Books: Historical Tapestry

THE MAN ON A DONKEY (627 pp.]—H.F.M. Prescott—Macmillan ($5).

The average historical might be described as a novel with a past, and no better than it should be. In Britain, during the last three years, however, three have been published that are almost as good as they can be.

They are The Golden Warrior, by Hope Muntz, The Golden Band, by Edith Simon (TIME, April 28), and The Man on a Donkey, by H.F.M. Prescott, published last week in the U.S. All three novels are set in England during the Middle Ages or early modern times. All three were written by scholarly and literate Englishwomen. All three have something of the graciously precise air of old tapestry.

Author Prescott, onetime vice-principal of St. Mary’s College at the University of Durham, begins her stitching of events in the year 1509, when Henry VIII mounted the throne. The scene shifts back & forth between Yorkshire and London. The characters and circumstances are those involved in the King’s expropriation of church property, and the answering rebellion of the North.

The tapestry unwinds slowly, and in a leisurely procession of vivid details—the nuns of Marrick Priory at the harvest, an ousted priest bitterly walking travelers’ horses before a church, young squires at archery practice, a merchant cold-bloodedly bartering his wife for a neighbor’s gold—the chronicler delicately picks out a background of all England in that age.

One by one, a few clear-edged characters appear: Christabel Cowper, the hard-minded, powermongering Prioress of Marrick; Lord Darcy, a subtle old nobleman who holds kings cheap and honor dear; July Savage, the unhappy sister of a famous whore; Robert Aske, squire and barrister, a young man who lives in a straight line, and so cannot avoid trouble when it comes his way.

Trouble comes in 1536 when Aske, beloved by all the Yorkshire commoners for his mettle as a man, is lifted up against his will as leader of a revolt against Henry VIII. In the end, he is undone and hanged in chains.

As a drama, the book is beautifully paced. So carefully has the novelist drawn her background that when the rebellion comes, it rises like a wave of humanity that hurls its strongest man on to glory—and destruction.

The one failure of the chronicle—and of its two recent predecessors—is that its characters are hardly clear and round enough to stand out against the brilliant vitality of the background. If this had been managed, the books would have been works of art. As it is, and taken together, they make wonderfully fine reading.