The Adventures of Philip Vol. 1 by Thackery

The Adventures of Philip on his way through the world shewing who robbed him, who helped him and who passed him by.

I started this book several times before I was able to finish it and now I’ve finished vol. 1 I find I’m going to read The story of the stone before reading vol. 2. I absolutely adore the way the book is written. It has such a gorgeous use of language, you can imagine Stephen Fry reading it aloud in the guise of a good Victorian gentleman. The narrator is Pendennis, who has his own novel which I haven’t read yet but is on my list, I find him and his wife very charming, however the main character of Philip doesn’t do all that much for me. In the first vol. Philip is presented as a bit of a dandy, preferring drinking with his inappropriate friends and being rather drunken and aimless while his dad is a “respected” doctor. His dad turns out to actually have stolen Philip’s fortune that was left to him by him mother and so Philip has to make his own way in the world. The plot is quite slow moving but the descriptions and the asides are fantastic and often highly amusing. One of my favourite passages was when Pendennis was describing the strangeness one encounters when meeting up with a former lover, and the enforced artificiality and pain in such situations.

Has it ever happened to you to leave a card at that house – that house which was one THE house – almost your own; where you were ever welcome; where the kindest hand was ready to grasp yours, the brightest eye to greet you? And now your friendship has dwindled away to a little bit of pasteboard, shed once a year, and poor dear Mrs. Jones (or is with J. you have quarrelled) still calls on the ladies of your family and slips her husband’s ticket upon the hall table. Oh, life and time, that it should have come to this! Oh, gracious powers! Do you recall the time when Arabella Thompson was Arabella Briggs? You call and talk fadaises to her (at first she is rather nervous, and has the children in); you talk rain and fine weather; the last novel; the next party; Thompson in the city? Yes mr. Thompson is in the City. He’s pretty well, thank you. Ah! Daggers, ropes, and poisons, has it come to this? You are talking about the weather and another man’s health. and another man’s children, of which she is mother, to her? Time was the weather was all a burning sunshine in which you and she basked; or if clouds gathered, and a storm fell such a glorious rainbow haloed around you, such delicious tears fell and refreshed you, that the storm was more ravishing that the calm. And now another man’s children are sitting on her knee – their mother’s knee; and once a year Mr. and Mrs. John Thompson request the honour of Mr. Brown’s company at dinner; and once a year you read in The Times, “In nursery Street the wife of J. Thompson, Esq., of a Son.” To come to the once-beloved one’s door, and find the knocker tied up with a white kid glove, is humiliating – say what you will it is humiliating.

I will definitely read vol. 2, and after Pendennis.

The Broken Spears

The Broken Spears

The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Edited with an introduction by Miguel Leon-Portilla.

I’ve had this book for ages, but after reading the Daily Life of the Aztecs I was finally in the mood to read this one. I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot. I wouldn’t recommend it as the first book you read about Aztecs as it doesn’t explain anything just offers a translation of the work. It is also intended for the general reader, rather than the historian/scholar so doesn’t offer all that much in the way of notes or textual critique but nether the less is very interesting.

The texts themselves are quite interesting. They tended to be written about 30 years or more after the conquest and so the information comes through quite a filter. It is interesting to see the Aztec’s fear of the Spanish before they’ve even met, how in some accounts they can speak each others languages from the start, and from the accounts of the people who converted to Christianity the judgemental attitude towards their own culture. The attacks of the Spanish are quite brutal and horrific. Even in the rather simplistic translations they can be hard to read.

The accounts are divided up into three parts, there is the basic narrative where different accounts are combined into a longer chronological account of the arrival and war with the Spanish. Then there is a shorter, but more authentic sounding, account that relates the events more concisely, and with what appears to be a less biased view. It was written much closer to the events than the first part. (Only 7 or 8 years afterwards). The book also contains poems and songs about the invasion as well as illustrations that have been taken from the codices.

The book was written quite awhile ago and I would be interested to see if longer and more detailed accounts have been translated and studied. But this was an excellent starting point.