Desolation of Dragons

Rather than do a usual Wednesday book post, I'm going to aim for a more in-depth review of the most interesting book I read this past week.

This was another fortitous historical find thanks to the Song of the Lark blog -- I'd previously heard of Johanna Kinkel, and listened to some of her songs, but the blog post there, helped put together for me the arc of her life. She left her abusive first husband and supported herself with a successful musical career (here's her setting of Heine's Die Lorelei). Then she secured a divorce, fell in love and married again. She and her new husband got involved with politics, which led to him being sentenced to death for his part in the revolution of 1848-49. However, she used her connections to first commute his sentence and then help him escape from jail, after which they moved to London and struggled to get by with four children, but despite declining health found a second career writing and giving public lectures on music. Sadly, just days after writing her novel Hans Ibeles in London, she fell out of a window and died; she was only 48.

I also learned from the blog post that Johanna Kinkel's novel had been translated from German into English in 2016 as part of the Ph.D. thesis of Angela Sacher -- so of course I had to try reading it, and it drew me right in with the story, characters, social commentary, and sense of humor. That said, while for the most part I greatly enjoyed reading it, I don't think it entirely works as a novel, and I can only recommend it with the reservations that it's depressing in stretches, and the final section has weird melodrama and uncomfortable race stuff. (More on that later.) I also feel a bit daunted writing this review, since, while there is some scholarly writing about Hans Ibeles in London out there, I could only find one short book review of it on the Internet, and it's quite short (here, in German, also contains a link to a epub of the original German text).

While the book draws deeply on Johanna's family experiences as German refugees in London, the story is only very loosely autobiographical. The titular Hans Ibeles is a small-town composer and conductor in Germany, who gets caught up in the revolution and then has to flee to London, with his wife and their seven children. But it is his wife, Dorothea, steadfast, practical, and domestic, who is the heart of the story -- Hans's character sometimes feels a bit out of focus, but we always know where we are with Dorothea as she navigates the culture shock of moving to England, makes friends, faces difficulties, and ultimately comes to respect her Victorian middle-class neighbors and find a place among them.

There's a scene early in the book, where Hans and Dorothea are making their first round of calls in England, and one of the people they call on is a Great Man of Letters, who turns out to be an incredibly dull conversationalist, more a businessman than an intellectual. Ultimately they come to the following explanation for their disappointment: London is just such a fascinating and multifaceted place that one just has to tell it like it is in order to make a good story. And that is absolutely part of the appeal of this book -- the incredibly detailed depiction of London from an outsider's perspective, as well as showing a side of London society, the German refugee community, that you don't see in more British novels. And this is a book that is deeply concerned with woman's lives and the domestic sphere -- there's a chapter where a character recounts her experiences of working (and seeking work) as a German governess in England, and another chapter about the process of hiring a housemaid in London.

But while one of the literary strengths of this book is its realism, and its unflinching look at the conditions of genteel artistic poverty that reminds me of George Gissing, it is also a book that indulges in some less-realistic tropiness at times. I particularly enjoyed the episodes where various revolutions describe their daring escapes from Germany, including the story of how Hans was hidden in a mausoleum by an eccentric musical young lady. The book also has the appropriate amount of coincidence for a 19th century novel, and some scheming plots that never entirely come into focus. There's a Polish countess who befriends German refugees while secretly working on behalf of Russia -- but her pretensions at being a femme fatale are undermined by the story, as we see her from the perspective of her German governess, and ultimately she comes across as a well-rounded, good-hearted, character.

Two-thirds of the way through I was telling people I liked the book so far but I wasn't sure if I could recommend it until I got to the end. I could tell that the main tension in the story was due to Hans and Dorothea's failing marriage, and I wasn't sure if it would resolve happily or sadly. What I didn't expect is that it would resolve by way of melodrama with some problematic racial stuff. The shape of the ending, as far as Hans and Dorothea are concerned, is a fairly standard sentimental plot of betrayal, forgiveness, and reconcilation. But in order to set off the betrayal Johanna Kinkel feels the need for a Bad Woman, and the countess has been defanged and won't do. Instead, the new Bad Woman is a beautiful woman who murdered her husband and got away with it in the eyes of the law, but to escape the infamy of her reputation has disguised herself in blackface with the help of her devoted mixed-race former nurse. We get one conversation between the two women that does give their characters some depth, but ultimately I don't rally want to excuse the choice made here.

Finally I feel like I should end by emphasizing the feminism of the novel -- this is a book that is deeply focused on its women characters, and interested in the predicament of women's lives in general, which the characters all have different perspectives on -- I'm particularly fond of Meta, the countess's German governess, who is the most outspoken feminist.

I'm really glad I read this book, and it's given me a lot of food for thought, much more than I've brushed on in this review.