Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize nomination prompts me to finally write some words on The Mirror & the Light – inadequate as they may be. Whilst not exactly putting it off, I just felt, like I said, inadequate – unable to find a way in and unable to cohere my many thoughts. At the time of publication in March, I linked to some various degrees of flattering reviews and there are many more to easily be found around about, so I will only add mention here, and for my own devices, Daniel Mendelsohn’s review in The New Yorker. Firstly, because I always enjoy Mendelsohn’s writing, and secondly, because it errs from the absolutely positive resonance to be found elsewhere – “…bloated and only occasionally captivating…” is less than charitable! – but it is thought provoking anyway, placing as it does this end to the Cromwell saga in the context of the two preceding novels and Mantel’s other work. Also, it does offer a good starting point for me; suggesting some interesting aspects – and doing so sometimes in respect to that which I perceive to be absent.
The New Yorker review is from way back at the beginning of March, and there is no need to get into why that seems now like almost another time – not exactly medieval, but still…! Perhaps, because Mendelsohn’s reading and writing came before the Corona pandemic fully insinuated itself upon us (and what we read, and what we read into that which we read), he doesn’t seem affected by, or least ways lend his criticism to, the pervading atmosphere of death and impending death that at times almost overwhelmed me; be it to come at the gallows, in child-bed – or, and especially, through plague and disease. When the King’s summer tour route has to be meticulously researched and planned to avoid outbreaks of plague [p.680 Fourth Estate ed.], I could do nothing but think of the here and now and thwarted summer holidays. Trivial comparison I know.
Death also finds its extension in the ghosts of the past; omnipresent in the novel and as Cromwell’s constant company – for him, the past is never past (to use Mendelsohn’s expression), nor the dead ever put to rest. Mendelsohn, interestingly, comments more generally in regard to the supernatural in Mantel’s larger body of work – alerting me to an unfortunate gap in my reading, that will be rectified.
Also not mentioned in the review, is the role of rumour and here-say in fuelling discontent amongst the people; the speed at which news and fake-news spreads into far counties (and beyond, to France and the Empire) is startling given the primitive trains of communication, and is eerily reminiscent of the power of social media in this day and age of conspiracies, disinformation and gossip galore. For instance, during the so-called Lincolnshire Rising that anticipated the Pilgrimage of Grace, the folk firmly believe Henry to be dead, a puppet laying in his bed with crown upon its head, and that (the surely to be damned) Th. Cromwell rules in spe, and connives without restraint to demolish the churches, de-frock their clergy, increase taxes and impose draconian levies [p.297].
Daniel Mendelsohn does grant Mantel’s prose to be often “sumptuous”, and on that we can agree. There really are some wonderful descriptive passages and literary devices aplenty. The book’s title should alert one to a figurative trope that extends throughout the novel – light is everywhere; slanted, broken, faded, and behind broken mirrors dwell dead Queens – and it is there exactly stated by Cromwell to Henry: “Your Majesty … the mirror and the light of other kings” – a description of course delighting the King![p.544] Later, thinking of this again, he is distracted by the reflection in a silver plate ” …reflecting himself to himself: the mirror and the light of all councillors that are in Christendom.” [p.616] Is this the hubris theme that Mendelsohn thinks is lost? That may be so, or it may be that it just subtly placed.
My reading of the novel was sometimes checked, not through distraction nor tedium, but simply to return to a piece again, so exquisite did I find some of her writing. Like this, as we are invited inside Cromwell’s head as he works his garden in Stepney, that could have been just another of many fine descriptive passages, but instead contains a metaphorical (and horticultural!) delight:
The middle of the tree we call the crown. We take out any shoots that are fractious against each other, those that are growing backwards, inwards, any way they shouldn’t. We thin the new shoots and as we cut we are aiming for the shape of a goblet. When the balance is right we clip the shoots, cutting back to an outward-facing bud.
[p.390]
The pruning of an apple tree or the protecting of the Crown, such the methods and labours of Thomas Cromwell.
Before I remove my crown, stop thinking about affairs of State, and get back inside my own head, I should like to get grammatical for a moment and mention the present tense used by Hilary Mantel that so powers the narration. It is this voice, voices in one’s head, telling the Cromwell story that kept me there, concentrated, never getting bogged down; adding an immediacy, an intimacy that transcends the clutter (bemoaned by Mendelsohn); in fact, it exposes the clutter to be existential. It may be that some would have preferred a tighter narrative structure, but “words, words, words” are sometimes needed to get to the nitty-gritty, to chip away at the obvious and lay bare the bones holding a life together and erect.
And it is with “words, words, words” that Daniel Mendelsohn concludes his review, so I will too. (I should say I read Wolf Hall a long time ago now, so perhaps I would not have remembered some of that which follows had I not, somewhat less “a long time ago”, watched again the BBC production.) Towards the end of Wolf Hall, and in one of Cromwell’s last attempts to persuade Thomas More to recant, More responds to Cromwell’s theatrical description of how his fate may still end well (that is, with body intact!) with: “It’s better than Chaucer. Words. Words. Just words.” And a startled Cromwell is suddenly a child again bringing food and drink to Lambeth Palace, and he tells More how he, a Putney urchin, interrupted him that evening at the Palace deep in his studies and asked: “…Master More, what is in that great book? You said words, words, just words”. More is ignorant, or feigns ignorance, of that meeting long ago. What does it say of the power of the word, and the consuming power “the Word” had over Thomas More?
And what is to be said of Hilary Mantel’s intent? Proverbially it is said: actions speak louder than words. Cromwell certainly admonishes and reminds More of the cruelty he too has imparted on others; wondering that More’s acts should somehow be attenuated by his formal brilliance – and sackcloth – while he, Cromwell, is judged as unprincipled or worse. But more than anything I understand here the arc, and not just literary, of a shared destiny – and as the circle closes, roles have been reversed; he once subservient is now in the position of power.
And as The Mirror & the Light nears its end, another arc is closing. Mantel’s Wolf Hall ends in 1535 on the day of More’s execution with Thomas Cromwell juggling dates for the King’s summer tour: “…Five days. Wolf Hall”, and we know now (as Bring up the Bodies tells) it was only that handful of days that was needed to set in motion a chain of events that would seal Anne Boleyn’s fate, seat a new Queen upon the throne and secure Cromwell’s ascendancy to the King’s most favoured. Then, in the Spring of 1539, there he is again immersed in organising Henry’s itinerary: “…Five days. Wolf Hall.” [p.682] Another marriage plot is to be concocted in the interests of the Crown and political expediency. This time, though, it will mark the beginning of the end of Thomas Cromwell. The last part of the novel, from his arrest to his execution, is not-put-down-able spectacular.
Thomas Cromwell was executed on 28th July, 1540, and on the same day Henry VIII wedded Catherine Howard; not at all the bride nor the marriage Cromwell had diligently planned through the previous year, and had so briefly seen realized. Of course Howard too meets a grisly end, and one could say the good Anne of Cleves, she whose person lived not up to her portrait – as the King would have it, had the last laugh (the Germans may well call that Galgenhumor – literally, “gallows humour”!). Amusing of course is it not, rather it chills; but then those were dark and chilly times.
Finally, I should express my gratitude to Daniel Mendelsohn for his New Yorker piece that suggested a way in; irrespective that we conclude differently on a number of fronts.
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