# St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 5/Books and Reading

* related authors: George Edmund Varian.
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BOOKS AND READING
BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE
NORMAN AND SAXON
Back in the old times, where our story of England’s adventures begins, this was as true as it is to-day. And you get the clearest possible idea of these opposing points of view regarding the same man in the two books, “Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings,” by Bulwer Lytton, and “Hereward the Wake,” by Charles Kingsley. In the first volume, Harold is shown in his hero aspect, as he was in the eyes of the men and women who loved him, and believed in him, and died for him. In the second story, we see Harold through the grim regard of his hereditary foes, the Herewards and the men of the Danelagh, descendants of the wild Danes who had settled years before in England. Naturally, this double picture is an interesting thing, and one gets a far more complete notion of the state of things in those old days than either book could give alone.
In “Harold,” we are given more of the condition of affairs in England, especially in and around London, and of the direct conflict between the incoming Norman and the stubborn, yet gradually overborne, Saxon. William himself is wonderfully portrayed. A giant in form, scheming and fierce of spirit, his influence on Edward the Confessor, a gentle, devout soul, to whom the duties of his kingly state were painful and oppressive, was excessive. He meant to have England from the first moment his eyes looked on her; Edward’s consent was, however, not enough for the Saxons were hardly the men to bow to the will of a weak king. With Edward, half-Norman, gone to his account, they rallied round their Saxon Harold, Earl of Wessex, and made him their king.
What he does, his love-story with the beautifu1 Edith—called the “Fair” and the “Swan-necked”—and all the sad ending of the Saxon hope. Bulwer tells with the color, romance, and spirit that mark his historical novels. Not only the battles, but the home life, the love of brothers and sisters, the hunting and the feasting, are given to us with vivid touches. We ache in sympathy for Harold and for Edith, kept apart but loving so deeply and vainly. Fate is cruel to them both, but glorious is their story, and your hearts will beat with a martial joy as you read it, for there was nothing weak or cowardly or mean in the life or death of these ancient forerunners of our race.
You may be surprised, as you read, to find how much culture and luxury there was in those days, particularly among the Normans, whose manners and furnishings were being copied by the English nobility with a slavishness that aroused the wrath of the country at large. Harold goes to visit William at his court in Rouen, where he is impressed by the beauty, grace, and charm of the foreign life—and where much happens, and the tragedy begins, if, indeed, it had not begun long before.
If you want an exciting scene, read in this book how Harold withstood the Norman archers, including the giant William, unprotected save for his shield, and then how he swung his battle-ax, an ax that had come to him from Canute the Great. This was only in play—the time came when it was repeated in earnest, in the terrible battle of Hastings; and then it was William who won.
And afterward, in the silent night among the heaped-up dead, Edith, the Swan-necked, seeks for her hero and beloved, and finds him at last, and dies on his heart with a smile of joy, for they will be separated no more. And therewith the book ends.
Hereward was rather a wild youth; unluckily, his mother misunderstood him, thinking him a wilful sinner, and she so influenced his father against him that the lad was banished and flung out into the world to shift for himself. Which shows that Lady Godiva had her faults, for all her saintliness. But Hereward is a stout youngster, and few can match him in feats of arms or bodily skill; he is also a leader born, and born for greatness.
But he is not so lovable as the noble Harold, great though he be, and gallant. He loves too, and marries his beloved, but he breaks her heart, for he is not worthy of her.
In reading both these romances, you will see that the Saxon and the Dane both adored freedom with a real passion. The trouble with Hereward was that he loved himself best of all, however, and he brings harm and sorrow to England, and more to himself, and dies betrayed; but it is a brave death, a hero’s death, one against many. Torfrida, his wife, forgives him then for the wrongs he did her and others. It was an age of sudden death and constant peril, and courage was the greatest possession a man might have; Hereward died a brave man, and, therefore, was counted a good one at the last.
But England under the Norman was in a sad plight.
sang Thorkel Skallason, a bard of those days. Things grew worse and worse. For more than sixty years, the Norman Williams, and Henry Beauclerc, and Stephen, oppressed the poor. “Then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese and butter, for there was none in the land. Wretched ​men starved with hunger. Some lived on alms who had once been rich. Some fled the country. Never was there more misery, and never heathens acted worse than these.” So says the old chronicler in bitterness of spirit.
The third book in this group, “The Young Duke,” by Charlotte M. Yonge, though I speak of it last, belongs almost a century earlier, and does not enter England. But it tells of the great-grandfather of William the Conqueror, and it shows from: what sources he was descended, as well as the manners and spirit of Normandy when that duchy began to grow powerful.
Its hero is Richard, known as The Fearless, strong for the right, for generosity and kindness, known also as a gentle and true soul in an age when men were rough and savage. It is the boyhood of this “Young Duke” which we follow in Miss Yonge’s interesting pages. The tale is simply told, but it is crammed with adventure. It was a dangerous business to be a duke or a prince in those days, for many other men coveted and claimed, under one pretense or another, most of the thrones and titles of Europe; it was the strongest who held on, and usually he was killed off before his time, either by the treachery of a friend or on the field of battle. A child like our young Richard, who must depend on his friends rather than himself, ran a double danger.
Norman Richard was taken to the court of Louis IV of France as a hostage. At that time, the Normans were chiefly what the name implies, men from the North, Danes and Vikings from Norway, who had settled in this part of the Frank country. The true Franks liked them little enough, you may be sure, though there was an apparent peace between the two races. Louis and the French were, of course, more powerful in the beginning; but Normandy was growing stronger under its lusty dukes, until the French began to fear their wild and hardier neighbors.
So, in pretended friendliness, Louis takes Richard with him to the court of Laon, where the French kings then lived. He has two sons of his own, with whom Richard is to be educated. Just what befalls him, how he is treated by the young princes and the queen, who hates him Miss Yonge tells in a thrilling manner; finally he escapes, with the aid of one of his true friends and servitors. In time, the situation is completely reversed, and it is the young princes who become hostages in Richard’s own castle.
Wild and cruel as were those old times, there was none the less a spirit of noble Christianity in the world, a spirit showing strongly in several of the rulers and great men. Richard was among these choice souls, as was also his father, known as Duke William of the Long Sword. To be sure, both were usually at war, for war was the natural state of the world in the tenth century. But they strove to be in all things knightly, to forgive their enemies when possible, and to hold no private grudge, even where treachery and murder occurred.
The beauty of these three books is the picture you get from them of actual living conditions back there where England took root. You fee! the real heart-beat of the people, see them at their daily tasks, hear their speech, know for what they hope and struggle, and suffer with them in their losses and their griefs. There is nothing dry or stiff in any of the three. The writers loved their work, loved the strenuous researches necessary to get at their facts, and the study of strange old songs and chronicles, written in ancient tongues long passed away, or at least greatly altered.
You will get a great deal of enjoyment out of all these books, and a fair idea of the period. Next month, we will take up a later time in the life of England, and begin with Scott, who was the master of the historic novel.