The Mirror and the Light

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

Book Review

The Mirror and the Light received a lot of attention when it was published in March 2020, just as stay-at-home orders took effect. I decided to read Hilary Mantel's trilogy as a diversion, having meant to read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies but never gotten around to it.

I'm in awe of Hilary Mantel. She brings an influential man from Henry VIII's 16th century Tudor England, Thomas Cromwell, to life with conversation, aspirations, and thoughts we easily recognize from our own world, yet we would never mistake him for someone other than from his own time. He's especially good with the ladies, not as a suitor but because he notices them as people, and talks easily with them, to the bafflement of many blustering, strutting noblemen around him. 

For example, in The Mirror and the Light, Cromwell continues to work hard to preserve Henry's daughter (with Katherine of Aragon) Mary's life. She's stubborn, unlikeable, and a danger to herself because her devotion to her mother, to Catholicism, and her refusal to acknowledge her father as head of the Church is grounds for treason and execution. Cromwell knows what a public relations nightmare that would be, and also, one never knows who may be in power in the future. He offers her every opportunity to secretly hold her own counsel while officially supporting Henry. Meanwhile he can't help but despair of her physical clumsiness. When he finally engineers Mary's public acceptance of Henry, Cromwell hovers with her ladies in waiting as she ceremonially descends a staircase in an unattractive gown of her own choosing, Meg the train-bearer behind her.

Mary glances around, as if to check he is following. Meg gives her train a shake. She seems to steer her from behind, with clucks and murmurs, like a woman driving a cart. When Mary stops, Lady Meg stops. What if Mary panics? What if she thinks at this last moment, I cannot do it? But, he murmurs to Lady Shelton, my anxiety is not so much, will she change her mind--it's will she trip over her feet and land before her father in a heap. 

Mary's just one of the matters Cromwell oversees as the handful of years the book covers plays out before his own execution. Henry relies on him more and more, and Cromwell's power is known beyond the borders of England. Cromwell has loyal men in his household whom the king also comes to trust and rely on. Many, perhaps most, of the nobility are jealous and righteously convinced that low-born Cromwell is underserving of his elevated position as Lord Privy Seal, on the king's council, and other titles. They persuade the king that Cromwell's after the throne himself. Just look at his attachment to Mary.

By about the last hundred pages, Cromwell, unsurprised, feels the current of danger. The new marriage he's achieved for Henry has failed because Henry, who believes in romantic love, is not attracted to his new bride. (Hilary Mantel imagines a florid, extremely overweight, unattractively old Henry--depicted otherwise in a painting shown to his prospective young queen--surprising her in her chambers and eliciting a reaction of distaste. Henry can never get over that.)

At the next council meeting the Lord Chancellor says, 'If the king and queen are civil to each other by day, it will help counter the rumours. And I think we can rely on them for that.'

 

'When he was with the other one,' Fitz says, 'and he couldn't tup her, he blamed witches.'

 

'Superstition,' Cranmer says. 'He knows better now.'

 

Norfolk says, 'Well, Cromwell? What to do?'

 

He says, "I have done nothing, but for his safety and happiness.'

 

He overhears a young courtier--it is a Howard of course, the young Culpepper: 'If the king cannot manage it with the new queen, Cromwell will do it for him. Why not? He does everything else.'

 

His friend laughs. What alarms him is not their mockery. It is that they take no care to keep their voices low.

 

When the council meets they should, he feels, put down sand to soak up the blood. It is like the champ clos for a tournament, sturdily fenced to stop the spectators getting in or the combatants getting out. The king stands in a watchtower, judging every move. 

 

Eventually the king is persuaded, and walks away from Cromwell. Cromwell ends up in the Tower before his execution, a place where he has sent and visited many people. He knows Henry will not change his mind. 

I read the last pages in stops and starts, out of order, because I didn't want to face the approaching horror of his execution. Cromwell was ruthless in doing the king's will, but I liked and respected Mantel's version of him, and through him vicariously living in the upper echelons of Tudor England power. I realized addiction to power is the same no matter where it falls in history. Mantel's depiction of Cromwell's last days is a meditation on a life and an acceptance of fate. This Cromwell will linger in my thoughts for a long, long time.

Digitalis Cardigan and Unselfish Knitting

I have one issue of Making magazine, No. 5/Color, which was published in 2018. In a burst of grandmotherliness, I bought it planning to make Susan B. Anderson's Sweet Bee and Flower for someone, and ordered the kit from her.

The little bees and flowers have not been made, but I've looked through the magazine over and over, daydreaming of making several projects featured in its pages (behaving just as the publishers hoped!). I thought about subscribing, but no other issue has captivated me quite like this one.

One of the sweaters is Digitalis Cardigan, designed by Amy Christoffers. The more I looked at it, especially after making several other sweaters, the more I wanted to knit it, even though I already had plenty of projects lined up to knit for myself. For a cardigan, it had details I like, including a V neck, raglan shoulders, and some lace design--but not too much. And after knitting a ton of stockinette recently, but appreciating being able to do it on autopilot, I liked the reverse stockinette texture.

I am at a stage in my knitting practice where I want to use the yarn the designer used if at all possible to help ensure a good result. (I'm a product knitter and started knitting because I longed for really great sweaters.) So in November, when I happened to see a colorway closeout of Berroco Summer Silk (the yarn Christoffers used) on sale online at WEBS, I bought it. It was a bonus that it seems to be the same color, which was also a reason I liked the sweater. On Instagram not too long ago someone posted that all they wanted to do was knit with mustard colors. I have had the same urge, recently purchasing the Mason Dixon Field Guide No. 14, Refresh, to make Carol Feller's Trellis Top in her Nua Sport yarn in the colorway Rolling Bales.

It is, of course, still shelter at home because of the pandemic, and knitting has been a refuge. This sweater has been fast knitting and I will finish it in well under two months, unheard of for me. I am optimistic it's going to turn out well, and that started me thinking about wearing it.

Which would be...where? It's not just the pandemic, it's that I no longer go to work every day. My wardrobe needs have changed. When I open my closet there are a lot of clothes just hanging there, going unworn, because like most people I tend to wear the same few things over and over again. That includes sweaters, especially cardigans, but I don't need this one.

I love the color--it's more brown than gold but not exactly. More like stone ground mustard than yellow mustard. There's someone else, a knit worthy family member, who also would love this color. I know because we've talked about what colors she likes. If it does turn out, and the fit seems right, I think I'll surprise her with it. I wouldn't say I'm a selfish person, exactly, but I'm not known for giving extravagant gifts. It would be a great joy giving this to her. Oh, there I go thinking about myself! But I think she'd find some joy in it, too.

Nothing to See Here

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Book Review

As the grandmother of twins, I wanted to read this book as soon as I heard of it. I expected the book to be kind of a joke as I tried to imagine spontaneously combusting twins, but Nothing to See Here is a poignant story of children who have not been well cared for, including the narrator.

Lillian tells the story with her cool, painfully honest but don't-give-a-damn voice. She's 28, smoking a lot of weed, and living in the attic of her emotionally detached mother's house when her college friend Madison asks her to come live with her and her senator husband and his twins who will be moving in after their mother's (the senator's ex-wife) death. Lillian will be paid well to take care of them, and oh, there's one little important detail to be dealt with that Lillian isn't told until she gets there: they spontaneously combust when they're upset.

Lillian doesn't see many options for a better life and she's curious, so she agrees to come to their mansion in Franklin, Tennessee. She and Madison are friends but not in a confiding, companionable way. They keep in touch by letter (it's 1995) and Lillian knows nothing about Madison's interior life. At one time Lillian was ambitious and smart and pursuing a good college education without a drop of help from her single parent mother, but her relationship with Madison led to the destruction of that dream. Lillian wonders if there will be a reckoning between them, but soon realizes there won't be.

Instead she decides to take advantage of living like a rich person--Madison's life instead of the life Lillian had wanted for herself. But it's awkward, starting with cucumber sandwiches that look like dollhouse food.

We were, I understood, being polite. "But now you're here!" she [Madison] said. She poured sweet tea, and I drank it down in, like, two gulps. She didn't even look surprised, just filled my glass up again. I ate one of the sandwiches, and it was gross, but I was hungry. I ate two more. I didn't even realize that there were tiny plates stacked on the tray. I'd held the sandwiches in my dumb hands. I didn't even want to look down at my lap because I knew there were crumbs there.

When the twins move in, Lillian has to immediately invent a way to keep them from burning down the special house away from the mansion that's been built for them, which she does almost instinctively. She also invents a curriculum to occupy the days.  Lillian has no idea what she's doing but hour by hour, day by day, she recognizes they share her feeling of belonging to no one and a kind of existential despair. They don't trust her at first and she doesn't blame them. She earns their trust by letting them see the truth about her loser self. And they share a growing mutual distrust of Madison; their father, Senator Jasper Roberts; the employee Carl who tries vainly to manage the three of them, and even Madison and Senator Roberts' three year old son (the twin's half-brother), Timothy.

It was a little harder to believe Lillian found her way with the twins so surely than it was to go along with the spontaneous combustion condition, yet I did love this book. The ending came together in a satisfying way. Kevin Wilson is a smart, funny writer. An extra little kick of delight for me was discovering he is a nephew of my husband's high school classmate, whom I'd just met this past summer. At that time I heard the story about how the horses were hidden during the Civil War from the Union Army by leading them up the stairs of his mansion. When that same thing showed up in this book I thought maybe all the mansion owners took their horses up the spiral staircase to be hidden from the Yankees.