[Editor: This book review, of the novel Saraband for Dead Lovers by Helen de Guerry Simpson, is an extract from the “New novels” section published in the The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic.), 27 April 1935.]
New novels
The unhappy married life and lonely and terrible fate of the child princess, Sophia-Dorothea, wife of George Louis, of Hanover, afterwards George I., of England, provides Miss Helen Simpson with the material for her novel, “Saraband for Dead Lovers” (Heinemann, 7/6).
This is a richly woven historical tapestry, the threads drawn from a period near enough in time for the correct pattern to be fixed, yet sufficiently remote to allow opportunity for the filling in of imaginative detail, without, as Miss Simpson has it, “doing violence to any essential truth.” The author does, however, do violence to reason.
The brilliant and reckless Von Konigsmark, in love with Sophia-Dorothea, and seeking to provoke George Louis to a duel, is made to refer, at a regimental dinner, to his former service with the Elector of Saxony. He left, he says (and here is the taunt flung at George Louis) because the Elector of Saxony was “a man who betrays his adorable wife for a dirty, grasping bitch of a mistress.” But would any man have spoken thus of his own sister? It was Von Konigsmark’s sister who was the Elector of Saxony’s mistress, and, all else apart, he was on the best of terms with her.
“Saraband for Dead Lovers” is a novel which makes dead history live. It is neither a well-known period nor a well-known court, but both period and court are important, and the author does full justice to them, enlivening them and bringing out the strongly contrasting personalities of the various principals — the bovine and profligate Ernest Augustus; the vicious von Platen, his mistress; the Electress Sophia, niece of Charles I., his wife, hiding her hurts by absorption in her books, yet with even her fine nature worsened by the cruel cynicism and rawness of thought and speech of the age; the sottish George Louis and the surly Maximilian; the time-servers of the Court and the bluff, free-spoken officers; over all the heavy atmosphere of a German court. But the terrible tragedy of the novel is the marriage for policy’s sake and for money, of a girl of sixteen, indulged and impulsive, to a man at once sensual, immoral, and frigidly repellent.
Source:
The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic.), 27 April 1935, p. 5 (Metropolitan Edition)
Editor’s notes:
bovine = (in the context of describing a human) stupid, mentally dull or slow; sluggish; of or pertaining to cattle
court = the residence of an emperor/empress, king/queen, prince/princess, or some other sovereign, dignitary, or noble; a palace; the place where a sovereign, dignitary, or noble conducts administrative and ceremonial duties, functions, and tasks; the collective body of people who constitute the retinue of a sovereign; a formal assembling of the retinue of a sovereign
Elector = (also known as a Prince-elector) a German prince with the entitlement to vote in the election of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806)
See: 1) “elector: German prince”, Encyclopaedia Britannica
2) “Prince-elector”, Wikipedia
Electress = the title of a wife of an Elector; an Elector was a German prince with the entitlement to vote in the election of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806) [see: Elector]
Helen Simpson = Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940), author, playwright, and politician; she was born in Sydney (NSW) in 1897, moved to England in 1914, and died at Overbury (near Evesham, Worcestershire, England) in 1940
See: 1) Alan Roberts, “Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897–1940)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography
2) “Helen de Guerry Simpson”, Wikipedia
sottish = of or pertaining to a sot (a a chronic or habitual drunkard; someone displaying signs of being very affected by alcoholic drinks); foolish, senseless, or stupid from drinking too much alcohol (or someone acting in a similar or comparable manner), someone as mentally incapable as a sot
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
Leave a Reply