Review: The Mirror & The Light

May 26, 2020May 26, 2020 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2020.

Summary: The third and final installment of Mantel’s historical fiction account of the life of Thomas Cromwell from the pinnacle of his own career under Henry VIII following the execution of Anne Boleyn, to his own downfall.

It has been eleven years since Hilary Mantel introduced us to the character of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, and eight years since Bring Up the Bodies. The lasting impression this book leaves with me is the mix of knowing and unknowing that made up Cromwell, King Henry VIII’s “fixer” who both seems to grasp and be oddly oblivious to the danger of flying like a moth too close to Henry’s flame.

The book opens with Anne Boleyn’s death by the swordsman, after Cromwell had managed her trial and that of her adulterers to the conclusion Henry desired. He witnesses her death, and then goes to his breakfast and the pinnacle of his career. As Henry takes Jane Seymour to be his wife, he is elevated to Lord Privy Seal and Baron, and Vicegerent, along with retaining his role as Secretary.

The book traces Cromwell’s efforts to support an aging Henry VIII, suffering from an unhealed leg wound and growing waistline, as he desperately seeks to conceive a son with Jane. All the while, Cromwell is trying to fill the treasury through the dismantling of the monastic houses, implement reforms to decisively move the Church of England away from Rome, keep Henry’s European enemies at war with each other, and put down a rebellion in the north directed as much at his reforms as Henry, while also keeping Scotland at bay.

Cromwell the widower seems to have a soft spot for women. There is Bess, Jane Seymour’s sister, toward whom Cromwell is drawn, yet marries off to his son in a Freudian engagement process (to whom is she being engaged?). He protects the princess Mary, daughter of Katherine, persuading her to renounce the Church and declare loyalty to Henry. Again, Cromwell is suspect of wanting to marry her, interfering with her role as a pawn in diplomacy.

The unraveling begins with the death of Jane shortly after she gave birth to Edward. Once again Cromwell is tasked with finding a mate for the aging king hoping for additional heirs to ensure the succession. This is one of his greatest failure in the king’s eyes, due to the unattractive woman he found in Anne of Cleves, with whom he was unable to consummate the marriage. Increasingly as well, the reforms in the church brought growing resistance from traditionalists who gained Henry’s ear. The Bishop’s Book was countered by the Six Articles restoring traditional views of the mass, eucharist, and priesthood.

Mantel observes that Cromwell’s greatest danger was at his own table. Incautious statements are remembered. French ambassadors and trusted associates join with Bishop Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk in his arrest and interrogation in the Tower where he had interrogated others, with the techniques he had himself used. Indicted under a list of charges on which he was never tried, his last act was to draft the annulment papers for the King to end his marriage to Anne of Cleves and marry Katherine Parr. The fixer to the end, expendable after have completed his final act of service.

Throughout, it seems he was aware of his vulnerability, remembering how his father had beaten him and the image of his fathers unlaced shoes as he lay on the ground. Yet his gifts brought him closer and closer to Henry, until perhaps he believed in his own indispensability. Yet there are flashbacks throughout to the “indispensable” Cardinal Wolsey, whose fall he had witnessed as a young man. Did he believe his own gifts would deliver him? Or was he caught in the bind of his powers and his loyalties from which he could not step away?

As in her other novels, all this unfolds through dialogue, the most challenging aspect of reading Mantel. Other than the “he” which always denotes Cromwell, one has to keep careful track of who is speaking as well as when Cromwell as speaking, or merely thinking. We see the deftness of Cromwell, an iron fist in a velvet glove, in all the maneuvering in the court of Henry, the tension of a devotion both to Henry and to England. If one is willing to work through the inner monologues and outer dialogues, what emerges is Mantel’s portrait of Cromwell as a complicated man: internally motivated to competence and yet loyal, tender and ruthless, pious and a pragmatist, ambitious yet at least partially aware of the dangers of ambition, powerful and yet conscious of the ephemeral nature of his standing, seemingly knowing that Anne Boleyn’s end could easily be his own.

Review: Bring Up the Bodies

October 3, 2017October 2, 2017 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel. New York: Picador, 2013.

Summary: The second part of Mantel’s historical fiction on the life of Thomas Cromwell, from Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn to her downfall and execution.

Thomas Cromwell enjoys more power than ever. Katherine is out, her marriage to Henry VIII annulled. Anne Boleyn, never at ease with Cromwell, has borne Henry a daughter and the hopes are that she will bear a son. In the summer of 1535 she is pregnant once again, although the progress of the pregnancy doesn’t seem right. Already the aging Henry has begun to look elsewhere in hope of begetting a son to take the throne.

Katherine is dying and passes. Mary, her daughter, refuses to reconcile to Henry. Then Anne gives birth to a stillborn son. Henry is increasingly enamored with one of Anne’s ladies in waiting, Jane Seymour. Much of this volume centers around the shrewd maneuverings of the ambitious Seymour family of Wolf Hall. Jane shows herself receptive to Henry while giving nothing away as long as Anne is queen.

It is to Cromwell Henry turns once again to “fix” his problem, and he shrewdly manages to obtain critical confessions leading to Anne being charged with incest with her brother George, and adultery with four other men. Apparently a number of historians believe Cromwell was the one who engineered Anne’s downfall. Mantel portrays him as the loyal “fixer” who accomplishes the King’s wishes, inexorably building the case that eventuated in six beheadings, and opened the way for Henry VIII to marry Jane Seymour.

At the end, Cromwell is more powerful yet, being raised to Baron, succeeding Anne’s father as Lord Privy Seal. Yet throughout this narrative, one has the sense that Thomas knows that it could one day be his turn to feel the executioners axe. He has risen from a peasant to such power simply by serving at the King’s pleasure, a king whose pleasures easily change direction, whose loyalties shift, when one fails to please. He has watched this happen to Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas More, and the powerful people around Anne. In Mantel’s words “He thinks, strive as I might, one day I will be gone and as this word goes it may not be long: what though I am a man of firmness and vigour, fortune is mutable and either my enemies will do for me or my friends.”

Mantel portrays a Cromwell who rises by competence, and by not being deterred by moral qualms from doing what was necessary to serve his king. He can be ruthlessly pragmatic and at the same time a loving father wanting only the best for son Gregory, worrying about his fate in jousting matches. With a wink and a nod as it were, he permits Lady Willoughby to attend Katherine at her death. Ruthless, shrewd, loyal, and tender by turn, this is Mantel’s Cromwell. He is also a man trapped by his loyalty and success, who cannot walk away from the King who has come to depend so much upon him and so richly rewarded him. What will that cost him?

Bring Up the Bodies is the winner of the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

Earlier this spring, I reviewed the preceding volume, Wolf Hall, covering the rise Cromwell to the fall of Katherine, Henry VIII’s first wife.

Review: Wolf Hall

May 4, 2017May 3, 2017 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel. New York: Picador, 2010.

Summary: Book One of a historical fiction trilogy on the life of Thomas Cromwell, a key figure in the English Reformation, covering the rise of Cromwell to power under Henry VIII, up until 1535.

Thomas Cromwell is one of the most interesting figures of the English Reformation. He was one of those “indispensable men” one often finds close to great leaders, shrewd and capable in solving the problems facing the great leader, often more loyal to those they serve than the one they serve is to them. Charming and ruthless and skilled in both law and finance, Cromwell accrued more and more power to himself. He cut through the Gordian knots of Henry VIII’s marriages and engineered the formation of the Church of England, cutting ties with Rome.

This work of historical fiction, a 2009 Man Booker Prize winner, is the first of a trilogy, narrating the rise of Cromwell from the boy who survives violent abuse by his blacksmith father Walter to spend his early adult years fighting with the French and learning finance with the Italians, and working in the mercantile centers of Europe, acquiring a broad network of contacts. He returns to London, establishes himself as a lawyer accomplished in commercial negotiations, and eventually secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Chancellor to the King and charged with securing an annulment of the King’s marriage to Catherine. Wolsey fails, leading to his downfall and charges of treason.

Thomas Cromwell, Hans Holbein

Cromwell remains loyal to Wolsey until his death, a loyalty noted in royal circles. While he suffers the loss of wife and both daughters to illness–loss that haunts him throughout this book–he gains the confidence of the king and Anne Boleyn, who the king hopes to marry and on whom are the king’s hopes of a male heir. Eventually, under Cromwell, Parliament passes the Act of Succession under which clergy swore their ultimate submission to the king, not to Rome. For this Bishop Fisher and Thomas More, refusing to submit, go to their deaths.

Mantel tells this story, with all its in and outs and political maneuverings from Cromwell’s perspective. We read his thoughts, his perspective, his voice as he solves problems, faces loss, stewards the fortunes of the king, his sons, his wards. Where other accounts may portray a Machiavellian against the principled likes of More, this portrays a shrewd pragmatist, fiercely loyal to king and family, not without religious sensibilities but likewise very much grounded in the practical realities and use of power for the king’s ends. Whether she gets Cromwell right or not, Mantel explores what it is like to be Thomas Cromwell–to rise from a common birth, to advance by his shrewdness in managing affairs of state and of the heart, and through his competence to gain greater and greater power.

We have hints that it will not always be this way–Wolsey’s fall warning that Henry brooked no failure, but that is yet in the future. When the book ends he is Principal Secretary and Master of the Rolls to the king. The religious opposition in the form of Fisher and More are dead. He has also been appointed Royal Vicegerent and Vicar-General, and is preparing to visit the monasteries and religious houses either to liquidate them or more effectively tax them.

A couple of other comments. A key to enjoying this book is to figure out when Cromwell is speaking in dialogues and understanding that the narrative is through his eyes. That is not always easy to discern in the text, as many readers have noted. The other is the tantalizing character of the title. Wolf Hall is the family seat of the Seymour family, rivals of the Boleyns, influential nobility whose daughter Jane served in the court of Anne and eventually succeeded her (after the time of Book One of the trilogy) as the wife of Henry VIII. Cromwell’s son Gregory marries Jane’s sister and Cromwell notes the hovering presence of Jane in Anne’s household. Wolf Hall is a presence, a harbinger of things to come.

Should you read Wolf Hall? If you are willing to work to track the narration and keep track of the many characters, including the many Thomases, you will be rewarded with a rich psychological study of Cromwell and what it is like to wield power in the ever-dangerous presence of greater power. This is not mind candy for casual reading but rich fare for the attentive reader.