The term / image “female ventriloquism” is so rich! It’s an interesting consideration in historical research, when fewer women’s voices were recorded in writing. And in historical fiction, particularly when writing about times so deeply steeped in patriarchy. I remember reading that reflective line in Wolf Hall when Cromwell notes how women imagine being other women and immediately highlighting it in my Kindle. It jumps out on every reread. The work of the Cromwell Trilogy, among its myriad other achievements, is an example of that exercise by its brilliant author. Thanks as always for a great post, Simon! What a great way to start the day (US reader here).
Fabulous. Yes, I remember someone commenting right at the start of our reading that the trilogy lacked female voices. I disagreed but it got me thinking: how Mantel shows all these women's lives through Cromwell's eyes. How his limited ability to access that world mirrors their partial erasure in the historical record. And of course this story is all about a king trying to get a son, a main character who has lost his daughters, and how closely controlled women's bodies and their actions were. Meg Douglas chose the wrong hour/century to fall in love.
Absolutely! It’s an ironic aspect of the tight closeness of the narrative style. We know it’s Cromwell’s perspective, but we attach to it so closely and almost mind-meld with it. There was a really interesting discussion on a Tudor history subreddit about Claire Foy’s performance as Anne in the adaptation, and some users expressed frustration about how negatively some of her character was portrayed. But others pointed out that all of these impressions are meant to have the Cromwell lens coloring them. It’s so easy to forget!
Yes, and much harder in a stage or tv adaptation where you forget you are seeing it all through Cromwell. I'm still seeing the tired old comments about the books being full of anti-Catholic bias – what would you expect from the world according to Cromwell!
100%! I’m a practicing Catholic who has zero qualms with the trilogy. I honestly found the books’ version of More to be even more interesting and rich because I had such a different context for him prior to reading. The richness of literature!
When we read Books 1 and 2, I was rereading them, but Book 3 is my first run-through. What I notice at this point is a slight flattening of Cromwell’s character. He feels to me more brutish, more selfish. Whereas previously I was completely on his side (I saw him as a realpolitik genius with an essentially good heart), now I seesaw between support and dislike.
I personally wouldn't say flattened. A slow read of Books 1 and 2 brought attention to all the reasons why we should feel ambivalent about Cromwell right from the start. The bully is there from day one, and it comes out most spectacularly in Book 2. What this final book does is circle back and reveal to Cromwell the nature of his actions in the first two books. The crises of 1536 have a powerful effect on his psyche.
The result isn't a flattening, but a deepening of the contradictions. He was always suave and a persuader, and we the readers are seduced by him in the first two books, against our better instincts! And even now, when we know what he is, we still feel invested in his fate – we've spent so long in his skin and in his mind's eye.
Could it be that what you read as flattening could be an exertion of Cromwell’s growing confidence (over-confidence) in his power and position? He feels safer being brutish and selfish than in the past? But with it comes blind spots and an eventual fall?
The first time I read Mirror I also saw something more brutish in him. There is one particular example of this still to come. But on the re-read I'm seeing much more humour and in general a recourse to memory that I think reflects an accurate view of ageing. I find myself thinking how tired he must be and how often exasperated. Despite his flaws, I remain a Cromwell ally!
Where are today's poets? It's such a huge part of courting back then and used as a way to express feelings otherwise kept hidden. But nowadays, poets are a very niche group and to receive poetry from a lover would be unheard of, I think. It'd be nice to bring back such a personal form of communication; I doubt a text can ever capture that kind of romance.
But everyone making fun of Tom's rhyming capability will never not be funny.
Perhaps it doesn't help that we don't read poetry these days. But then again we listen to enough songs to all try our hand at writing one?
I like that Cromwell told Tom Truth it is not a crime to write bad verse, but then passed a law makes his verse effectively treasonous. Makes one afraid to put pen to paper!
I love reading and writing poetry but what I write I rarely share with anyone other than my husband. I does feel like poetry is coming into it's own again, and I have read some great poems recently depicting the times we are currently going through. Love poems they are not though!
“I have this peculiar hunch that the Cromwell trilogy is actually narrated by Thomas Wyatt as Thomas Cromwell.” [“I” being you, Simon] I love this idea! I am not supposing that that was in Hilary’s mind, though goodness knows she was capable of it and, true or not, it brings a delicious complexity to an already complex tale. Tangled threads her speciality, tangled, and golden. Imagine if Wyatt had written a memoir of those days… I want to remember your hunch, and test it against the narration as we proceed….
“In Wyatt’s verse there is a tussle in every line. In the verse of Lord Thomas, there is no contest at all, just a smooth surrender to idiocy.” Your quotation of this line is another delight. I think it was my favourite line this week: few writers do contempt as well as Hilary does. (Few writers do anything as well as Hilary does, come to that.) You could almost feel sorry for Tom Truth, couldn’t you? But you don’t. At least I don’t, and I’m sure Hilary didn’t mean us to.
Yes! I'm not sure whether it holds up, but I like the idea. Mantel's Cromwell feels like Wyatt's version of Cromwell, especially if you read the poem that is supposed to be about his death. Wyatt is the last man to have spoken to Cromwell before he died and it is almost like he's writing the man's memoir...oh and the title of The Mirror and the Light comes from a letter written by Cromwell to Wyatt. The letter is heartbreaking, but we will get to that. God, I love this book.
I am now imagining Hilary, early in her researches into Cromwell’s life, wondering what a man like Thomas Wyatt saw in a man like Thomas Cromwell, and, indeed, vice versa. There was a mutual respect there which does demand investigation. I have Prof MacCulloch’s biography of Crumb, and somewhere a biography of Wyatt by Nicola Shulman. When we are finished reading TMatL I will have a closer look at both in this light. Oh, I am enjoying this Crawl!
There is a piece about Wyatt in the back of the first edition hardback. Mantel recommends a biography, I'll check whether it is the one you mention. She describes him as an enigma, perhaps just a curious question as Cromwell himself.
I'm planning to do a lot of biography reading too once we're done. So many of the figures are interesting on their own and understanding them better can only make my next read of the trilogy better.
I confess I don't like the idea. I always feel that Wyatt doesn't really 'get' Cromwell. I doubt he'd give us such a close view of him if that were the case. Wyatt always strikes me as faintly pathetic and I won't stand for that epithet being attached to Crumb!
I noted Dr. Butts' comment: "They say Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder."
He's referring to Richmond's sickness, that it's July, and Cromwell should cease to write laws so that Parliament and everyone else can leave London. Reminds me of Covid and people leaving New York.
But then here's this rejoinder (about crime, not sickness) from Sherlock Holmes:
“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”
“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
I laughed so hard reading that out loud. Poor Tom Truth!
I also enjoyed the introduction of a few more characters this week, the clever Bess Darrell and the weepy Meg Douglas. Oh, especially the reintroduction of a newly calculating Mary Fitzroy!
I enjoyed this section's collection of women seen through Cromwell’s eyes, especially:
- the naivety of Meg Douglas, underestimating both the risks of the king’s displeasure & Cromwell’s ability to rewrite history (despite Anne’s earlier experiences!)
- the admirable cunning of Bess Darrell, admitting to saving Wyatt’s life with an imagined pregnancy
- the surprising Latin skills of "Oughtred's widow" & the refreshing bluntness of Queen Jane ("The king never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him." - and that list of Henry’s lovers!)
& as always, the malicious gossip of cruel but perceptive Jane Rochford...
There were two quotes that particularly stood out for me:
"A prince cannot be impeded by temporal distinctions: past, present, future. Nor can he excuse the past, just for being over and done. He can't say, 'all water under the bridges'; the past is always trickling under the soil, a slow leak you can't trace. Often, meaning is only revealed retrospectively."
&
"'"Set me free," Henry said. And so you did. He meant, free like a prince - not free like a beggar. You knocked down his palace of dreams and left him stark in the ruins.'"
Finally, I was highly amused by Cromwell's turn as literary critic: "'Can you go on, Mr Wriothesley? I cannot. It's not the handwriting,' he assures Truth. 'It's that my tongue refuses to do it.'"
I loved Queen Jane’s assessment of Henry and Cromwell, as you quoted, “The King never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.” These two short sentences sum up their relationship so well. Queen Jane, quiet and introverted, observes everything and everyone with such sound political acuity.
Interesting, the 'everyone's a poet' thing: I wrote a Note yesterday regarding Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy (a parallel masterpiece of historical fiction). https://substack.com/@rosiewhinray/note/c-67080689
'In the third book, The Ghost Road, Barker has her protagonist Billy Prior describe how in France the soldiers in his platoon scribble by candlelight, fancying themselves poets. Maybe if they make themselves the main character of a story, they won’t be killed?'
Of course, the other notably bad poet at Court is the King... Bad at verse, bad in bed, and with the trial of Anne Boleyn, Henry now knows that everyone knows that the Emperor has no clothes, a terrible blow to his romantic self-image. As Lady Rochford says, "You knocked down his palace of dreams and left him stark in the ruins. You showed him his wife was false, that his friendships were feigned."
(As a friend of mine said once, "Only poor men need to be good lovers.")
Another thing I noticed this chapter: Richmond on his deathbed, obsessed with being named heir, is a kind of prefiguring of Jane's future child, the young Prince Edward, drafting his 'Devise for the Succession' on HIS deathbed, to do his half-sisters out of the throne.
The term / image “female ventriloquism” is so rich! It’s an interesting consideration in historical research, when fewer women’s voices were recorded in writing. And in historical fiction, particularly when writing about times so deeply steeped in patriarchy. I remember reading that reflective line in Wolf Hall when Cromwell notes how women imagine being other women and immediately highlighting it in my Kindle. It jumps out on every reread. The work of the Cromwell Trilogy, among its myriad other achievements, is an example of that exercise by its brilliant author. Thanks as always for a great post, Simon! What a great way to start the day (US reader here).
Fabulous. Yes, I remember someone commenting right at the start of our reading that the trilogy lacked female voices. I disagreed but it got me thinking: how Mantel shows all these women's lives through Cromwell's eyes. How his limited ability to access that world mirrors their partial erasure in the historical record. And of course this story is all about a king trying to get a son, a main character who has lost his daughters, and how closely controlled women's bodies and their actions were. Meg Douglas chose the wrong hour/century to fall in love.
Absolutely! It’s an ironic aspect of the tight closeness of the narrative style. We know it’s Cromwell’s perspective, but we attach to it so closely and almost mind-meld with it. There was a really interesting discussion on a Tudor history subreddit about Claire Foy’s performance as Anne in the adaptation, and some users expressed frustration about how negatively some of her character was portrayed. But others pointed out that all of these impressions are meant to have the Cromwell lens coloring them. It’s so easy to forget!
Yes, and much harder in a stage or tv adaptation where you forget you are seeing it all through Cromwell. I'm still seeing the tired old comments about the books being full of anti-Catholic bias – what would you expect from the world according to Cromwell!
100%! I’m a practicing Catholic who has zero qualms with the trilogy. I honestly found the books’ version of More to be even more interesting and rich because I had such a different context for him prior to reading. The richness of literature!
When we read Books 1 and 2, I was rereading them, but Book 3 is my first run-through. What I notice at this point is a slight flattening of Cromwell’s character. He feels to me more brutish, more selfish. Whereas previously I was completely on his side (I saw him as a realpolitik genius with an essentially good heart), now I seesaw between support and dislike.
I personally wouldn't say flattened. A slow read of Books 1 and 2 brought attention to all the reasons why we should feel ambivalent about Cromwell right from the start. The bully is there from day one, and it comes out most spectacularly in Book 2. What this final book does is circle back and reveal to Cromwell the nature of his actions in the first two books. The crises of 1536 have a powerful effect on his psyche.
The result isn't a flattening, but a deepening of the contradictions. He was always suave and a persuader, and we the readers are seduced by him in the first two books, against our better instincts! And even now, when we know what he is, we still feel invested in his fate – we've spent so long in his skin and in his mind's eye.
Could it be that what you read as flattening could be an exertion of Cromwell’s growing confidence (over-confidence) in his power and position? He feels safer being brutish and selfish than in the past? But with it comes blind spots and an eventual fall?
The first time I read Mirror I also saw something more brutish in him. There is one particular example of this still to come. But on the re-read I'm seeing much more humour and in general a recourse to memory that I think reflects an accurate view of ageing. I find myself thinking how tired he must be and how often exasperated. Despite his flaws, I remain a Cromwell ally!
Where are today's poets? It's such a huge part of courting back then and used as a way to express feelings otherwise kept hidden. But nowadays, poets are a very niche group and to receive poetry from a lover would be unheard of, I think. It'd be nice to bring back such a personal form of communication; I doubt a text can ever capture that kind of romance.
But everyone making fun of Tom's rhyming capability will never not be funny.
Perhaps it doesn't help that we don't read poetry these days. But then again we listen to enough songs to all try our hand at writing one?
I like that Cromwell told Tom Truth it is not a crime to write bad verse, but then passed a law makes his verse effectively treasonous. Makes one afraid to put pen to paper!
I love reading and writing poetry but what I write I rarely share with anyone other than my husband. I does feel like poetry is coming into it's own again, and I have read some great poems recently depicting the times we are currently going through. Love poems they are not though!
I like that a lot!
“I have this peculiar hunch that the Cromwell trilogy is actually narrated by Thomas Wyatt as Thomas Cromwell.” [“I” being you, Simon] I love this idea! I am not supposing that that was in Hilary’s mind, though goodness knows she was capable of it and, true or not, it brings a delicious complexity to an already complex tale. Tangled threads her speciality, tangled, and golden. Imagine if Wyatt had written a memoir of those days… I want to remember your hunch, and test it against the narration as we proceed….
“In Wyatt’s verse there is a tussle in every line. In the verse of Lord Thomas, there is no contest at all, just a smooth surrender to idiocy.” Your quotation of this line is another delight. I think it was my favourite line this week: few writers do contempt as well as Hilary does. (Few writers do anything as well as Hilary does, come to that.) You could almost feel sorry for Tom Truth, couldn’t you? But you don’t. At least I don’t, and I’m sure Hilary didn’t mean us to.
Yes! I'm not sure whether it holds up, but I like the idea. Mantel's Cromwell feels like Wyatt's version of Cromwell, especially if you read the poem that is supposed to be about his death. Wyatt is the last man to have spoken to Cromwell before he died and it is almost like he's writing the man's memoir...oh and the title of The Mirror and the Light comes from a letter written by Cromwell to Wyatt. The letter is heartbreaking, but we will get to that. God, I love this book.
I am now imagining Hilary, early in her researches into Cromwell’s life, wondering what a man like Thomas Wyatt saw in a man like Thomas Cromwell, and, indeed, vice versa. There was a mutual respect there which does demand investigation. I have Prof MacCulloch’s biography of Crumb, and somewhere a biography of Wyatt by Nicola Shulman. When we are finished reading TMatL I will have a closer look at both in this light. Oh, I am enjoying this Crawl!
There is a piece about Wyatt in the back of the first edition hardback. Mantel recommends a biography, I'll check whether it is the one you mention. She describes him as an enigma, perhaps just a curious question as Cromwell himself.
That’s the edition I have: I had quite forgotten that it was there! Thank you.
I'm planning to do a lot of biography reading too once we're done. So many of the figures are interesting on their own and understanding them better can only make my next read of the trilogy better.
I confess I don't like the idea. I always feel that Wyatt doesn't really 'get' Cromwell. I doubt he'd give us such a close view of him if that were the case. Wyatt always strikes me as faintly pathetic and I won't stand for that epithet being attached to Crumb!
Maybe it's Mantel's version of Cromwell's version of Wyatt's version of Cromwell. 🙃
Hmm. 😂
I literally gasped out loud when you mentioned the possibility of Wyatt as narrator. What a thing to contemplate!
I noted Dr. Butts' comment: "They say Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder."
He's referring to Richmond's sickness, that it's July, and Cromwell should cease to write laws so that Parliament and everyone else can leave London. Reminds me of Covid and people leaving New York.
But then here's this rejoinder (about crime, not sickness) from Sherlock Holmes:
“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”
“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
"What helpeth hope of happy hap
When hap will hap unhappily?"
I laughed so hard reading that out loud. Poor Tom Truth!
I also enjoyed the introduction of a few more characters this week, the clever Bess Darrell and the weepy Meg Douglas. Oh, especially the reintroduction of a newly calculating Mary Fitzroy!
Yes extremely LOLworthy poesie
I enjoyed this section's collection of women seen through Cromwell’s eyes, especially:
- the naivety of Meg Douglas, underestimating both the risks of the king’s displeasure & Cromwell’s ability to rewrite history (despite Anne’s earlier experiences!)
- the admirable cunning of Bess Darrell, admitting to saving Wyatt’s life with an imagined pregnancy
- the surprising Latin skills of "Oughtred's widow" & the refreshing bluntness of Queen Jane ("The king never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him." - and that list of Henry’s lovers!)
& as always, the malicious gossip of cruel but perceptive Jane Rochford...
There were two quotes that particularly stood out for me:
"A prince cannot be impeded by temporal distinctions: past, present, future. Nor can he excuse the past, just for being over and done. He can't say, 'all water under the bridges'; the past is always trickling under the soil, a slow leak you can't trace. Often, meaning is only revealed retrospectively."
&
"'"Set me free," Henry said. And so you did. He meant, free like a prince - not free like a beggar. You knocked down his palace of dreams and left him stark in the ruins.'"
Finally, I was highly amused by Cromwell's turn as literary critic: "'Can you go on, Mr Wriothesley? I cannot. It's not the handwriting,' he assures Truth. 'It's that my tongue refuses to do it.'"
I loved Queen Jane’s assessment of Henry and Cromwell, as you quoted, “The King never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.” These two short sentences sum up their relationship so well. Queen Jane, quiet and introverted, observes everything and everyone with such sound political acuity.
Interesting, the 'everyone's a poet' thing: I wrote a Note yesterday regarding Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy (a parallel masterpiece of historical fiction). https://substack.com/@rosiewhinray/note/c-67080689
'In the third book, The Ghost Road, Barker has her protagonist Billy Prior describe how in France the soldiers in his platoon scribble by candlelight, fancying themselves poets. Maybe if they make themselves the main character of a story, they won’t be killed?'
Of course, the other notably bad poet at Court is the King... Bad at verse, bad in bed, and with the trial of Anne Boleyn, Henry now knows that everyone knows that the Emperor has no clothes, a terrible blow to his romantic self-image. As Lady Rochford says, "You knocked down his palace of dreams and left him stark in the ruins. You showed him his wife was false, that his friendships were feigned."
(As a friend of mine said once, "Only poor men need to be good lovers.")
SPOILER AHEAD in the nested comment
Another thing I noticed this chapter: Richmond on his deathbed, obsessed with being named heir, is a kind of prefiguring of Jane's future child, the young Prince Edward, drafting his 'Devise for the Succession' on HIS deathbed, to do his half-sisters out of the throne.