ROSE TREMAIN Merivel: A Man of His Time. Reviewed by Peter Corris
This sequel to Restoration is a hectic, witty adventure set in seventeenth-century England and Europe.
When, in my constant search for a readable historical novel, I encountered Rose Tremain’s Restoration in 1980, my day was made (several days actually). It was a romp through the early years of Charles II’s reign, with lots of sex, silk, satin and lace.
Merivel is a sequel set twenty years later. It has the same central character, Sir Robert of that name – a randy, witty, somewhat cowardly but resourceful doctor, enjoying the favour of the king and a handsome estate he’s been granted for veterinary service to the royal spaniels.
If you hadn’t read Restoration, a lot of the reprising of the action in that book in this one would be annoying. I was fortunate in having read it but had forgotten or half-forgotten a good deal of it, so the revisiting was a pleasure.
Rose Tremain has the knack a historical novelist must have of evoking the period: its sights, sounds and smells, its preoccupations and its language. A light touch is needed in every case and particularly with the language.
Tremain captures the flavour of the speech of the time by imitation and the use of devices like dropping in capital letters at random, but she doesn’t overdo it. She uses words like ‘drab’ meaning prostitute and, appropriately, ‘breeks’ meaning trousers, for a period flavour, but sparingly. There is a sprinkling of French and Latin but never to the point of obscurity. With the psychology of characters, Tremain is in command of the essential trick: make them credible as men and women of their time but give them something of a modern sensibility.
This is a picaresque novel in which one thing happens hectically after another to Merivel – an attempt to seek employment with Louis XIV at Versailles, a love affair with a woman who has a dangerous gay husband, the acquisition of a bear, a serious illness, a duel and much coming and going across England and Europe.
It’s all great fun as related by Robert Merivel himself whose personality – a blend of bawdiness, sadness and seriousness – infuses the story and keeps it buoyant. There are many set pieces, particularly a highly erotic scene in a carriage where a woman exposes herself to Merivel and three male travelling companions, names her price, services Merivel, masturbates and then obliges the others as the carriage rocks on.
An odd thing about the book is that expectations of the kind usually set up in romantic novels – here, the pathetic death of an innocent maiden, a positive association with a wild animal, a deadly duel, a magnificent marriage – are not fulfilled. It is almost as if the author deliberately chooses to entice and interest the reader without providing the pay-offs. It works.
Refreshingly, Merivel is a sceptic, which enables him to be free and frank in his description of human behaviour without religious moralising. In this he is like C J Sansom’s character Matthew Shardlake in his books set in Tudor England. The modern reader responds best to a character set apart from the hatreds and delusions of religion-ridden times.
At the end of the e-book (but not the printed version), the reader is invited to sample the first chapter of Restoration, which is advertised as a ‘prequel’. It’s rather like rewriting history, but that’s never worried the bean counters.
Rose Tremain Merivel: a Man of His Time Vintage 2012 PB 352pp $29.95
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