The Quincunx: The Mompessons

By Charles Palliser

Desperate times and darker mysteries abound in this extraordinary historical thriller

With their savings rapidly running out, and the world turning against them, John and his mother are pursued by bailiffs and forced to move. Taking refuge with the Isbister family, they flee upon discovering a shocking dark side to their hosts.

But then their luck seems to change when they discover the hospitable Miss Quilliam. And a way out of debt and disaster seems to offer itself with a momentous decision, one that will shape everything: to sell the most valuable thing they own.

Life is never so easy, and cruelty, danger and disease are never far away...

The second Part of the unputdownable classic, The Quincunx, is the ideal read for fans of S.J. Parris or Peter Ackroyd.

Praise for The Quincunx

‘Grips like steel… it’s a book to make you miss your stop on the bus or the train, keep you up at night and wake you early… a formidable achievement’ Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4

‘His brilliant and entertaining pastiche of the mid-nineteenth-century novel’ The Times

‘A brilliant and deeply eccentric attempt to reproduce an early Victorian novel…it combines massive scope with minute detail – there is a cast of thousands, but every figure is lovingly painted. The plot is so thick the spoon stands up in it, and by the end, the reader has toured the whole of late Regency society… Magnificent – gripping and beautifully written; the sort of book that sends you into a trance of pleasure’ Independent

‘Charles Palliser has realised a world that can almost be smelt and tasted as it pours off the page of this gripping, extraordinary novel’ Daily Telegraph

‘His plot is of an intricacy that Wilkie Collins himself might have envied… an astonishing achievement’ Scotsman

The Quincunx

1 The Huffams

2 The Mompessons

3 The Clothiers

4 The Palphramonds

5 The Maliphants

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781788632133

Book preview

Chapter 1

A lamp-lighter, working his way along the street of tall, dull houses upon a corner of which we are standing, blows on his cold fingers, picks up his ladder, and goes on to the next lamp. And so all down the length of the street small points of light appear, briefly flaring up before settling down to a steady glow. And now along the pavement trails a little fatherless family in rags, poor unhappy exiles of Erin, our sad sister-island. Wretched, cold, hungry fellow-creatures! So close to the haunts of Idleness and Dissipation. We shall let noble Poverty pass by, for our business is again with Wealth, Arrogance, and Power.

For once more we are outside Mompesson-house. This time it is ablaze with lights for it is one of Lady Mompesson’s ‘Friday nights’. You know the kind of thing, Weipert’s band is playing quadrilles, the livery-servants are in evening dress, additional servants who have been hired from an agency are pretending to belong to the house and to know where everything is and yet keep bumping into each other and blundering into the wrong chamber. The state-rooms are dazzling and filled with the slightly honeyed fragrance of the best wax-candles. In short, all that the insolence of Opulence can offer when Old Corruption gathers is on show, and…

But enough, for it appears that elegant writing is not what is required. Very well. Sober truth then, without digression.

It must have been towards ten o’clock that Mr Barbellion (Power) dismounted from nothing grander than a hackney-coach and, to the contempt of the link-boys and footmen guarding the steps, was recognised by the butler and allowed to enter the house. He ascends the stairs and in the grand Salon full of gentlemen, in court dress and their ladies in silk and jewels, makes his way towards Lady Mompesson (Arrogance) as she looks at him with an expression as close to surprise as good breeding permits.

‘This is an unlooked-for pleasure, Mr Barbellion,’ she says coldly.

He appears to flush at this and perhaps it would not be too fanciful to suppose that he resents it. But no motives! That is the rule.

However that may be, he says something like, ‘My lady, I would not have presumed to intrude if it had not been upon a matter of the utmost urgency. My agent has just ridden up post from Melthorpe. Mrs Mellamphy – as she calls herself – has fled.’

‘Fled! And gone where?’

‘To London, but beyond that I do not know.’

‘You do not know, Mr Barbellion?’ she repeats frigidly. At that moment a courteous smile appears on her face and she bows towards a gentleman wearing the uniform of an Imperial ambassador on the far side of the room.

Mr Barbellion flinches, ‘I am afraid my agent lost her, Lady Mompesson.’

‘He should not have done. He was being well paid for his pains.’

‘Lady Mompesson is doubtless correct,’ Mr Barbellion replies with a slight bow.

‘How came he to be so remiss?’

‘In the very early hours of this morning he was roused at the Rose and Crab inn by a message from his informant to the effect that Mrs Mellamphy had just left for London. He naturally set off in pursuit of the night-coach, but when he overtook it he found that she and her son were not on it. So, assuming that they had travelled post, he himself proceeded to Town, making enquiries at each of the inns that post along that road. He found no trace of them.’

‘I see,’ Lady Mompesson says, and drums with her fingers on her fan. ‘Then why do you say she has come here?’

‘She confided as much to my informant.’

‘Has it not occurred to you that she might have been lying? I take her for a cunning dissembler.’

‘I think that unlikely, Lady Mompesson. It is more probable that because my agent was apprised of her departure so soon, he somehow overtook his quarry on the road.’

‘Overtook her! How extraordinary. But if she is here, she must be found. As long as she has that codicil…’ She breaks off and Mr Barbellion nods. ‘You did right to report this to me, Mr Barbellion. Sir Perceval has not my appreciation of the delicacy of the affair.’

‘Sir Perceval’s directness,’ says Mr Barbellion, ‘is in the fine old tradition of the English gentleman, but in this case something more circumspect is called for.’

‘Precisely my view. Tell me, why do you think she decided to flee, Mr Barbellion? Did she realize that your agent was observing her, for he seems to have made a bad business of it.’

‘I believe she fled on account of the attempt to abduct the boy that took place on the very day that I visited her. She actually accused me of responsibility for that. How absurd! As if I would ever involve myself in anything that exposed me so dangerously.’

‘I believe I can account for her fear of yourself, Mr Barbellion. From something she said when she came to Mompesson-park two months ago, she is under the misapprehension that you are acting for the other party.’

‘I see!’ Mr Barbellion exclaims. ‘Then that explains much.’

‘However, I am very alarmed to hear that the other party found out her whereabouts and attempted to seize the child.’

‘Indeed. In fact, I believe that it was through her own attorney that our opposite discovered where she was hiding.’

‘Yet you assured Sir Perceval and myself that that man – (What is his name, Sumptious?’

‘Sancious,’ Mr Barbellion murmurs.

‘Quite so.) – That that man could be, if not precisely trusted, then at least relied upon.’

Mr Barbellion flushes. Surely he must have felt… But no, let us speculate no further.

He murmurs, ‘I fear I was mistaken, Lady Mompesson. He had the audacity by some means to discover Mrs Mellamphy’s hiding-place and, doubtless realizing the value of this intelligence, to sell it to the adverse party.’

At that moment the baronet, who is reclining upon a sopha near the door into the next room, catches sight of his solicitor and beckons to him.

‘I am alarmed to learn it,’ Lady Mompesson says. ‘But I see Sir Perceval has noticed you. Just before you go to him, I want to say something. We seem to be singularly unlucky in tutors and governesses.’

‘So I have heard from Assinder. Mr David Mompesson is recovered, I trust?’

Lady Mompesson draws her lips together, ‘Indeed, but I was not referring to that regrettable incident. My allusion was to Tom’s governor who has also left, though under much less reprehensible circumstances. There was some unpleasantness over what Sir Perceval sees as a boyish prank. Be that as it may, we are in need of another governor. Will you look out for one – and this time find a young man with a somewhat robuster disposition?’

‘I shall take charge of that, Lady Mompesson. And before I go, I have some grave news from Hougham. Now that the autumn rents are in, Assinder informs me that the rent-roll is down again and I fear the figure is alarmingly low. Much of this is due to the old difficulty, tenants cannot be found who are willing to take on a farm whose poor-rate is at least equal to the rent.’

‘I thought Mr Assinder was dealing with the problem of the settled poor?’

‘He informs me that he is proceeding as fast as is practicable, Lady Mompesson. But at the same time, I must caution you again that…’

He breaks off and looks at her speculatively.

‘I am prepared to acknowledge that you are correct about Mr Assinder,’ she says. ‘But I warn you, Sir Perceval still refuses to hear a word against him.’

Sir Perceval beckons again, this time with an impatient shake of his head, and receiving a cold smile of dismissal, the solicitor leaves Lady Mompesson with a bow and crosses to the baronet.

Chapter 2

We changed horses twice during the night, though I have only a very confused memory of being carried half-awake from the darkness of the carriage into the bright lights of the coffee-room. When I awoke I found myself leaning against the shoulder of my mother who was still slumbering. On my other side was an elderly gentleman, also fast asleep, at whose slowly opening and shutting mouth I gazed in fascination. It was a dark and gloomy morning for the good weather of yesterday had departed – or perhaps had stayed behind as we journeyed south. The sky was low and grey and a drizzling rain fell at intervals, so that we seemed to have passed suddenly from the golden end of summer to the grey beginning of autumn. We travelled on all through that long day and the next night, and although it had all seemed so exciting at first, my spirits quickly sank with the boredom and confinement of the swaying carriage.

In the early dawn the coach rumbled beneath the arch of an inn-yard. My mother half woke up, looked out of window and sleepily asked, ‘What is this town?’

‘Hertford,’ the elderly gentleman answered, waking with a snort. ‘The Blue Dragon.’

My mother started and came suddenly awake.

At that moment the guard bellowed at us that we had five minutes, and in great haste we left the coach and hurried to the travellers’-room. (Here, to my amazement, there was a gentleman being shaved in a corner of the room as we ate.)

‘We are nearly arrived,’ my mother said as we drank our coffee.

‘Mamma, whom do you know in London?’ I asked.

‘I know no-one except Mr Sancious. I will go to him as soon as possible in order to ask his advice about how we can manage with so little money.’

Now I broached a subject I had for some time brooded over in secrecy, ‘Mamma,’ I began, ‘has it ever struck you that Mr Sancious may not have behaved well by us?’

She admitted that this had occurred to her and now that the question was before us, we frankly discussed whether it was in good faith that he had given us such disastrous advice. When my mother made much of the fact that he could have no motive for having deceived us, I told her that Mrs Digweed’s story about how her husband had lost money in a building speculation suggested that the scheme we had been encouraged to put money into might have been a fraud from the very beginning. And then I pointed out how suspicious was Mr Sancious’ interest in whether we had anything to sell, and asked her if she thought he might have had any way of knowing that we had the codicil and that it was valuable to other people.

At this she fell silent for a long time and then said, ‘Yes you may be right. Perhaps it was he who betrayed us to our enemy, although I don’t understand how he could have found the way to him. But it’s true that he has always known my real name and that might have aided him.’

Despite my attempts, I could not persuade her to tell me what she called ‘our real name’, though I guessed it was the one beginning with ‘C’ that I had seen all those years ago before I could properly read.

Finally I asked, ‘Mamma, what name shall we go under now?’

She looked at me in surprise, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I think we should use another in case anyone is searching for us.’

‘Another name! How strange that it should be here…’ she began softly and then broke off.

She would not tell me what she meant (and it was long before I found out), but she agreed that we should choose a new name. We thought of the little hamlet near Melthorpe called Offland to which we had often walked, and settled on that. How strange names are, I reflected, repeating to myself ‘John Offland’.

‘So now we have no-one to go to,’ I said. ‘Except for Uncle Martin’s widow?’

‘Oh, Johnnie, we can’t do that. I hardly knew her. She was a young woman when I was only a little girl.’

‘But wasn’t she your cousin?’

‘I suppose so. Our families were connected in some way, but not very closely for my father did not know hers. And about the time she married Uncle Martin my father and he quarrelled and I had very little to do with her afterwards.’

‘What was the quarrel about?’

‘Oh never mind now. It’s a very long story. You’ll know all about it one day.’

I was about to ask what she meant by these hints that she had dropped before, but at this moment the guard interrupted us with a warning that the coach was about to go forward. The gentleman who had been seated opposite us did not get back in but two new passengers – a genteelly dressed lady with a youth a few years older than I – boarded the coach and we set off again.

The lady – who introduced herself as Mrs Popplestone (travelling with her son, David) and to whom my mother, rather shame-facedly, returned that we were Mrs and Master Offland – struck up a conversation with my mother and they were soon fast friends.

Long before I saw London I smelt it in the bitter smoke of sea-coal that began to prickle my nostrils and the back of my throat, and then I saw the dark cloud on the horizon that grew and grew and that was made up of the smoke of hundreds of thousands of chimneys. After some miles the villages became more frequent, straggling along the road as if reluctant to leave its protection, and the gaps between them grew shorter. At last they came to be so many and the gaps so few that I exclaimed, ‘Surely this is London!’ But my mother and the nice lady and her son laughed and assured me that we still had some way to go. I went through this exchange several times more, for I could not believe that the streets of shops and fine houses which were now almost continuous were only overgrown villages lying outside the capital.

I could see that my mother was almost as excited as I was. ‘It seems bigger than ever,’ she said softly, her eyes glittering.

At last, however, we passed through the turnpike that was at that date on the New Road, and my fellow travellers admitted that indeed we were in London. And now I was amazed that we travelled on and on through street after street without coming out at the other side of the town. Moreover, I had never seen or imagined streets like them: I was overwhelmed by their width, by the height of the buildings, the volume and the variousness of the traffic – magnificent private carriages that swept past us with a disdainful flourish of their horses’ tails, shabby hackney-coaches, black coal-waggons, huge lumbering drays – and the press of foot-passengers along the pavements like two vast crowds hurrying in opposite directions.

After nearly an hour we entered a particularly wide street which Mrs Popplestone informed me was Regent-street but which I did not recall from my beloved map – and, indeed, it had been constructed since that was printed. Now the coach slowed almost to walking pace for here the carriageway and pavements ran together in one dangerous crowd of men and youths and horses and carriages like a wild, moving market-place. There were sallow-skinned boys in black coats with flat round hats and with ringlets hanging down on their cheeks – ‘Jews’, my mother whispered – who were running in amongst the carriages offering articles for sale at the windows, oranges, gingerbread, nuts, pen-knives, pocket-books, and pencil-cases. And other men and boys were thrusting papers through the windows of carriages, and when one hurtled through ours I picked it up and saw that it was a play-bill. (At last I would go to a real theatre!) And there were yet others running into the middle of the streets at peril of their lives with shovels and buckets. It was like a waking dream, the noise of the vehicles rumbling and clattering over the paved streets, the cries of street-vendors, and the ringing of the newspaper-sellers’ bells. All of this filled me with a mixture of excitement and fear.

Now we encountered a lock of carriages and came to a halt, surrounded by handsome vehicles of a number and variety I had never dreamed of. On our right was a fine landau painted scarlet and beautifully varnished, with a coat-of-arms emblazoned on the side-pannel which was repeated on hanging folds of the gold-fringed hammer-cloth on which the coachman and the whip sat. There were two footmen standing abreast up behind wearing tri-corns and coats with huge gold shoulder-knots, each carrying a gold-headed cane sloped across the roof, and both of them were staring as if sightlessly ahead. There was an even more elegant equipage on the other side, for in addition to the two footmen it had a boy in a striped waistcoat and small wig who stood on the platform and who caught my eye and smiled in a manner that made him my mortal enemy.

Above all I was astonished by the flaring gas-jets lighting the streets and shop-windows, for they had been lit quite early on that dark and rainy September day. I had never heard of such a thing, for gas lighting had not at that date reached our village. I looked at my mother and saw that her cheeks were flushed as if the same emotions had taken hold of her.

‘So many gas-lamps!’ she exclaimed. ‘And only look at the plate-glass and the gas in the shops. When I was last here only three or four streets in St. James had gas lighting and few of the shops had such windows.’

‘My dear!’ Mrs Popplestone exclaimed, while her son smiled disdainfully, ‘You can’t have been in Town for simply ages and ages!’

My mother coloured and looked down.

The coach which had flown like a bird along the highway seemed to have become a clumsy monster in these streets, constantly coming up against other vehicles, being shouted at by drivers and narrowly missing foot-passengers who dived in front of it at the crossings. It reminded me of the ducks on the village-pond which swam so gracefully over the water but waddled awkwardly when they came ashore.

Now that the vehicle was going so slowly I had a chance to examine my new fellow-citizens. On this broad street (which my mother whispered to me was called Haymarket) the fashionably dressed and the poorly clad mingled promiscuously. Brushing past the ladies and gentlemen, often with a footman walking behind them carrying an ivory-topped cane, were many who looked like beggars, men in fustian and corduroy with their sleeves tied with string, women in ragged gowns, and little girls selling flowers whom I took for beggars. On every side the eye and ear and nose were assaulted, by posters and placards pasted on every wall and paling, by bellmen crying the events of the day – a lost child or ship or motion in the House – by the stalls selling roast chestnuts or baked potatoes or cooked shell-fish.

We now approached a district which was being extensively demolished, for the Royal-mews were being taken down and a great public square opened up. My mother looked around in amazement as if half-recognising the place. With a sudden blast on the guard’s horn the coach came almost to a halt and then lumberingly turned and passed under a high arch and along a narrow alley-way into the yard of an inn whose sign proclaimed it to be the Golden-cross.

‘We are not to stay here, are we?’ I asked my mother as we gathered up our possessions and prepared to get down.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘This is too expensive.’

‘And besides,’ I replied, ‘it would be easy for anyone to find us here. Then where shall we go?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

Mrs Popplestone, who was standing beside us with her son, must have overheard this last exchange, for she now said, ‘My dear, we are going now to a very respectable private-hotel, Bartlett’s, in Wimpole-street. I can recommend it. Will you and your son not share a coach with us since we have no luggage to speak of?’

My mother thanked her and accepted her offer. But then a problem arose for when the coach-driver saw how many we were and how much luggage my mother and I had, he demurred.

‘You know I can’t take that much,’ he said to Mrs Popplestone reproachfully.

‘Then,’ she said to my mother, ‘it is very simple. You and I will go on ahead with the luggage and the two young gentlemen will follow on foot. My son knows where the hotel is.’

This seemed a very sensible arrangement and so our luggage was loaded and the two ladies boarded the coach. (But not before I had insisted on unpacking my map and removing the sheets that portrayed the central districts, putting the rest of it back in the box.) Master Popplestone and I followed the coach out of the yard by another alley-way and found ourselves in the Strand directly opposite to the gloomy old front of a great mansion whose façade was surmounted by a stone lion. (When I learned much later that this was Northumberland-house, I understood why my mother was so upset at finding herself so suddenly here of all places.) Soon losing sight of our quarry, my companion and I took to the bye-streets.

As we twisted and turned I quickly lost my bearings, so preoccupied was I in drinking in the sights, the laundresses in clogs carrying bundles on their heads, the pie-men ringing their bells and crying ‘Rare hot pies!’, the stalls selling oysters and apples and pies and cockles, and at each crossing the sweepers with their long brooms. There was much that daunted me: in the high narrow airless streets, looking at the sky was like peering up from the bottom of a well; and the iron grilles on the houses on all sides reminded me of tombs. London must be a very dangerous place, I thought, for in the main streets all the shops had guard-irons. But those shops! I gazed through the plate-glass windows of the print-shops longing to dawdle there, but Master Popplestone hurried me on.

Suddenly he halted and cried, ‘Wait here! I must run an errand for my mother!’ and disappeared into a nearby milliner’s-shop. I waited outside so distracted by the sights that it was with a sudden shock that I realized that a long time had passed. I went into the place and not seeing my companion, I asked a shop-boy.

When I had described him he said, ‘You must mean that young genel’man what come in here a bit back. Why, he runned straight out agin through the back-door.’

I could not think what to make of this but I had no leisure to reflect, for I now realized that I was lost and had no idea where the hotel was to which my mother had gone. In mounting alarm I wandered about, and now it seemed to me the street-sellers were directing their cries at me – the orange-sellers crying ‘Chase some oranges! Chase my nonpareils!’ as I hurried past and the long-song sellers barring my way with shouts of ‘Three yards a penny!’ And once I passed a stall where a big bold woman held out a half-skinned live eel on a long fork that squirmed at me hideously as she grinned and said something.

I tried to consult the map but since I had no idea where I was it was of no use. I showed it to a man chosen from among the passers-by at random, but he had never seen one before and had no idea what to make of it.

Luckily, however, I remembered the name of the coaching-inn and at last I managed to find my way back to Charing-cross. I waited at the entrance to the yard for a good hour until a hackney-coach stopped and my mother dismounted.

She was distraught and as soon as she saw me ran to hug me, crying, ‘Is she not here?’

When she was able to speak coherently this was the story she told me: When the coach had halted outside the hotel, Mrs Popplestone had insisted upon settling the fare and had asked my mother meanwhile to enter the hotel to say that she, Mrs Popplestone, was returned and required assistance with her luggage. My mother had done so leaving everything in the coach, and had found to her surprise that nobody at the hotel knew her companion’s name. When she had gone back into the street she had found, of course, that the coach had driven off. So all our luggage was gone!

‘I waited and waited but she did not return,’ she kept saying. ‘And you didn’t come either, Johnnie. But it must be a misunderstanding. Surely she will come back here when she finds I am no longer at the hotel?’

It took me some time to convince her that we had been robbed and then she broke down and wept, ‘How could she do it? I cannot believe it! She was so kind and so respectable. Oh, Johnnie, we have nothing but the clothes we stand up in! Nothing!’

She kept repeating that we had been unlucky, and this irritated me for I thought we had been foolishly trusting. All the time aware that people were staring at us, I led her into the coffee-room. The waiter asked me what the matter was, and when I told him our story, he said it would be a waste of our time to lay an information before a magistrate, and when he took no more notice of us I saw that what I had taken for sympathy was merely curiosity.

At last, when my mother was more composed, we engaged another coach, instructing the driver to take us to a respectable private hotel of his acquaintance. So a few minutes later Mrs and Master Offland alighted before a house in Clifford-street with a modest sign announcing – or, rather, intimating in a genteel under-tone – that it was ‘Nevot’s Private Hotel’. There – having explained to an uninterested clerk why we had no luggage – we engaged rooms and ordered a small luncheon to be brought to us.

We assessed the implications of our loss – all the silver, the good china, and the fine clothes whose sale we had been counting upon to support us. How would we keep ourselves now? Cautiously I raised the prospect of selling the codicil to Sir Perceval, but my mother became so upset at the idea and talked so incoherently of her father and how such a betrayal would break her heart, that I vowed never to mention it again. After a time I asked her if she did not think that in view of our situation, we should go to Mrs Fortisquince after all.

She sighed and said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Later that afternoon, therefore, we made our way towards Golden-square where Uncle Martin’s widow lived.

Chapter 3

As we approached Regent-street, the number of poor people on the streets increased. Noticing that many of them were heavily laden with possessions, I asked my mother the reason for this, but she merely shook her head. Here there were many little girls (some much younger than I) selling flowers, and I noticed that they did not stop us but addressed themselves only to gentlemen – perhaps finding them softer-hearted, it occurred to me.

Mrs Fortisquince’s house was on the western side of the shady square which, though so close to the great thoroughfare which had been recently constructed, was quite retired. We found her name etched on a new brass plate and when we rang, the door was opened by a pleasant young maid who, when my mother explained that she was a connexion of Mrs Fortisquince’s who had come to London unexpectedly and gave her name as ‘Mrs Mellamphy’, showed us into an upstairs parlour and left us. The room, its walls hung with rich flock papers, was most elegantly furnished with tables and chairs of walnut, a marquetry side-table with a matching glass above it, and a satin-covered ottoman. There was a magnificent Turkey-carpet on the floor, and in a corner were a large harp and a pretty pianoforte, on top of which lay some fine needlework and several books. Although the day was quite warm, there was a fire burning in the grate. We waited without sitting down and listened to distant voices and the sound of doors opening and closing in other parts of the house.

At last we heard a step upon the landing, the door opened and a lady came into the room. She was tall, distinctly handsome, and although only a few years older than my mother had the manner of one much her senior. She had a high straight nose between two clear blue eyes, a strong jaw and a thin mouth. She was wearing a half-mourning dress and a cap trimmed with black lace and mourning-ribbons. Her air of gravity was increased by the stately manner in which she entered the room and closed the door behind her. Then she and my mother looked at each other for a moment, neither of them smiling. At last Mrs Fortisquince smiled and my mother timidly did the same.

‘Mary, after so many years! Is it truly you?’

She stepped forward and they embraced quickly.

‘Dear Mrs Fortisquince,’ my mother said.

‘Mrs Fortisquince!’ that lady repeated. ‘You must not be so cold, Mary. Have you forgotten that you used to call me Jemima?’

‘No, of course not. Of course not, Jemima.’

‘That’s better, my dear Mary. Pray seat yourself.’

My mother did so and Mrs Fortisquince, having made herself comfortable on the ottoman, now turned and gazed at me with a mysterious half-smile for some moments before saying softly,

‘And with such a grown-up young man!’

‘This is Johnnie,’ said my mother.

‘Of course it’s Johnnie!’ she said. ‘Why, the resemblance is so obvious. Do you not think so?’ She turned to my mother who lowered her eyes. ‘Well, don’t you?’

‘I… I’m not sure.’

‘Indeed? You do surprise me. Surely he features your father quite remarkably?’

‘My father? Yes, he does,’ my mother said readily, now looking up.

To my surprise, Mrs Fortisquince looked directly at her rather than at me and said, ‘But I can see nothing of his own father.’

My mother reddened and looked down again, ‘No, indeed?’

‘Positively not a trace. Can you?’

My mother looked at her timidly and with a quick glance at myself, briefly put her hand to her lips.

Mrs Fortisquince turned to me raising her eyebrows, ‘Sit down, young man.’

I perched on the edge of the only remaining chair which was before the fire, where the heat was intense for there was no screen.

‘How long must it be since we last met?’ Mrs Fortisquince mused.

‘Many years,’ my mother murmured.

‘Let me consider, when was the last occasion?’

I saw my mother bite her lip.

‘Ah, of course,’ Mrs Fortisquince suddenly. ‘How could I have forgotten? It was that night, was it not?’

My mother nodded dumbly.

‘My dear, I should not have spoken so thoughtlessly. But such a long time,’ Mrs Fortisquince said reflectively. ‘And so much has happened. I am intrigued to know what brings you to Town. Has there been a change at last in the melancholy circumstances of your poor…?’

‘I know nothing of that,’ my mother interrupted and glanced sharply towards me, ‘Johnnie, will you go outside and wait on the landing until I come for you?’

‘There is no necessity,’ said Mrs Fortisquince. ‘You need tell me nothing.’

My mother flushed.

‘But then I wonder what brings you here now. And how mysterious that you did not write to me first!’

‘There was no time. I will explain. But, Jemima, I have said nothing to you of… I am so sorry about…’

She paused.

Mrs Fortisquince sighed, ‘I am, of course, profoundly bereft. But it could at least be no surprise. With a husband so much more advanced in years than oneself it is an event that one must always have foreseen. But enough of my own sorrows. Tell me what brings you to Town.’

‘That is very simply told. I have lost everything. Johnnie and I are penniless.’

‘I am horrified to learn it,’ Mrs Fortisquince said equably. ‘Pray tell me how such a thing came about.’

So my mother had to rehearse the whole sad story. Mrs Fortisquince, who appeared to accept the news with considerable philosophy, became more and more interested as her tale progressed. She asked a number of questions about the nature of the speculation, the assignment of leases, and the redemption of the mortgages, which were of such a technical nature that we did not know how to answer them; and she appeared to be particularly interested in the precise terms of the advice that Mr Sancious had given my mother and in the nature of the financial obligations that she had incurred and of which she now went in fear.

Clearly struck by her curiosity, my mother asked, ‘Do you think Mr Sancious cheated me? You see, Johnnie thinks I should have nothing more to do with him because his advice turned out so badly.’

‘How absurd,’ she said, turning and smiling at me. ‘What an imaginative child it must be. My dear Mary, I am sure Mr Sancious played an entirely honourable part. There is always an element of risk in such a speculation and you admit yourself that he did not disguise this from you.’

‘There you see, Johnnie,’ my mother said, smiling at me triumphantly.

‘Building speculations,’ Mrs Fortisquince explained, ‘have been extremely profitable, but at the same time they have ruined many people in the last few years. I think you should certainly go and see this Mr Sancious again. He will advise you on how to make the best of your present circumstances.’

‘Thank you, Jemima. I believe I shall.’ Then my mother went on, ‘But as if that were not bad enough, we were robbed of all our luggage when we arrived here.’

‘How terrible,’ Mrs Fortisquince said calmly.

There was a pause and seeing that nothing further was to come, my mother, her eyes cast down, went on falteringly while I burned with shame, ‘Until some money arrives from the sale of our furniture, we have literally only a few pounds to live on.’

‘I am profoundly relieved to know that you are expecting some money,’ Mrs Fortisquince said. ‘I know only too well what it is to be pressed by creditors. It may surprise you to learn that I am myself somewhat embarrassed for money since my late husband – because of injudicious dispositions in his latter years – left me considerably less well provided for than I had anticipated. Were it not for that, I would gladly assist you.’

At these words my mother looked at me with a lack of reserve which laid bare how these words had disappointed and hurt her. I felt a sense of shame on her behalf that was mingled with resentment against Mrs Fortisquince.

‘What will you do?’ that lady asked. ‘I suppose you will have to accept a situation as a governess?’

‘If I must,’ my mother answered.

‘Well, just fancy!’ Mrs Fortisquince exclaimed with a bright smile. ‘Isn’t it strange how things turn out? To think that I was once a governess when you were the adored child of a wealthy gentleman.’ When my mother did not return her smile, she moved slightly as if preparing to stand and said, ‘But how kind of you to think of coming to see me so soon after your arrival. Especially when you have had so many other things to think about.’

Presumably hearing the note of dismissal in her voice, my mother said, ‘I think we should go now, Johnnie.’

‘My dears, must you?’ said Mrs Fortisquince as she rose and rang the bell. As we stood she asked with languid curiosity, ‘Where are you staying?’

Before my mother could answer I replied, ‘The Golden-cross, Piccadilly.’

My mother looked at me in astonishment and horror. I frowned slightly to indicate that she should not contradict me.

Since the young servant came in at that moment, Mrs Fortisquince did not notice this exchange. She kissed my mother farewell at the door of the room. ‘Mind you come and see me again, soon,’ she said, and the way she paused before that final word strangely conveyed the exactly contrary effect.

We descended the stairs and the maid accompanied us to the street-door. As soon as it slammed shut behind us my mother exclaimed, ‘Johnnie, whyever did you tell such an untruth?’

‘I didn’t like her,’ I said.

‘What can you mean?’

‘Why did she want us to trust Mr Sancious so much?’

‘Oh do stop that, Johnnie. You’re quite unreasonable about Mr Sancious. Why did you lie to her?’

‘Mamma, don’t you think she could be connected with whoever it is who is looking for us, and that is why she wanted to know how to find us?’

‘No, Johnnie, of course not.’ Then she hesitated, ‘Well, I suppose it is just possible.’

‘Anyway, there’s nothing to be gained by having anything more to do with her, is there?’

‘I suppose you are right.’

‘Then, Mamma, tell me what Mrs Fortisquince meant by ‘that night’? And who were you talking about?’

She clutched my arm, ‘Not

Reviews for The Quincunx

[pattylee-621744 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Definitely Dickens. I liked it, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Once or twice in the nearly 800 pages I got annoyed that the mystery would just not be solved. It kept morphing into yet another conundrum. But just when I was about to say Bah Humbug, it kept me reading onward. Try it.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

By most sane standards this is a ridiculous book. At least four times as long as the average modern novel, with a vast family-inheritance-saga plot that brings in just about every element of 19th century life that you remember from Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry Mayhew, Thackeray, Trollope, the Brontës, and many other English 19th-century writers (there's even a little echo of The prisoner of Zenda at one point...). Not quite everything: the chapter in which Our Hero finds himself forced to work in a hellish Lancashire cotton mill seems to have been inadvertently missed out, and there's a mysterious absence of any serious discussion of religion. But we get shady lawyers, complex financial transactions, missing documents, elopements, murders, street crime, poverty, prostitution, burglary, body-snatching, "schools" and "lunatic asylums" that are nothing more than places to imprison inconvenient family-members, domestic service, enclosures, workhouses, stage-coaches, a public hanging, a tour of the London sewers, and much, much more. There's even some entertaining nineteenth-century spelling to keep us amused, with (too) much play being made with sopha, lanthorn, visiter, shore (for sewer), and the like. And a few chapters in the central section are from the diary of a female narrator who can't spell at all...So it's hardly surprising if, as Palliser complains in his 1992 afterword, this is a book that most readers just treat as a clever pastiche of the Victorian novel and some took as a satire on Mrs Thatcher's "Victorian values". (The action of the book takes place in the 1820s, so it's not really "Victorian" at all, but many of Dickens's and Collins's novels were set in the same pre-railway period.) Palliser is simply too much the academic literary scholar, keen to use his expertise to tell us as much as he possibly can about the type of things that would have been going on in the minds of his nineteenth-century characters, and it all rather swamps his grand literary design for the book. We're more or less forced to notice that there's something going on with fivefold patterns (five parts, each divided into five books, each containing five chapters), and we're never quite as convinced as the narrator is that we've been given a complete solution to the mysteries of the plot, but there's just so much detail for us to keep track of that there's very little incentive to do what Palliser is apparently expecting the reader to do and work out alternative ways of making sense of the inter-relationships between the characters, different from the family-trees he helpfully scatters in our path. The ending is a kind of clumsy compromise between our need for some sort of neat closure that would allow the narrator to stop work and the author's need to show that this is a book written in the late 20th century when no-one believes that literature has a place for fully-determined stories any more, but I doubt if many readers will follow the example of the apocryphal friend of the author who was so thrown off by the ambiguity in the last sentence that he went back to the beginning and started again. Life's too short!

[liz.mabry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the longest book I've read in a while, but it was fantastic. Read during a beach vacation and it kept my attention the entire time. Twisty and sneaky and lovely.

It's very Dickensian - which is usually not something I enjoy, but it's made me wonder whether I shouldn't give Great Expectations, etc. a second change.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

From the time of its release, my friends and I were all fascinated by Oliver Stone's film JFK. We'd watch it together and discuss such for hours, debating the motives and agency each suspect would have. This continued for many years and I'd wager if circumstances allowed such, we'd all still gather and view the film again. Most of us were never drawn to the literature surrounding the assassination, by which I mean the myriad accounts and theorists who created an additional universe of sinister possibility from that sunny afternoon in Dallas. By consensus our chief complaint was the too- tidy character of X, played with aplomb by Donald Sutherland. This walking Rosetta Stone meets Jim Garrison at Arlington National and proceeds to connect all the dots in Garrison's investigation. We'd groan with how connected it would thus appear. My problem with Quincunx was very similar. The primary characters would make impossibly stupid decisions, regroup and continue. This extends for 800 pages and about a dozen horrifying situations. Nearing collapse, the reader is more fortunate than John Huffam as a whole cadre of Donald Sutherlands step forward and reveal ALL the veiled areas of the multifaceted plot. I could deal with that. What was indigestible was the dearth of humor. There's hardly a crackle of hilarity in the entire tome. One would imagine this titular homage (John Huffam are Dickens' two middle names) to Dickens would contain some of the master's black mischief. This isn't the case.

I tip my hat to Kris and Aloha. I hectored them into reading this. I hope it wasn't painful.

[beyondedenrock · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Quincunx is an enticing, entrancing recreation of a Victorian novel, written in such perfect period prose and holding so much that is typical of the Victorian novel that you might well believe that Charles Palliser had excavated it and not sat down to write late in the twentieth century.I skated around it for quite some time, because it is such a very big book, and I read a couple of the author’s later, shorter works; but now that I have read this book I have to say that completely outclasses them.The story begins with a young boy, named John, who lives with his mother, Mary, in an English village. They are not wealthy but they are not poor either, and so they are able to live quietly and quite comfortably. As he grows up John comes to realise that the way they live is not normal and that his mother is keeping secrets; that there must be reasons why she is so very protective of him, why he isn’t allowed to play with other children, why anyone who comes to their door is unwelcome.When a relative he has never met dies – and after he has broken more than one of his mother’s rules – things go terribly wrong for Mary and John. They lose what small capital they had, Mary comes to believe that they are no longer safe in their home, and so mother and son set out for London.Things go wrong again, and Mary does not know who they can trust; who is really her friend and who is in the employ of the man she believes to be her enemy?The plot is much too elaborate to explain, but it spins around a simple scrap of paper: the codicil to a will written half a century earlier. The will and the codicil had implications for five families; they had been written for unhappy reasons in unhappy circumstances, and they had created greed, hatred, madness and murder in five generations. They affected John, but he didn’t know how, he didn’t who his father was, and he didn’t know who his friends and enemies were.He did know that he was in danger, caught in a complicated conspiracy, and that he had to work out how to survive and claim the inheritance that he believed was his.Every kind of character, every scenario, every setting, you might think of finding in a Victorian novel is to be found in this book.Sometimes the plot lingers, but I found the details of day to day living and how practical problems were faced quite fascinating. At other times it rattles along, almost so quickly that I wished I might have spent a little more time with some places and people, though what happened next always captured my interest and didn’t allow me to miss the things that had gone by.The plot is relentless, always focused on John’s story; mainly through his own first person account, broken only when he hears the stories of others and when an omniscient narrator steps from the shadows to show scenes that will affect John’s progress.It’s construction is so elaborate and so clever.The atmosphere is wonderful, and this really is the perfect book for dark winter evenings.Imagine that Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens sat down together with all of the time in the world to create a masterpiece, drawing on their own greatest works and the great works of their contemporaries, each writing to their strengths and reining in the other’s weaknesses, and trying things they has never tried before, to wonderful effect.This feels a little like that.There really is everything you could want in a Victorian novel, and I caught echoes of many beloved stories. And then there are things that feel a little more modern but work so well: a narrator who may not be wholly reliable, questions that are left unanswered, an ending that lets the reader draw their own conclusion, and a structure that slowly moves into the light ….There are five related families over five generations, whose five crests form a quincunx, an arrangement of five objects with one in each corner of a square and one at the centre. The novel itself is divided into five parts, and each part is divided into five books and then five chapters.There are so many small but significant details. I spotted some of them but I am sure that I missed others, and that this is a novel that would reveal much more on a second reading.It has failings. John and Mary could both, for different reasons, be infuriating. Occasionally a character or a situation was compromised a little for the sake of the plot. The later chapters were less subtle than what had come before. There was at least one unanswered question that needed an answer: the question of John’s parentage.But, as a whole, The Quincunx worked wonderfully well.It is more a book for the head than a book for the heat.And yet I loved that quite near the end I came to realise that it was also a coming of age story.I read it much more quickly that I thought I would. I had to keep turning the pages. I was intrigued. I had to know. I couldn’t quite explain how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but I have a good idea, and I think that it works.I was completely caught up in the world of this book, I miss it now that it is over, and I can’t help wondering about the lives of many of the characters I met beyond the pages of the book.

[katesherrod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I suppose we could regard Charles Palliser's Quincunx as final proof that for every genre or great genre master of fiction, however obscure or archaic, there is not only someone who will attempt a pastiche of it/him, but sometimes there is even one who is very, very good at it. Charles Palliser is one of these, an otaku's otaku in the realm of... the nineteenth century social novel?

I didn't know there could be such a thing. Did you?

For Quincunx* is a Dickensian pastiche of the very highest order, though it goes Dickens one better, or at least earlier, by setting itself in Britain's late Regency (and therefore pre-Victorian by a good bit) period. And perhaps it takes the Dickens to 11 at the very least, both in terms of legal/inheritance wrangling as plot driver and of risible degrees and numbers of coincidences at least in that Dickens' and Palliser's Londons have hilariously small populations.

And there is still more to keep the 21st century reader chuckling, for about halfway through, when a certain heraldry puzzle assumes paramount importance, the penny drops and one realizes she is in fact reading a high quality prose version of a hidden object game. All that is missing is the frustrating experience of "breaking" the cursor by mis-clicking on too many objects, but then again, that could be substituted for by our young hero's continually narrowly escaping yet another assassination attempt -- or only sort of escaping, continually forced as he is to more or less respawn as the penniless, near-helpless, delerious, paranoid, starving waif that he is for most of the novel.

And why is this so? Because, as I said, property inheritance and greed are the great drivers of the plot. An ancient francophone family (lots of glorious surnames feature in this story: Umphraville, Palphramond, Mompesson!) whose possession of a profitable estate dates back, apparently, to the time of William the Conqueror and whose bloodline includes Plantagenet ancestry, fell on hard times a few generations before our hero (John Mellamphy, he who answers to oh so many other names as he grows up) was born has been shadow-fighting over different versions of the patriarch's will in addition to publicly battling it out in the Court of Chancery (shades of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, eh wot?). Depending on what document finally surfaces and is approved, one family could be turned off the estate in favor of, well, several others.

The plot is intricate and small details matter; like in playing a hidden object game, we have to scrutinize every scene with care, somewhat hampered by our guide through all of this, John of the Many Surnames, from whom Secrets Have Been Kept and whose life is perpetually both endangered and protected by different interests, depending on which will from which they would benefit.

All this and all the Dickensian social justice hand-wringing you could ask for, as we spend time with body snatchers, dishonest bankers and lawyers, out-and-out bandit gangs, "down below men" who make their living salvaging coins and other valuables that have fallen into the sewers, starving Victorian garment workers, and, every once in a while, the gentry living high and betting too much on cards and horses. Like you do.

If that sounds like something you might enjoy, you'll enjoy the hell out of this book. I did, even though I snickered a lot. Hey, snickering is good.

*And I absolutely wound up reading this one now because of Aliette de Bodard, whose Obsidian and Blood Aztec godpunk trilogy employs the visual device and term of "quincunx" - a five-fold cross, more or less - and every time I came across the term, I remembered that my mother had presented me with a battered but still nice hardcover edition of Quincunx and it was still the substantial base of my small but formidable tower of dead tree TBR. Brains are funny old things.

[ecw0647 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The quincunx is an arrangement of five items in a square based on a cross that was used for several five-domed Byzantine churches. It's also a terribly important design in a novel of five parts by Charles Palliser that is absolutely riveting. Set in England during the early nineteenth century, it is narrated by a child whose age we are never told, even as he grows older. His name changes also as he realizes he has been hidden to protect his life, for he is the direct descendant of a wealthy landowner who left him everything in a will and a peculiar codicil, and the land will revert to others upon his death. Palliser's book makes a grand Dickensian sweep through the slums and ballrooms of Victorian England. John begins to piece together the puzzle, but only after he and his mother are manipulated and schemed out of everything they own Friends turn out to be enemies and ostensible enemies become friends in a topsy-turvy world.

Palliser did extensive research into the period, and intricate detail lends marvelously to the setting. And what an environment. A rigid class system prevented any kind of upward social mobility. Women were to be seen, not heard. They had no skills, were prevented from getting any, and when destitute, turned to prostitution as virtually their only means of survival. Greed and corruption were pervasive.

Intricate legal mechanisms were devised by rich landowners to deprive the poor of whatever little land they owned; more machinations made things worse by driving the price o flab or down. "Close towns" were created by buying up "freeholders," whose houses were then destroyed; only certain people were then allowed to live in the new cottages that were built. This meant the landowner did not have to "pay the paritch," a form of tax that was used to provide welfare for the completely indigent, of which there were many.

Some of the jobs the poor were forced into are graphically depicted. The "shore-hunters," for example, climbed down into the sewers at night during low tide, working their way through the labyrinth of tunnels underneath London to the spots where the sewers washed most of their detritus. This was picked through for whatever coins might have fallen down drain holes and been swept toward the river by the rain. It was filthy, dangerous (the tides were capricious and one did not dare to be caught underground at high tide) and not very rewarding. Often it was all there was. If a dead body was found, it was the custom not to strip it for anything valuable (like clothes), because after the body washed into the river it would be scavenged by those who eked out their living in such a manner. Stripping the body would be considered "robbing them of their trade."

John finally learns the secrets of the wills and codicils and the details of the murder that had haunted his family. Beware! Once begun, this book is difficult to put down. It will also make you want to dig out Dickens again.

[stuart10er_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As slow as this read was for me, it was an easy read - although I really only got pulled into it after about half way. This book is written in the style of Dickens and other Victorian era writers - of which this writer is a scholar in. He succeeds well. Although it seemed like a pastiche of Dickens rather than something that he would have written. The characters don't have the same Romantic era exaggeration of Good or Evil. Most of the characters are very modernly drawn in grey rather than a Dickensian Black and White. That being said, the story of a boy involved in a five-family inheritance fight and all the people impacted by it before finally being resolved is more convuluted and involved more characters than I think Dickens would have been prepared to write. As a serial novelist - I think he would have worried that his audience would become lost - as I was a few times - but it is well written enough that I wasn't lost for long. I also thought that the "moral" of the story was also drawn too lightly for Dickens. Dickens would have piled it on thickly. So, this seemed like a Victorian story with Victorian style and characters - but told by a modern person for a modern audience. Still, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who loves Dickens. If you hate Dickens, you will probably hate this one too.

[pajarita_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

------------------------------------------------------This book of course sets out to recreate a traditional nineteenth century novel. The language, the plot curves, the characters, the settings, these elements all work admirably towards that end. If you are transported by historically accurate nineteenth century details; if you love very, very complex mysteries; if intrigues and the Gordian knots of family genealogies lure you; if the you are charmed by the reconstruction of pre-Victorian plot conventions, this book is definitely for you. The obvious scholarship that went into this work is clearly impressive.There are also very compelling studies in pre-Victorian class structure, economy, and land speculation--with its attendant side effects and spin offs. Many of the characters are well defined and endearing. So the cumulative whole of this book is worth your time.But I, myself, have never been a big fan of mysteries; and although this book aspires to be more than simply a classic of the mystery genre, there are enough of the plot systems required for a mystery, included in this book, for [book:The Quincunx|824986] to be compared effectively to that literary convention. And what I have always found tedious in mysteries is the denouement: that gathering in parlour while the great detective explains, to us, that “…the maidservant couldn’t possibly have killed the Viscount because she was in the conservatory while….” Well about two-thirds of the way into this large book, an exhaustive sequence of denouements begins. “Ah ha! So the countess was really the same woman who……….”“So Exeter is really the grandson of……..”“So the reason that Charles left the banquet so early was……”These start slowly at first; but occur more frequently, and accelerate manically as the conclusion approaches. And because the plot twists, the mysteries, and the revelations are so labyrinthine—so, therefore, are the denouements. And, therefore, these explications become numerous, frequent, and tedious.But many readers, I am certain, will very much enjoy the unraveling of this complex puzzle. And this process allowed a thorough and admirable investigation into human motivations and the results of our actions.So for me this was not what I expected, but a worthwhile read. And it was tedious at times.

[sarbow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It starts off slow, but once the main cahracters get into london, the movie gets quite interesting and engaging.

[bjbookman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Add a pinch of Trollope's 'Orley Farm' and some Dickens' "Bleak House" and a bit of Collins' 'Armadale" and a big helping of le Fanu's 'the Rose and the Key', you have this novel.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a pastiche of an early Victorian novel, complete with archaic words and quaint spellings, but the author goes into details about things that a Victorian author would not have, such as the squalid lives of the London poor, body-snatching and prostitution.One of the most interesting things about "The Quincunx" is that it is written as if it is a real early 19th century novel. There are obsolete spellings; sopha for sofa, clew for clue and lanthorn for lantern, and archaicslang; blunt for money, flatt for fool, fakement for job (as in a criminal undertaking), pinked for stabbed and prigged for stole. John's mother is a particularly poor speller. When she wrote in her letters for John that the Clothiers were not 'gentile' enough for Nick Clothier to be a good match in marriage for her great-aunt, I thought it was a misspelling and she meant 'genteel'. But later on there are enough hints to make it clear that the Clothiers were of Jewish origin, so did Mary mean gentile after all, or did she mean genteel but make a Freudian slip in her letter, or maybe this is a pun put in deliberately by the author.In the Afterword, Charles Palliser mentions the book that first got him interested in the plight of the poor in Victorian times when he read it as a child. It was called "London Labour and the London Poor" and contained firsthand accounts of the lives of the poor in London, collected by Henry Mayhew who to start his work by the novels of Charles Dickens. It sounds like a fascinating read - if it's not still in print, I'll have to look on abebooks to see whether it's available second-hand.The most interesting of the jobs described in the Quincunx is when John is working the shores with Mr Digweed and Joey. He assumes that 'working the shores' means beachcombing along the river at low tide. However he finds that the toshers' job is much more dangerous than that, as the shores that they search for lost coins and other valuables are actually the sewers deep below London, so amongst other dangers they are risking tunnel collapses and being caught underground by the incoming tide or a rainstorm. I was still confused having read all 1100+ pages plus the author's afterword.Skip the rest of my reviews iif you haven't read the book, as my ramblings about possible solutions to the mystery will make no sense to you anyway. As you read this book, you realise that there are no coincidences. Almost everyone John meets is linked to the mysterious conspiracies surrounding him, but there is always a logical link from one acquaintance to the next.In the afterword Charles Palliser mentions the Swedish translator's problem with the last sentence, due to Swedish having separate words for maternal (morfar) and paternal (farfar) grandfather. Next time I'm in Sweden I'll have to have a look in a bookshop and just read the last sentence to see which word he decided to use.At the beginning of the book, I suspected that John's mother's father was also (incestuously) John's father, due to her embarrassment and confusion every time there was a verbal father/grandfather confusion and when people commented on how much John looked like him. However, later on I changed my mind and anyway that would not fit in with the final sentence at all.Lydia's lover was killed by Jeoffrey Escreet, so according to the final sentence of the story, he has to be John's grandfather. This would rule out Peter Clothier as John's father. He and John's mother Mary were only married for about a day before he was arrested and committed to the asylum, and from Mary's account there didn't seem to have been time for them to consummate the marriage. However there is always the possibility that they didn't wait until they were married and she wouldn't actually have mentioned the consummation in a letter to her son anyway. So it's possible that John's suspicions are entirely unfounded and that his father is in fact his mother's husband, Peter Clothier. In that case John is wrong about Jeoffrey Escreet being his grandfather and the final sentence of the novel is false. If JE is John's morfar, then he must be Mary's real father (which is possible because her supposed father John, had lived in JE's house since before he was married and Mary was brought up there). As JE was related to Mary's supposed father there could still have been a ressemblance between John Jr & John Sr, or it could have been that the people who made the remarks knew that JE was Mary's real father and were being catty, which would explain why Mary blushed.On the other hand, if JE is John's farfar, then John's father could either be John Sr. (my first suspicion), or Martin Fortisquence. JE invited them to live with him when they finished university, and was very fond of them both. John Sr. returned his love but Martin never did, which could possibly be because he knew or at least suspected that JE was his father and resented him for this. I think (but I could be wrong about this) that it said at some point that John Sr. and Martin looked like each other, which could only be explained if it was Martin who was JE's son, as otherwise he would not be related to John Sr. Oh bother - it's just occurred to me that maybe they are both JE's sons. Both their mothers would have known JE, so it is possible.If Martin is John's father it would explain Jemima F's hostility to Mary, which seemed too extreme to be explained by being jealous of Mary's wealth when they were children. This is another possible explanation for her catty remarks about who John took after in looks. It would explain why Martin supported Mary financially and protected her and John from their enemies, but I'm surprised that he would have left his son nothing in his will, unless that was the price he paid to placate his wife. It also fits in with Mr Advowson's information about John's baptism.The people who could have told John the truth are frankly unhelpful. John remembered that Mary had written "I could not bear to think that the father of my child had killed my Papa", but that is no help at all, since Jeoffrey Escreet, Peter Clothier & Martin Fortisquence were all in the house on the night of the murder.Jemima told John "I never believed that the murderer was your father", which is too obscure by half, as I can't tell who she thinks the father was or who she thinks the murderer was, or even whether she knows the identity of either for certain or is just guessing. However, I can't understand why John does not press her about this, as she is very possibly the only person alive who may be able to answer his questions.Tentative conclusionsI am leaning towards Jeoffrey Escreet being John's farfar and Martin Fortisquence being his father, but John misinterpreted so many clues throughout the book, that my secondary theory is that Peter Clothier is his father.Sometime very soon I am going to have to read the whole book again and look out for more clues. In such a long book (the story ends on page 1191), it's really hard to flick through and find the bits I want to check again. A loose end.What happened to Lydia's baby? Did it die as she was told, or did I miss a clue and it was adopted like JE was a generation earlier? Oh, I just thought, in the afterword it says that there are clues to suggest that the Digweeds are also related to John, so maybe there's a link there, as I didn't pick up on that at all

[adpaton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the most paradoxical books I have ever read, the Quincunx is a plot-driven page-turner, well-written and compulsively readable, yet dense and boring at times, more inexplicable than mysterious - more parody than pastiche. Palliser was obviously influenced by Charles Dickens, taking his main inspiration from the books Bleak House - both deal with a chancery suit and inheritance - and David Copperfield - both feature weak and foolish mothers plus sojourns in the criminal undersworld - and Quincunx is seriously unsuitable to anyone who does not like their books long and wordy and perplexingly indirect. The hero is named [initially] Huffam, but that is the only semi-normal name in the book as the writer proceeds to deliver names of increasing lenth and unlikeliness - as he explains in the afterword, he has been collecting unusual names for decades, and Mompesson, Barbellion and Fortisquince are pretty commonplace compared to some of the more outlandish surnames he uses, such as Advowson, Maliphant and Palphramond.Then there is the question of John Huffam's paternity - or John Mallamphy at he is called at this stage. I thought I was just stupid when, given the fraught wedding night enjoyed by Mary and Martin Huffam, I couldn't see any window of opportunity during which conception might have taken place. I reread the brief descriptions in the book and it still seemed unlikely. To my relief, the internet contains a vast body of work devoted to this very theme.I have always wanted to discuss this book with a friend but although I have pressed it on many people, no one has ever taken to it - for which I cannot wholey blame them: fascinating, entranching , spell-binding, even awesome Quincunx may be, but it is not particuarly enjoyable.

[sableindian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is like a Charles Dickens novel. It starts off pretty slow. I found a review that I like: "John Huffam had a happy early childhood with his mother, but he always sensed a secret being hidden in the shadows of their lives. Eventually he learns that since his birth his mother has been hiding him from people who wish him harm. John is an potential heir to an extremely wealthy estate, a lost will and a codicil officially name John the heir, and he embarks on a quest to gain his hereditary rights. As he wanders penniless through England, enemies accost him at every turn. John learns that he cannot trust anyone, perhaps not even the beautiful, wealthy girl he has grown attached to. "By Fran Laniado, Resident Scholar

[randalrh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There's at least a star here for all the work that went into researching this. It's the kind of thing that's right in my wheelhouse--complex, self-consistent historical mystery. The kicker here is that it's self-consistent in it's inconsistency, something even harder to pull off.

[riverwillow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn't think they wrote books like this any more. I will admit to having a great deal of affection for the nineteenth century novel and this novel ranks alongside those sweeping novels written by Dickens and Eliot in its complexity and density. Wonderful.

[30oddyearsofzan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Quincunx is the first book I've read this year that I haven't been able to finish, although paradoxically I would still recommend it. Palliser's quasi-Victorian potboiler is meticuously researched and technically brilliant, but I found myself unable to warm to it, and its humourless, priggish hero. I managed 931 of the 1200-odd pages, but when I realised I'd worked out the villain about a hundred pages previously - and he was my favourite character - I gave up.Nevertheless, this is absorbing and well worth a read - I may well attempt to complete it in the future.

[cabegley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is so plot-driven that I hesitate to give much information, but suffice it to say that young John moves from the remote North countryside to London to try to discover the truth about his origins, slowly uncovering clues about an inheritance that may or may not rightfully belong to him. We travel with John all over London (and underneath it), encountering company both high and low.I was completely absorbed by this book, staying up several nights for hours past my usual bedtime in order to read just a little more. My heart raced for the last hour or so--when's the last time a book did that for me? The plotting is incredibly convoluted (at some point, I wished I had kept notes), but it all ties together beautifully. There is a wealth of period detail--apparently, Palliser spent twelve years researching--all of which weaves seamlessly into the story.Readers may be put off by the length--my hardcover copy is 788 pages of small type--but those who take it on will be amply rewarded. A highly recommended read!

[shawnd_72 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Umberto Eco meets Charles Dicken, with a little Anthony Trollope and Ian Caldwell thrown in. Not many British Victorian novels written in 1989 +/- 20 years but here it is. Deep, complex, fairly fast paced but not as accelerated as they've become since it was written. I recommend this. Small type and 700+ pages.

[poulantik · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

a fantastic novel in the dickensian style about a struggle for nobility and with a precise and gruesom desciption of London in early 19th century.

[oddvark59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Simply the greatest novel written in the second half of the twentieth century. Complex plot, complex characters, and a great Dickensian romp through London and the English countryside.

[bibliobeck · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book! It's a mathematical/historical mystery and so much more. It really needs reading with a notepad by your side which I intend to do on the second reading. I became so enthralled that I was reading late into the night (and early into the morning). I've just ordered The Unburied and have very high expectations.

[ablueidol · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bit of a sucker for a good victorian melodrama without the pages of desctiption that tend to put me off reading say Dickens. Love the fact that the author is as much achacter in the story morallsing and speculating as the players are.

[jbd1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A twisted and suspenseful Dickensian-style monster of a book, intensely absorbing and affecting. Well worth every page.