Further notes on the Veil of Veronica. The allusion is interesting: if the relic and miracle is true it would be one of the few (only?) true visual representations of Christ. We have no contemporary portraits of Anne Boleyn so we cannot be sure what she looks like. And of course, that question about how true the copy (fiction) is to the past (fact) is central to Mantel's work.
Further notes on the title: I didn't mention it in the post, but the chapter title Wreckage references Call-Me's comment at the end of Bring Up the Bodies. Cromwell tells him that you can use wreckage. It is then interesting that this conversation has been rewritten at the start of this novel, almost as though Mantel has herself taken the wreckage and created something new.
Talking of titles, we’re only in chapter 1 but already had a mirror and a light in the penultimate paragraph: Someone has brought a torch into the garden below. A dusky flicker fills the panda. His shadow in the window raises a hand; he inclines his head to it. ‘Drink my health.’
Correction: Just noticed I got by dukes mixed up, just like Gregory! Cromwell gave Brandon an earful, not Norfolk! Mistake corrected in the text, error remains in the voice over to haunt me.
"The oldest written telling version Costantino Fortunato (Italian for "Lucky Costantino") by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, included in The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550–1553), in which the cat is a fairy in disguise who helps his owner, a poor boy named Costantino, to gain his princess by duping a king, a lord and many commoners."
I've seen the many-towered walls of Toledo but I've never been inside. I was on the way from a conference in Salamanca to the airport. It was very hot, and the sky went on for miles. In Salamanca there is an astronaut carved into the stone of the cathedral. What would Crumb make of space travel?
I had forgotten that the beginning of Mirror was a remembering of the end of Bodies. Call-Me's frustration is palpable here, He's almost crying while the others look for a cat. But Crumb's mind is always working. He, Cromwell, is listening.
I have a lot of thoughts about Wolf Crawl at the moment. This is my second reading of Mirror. I read it at the end of last year so that Wolf Crawl could be a re-read in its entirety. I felt this last volume as the climb before the rollercoaster drops. It was a relief almost to go back to the beginning immediately. Sort of undoing what I'd just read. To be honest, I don't know if I'd be brave enough to do it again on my own - what kind of madness is it when you grieve for a fictional man based on a real man who's been dead for 500 years??? Maybe I need to get out more... I wish I could hold it all in my head and see the connections between the books more clearly, but I suspect it will take many more readings before my view becomes wider.
I'm glad you did decide to read it last year. The re-read is allowing us to piece everything together. In terms of winding back the clock, these early scenes feel like some fresh air after the stench of the bodies. A cat up a tree, the household all there: there are so many scenes in these books where you want to stop time and climb inside.
"Who am I but who [Henry]has made me?" says Cromwell in response to the notion that he would take revenge against the King for his treatment of Wolsey. Yet, Simon, as you point out, Cromwell cannot dismiss the logic that if he is motivated by revenge for Wolsey then Henry is the biggest offender.
I think of the phrase "No man is a hero to his valet." Cromwell the valet, sees all of Henry's flaws and foibles up close, including his treatment of Wolsey, and must face the fact that he is a toady to an inferior man, the ultimate entitled brat, to whom Cromwell has given his fate. The higher Cromwell rises, the more challenging that situation must be for him.
Nicely summarising the place we're headed. To some extent, Cromwell's story is not one of hubris: he is better, brighter, even nobler than the man he serves. The problem is he is up against a fight he cannot win.
It is interesting how beginning this third volume, it feels as though we (we #WolfCrawl people) have paused a while, when in fact we have simply carried on as ever from last week. It was Dame Hilary who paused, so to speak, allowing new readers to start here and old readers (who had waited eight long years for this book) to come back up to speed—and also, as you say, allowing her to cast certain aspects of the case in a slightly different light.
I am so glad that you homed in on the Damascene cat, Simon. Its appearance in the tale had the same effect on me—here is Mantel back working her usual magic. For example, it was he, Cromwell, who, after a glance out of his window, called down to the milling crowd looking for the Damascene cat: “She’s up the tree!” In the middle of one of the most crucial episodes of his career (the start of the rest of his life, one might say), he cannot help still noticing everything. Later he, Cromwell, is compared with the D cat, at the top of the tree, camouflaged by her stripes, lolling draped over a branch: “I have travelled so far to get here, and nothing they do disturbs me now, nor disquiets me, high on my branch.” He notices everything—except what he does not notice. “He is shocked: …Third, that he does not know the answer”—that is, if Cromwell is about avenging Wolsey’s death, “what revenge will [he] seek on his sovereign, his prince?”
Very scary. And perhaps the cat wondering: now what? I have climbed the tree. Where do I go now but down among the scrapping men. If only I could grow wings...
Gregory to Norfolk "Sir William is no older than yourself, my Lord" and following it up with the comment, that his father is much younger than Norfolk 😂 Teenagers, they take no prisoners, telling the truth
Cromwell was a wall for Mary Boleyn, and now he's a door for the reenactment between Suffolk and Katherine. No wonder he, Cromwell, can learn so much: he blends in with the scenery :)
Guess what, I left my copy in England, so now I'm going to have to the same god-damn thing as Bring Up The Bodies and speed read slow wolf crawl when I get home 😂. Not really a huge hardship, though. I'm so in love with Mantel, I'll do anything for her.
I also in this chapter loved the idea that Anne selected her head covering as a nod to Katherine, and Cromwell’s thought that they would be “meeting this morning in another country, where no doubt they will have much to tell”. An afterlife where one takes tea with the other discarded queens doesn’t seem like much to look forward to honestly 😂
As usual, l am thoroughly enjoying the book. Although it may be taking some toll…earlier this week I did a double-take at a headline in a newspaper. Then I saw that the word it used was “befriend”, not “behead”. Bit of a difference!
I loved Uncle Norfolk’s hearty sizing up of Cromwell, this new, post-Anne Cromwell. Who hasn’t adopted a friendly tone to gather information? I don’t usually find Norfolk relatable but in this moment I felt some affection for him 😂
I'm worried what this says about you! Haha, Norfolk definitely thinks he's the second man in England and their rivalry is going to be centre stage now.
I just read that he will be played by Timothy Spall in the tv series, to replace Bernard Hill who has passed away recently. I will be curious to see his take on the character!
I am curious too to see who will play Gregory, I haven’t seen anything to indicate Tom Holland is reprising the role.
I ordered the book second-hand off the local buy / sell group last week, hoping it would arrive in time. Yesterday evening I was on my way out to a panel discussion, and there was the paper-wrapped package sitting underneath my letterbox. (The courier had tried to fit it into my letterbox and failed, leaving the door swinging open.) I was late for the bus so I picked up the package and took it with me. It was wrapped in brown paper, as big as a box, more like an object than a book: a hardback edition, which seemed better value, but I'd forgotten how large and unwieldy the third book is. I went around town with the package 'tucked underneath my arm', then read the chapter before I went to sleep last night, holding the book aloft and wishing I'd bought the paperback. And now no more, for lack of time.
I love that it’s specially a Damascene cat for a blacksmith’s son - damascene being a technique of decorating metal with inlaid copper, gold or silver; and an eternal mark of luxury. So Cromwell!
I can't believe we're onto the last book already! (Although feeling the weight of it I can see why we've still got nearly half the year left...) I've only read this one once, and don't remember it as clearly - I can remember where we end up, but not how we get there, so this should be interesting.
I was curious about the different forms of exposition/recapping in this chapter. Sometimes it was cleverly slipped into a beautiful sentence ("his father was a blacksmith; he has affinity with iron, steel, with everything that is mined from the earth or forged, everything that is made molten, or wrought, or given a cutting edge"). Sometimes it is woven into a conversation that does a lovely job of illuminating the relationships and attitudes of the speakers ("'Yes, sir ' Rafe says, as if he is humouring him. 'That was stated in court, was it not?'") And we had another great set piece description of Cromwell to set alongside those in the first two books. But occasionally I still found it a bit much, especially Gregory’s overly talkative naivety - although I'm sure I'd have felt grateful after a gap of 8 years rather than a week!
I was also struck by the fact that the narrative pulls us straight back into identifying with Cromwell after our time apart - "Uncle Norfolk is not our comrade or our ally or our friend. He is slapping us to appraise how solid we are." (That's 3x our, an us and a we...)
I found it a bit jarring when Cromwell was "shocked" by Wriothesley's question (as in my mind he'd already heard it), but I like your interpretation that this is a deliberately different memory, playing against the claim that "the only things he cannot remember are the things he never knew".
This opening pulled me in and made me want to keep reading. "The future is a curious blank" but threats are appearing on all sides, and it's mesmerising watching Cromwell & Richard try to face them down with steady arms.
Yes this double memory fascinates me. Both versions are perfect. Call Me talking of burning plains while a fearful Cromwell arranges his face at the window. Call Me fretting over his master's future while Cromwell watches a cat stuck up a tree. How can both versions be true? That doubling gives us the book's theme: the mirror and the light, the light doubled and shimmering in the mirror, until the light is gone.
Perfect indeed! I did notice that Cromwell's reflection is distorted or blurred in the window in both versions... Really looking forward to your slow read version of this one, I think I read it far too fast the first time around.
"That's 3x our, an us and a we..." Such a great observation. I keep looking for how she keeps making me root for him - and then get caught up in the language and forget. But I think you've nailed a big piece of it here.
Further notes on the Veil of Veronica. The allusion is interesting: if the relic and miracle is true it would be one of the few (only?) true visual representations of Christ. We have no contemporary portraits of Anne Boleyn so we cannot be sure what she looks like. And of course, that question about how true the copy (fiction) is to the past (fact) is central to Mantel's work.
Further notes on the title: I didn't mention it in the post, but the chapter title Wreckage references Call-Me's comment at the end of Bring Up the Bodies. Cromwell tells him that you can use wreckage. It is then interesting that this conversation has been rewritten at the start of this novel, almost as though Mantel has herself taken the wreckage and created something new.
Talking of titles, we’re only in chapter 1 but already had a mirror and a light in the penultimate paragraph: Someone has brought a torch into the garden below. A dusky flicker fills the panda. His shadow in the window raises a hand; he inclines his head to it. ‘Drink my health.’
Are there more reflections to come?
The book is full of mirrors and lights. We will have to make a note of them all.
I'm just writing a piece on building houses out of driftwood
Correction: Just noticed I got by dukes mixed up, just like Gregory! Cromwell gave Brandon an earful, not Norfolk! Mistake corrected in the text, error remains in the voice over to haunt me.
A tangent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puss_in_Boots
"The oldest written telling version Costantino Fortunato (Italian for "Lucky Costantino") by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, included in The Facetious Nights of Straparola (c. 1550–1553), in which the cat is a fairy in disguise who helps his owner, a poor boy named Costantino, to gain his princess by duping a king, a lord and many commoners."
I've seen the many-towered walls of Toledo but I've never been inside. I was on the way from a conference in Salamanca to the airport. It was very hot, and the sky went on for miles. In Salamanca there is an astronaut carved into the stone of the cathedral. What would Crumb make of space travel?
Credulity is not consigned to the past:
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-stone-astronaut-was-not-carved-into-cathedral-wall-in-1600s-idUSKBN2832CJ/
I had forgotten that the beginning of Mirror was a remembering of the end of Bodies. Call-Me's frustration is palpable here, He's almost crying while the others look for a cat. But Crumb's mind is always working. He, Cromwell, is listening.
I have a lot of thoughts about Wolf Crawl at the moment. This is my second reading of Mirror. I read it at the end of last year so that Wolf Crawl could be a re-read in its entirety. I felt this last volume as the climb before the rollercoaster drops. It was a relief almost to go back to the beginning immediately. Sort of undoing what I'd just read. To be honest, I don't know if I'd be brave enough to do it again on my own - what kind of madness is it when you grieve for a fictional man based on a real man who's been dead for 500 years??? Maybe I need to get out more... I wish I could hold it all in my head and see the connections between the books more clearly, but I suspect it will take many more readings before my view becomes wider.
I'm glad you did decide to read it last year. The re-read is allowing us to piece everything together. In terms of winding back the clock, these early scenes feel like some fresh air after the stench of the bodies. A cat up a tree, the household all there: there are so many scenes in these books where you want to stop time and climb inside.
In the end I had to trust Hilary to take me where I didn't want to go.
"Who am I but who [Henry]has made me?" says Cromwell in response to the notion that he would take revenge against the King for his treatment of Wolsey. Yet, Simon, as you point out, Cromwell cannot dismiss the logic that if he is motivated by revenge for Wolsey then Henry is the biggest offender.
I think of the phrase "No man is a hero to his valet." Cromwell the valet, sees all of Henry's flaws and foibles up close, including his treatment of Wolsey, and must face the fact that he is a toady to an inferior man, the ultimate entitled brat, to whom Cromwell has given his fate. The higher Cromwell rises, the more challenging that situation must be for him.
Nicely summarising the place we're headed. To some extent, Cromwell's story is not one of hubris: he is better, brighter, even nobler than the man he serves. The problem is he is up against a fight he cannot win.
Cromwell is Jeeves!!!
It is interesting how beginning this third volume, it feels as though we (we #WolfCrawl people) have paused a while, when in fact we have simply carried on as ever from last week. It was Dame Hilary who paused, so to speak, allowing new readers to start here and old readers (who had waited eight long years for this book) to come back up to speed—and also, as you say, allowing her to cast certain aspects of the case in a slightly different light.
I am so glad that you homed in on the Damascene cat, Simon. Its appearance in the tale had the same effect on me—here is Mantel back working her usual magic. For example, it was he, Cromwell, who, after a glance out of his window, called down to the milling crowd looking for the Damascene cat: “She’s up the tree!” In the middle of one of the most crucial episodes of his career (the start of the rest of his life, one might say), he cannot help still noticing everything. Later he, Cromwell, is compared with the D cat, at the top of the tree, camouflaged by her stripes, lolling draped over a branch: “I have travelled so far to get here, and nothing they do disturbs me now, nor disquiets me, high on my branch.” He notices everything—except what he does not notice. “He is shocked: …Third, that he does not know the answer”—that is, if Cromwell is about avenging Wolsey’s death, “what revenge will [he] seek on his sovereign, his prince?”
Scary scary stuff.
Very scary. And perhaps the cat wondering: now what? I have climbed the tree. Where do I go now but down among the scrapping men. If only I could grow wings...
Gregory to Norfolk "Sir William is no older than yourself, my Lord" and following it up with the comment, that his father is much younger than Norfolk 😂 Teenagers, they take no prisoners, telling the truth
Gregory and Norfolk provide the light relief in this section. Although Uncle Norfolk is not our friend, and now he's no one's uncle.
Cromwell was a wall for Mary Boleyn, and now he's a door for the reenactment between Suffolk and Katherine. No wonder he, Cromwell, can learn so much: he blends in with the scenery :)
Love that parallel.
Guess what, I left my copy in England, so now I'm going to have to the same god-damn thing as Bring Up The Bodies and speed read slow wolf crawl when I get home 😂. Not really a huge hardship, though. I'm so in love with Mantel, I'll do anything for her.
Speed slow reading is the new slow speed reading.
Hahaha, that’s what I was doing for Bodies! Now I’m back to slow slow reading. 😁
Ha! 🙌🏻
I also in this chapter loved the idea that Anne selected her head covering as a nod to Katherine, and Cromwell’s thought that they would be “meeting this morning in another country, where no doubt they will have much to tell”. An afterlife where one takes tea with the other discarded queens doesn’t seem like much to look forward to honestly 😂
As usual, l am thoroughly enjoying the book. Although it may be taking some toll…earlier this week I did a double-take at a headline in a newspaper. Then I saw that the word it used was “befriend”, not “behead”. Bit of a difference!
If you can't befriend your enemies at the beheading of your friends, when can you!
I loved Uncle Norfolk’s hearty sizing up of Cromwell, this new, post-Anne Cromwell. Who hasn’t adopted a friendly tone to gather information? I don’t usually find Norfolk relatable but in this moment I felt some affection for him 😂
I'm worried what this says about you! Haha, Norfolk definitely thinks he's the second man in England and their rivalry is going to be centre stage now.
I’m not sure what it says about me either 😂😂
Like everyone else though, Norfolk is just fighting for survival, right?
When you're Norfolk, the only way is down!
I love his tenacity 😂
I just read that he will be played by Timothy Spall in the tv series, to replace Bernard Hill who has passed away recently. I will be curious to see his take on the character!
I am curious too to see who will play Gregory, I haven’t seen anything to indicate Tom Holland is reprising the role.
I ordered the book second-hand off the local buy / sell group last week, hoping it would arrive in time. Yesterday evening I was on my way out to a panel discussion, and there was the paper-wrapped package sitting underneath my letterbox. (The courier had tried to fit it into my letterbox and failed, leaving the door swinging open.) I was late for the bus so I picked up the package and took it with me. It was wrapped in brown paper, as big as a box, more like an object than a book: a hardback edition, which seemed better value, but I'd forgotten how large and unwieldy the third book is. I went around town with the package 'tucked underneath my arm', then read the chapter before I went to sleep last night, holding the book aloft and wishing I'd bought the paperback. And now no more, for lack of time.
Ufff. I have both hardback and paperback. The HB sits on my shelves, unread.
I love that it’s specially a Damascene cat for a blacksmith’s son - damascene being a technique of decorating metal with inlaid copper, gold or silver; and an eternal mark of luxury. So Cromwell!
I love this, it is a great observation!
I can't believe we're onto the last book already! (Although feeling the weight of it I can see why we've still got nearly half the year left...) I've only read this one once, and don't remember it as clearly - I can remember where we end up, but not how we get there, so this should be interesting.
I was curious about the different forms of exposition/recapping in this chapter. Sometimes it was cleverly slipped into a beautiful sentence ("his father was a blacksmith; he has affinity with iron, steel, with everything that is mined from the earth or forged, everything that is made molten, or wrought, or given a cutting edge"). Sometimes it is woven into a conversation that does a lovely job of illuminating the relationships and attitudes of the speakers ("'Yes, sir ' Rafe says, as if he is humouring him. 'That was stated in court, was it not?'") And we had another great set piece description of Cromwell to set alongside those in the first two books. But occasionally I still found it a bit much, especially Gregory’s overly talkative naivety - although I'm sure I'd have felt grateful after a gap of 8 years rather than a week!
I was also struck by the fact that the narrative pulls us straight back into identifying with Cromwell after our time apart - "Uncle Norfolk is not our comrade or our ally or our friend. He is slapping us to appraise how solid we are." (That's 3x our, an us and a we...)
I found it a bit jarring when Cromwell was "shocked" by Wriothesley's question (as in my mind he'd already heard it), but I like your interpretation that this is a deliberately different memory, playing against the claim that "the only things he cannot remember are the things he never knew".
This opening pulled me in and made me want to keep reading. "The future is a curious blank" but threats are appearing on all sides, and it's mesmerising watching Cromwell & Richard try to face them down with steady arms.
Yes this double memory fascinates me. Both versions are perfect. Call Me talking of burning plains while a fearful Cromwell arranges his face at the window. Call Me fretting over his master's future while Cromwell watches a cat stuck up a tree. How can both versions be true? That doubling gives us the book's theme: the mirror and the light, the light doubled and shimmering in the mirror, until the light is gone.
Perfect indeed! I did notice that Cromwell's reflection is distorted or blurred in the window in both versions... Really looking forward to your slow read version of this one, I think I read it far too fast the first time around.
"That's 3x our, an us and a we..." Such a great observation. I keep looking for how she keeps making me root for him - and then get caught up in the language and forget. But I think you've nailed a big piece of it here.