The Crusader’s Tomb by AJ Cronin


published 1956





I read this book because Lissa Evans told me that someone should:





‘fabulously terrible’ - what a great phrase.

I consider myself to be an expert in the field of literary tosh – I wonder if many people have read as many early 20th century bestsellers as I have. See this post here for more on this topic.

And so I feel qualified to say: this book is indeed fabulously terrible, and it is tosh and not even first-class tosh. And yet…

It is the story of a young man – dates initially not clear, but we’re going to guess the book opens in the early days of the 20th century. His father wants him to go into the church, like his forefathers, and take over the lovely house, church and living where they have been since time immemorial. But Stephen Desmonde wants to be an artist. The book takes in his whole life and career.

It is, on the plus side, very readable and rather unpredictable – you never know what is going to happen, and you do quite want to know.

There are many artists in fiction, and the key is always to make the reader want to see their pictures, and this is where I think Cronin falls down. Agatha Christie does better (Five Little Pigs and the sculptures in The Hollow). WJ Locke’s Beloved Vagabond, W Somerset Maugham’s Moon and Sixpence, Harriet Evans’ recent book The Garden of Lost and Found. The wonderful Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland.

But then – I never had any desire to see the paintings of Troy Alleyn in Ngaio Marsh’s crime novels. In Brideshead Revisited there is no verdict on Charles Ryder’s work (as he is the 1st person narrator that’s not surprising), but according to Evelyn Waugh’s letters, he was a very bad artist. He wrote to Nancy Mitford: “[Charles Ryder] was a bad painter. Well he was as bad as painting as Osbert [Lancaster or Sitwell?] is at writing; for Christ’s sake don’t repeat the comparison to anyone.” (!) So much for Ryder’s Latin America, which people were queuing up to order in the book.

Anyway, I think Desmonde joins this second list.

There is a long plot strand where he is commissioned to do some pictures as a war memorial, and the descriptions sounded very like the memorial chapel that Stanley Spencer did at the Sandham Memorial Chapel in Hampshire. (I have used a picture of one of the panels for two different Armistice Day posts.) The panels ARE very beautiful, and well worth a visit.



Cronin seems to have crammed in every cliché possible about an artist. There are two unexpected things: Stephen refuses to fight in the First World War, and doesn’t mind being supported by women. We know more about his thoughts than you might think possible (it’s not a short book, and he dominates every page) while still remaining a cipher and just not very interesting.

His left-behind family circle is fairly awful – all very Charlotte Mew/FM Mayor as in featured-this-week The Rectors Daughterwhen the book starts you think it will be about the miserable daughter Caroline. There is an entertaining but very distant mother off to the side. (What would Margery Sharp have done with these characters? Wonderful things!)

A cockney friend is about as unreal a character as you might hope to find in male writing of the 20th century, although portrayed sympathetically – this is from the blurb that entranced Lissa so much:

Few artists could have survived the scandal and mockery he had to endure in the sensational trial that stirred all England. Indeed, Stephen Desmonde himself could not have survived without the tender and understanding love of the unforgettable […], the uneducated but strangely wise little Cockney girl whose devotion kept him going when all else failed.

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An Amazon reviewer called Brian says ‘Good story but not what was expected. This is not a story about a crusader. It is in fact about a starving artist in France.’

It is only after you’ve finished it that you stop to think – why IS it called that? There is a crusader’s memorial: it is an ancestor of protagonist Stephen Desmonde, and sits in the church where his father is rector/vicar.

the Sieur d’Esmonde, who had gone to the Crusades, lay beneath his marble effigy, the beaked nose broken, alas, by some vandal tourist, in the little Downland church.

But it plays no part in the story, except someone is buried near it at the end, and – get this, Kindle haters – the word tomb does not appear anywhere in the book.

****Added later - there's an interesting suggestion about the title in the comments, and I have added some details in the subsequent post on tombs in books.

Incidentally, the actual status of the Desmonde family is very hard to parse – the idea of the hereditary parish and the beautiful Georgian house to go with it doesn’t seem to actually resemble any reality in English life of the past 500 years, there isn’t room for that kind of a thing. (Up to a Bishop or a Lord, or down to George Eliot clerical poverty, but not stasis). There’s a vague ‘marrying an heiress’ a generation or so back, but that makes it less convincing if anything.

The book was also known as A Thing of Beauty, which isn’t much more relevant, but is exactly the kind of title you would expect a mid-century book of this kind to have.

AJ Cronin was a massive bestseller in his day. (Lord Peter Wimsey’s mother is reading, and disliking, one of his books in Busman’s Honeymoon.) He’d been writing for years when this one came out, which makes it more surprising that it seems, if anything, amateurish and un-accomplished. But you can’t dismiss him: online you can find this claim:

‘Not only were the author's pioneering ideas instrumental in creating the NHS, but according to the historian Raphael Samuel, the popularity of Cronin's novels played a major role in the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1945.’

 Which if true would make you forgive him anything.

The Smithsonian Institute has a wonderful collection of b/w photos of artists of the 20th century, which they generously make available under a creative commons licence. I have often used them on the blog – they never challenge any stereotypes of how artists appear, or dress, or where or how they would stand to have their picture taken… (see The Belting Inheritance for a recent example). In case that sounds critical – it’s not meant to be, I love the pictures.

The one at the top shows Abraham Walkowitz (1880-1965) who would for a time have been working contemporaneously with Stephen Desmonde.

Comments

  1. Oh, well done, Moira - I loved reading this, though I have to admit that it doesn't tempt me to tackle the book. V interesting about Cronin's influence on voters; The Citadel, about a pre-NHS doctor in a mining town, who becomes seduced by the riches of private practice before tragedy makes him re-assess his beliefs, is certainly heartfelt & inpsiring.
    Incidentally, I've visited Sandham Chapel several times, and I think it's one of my favourite places in the world (no exaggeration) - I wrote about one of the panels for a book about WW1; they're *humble* pictures, depicting the lives of NCOs and hospital orderlies behind the lines. And the altar-piece is breath-taking.
    One more artist to add to the books that allow you to imagine a fictional painter's artworks: Bill Wechler in Siri Huvstedt's marvellous 'What I Loved'.

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    1. Thanks, and this is Lissa, the onlie begetter of the post, for anyone else's benefit..
      It was exactly the kind of book I most enjoy reading, while being annoyed with it the whole time.
      Yes to Sandham, such a wonderful place. What's the book you contributed to?
      And haven't read the Hustvedt, you are tempting me.

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  2. Oh, this does sound like tosh, Moira, but some of it is worth reading. I can see why Lissa called this 'fabulously terrible.' It's funny you'd bring up the whole subject of art and artists, too. They're handled very differently in books - sometimes well and sometimes... not. I'd not thought of how much I'd want to see the art that's described, but it's a good barometer of whether a story does it well. Hmmm.. that's something to think about, so thanks.

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    1. This is the category where I say 'I read this one so you don't have to'!
      I bet you know many many crime books with art in - can we hope for a post on that....?

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  3. More fictional painters who sound loathsome: The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary (charming sponger Gulley Jimson), Patrick White's The Vivisector (heartless Hurtle Duffield). Both are free spirits who splash paint all over any flat surface. Why popular among uptight, law-abiding, middle-class male readers? Ask Freud.

    Hereditary parish priest jobs? See the Fishers of Higham on the Hill. It was probably by arrangement with the local land-owner who had the "living" in his "gift", meaning he could give the job and beautiful Georgian house to whomever he liked.

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    1. "Why popular among uptight, law-abiding, middle-class male readers? Ask Freud."
      Sigmund or Lucien? Lucien seems to have been the ultimate free spirit who splashed paint all over any flat surface going and abandoned his children, going by Julian Barnes's account.
      There's an assortment of artists - not always geniuses - in Anthony Powell's Dance...

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    2. Lucy: I knew you'd have some good comments, I nearly tagged you to answer.
      I did not know about Fishers, but well worth looking up, intriguing! But Cronin is very specific in the book that it is not someone else's gift, it is his own family. But, the Fishers do sound very similar..

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    3. Rawdon Crawley: LuciAn Freud - at the Guardian they claimed this was the single most common spelling mistake in the paper - only the G would mention him often enough for it to be an issue. He was definitely the other style of stereotyped, cliched artist - the one in the book does not go fathering children and abandoning them as LF most certainly did.
      I remember the musicians and writers from Powell really well, the artists not so much. Was there an old codger, very traditional? And presumably some young very modern ones...

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    4. Well, there's Poussin himself, of course.
      There's Mr Deacon, an old chap whose paintings of classical youths are mocked in the early volumes (along with the nineteenth century seascapes another character collects) but are revived and acclaimed in the last book. There's also Gypsy Jones, who was based on Nina Hamnett.

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    5. Perhaps the Desmonde family are the ultimate squarsons and own the vicar's living and perpetually award it to themselves. Why would being a country parson stop Stephen Desmonde being an artist anyway? The great virtue of being a country parson was that you could do almost anything you wanted.
      Glad I'm back in propria persona.

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    6. Rawdon Crawley: Mr Deacon! - that's exactly who I was thinking of in terms of Dance.
      I remember the first time I saw the Poussin in real life, long after I'd read the book, and being stunned by it.
      And, as it happens, given your name - this was the Wallace Collection, and I went to the cafe afterwards and read my book, which was Vanity Fair. And a social event in the book (a ball I think) was being held in Hertford House (maybe id'ed in the footnotes) the very building that I and the Wallace were in. Literature and art and real life were certainly combining that day....

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    7. Roger Allen: The economics of it all were not super-clear. I think Stephen was determined to be true to himself, so could not compromise, and he was the only son. There's a Somerset Maugham book (maybe Human Bondage) which makes much of the fact that a country vicar had virtually no duties and could live a most lazy life - as you say, he could have combined the two. In a completely different context, a young woman in a Vita Sackville-West book is in love with a penniless artist: a family friend basically says marry a Lord and then winks and says 'we'll see what can be done about the painter later', which is kind of comparable! Female version.
      I have no power over blogger, it feels feeble over me, and I am horrified when people have problems, but I suppose I get what I pay for!

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    8. PS Rawdon: Both Gypsy Jones and Nina Hamnett have featured on the blog, without my realizing there was a connection. I used a photo of Louise Brooks for Gypsy, and always think of her that way now.

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  4. I'm old enough to remember Dr Finlay on TV. I read The Citadel years ago and even remember something about it but I know I've read a couple more that I'ce completely forgotten. I'm not really tempted by terrible books any more.
    In Kingsley Amis's I Like it Here, the main character earns pocket money by lecturing on English literature to foreigners. One of them says, 'We are not hearing of your Edgecrown' (you have to say it aloud.)

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    1. Urban legend - foreign students ask for Edge Crown, Grim Grin, Shrunken White Elephants of Style, Oranges and Peaches, Sir Arthur Coal and Oil...

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    2. I remember reading the Cronin when I was young and finding it a bit grim compared to the TV programme. It was tremendously popular wasn't it?
      I haven't yet worked out Oranges and Peaches....got the rest with a bit of thought

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    3. "Origin of Species"?

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    4. Oh thank you Marty, for sure!

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  5. Daniel Milford-Cottam3 May 2022 at 13:33

    I'm loving that there's a tag just reading "TOSH"!

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    1. It's time to face up to the truth about the blog!

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  6. Margery Allingham's "Death of a Ghost" features a deceased artist, supposedly brilliant but sounding to me like an egotistical jerk as well.

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    1. Oh yes indeed, he was given a lot of leeway wasn't he, all round. I'd have to re-read to try to visualize the pictures....

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  7. Wentworth again! In "Out of the Past" the letters of a dead artist play an important role in the plot. The artist doesn't sound like as bad as some other depictions, but he apparently did misbehave a bit.

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    1. Aha! I have just read that and will be blogging on it soon, good catch.

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  8. Perhaps the title is taken from Francis Turner Palgrave's poem "The Crusader's Tomb:"

    He looks with larger sight
    Than they who hedge their view by present things,
    The small, parochial world
    Of sight and touch:

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    1. I didn't know it at all, and have just read it, it is lovely and touching (and - of course - of its time in not questioning crusades). I will have to add it to the post on tombs.
      It would make sense for this book. I wonder if it should have been quoted there? - I read it on Kindle, and you can never guarantee that everything made it through.

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    2. Not a poem I know.
      I think there is criticism of the motives of some crusaders in "Some, gold-enticed;/By love or lust or fame/ Urged". There's also an irony in the fact that Palgrave was of Jewish descent and te crusaders went in for massacring jews when they came across them.

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    3. Yes, you're right, it's not as unquestioning as I implied, I was trying to pack too much into short sentences. Weirdly it reminded me of a moment in Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl (a book I very much admire) where Mary Boleyn comments on the fact that her brother George wanted to be a crusader and do great deeds, and ended up hanging round a court politicking, and then executed for treason. It is a very affecting moment in an unexpected way.

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    4. I wonder what Palgrave's other poems are like: there's a resemblance to Hardy in the invention of an innovative stanza (well, I'd never seen it before) just for one poem.

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    5. It does make you interested to read more of him, and good call on the comparison with Hardy...

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