The Dark Lantern (A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight)

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I'm finished reading the book. Things did come together at the book's end, but despite the protagonists' escapes from the drudgery of servitude or living double lives, it's still not altogether a happy ending. I don't need happy endings, I just need ones that sort of fit. I think this book ended a little more tidily than I would have liked it to, but that's just my own personal opinion. Lanterns designed as permanently mounted electric lighting fixtures are used in interior, landscape, and civic lighting applications. Styles can evoke former eras, unify street furniture themes, or enhance aesthetic considerations. They are manufactured for use with various wired voltage supplies. The attitudes of the Master and Mistress of the house towards their staff is also described very well throughout the book. All of these unspoken feelings and thoughts between the characters only heightens the suspicious elements of the story. "Is the maid spying on me or going through my things? What does she know? Who is the gentleman that she meets on her half day off?" The fact that almost every character has secrets to hide only adds to the paranoia and creates tension.

Tribune (Philip Parrish), 11 January 1952. Having already rather dismissed in this article L. P. Hartley’s My Fellow Devils (as absurd rather than true) and Wyndham Lewis’s Rotting Hill (grouchy and boring) the reviewer continues: The scene itself, the fringe of London in the ‘nineties, is about to pass, and has the sad enchantment of the doomed. And Richard Maddison is drawn to it, as to a fellow-sufferer. For his existence has depreciated in the same way; he is a country boy, living nostalgically in his country childhood, but condemned to labour as a bank clerk. And hopelessly condemned, as he has no resilience. He is strict, sensitive, devitalised, a born worrier. But he is conscious of a great need, a need for Hetty Turney and her tenderness. Hetty would bring him peace, would be his mother, and his childhood, and his lost home. But courting her is perpetual torment. I liked that this book was able to put me into the Victorian Era for awhile, at least as long as I read it. The grime and sights and smells of London in the 19th century were just there, waiting for me. Brightwell has fashioned a multilayered, Upstairs Downstairs-type mystery that drew me in completely. When I finally paused to reflect, I realized it had everything but the kitchen sink. To wit: a young servant girl moves from the country to London and hides her past from her new employers; the matriarch of this household is on her deathbed while her daughter-in-law longs to return to Paris; and her son is intent on proving that anthropometry is a superior method to fingerprinting in identifying criminals. One more thing—when the eldest son is expected to return from India, what the family gets instead is a woman claiming to be his widow and the news that he has drowned at sea. Millar, Preston S. (30 April 1920). "Historical Sketch of Street Lighting". Transactions of the Illuminating Engineering Society. New York, New York: Illuminating Engineering Society. XV (3): 185–202.

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William Leopold Williamson was a bank clerk by profession, who in May 1893 married Gertrude Eliza Leaver, encouraged by her mother, in Greenwich Registry Office in a ceremony kept secret from her father, exactly as happens in the novel. The reason for this extraordinary procedure is unclear: the two were of age, William beingtwenty-seven years old and Gertrude twenty-five. One has to presume (as in the novel) that Thomas Leaver disapproved of the Williamson family because William Leopold's father was considered to be a bit of a bounder! It is known now that the two families, Williamson and Leaver, lived next door to each other in the borough of Sutton, and so there must have been considerable interaction between them in real life. HW clearly knew the area very well, and it is entirely possible that William Leopold took his young son over to the area to visit – the 1901 census shows that William's sisters Isabelle and Effie (Ethel) and his brother Henry Joseph were still living in Alfred Road, Sutton, in the house in which they had been born. However, other than Robert Bentley, there wasn’t a single character about who I really cared. I could sympathize with Jane, considering her beginnings, but didn’t particularly like her. These were unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly and almost no one is as they seem and everyone is spying on everyone else. London, 1893. Elderly Mrs. Bentley is on her deathbed, and her son Robert has returned from France. But in the Bentleys’ well-appointed home, everyone has their secrets, including Robert’s beautiful and elusive wife, the orphan maid she hires from the country, and the mysterious young woman who arrives, claiming to be the bride of Robert’s drowned brother. I shall read the sequels with interest and pleasure. But I put in a plea . . . [that Mr. Williamson should] . . . weave his pattern with slightly more intricacy and verve. The Dark Lantern is the first of a series . . . Although in itself a long novel it clearly covers only the first phase of the story . . . There are hints of the scale of the drama which will later be reached, but even the overtures in this volume hold much that is moving. . . .

Theodora is based upon William Leopold’s real sister, Henry’s aunt, Mary Leopoldina Williamson. This lady was very intelligent and wrote two quite extraordinarily visionary short books published in 1910 (reprinted in HWSJ 31, September 1995, and HWSJ 37, September 2001). She was a great influence on Henry Williamson, and encouraged him in every way. As Theodora Maddison she is a major character throughout the Chronicle. In this opening volume she is seen as a very kind and sensitive clever young lady, sympathetic and intuitive, attractive and gay – yet shy and serious. It is a masterly portrait in words, and the development of her character as the Chronicleprogresses is somewhat tragic. The story was interesting enough that I did read it straight through, but was very happy when it ended. The one thing I did very much appreciate was that the author tied up the details as to what happened to most of the characters at the end. has an extraordinary – and without doubt deliberate – resonance to the opening sentence of his earlier masterpiece, Tarka the Otter, which reads: While some might consider this book atmospheric, for me it was plodding. It did depict the hard life of those in service “below stairs.” La trama ruota intorno ad una casa, come da titolo, e ai segreti di chi in essa ci vive. Ogni personaggio nasconde delle ansie e nessuno di loro sembra sentirsi al sicuro in quelle mura come fossero estranei. Robert Bentley e la moglie Mina, dalla Francia sbarcano in Inghilterra in quella casa per assistere la madre morente dell'uomo, e qui i loro destini insieme a quelli della cameriera Jane, si incastreranno. Mina sembra innervorsi all'improvviso da quando è Inghilterra e i sospetti annebbieranno ogni cosa.a b Roberts, David (1983). "Allsopp, George". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol.V (1801–1820) (onlineed.). University of Toronto Press . Retrieved 15 June 2022. The opening scene of The Dark Lantern (and so of the Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightas a whole) is a superb evocation of time and atmosphere and place. It is as a great painting in the style of Constable, Turner, or Whistler: that is, a great painting in words in the traditional English style. But not only can one see the scene, one is immediately inside it, participating in the events that unfold. The opening sentence: The shutter and top are one piece, so with the top fully rotated CCW, the shutter is open, allowing light to pass. https://darklanterntales.wordpress.com/

lantern jaw". Oxford English Dictionary (Onlineed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.) Boesveld, Sarah (23 July 2013). "While their popularity soars, illuminated paper lanterns increasingly banned across Canada as 'serious fire hazards' ". National Post. Postmedia Network Inc. A fascinating portrayal of a vanished England as well as an unconventional mystery, The Dark Lantern exposes the grand “upstairs” of a Victorian home and the darker underbelly of its servants’ quarters. The clash between the classes makes for a suspenseful novel of mistaken identities, intriguing women, and dangerous deceptions. a b "lantern". Oxford English Dictionary (Onlineed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)The Beast, many times throughout the series, claims that if the light in the lantern goes out, the Woodsman's daughter's soul will be lost forever. In actuality, she never was in the lantern and the lantern had the Beast's soul A s this first book of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight ends, so Jenny shyly tells her husband that she is pregnant. But, of course, we already know from the earlier Flax of Dream series thatthis is to end in tragedy. Another common design controls the shutter with a knob in a slot at the bottom right of the lantern. Pushing the knob around to the front of the lantern closes off the light. An 1890s Dark Lantern showing shutter open and closed Illustrated London News (unsigned), 29 December 1951. An opening paragraph decries the ‘family chronicle’ as ‘fiction at its least gay’ and continues: Il signor Bentley è un esperto di antropometria, ovvero misurare le persone, in special modo i detenuti.