generative and occult, in philoso-
phy, in sociopolitics, in aesthetic desire” (2014, p. 3). The hero offers a
projection space for dreams, ideals, explorative fantasies and experiments.
In this space cultural boundaries can be tested and possibly renegotiated.
Hero figures, male or female, frequently operate in boundary zones where
engagements with potentially threatening ‘others’ enact cultural conflicts.
They can help to resolve conflict by uniting the community in their sup-
port (fighting the ‘dragon’ that threatens the community). They can also
create morally charged delimitations by clearly identifying ‘the enemy’.
Knights in Renaissance romance for instance, frequently encounter a
pagan, oriental other and the romance genre negotiates the terms in which
Christianity can and should engage with this ‘enemy’.
Despite critical scepticism, the heroic continues to provide a nodal
point for the negotiation of social and cultural concerns, and it has always
done this in and through literature. For centuries, literature has drawn
justification from a basically didactic function of the hero. Homeric epics,
as much as Renaissance romance, gothic novels or Victorian adventure
stories, down to contemporary action cinema have been defended (against
always prevalent attacks against the imaginative exploits or emotional
excesses of fiction) on the grounds that the presentation of model behav-
iour in the attractive figure of a hero or heroine can create social cohesion,
an imaginative community that supports certain values and rejects oth-
ers. Literature also has a special capacity to bring out the attractiveness
and emotional appeal of heroes and heroic narratives. Indeed, as much
as social constructs, hero figures are products of the media and genres
in which they appear. They cannot be thought apart from the forms and
aesthetics in which they have been aggrandised or belittled, glorified or
mocked. As mentioned above, only a few of these forms and aesthetics
have received critical scrutiny.
This volume focuses on various genres of narrative fiction, whose
crafted heroes emphasise the constructed nature of the heroic imaginary,
and which—perhaps more so than poetry or drama—offers writers the
opportunity to explore heroes within a wide range of perspectives and
styles, realms of action, settings and psychological insight. Furthermore, it
is the privilege of the teller of tales to describe action in time—as opposed
to the fine arts which necessarily focus on the moment in time, as Lessing
outlined. The heroic figure is largely constituted through action (even
in cases where action consists of passive endurance) and thus uniquely
suited for narrative literature. The chapters in this volume each focus on
a prominent conjuncture of texts, histories and approaches to the heroic.
Taken together, they present an overview of the ‘literary heroic’ in fiction
since the late eighteenth century. The subsequent sections of this intro-
duction sketch general lines of development, also considering the legacy
of heroic concepts and genres of earlier periods that has been continually
reworked since the eighteenth century.
EPIC TRADITIONS AND ROMANCE TRANSFORMATIONS:

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW TO 1800
The hero in literature is, to a large extent, determined or at least restricted
by genre conventions which operate as “co-constructors” of the hero
(Berns, 2013, p. 219). Certain genres require certain types of heroes. Vice
versa, certain plot types and narrative perspectives elevate characters and
the ideals they represent to the status of hero. Literary representations
guide reader perceptions through narrative perspective, privileging specific
characters and points of view. The main character of a narrative thus has
a good chance of also becoming a hero in the proper sense of the word
(that is more than the protagonist). The overlapping meaning of the term
hero and protagonist itself suggests the potential of narrative positioning
to create heroic characters.6
The habitat of the hero proper is heroic verse; ancient epics served—at
least until the early eighteenth century—as standard models for what a
hero should be, could be and perhaps also what he could not be. However,
these models did not go uncontested. The central difficulty which arose
was that classical epics presented hero patterns that did not necessarily
coincide, in fact frequently conflicted, with Christian values. The epic
hero’s self-reliance, hunger for fame and wrathful revenge clashed with
Christian requirements of humility, obedience to God’s will and forgive-
ness. A central concern of heroic literature from the Middle Ages onwards
was thus to try and correlate Christian with classical ideals. The classi-
cal model retained its status as superior poetic form: the “best and most
accomplished kindes of Poetrie”, as Sidney affirmed (1923, p. 25). The
main purpose of the heroic poem was, to Renaissance writers, not only to
please but also to teach virtue (Evans, 1970, p. 5) and the hero in heroical
poetry according to Sidney “doeth not only teache and moove to a truth,
but teacheth and mooveth to the most high and excellent truth” (Sidney,
1923, p. 25). The epic served a didactic purpose in the moral education
of the individual as well as providing “the most comprehensive models for
public life” (Di Cesare, 1982, p. 59). While thus an effort was made to
maintain the highly prestigious classical framework in recognisable form,
various modifications became necessary to accommodate Christian values.
These modifications included changes to the evaluation of heroic action
(often through a narrator) or to typical plot elements.
In Beowulf (eighth century), the earliest extant epic of the British
Isles, the standard revenge plot—Beowulf’s campaigns against Grendel,
Grendel’s mother and finally the fight against the dragon—stands uneasily
beside narratorial references to Christian piety and humility. To Bernard
F. Huppé, Beowulf “demonstrates the limits of heathen society” and with
it “the limits of the heroic” as it shows Beowulf’s eventual failure in the
foreboding of disaster that is to come (1975, p. 19). The gloomy mood at
the end of the poem, despite the people’s celebration of Beowulf’s heroic
death, “reveals the doom of the one who lacks saving grace” (p. 21). The
epic, according to Huppé, presents a pagan world from a Christian point
of view, essentially a rejection of the pagan heroic model, even while it is
reiterated.
Perhaps more successful, certainly more optimistic, than the doom of
the hero which governs Beowulf, is the concept of the miles christianus
which found an early perfection in the saintly Galahad, member of the
Arthurian round table and presented as perfect knight in the Arthurian
chivalric romances, for instance in Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur
(1485). While Galahad was theoretically a model of perfection, he is
also notoriously uninteresting, in particular compared to the more sin-
fully inclined knights of the Holy Grail like Launcelot or Arthur himself
(Bolgar, 1975, p. 124). Nonetheless, the warrior saint was to carry appeal
well into the nineteenth century, when for instance Sir Henry Havelock
was frequently praised as such. Even if Galahad fails to draw a large follow-
ing, the romance genre tendered further possibilities to integrate classical
models into Christian concepts, especially through allegory.
Two generic traditions of romance offered variations of hero-patterns
that facilitated allegorisation: in romances dealing with ‘the matter of
France’, knights at the court of Charlemagne fought for Christianity
against paganism. The Celtic tradition, or ‘the matter of Britain’,
introduced love as motive for heroic deeds (Hempfer, 2009, p. 54). In
this tradition, knights follow their quest for the honour of a lady. It was
a comparatively small step to combine the two motifs and turn the reli-
gious quest of the Christian knight into an internal struggle within the
conventions of the psychomachia. Conceptualised as internal struggle
between good and evil, the clash of arms and the wrathful killing of the
enemy in epic romances like Philip Sidney’s Arcadias (1580s/1590s) or
Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) were much less objection-
able from a Christian point of view. Though the princes Musidorus and
Pyrocles in the Arcadias engage in large-scale slaughter, it is inevitably
out of an impulse that defends the weak or wronged. More than that,
the Arcadias “allegorize inner conflicts of heroic development” (Borris,
2000, p. 116). Pyrocles for instance, disguised as the Amazon Zelmane, is
captured and imprisoned with the two princesses Pamela and Philoclea at
a moment when they indulge in an overly sensual celebration in the forest.
Sidney allegorises “moral progress through temptation, trial and discipline
of the ‘lower nature’” (p. 116). In Cecropia’s castle, Pyrocles and the
princesses are subject to mental torture and increasing despair. It is the
sisters’ goodness and virtue that enables all three to survive the torment,
not Pyrocles’s prowess or Basilius’s martial endeavour from the outside.
Notably, Sidney also censures an excess of reason untempered by emo-
tional understanding. Thus Cecropia’s coldly calculating power politics is
unable to comprehend her son Amphialus’s love for Philoclea which leads
to the eventual destruction of both mother and son. Heroic development
thus incorporates the control of excess, both of the senses, and of reason
and teaches a reliance on spiritual values.
As allegories, epic romances were more generally applicable beyond a
limited circle of aristocracy. Based on St Paul’s recommendation to “[p]ut
on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles
of the deuill” (KJV, Eph. 6:11), every Christian was in fact encouraged to
(figuratively) join the fray against evil and temptation. Crucially, within a
Protestant context, this could not be done without god’s grace, and thus
the hero could not rely on his strength or courage alone. This becomes
explicit, for instance, in Spenser’s Fairie Queene. After his long imprison-
ment in Orgoglio’s castle (which stands for pride) and a near-fatal brush
with Despayre, Una takes the Redcrosse Knight to the House of Holinesse
a “fraile, feeble, fleshly wight” (I.ix.53). Restored by the ministrations of
Fidelia, Speranza and Contemplation, the knight faces the dragon that
threatens the castle of Una’s parents in a classic heroic configuration.
Just at this point the poet explicitly renounces heroic poetry and calls
on the “sacred Muse” to “Come gently, but not with that mighty rage,/
Wherewith the martiall troupes thou doest infest,/And harts of great
Heroës doest enrage” (I.xi.6–7). Despite his knightly valour and prowess,
Redcrosse does not defeat the dragon of his own accord. It is only the
intervention of divine grace that saves him and enables him to eventually
defeat the monster. Spenser’s heroes represent specific virtues (Holinesse,
Temperance, Justice and so on) but in most cases they need to learn the
virtue they represent. It is through this learning process that they eventu-
ally earn their status as ‘true’, that is to say virtuous hero.
While Spenser thus presents his heroes as members of a “meritocracy
of virtue” (Borris, 2000, p. 7), carefully balancing theological issues of
grace and faith, literature for a more popular market was quite content to
continue a tradition of heroism that was interested neither in the hero’s
internal struggle for virtue nor in the finer points of justifying Christian
violence. Richard Johnson’s enormously popular and often reprinted
Seven Champions of Christendom, first published in 1596/1597, incor-
porates many of Spenser’s motifs and with St George one of Spenser’s
heroes, “but he shares none of Spenser’s moral and religious preoccu-
pations” (Fellows, 2003, p. xvi). This St George challenges the dragon
largely for the “large proffer” of the Egyptian king’s daughter for a wife
and the crown of Egypt after the king’s death (Seven Champions, p. 13).
During his seven years in prison, eating rats and mice, there is no indica-
tion that this Champion grows in virtue, self-understanding or humility.
Though “[f]rom time to time Johnson attributes to his heroes a specifi-
cally Christian motivation, or ascribes their success to their faith in God,
[…] the story is always paramount” (Fellows, 2003, p. xvii). This popular
hero, while he keeps external markers of a Christian faith, like occasional
prayer or a hatred for Muslims, maintains his status as hero or “cham-
pion” through martial strength and an unquestioning assumption that a
‘Christian’ champion is a ‘good’ champion, which is not demonstrated
through any particular show of virtue.
However, not all popular literature focused on the externals of heroism.
The most long-lived example for the interiorisation and allegorisation of
the heroic journey from a Christian viewpoint is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678), which, next to the Bible, was one of the most widely read
prose pieces of English literature well into the twentieth century (Swaim,
1990, p. 388). Christian’s struggle through manifold trials and tempta-
tions on his journey to the Celestial City in many ways “fulfills the para-
digm of heroic departure, initiation, and return which Joseph Campbell
outlines” (2008, p. 390)7 and it incorporates several heroic set pieces,

most notably his encounter with the monster Apollyon (who represents
pride) whom he defeats with the (Pauline) shield and sword he received
in the Palace Beautiful. Christian’s journey is, however, the journey of
a solitary fighter—Christian, though joined by occasional companions,
essentially fights only for his own salvation. It is only in the second part of
The Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian’s wife Christiana and her children
start on their journey, that the value of community starts to dominate the
tale. Bunyan, according to Kathleen Swaim, extends concepts of individu-
alistic, masculine heroism by including the more sociable, feminine part
Christiana stands for. It is also not Christian who is the model hero in the
end, but Great-heart, who fights for the whole community of pilgrims:
“it is only through a feminizing and socializing process that Christian can
become Great-heart, ‘under another name and at another stage of his
growth’” (Schellenberg, 1991, p. 314). The interiorisation of knightly
valour and the Christianisation of the hero, enforcing humility, gentle-
ness and reliance on the powers of providence rather than personal prow-
ess, made the heroic accessible not only for every Christian man, that is
across class lines, but also across gender lines. Character traits that are
stereotypically assigned to the ‘feminine’, and thus typically not consid-
ered part of the warrior hero, became constituent for the christianised
hero. Ina Schabert traces the growing prestige of female heroism in liter-
ary and cultural contexts during the Renaissance—embodied in characters
like Spenser’s Britomart or Ariosto’s Bradamante but manifest also for
instance in the protagonist’s painful recognition of the values of endur-
ance and humility in Shakespeare’s Tempest or King Lear (Schabert, 2013,
esp. pp. 41–43). Such extended conceptualisations of heroism repair the
shortcomings of the more traditional, self-reliant and confrontational hero,
who is repeatedly shown to be one-sided and potentially (self-)destruc-
tive, as in Othello or Henry V.8 Mary Beth Rose outlines a similar process
for the seventeenth century, where not only Milton, after the experience
of religious conflict and a civil war, advocates a “Heroics of Endurance”
and “the better fortitude/Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom” (Paradise
Lost, 9.31–9.32), but Aphra Behn in Oronooko (1688) compromises the
agency of her hero in slavery “simultaneously idealizing and scrutinizing
the heroics of endurance” (Rose, 2002, p. 100).9 Toni Wein diagnoses an
incorporation of the feminine in concepts of the heroic as explored in the
gothic novel at the end of the eighteenth century (Wein, 2002) and, as
will be seen, the Victorian concept of moral heroism fully embraces quali-
ties that used to be primarily associated with the feminine.10 Chapter 4

on gendered heroism in the Victorian novel by Ralf Schneider further
considers this aspect.
Rather than a feminisation of the heroic at any particular period in time,
what emerges from these observations is that ideas about the heroic seem
at all times to have included aspects that were stereotypically connoted as
feminine, such as gentleness, endurance, passive suffering, emotional vul-
nerability and a strong communal orientation. At all times the hero (male
or female) needs to reach out to his community, evince an attitude of car-
ing and self-sacrifice, in order to qualify as hero. While there seem to be
times and genres where the more martial and masculine aspects of heroism
are foregrounded constituents, the overall trend from the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries on was to expand the concept of heroism to increas-
ingly accommodate and incorporate characteristics that are at least neutral
in terms of gender ascriptions.
The eighteenth century turned to an emphasis of the civil rather than
the martial virtues of heroism. Milton’s graft of classic heroic attributes
onto Satan in Paradise Lost and the suggestions of a milder, humbler
heroism in Paradise Regained held two mutually opposed options for
post-Miltonic conceptions of the heroic. These developed further in the
eighteenth century especially as the Zeitgeist moved away from religious
preoccupations. On the one hand, the classical model continued to be
interrogated and the milder strand of heroism received further attention
in the less elevated domestic or private heroes of the novel and the fiction-
alised periodical piece. On the other hand, the gothic hero, so popular
towards the end of the century, for instance as the Byronic hero, shows
the continued fascination with a dominating, masculine heroism which
combines strands of sublimity and rebellion with (forbidden) desires, as
does Milton’s Satan.
According to popular conceptions, the eighteenth century is “An Age
without a Hero”. But, as James W. Johnson has remarked, this should
more accurately be phrased as “an age with far too many [heroes]”
(1982, p. 25). The novel in particular struggled with the concept of the
(unflawed) hero since it aimed for high degrees of verisimilitude and
heroism presented itself as increasingly unlikely and impracticable for a
middle-class context. Johnson locates the very problem of the eighteenth-
century hero in the plurality of potential candidates and options for hero-
ism. To the lack of consensus about “the constituent elements of heroism,
or even as to whether the heroic concept had any validity” (p. 25), one
needs to add the impact of an expanding print culture which multiplied

genres and possible perspectives for the presentation of heroes and thus
proliferated—but also diluted—notions of the heroic.
Despite its admiration for the classics, the neo-classical period struggled
with the appropriateness of classical heroes for an age that valued civility,
politeness, reason and economic success. Not only did enlightenment
authors regard the military carnage produced by traditional epic heroes
with distaste (Terry, 2005, p. 22), they also questioned the practicality
of epic sentiment for a populace that did not in fact want to emulate
aristocratic codes of conduct. The most obvious way of side-stepping the
moral issues while still keeping up classical pretensions was to burlesque or
parody the classical model—the genre as much as the hero—and produce
mock-epic or to employ mock-heroic elements for instance in the novel.11
To Terry, the “mock-heroic provided a formula for thinking through a
range of personal or social issues, ones involving ideas of triviality, dispro-
portion, condescension or degradation” (p. 8). The concept of the hero
thus became a sounding board for contemporary discussions about proper
conduct both in public and in private spheres.
Apart from the novel the new prose genre that gained widespread pres-
ence in the early eighteenth century was the periodical essay, a form that
rose to fame especially with Richard Steele and Joseph Addison’s Tatler and
Spectator (1709–1712). Generally, periodicals of the early eighteenth cen-
tury investigated the phenomenon of heroism with a critical eye, though
they did not reject it outright. Instead, persistent strategies of deheroisa-
tion, most often through irony, questioned components of a heroic code
without necessarily questioning the need for heroism itself. It is especially
the grand heroic pose that is criticised, while a ‘heroism of virtue’ was
defended, a version of the heroic that Steele had already propagated in his
pamphlet The Christian Hero (1701) which defended religion over pagan
philosophy as moral guide (Blanchard, 1977, p. xiii). “For the English
writers”, Claude Rawson claims, “the terms ‘Hero’ and ‘Great’ were often
ironic, and later evoked Walpole, and implied bullying, effrontery and cru-
elty, while Alexander and Caesar […] were types of the conqueror thug”
(2013, pp. 442f). In Jonathan Wild (1743) Fielding turns the heroic para-
digm right on its head, invoking—with an eye on Prime Minister Robert
Walpole—the vocabulary of ‘the great man’ for an acknowledged crimi-
nal. Nonetheless, the periodicals defended ‘Great Men’ in terms of great
virtue. The Female Tatler explicitly claimed such greatness also for female
virtues like patience, chastity or conjugal love: “the highest Degrees of
Virtues are all the same. When we so firmly adhere to any one as to chuse
Death rather than forfeit it, we are advanc’d to the top of it and our Virtue
is Heroick” (Female Tatler, 1710, p. 281).
The distinction between external and internal heroic qualities that the
periodicals explore also dominates the eighteenth-century novel. The
focus on interiority and psychological development in the novel, espe-
cially under the impact of Samuel Richardson, encouraged a shift from
heroic actions outwardly performed to heroically maintained virtue. The
inward turn once again opened heroism across gender lines. Richardson’s
Pamela (1741) and Clarissa (1748), whose title figures are named after
characters in old romances, investigate precisely a domestic heroism that
is pitted against a corrupt aristocratic pose represented by Lovelace or Mr.
B. (Deters, 2013). Henry Fielding, rejecting Richardson’s emotionalisa-
tion, created heroes that were, though flawed, more creditable than either
classical heroes or Richardson’s paragons of virtue. To Ritchie Robertson,
Fielding’s version of the novel as modern epic (“comic epic poem in
prose”) is an attempt to “masculinize” the new genre by associating it
with a “preeminently masculine” older one and so to rescue the novel
from Richardson’s sentimentalism (2009, p. 25). But in a contemporary
eighteenth-century setting, a standard classical or chivalric hero was either
out of place or out of time—a Don Quixote character, as amply demon-
strated by Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752). In a rework-
ing of traditional heroic standards, Fielding creates, with Tom Jones or
Joseph Andrews, flawed as they are, “the new man of mid-century English
society, a citizen. […] Like princes of the past, he must be prepared for
his high responsibility by education and experience—and so must the
citizen-reader, through Fielding’s Thomapaedia” (Hunter, 1982, p. 139).
Deprived of a setting that allows for a heroic life-style in totum, the
middle-class hero experiences heroic moments (for instance when Joseph
Andrews defends Fanny against highway robbers) and cultivates his virtue
against recurring temptation. The hero is domesticised but the concept is
not given up. The domesticated citizen-hero is both exceptional (in his
virtue) and conform (in his reasonable and socially responsible conduct),
perhaps the only form of heroism that is acceptable in a bourgeois and
commercial society.
Not all novels condemned the aristocracy out of hand. Frequently, an
uneasy combination of heroic status conferred through an aristocratic
bloodline as well as through virtue indicates an attempt to incorporate a
meritocratic and basically middle-class model of heroism into traditional,
more narrowly class-based forms (Wein, 2002). The successful heroes of

the later eighteenth-century novel on the whole qualify themselves through
merit first and are later also discovered to have aristocratic status—as for
instance Theodore in Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764) who
turns out to be the true heir of the dukedom.
The emergence of the gothic novel in the second half of the eigh-
teenth century indicates a basic deficiency in the reconceptualisation of
the standard literary hero into a model middle-class citizen: The tam-
ing of the passions and the great ordering impact of reason created an
essentially boring mediocracy (Bolz, 2009, p. 768). Both the gothic novel
and romantic poetry (notably Byron’s) responded to the disenchantment
of the world and hero by creating dark, lonely and deeply flawed heroes
that are nonetheless thrilling and sublime in their unbridled desires and
their individuality. The romantic definition of the heroic is defined against
dominant societal values and standards. To Jenni Calder, this heroic type
with its strong elements of counter-heroism has to be seen in a context
when “commerce and industrialization seriously threatened the heroic
idea through their inevitable fragmentation of society”, and thus this
image of the heroic represented an “effort to outwit this fragmentation”
(1977, p. ix). As Morse Peckham writes, the romantic aim to transcend
limitations of eighteenth-century European culture called for individuals
of heroic disposition: “[T]he Romantic concepts of imagination and self-
hood required a heroic activity, in that it devolved upon the individual to
discover the reasons for the failure of European culture and to establish
the foundations for a workable culture” (1982, p. 14). Milton’s Satan
provided one of the models for this rebellious heroic stance. The anti-
social, ‘dark’ and ambivalent Byronic hero is an extreme manifestation
of this concept, but he was anticipated by the hero-villain of gothic fic-
tion who also reintroduced the supernatural to the heroic (Anderson,
1982). It is also, however, a piece of gothic fiction—significantly written
by a woman—that severely critiqued the romantic hero and his grandiose
transgressions of the social and moral order: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(1818). The romantic hero continued to fascinate the Victorians (includ-
ing Thomas Carlyle), but he remains essentially a fantasy, an option of the
lost past or of exotic places (like the far-away places of the British Empire),
displaced in time or space, a dream and in this sense an ideal, but only in
exceptional moments a reality.
However, there were also legacies from Romanticism that the Victorians
could put to good use. The Napoleonic Wars had not only created heroes
in real life—including a half-guilty fascination with Napoleon. In their

context heroes in fiction took on renewed relevance as patriotic and
national leader figures. Thus the celebration of heroic Richard Coeur de
Lion and his merry order of knights, including the folk hero Robin Hood,
in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) helped to (re-)invent a chivalric tradition
charged with national significance. Scott utilised the nationalistic impetus
of the heroic even more emphatically in his Scottish novels, for instance in
Rob Roy (1817), and he remained an extremely popular author through-
out the nineteenth century. Even where nationalism and patriotism were
not directly evoked, the Victorians showed a marked preference for heroes
that enabled social participation and contributed to community-building
at a time when their country was faced with large-scale transformations
inside its borders, and a centrifugal spread of its empire outside. Both
developments called for, and generated, their specific heroic types.
AFTER ROMANTICISM: VICTORIAN TO PRESENT

While the eighteenth century was unsure about heroism and often
debunked it, the Victorian period has been characterised as “the last age
to take heroism seriously” (Putzell and Leonard, 1982, p. xv) and appears
to have revived the heroic in British culture on a grand scale. Heroes were
honoured with medals and monuments and used to boost patriotic engage-
ment in war and the empire. The heroic could also serve as ersatz religion
at a time when the Bible and Church were losing authority. In his study of
the Victorian ‘frame of mind’, Walter Houghton points out that between
1830 and 1880 “the worship of the hero was a major factor in English
culture” (1957, p. 310) that also had a firm literary foundation: “Heroic
myth was as popular as heroic biography. Tales of medieval knights and leg-
endary heroes, Greek and Roman, Celtic and Norse, were widely read—in
new editions of Malory and Froissart, in the poetry of Tennyson, Arnold
and the Pre-Raphaelites” (p. 305). At the same time, however, the heroic
was scrutinised and debated among intellectuals as well as the public, and
this debate continued strands we have noted above for preceding centu-
ries. Echoing Hegel’s diagnosis of a world that had become prosaic and
disregardful of the great individual (1975, pp. 183–196), Carlyle declared
in 1840 that “in these days Hero-worship […] professes to have gone out,
and finally ceased” (1993, p. 12)—even though modern life with its many
changes and transitions seemed in dire need of leadership. The Victorian
critic E.S. Dallas mourned over new standards of mediocrity, quipping
that “a Greek artist would be astonished to see how, in the modern drama
[…] all the billing and cooing, and doubting and pouting, not only of
heroes and heroines, but of every Jack and Jill in the land, are exposed to
view” (1866, II, p. 323, 325). According to such views, Victorian culture
was succumbing to the disenchantment that Max Weber saw at the core
of modernity and that was more intense than in the eighteenth century
(2004, p. 13). The Victorian age was rationalised, democratised, routinised
and bureaucratised and it was increasingly consumerist. All these develop-
ments seemed adverse to the heroic principle.
Historians of Victorian literature have therefore tended to adopt a post-
heroic tone in their analyses. George Levine writes that “[e]ven the most
overtly heroic literature of the Victorians tends to produce, at best, prob-
lematic heroes” (1982, p. 48, 50). Ian Ousby finds that the Victorians
abandoned “much of the traditional concept of heroism”, while also
attempting to salvage it and make it over “to their own needs, with mixed
feelings of complacency and disappointment” (1982, pp. 152f). How the
heroic could be made over to suit new social realities was pointed out
by Samuel Smiles. In Self-Help (1859) and in his many biographies of
engineers and men of business, he offered a democratic re-interpretation
of the heroic for a more egalitarian society, with a focus on an exemplary
heroism that could show itself in all walks of life. The great men whom
Smiles called ‘heroes’ embodied core middle-class values and virtues such
as industry, a sense of duty, piety, endurance and perseverance, and they
enacted them for the benefit of others. They could serve as models for
people from all ranks of society, and they could originate from all ranks of
society:
Even the humblest person, who sets before his fellows an example of indus-
try, sobriety, and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a
future influence upon the well-being of his country; for his life and character
pass unconsciously into the lives of others, and propagate good example for
all time to come. (Smiles, 2002, p. 20)
The Victorians referred to this form of heroism explicitly as ‘moral her-

oism’.12 And while Smiles hardly mentions them, women could also be
exemplars of this kind of heroism; Florence Nightingale was a frequently
cited example, just like the more humble Grace Darling, a lightkeeper’s
daughter who had helped to rescue shipwrecked seamen. Indeed, the
Victorian heroic imagination extended its social scope—in terms of both
gender and class—in a manner that intensified and normalised the trends
already observed for earlier periods and their literature: the female war-
riors and feminised heroes of the Renaissance, Bunyan’s humble Christian
heroes, the heroic moments of middle-class heroes in the eighteenth-
century novel. The Victorian period thus was, once more, an age in
which we observe a proliferation and pluralisation of heroic concepts.
They ranged from past to present, myth to real life, exception to norm.
Everyday heroes (as discussed extensively by Price, 2014), were appreci-
ated next to great soldiers and explorers, and the latter were admired even
when they exhibited a certain non-conformism like General Gordon and
Richard Burton.
This panorama of heroes was presented in a wide spectrum of genres,
and in books as well as in the periodical press. Biographies offered glimpses
of heroic character in real life, while poetry could bring out heroism’s
affective dimension. Tennyson captured the bravery of a futile attack in
‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, just as he created nostalgia for past
heroism in ‘Ulysses’. High imperialism in the final decades of Queen
Victoria’s reign produced a surge of poems affirming martial heroism.
Henry Newbolt sung the virtue of English pluck in nautical ballads like
‘Drake’s Drum’ and public-school poems like ‘Vitaï Lampada’ with its
now notorious challenge to “play up” in games and on the battlefield.
In a more vernacular idiom, Rudyard Kipling’s poems took a sceptical
attitude towards the glory of war but also expressed the stoicism of the
common soldier who served his Queen and country dutifully and endur-
ingly even if the schemes of the high and mighty only caused him misery.
As the speaker in ‘The Widow of Windsor’ enunciates: “We ’ave ’eard o’
the Widow at Windsor,/It’s safest to leave ’er alone:/For ’er sentries we
stand by the sea an’ the land/Wherever the bugles are blown./(Poor beg-
gars!—an’ don’t we get blown!)” (Kipling’s Verse, p. 182). The Victorian
novel was likewise divided in its representation of heroic behaviour, just
as it was split between interests in prosaic life and ordinary psychology
on the one hand, and sensation and romance on the other. A tendency
to mock and deflate heroic stature has been observed by George Levine
(1982, p. 53), who names Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (tellingly subtitled
“a novel without a hero”) and Meredith’s Egoist as examples. In fin-de-
siècle fiction, established notions of male heroism were challenged and
complicated by new concepts of masculinity and femininity as in Bram
Stoker’s Dracula (1897), discussed by Stefanie Lethbridge in Chap. 2 of
this volume, or in Henry Rider Haggard’s She (1887), whose illustrated
book edition Alison Martin examines in Chap. 3. At the same time, the
blind war artist in Kipling’s The Light that Failed (1891) seeks an honour-
able death by returning to war, and Kipling’s fictions of empire articulate
both pessimism and the creed that personal heroism and honour are still
possible (Dillingham, 2005). Kim (1901) was written according to the
patterns of adventure fiction, but Kipling’s narratives for adult readers
present imperial heroism as dutiful perseverance rather than triumphant
action. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), by contrast, impe-
rial heroic models deteriorate into madness and horror.13
However, throughout Queen Victoria’s reign, the novel also provided
examples of a more affirmative heroism. The authors of romances for
‘boys’, from R.M. Ballantyne and Charles Kingsley to Robert Louis
Stevenson and G.A. Henty, promoted “manliness, patriotism, chivalry,
service, sacrifice, comradeship and courage” and generated support for
“popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions” (Richards, 1992, p. 83).14
The titular character in Disraeli’s political novel Coningsby (1844) rep-
resents the ‘Young England’ movement and becomes a heroic leader for
democratic times. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) revolves around a
female character who displays heroic qualities of courage, dignity, endur-
ance and self-sacrifice. Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855) includes
a scene in which both Thornton, the new man of industry, and Margaret
Hale demonstrate mental and physical courage when they confront a strik-
ing mob. In such novels, new concepts of heroism are inscribed into real-
ist fiction and defined on a more modest, practicable scale that suits the
dimensions of ordinary life. This is made explicit in the preface to George
Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871–1872), which states that women in the nine-
teenth century lead uneventful lives and perform unheroic acts and that
the epic, in which “ardent deeds” could take shape, is “for ever gone”
(p. 825). However, the story of Dorothea Brooke is then presented as a
modern form of female heroism—a woman’s will to live a self-determined
life against odds and especially an unloved husband’s spite—that finds a
suitable medium in the novel. Eventually, the domestication and prosai-
fication of the heroic during Victorian times led into a long line of comic
and tragic anti-heroes in twentieth-century literature.15
The opinion that the First World War was a catalyst in this develop-
ment and in particular put an end to all traditions of military heroism
inherited from the Victorians (Bergonzi, 1965) needs to be qualified. It
is true that novels of classical modernism either show little interest in the
heroic or deconstruct its myths. The Odysseus figure in Joyce’s Ulysses
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“I wonder if you will ever really forgive me?” he added sadly. “I shall
never forgive myself.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she said, true to the innate sweetness of
her nature. “There was no adequate reason why you should have kept your
marriage a secret from me all these years; it was quite unnecessary. But we
all make mistakes sometimes. It was not your fault that I was so foolish as
to give my love unasked.”
She paused, for Bobbie reappeared upon the scene. Herbert wished to
escort his visitors to the carriage; but Lady Marjorie reminded him that he
was still an invalid: it was cold and draughty downstairs.
Bobbie endorsed her statement; and advised him to remain where he
was.
“I’ll ’scort mother,” he said cheerfully. “I know how to take care of her
quite as well as any growed-up person. Come along, mother. You’ll be all
right with me.”
“I am glad that you have such a worthy protector,” Herbert said in a low
voice, aside. “I trust he may ever be as attentive as he is now.”
“I trust so,” she rejoined, the tears springing to her eyes. “Good-bye—
Mr. Karne.”
She held out her small ungloved hand. He pressed it gently, then almost
reverently raised it to his lips.
“Good-bye, Lady Marjorie—good-bye.”
One last look—and then she was gone. All the freshness and brightness
of the room seemed to go with her. Herbert shivered, and rang the bell for a
lamp; for some inexplicable reason he could not endure the glare of the
electric light just then. All the evening he remained in his chair, deep in
thought; and having left his dinner untested, went despondently to bed.
On the following afternoon, the weather being congenial, he went for a
stroll. Almost involuntarily his steps turned towards Durlston House,
although he had not the slightest intention of calling there. To his surprise
he found all the blinds down, the house having an unwonted appearance of
desertion. Without pausing to think twice, he rang the bell, and inquired for
Lady Marjorie Stonor. The lodge-keeper informed him that her mistress had
left suddenly for London, where she intended leaving her son at school.
From thence she would proceed to Paris en route for the South. More she
did not know.
Karne thanked the woman and turned away. Suddenly he paused, and
looking up at the silent windows, raised his hat, as though greeting a friend.
“Poor Marjorie!” he exclaimed softly to himself, heaving a deep sigh. “Poor
little Marjorie!”
Then, squaring his shoulders, he resumed his walk.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ACME FURNISHING CO.
“I think you are the most ungrateful and undutiful child,” said Mrs.
Friedberg, surveying her youngest daughter with keen disapproval. “Your
Pa and I have done our very best for you ever since you were born; and now
that we are anxious to get you settled, you behave just like a silly
schoolgirl, doing your utmost to thwart our wishes. It’s all the fault of those
penny novelettes you’ve been reading. Now, remember this: I forbid you to
bring any more of those trashy things into the house; and every one I find
I’ll burn. Do you hear?”
Dinah stared back sullenly. “Yes, I hear,” she retorted pertly. “I should be
deaf if I didn’t. You talk loud enough, anyhow, ma.”
Then she sat down at the table, and went on with her interrupted letter to
David Salmon, which had been the cause of her mother’s outburst of wrath.
It really was most annoying from Mrs. Friedberg’s point of view. The Rev.
Isaac Abrahams had found a very nice man possessing the necessary
qualifications for a chosan;[20] and Dinah, taking a foolish dislike to him at
their first meeting, refused point-blank to have anything to do with him,
scarcely treating him with civility. Moreover, she declared her intention of
marrying David Salmon or nobody: and as David earned barely sufficient to
gratify his extravagant tastes, much less keep a wife, such a decision was
ridiculous in the extreme.
“What fault have you to find with Mr. Finkelstein?” her mother asked in
exasperation. “He may not be good-looking, but looks are not everything.
He’s got a good business, which is the chief thing, and I’m sure he is a very
amiable sort of fellow. Girls are so particular nowadays. I suppose you
would prefer one of those penny-novelette young men, with blue eyes and a
curly moustache, eh?”
Dinah shrugged her shoulders. “I won’t consent to marry a man I
couldn’t kiss,” she jerked out, nibbling the end of her pen.
“What nonsense!” rejoined Mrs. Friedberg, smiling in spite of herself. “I
have never heard of such a thing. Besides, if it comes to that, I see no
reason why you should not kiss Mr. Finkelstein.”
The girl made a grimace, and shuddered. “Ugh!” she exclaimed. “Fancy
kissing that! Why, he’s got a beard like a door-mat. He looks as though a
visit to the Hampstead swimming-baths wouldn’t do him any harm, either.
There is too much of the Schneider-how-ye-vas? about him for me, thank
you, Ma. You can tell him that I am already engaged.”
“But you are not already engaged,” her mother rejoined with anger. “A
girl is not engaged until she has the ring. I wish you would have done with
this nonsense, Dinah. You cannot marry David while he is in his present
position; and you are not going to waste the best years of your youth in
waiting for him. So understand that.”
Dinah went on writing in silence, knowing that words were useless in the
present instance. When her mother had gone out of the room she produced a
small case from her pocket, and, opening it, disclosed a pretty pearl and
diamond ring, which she slipped on her finger. It was not half as valuable as
Celia’s had been, but Dinah was quite satisfied with it, and wore it with a
sense of proud possession. Her lover was at present away on business in the
north of England, but she heard from him nearly every day. He always
addressed his letters to the care of the Brookes, next door—Harold very
kindly handing them to her over the garden-wall,—so her mother had not
the slightest idea that the two refractory young people were carrying on
such an ardent correspondence.
As soon as his engagement with Celia Franks was broken off, David had
gone to Dinah for consolation; and the merry dark-eyed girl had responded
to his attentions with a spontaneity that was quite refreshing. She had
always been fond of him, even when she had snubbed him so cruelly, and,
now that he was free, she did not hesitate to tell him so.
Before he went away, he proposed to her, and gave her the ring; but on
account of the opposition of her parents, they decided to keep their
engagement strictly private for the present. Dinah, however, was not quite
happy about it. The prospect of being engaged for an indefinite period did
not please her—it was too vague. One thing was certain, they could not get
married without Mr. and Mrs. Friedberg’s consent, for to do so would mean
the loss of the dowry and wedding-presents. It was a very mundane reason;
but it had to be considered, for they could not possibly afford to dispense
with such matrimonial perquisites.
Whilst David was away, Dinah was struck with an idea. She would try to
enlist the sympathy of her brother-in-law, Mike Rosen, who was her lover’s
employer, and see what good that would do. So she waited for an
opportunity; and one morning, when her mother had gone to Lottie’s house
in Canonbury for the day, jumped on an omnibus for the city. She hoped
Mike would not mind her going to see him at his place of business, but she
knew that if she went to Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Adeline was sure to be there,
and she wanted to see him alone.
The Acme Furnishing Company’s premises were situated in the
neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road. Dinah found them with little
difficulty, for, by dint of extensive advertising, they were well-known. She
stood outside and surveyed the well-stocked windows with admiration.
Each window represented a bedroom or sitting-room in miniature, fitted
with all the latest improvements in the furnishing line. Mike Rosen must be
very rich to be the owner of such a magnificent establishment, she thought.
Her intention was to go in and inquire for her brother-in-law
straightway; but with her usual aptitude for fun, she thought she would
amuse herself first. So with a bold step and a merry twinkle in her eye, she
pushed open the swing-door, and stepped inside. A young man in a
fashionable frock coat came forward to attend to her requirements. Dinah
put on her most dignified manner.
“I have come,” she said, sinking on to a comfortable settee with an air of
importance, “in answer to an advertisement of yours in the Daily Post, in
which you term yourselves the benefactors of mankind.”
“Yes, madam?”
“You offer to accommodate young couples just about to get married,
with furniture on the easy-payment system. I am just about to get married,
and I want to pay easily, if you can understand.”
“Quite so, madam?” The young man regarded her with gravity. “How
many rooms would you require to furnish?”
“I can hardly tell you yet. We have not yet decided whether it is to be a
little back room in Bloomsbury or a villa in Hampstead. It all depends on
circumstances. Lots of things depend on circumstances, don’t they?” she
added with a sweet smile.
“Quite so, madam.” The young man thought her a somewhat queer
customer.
“I have not come to order anything to-day,” she continued with dignity.
“I’ve only come to inspect. You say in your advertisement ‘Inspection
invited,’ you know. By-the-by, if we can’t pay up to date, I suppose you
come and grab the chairs and tables, don’t you? That is a disadvantage—a
decided disadvantage.”
The clerk cleared his throat. “Well, madam,” he replied, “we always
endeavour to exercise the greatest leniency possible. Of course, before we
send any goods to your—ahem—place of abode, we shall have to satisfy
ourselves as to your ability to pay. I do not suppose you will object to our
making full inquiries?”
“Oh, not at all,” said Dinah, complacently. Why should she object?
“Unlike some firms, we conduct our business on thoroughly honourable
and equitable principles,” the young man went on to assure her. “Then there
is our free insurance scheme. If your husband were to die——”
“Oh, but he is not going to die,” the girl interposed quickly. “Why, he
has only just begun to live!”
“Just so, madam; but life at best is uncertain. I was going to say that,
were your husband unfortunately to die, the furniture would be yours—as
his widow—without any further payment.”
“How nice!” Dinah murmured. “You give me the cold shivers down my
back. Widow indeed! And I’m not even married yet. Can I see your chief
this morning?”
The clerk looked dubious. “That is scarcely necessary, madam, at this
stage of the proceedings,” he replied. “The head of our firm is a very busy
man——”
But Dinah had espied a familiar figure looming in the background—a
figure with a broad waistcoat and a heavy gold chain.
“Mike!”
“Dinah! Why, what an unexpected treat this is, little girl!”
He came forward to greet her, his good-natured face beaming with
pleasure. Dinah bowed with a saucy air of apology to the astonished clerk,
and favoured her brother-in-law with a hearty kiss. Then she linked her arm
in his, and passed down a narrow passage which was lined on either side
with bedsteads of every description.
“Mike,” she said impressively, “I have come to talk to you about
something very serious. I am going to take you into my confidence; that is
why I have come down here. It is just between ourselves. Do you
understand?”
Mike nodded gravely. “Perfectly,” he replied. “You will do well to take
me into your confidence. But it is just my luncheon-time. Thompson, lay
another knife and fork, please”—this to another of his numerous clerks.
“Things of importance are much better discussed after lunch, you know.
You are not in a hurry to get home?”
“No, Ma is out, so it doesn’t matter. You are not vexed with me for
coming here, Mike?”
“Not at all, not at all. Quite delighted, I assure you. It’s not often I get a
visitor to lunch, though Adeline brings the kiddie occasionally.”
He led the way up a short flight of stairs to a room marked “private,”
and, opening the door, stood back for Dinah to enter. Although not large, it
was a sumptuously furnished room, fitted with all the comforts that the
owner could possibly desire. Red was the predominant tone, the wall-paper,
carpet, hangings and upholstery being all of that colour. A large pigeon-hole
cabinet and desk combined took up the whole of one wall, whilst a small
card-table bore testimony to the fact that the proprietor was not averse to a
little recreation in the midst of work. One picture only adorned the walls: it
was an enlarged portrait of the woman he cared most about—his wife.
Dinah inspected her surroundings with undisguised approval, then sat
down to the table, which gleamed with the finest cutlery and silver.
Suddenly something pink streaked with fat caught her eye. She glanced
at it casually at first, then fixedly, and finally gasped in astonishment.
“Mike, you humbug!” she exclaimed in a tone of pained surprise. “It’s—
it’s—ham!”
Mike felt himself go red down to the back of his neck. What an idiot he
was not to have ordered the unlawful viand to be removed before the girl
entered the room—but he had scarcely had time.
“Yes,” he replied with exaggerated carelessness, “my doctor
recommends it as an extremely nutritious article of food. Adeline objects to
have it in the house at all at home, so I am obliged to partake of it down
here. However, I will not hurt your feelings by offering you any. This is a
very tender chicken.”
He proceeded to carve the bird, handing a well-filled plate of it to his
guest.
Dinah’s face fell. Looking longingly at the ham, she began to trifle with
her chicken.
“I suppose I had better not ask whether this is kosher?” she inquired
diffidently.
“Oh, it is quite kosher; it came from Abrahams’,” Mike answered
quickly. “I would not offer it to you unless it were.”
He poured out two wine-glasses full of port: it was ’57 port. Dinah
clinked her glass against his, and drank. Then she looked at the ham again,
and sighed.
“Have a bit?” suggested her brother-in-law, with a sly wink.
She shook her head, but it was not a very decided kind of shake. Then,
after a moment’s pause, she said, with a feeble attempt at casuistry—
“Mike, the ham has rubbed shoulders with the chicken. They are both on
the same dish, therefore one is no more kosher than the other. I think you
may give me a piece just about the size of a sixpence. I’ve never tasted it
before in my life.”
“Certainly,” he replied with alacrity. “Here, give me your plate. If you
eat a little bit, it’s just as bad—or as good—as eating the whole lot. There—
now what do you think of it?”
Dinah cut a small piece, and pricked it with her fork. “ ‘Get a piece of
pork,’ ” she murmured softly, “ ‘and stick it on a fork, and give it to the
——’ ” Here she popped it into her mouth. “Oh, Mike, it’s positively
scrumptious. But you won’t tell Ma, will you?”
“Oh no, I won’t split on you,” he replied cheerfully. “You see, we are
both in the same boat.”
Pushing back his chair, he rose from the table; for a ring on the telephone
claimed his attention.
“Do you know who that was?” he said, when he sat down again. “It was
Mr. Salmon talking from Manchester. I would have told him you were here,
but there was no time.”
“It is about David that I have come to see you,” Dinah began, somewhat
nervously. “You must not tell anybody yet, but we are engaged.”
Her brother-in-law raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say so!” he
exclaimed. “Why, I thought that Ma——”
“Yes, Ma and Pa are both against it,” she hastened to explain. “That is
the trouble. But I have quite made up my mind not to have Mr. Finkelstein
or any other snuffy old creature they may choose to rake up for me. I am
going to marry the man I love, and that is David. Oh, I love him so much,
Mike—awfully much! I feel I shall do something desperate if anything
happens to prevent us from marrying.”
She spoke quickly, and evidently meant what she said. Mike puckered up
his brow, and having obtained the requisite permission, lit a cigar.
“It’s a pity,” he said between the puffs. “Couldn’t you place your
affections on somebody more reliable than Salmon? I don’t say he’s not a
nice lad—in fact, I rather like him myself; but he is not steady, he doesn’t
stick to his business. I should like to see you comfortably married, Di, but
to somebody with more backbone than David Salmon.”
“I know he is not a saint,” she answered eagerly. “I don’t want him to be.
I couldn’t stand a paragon of perfection for more than a week. But he is not
bad, Mike. You have no idea how good-hearted he really is. And he has
promised me not to bet or gamble any more. Oh, I’ll make him stick to his
business when we are married; you don’t know what a tremendous
influence I have over him.”
“H’m!” Mike grunted, and scratched the back of his head. “Well, what
do you want me to do?”
“I want you to give him a lift,” she pleaded earnestly; “to put him in a
position that will enable him to marry me with the consent of my parents. I
wouldn’t ask you to help us if you were not such a thoroughly good fellow,
Mike. You give away such large sums in charity, that I thought you
wouldn’t mind going in for a little of that charity which begins at home.
You offered to take David into partnership when he married, you know.”
“Ah, yes, but that was a different matter. If he had married Celia Franks
he would have had her money to invest. I withdrew my offer directly the
girl so foolishly threw away her fortune. You cannot expect me to take him
into partnership if he hasn’t a farthing to put into the business—now, can
you, Dinah?”
“No, I suppose not,” she answered dejectedly, scarcely knowing what to
say.
A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. The same clerk who
had attended to Dinah came in to state that the head of a contemporary firm
wished to see Mr. Rosen on important business.
Dinah jumped up and drew on her gloves, thinking she had taken up
enough of her brother-in-law’s valuable time. Mike flicked the ash off his
cigar.
“Well, I will have a serious conversation with David when he returns,”
he said, as the clerk withdrew. “And if I can see my way to promote him, I
will do so, for your sake, little girl. Anyway, I’ll give you all your house-
furniture for a wedding-present, and a handsome cheque besides. So keep
your pecker up, Di; I’ll see you through.”
Then, with a hasty farewell, he ordered the clerk to call a hansom and
pay the driver. Dinah appreciated the attention, and quite enjoyed her free
ride home. She was delighted with the result of her mission, for she knew
that her brother-in-law would be as good as his word.
As for Mike, he went home and told his wife everything; and, as usual,
asked her advice. Adeline hemmed and hawed, and cross-questioned her
spouse until he marvelled at the shrewdness of womankind. Finally she said
—
“Di won’t be happy till she gets him, Mike. We had better let her have
him, and between us all we’ll manage to keep him straight.”
And so it was, that within the next fortnight the engagement between
Dinah Friedberg and David Salmon was formally announced.
CHAPTER XIV
“THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER;” AND AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

It was a Sunday afternoon in November. Outside, a grey mist hung over
streets and squares, filling the air with unpleasant dampness; but inside—in
this particular St. John’s Wood drawing-room, at least—there was warmth
and comfort. The lamps under their crimson shades combined with the
crackling fire to generate a cheerful light and heat, the pleasant effect of
which was heightened by the clink of tea-cups and the buzz of human
voices.
A stranger had merely to glance casually around to know that this was
the apartment of one who was in some way connected with the drama.
There were portraits everywhere: on the walls, the mantelpiece, the boudoir
grand piano, and on both sides of a large screen; in fact, in every nook
where there was the smallest space. Most of them portrayed the charms of
well-known actors and actresses, some of them being the leading lights of
the dramatic profession in England, America, and France. Art and music
were also represented, although in a lesser degree; and each portrait was
signed by the autograph of the original, in some cases supplemented by a
friendly inscription.
The latest addition to this collection was a panel portrait of Celia Franks,
in the character of Galatea, which was the last part in which she had
performed at the Academy; and in close proximity to it sat Celia herself,
carelessly stirring her tea. She was talking to the famous and marvellously
beautiful actress, Mrs. Potter Wemyss, who, having at Haviland’s request
attended the dress rehearsal of the new play, was so delighted with Celia’s
acting as to wish to give her a few hints before the important first night.
This was a great honour, for Mrs. Potter Wemyss did not usually trouble to
give a novice the benefit of her advice; so Celia, appreciating it as such,
listened with eager attention.
There were several other people in the room, including a little woman in
black, who poured out the tea and spoke to nobody—she was the
insignificant mistress of the house; Guy Haviland himself, genial as ever;
his sister Grace, who was talking to Mrs. Neville Williams; and Lord
Bexley, who sat silent in a far-off shadowy corner.
Bexley looked preoccupied as he absent-mindedly twirled his
moustache. He watched Celia Franks and Mrs. Potter Wemyss, and
wondered which of the two distinct types of beauty were the more perfect
from the artistic point of view. Mrs. Potter Wemyss was Irish, with typical
Irish eyes, and plump yet delicately moulded features. Celia, although her
profile reminded him of a Greek statue, had the advantage of her Semitic
descent; and with her red-gold hair would have made an excellent study for
the Madonna, the accepted ideal of Jewish virginal beauty.
Bexley admired lovely women, especially when they were women of
intelligence also, so that to gaze unobserved at these two afforded him keen
pleasure. Their every movement was a graceful pose—perhaps studied in
the case of the elder woman, but not so with the younger; and their long
clinging gowns served to enhance the beauty of their well-proportioned
forms.
“A pretty picture,” remarked Mrs. Neville Williams, in an undertone,
suddenly appearing beside his chair. “Age instructing youth in the way of
vice.”
She glanced towards the pair as she spoke. Her words jarred on Bexley
in his present mood.
“I do not know why you should think that,” he returned with warmth. “I
should say that Mrs. Potter Wemyss would be more likely to teach virtue
than vice.”
“Oh yes”—with a laugh that was half a sneer,—“I know she is very
good. Goes to church regularly, refuses to travel on Sunday, and won’t act
during Lent. But it’s just a fad, you know, which she, being at the top of the
ladder, can afford to indulge. It’s a good advertisement too. An actress does
not usually possess a reputation of that kind.”
Bexley wondered what it was that made Mrs. Neville Williams so
ungenerous to those of her own sex. Whenever he met her, which was very
frequently of late—more often, if the truth be known, than he desired,—she
always had something spiteful to say about one of their mutual
acquaintance. He did not admire this trait in her character, and generally felt
called upon to defend the lady who happened to be under discussion.
“It is hardly fair to take it for granted that Mrs. Wemyss is guilty of
hypocrisy,” he said with a touch of asperity. “I consider it very praiseworthy
on her part to stick to her Christian principles even though she is on the
stage. Her example is one which might be followed to advantage by the
lesser luminaries of her profession.”
“That sounds very nice,” Mrs. Williams replied with a shrug. “But I am
afraid that I do not believe in such goodness. The world—especially the
theatrical world—is too full of sham and make-believe.”
“And yet there is plenty of unaffected sincerity too, if we only know
where to look for it,” the peer returned musingly, his eyes still on Celia and
Mrs. Potter Wemyss. “Do you know, I used to think that when a human
being ceased to believe in goodness, and in God as the Author of all
goodness, he—or she—was no longer fit to live. Sometimes I think so
now.”
Mrs. Neville Williams bit her lip, although it was not Bexley’s fault if
she chose to apply the remark to herself.
“That is rather a strong expression,” she said, her small foot tapping the
ground.
“Yes, one feels strongly sometimes,” he rejoined; then turned to
Haviland’s little girl, who had just come into the room.
Mrs. Williams moved away wondering what had occurred to vex his
lordship, for that he had been put out about something was evident. It was a
question whether she would have been pleased, had she known.
That very morning Lord Bexley had proposed marriage to Celia Franks,
and, to his sorrow, had been refused. She liked and respected him
immensely, she said, and felt honoured that he should desire to marry her;
but she did not love him, and, having once experienced an engagement
without love, she was anxious to avoid a repetition of the mistake. It was no
wonder, therefore, that he was not in the happiest of moods. He had known
all along that, having given up her own fortune for the sake of her belief, his
rank and wealth were not likely to carry much weight; but such knowledge
did not make his disappointment any the less keen.
“I think I shall join my sister in the South,” he said, when, Mrs. Potter
Wemyss having taken her departure, he was able to speak to Celia. “London
seems suddenly to have become cold and grey. It will be a relief to see
sunny Italy once more.”
Celia turned to him with an expression of regret. “You make me feel that
I am sending you away,” she said, with a touch of self-reproach. “I am so
sorry, Lord Bexley, sorry that I have had to hurt you, I mean.”
“Never mind, it was my own fault,” he rejoined, not wishing her to feel
that she was in any way to blame. “It was foolish of me to imagine that you
could fall in love with an old stager like myself. Oh, that’s all right”—as the
girl was about to remonstrate,—“I am getting old, you know. Well, well, we
will not say any more about it; only I do hope that when Mr. Right comes
along, he will be worthy of you, Cely. You are a dear girl, you deserve to be
made happy, and I sincerely trust that some good man will make you so.”
There was a suspicious moisture in Celia’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said
simply, with one of her wonderful smiles. “It is very kind and generous of
you to wish me all that; I hope, though, you won’t go away before
Thursday,” raising her voice slightly, for Miss Haviland’s eyes were upon
them. “I made sure that Lady Marjorie would be present at the theatre on
the first night. I shall be dreadfully disappointed if you are away too.”
“Then I will stay,” he hastened to rejoin. “It is very kind of you to
express such a desire.”
Thus ended Lord Bexley’s love affair, the only one he ever had.
The important Thursday came in due course, as every long-anticipated
day comes, whether its advent be hailed with delight or dread. Celia was
excited one moment, calm the next, and all the time cherished a secret fear
lest she should be overcome with stage-fright at the crucial moment.
Late in the afternoon a large floral horse-shoe arrived from Mrs. Potter
Wemyss. Haviland had it hung up in Celia’s dressing-room at the theatre,
for luck. Accompanying the emblem was a note from the great actress
wishing the author and his heroine a huge success. She was unable to attend
the performance herself, having a professional engagement of her own to
fulfil, but hoped to join them later at the Carlton, where Haviland was
giving a supper in honour of the occasion.
Her good wishes were, happily, gratified. “The Voice of the Charmer”
was a decided success. From the first ring-up to the final fall of the curtain,
it went without a hitch. Beautiful scenery and costumes, good acting, a
whimsical but fascinating plot—all these things were in its favour; and the
audience being enthusiastic, ready to applaud on the slightest provocation,
the good fortune of the play was thus ensured.
Celia’s cue did not occur until the latter part of the first act. She was
heard singing in the distance until, after a melodious cadenza, she herself
appeared. From the first moment of her entrance she held the stage. Opera
glasses were immediately levelled and focussed, as with almost breathless
interest the audience took in the beauty of her face and form, the profusion
of bright hair falling over robes of filmy white; and then, the marvellous
sweetness of her voice. Slightly nervous at first, she soon gained
confidence; and, taking no heed of the audience, lost herself in the identity
of Mallida, the hypnotist’s daughter, who, living in an old-world German
town, lures men and women on by the magic power of her voice, until,
arriving on her father’s domain, they are forced to submit to his evil
machinations.
It was a curious play, recalling “Dr. Faustus” in the mystic impossibility
of its first act, but becoming more plausible as it proceeded. The first scene
was a secret cave in the heart of the Hartz mountains, where the hypnotist
hid the spoil he had plundered from his victims; the last act represented, in
striking contrast, a modern London ball-room; Haviland having run the
whole gamut from the romantic to the commonplace.
The theatre was crowded in every part. Celia could not have desired a
better reception than the one which was accorded her. Many of the people
in the stalls and boxes had met her, when, like a meteor, she had flashed
upon society under the chaperonage of Lady Marjorie Stonor. Claiming
personal acquaintance, therefore, they were particularly interested, and vied
with pit and gallery in thundering their applause.
Sitting far back in the stage-box sat Herbert Karne, who had arrived
from Durlston the preceding day. Although he was naturally gratified at his
sister’s success, he felt strangely unattuned to the spirit of the performance,
and was not as elated as he should have been. The depression which had
accompanied his convalescence seemed to have settled upon him with
deeper gloom. Try as he would, he could not reclaim that buoyancy of
disposition which had been his aforetime. The sudden departure of Lady
Marjorie had affected him more deeply than he would have thought
possible. Not only did he miss her cheering visits, her dainty attentions, her
vivacious ways, but he also felt that, in spite of extenuating circumstances,
he had treated her badly. A hundred times a day her face rose up before his
mental vision—her face as it had been after he had told her of his past. And,
however hopeless it might be, he loved her. Waking or sleeping, she was
continually in his mind.
When the lights were switched on after the end of the second act, he
recognized Lord Bexley, but avoided a direct glance. He was, perhaps,
hyper-sensitive, but—although he might have been sure that Lady Marjorie
would not tell even her brother of what had occurred—he felt that if Bexley
were to approach him with a horsewhip, he would have no right to display
resentment.
The peer was in an opposite box with friends. One of them, a lady, sat
sideways, apparently studying her programme. There was something
curiously familiar to Herbert Karne in the contour of her face. He was not
able to regard her for long, however, for at that moment Guy Haviland
appeared at the door of his box, offering to take him to the vicinity of the
stage. He stayed there for the remainder of the performance, being much
interested in the working behind the scenes.
Haviland and Celia received quite an ovation when the curtain fell for
the last time, the author insisting in sharing the honours with his heroine. As
soon as Celia had got rid of her make-up and changed into conventional
evening dress, they all drove to the Carlton, where the flowers which had
been presented during the evening were already displayed on the tables
reserved for their party. Herbert Karne was allotted the place next to Mrs.
Potter Wemyss, who had arrived with her husband a few minutes earlier.
The two seats on his right were still vacant, but he was so absorbed in
studying the radiant beauty of Mrs. Wemyss, that he did not particularly
notice the fact.
“Good evening, Karne. Glad to see you again. How is the arm?” said a
voice behind him; and, rising, the artist was confronted by Lord Bexley.
With averted eyes he shook hands, and uttered a commonplace greeting;
then started suddenly, scarcely able to restrain an exclamation of surprise.
A lady was standing by the side of the peer, the same he had seen in the
theatre. Although dressed entirely in black, her appearance was by no
means sombre, for her corsage, neck, and arms blazed with diamonds; the
same jewels gleaming from amongst the unnatural brightness of her hair.
Tall and erect, she towered above Herbert with an expression of calm
triumph on her face; then, as Lord Bexley introduced him, held out her
hand.
“I think we have met before,” she said with her peculiarly crisp accent,
half French, half Scotch. “Perhaps Mr. Karne does not remember? It was in
the Quartier Latin a few years ago.”
Herbert grasped the back of the chair; the whole room seemed to spin.
“Yes, I remember,” he answered thickly. “It would be impossible to
forget——”
The lady prepared to take her place on his left. “How charming of you to
say so,” she said, as she sat down. “We shall be able to talk over old times.
To recall pleasant reminiscences is quite a favourite pastime of mine.”
It was a merry little supper-party. Guy Haviland kept the table going
with his clever wit; he was a past-master in the art of entertaining. Although
the evening had been a trying one, Celia did not seem to be fatigued. She
enjoyed being made much of—what girl does not?—and her face glowed
with happy excitement as she responded to the congratulations of her
admirers.
Her brother felt like the death’s-head at the feast. Had Celia been less
excited, she could not have failed to notice his unwonted moodiness. Mrs.
Potter Wemyss made several efforts to sustain a conversation, but finally
despairing of eliciting any but monosyllabic answers, left him to himself.
His brain was in a whirl; he could not eat, nor could he speak. All he could
do was to stare straight in front of him and marvel at the irony of fate. He
had not caught the name of the woman to whom he had been reintroduced;
he did not know in what guise she posed or how she came to be an
honoured guest at Haviland’s table. It was enough for him that she was
there; and being there, claimed recognition.
She confined her conversation principally to her partner, with whom she
seemed to be on terms of intimacy. Several times, however, she turned
towards the artist with a “Do you remember such and such a thing in
Paris?” or, “We had delightful times in those old student-days, didn’t we,
Mr. Karne?”
Herbert was amazed at her coolness, being unaware that on her part the
meeting with himself had been anticipated. He was completely staggered,
too, at the metamorphosis which had taken place in her. He had always
credited her with being arrogantly clever, but how in those twelve years she
had managed to transform herself from a rank Bohemian into a
conventional society lady was more than even he could understand. Judging
by the smiling bows of recognition which passed between herself and others
who were supping at the Carlton, she was well known: that she had been in
the company of Lord Bexley all the evening was in itself sufficient
guarantee as to her social standing.
Not until the guests were dispersing did he get an opportunity of
speaking to her alone; and then it was only for a second. She was standing
in the vestibule, having just said good night to some friends whilst her
cavalier went to see after her carriage. Herbert approached, and, with a
gesture, drew her aside.
“Ninette!” he exclaimed; and then again, “Ninette!”
She smiled the slow tortuous smile he knew so well of old.
“Not ‘Ninette’ in England,” was her laconic answer.
“I must speak to you,” he said hurriedly, noticing that in spite of the
difference in her age and position she was little changed. “Where can I see
you, and at what hour? I must have an explanation.”
She drew herself up with dignity. “There is no ‘must’ where I am
concerned,” she replied haughtily. “But if you care to call and see me to-
morrow, I shall be at home. Here is my card.”
He took it hastily and placed it in his card-case. “At what time?” he
asked again. “Ten o’clock?”
“You surely do not expect me to be up at that unearthly hour of the
morning?” she answered in an aggrieved tone. “You can come at twelve.”
At that moment Lord Bexley reappeared, and, with a bow, the artist
moved away. Then, when he had taken leave of Celia and was on his way to
his hotel, he paused under a street lamp to examine the card.
“Mrs. Neville Williams,
150 Cromwell Mansions,
South Kensington, S.W.”
Such was its inscription.
Herbert read it aloud. “Mrs. Neville Williams.” The name seemed to have
a familiar ring about it. Where had he heard it before? Suddenly he
recollected. It was the name of the Vicar of Durlston’s brother-in-law, the
late Dr. Neville Williams of Harley Street. Good Heavens! Could Ninette
have had the audacity to pose as the doctor’s wife?—or of what had she
been guilty?
A cold sweat broke out upon his brow as he thought of it. In whatever
way she had disgraced him, she was still his wife; and now that she had
suddenly crossed his path again, there could be no more ignoring of the
fact.
What would society say if the scandal were exposed? he wondered dully.
What would Marjorie say?
There was no sleep for Herbert Karne that night.
CHAPTER XV
NINETTE TELLS HER STORY
“Did you notice what magnificent diamonds Mrs. Neville Williams wore
last night?” said Celia to her brother the following morning. “Mrs. Haviland
says they belong to the Wallingcourt family, and that there has been some
amount of litigation about them. Fancy her wearing jewels that are not her
own!”
Herbert Karne made no remark, for to discuss Mrs. Neville Williams
with his sister was impossible under existing circumstances. Celia had
called for him at his hotel; and was engaged in looking over a pile of
newspaper cuttings concerning the performance of the previous night.
Opinion was divided as to the merits of the play; but the critics were
unanimous in their praise of the acting of Mallida.
“I feel frightfully flat this morning,” she continued, stifling a yawn. “It is
the reaction from last night, I suppose. I think a walk would do me good.
Will you come for a stroll over the heath, Herbert? Mr. Haviland wants me
at the theatre at two o’clock, but I am free until then.”
Herbert rose from the table and looked out of the window.
“It is not a very nice day for the heath,” he replied. “It seems inclined to
be foggy. Besides, I have an appointment in Kensington at twelve.”
“A business appointment?” she asked with interest.
“No, a private appointment,” he answered briefly, apparently disinclined
to be communicative. Then with a gesture of weariness he passed his hand
across his forehead and sighed.
Celia tossed the papers aside, and regarded him with solicitude. There
was a furrow on his brow which hitherto she had not noticed, and his eyes
had deep lines under the lids. He seemed thoroughly dispirited, though for
what reason she did not know.
“I wish you would tell me what is the matter, Herbert,” she said gently.
“You are not your own bright self at all. I noticed it directly you arrived on
Tuesday. Is anything troubling you, dear?”
He sighed again—for the sixteenth time according to his sister’s
calculation—then confessed to being “a bit worried,” but would not divulge
what was the source of his trouble.
“Won’t you tell me what it is?” she urged. “Perhaps I could help you if I
knew.”
He shook his head. “It’s a trouble for which there is no help,” he replied;
and all her coaxing could elicit no more.
When he parted from her an hour later, he hailed a hansom and drove to
Kensington, where he found the neighbourhood enveloped in fog. The
cabman, unable to see his way clearly, had some difficulty in finding
Cromwell Mansions; but after making a circuit of the whole district,
eventually arrived at the destination he sought.
With a nervousness quite foreign to his disposition, Herbert paid the man
and rang for the elevator. He had not chafed at the delay; quite the contrary,
even though the fog were more or less unpleasant. He was going to see his
wife, but what the result of that interview would be, he had not the slightest
idea: his mind seemed a positive blank.
Arrived at the third floor, he pressed the electric bell, and was
immediately admitted by a trim parlour-maid, who ushered him into an
artistically furnished room of octagonal shape. An ugly pug, who lay coiled
up on the hearthrug, was the only occupant, and greeted the visitor with a
snarl. Herbert quieted it with a word; then, as the servant went to inform her
mistress of his arrival, proceeded to look about him.
Some of the outside fog had penetrated within; and the only illumination
was that obtained from an electric lamp, which, under a heavy golden shade
formed to represent a daffodil, cast a subdued light over the room. As soon
as his eyes had become accustomed to the dimness, he discovered that the
appurtenances certainly suggested taste and refinement. Books, pictures,
music, and the many dainty knick-knacks which women delight in, all these
were there. Of the pictures, two he recognized as his own handiwork,
painted at the time of his infatuation for Ninette. The sight of them brought
back a host of recollections. Quite vividly he could see again his old studio
overlooking the chimney-pots of Paris; and Ninette perched on the dais with
her favourite poodle in her arms. In the next atelier there had lived a
pianist, who shared the room with an artist brother, and practised Liszt’s
fourteenth rhapsody energetically every day. Herbert could almost hear the
crisp, dotted notes of that rhapsody now. It is strange how, in our minds, a
certain musical phrase will persist in connecting itself with certain past
events; and we can never think of the one without the other recurring to us
also.
The creak of the door as it swung back on its hinges broke his reverie,
and in another moment Ninette stood beside him. In the half light he could
not see her very distinctly, but she was clad in a loose tea-gown trimmed
with a profusion of ribbons and lace.
“Good morning,” she said as coolly as though his visit were of daily
occurrence. “I hardly expected you in this fog. Won’t you sit down?”
He touched the tips of the fingers she held out as though the action
almost hurt him.
“Thanks; I prefer to stand,” he answered briefly. “I suppose you are
prepared with your explanation, Ninette?”
She sank on to an arm-chair with an air of weary languor, the pug
nestling against the folds of her gown.
“Yes, I am quite prepared,” she answered calmly. “But, first of all, I do
not wish to be called Ninette any more: the sobriquet savours too much of
Paris and Bohemianism. My real name, as I thought you were aware, is
Marie, which my late husband preferred to translate into Mary. I was
always plain English Mary to him, never the frivolous Ninette you knew.”
“Your late husband,” repeated Karne, a trifle cynically. “To whom do
you allude?”
“To my second husband, of course,” she returned evenly. “Dr. Percival
Arthur Neville Williams, of Harley Street, London, and Bolton Lawns,
Surrey.”
Herbert paced the room in agitation. “You say that the late Dr. Neville
Williams was your second husband,” he said incredulously. “Have you
forgotten, or do you pretend to ignore the fact of your marriage with
myself?”
“I do neither,” she rejoined, lifting the pug on to her knee. “As it
happens, however, my marriage with you was annulled on the very day that
the ceremony took place.”
The artist stood still and confronted her with amazement. He could
hardly believe his ears. The marriage annulled! How could it have been

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Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction

Since 1800: Case Studies 1st Edition

The Ideal of Parliament in Europe since 1800 Remieg

Metropolis London Histories and Representations since

The Gothic in Contemporary British Trauma Fiction

Tragedy's endurance : performances of Greek tragedies

International Case Studies in Event Management

The Family Nurse Practitioner: Clinical Case Studies

Studies in the Rhetoric of Fiction Ana-Karina Schneider

Case Studies in Cell Biology 1st Edition Merri Lynn

Heroes and Heroism

ISBN 978-3-319-33556-8 ISBN 978-3-319-33557-5 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955189

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover image © SOTK2011 / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction.

2 Negotiating Modernity, Modernising Heroes:

3 Potentially the Noble Creature? Picturing Heroism

4 The Fate of Heroism After Industrialisation:

5 Death of the Hero? Heroism in British Fiction

6 “A Courage Steadfast, Luminous”: Christopher Caudwell

7 Unspeakable Heroism: The Second World War

8 Constructing and Deconstructing the Fantasy Hero:

9 An Unlikely Hero for the War-on-Terror Decade:

10 The Heroic in British Young Adult Fiction:

11 Victims and Heroes Get All Mixed Up:

Fig. 3.1 The Casket. Haggard, She (1888). 55

Ann-Marie Einhaus is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Ralf Schneider is Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at Bielefeld

Introduction: Heroes and Heroism

Barbara Korte and Stefanie Lethbridge

B. Korte () • S. Lethbridge ()

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 1

Cubitt and Warren’s collection of critical articles (2000) is primarily con-

EPIC TRADITIONS AND ROMANCE TRANSFORMATIONS:

outlines” (2008, p. 390)7 and it incorporates several heroic set pieces,

ties that used to be primarily associated with the feminine.10 Chapter 4

needs to add the impact of an expanding print culture which multiplied

more narrowly class-based forms (Wein, 2002). The successful heroes of

in real life—including a half-guilty fascination with Napoleon. In their

AFTER ROMANTICISM: VICTORIAN TO PRESENT

The Victorians referred to this form of heroism explicitly as ‘moral her-

THE ACME FURNISHING CO.

“THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER;” AND AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

NINETTE TELLS HER STORY

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