Varina

Wow, just reading a Charles Frazier novel with his remarkable writing style on display is worth the price of admission, so to speak! The bestselling author of Cold Mountain upstages his previous novel with this serpentine historical fiction account of the life and times of Varina Howell (identified simply as “V” in the novel), wife of the eventual Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. And I thought descriptive writing went away in the mid-1920s with Hemingway and his American expatriates in Paris, France (see my 2/17/2017 review of Lesley M.M. Blume’s Everybody Behaves Badly). Before I delve into the story, let me recount a paragraph of the novel, so you can see why I’m so excited by the author’s descriptive writing (which everybody knows is my favorite style). V arrives in 1874 London and observes her furnished rented flat: “The short stack of china stood only five dinner plates tall, each one chipped at the edges and crazed on the pink floral faces. Three soup bowls, five teacups, but only two saucers. Glassware - just four stems - cloudy as an old man’s eye. Bed and table linens and towels worn by time to an indeterminate color, like a teaspoon of coal dust in a pint of heavy cream - the color of dirty soles and also the color of the plaster walls. The tiny fireplace might have been adequate for roasting a single sparrow over a fistful of twigs. V pulled open a cupboard drawer and found a sprinkling of mouse droppings. The oblong black nubs moved like suddenly magnetized iron fillings or swirled tea leaves until they settled and found their pattern on the drawer bottom.” Is that classic writing, or what? By the way, Mr. Frazier must be a fan of Cormac McCarthy because he also doesn’t use quotation marks, when a Frazier character talks, it’s usually preceded by a dash (-).

The story meanders through the different years of V’s life, from chapter to chapter. While this type of writing is sometimes distracting to the reader, in this case it’s not. The modus operandi chapter seems to be when V lives in Saratoga Springs, NY. It is 1906 and V is now 80-years-old and living in a NY resort hotel, The Retreat, when a mulatto gentleman, carrying a blue book written by a Miss Botume, approaches the hotel desk and asks for Mrs. Davis. He believes that he is the boy, Jimmie, in the blue book written by Miss Botume. As Jimmie (James Blake) waits by the hotel’s fireplace to see if Mrs. Davis will receive him...suddenly he sees, “An elderly woman enter the great room from one of the corridors. She resembles later photographs of Queen Victoria - much taller, but with similar gravity and tiredness dragging from behind. Same hairstyle. Her dress a sheen of eggplant. She walks by the piano player and palms the small of her back to correct her posture.” I love this author’s writing! V says that she doesn’t recollect him or his name, James Blake. James says to V, “Yes, Ma’am. Thank you for seeing me. I’ll be brief. What I wanted to speak to you about concerns the war.” V is angry, tired of answering questions about the war and her husband, Confederate President Jefferson Davis. She turns to leave. James says, “My apologies, Mrs. Davis. I saw in the Albany paper that you were here, and I wanted to see you and ask about this book and about the children. I don’t recall all the names, but I remember Joe.” V says, “What could you possibly know about Joe?” V’s young son, Joe, fell off a building and died...Jimmie was there. V is stunned that he knew about Joe’s death. She asks James if he can bend his wrists all the way to his forearm. He does it. V, remembering that James was double jointed, says, “You’re Jimmie Limber (her made up name for him when he was a child in her care in Richmond, VA).” V says, “I don’t need a book to know you, I’ve believed for years that all my boys were long gone, crossed over. I’ve thought of it as my diminishing circle of boys pinching to a black point, like the period at the end of a sentence. But here you are. Sit down and I’ll tell you what I remember.” Gadzooks, all this and I’m only on page nine.

On page eleven, V strives to refresh Jimmie’s mind as to what happened in Richmond at the end of the Civil War in 1865. So you get the benefit of reading more of Charles Frazier’s excellent composition: “Things fell apart slowly before they fell apart fast. Late March - Friday night before Richmond burned - V fled the false White House and the capital city. That afternoon she and Ellen Barnes packed in a rush, knowing they might never be back. Billy and Jimmie went back and forth from V to Ellen, touching their arms or hips for reassurance. Ellen always kept her hair parted in the middle and oiled, pulled back tight against her scalp. But that day, long curling strands escaped, and she kept sweeping them back from her face...when the packing was done, Jeff (the president) took V aside and gave her a departure present. A purse pistol, slight and pretty, almost an art object suited for display in a museum.” “He said that if the country fell (the South), she should take the children to Florida and find passage to Havana. Then he told V to keep the little pistol with her at all times, and if Federals tried to violate her, she should shoot herself. Or if she couldn’t do that, at least fire it in their direction to make them kill her.” I know this book is historical fiction, but the author had me believing that every word was fact, not fiction. Incidentally, most of the characters in this novel were real people, including Jimmie Limber. I have left almost all of the characters and situations out of my review and instead decided to focus on the author’s superb writing. That’s great for you because you now have the whole story waiting for you to discover. In the next paragraph, I’ll give you one more example of the writer’s talent...then I’m outta here!

We’re back to 1906 Saratoga Springs, NY, near the end of V’s life. She’s having lunch with her young friend Laura Scott, an actress, who is accompanied by her mother and brother. Read how Charles Frazier describes how Mrs. Scott eats, or more appropriately chomps (haha): “Lunch arrives. Mrs. Scott talks while she eats, and the cavity of her mouth as she works her food makes sounds like a rubber plunger opening a sink drain. Chicken salad and lettuce at various stages of liquidation make repeat appearances between lips and teeth. She holds her fork as if her finger joints hardly articulate, a limp reluctance, as if other people’s hands usually do that job for her. She talks without letup, complaining of Laura’s expenses.” To me, this novel was a work of art.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: This novel is available in an exclusive “signed copy” edition at your local Barnes and Noble store (that's where I got my copy).

Jefferson Davis was a strange man that worked his way up to the position of Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce in 1853 largely based on his heroics fighting the Mexicans. He was generally unliked. During that time, one of his teachers at West Point wrote, “Neither Davis nor my opinion of him have changed since I knew him as a cadet. If I am not deceived, he intends to leave his mark in the Army & also at West Point & a black mark it will be I fear. He is a recreant and unnatural son, would have pleasure in giving his Alma Mater a kick & would disclaim her, if he could.”

Later, when Lincoln became president, Davis thought that Lincoln would find a way to avoid war. It didn’t happen. When Davis and V left Washington D.C. for their home in Mississippi, he got a message: “He had been appointed president of a country that didn’t exist." As the drums of war got louder “Their friend Robert Toombs, until recently a U.S. senator from Washington, Georgia, sent Jeff a letter of warning against being pulled into battle. Toombs wrote: It is suicide, murder, and will lose every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.” About 620,000 soldiers died during the Civil War from combat, accident, starvation and disease.

Other than Charles Frazier, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in writing novels embracing the Civil War. I can name three classics that I’ve read during my lifetime: Stephen Crane’s 1895 novel, The Red Badge of Courage; Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind and MacKinlay Kantor’s 1955 novel, Andersonville (I got my copy at the revolving rack in a local drugstore...hard to find that rack nowadays). Bring back the fifties!

Now on the non-fiction side, everybody knows that Bruce Catton is the all time genre champion. But Ulysses S. Grant might have some say about that title. After his presidency ended, Grant joined an investment firm in NYC, which turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. Grant was now penniless. Dying of throat cancer, Grant rushed to conclude his memoirs. He finished just days before his death and with the help of his friend, Mark Twain, got them published in 1885. Although the book was initially a slow seller, it eventually took off to record sales. His family's future was now secure with a profit of $450,000 (that’s $12 million in 2017 money).