This short novel by an American writer was published in 1890. It is Dickensian in style: it is told in the third person past tense by an omniscient narrator whose authorial voice frequently intrudes; the prose is quite florid and the plot quite melodramatic; and the characters are mostly stereotypes (the poor but honest working girl, the aristocrat fallen on hard times with a strict code of honour, the shrewish wife, the loyal but brutish peasant). It is even Dickensian in its fundamentally working-class setting: the characters make cigarettes (by hand) in a 'manufactory'; they live in poorly furnished rooms; they eat in cheap cafes; they wear shabby clothes; they are habitues of the pawnbrokers.
The author was the nephew of Julia Ward Howe, the poet who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic (the 'Grapes of Wrath' song). He wrote this novel while living in Sant'Agnello near Sorrento in Italy, where he spent most of his life (there is a street named after him). His 1897 novel Corleone was the first major fictional treatment of the Mafia.
In 1913 A Cigarette Maker's Romance became a silent film made by Hepworth Studios in Walton-on-Thames, England.
I enjoyed the story. The ornate prose and rococo dialogue is of its time, as are the characters. But the plot was well constructed and perfectly placed and one is kept guessing to the very end about whether the Count is really a Count or just a fantasising lunatic. I loved the fact that it was set so firmly in real life, despite the aristocratic pretensions of the main character. It was easy to read.
Selected quotes
- "Our furious chariot races round the goals of fame" (C 1)
- "We are in the world and, before we know it, we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score years between birth and death." (C 1)
- "Christian's wife, his larger if not his better half." (C 1)
- "There are poor men who can wear a coat as a red Indian will ride a mustang which a white man has left for dead." (C 1)
- "We say at home that 'strange earth dries without wind'. A foreign land will make old bones of a man without the help of years." (C 2)
- "The fundamental question of upper society, 'Whence art thou?' ... the inquiry which rises first to the lips of the man of action, 'Whither goest thou?'" (C 3)
- "In Munich the strength of fiery spirits is drowned in oceans of mild beer, a liquid of which the head will stand more than the waist-band" (C 4)
- "The worst that can be said of the poorer public-houses in Munich, is that they are frequented by the poorer people, and that as the customers bring less money than elsewhere, there is less drinking in proportion, and a greater demand for large quantities of very filling food at very low rates." (C 4)
- "The poor old woman from the country, who had been supping in the corner, had got her basket on her knees, holding its handle tightly in one hand and with the other grasping her half-finished glass of beer, in terror lest some accident should cause the precious liquid to be spilled, but not calm enough to put it in a place of safety by the simple process of swallowing." (C 4)
I would happily read another novel by this author.
October 2021
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