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    A Mixture of Frailties
    A Mixture of Frailties
    A Mixture of Frailties
    Ebook461 pages

    A Mixture of Frailties

    By Robertson Davies

    4/5

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    The “first-rate . . . abundantly funny” conclusion to the Salterton Trilogy, following Leaven of Malice and Tempest-Tost (The New York Times).
     
    Louisa Bridgetower, the imposing Salterton matron, has died. The substantial income from her estate is to be used to send an unmarried young woman to Europe to pursue an education in the arts. Mrs. Bridgetower’s executors end up selecting Monica Gall, an almost entirely unschooled singer whose sole experience comes from performing with the Heart and Hope Gospel Quartet, a rough outfit sponsored by a small fundamentalist group. Monica soon finds herself in England, a pupil of some of Britain’s most remarkable teachers and composers, and she gradually blossoms from a Canadian rube to a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique—and tragicomic—career.
     
    “Davies is equally familiar with the world of the Canadian provinces and with that of musical London, and portrays both with rich humor and sympathetic understanding.”—Chicago Tribune
     
    “Something of a virtuoso performance, this relies more on its wit than its warmth, but the musicianship is very knowledgeable and the fingerwork light.”—Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 22, 2019
    ISBN9780795352300
    A Mixture of Frailties

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    • 5/5
      Last in the Salterton Trilogy.Each book in the Salterton trilogy is different. The first, Tempest-Tost, uses a small town amateur theater production to introduce us to Salterton and some of its inhabitants, with Davies dry wit illuminating the characters. The second, Leaven of Malice, is an out-and-out comedy centered around an erroneous engagement announcement in the local newspaper involving the scions of two warring families. While Leaven of Malice introduces new characters, most notably the editor of the newspaper, Gloster Ridley, it carries characters from the first book through.The third is quite different. One of the characters from the first two books, Mrs. Bridgewater, has died--and left a will that does the best possible to punish her son for his marriage. Her considerable money has been left to a trust fund to finance the education of a young woman from Salterton in the arts in Europe. A most unlikely candidate--a 20 year old daughter of a fundamentalist Christian family--winds up at the top of the list for mostly all the wrong reasons, and is sent to England to study to become a singer.While the book to that point is full of Davies’ usual wit and insights into small town life, as soon as Monica Gall reaches London it becomes something else. It is a story of an immature, sheltered, ignorant (in the original sense) young woman who begins, much to her surprise and at times discomfiture, a journey of self-discovery. It is a spiritual journey as well, although I hate to use that adjective which in our day has lost all its meaning through overuse and abuse. But in this case--in a book written in 1958--it fits. It is the journey of what it takes to become a great artist. While the description is not technical, clearly Davies knew a good deal about the world of music as well as theater (he was an actor with the Old Vic for a while); he knew the type of training a singer had to have--and the life that went with it.The plot device Davies uses to bring about the crisis and resolution of the story is a standard one, but the result is not. And the title of the book then becomes clear.Graced with Davies’ remarkable prose, this is a thoughtful, compelling book, one of Davies’ best, possibly his finest. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This story might have been titled "The Revenge of Solly's Mother"! It is generously laced with Davies' distinctive humour as well as his extensive knowledge of music, theatre, and the business of newspapers. Although Monica evolved into a sophisticated singer and left her fundamentalist life behind, I just could not believe her love for boorish, ungrateful, Giles Revelstoke. This is an elegant third episode of the Salterton trilogy which has given us the traditional format that includes tragedy, comedy, and satyric drama. Despite a somewhat slow section in the middle, this is an excellent finish to the series.
    • 3/5
      The most substantial of the three parts of the trilogy, in which Mrs Bridgetower continues to torment her long-suffering son from beyond the grave through the gloriously malevolent terms of her will. Much of the story takes us away from Salterton, as we follow the working-class Canadian girl Monica Gall who is sent to England to study singing as the first beneficiary of the Bridgetown Foundation. There are a few scenes in mid-Wales, where Davies's family came from, and we get a lot of Anthony-Powellish exploration of Bohemian life in London, and a lot of in-jokes about professional musicians and critics. Monica comes under the influence of a talented young composer (vaguely reminiscent of the young Britten, but heterosexual) and gets involved with the publication of a Little Magazine, and it all sounds much more like 1938 than 1958, as Davies himself seems to realise rather late in the day. The climax of the novel is the production of an opera based on The golden ass (somewhat later, Davies actually wrote a libretto for such an opera himself - it was produced in Toronto in 1999, after his death).The message seems to be that real art will come out on top, despite - or perhaps even helped by - provincial human frailties and pettiness. There are some very good bits in this book, but because it is more ambitious than the previous two, you also notice the weak points a little more than you otherwise might. The portrayal of the fundamentalist protestant sect Monica's family belongs to, in particular, is unconvincing: anyone who's ever been involved with a group like that knows that it wouldn't have been so painlessly easy for Monica to get away from them. Either there would have been a huge and damaging row before she could go, or she would have been sent to London under the close escort of members of the sect based there. I didn't much care for the gratuitously comic gay couple, either...
    • 3/5
      Good writing but didn't make his characters as interesting this time around. To real, caricatures are more fun.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this book, though not as much as Leaven of Malice. I never felt entirely sympathetic towards Monica (what on earth did she see in Giles Revelstoke?) and would have liked to have spent more time in Salterton and less in London. But these are minor points: the prose was wonderful to savour and digest and the world of professional musicians in the 1950s seemed convincingly drawn.
    • 5/5
      I have always loved The Salterton Trilogy, and this, the third, is my favourite. Sly, poignant, and perceptive. Can be read whether you've enjoyed Tempest-Tost and The Leaven of Malice or not. I imagine it's even more enjoyable if you know anything about Kingston, but I don't.

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    A Mixture of Frailties - Robertson Davies

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