Mantel's writing just takes my breath away! The whiplash I get from the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy in the section where Frith is burned: Henry's hypochondria about the sweat is written just wickedly, "The king, who embodies all his people, has all the symptoms every day," as he dithers over a letter to Anne, while Frith and the tailor's apprentice suffer and "Frith is being shoveled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his beauty: a compaction of mud, grease and charred bone."
Thanks for highlighting the passage about Anne's confinement. When i saw the end of the chapter coming, I didn't linger on it as it deserved.
It's good and natural that Cromwell has ambitions and dreams. In his fantasy of molding a future Henry into the perfect king, he's like Ovid's Pygmalion wanting to make the perfect woman.
We're rooting for Cromwell, how can we not when he seems to be able to solve every problem? But Mantel gives him human frailties of vanity and pride.
Still, he's always practical. During the coronation, he thinks about making copies of coronation rites set down in a book so old that no one dares touch it.
And I'm glad you highlighted the statuary staring down at the crowds. That passage reminded me very much of Dickens.
Wittiest line by the French Ambassador: "[Anne] must have been six hours on her feet today. One must congratulate Your Majesty on obtaining a queen who is as strong as a peasant woman. I mean no disrespect of course."
"We do not all..." Cranmer drops his gaze. "Forgive me, we do not all see as many paths as you."
I wonder whether it's a hint of foreshadowing there - Cranmer telling Cromwell that not everyone sees or likes to see so many paths of action (a heretic turning his back on his beliefs, proclamations written out with a little space after 'prince'). Possibilities are dangerous, and not always loved.
I also enjoyed the passage you include beginning "And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air..." In Mantel's writing, you can feel the weight of centuries and the uncanny pressing down. Marvelous!
Why is it Simon that I read what you read but then you send out your missives and I feel like I didn’t read or read the wrong bit? I guess that’s why I’m here. Reading slower and deeper and learning from you and my fellow crawlers.
I particularly noted Cromwell’s hopes for the child with the view that all Elizabeth would become:
“Let him (her) be like his father’s father … let him (her) be hard, alert and watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest turn of fortune.”
Well, I like this part because we get our first glimpse of one of my favorite Howards, Mary Howard. She tries to bar the door to Cromwell when he wants to visit Anne post-Coronation. She’s such a fierce little girl, and her real life story is GOOD if anyone wants to wiki her.
She is part of Anne’s coronation because her mother, Uncle Norfolk’s wife refuses to attend. So Mary comes to court quite young, seemingly becomes devoted to Anne, and is good friends/a pet of Margaret Douglas & Madge Shelton and part of the Devonshire Manuscript. But she always seems the most level-headed of the bunch. I’m not sure if that is fictionalized personality or based on history, she did leave some letters behind.
Also the scene with pregnant Anne in bed and Cromwell in the chamber is very intimate and to me hints at Anne’s troubles to come. Hard to think of Katherine of Aragon letting any man in while she was not in complete regalia. Or do you think it was appropriate? To me it seems like a line that’s being being blurred.
Committed as he is, it remains astonishing that Cromwell can love Henry despite the king's hypocrisy and overriding superstition. Confronted with Cranmer's predicament, one is reminded of Cromwell pondering a late night escape from Calais, into the unknown East. Too late now... I love that photo of the gargoyle at Salisbury! Puts me in mind of York Cathedral where we visited this August last. The stone masons are always busy there and there works are on display outside on the ground level (in varying stages of completion).
This slow read had been one of the highlights of my year so far, a constat source of joy. Thank you!
This particular chapter, as well as your truly beautiful review, left me quite in awe. While reading Anna Regina, I kept naming the chapter “A woman’s place”. Anne’s doubts that she will ever be accepted, queen or not, the uncertainty and pressure she must have felt every waking hour are so brilliantly described by Mantel. By the end of the chapter, she is indeed queen, wife, and mother, but she is as vulnerable as she ever was in a man’s world, and she knows it. Meanwhile, her sister is used as a commodity in a nightmarish scenario, and the only man willing to help her still can’t seem to see past her beauty – “Something must be done for her. She's losing her looks”. Page after page I was reminded of Alice Munro’s words: “All women have had up till now has been their connection with men."
Your quote of the week was also my favourite quote of the week, so delicately beautiful.
I want to know if Anne knows where her husband is every night while she’s growing “this creature”. I agree with TC’s assessment that she would strangle any child of Mary and Henry it in the cradle but what of her relationship with her own sister? Henry slept with Mary long before he took up with Anne, right? So presumably Anne is aware of their history if not their current situation. I can’t help but feel she wouldn’t be sympathetic to the fact that Mary’s autonomy in the situation is clearly compromised.
And Cromwell: I do like him,but there are some things emerging, that I am not so happy about. He is getting v e r y confident- from 'you choose your prince and have to take him as you find him' to 'I can make my own prince'... well. And I think he is getting more robust, threatening to other people? Pinning Francis Bryan to the wall, and there was another incident like that I think. How he thinks he has the right to take revenge on people for Wolsey's downfall e.g. Henry Percy, who just did the same as Cromwell is doing, if at all. Paying Wolsey back for destroying Percy's relationship with Anne. I am already worried for Cromwell.
Thank you for this (as always) great post, Simon! And thanks to my fellow readers for the comments, always looking forward to reading them. I am a little late this week, read the chapter fully yesterday. I feel very sorry for Anne, it is the first time I am starting to think and care about her, before I was slightly indifferent. The pressure to deliver a son must have been unbearable. And she has no one to talk to, she probably can't even allow herself to think about getting a daughter, to have doubts, fears, because people thought at the time that everything she is doing and thinking might influence whether she gets a boy or girl. And she would be blamed and blame herself.
„Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held with a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place.“
I immediately think of the QR code: Information and knowledge reduced to the quintessence and made accessible in an image on a place which is no place.
I love Anne’s quote, how now she’s “valued” for the first time. I feel for her. Both she and her sister, like almost any other woman of her time, are ultimately used to satisfy men’s desires and ambitions. I have the impression Anne could have put her strong will and inteligence to much kinder use had she been born in another time and place 😞
Thank you for another great read - I loved that gargoyle, and the themes you picked out. I hadn't spotted the neat contrast between Cromwell running the weather (like Wolsey before him!) and the uncooperative wind at Frith's burning.
I was also childish enough to be highly amused by Cromwell’s cheeky comment about his “very large ledger” - so much so that I nearly missed how deadly serious he's being…
What mostly struck me this week was the nonchalance with which Cromwell now carries his proximity to power. He can decide whether to “put my king on the high seas”, has taught him how to speak of the pope, and takes it for granted that the new prince would be his to “build”. It’s convenient for him that in this case his personal ambition is so closely aligned with “the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England”.
Another great summary of this week's reading, thank you Simon. Mantel's writing is a joy to read. So many characters within even this chapter, yet she gives us enough of each one to allow them to form as fully fledged people in the reader's mind. Helen Barre already sits in my mind, kind, willing to help and developing a new love now Cromwell has stated she is free from her husband. And Cramner's wife, soon to give birth whilst hidden in a new country, yet still staunch in her outlook. The way she reminded Cromwell of his own wife in her actions when rising, and possibly of his lost children, also shows the depth of Mantel's writing.
Mantel's writing just takes my breath away! The whiplash I get from the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy in the section where Frith is burned: Henry's hypochondria about the sweat is written just wickedly, "The king, who embodies all his people, has all the symptoms every day," as he dithers over a letter to Anne, while Frith and the tailor's apprentice suffer and "Frith is being shoveled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his beauty: a compaction of mud, grease and charred bone."
Simon,
Thanks for highlighting the passage about Anne's confinement. When i saw the end of the chapter coming, I didn't linger on it as it deserved.
It's good and natural that Cromwell has ambitions and dreams. In his fantasy of molding a future Henry into the perfect king, he's like Ovid's Pygmalion wanting to make the perfect woman.
We're rooting for Cromwell, how can we not when he seems to be able to solve every problem? But Mantel gives him human frailties of vanity and pride.
Still, he's always practical. During the coronation, he thinks about making copies of coronation rites set down in a book so old that no one dares touch it.
And I'm glad you highlighted the statuary staring down at the crowds. That passage reminded me very much of Dickens.
Wittiest line by the French Ambassador: "[Anne] must have been six hours on her feet today. One must congratulate Your Majesty on obtaining a queen who is as strong as a peasant woman. I mean no disrespect of course."
Thanks as always for the great post.
"We do not all..." Cranmer drops his gaze. "Forgive me, we do not all see as many paths as you."
I wonder whether it's a hint of foreshadowing there - Cranmer telling Cromwell that not everyone sees or likes to see so many paths of action (a heretic turning his back on his beliefs, proclamations written out with a little space after 'prince'). Possibilities are dangerous, and not always loved.
I also enjoyed the passage you include beginning "And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air..." In Mantel's writing, you can feel the weight of centuries and the uncanny pressing down. Marvelous!
Why is it Simon that I read what you read but then you send out your missives and I feel like I didn’t read or read the wrong bit? I guess that’s why I’m here. Reading slower and deeper and learning from you and my fellow crawlers.
It’s as if we are standing on the precipice …..
I particularly noted Cromwell’s hopes for the child with the view that all Elizabeth would become:
“Let him (her) be like his father’s father … let him (her) be hard, alert and watchful of opportunity, wringing use from the smallest turn of fortune.”
Well, I like this part because we get our first glimpse of one of my favorite Howards, Mary Howard. She tries to bar the door to Cromwell when he wants to visit Anne post-Coronation. She’s such a fierce little girl, and her real life story is GOOD if anyone wants to wiki her.
She is part of Anne’s coronation because her mother, Uncle Norfolk’s wife refuses to attend. So Mary comes to court quite young, seemingly becomes devoted to Anne, and is good friends/a pet of Margaret Douglas & Madge Shelton and part of the Devonshire Manuscript. But she always seems the most level-headed of the bunch. I’m not sure if that is fictionalized personality or based on history, she did leave some letters behind.
Also the scene with pregnant Anne in bed and Cromwell in the chamber is very intimate and to me hints at Anne’s troubles to come. Hard to think of Katherine of Aragon letting any man in while she was not in complete regalia. Or do you think it was appropriate? To me it seems like a line that’s being being blurred.
Committed as he is, it remains astonishing that Cromwell can love Henry despite the king's hypocrisy and overriding superstition. Confronted with Cranmer's predicament, one is reminded of Cromwell pondering a late night escape from Calais, into the unknown East. Too late now... I love that photo of the gargoyle at Salisbury! Puts me in mind of York Cathedral where we visited this August last. The stone masons are always busy there and there works are on display outside on the ground level (in varying stages of completion).
This slow read had been one of the highlights of my year so far, a constat source of joy. Thank you!
This particular chapter, as well as your truly beautiful review, left me quite in awe. While reading Anna Regina, I kept naming the chapter “A woman’s place”. Anne’s doubts that she will ever be accepted, queen or not, the uncertainty and pressure she must have felt every waking hour are so brilliantly described by Mantel. By the end of the chapter, she is indeed queen, wife, and mother, but she is as vulnerable as she ever was in a man’s world, and she knows it. Meanwhile, her sister is used as a commodity in a nightmarish scenario, and the only man willing to help her still can’t seem to see past her beauty – “Something must be done for her. She's losing her looks”. Page after page I was reminded of Alice Munro’s words: “All women have had up till now has been their connection with men."
Your quote of the week was also my favourite quote of the week, so delicately beautiful.
Lady Rochford talks way too much!
I want to know if Anne knows where her husband is every night while she’s growing “this creature”. I agree with TC’s assessment that she would strangle any child of Mary and Henry it in the cradle but what of her relationship with her own sister? Henry slept with Mary long before he took up with Anne, right? So presumably Anne is aware of their history if not their current situation. I can’t help but feel she wouldn’t be sympathetic to the fact that Mary’s autonomy in the situation is clearly compromised.
And Cromwell: I do like him,but there are some things emerging, that I am not so happy about. He is getting v e r y confident- from 'you choose your prince and have to take him as you find him' to 'I can make my own prince'... well. And I think he is getting more robust, threatening to other people? Pinning Francis Bryan to the wall, and there was another incident like that I think. How he thinks he has the right to take revenge on people for Wolsey's downfall e.g. Henry Percy, who just did the same as Cromwell is doing, if at all. Paying Wolsey back for destroying Percy's relationship with Anne. I am already worried for Cromwell.
Thank you for this (as always) great post, Simon! And thanks to my fellow readers for the comments, always looking forward to reading them. I am a little late this week, read the chapter fully yesterday. I feel very sorry for Anne, it is the first time I am starting to think and care about her, before I was slightly indifferent. The pressure to deliver a son must have been unbearable. And she has no one to talk to, she probably can't even allow herself to think about getting a daughter, to have doubts, fears, because people thought at the time that everything she is doing and thinking might influence whether she gets a boy or girl. And she would be blamed and blame herself.
„Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held with a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place.“
I immediately think of the QR code: Information and knowledge reduced to the quintessence and made accessible in an image on a place which is no place.
I love Anne’s quote, how now she’s “valued” for the first time. I feel for her. Both she and her sister, like almost any other woman of her time, are ultimately used to satisfy men’s desires and ambitions. I have the impression Anne could have put her strong will and inteligence to much kinder use had she been born in another time and place 😞
Thank you for another great read - I loved that gargoyle, and the themes you picked out. I hadn't spotted the neat contrast between Cromwell running the weather (like Wolsey before him!) and the uncooperative wind at Frith's burning.
I was also childish enough to be highly amused by Cromwell’s cheeky comment about his “very large ledger” - so much so that I nearly missed how deadly serious he's being…
What mostly struck me this week was the nonchalance with which Cromwell now carries his proximity to power. He can decide whether to “put my king on the high seas”, has taught him how to speak of the pope, and takes it for granted that the new prince would be his to “build”. It’s convenient for him that in this case his personal ambition is so closely aligned with “the glorification of God and the commonwealth of England”.
Another great summary of this week's reading, thank you Simon. Mantel's writing is a joy to read. So many characters within even this chapter, yet she gives us enough of each one to allow them to form as fully fledged people in the reader's mind. Helen Barre already sits in my mind, kind, willing to help and developing a new love now Cromwell has stated she is free from her husband. And Cramner's wife, soon to give birth whilst hidden in a new country, yet still staunch in her outlook. The way she reminded Cromwell of his own wife in her actions when rising, and possibly of his lost children, also shows the depth of Mantel's writing.