The Cardboard Crown

Langton Quartet #1

by Martin Boyd

"A rueful, cheerfully savage novel . . . lit with unearthly fires and enchantments."—The New York Times

It is 1949, and Guy Langton's house—like his family's fortunes—has seen better days. But when Guy finds his grandmother's diaries he chances on an intricate web of deception and reveals the complex fate of his family over three generations.

Genres: Australia, Fiction, 20th Century, British Literature, Historical Fiction, Classics

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 1952

About the author

Martin à Beckett Boyd (10 June 1893 - 3 June 1972) was an Australian writer born Lucerne, Switzerland, into the à Beckett-Boyd family—a family synonymous with the establishment, the judiciary, publishing and literature, and the visual arts since the early 19th century in Australia.
Boyd was an expatriate novelist, memoirist, and poet who spent most of his life after World War One in Europe, primarily Britain. His work drew heavily on his own life and family, with his novels frequently exploring the experiences of the Anglo-Australian upper and middle classes. His writing was also deeply influenced by his experience of serving in World War One.
His siblings included the potter William Merric Boyd (1888–1959), painters Theodore Penleigh Boyd (1890–1923) and Helen à Beckett Read, née Boyd (1903–1999). He was intensely involved in family life and took a keen interest in the development of his nephews and nieces, and their families, including potter Lucy Beck (b. 1916), painter Arthur Boyd (1920 - 1999), sculptor Guy Boyd (1923 - 1988), painter David Boyd (1924 - 2011), painter Mary Nolan (b.1926) - who was married to painters John Perceval and Sidney Nolan, and architect Robin Boyd (1919 - 1971). His nephew Guy Boyd was his literary executor.

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the supremely talented Boyd family. The first in the Langton Quartet I read these books in high school and am revisiting them nearly 40 years later. The first is the story of Alice, grandmother to the fictional author and tells of her family's peripatetic lives. It is also an interesting look at early Melbourne. Loved the books in 1980, loved this now and will go on to read the rest in the series.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stumbles a bit at the start, but the conceit--our narrator is convinced to tell the story of his family as mediated by his grandmother's diaries--is a very nice one, and once we get into the family story, the awkward flaws fall away. Then you're left with Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead style), or the early volumes of Powell's 'Dance to the Music of Time,' only in Australia.

"Austin understood much better le plaisir aristocratique which consists not as his guest had imagined in rudeness to someone whom it is safe to snub, but in a confidence so complete in one's own values that one affirms them clearly, indifferent to the fact that they are incompatible with the ideas of a bourgeois society, and the pleasure consists in seeing the bewilderment of a conventional mind, when faced with an idea too generous, or a taste too eclectic or even an honesty too obvious for its comprehension."

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A spirited and highly accomplished novel, done with the most engaging liveliness and intelligence.’
Times

‘A rueful, cheerfully savage novel…lit with unearthly fires and enchantments.’
New York Times

‘The grace and wit of his best writing, the subtlety with which he captures social nuances, and his placing of intimate family dramas against a broader social background, make Boyd quite individual as an Australian novelist.’
Australian

[Perseus Q · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad soap opera but ermahgerd, so pretentious. Australia has changed and this book has dated less like a fine wine and more like an uncovered lamington left in a dead man’s pantry.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a significant book which is hugely under-rated and forgotten. There are two more in the series and I've started on "A difficult young man" already.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite quotes:
"We have to assume that our parents were always as upright and respectable as when we knew them, and though all the world knows otherwise, no one is going to tell us. And this is quite right, as the sins of the fathers should not be allowed to destroy their authority, or there would be no civilization left." (p. 152)
"Too often we are given what we asked when we no longer have the power to use the gift." (p. 256 - the last page)

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended to me on the strength of my buying an Elizabeth Harrower and enjoyed for the rarity of the tale - late nineteenth century family history of a family which moves from Australia to Europe and back again, several times. Quietly paced and thoughtful.

[Brona's Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Langton Quartet (there are three more books in the series) have been compared to the Forsyte Saga, and Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time as an Australian example of a family epic across time and place.

Boyd (10th June 1893 – 3rd June 1972 - how frustrating to get so close to one's 80th birthday and just miss out!) was part of the well-known à Beckett-Boyd family of Melbourne. Various members of the family made their names in the judiciary, art, literary and publishing worlds. To name a few of this creative extended family we have Merric Boyd, Helen à Beckett Read, Arthur Boyd, Guy Boyd, David Boyd, Mary Nolan, Robin Boyd and Joan Lindsay.

Martin actually spent most of his adult life in Europe, but The Cardboard Crown and it's follow up books A Difficult Young Man (1955), Outbreak of Love (1957) and When Blackbirds Sing (1962) were written thanks to a brief period of his life when he returned to Australia with a dream to restore the old family home.

During this time (1948-1951), he rediscovered his grandmother's diaries where he read about her previously unknown convict heritage. Her father, John Mills, the founder of Melbourne Brewery, was an ex-convict. It was his money that had funded the extended family for several generations. In 1950's Australia though, a convict past was decidedly frowned upon. So Boyd changed the family scandal in his books to that of an adulterous affair, or as Brenda Niall says in her Introduction, he 'reinterpreted a century of family history'.

Boyd had a brief stint in a seminary (followed by a lifelong search for the place of religion in his life) before enlisting in the Royal East Kent Regiment during WWI. After the war, he returned to Melbourne, but no longer felt like he fitted in there. He returned to Europe, wandering around from place to place. After his final stay in Australia, he moved to Rome to write. He converted to Catholicism in his dying days and is buried in the Rome Protestant English Cemetery near Keats and Shelley.

Like the characters in his semi-biographical quartet, Boyd never felt at home in Australia or England. Throughout The Cardboard Crown the tension between being English and being Australian is a constant pull. As is the sad and slow decline of a once well-off, well-connected family moving down the social ladder.
It did not occur to anyone until after the 1914 war that there was any obligation to work unless it was necessary.

I can see why this book may have fallen out of favour for a while. Aristocrats, inherited money and gentlemen of leisure don't really hold much truck with the average Australian. Ignoring our convict heritage may have been de rigueur in the early part of the nineteenth century, but by the 1970's, with its sudden surge in family history research, having a convict or two in your past, became not only acceptable but something to be proud of, especially if you could claim a First Fleeter on your tree. It's a shame that Boyd didn't feel that he could tell that story.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2020/...

[Jacqueline Sorokin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. I gave it 3 stars, because I learnt a little about life in Australia in the upper classes back when. The characters were good. But it took a long time to warm up, and it was an account of a families life, which was ok, but not gripping.

[CLM · Rating 4 out of 5]

This started very slowly as the author uses the device of finding his grandmother's diaries to tell her story; however, that is apparently exactly what happened. Some call this series A Forsyte Saga of Australia:

http://perfectretort.blogspot.com/202...

[Evelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

All history is a little false.

Martin Boyd is one of those forgotten Australians – literary geniuses whose writing has only recently been revived. This, his first novel in The Langton Quartet, is certainly evidence of his lasting appeal. Yes, this is a novel about a quasi-aristocratic family and its many exploits. Yes, this is a novel about a woman trying to navigate the limitations of Australian, English and European society. But, more importantly, it is a novel about a bygone era that, for some, can be marked by nostalgia or, for others, is to something be sneered at. Despite the regulations imposed by social constraints, Boyd writes with true affection, lamenting the Langton family’s decline from Melbourne elite, to contrived British gentry. Funnily enough, it is not so much the likeability of the characters that draws the reader into Boyd’s world. Each is riddled with faults, even the beautiful, loyal Alice. Each has been embroiled in their own scandal, ranging from illegitimate children to financial despair. Yet, it is their very imperfection that enlivens Boyd’s prose. They are the symbols of their historical era – stories passed from one generation to the next. Even if they are a little false, they are a gorgeous evocation of the past.

My question is (potential spoiler alert!)…despite the narrator’s conclusions about Aubrey Tunstall, can his intentions truly be labelled as dishonourable?

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this in the 70's when it was originally published. I enjoyed it then and was so glad to find a reprint recently. It's a really interesting account of the life of wealthy Australians in the latter half of C19. They drift between Australia and Europe and seem unable to find a comfortable identity for themselves.

[Susan Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was certainly written in a different era to the one I inhabit. I found it quite tedious but every now and then there was a sentence or idea which got me thinking about living in the world a century ago.

[Karen Connolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the Cardboard Crown was engaging and a pleasure,..we learn about some of the Boyd family. And some 'Australianisms'..torn between the UK and Europe established connections and determined to be 'upper class' in an Australia which began and continues to favour wealth and work rigour over title.
It is a microcosm of a very small part of society in either world.
Perhaps the flaws are here as it doesn't inform us of the world more broadly. Also, the character Hetty, so important in the first parts of the novel, becomes completely absent towards the end, and isn't
included in the finish. I will read the subsequent books in the series with interest. Definitely worth reading.

[Ruprecht · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prescribed text for Uni English.

[Bronwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening book in his quartet - a picture of a family strung between England and Australia based on his grandmother's diaries.

[Neer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting narrative style. More here: https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpr...

[Michael Vawser]

First edition 1962