Novel 244: Edward Everett Hale, Ups and Downs (1873)

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After the sudden collapse of his uncle’s business, a young man works to establish himself in Detroit; meanwhile, a young German immigrant girl finds work as a governess in Milwaukee.

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Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), a Unitarian minister and prominent American social reformer, also wrote several novels.  This one,  though sometimes marred by its author’s enthusiasms, has some lively characters and several interesting settings.

A “quiet story of domestic life in America . . . , a life as homely and picturesque as any that Mrs. Gaskell or George Eliot has described.” Saturday Review, October 25, 1873

“A very characteristic story of American life . . . written with humour and pathos.” Spectator, November 29, 1873

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/upsanddownsanev00halegoog

Crossword 243: Downplay

Edward Robert Hughes, Dream Idyll (A Valkyrie)

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I give you fair warning:  the Downs in this puzzle (at least the themed ones) are all Across.  Now that’s just the kind of startling, long-overdue innovation you’ve come to expect of my puzzles; but, like most wonderful things, it comes at some risk:  if you’re subject to vertigo, you might want to solve the puzzle while lying on your side.

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243-Downplay.puz

243-Downplay.pdf

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243 Downplay

Novel 243: John Cordy Jeaffreson, Live it Down (1863)

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In an old-fashioned Suffolk town, c.1820, as social and religious habits change, an aristocratic family is troubled by a dark secret.

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John Cordy Jeaffreson (1831-1901) wrote, in addition to much nonfiction, fourteen novels between 1854 and 1890.  An over-attention to historical and regional setting and a surplus of morality and sentiment are redeemed here by some well-defined characters and a good plot.

“The story is interesting throughout; the characters stand well on their feet, and are real human beings marked with individual character.” Athenaeum, March 28, 1863

It is “a good, sound novel.  It may not be vividly interesting; but it is clever, truthful, and observant.” Literary Times, April 28, 1863

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

Though “told in a manner which . . . it would be easy to criticize, . . . still it succeeds . . . in exciting the interest . . . and some of the characters are drawn with no little delicacy and discrimination.  Still the book is, in its general effect, a provoking one, for it might so easily have been made much better than it is.  The simple process of leaving out altogether about two-thirds of the first volume would have wrought wonderful improvement in the novel.   Not only is the first part of the story drawn out to an extent which is at once extremely wearisome and entirely useless, but Mr. Jeaffreson appears, in the earlier portion of the work, to have not unfrequently forgotten that he was telling a story at all.” Spectator, May 23, 1863

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/liveitdownastor02jeafgoog

v.2 https://archive.org/details/liveitdownastor00jeafgoog

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_000000048444#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=321&xywh=97%2C211%2C1937%2C1195

Crossword 242: What a Downer!

Frederick Daniel Hardy, Sorrowful News 

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I meant this website to be a cheerful place, filled with smiles and sunshine, and look what’s happened!  Why, I wonder?  Maybe it’s the crossword genre itself, which necessarily makes us cross and takes us down.  As I’ve said before, I think the time is overdue for a radical reconceptualization of the form, one that ceases to valorize traditional numerical hierarchies (why should 2 always be greater than 1?), one that shatters the old boundaries imposed by binary grids of black squares and white squares, one that replaces the cross with the happy, the down with the up.  I’m working on it.  

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242-What-a-Downer.puz

242-What-a-Downer.pdf

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242 What a Downer

Novel 242: Emma Newby, Trodden Down (1866)

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A virtuous young lady is intended by her parents for one man but loves another.

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Emma Newby (1825-1899) wrote 13 novels between 1854 and 1879.  This one is chiefly notable for the chillingly calculated behavior of the heroine’s parents.

“The consciousness and confidence of power are visible in Mrs. Newby’s latest work, in which the reader will find a very romantic story very cleverly told.” Manchester Guardian, August 28, 1866

“The plot is sufficiently improbable, and its principal incident has been already made familiar to us by more than one novelist; but Mrs. Newby tells her tale with simplicity and feeling, and thus renders it touching and attractive.” London Review, September 8, 1866

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/troddendownanov00newbgoog

v.2 https://archive.org/details/troddendownanov01newbgoog

v.3 https://archive.org/details/troddendownanov02newbgoog

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Crossword 241: Downspout

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Last week’s puzzle was called “Tossing It Down.” This week’s is called “Downspout.” The alert solver will suspect a pattern. In fact this puzzle is the second of this year’s summer series on David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender, the fifth in a series of such serieses. It’s all about downness, explored from various points of view. Are you “down with that,” as the hipsters would say? Then it’s time to “get down,” as the hipsters would say.

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241-Downspout.puz

241-Downspout.pdf

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241 Downspout

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A crossword of mine appears Tuesday, July 5, in Universal Crossword; another appears Thursday, July 7, in the Wall Street Journal.

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Novel 241: Hope Stanford, Down the Way (1884)

James Sant,The Walker Sisters 

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A young intellectual becomes interested in a plain young lady neglected by her family.

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Nothing seems to be known of Hope Stanford.  This, the first of her two novels, though quite good, in my opinion—its heroine especially is refreshingly unusual in her plainness and ill-temper—was not very well received.

“There is a good deal that is thin and common-place in this novel, but also decided tokens of originality and dramatic instinct. . . . One or two of the characters on which the author has spent most pains are exceedingly well done.” Contemporary Review, July, 1884

“This is a pleasant, simply written story with which there is little fault to find.  We think the writer has aimed somewhat too high, and that her characters are hardly sufficiently worked up. . . . Still the interest is well kept up. . . .  Finally the writer possesses one merit dear to the heart of all critics.  She knows what she wishes to say, and says it in clear simple language, pleasantly free from mannerisms and strainings after effect.” Scottish Review, October 1884

A contrasting view:

“There is practically no plot, and the incidents are neither happy nor well contrived.  The situation selected for study is tolerably good” but “the three volumes demand more compression and conciseness.” Athenaeum, May 10, 1884

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v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004C950#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=4&xywh=-1%2C-140%2C2576%2C2176

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004C956#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-1%2C-90%2C2438%2C2060

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000004C95C#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-743%2C-125%2C2941%2C2485

Crossword 240: Tossing It Down

John Melhuish Strudwick, Oh Swallow, Swallow

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When we at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender indulge in an occasional flagon of mead or snifter of usquebaugh, we like to savor it slowly, meanwhile discussing the issues of the day in an incisive but nuanced manner.  However, we have no interest in confining ourselves to making only crosswords that “look like us.”  We hope to cater to all tastes and types.  So if you are one of those people whose approach to liquor, or to life, is to “toss it down,” here’s one that looks like you.

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240-Tossing-It-Down.puz

240-Tossing-It-Down.pdf

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240 Tossing It Down

Novel 240: Archibald Boyd, The Delameres of Delamere Court (1852)

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A needy aristocrat falls in love with a proud cotton-manufacturer’s daughter.

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Archibald Boyd (1801-1864), born in Scotland, emigrated to Australia in 1838, and in the 1840s worked to represent the interests of the Australian squatters in the British Parliament.  In 1849 he returned to England and took up novel writing; this is the second of the four novels he wrote between 1850 and 1856.

The obviousness of its plot “does not prevent ‘The Delameres’ from being a fairly good novel of its kind.—Too much time is spent at its commencement among the small people of the small town where the tale begins . . .; but from the moment that the curtain falls upon their twaddle and tea-drinking, the action and passion move rapidly enough:—and we read on, with as much eagerness as though we had been unable to foresee for a page’s length what was going to befall the lessoned hero and the lesson-giving heroine!” Athenaeum, January 24, 1852

“The most remarkable quality of this novel is style, or the power of presenting the writer’s images and ideas neatly, tersely, and with a quiet but sustained animation. . . .  The author has studied the externals of life and nature; he has a certain knowledge of present society from observation or hearsay, and of the past from books or tradition; he is clever in the mere contrivances of the fictionist to extricate his story from entanglements, or to carry it on. . . .  But . . . he is better in narrative than in dramatic development. . . .  When the author has to plunge his dramatis personae into difficulties in order to clear them up . . . he breaks down, from the want of knowledge of the events of life.” Spectator, May 22, 1852

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v.1 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003C2A0#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1496%2C-129%2C4405%2C2567 

v.2 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003EA90#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-555%2C0%2C3405%2C1984

v.3 http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_00000003D686#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=6&xywh=-461%2C0%2C3386%2C1973

Crossword 239: The Cutting Edge

James Charles, The Knifegrinder

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Here’s another puzzle on the very cutting edge of cruciverbal development.  Unfortunately for me, I’m so far in advance of current trends, so near the horizon of word-crossing possibility, that few of my contemporaries enjoy sufficient keenness of vision to discern either the cutting edge itself or my presence there.  But never mind; as I’ve said before, I create not for the current generation of fools, but for posterity.

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239-The-Cutting-Edge.puz

239-The-Cutting-Edge.pdf

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239 The Cutting Edge

Novel 239: Elizabeth Anna Hart, Freda (1878)

Charles Sillem Lidderdale, A Country Maid

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A free-spirited young lady flees from her ill-tempered husband.

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Here is a third novel by Hart, for whom see Novels 006, 140. Its heroine achieves unexampled heights of Victorian girlishness.

“It is clever, amusing, genuinely in earnest. . . .  There is life and stir in every chapter.” Academy, August 17, 1878

A “most entertaining book”; the heroine is “a creation of singular merit.  To have made so striking an addition to that gallery of imaginary portraits which a reader’s mind possesses is no slight achievement in a novelist.” Spectator, February 15, 1879

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

Despite the improbability of the plot “the result is more substantial than seemed possible . . . and there is pathos as well as farce in the tale.  But the author has escaped by a hair’s breadth from downright imbecility.” Athenaeum, July 27, 1878

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/fredanovel01hart

v.2 https://archive.org/details/fredanovel02hart

v.3 https://archive.org/details/fredanovel03hart

Crossword 238: Etail Discounts

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I’ve thought of converting this website to an “etail” enterprise—charging a dollar apiece for the crosswords, fifty cents per volume for the novel recommendations, and offering for sale an array of t-shirts, coffee mugs, and tote bags with my logo.  I’m pretty sure I’d get rich quick.  But I don’t do it.  Why?  Because I care about you, inadequately compensated solver.  It would be simply wrong to tempt you into squandering on crosswords what you might spend on winter fuel or shoes for the children.  I just can’t do it, and I won’t.

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238-Etail-Discounts.puz

238-Etail-Discounts.pdf

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238 Etail Discounts

Novel 238: William Webb Follett Synge, Tom Singleton (1879)

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A young man is called to war in India; meanwhile the brother of the woman he loves strives to begin a literary career.

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“An exceedingly pleasant story, partaking of the kind called rattling, but with some strong situations, and some characters by no means ill drawn.” Academy, November 29, 1879

“It happens but rarely that among the number of novels which call for . . . attention . . . we find one we regret to part with. . . .  Mr. Follett-Synge’s novel is a rarity of this kind. . . .  The book is full of character, and the kind of wisdom which we can only call knowledge of the world. . . .   There is . . . a spirit as kindly as it is discerning . . . a true delineation of the ‘gentleman’ and ‘gentlewoman,’ a refined playful humour. . . . It is, . . a book which becomes a friend.” Spectator, December 13, 1879

“The author . . . is an ingenious novelist, whose calm audacity of conception does him credit.  By assuming, as a matter of course, the probability of the incredible, he has laid the foundations of a decidedly clever novel, and may carry nine-tenths of his readers triumphantly along with him.” Saturday Review, December 13, 1879

A contrasting view:

“We have seldom come across so unequal a book. . . .  At times, both in style and dramatic force, it is excellent, while at others flat and unprofitable.” Examiner, January 17, 1880

Download this week’s novel:

https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/f/89vilt/oxfaleph014735424  (Right-click (or control-click, if you have a Mac) on the “view digitized copy” links to download the novel’s three volumes in pdf form)

Crossword 237: Alternating Biconsonantal Pentads

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You can find alternating pentads in lots of places, and the same is true of biconsonantal pentads—but where else but here, at David Alfred Bywaters’s Crossword Cavalcade and Weekly Victorian Novel Recommender, can you find alternating biconsonantal pentads?

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237-Alternating-Biconsonantal-Pentads.puz

237-Alternating-Biconsonantal-Pentads.pdf

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237 Alternating Biconsonantal Pentads

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A crossword of mine appears today in the Wall Street Journal.

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Novel 237: Agnes Macdonell, Quaker Cousins (1879)

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, The Woman of Fashion

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Two Quaker orphans are brought to live with their worldly great aunt.

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Agnes Macdonell (1840-1925) wrote three novels in the 1870s, of which this is the last.  The title characters’ earnestness grows wearing at times, but their selfish, self-deluded aunt is a lot of fun.

“There is a natural ease about the progress of events which is the result of care and thoughtfulness.  The story is, in fact, in admirable harmony with the refinement and self-restraint shown in the characters.” Athenaeum, March 22, 1879

“A book for people who prefer homely scenes described with humour and delicacy.” Academy, April 19, 1879

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

“A very readable novel” but “spun out with gratuitous prolixity.” Saturday Review, May 10, 1879

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://books.google.com/books?id=FYU-AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=editions%3AwMa2nv7aBUIC&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false

v.2 https://books.google.com/books?id=NYU-AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=editions%3AwMa2nv7aBUIC&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false

v.3 https://books.google.com/books?id=VIU-AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=editions%3AwMa2nv7aBUIC&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false

Crossword 236: Cross Out

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I’ve mentioned before my ambition of taking my art form to a new level heretofore undreamed of, one from which I and my disciples can look down on our rivals and predecessors with scorn—as abstract painters long ago learned to do at representational ones, or atonal at tonal composers.  I think I’ve hit at last on a promising idea—crosswords in which the words don’t cross.  Such post-crosswords will allow me to break through the limits by which other constructors are sadly constrained, forced as they are to think up words that share letters with other words at certain crucial points, and to free myself to achieve—what exactly?  I haven’t quite decided, but certainly something incomprehensible to those hidebound traditionalists who continue to think that crossing words is the whole point of crosswords.  If you are yourself such a traditionalist, I pity you; meanwhile, however, here is what may be one of my last works you’ll understand, though its title hints at the coming transition.

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236-Cross-Out.puz

236-Cross-Out.pdf

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236 Cross Out

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A crossword of mine will appear tomorrow, May 29, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Novel 236: Hamilton Aïdé, Confidences (1859)

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A young curate gains the trust of various of his parishioners.

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For Aïdé, see Novels 076 and 176.

“The book is decidedly both good and interesting.  The drawing-room conversation and small-talk of a country town are well given, as far as the dialogue is concerned; while the incidents are natural and the characters well sustained.  There are touches of pathos here and there, which we must rank with a higher style of composition than that usually attained in works of this class.” New Quarterly Review, April, 1859

“The best idea we can give the reader of the work before us, is to suppose the celebrated philosopher in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World transformed into” its narrator.  “As he is a man of vast sympathies, very enlightened views, and a great love for his kind, and having withal peculiar facilities from his position for studying character, it may be imagined that his letters are pregnant with philosophical reflections on modern society. . . .  ‘Confidences’ is written in the most pleasing manner of any novel we have read for years past.” Leader and Saturday Analyst, June 11, 1859

A contrasting view:

“These ‘Confidences’ are of the mildest interest.  If we were ill-natured, we should call them insipid.   The style is pleasant and well bred, but the matter in hand has neither bone nor muscle.  The story, if story it may be called, is rambling gossip about a small parish. . . .  There is no precision of touch in either the dialogue or description, whether of people or their belongings.  There is a rather pleasant flavour in its gentle dullness, but the ‘Confidences’ were not worth making.” Athenaeum, July 9, 1859

Download this week’s novel:

https://archive.org/details/confidences00aide

Crossword 235: Ten-Four

George Bernard O'Neill, “Cheer up!”

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I’ve already posted a puzzle entitled “Yes” (Crossword 213); here’s another that celebrates this best of all possible worlds with a hearty cry of joyous affirmation, this time in radio jargon.  Next, “You Betcha!”—a puzzle in which “you” is replaced by “tcha.”  So far I’ve got LAT CHAT (“Shop-talk between physical trainers”); I’m sure three or four more will occur to me eventually.

(Clues to 25 Across and 50 Across were provided by test-solver Kevin Walker, whose clue-writing genius I’ve drawn on more than once already.)

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235-Ten-Four.puz

235-Ten-Four.pdf

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235 Ten-Four

Novel 235: Catherine Gore, The Heir of Selwood (1838)

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A childless baronet with an entailed estate, living unhappily with his wife, decides to adopt a child.

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For Gore see Novels 012, 072, 118, 172.  The characterization here is excellent throughout, even if the plot, towards the end, grows a little over-fanciful.

“Mrs. Gore has added another charming work to her delightful list; a work no less conspicuous than its predecessors for the interest and naturalness of its plot, the ease and simplicity of its development, the flesh and blood and bone of its characters, the pointed, happy satire, the good humour, and the pathos and passion of its language.” It is “a work that from the first page to the last has scarcely a barren page—scarcely a leaf in which some trait of character—some powerful yet natural incident, some witty yet good-tempered observation on life, its men or its puppets—does not promise to secure it from the fate which, season after season, awaits tens of thousands of leaves denominated fashionable novels.” Examiner, October 14, 1838

“Like all Mrs. Gore’s novels, The Heir of Selwood displays an intimate observation and no slight acquainance with the human heart.  The story . . . is replete with interest; and the effects upon the principal actors at different periods of their lives, when young, middle-aged, and elderly, are very naturally as well as very forcibly painted.” Literary Gazette, October 29, 1838

A (somewhat) contrasting view:

It is “excellent in the complication of its story” but “sadly deficient in the solution of the same.” Athenaeum, October 27, 1838

Download this week’s novel:

v.1 https://archive.org/details/heirofselwoodort01gore

v.2 https://archive.org/details/heirofselwoodort02gore

v.3 https://archive.org/details/heirofselwoodort03gore

Crossword 234: Four Aces

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Are you one of those good-natured solvers who claims to be “glad to learn about” some proper name or obscure fact that made some crossword difficult or impossible for you to complete?  As a solver myself, I don’t share this gladness: I am never glad to learn, for example, that the actor who portrayed a character I’ve never heard of on a TV show I’ve never wanted to watch has such-and-such a first name.  But as a constructor, I am, like all constructors, in debt to such solvers: and whenever I’m attacked for obscure crossword fill, I’m happy to claim that I’m just telling people things that they are, or should be, “glad to learn about.”  

If you’re one of these easily gladdened solvers, I apologize for what may seem a certain lack of educational fill in this puzzle.  There’s a writer at 67 Across and a Spanish word at 46 Across, but both are pretty well known.  I’ll make up for this lack, however, right now, by telling you four things about “aces” I just learned myself from the internet.  

1. The University of Illinois calls its College of Agricultural, Consumer & Enviornmental Sciences “ACES.”

2. A military airplane pilot qualifies as an “ace” only after destroying at least five enemy airplanes.  

3. Some psychologists refer to adverse childhood experiences as “ACEs.”

4. Ace Hardware was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Richard Hesse, E. Gunnard Lindquist, Frank Burke, Oscar Fisher, and William Stauber.

Are you glad to have learned about these things? Well, I confess that I am not—but I am glad that there are people in the world who are.

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234-Four-Aces.puz

234-Four-Aces.pdf

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234 Four Aces