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1321, art versus commerce, Black Death, book of hours, book review, devotion, Edward II, England, fourteenth century, historical fiction, illuminators' craft, illustrators, literary fiction, Little Ice Age, London, religious tradition, Robyn Cadwallader, social inequality
Review: Book of Colours, by Robyn Cadwallader
HarperCollins, 2019. 376 pp. $16
The year 1321 witnesses great hardship and political upheaval in England. Winters are wetter and colder than usual; crops won’t grow; livestock dies off; King Edward II’s ruinous wars bring further misery and empty the treasury; and his grasping, power-hungry favorite has roused armed opposition from the barons.
Amid this turmoil Lady Mathilda Fitzjohn has commissioned a book of hours, an illuminated volume of devotion to lead the reader in prayer. Her motives, however, aren’t entirely religious. She wants a beautiful object to call her own; her husband’s a man who likes his own playthings but can’t fathom why she’d want or need any.
She sells him the idea partly on the prayer angle—he can’t argue with that—but also that of prestige. The Fitzjohn manse, which will be pictured therein, with the coat of arms, will honor the family name. He can’t argue with that either.
The commission changes three lives. John Dancaster, the master illustrator called upon, needs another hand to help with such an ambitious project. Will Asshe, an all-but-journeyman illustrator new in London from Cambridge, talks his way into the job, upsetting John’s wife, Gemma. She works in the studio too, but as a woman, has no say in anything, nor any right to touch paint to parchment. This is a man’s craft, a man’s world.
Other conflicts threaten the project. Why did Will Asshe flee Cambridge before he received his credentials—and why is he reticent to explain? Why does John Dancaster absent himself so often from the studio he’s made famous? The answers interest the middleman through whom Lady Mathilda offered her commission, an officious, well-connected snob who could destroy these artists with a word passed on to the right person—and would enjoy doing so.
Like The Anchoress, Cadwallader’s previous novel, Book of Colours brings the reader up close to medieval life. You see London in its muck, rank odors, violent passions of crowds, and disrespect for anyone save the powerful. The imbalance between gentry and commoner is a recurrent issue, one that incites Will, who has trouble keeping his mouth shut and his hands to himself.
Through small moments, Cadwallader conveys a large picture of the era sometimes known as the Little Ice Age, when cold, famine, and disease afflicted much of Europe. Some historians believe that these hardships may have contributed to the death rate a quarter-century later when the plague struck. Reading Book of Colours is therefore an education about what Barbara Tuchman called “the calamitous fourteenth century.”
Even better, the narrative puts you right by the illustrators’ elbows, showing how they plied their craft and how they thought about it, torn, as with any artist from any era, between the claims of beauty and commerce, with religious tradition influencing the result.
Nevertheless, within these strictures, which no one in his right mind would dare challenge, the clever artist manages to create commentary and a worldview without getting punished. Much of this creativity takes place in the manuscript’s margins, a fitting metaphor, for each character feels that’s where they abide in life, for one reason or another, even Lady Mathilda.
The characterizations allow the principals their rough edges, and what a pleasure that is. Will, a large man and son of a wheelwright, needs a brawl now and then to salve his angry soul. John, a smooth talker, has trouble understanding viewpoints other than his own. Gemma, suspicious and controlling, resents her second-class status in the studio (and outside it), which fuels outbursts she’d have rather contained.
As with The Anchoress, I admire the prose, as with this passage, one of several depicting Will’s first views of London:
At the base of the [cathedral] roof was an army of gargoyles, stone-grown and weather-worn, each one distinct, all reaching out beyond the gutters, spout-mouths open. Creatures dragged from some netherworld and put to work guarding the holy ground beneath. Such proud ugliness, so assured of their right to be there, as if directing water away from the building was merely a foil for their true status. . . . What minds the masons had, to carve from solid stone such creatures that seemed at once of air and earth.
However, I think The Anchoress succeeds better as a story. The narrative here jumps back and forth between the production of the book of hours and Lady Mathilda’s troubles. The latter are more internal than external, more significant to themes (class, beauty, and art) than the action. I see nothing wrong with stories like that—what the industry mistakenly and pejoratively calls “quiet”—but of necessity, her story advances past the artists’ in time frame, which throws off the flow, a little.
I wonder whether Cadwallader felt she had to disguise the “quiet” sections by interposing them with the more active artists’ story—or was told to. Either way, I don’t entirely believe the way the two narratives converge; though again, I appreciate Lady Mathilda’s place in the novel. She has a nascent desire to be considered a full person—though at first, not as strongly as Gemma does—and ponders whether she has the right to see beauty for what it is.
Despite my reservations, I enjoyed Book of Colours. Maybe you will too.
Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.