Land of Hope and Glory is an example of a fine talent drowning in research.
This is the fourth in a series of chronicles that began with Tom Northway, a novel based on the life of the author's grandfather. It is a sequel, and the usual thuds surround the bits of exposition new readers must have but which constant readers know full well.
This volume is the story of the old age of Marcus Northway, an elder cousin of Tom. Marcus is a vain, demanding, and sometimes rather silly man who need never apologize for these flaws in his character because his first marriage was very fortunate—in the monetary sense; there are dark hints that fortune in the sense of fate has been somewhat assisted here and there. In his seventh decade he has been put to work on his memoirs by his socially ambitious second wife who is rather frustrated that their money will not buy them a toehold in New York society as easily as it will buy a coat of arms of her own design imprinted on her stationery. Who she would like to meet if they did break into society is rather a mystery, for Marcus knows, on better terms or worse, Edison, Burbank, Ford, Firestone, Theodore Roosevelt, Harding, Runyon, and so forth. Moreover he credits himself with small roles in many historic events. Marcus Northway, in other words, seems to have been the Forrest Gump of his day, but richer, perhaps more clever, and considerably less honest.
Burbank, Edison, and Ford are essential to the plot because a vanity of Northway's old age, one much encouraged by his wife, is his notion of himself as their peer and of his accomplishments in osteopathy as on a plane with their accomplishments in their fields. Since Northway, although sometimes foolish, is not an idiot, he can only entertain his loftiest images of his own place in the world because he does know these great men. He knows they put their pants on one leg at a time, and if Ford seems patronizing on the one hand, on the other hand Burbank believes he receives telepathic communications from Northway.
Northway's claims to fame in osteopathy rest mostly upon Vaseline and whiskey. About the Vaseline not much can be said without spoiling a great comic passage, but that Northway's whiskey cures are in doubt in the days of Prohibition is something that can be read with sympathy by anyone who draws near the end of life thinking his or her life's work has gone for naught or nearly.
The problem with including so many famous period names is that they reside in prose overwrought with period references. Researching a period novel is a very fine thing, but readers do not have to have the evidence of every hour of research. Terry has a timeless story here and uncommon grace in writing, and if only he had let the trivialities of his historic setting assume their proper place in the background, he would have a damn-near perfect, if much shorter, novel.
Northway's management of his kinfolks comes across much better. To mold history sufficiently to make a place for himself in it is really beyond his power, and even as he labors on his memoirs, Northway seems to know, at some level, the futility of his effort. Yet, using his money as a wedge, for his kin are poor and made poorer by the Great Depression, he hopes to shape the course of his relations' lives. Parts of this story are bound to be familiar to anyone who has belonged to a family with modest means of which just one member has obtained a vast fortune. Rich relations seem constitutionally incapable of parting with money unless they see some return on it—and this means something more than gratitude or the continued survival of the recipient. What Northway's wife wants is a general elevation of the Northway name, although she never seems to understand that sending rich gowns to women who will never know an occasion for which they are appropriate is useless, as rich food to those accustomed to plainer fare is indigestible.
The obvious explanations of Northway's interest in his relatives are first to avoid censure from his wife, should some Northway do something discreditable, and second, if he can, to develop a protégé, for he is childless. As any old man will, he wants to keep a hand in the affairs of the living. Money without insight, however, is a poor instrument for his purpose, and his gestures are in their own way just as inappropriate as the gowns his wife sends. They are a fine match: for every frivolous note she hits, he has the same note in his profound bass register. She orders a dress sent; he orders an education at Yale arranged. And both gifts are worse than useless.
Needless to say, although this is a book about a vain old man there is more of an old man here than his vanities. Land of Hope and Glory is not a cartoon, but a loving, if frank, portrait.
No books have crossed my desk this season that have anything near the elegance of expression found in Terry's writing. Readers who are not writers are unlikely to notice this because everything glides so smoothly and pleasantly past the eye. Although there are some bald devices—the little child who will give Northway a candid account of what the family thinks of him—and more than a few lumpy chunks of exposition, Terry has conquered English style so thoroughly that there remains no sign of a struggle. Land of Hope and Glory achieves the kind of elegance recommended by Strunk and White, that need not let on that it is elegant.
