FICTION: The Quickening MazeBy Adam FouldsCape, 259pp, £12.99
THE TITLE attracts, the sinuous, animal grace of it, the quickening, the very word conveys a beautiful sound, and then there is the image, that of a maze. The imagination sees a maze becoming ever more complex, while the cover of the book, featuring a romantic photograph of a slender tree in a shaded woodland of shadows and snatches of light, beckons.
Here is a book which beguiles and that even before discovering it tells the story of poor John Clare, poet, dreamer and victim of his own melancholy. Or rather, this brooding series of snapshot scenes re-imagines the trials of the poet stumbling towards madness. Be warned, the opening pages are the weakest in the novel, Adams Foulds appears intent on an overly lyrical prose: "Walking towards the wood, the heath beckoning away. Undulations of yellow gorse rasped softly in the breeze. It stretched off into unknown solitudes."
Yet the story quickly asserts itself into more of a drama, featuring a cast of interesting characters, each with his or her specific dilemma. It is 1840 and all life centres on the somewhat eccentric asylum run by Dr Matthew Allen.
Among his current set of patients are Clare and Septimus, the troubled brother of aspiring poet Alfred Tennyson. The Tennyson clan suffered from a variety of dark mental illnesses which the poet would refer to as "the black blood of the Tennysons." Allen was also a real-life figure, a Victorian doctor and scientist with a range of interests. The idea of bringing such a trio together is sufficient to draw readers not usually interested in historical fiction.
Yet Foulds wants to do more than tell a story based on real events, he wants to create a textured drama. Into the mix is brought Hannah, the plain middle daughter of Allen, she decides she wants to marry Alfred the handsome poet.
This is a contrived and surprisingly slight if engaging period novel celebrating, almost by the way, the beauty of the rural setting. The narrative is one of voices and inner thoughts, most of which Foulds handles quite well. A bizarre humour also emerges at times: a new patient joins the table. The man is not ill, his wealthy father merely wants Dr Allen to ensure his son does not marry the unsuitable female with whom the boy is presently engaged. "The doctor had listed his pedigree [the young aristocrat's] to the new man as though presenting a prize mastiff."
Elsewhere, in one of the funniest scenes in the novel, Dr Allen, who may well be crazy, discusses Tennyson's brother with the poet: "I've no doubt that Septimus has very fine prospects of recovery. Melancholy, you know, the English malady, what you will, is really quite tractable, I've found. Brightness of company, exercise, a familial atmosphere, an unbosoming of anxieties . . ." Tennyson is not pleased and puffing out "uninhaled smoke" - he smokes heavily throughout the book, sighs "So you'll be hearing all about my family."
We don't. The daily life in the asylum takes over. The Tennyson story is but one element and that is largely concerned with the young girl's desperate attempts to woo an unsusceptible Alfred. The patients have their routines and their distractions. Clare is intent on flight and is given a dangerous amount of freedom. The scenes shift with abandon and have the feel of a screenplay merely going through the formality of being a novel, the characters are described doing things, reacting.
It is as if their actions are notes for the director and his actors; "Matthew Allen lifted his head and looked out at the morning. Beyond the blue lawn the trees were there." One can almost imagine Colin Firth as Dr Allen and Rupert Everett playing Tennyson, all against a busy backdrop of domestic activity. The most interesting passages tend to feature John Clare, although his madness hovers uneasily between comedy and pathos. Foulds makes use of the biographical facts and these very facts almost burden the narrative. It is difficult to imagine the Clare that Foulds has recreated without resorting to the biography.
Fiction such as this, with its balancing of fact and invention, is often difficult to execute. Brian Lynch's The Winner of Sorrow(2005) achieved a far more satisfying sense of another troubled poet, William Cowper. The John Clare here is sketchy, almost a caricature. Foulds presents a Clare who never quite moves beyond being a man who enjoyed a brief popularity. There was more to Clare than this.
Considering the extensive amount of material on Tennyson, including his attitude towards depression, it is disappointing that Tennyson never becomes more than two dimensional.
Colm Tóibín's The Master(2004) drew extensively on Leon Edel's meticulous five-volume biography of Henry James. We knew the facts yet Tóibín also evoked a world. Foulds has written a book that is more impressionistic, and though not lacking in colour and linguistic florish, seems content on being a bit haphazard.
It is as if everything which happens, each word spoken, each gesture, is merely incidental to the tragedy of John Clare, who was to die hopelessly insane in 1864. But the Clare re-imagined in this novel is too stylised; he should not simply drift into the texture of the story, yet he does because this is such a magpie's nest of a tale.
Charles Seymour, the young aristocrat with the unsuitable girlfriend, explains to Hannah the reason his father has placed him in the asylum: "I am to be kept here for a while yet. Her family believe me mad, but the fear, you see, is elopement."
Hannah, having failed with Tennyson, appears to understand and enquires if an elopement is planned. Seymour is impressed and remarks: "Really you are an extraordinary girl - discussing such things with a gentleman, I suppose your situation is extraordinary. Talking to lunatics all day."
Having laughed heartily at such an exchange, it is not easy to summon much sympathy for a John Clare whose story is so moving, whose verse so powerful and yet whose presence here is so shadowy, at times caricatured in an attractive, ironic novel which promises far more than it ultimately achieves.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of
The Irish Times
