Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis (1904)

This is a substantial late Victorian-Edwardian story, with many qualities of what used to be called the sensation novel - a frisson of the slightly dark, of the undercurrents beneath polite society. In this instance it is a sexless marriage and the illegitimate offspring born to it. There is nothing particularly unusual about that; what is unusual is that it is Sturgis who is its author. His published novels, now that I've read them all, fill me with suspicion. His first, the classic of hero-worship-bordering-on-homosexuality, Tim, and his second, the obscure and quite inconsequentially quiet All That Was Possible, were novels with forms of spareness in them and yet vastly different from each other. Now comes this fulsome, conservative, rich family tapestry, with echoes of grand tragedy ringing through it. In other words, if I didn't have the title pages to tell me, I would never believe that these three novels were by the same author. Now, the question is: was Sturgis an extraordinary mimic or chameleon? Did he shift perspective most absolutely with each effort, right down to style? Or are some of these books other people's work? If so, whose? His life-companion, William Haynes Smith? Was one or another of them heavily revised by one of his literary friends? Henry James or Edith Wharton? But, at the end of the day, this is a beautiful, sad book, and its main character a movingly flawed man brilliantly portrayed.

Commonplace Book

'"...I am sure I feel as kindly towards my fellow-creatures as most people do; but I approach them with invincible terror; and there is no such sure way of making a dog bite you as to think he is going to."'

from Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'"....it is essential that politics should not be left to inferior men, or what becomes of the nation? Look at America with her venal professional politicians, and see what it has brought her to. Depend upon it, it is the intellectual element in parliament that leavens the lump..."'

from Belchamber by Howard Overing Sturgis (Chapter IV)

Commonplace Book

'The moon had risen and was flooding the landscape at our feet. A mist like a thin veil lay in the valley out of which the low hills rose with a weird distinctness: the distant estuary shone like a streak of silver.

"I am so glad there is a moon to-night," I said. "This view never looks so perfect as by moonlight. And it is odd that, after a time, one wants some one to show a thing to; one can't go on enjoying anything, however beautiful, alone."'

from All That Was Possible by Howard Sturgis (Letter XXX)

Commonplace Book

'...I have had the complaint young, and got over it. I am no more likely to fall in love than I am to have the measles, or any other juvenile ailment. Of course I know that middle-aged people do sometimes have the measles, and then it is very dangerous; they die of it. But the cases are rare. And I am terribly middle-aged.'

from All That Was Possible by Howard Sturgis (Letter XXVI)