Wheel of Fortune Part IV

After the war, the tensions between the 2 cousins carry on. Then both of their wives die, very young and around the same time. A couple of years after the war, Bella becomes pregnant again. She and Anna go shopping for the baby, and Anna, who is driving, is killed in a car crash. The accident causes Bella to miscarry, but she still desperately wants to have a daughter so she gets pregnant again. Harry persuades her to have an abortion, because he is worried that another childbirth might kill her. So she has a termination, and things go wrong, so she dies- she is only in her 20s. Harry tries to cope with his 4 sons, and Kester is alone. He has a nervous breakdown, and a little later, he kills Thomas, his uncle, who had been rude to Anna because of her Jewishness. Panicking, he calls Harry for help. Harry realises that Kester is going to try and blame Tom's death on him, and he tells Kester that he will help him cover up the killing, as long as Kester does what he wants. They fake a car crash, to destroy Thomas' body. Harry then blackmails Kester into ceding Oxmoon to him. Kester signs over the estate, and says he will go and live in Dublin with his Irish relatives. John dies, suddenly, and he does not leave his estates outside Wales to Harry as his son had expected. He leaves a complicated will. The lands that Harry hoped to inherit are to go to the children of Marian, John's elder daughter. So Harry fears that some day, Kester will return to Gower to confront him. If he does lose Oxmoon, he has nothing to fall back on. He still owns Penhale Manor but it is a small estate.

Wheel of Fortune III

The rest of the book is about the rivalry between Kester and his cousin Harry, John's son. This is based on the wars between Richard II and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke. John is still living in Gower, and is preoccupied with his difficult relationship with Bronwen. She is a devoted mother, but her situation makes her life isolated and unhappy. John's family like her but don't think that she could fit in, if he married her and she had to take on the duties of a mistress of an estate. Her own class despise her, because she is living with a married man - and they have 4 children. John finds that although many people do criticise him for leaving his wife and living openly with a mistress, as a man, he does not get so much condemnation. He begins to develop business interests, gets out and plays golf, while Bronwen is left alone. As he grows up, Harry, the eldest son, is very conventional. He's very unlike Kester who wants to be a writer. He marries young, to Bella Stourham, the daughter of one of old Bobby's gentry friends. She is not very intelligent. Harry is kept busy running his father's estate, Penhale Manor. Kester marries a Jewish middle class girl, Anna - when he is only 19. He is much richer than Harry. Kester decides, after his marriage, to take over running Oxmoon, but within a short time he makes a mess of it. He does the house up, and makes it an artistic masterpiece, but has no experience at managing the land. He is obsessed with his writing, so he spends far too much money and neglects his tenants. During this time, Bronwen decides she has to leave John. She goes to live near relatives in Canada. She can't bear to let her 4 children by John grow up in isolation. John misses her desperately, but they both feel that it's unfair to their children to have them laughed at because their parents are not married. John later returns to his wife, Constance, who has remained attached to him. He supports Bronwen and the children but has no contact with them. Soon after Kester's marriage, Ginevra dies of a stroke. Kester is left with noone to guide him. John and Harry have to intervene when Kester's mismanagement almost runs the estate to bankruptcy. He has to submit to his uncle managing his estate. John insists that he takes on Thomas, his other uncle, as full time manager, and Kester hates Thomas. The man is stupid and unpleasant and sneers at Anna, because she is Jewish. War breaks out and Harry joins the army, but Kester is a pacifist. He does work on the estate to provide food, as Thomas is away at war as well. So John begins to think better of him. Harry is eager to prove his manhood, and joins the SAS which he finds challenging and frightening but he has a reputation for being brave and a good soldier so he hides his fear. At the end of the War, he returns to his wife and their sons, but he realises that his marriage is failing. Bella, his wife, is unintelligent.. and she also has an obsession with having a daughter. She and Harry had made love during their teen years, and she became pregnant with a daughter. It was all hushed up, and Bella was sent abroad, but her baby died. She has longed for a girl to replace the baby. But she has had 4 sons in the first few years of the marriage and there's no sign of a daughter. Harry begins to find her exasperating. Harry envies Kester, who is well to do, able to devote time to his writing and who has no noisy children and a charming intelligent wife.

Wheel of Fortune II

Robert's health declines and he ends up in a wheelchair. Ginevra was indeed pregnant at the end of the war. She decided to have the baby, and in 1919, the year after the war, she produced another son, Kester. By then, Robert has adjusted to being at home, and does a bit of writing, about his legal trials and his political life. But he knows now that he won't be able to earn any money since he has to give up barristering. He is however heir to the estate but it rather looks as if he will die before he inherits. (Ginevra has a woman friend who is a journalist, and she begins to do a little writing, light articles about society life which makes some money.) John, Robert's next brother, who has moved to Gower after a few years of marriage, decides it is his duty to support his father and sick brother. He and Robert become closer.. However he too has problems. His first wife, Blanche, was very rich and she has lands outside Wales. John buys a small estate, Penhale Manor, near his father's house and farms it. Then Blanche dies and John makes a hasty second marriage to an American millionaire's daughter. He has realised that he will never inherit Oxmoon and wants to secure himself some more money and a job. Constance, his American wife, is well meaning but she is dull and humourless. This marriage produces a daughter, but proves to be a mistake. He finds Constance exhausting.. and he realises that the woman he loves is Bronwen, a Welsh working class woman who has been living nearby with her 2 children. Her sister is married to John's farm manager. He has had a one night stand with Bronwen. Then he finds out a few months later that the affair has produced a son, Evan. Bronwen's husband, a sailor, dies in a seaman's brawl around the same time so she is free. But John asks Constance for a divorce, and she flatly refuses. She lives in London and he is in Gower. John tries to help with the estate, Oxmoon, and help his aging, increasingly shaky father... who has taken up with his housekeeper, Milly Straker. She is a selfish woman but she's happy to be his mistress. Bobby gives her a lot of money to persuade her to stay with him. However John is not liked by the tenants because of his broken marriage and the fact that he is living openly with Bronwen. His father, now a widower, also is angry that John has chosen to leave his wife and have an affair with a working class woman. He refuses to let his son help to manage the estate. He relies on Milly, which worries John and Robert as they fear that Bobby will hand over most of his money to her, to keep her staying with him. Robert's health declines and his elder son Robin dies in a fall. He tries to become close to Kester, but it doesn't work out. Kester is too emotional and nervous. In the end, Robert dies after several years of suffering, leaving his only surviving son, who is 9 years old and nervy, sensitive, artistic and very unlike most of the Godwins.

Wheel of Fortune

This is Howatch's fifth saga book, published in the mid 1980s, after her 2 American novels and before she took to writing about the Church of England. It starts in the year before World War One... It is based on the history of Edward III, his sons the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, and his grandsons, Richard II and Henry IV. Robert Godwin (who represents the Black Prince) is the eldest son of Bobby Godwin, an Anglo Welsh squire. Robert is in his early 30's. He has always been in love with his cousin Ginevra (based on Joan of Kent), who was reared with him, almost as a sister. Robert is a very difficult cold obsessive man, and when Ginevra who was 2 years older than him, eloped with a young Irishman, some years previously, he never got over it. He is very clever and ambitious, and has become a great success as a barrister in London. He also is planning to become an MP. He has had some mistresses but he rather dislikes women. Now in 1913, Ginevra suddenly returns from New York where she has been living, with her 2 young sons, because she has lost her husband Conor Kinsella in a shooting incident. Robert is determined to win her this time.. but he then learns that his father seduced Ginevra when she was only 16. (Bobby, his father, has had a traumatic childhood). It was because of the seduction that Ginevra had run off and married another man. Ginevra is flighty and beautiful, and has not always been a faithful wife to Conor Kinsella, but she and Robert have an affair. She loved Conor but their marriage was stormy. She now falls in love with Robert, and she wants him to be the man who protects her. They get married not long before the war. They live in London, and there is no overt breach with his parents, but Robert hates his father for ruining Ginevra's youth. However before long, the marriage has its difficulties. Declan, her elder son goes to Ireland to live, because he hates his stepfather. Rory stays with Ginevra. But she is desperately hurt by Declan's leaving. Then war breaks out. Lionel, Robert's younger brother, joins up and is killed at the Somme. Ginevra finds Robert difficult and cold, and he is occasionally violent with her. When the war ends, Robert and Ginevra have had a small son, Robin, but he suddenly tells her that he wants to give up the bar and politics and become a climber. Ginevra is horrified. She tries to persuade him that this is a crazy idea, but he tells her that he has put up with her wanting a Society lifestyle, for years and he hated it. He has had enough. He has been an MP during the war, and he now wishes he had not become involved in the legal field and politics. They have just made him feel trapped and unhappy. Now he intends to resign and train as a mountaineer. Ginevra realises that he is really unhappy because their marriage has proved a mistake. He is trying to escape from the situation into another of his obsessions, climbing. But she can't persuade him of this, as he's not very self aware. He tells her they will have to live in Wales, as he will not be earning any money. She reminds him how difficult it will be for them to live near Bobby.. But he says he does not care if she finds it difficult. He won't be there, he will be off climbing most of the time. If she finds it hard to live near the man who abused her as a girl, it's her hard luck. Ginevra is afraid that she cannot get through to him- he is so obsessive and selfish. She herself is worried that she may be pregnant again with an unwanted baby. Then Robert has some health symptoms.. and finds that he has multiple sclerosis, which may mean that he winds up in a wheelchair. He now knows that climbing is completely impossible. He will have to adjust to a restricted life at home and give up both the law and climbing. He offers her a divorce, because he feels that she would never be able to cope with an invalid husband or a country life. She surprises him by telling him that she is his friend, even if their marriage has not worked out. She tells him she will go back to Gower with him.

Cashelmara IV

Ned has formed a circle of young friends, mostly tenants' sons from the estate. He gathers them to seize Drummond, meaning to arrest him. But in the struggle, Drummond is killed. Sarah admits to Ned that she killed Patrick - but he was ill and dying anyway. She was afraid that he would try and take the children from her. Ned tells her that he seized Drummond to protect her, and that the estate will be happier without his being manager, as he had been creaming off money and being harsh with tenants he did not like. Even his own 2 sons were against him because he had deserted their mother to live with Sarah. Sarah tells her son that she will not go to pieces over Maxwell's death. She did love him but she will recover and he suggests she goes to England to recuperate... He still loves her but his feelings are very complicated. But now he is master of Cashelmara and a husband and father and can get on with his new life. Cashelmara was Howatch's second long novel, covering 3 generations.... and with narrations by Edward De Salis's wife, Patrick's wife and Maxwell Drummond. She was sympathetic to the Irish point of view, though her characters were mostly Anglo Irish. The novel covers the years from after the Famine to the Fall of Parnell. However it is a rather depressing story with a lot of tragic deaths and violence and a muted ending. A few years later, she wrote Wheel of Fortune, which covered the mature years of Edward III, and his offspring. It is also a rather sad difficult novel. I hope to review it later.

Cashelmara III

Howatch gives an excellent portrayal of the West of Ireland in the days of Parnell and the Land War. She writes of the terrible poverty of most of the farming folk -... and how the Famine drove millions out of Ireland to England or America. But Patrick is not well off. When his tenants start a rent strike, he loses most of his income. But he is far richer than the tenants. Sarah becomes embittered, as her upper class neighbours shun her because of her affair with Drummond. Patrick returns to Ireland, and asks to see his children. She becomes frightened that he might secure custody of them or have them taken from her, because of her affair. She goes to see Patrick, to talk to him, but soon afterwards he dies. Ned has married Kelly Gallagher, an Irish American girl whose father paid Drummond a lot of money in the US, to get her an upper class husband. Kerry is in love with him, but they are both very young to get married, being only in their teens. Ned however did not want to wait any longer to marry her, nor to take a mistress until he was older. So he firmly insists on marrying Kerry, in spite of Sarah's opposition. He realises that he is going to have to grow up fast, and to take on Drummond who is causing scandal with his mother. He is also using his position as bailiff to help himself to his, Ned's money. Then, in conversation with his younger sisters, Ned learns that while he had believed that Drummond poisoned a drunken Patrick, it is more likely that it was Sarah who gave him the rat poison in a bottle of whiskey. He and Kerry have their first child, a son, and Ned decides that he has to make his move against Drummond now, to protect his mother and his son's inheritance.

Cashelmara II

The novel is set during the years of the Land War in Ireland, when the tenant farmers rose against their landlords and began to look for more rights, including the right to buy their farms. Patrick and Maxwell Drummond are on opposite sides, and in the ensuing violence, Drummond kills Hugh Mcgowan and Hugh's father, Ian. He and Sarah have broken the domination of McGowan and Patrick. They settle in Cashelmara, with the children of her marriage - and Sarah sues for divorce. She has to reveal Patrick's cruelty, and his homosexuality but she gets free of her marriage. Patrick goes to England, to try and get over his drink problem and lives with his half brothers from his father's second marriage. Ned, Sarah's elder son, loves his mother and sympathises with her but he realises that Drummond will drag her down socially. He is also a married man and a Catholic who cannot be considered a suitable match for Sarah. As Ned gets older, he can see that his mother's affair with Drummond has got to be stopped.