What's Bred in the Bone

By Robertson Davies

Called “an altogether remarkable creation, his most accomplished novel to date” (The New York Times), What's Bred in the Bone is the second brilliant novel in Robertson Davies’ The Cornish Trilogy. Available as an eBook for the first time.

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, a master art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis’s life were not always what they seemed.

In this wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown, Robertson Davies has created a spellbinding tale of artistic triumph and heroic deceit. It is a tale told in stylish, elegant prose, endowed with lavish portions of Davies’ wit and wisdom.
“Davies’s make-believe universe has the appeal of a mystic’s vision… What’s Bred in the Bone is vintage Davies.” The Globe and Mail

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9780771027871

Reviews for What's Bred in the Bone

[eyejaybee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Possibly Robertson Davies's finest work, offering a fascinating amalgam of forger's handbook, spy novel and potted history of early twentieth century Canada.In effect the novel represents a biography of Francis Cornish, the news of whose death came at the start of "The Rebel Angels". Although he grew up in Blairlogie, generally thought of as "the Jumping Off Point" in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, he was no simple country boy. Left largely to his own devices as his parents relocated to Ottawa, he spent much of his childhood learning to draw, assisted by lowly servant Zadok Hoyle who in addition to managing the family's stables also acts as embalmer for the village. His friendship with Hoyle gives Francis access to the corpses that the embalmer prepares for their funerary rites, which in turn yields great dividends in Francis's artistic skills.After studying at Toronto and Oxford universities, Francis is recruited as a very junior player in the British Secret Service. Meanwhile he becomes apprenticed to the world-renowned art restorer, Tancred Saraceni from whom he learns a multitude of skills, some more legitimate than others. Acquaintance with Saraceni offers a solid springboard from which to establish himself as a leading figure in the post-war art world, which Francis duly achieves, though at the same time he sinks into the life of a recluse.Throughout the novel we are given startling insights into his psyche from his personal daimon who has supervised his life's passage.A dazzling novel bursting with ideas.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This second part of the trilogy leaves most of the threads from the first part dangling, and instead of picking them up it jumps back in time to 1909 to look at the life of the enigmatic and surprisingly wealthy art-critic Francis Cornish. It's essentially a good old-fashioned Bildungsroman, dressed up with a bit of fancy stuff about daemons and angels (because, why not?), but really just a simple linear life-story. Superficially much easier for the reader to deal with than the more static narrative structure of the other two parts, but Davies is still making sure that our brains get a workout. He gives Cornish an (almost) impossibly complicated mix of background influences and explores the nature-versus-nurture implications of this combination (hence the title). In parallel, there's another story going on about the nature of creative art, playing around with our notions of where the lines can be drawn between restoration, forgery and original work, and then twisting things a bit further when we think we've got the point. It struck me after I'd finished this that Francis Cornish would be a near contemporary of Charles Ryder, and there are a lot of parallels here to themes dealt with in Brideshead revisited. But Robertson Davies is no Evelyn Waugh: he may be prepared to indulge in the occasional joke at the expense of his characters, but he never floats off into lyrical pessimism. The world is as it is, and that's that: no use blaming poor old Hooper.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Part Two of The Cornish TrilogyA great improvement on the first book in the trilogy. I liked the conceit of having the recording angel and a daimon watching a tape of Francis Cornish's life and discussing how the daimon had manipulated events to shape Cornish's life. Although I enjoyed reading about him growing up in Blairlogie surrounded by family secrets, it was just after he had won the school classics prize that the book really grabbed me.Loved it!

[chocolatemuse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Robertson Davies has been my discovery of the year. These books are unlike anything else I've ever read, but as I read them I realise they are exactly what I've been wanting to read all my life. Not merely entertaining, not just scholarly, they are in fact the very best of both, combined with exploration and discovery that hardly ever flags. When we read Rebel Angels, book 1 in this awesome trilogy of which WBITB is no.2, Francis Cornish is to us simply a professor and art-accumulator who has died. After reading this book, though, we can never see him in the same way again. After an introductory chapter in which the three main characters from Rebel Angels are discussing their findings on Cornish's life while attempting to write his biography, (this chapter feels a little artificial, but who cares) we are then taken to a conversation between the lesser Zadkiel, a Recording Angel, and the Daimon Maimas, who turns out to have been Cornish's own allocated daimon - a guiding force chosen to make Cornish's life something out of the ordinary. These two characters pop up at intervals throughout the story, commenting on Cornish's life as it unfolds before us, giving us a 'top down' perspective, an objective and often funny commentary on what's going on. But the main novel is the story of Cornish's life, full of unforgettable characters, events and ideas, all carried out with Davies' usual breathtaking scholarship, faintly ironic humour, and down-to-earth style. Among other things, this is a coming of age novel. I felt as if I came of age with Cornish, in that back-woods Canadian town of Blairlogie. Cornish does not simply grow up and discover as he does so some universal truth. Like a real person, a wealth of highly individual complexities surround his childhood, shaping him and making him the man he turns out to be (with no little unseen help from the Daimon Maimas). It's difficult to describe the individuality of this book, and of the character of Cornish. All I can say is it's all full of intricate truth and realism, but unlike genuine reality, it's never the least bit dull. And here is the best part - Francis Cornish is an artist, and from a child, his discovery of art in different guises and individual perspectives is detailed and complicated, and has all the force and power of something real and visceral - intelligent but not the least bit 'academic'. It has what I'm learning is a signature touch of Davies' - where scholarship is presented not as something gained for reasons of glory, progress or self-improvement, but for the sheer unpretentious delight of beauty and discovery. I truly feel as though I discovered art with Francis Cornish, admittedly helped along by a serendipitous chance - I happened to begin reading Simon Schama's Rembrandt's Eyes at the same time. The two combined have been a wonderful journey. I finished What's Bred in the Bone with a feeling that I'm not quite the same person I was when I began it. I'll let that stand for itself in my final praise of this novel, and will only add the practical details - that this is second in a trilogy, but could stand on its own pretty well. But why would you read it alone when there are two other books just as good to read with it?

[frederick0t6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As "The Rebel Angels" lovingly satirized the academic world, this novel takes a similar approach to the art world. Set in the first third of the 20th century, it tells the story of Francis Cornish and I rather liked it as a bildungsroman. Admitedly, some of the more adventure oriented sections strain plausibility but those are far from fatal error.As with other Davies' novels, I felt elevated and educated by my reading of it. It is set in a world where Canadians are fascinated with Britain and Europe and could be considered elitist in some respects. That said, this resonated with me. There are plenty of Canadian novels set in unremarkable small towns, mired in provincial concerns.

[snash_44 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An insightful exploration of the making of a person in depths of their being. What's inherent and what's a function of life experience.