Old Bestseller Review: Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Review: Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 

a review by Rich Horton

This is a somewhat famous mid-19th Century novel that, I gather, was somewhat (though never entirely) neglected for some time for the usual reasons, in some mix or another -- it's a noticeably "popular" novel in conception and ambition, it was a tremendous financial success (and indeed its author, over a long career, became quite wealthy), its plot is very melodramatic, and the author was a woman (and a woman with a faintly scandalous reputation, at least at the outset.) In more recent times these prejudices have lessened in importance, and it is now reasonably well established in what might be called the secondary canon of Victorian fiction. Braddon's reputation might track, to some extent, with that of her friend and sort of mentor, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, or with her contemporary and fellow writer of "sensation novels", Wilkie Collins; both of whom faced the same prejudices as Braddon with the exception of their sex.

I have had this novel in the back of my mind for a while, and when it popped up recently as a free audiobook, I figured, why not? And I was grabbed from the beginning. It is a great deal of sheer fun. And besides that -- it is really well-written. And there is a lot going on besides the sensational plot that only adds to the interest. Look -- it's not Middlemarch. But hardly anything is! It's a fine novel, with an admittedly implausible plot that is nonetheless fascinating, and with plenty of trenchant observation, well-described situations, and nicely turned lines and paragraphs. 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in 1835 (a day (and 124 years) before my birthday), to a nominally middle-class family, but her mother left her father, who was unfaithful and a failure at his business, when Mary was five. She grew up in straitened circumstances, and became an actress at age 17 to help support her mother, but turned to writing a few years later. She fell in love with her publisher, John Maxwell, who was about a decade older, and still married. (His wife is often said to have been confined to an asylum, while other sources say she lived in her family's home. I suspect the latter is true, and the asylum rumor derived from Braddon's fiction.) Lady Audley's Secret was her first major success, though about her sixth novel (her first appeared in 1860 -- she wrote quickly.) It began serialization in Maxwell's magazine Robin Goodfellow in 1861, but after the magazine failed, it moved to Sixpenny Magazine in 1862, and was also published in book form that year. It was sufficiently popular that it was serialized again in 1863.

Braddon continued to write for most of the rest of her long life. She became friends quite early with Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose work she admired, and they corresponded regularly. She died in 1915, at the age of 79. Her writing made her rich, and she was also an editor and publisher (notably of Belgravia Magazine.) None of her other novels achieved the same fame as her first, though Aurora Floyd (1863) still has readers. She had six children with John Maxwell. (Maxwell and Braddon had married in 1874, after the death of Maxwell's first wife.) One of them, William Babington Maxwell, became a successful novelist as well (though his books do seem forgotten now). William was also a friend of King Edward VII (Victoria's immediate successor), suggesting that Braddon and Maxwell had achieved respectability. Mary's brother Edward moved to India and then Australia while she was still young, and eventually became Premier of Tasmania, and remains a somewhat significant figure in Australian history -- so he too seems to have been a success. 

I confess I find Mary Elizabeth Braddon's life fascinating and indeed rather inspiring. But what about the novel at hand?

We open at Audley Court, the home of Sir Michael Audley, and his daughter Alicia. We learn quickly that Sir Michael has just remarried -- a very young woman, 21 or 22 years old, named Lucy Graham. Lucy had been the governess to Dr. Dawson's three girls, a very accomplished artist and pianist, of a very sweet disposition, much liked by the local people, and very pretty. Sir Michael is very happy with his new wife, but his daughter does not get along with her at all.

Next we meet Edward Talboys, sailing from Australia back to England. After over three years in Australia, he has made his fortune, and is ready to reunite with his wife and young son. There is a fascinating conversation with a fellow traveller, a Miss Morley, who has been in Australia for 15 years and hopes at last to be able to marry her fiancé. The two share their hopes, and their fears -- will their loves be waiting still for them? (We never do find out what happened to Miss Morley -- I admit I'd like to know the rest of her story.)

And then we encounter Robert Audley, Sir Michael's nephew. He is an idle man about town -- trained to be a barrister, and so licensed, but he has not taken up that profession, preferring to read French novels and smoke cigars and take care of his birds and dogs. By chance he runs into a man while heading to his bank -- and recognizes his old friend George Talboys. George asks him for help depositing the money he's made in Australia, and then mentions that he looking for his wife Helen Talboys. And then they see a notice in the Times, announcing the death of one Helen Talboys, aged only 22. 

So the main action is set in motion. George is in despair, but Robert convinces him to join him on a visit to Audley Court. Somehow Lady Audley is never available to meet Robert ... indeed, she makes a sudden journey to London. Robert and Alicia cross swords a bit -- it's clear to the reader that Alicia is in love with her cousin, but Robert, though he likes her well enough, is unaware of her feelings. She does let them up to her father's rooms, including a newly painted portrait of his new wife -- and George is struck dumb.

The reader knows what's going on by now, of course. On another visit George is at last able to maneuver a meeting with Lady Audley ... and then he disappears. It seems he has returned to Australia. Robert becomes obsessed with finding what really happened to him, especially after his visits to the offices of the ships to Australia, and his advertisements in Australian papers, prove fruitless. So he starts tracking, as best he can, the history of George Talboy's life, and his marriage, and his father-in-law and son. And then he looks into the life of Helen Talboys before she met George; and into the history of Lucy Graham before her time with Dr. Dawson. He is convinced that something quite terrible has happened to George, but proof is hard to find. He is ready to throw it all up, especially after a visit to George's father reveals that his father cares little for George's fate ... but then George's sister accosts Robert -- and between her passion to find out what really happened to her beloved brother, and her beautiful brown eyes, Robert realizes he is quite lost -- he has at last fallen for a woman, and he is bound to carry his search for the secret of Robert's fate to the bitter end.

I've failed to mention another key thread -- the story of Lady Audley's maid, Phoebe Marks, and her brutish cousin, later husband, Luke Marks. They have happened on Lady Audley's secret, and Luke blackmails Lady Audley to set him up as proprietor of a public house. But a blackmailer never stops, of course, so -- well, I'll say no more for now, except to note that bits of Braddon's life story show up in this book: the bigamy aspect, a woman confined to an asylum, a man who goes to Australia to make his fortune. 

So -- it's a wildly plotty (and well plotted) melodramatic novel. That's fine, but weren't those a ha'pence a dozen in the Victorian Era? Couldn't (and didn't) Charlotte Brame have done much the same? Well, yes, but ... Braddon could really write. And she was doing -- cleverly -- much more than telling the melodramatic surface story. For one thing, the book is really funny when it wants to be, especially in describing Robert Audley's character, and allowing him the occasional exaggerated rant about women (before he falls in love) -- these read to me like Braddon getting some frustration off her chest about some of the things she'd heard from men over the years. There are other comic delights, too, for example her aside about Lucy Graham's teacher, Mrs. Vincent, and her parsimony: "Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay [Miss Tonks] from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher." (This in the midst of a beautifully observed passage about Mrs. Vincent's poverty and her living quarters.) The depiction of George Talboy's absurdly strict father is also a comic -- or tragicomic -- delight.

Also: Robert Audley on women: "What a wonderful solution to life's enigma there is in petticoat government. A man might lie in the sunshine and eat lotuses and fancy it 'always afternoon,' if his wife would let him. But she won't, bless her impulsive heart and active mind. She knows better than that. ... She drives her husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into Parliament. ... That's why incompetent men sometimes sit in high places, and interpose their poor, muddled intellects between the things to be done and the people that can do them, making universal confusion in the helpless innocence of well-placed incapacity. The square men in the round holes are pushed into them by their wives. The Eastern potentate who declared that women were at the bottom of all mischief, should have gone a little further and seen why it is so. It is because women are never lazy. ... They are the stronger sex, the noisier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex. They want freedom of opinion, variety of occupation, do they? Let them have it. Let them be lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, soldiers, legislators -- anything they like -- but let them be quiet -- if they can."

There's also some subtle thematic play underneath the surface. Characters have doubles, characters wear masks, play parts. Inevitably, some contemporary readers see a homoerotic element to the friendship between Robert Audley and George Talboys. I think you can try to read it that way if you like, but -- frankly, not every male friendship is queer, and sometimes the automatic assumptions some readers bring to such friendships can get a bit tiresome. The novel, also, is concerned with class and financial status, and how poverty -- or any change in financial situations -- can drive people. Certainly this is central to Lady Audley's life and actions, but also to those of Lucy and Phoebe Marks, of Mrs. Vincent, even of George Talboys. 

The novel is surely not perfect. For all Braddon's awareness of class, she retains class prejudices, particularly in the treatment of Phoebe and Luke. And she is keenly aware of women's place and society, and she acknowledges its unfairness -- but she also is quite Victorian in her perceptions of gender roles. The characters -- with the exceptions, to some extent, of Lady Audley and Robert -- are not precisely deeply observed, and only Robert really grows (and I'm not sure I bought all of his growth.) There is also a degree of "characterization by looks" and of hinting at character by things like noticing that Alicia Audley's dogs hate Lady Audley. The last portion of the novel -- apparently finished at great speed after the opportunity for a new serialization arose -- is rushed a bit, with key revelations left to a long confessional monologue, and with what should be a major romance plot rather scanted.

But those reservations aside, I found this novel a pure delight to read. It's longish, at some 150,000 words, but reads rapidly. Truly gripping, quite well-written, with some real depth beneath the lurid surface. Highly recommended.