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What's Bred in the Bone

(The Cornish Trilogy #2)

Robertson Davies

4.26 · Rating details · 5,702 ratings · 263 reviews

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

In this wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of ...more

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Paperback, 436 pages

Published 1987 by Penguin (first published 1985)

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Jul 11, 2008 Terry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, desert-island-picks, canadian

This is Robertson Davies’ best book. No, really it is. And he’s written some pretty awesome ones, let me tell you. Certainly, at the very least, I can say that this one is my favourite. It has everything I want and expect from a book by Davies: a concentration on artistic and intellectual matters, exploration into the ways in which heredity and upbringing shape the soul of an individual, characters who are both ‘realistic’ and odd, witty insights into human nature and foibles at both the individ This is Robertson Davies’ best book. No, really it is. And he’s written some pretty awesome ones, let me tell you. Certainly, at the very least, I can say that this one is my favourite. It has everything I want and expect from a book by Davies: a concentration on artistic and intellectual matters, exploration into the ways in which heredity and upbringing shape the soul of an individual, characters who are both ‘realistic’ and odd, witty insights into human nature and foibles at both the individual and communal level, and a preoccupation with myth as it surfaces in our everyday lives through both obvious and not so obvious avenues; in short a heady rumination on what it means to be a sensate individual living in a difficult world coming to terms with oneself all wrapped up in a wonderful story built on well-wrought prose.

As the story opens we encounter our old friends Simon Darcourt, Maria Theotoky, and Arthur Cornish some years after we first met them in The Rebel Angels. They are haggling over some problems that Darcourt is having with the inaugural work commissioned by the Cornish Foundation, meant to launch this benevolent body founded by Arthur and Maria into the world of artistic patronage. It is in fact a biography of Francis Cornish, the somewhat mysterious art collector and millionaire whose death played an important, though ancillary, role in the first volume of the Cornish trilogy. It appears as though Darcourt’s problems are two-fold: one is that there are simply too few facts for him to compose anything like the comprehensive scholarly work of biography he desires, the other is that those nuggets that he is able to intuit from the sparse facts of Cornish’s life lead him to believe that some unexpectedly provocative revelations may lie behind what on the surface had seemed a sedentary, even boring, life. Arthur wants none of it. His foundation is surely not to be launched into the world with a work whose main thesis may be that his own uncle was something of a charlatan, or at the very least a man of disingenuous aspect. Darcourt simply bemoans the fact the he is likely never to know the truth of the “rum things” that seem to lie in the background of the life and times of Francis Cornish.

Luckily for the reader Davies has Zadkiel, the minor angel of biography, and Maimas, the personal daimon of Francis Cornish himself, appear on the scene to enlighten us with the true tale of his life. We are at first treated to a view of Francis’ immediate forbears, setting the scene as Maimas would have it, for the places and people that would shape him for better or worse upon his arrival in the world. Thus we meet the premier inhabits of the tiny Canadian hamlet of Blairlogie (the “jumping off point” as some might uncharitably call it): the Senator (Francis’ grandfather James McRory), a man of humble beginnings who rises to prominence in the economic and political world of turn of the century Canada due to shrewd decisions and the ability and desire to take risks, and his comfort-loving wife, Francis’ grand-mère. There is also the sweetly draconian and pious Catholic Aunt Mary-Ben, a spinster who takes over the management of the Senator’s household ostensibly to allow his wife the freedom required to fully live the life required of a society woman, and of course Francis’ parents: the Senator’s favourite daughter Mary-Jim and her very odd husband Francis “the Wooden Soldier” Cornish…the tale of their meeting and circumstances surrounding their marriage plays an important role in the first part of the narrative and ultimately sets the scene for the boy, and man, Francis is to become. Added to these ‘main players’ are the numerous background figures and servants of the prominent household, many of whom will play a much larger role in the life and development of Francis than they, or any of their ‘betters’, might have thought likely. With this the scene is set for Davies’ preoccupation with the twin pillars upon which our lives are built: nature and nurture.

Francis’ life in Blairlogie is lonely and often hard. Being the sensitive and often neglected son of the most prominent family in a small rough-and-tumble backwoods town is not exactly an enviable position for a little boy, especially when you get moved to a school on the other side of the tracks. Francis’ parents and grandparents are often absent, even when they are physically near him, and so his fostering is taken over primarily by his well-meaning, though strange and often misguided Aunt Mary-Ben, as well as the servants Victoria Cameron (a staunch and somewhat harsh, though caring, Presbyterian) and the kind, but unconventional groom Zadok Hoyle. All of these people strongly shape Francis’ young mind, usually in contrary ways, so that he is pulled in several different directions by the people who should be providing him with a stable life. As far as Maimas is concerned this is all to the good, for he cannot forge a great man with the small stuff of ‘normalcy’. Also, Francis is a resourceful boy (who has luckily been ‘gifted’ with his own inspirational daimon) and is thus able to take the varied and ambiguous gifts of these people and form them into something approximating a complete, though certainly fragmented, personality. From these strange roots Francis grows an intriguing crown: a profound love of and ability in art, a deep desire to find the eternal feminine that can provide him with the comfort and love that has always been so elusive to him, and a sense of charity and compassion tempered by a love of money and somewhat cynical eye. All in all it is a foundation that Francis himself describes as “A Catholic soul in Protestant chains”. There is one other shadow-figure of supreme importance to Francis’ life and development, but I will leave the discovery of his role and identity to you from the story itself.

From the small beginnings of rural Ontario Francis moves to the ‘big city’ of Toronto where he attends both Colborne College and ‘Spook’ (academic proving grounds familiar to those of us who have read more widely in Davies) before moving on to Oxford and the wider world of pre-WWII Europe. Here Francis will meet a variety of new people with whose lives and interests he will become entangled, both professionally and personally. Some will be lovers (both nurturing and destructive), others will be mentors and rivals (both very instructive roles). All of these relationships will be used by Maimas to forge Francis into the man he envisions: the ultimate work of art combining elements of both the physical and the spiritual world into an enigmatic, but complete human being. In the end Francis is led by both his interests and his connections not only into the world of art and scholarship, but also the realm of espionage and subterfuge. Ultimately he shapes himself into the skilled, knowledgeable, and supremely secretive man who is to provide such an enigmatic puzzle for the would-be biographer Darcourt.

As I said in my opening this book is great. I won’t go any farther into a précis of Francis' life, Davies details it with much more colour, wit, and interest than I could manage in a review, but I have to say that Francis Cornish is a compelling character (at least as much as that equally charming rascal Dunstan Ramsay) and the story of his life is one well worth reading. It is, I think, Davies’ tour-de-force that takes up all of his concerns and preoccupations, uniting them to the story of a life whose variety and pathos makes it both accessible and enlightening.

Definitely check it out. ...more

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Dec 13, 2016 Supratim rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This novel has been penned by Canadian author Robertson Davies and is the second book in the Cornish trilogy, but it can be read as a standalone novel.

I had chanced upon this book while book hunting in a second hand bookstore. I had never heard of Robertson Davies but something about the book, most probably the blurb appealed to me and I bought it.

The story starts with a meeting between the sole three members of the newly founded Cornish Foundation for Promotion of the Arts and Humane Scholarshi ...more

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Jan 25, 2018 Jan Rice rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, fiction, history, art-culture

Although starting with the same characters who inhabit The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, the second book of The Cornish Trilogy, is a prequel. How to tell the story of Frank Cornish, recently deceased eccentric uncle, wealthy banker and, more mysteriously, art collector and patron, when so little is known to the living characters?

Listen to this dialogue between the Anglican-priest-turned-scholar and would-be biographer Simon Darcourt and the beautiful Maria, recently wed to Frank's neph Although starting with the same characters who inhabit The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, the second book of The Cornish Trilogy, is a prequel. How to tell the story of Frank Cornish, recently deceased eccentric uncle, wealthy banker and, more mysteriously, art collector and patron, when so little is known to the living characters?

Listen to this dialogue between the Anglican-priest-turned-scholar and would-be biographer Simon Darcourt and the beautiful Maria, recently wed to Frank's nephew and heir, Arthur Cornish:

"But are the childhood years so important?"

"Maria, you astonish me! Weren't your childhood years important? They are the matrix from which a life grows."

"And that's all gone?"

"Unless you can wangle a chat with the Recording Angel."

"I don't think I believe in a Recording Angel. We are all our own Recording Angels."

"Then I am more orthodox than you. I believe in a Recording Angel. I even know his name."

"Pooh, you medievalists have a name for everything. Just somebody's invention."

"Why not somebody's revelation? Don't be so hidebound, Simon. The name of the Recording Angel was Radueriel, and he wasn't just a book-keeper; he was the Angel of Poetry, and Master of the Muses. He also had a staff."

"Wound with serpents, like the caduceus of Hermes, I suppose."

"Not that kind of staff; a civil service staff. One of its important members was the Angel of Biography, and his name was the Lesser Zadkiel. He was the angel who interfered when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, so he is an angel of mercy, though a lot of biographers aren't. The Lesser Zadkiel could give you the lowdown on Francis Cornish."

Darcourt by now was unquestionably drunk. He became lyrical.

"Maria--dear Maria--forgive me for being stupid about the Recording Angel. Of course he exists--exists as a metaphor for all that illimitable history of humanity and inhumanity and inanimate life and everything that has ever been, which must exist some place or else the whole of life is reduced to a stupid file with no beginning and no possible ending. It's wonderful to talk to you, my dearest, because you think medievally. You have a personification or a symbol for everything. You don't talk about ethics: you talk about saints and their protective spheres and their influences. You donn't use lettuce-juice words like 'extraterrestrial'; you talk frankly about Heaven and Hell. You don't blather about neuroses; you just say demons."

"Certainly I haven't a scientific vocabulary," said Maria.

"Well, science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it's a muddle of conflicting assertions. What gripes my gut is that it has such a miserable vocabulary and such a pallid pack of images to offer to us--to the humble laity--for our edification and our faith. The old priest in his black robe gave us things that seemed to have concrete existence; you prayed to the Mother of God and somebody had given you an image that looked just right for the Mother of God. The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he--because he usually doesn't know any Greek--can't pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It's the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination. But you, Maria, speak the old language that strikes to the heart. You talk about the Recording Angel and you talk about his lesser angels, and we both know exactly what you mean. You give comprehensible and attractive names to psychological facts, and God--another effectively named psychological fact--bless you for it."

"You're raving ever so slightly, darling, and it's time you went home."

There you have it: the pretext for the appearance of the Lesser Zadkiel and the Daimon Maimas, who put in an occasional appearance as commentators, plus a sample of the author's beautiful and imaginative writing. Not to give too much away: Francis Cornish had adventures that include learning to paint in a genuinely Renaissance manner and spying against Germany in the Second World War.

This book has been a favorite since I first read it about 25 years ago. I will say that, like a house one has known in childhood, the book seems just a little smaller, the rooms less awesome and the hall to the back of the house less dark and strange. This book has shrunk just a tad. Still, a four and three-fourths.

This time around, I listened to the wonderful audio by Frederick Davidson, whose real name was David Frederick Case. There is no e-edition of this book, but the audio was recaptured from old tapes. Both author and narrator are gone now, but their words remain. ...more

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Sep 12, 2020 W.D. Clarke rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, kanadiana

Some churlish sot who goes by my name awarded this book 4 stars ten days ago, without adding a review, and I am here today to correct both of those glaring errors, cos though 20C realism is not my usual thing, I absolutely loved this book and think it among Davies' very best.

All of our Man of Letters' usual ingredients (small town Canuck origins, a Jungian concern with and respect for the mythological side of religion* (view spoiler) Some churlish sot who goes by my name awarded this book 4 stars ten days ago, without adding a review, and I am here today to correct both of those glaring errors, cos though 20C realism is not my usual thing, I absolutely loved this book and think it among Davies' very best.

All of our Man of Letters' usual ingredients (small town Canuck origins, a Jungian concern with and respect for the mythological side of religion* (view spoiler), a deep love of learning in general and of the arcane in particular, a Rabelaisian wit tempered by Scots Calvinist propriety, a profound sense of wonder and compassion over human suffering**(view spoiler)…) are tossed into his alchemical crucible here, and before you can second-guess or "as-if" the plot or play spot-the-seams, pure artistic gold emerges and you have to thank Mr. Davies for braving the unimpeded visitation of his muse so comparatively late in his career—as you do get the feeling that this book came at some personal cost to the author, unlike, say, its immediate forerunner, The Rebel Angels, which felt more like a paint-by-numbers exercise to this reader…

One quibble: this book is a frame-narrative-with-a-twist, in that characters pop in from that aforementioned first installment in the trilogy: theologian Simon Darcourt is attempting to write a biography of the art collector Francis Cornish, and discusses his problems in doing so with Cornish's nephew and his young wife Maria, and since they were all in that previous book, one might expect something of their story to invade this one, but no: they disappear for 98% of the book and re-emerge just as the book closes. Instead, we have a real omniscient narrator, an honest-to-goodness Daimon, tell Cornish's story to a minor angel compadre—not just for kicks, it seems, because before he disappears, though, Darcourt makes an all-too-human biographer's confession:

Of course, I could fake it. Oh, I wish I had the indecency of so many biographers and dared to fake it! Not crude faking, of course, but a kind of fiction, the sort of fiction that rises to the level of art! And it would be true, you know, in its way. You remember what Browning says:

… Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least.

I could serve Francis so much better if I had the freedom of fiction.”

“Oh, Simon, you don’t have to tell me that you are an artist at heart.”

“But an artist chained to biography, which ought to bear some resemblance to fact.”

“A matter of moral conscience.”

“And a matter of social conscience, as well. But what about artistic conscience, which people don’t usually pay much attention to? I want to write a really good book. Not just a trustworthy book, but a book people will like to read. Everybody has a dominant kind of conscience, and in me the artistic conscience seems to be pushing the other two aside. Do you know what I really think?”

“No, but you obviously want to tell me.”

“I think that probably Francis had a daimon…."

I think that while the Daimon bit might put some people off, as a bit of unnecessary scaffolding, it does bring to the forefront one of Davies' chief concerns in this book: what is the (post)modern artist to do, after Joyce and Beckett, etc., have always-already done it all?! Do we just follow the market and act like 19C realism is perfectly fine once more, that all modes of writing have been made available to us by the Post-Modern theorists' destruction of capital-H Histories, including literary history?

That is a long and contentious debate, and Davies chooses not to contribute to it, except to say that the artist must do what the artist is best at, and damn the consequences. We not only dance with them that brung us, it seems, but we gots to embrace, not merely accept, our Masters', our Muse's, and our own limitations.(view spoiler)[ In one key scene, the apprentice art forger (and "revivifier" or improver of dull, but real old paintings) Cornish chafes against his master's teachings:

"I sense your hatered of me, Corniche. Hate on. Hate greatly. It will help your work. It gives you a good charge of adrenalin. But reflect on this: I ask you to do nothing that I have not done in my day. That is how I have achieved mastery that has not its equal in the world. Mastery of what? Of the techniques of the great painters before 1700. I do not seek to be a painter myself. Nobody would want a painting done today in the manner of, let us say, Goveart Flink, the best pupil of Rembrandt. Yet that is how I truly feel. That is my only honest manner. I do not want to paint like the moderns.”

“Your hatred is reserved for the moderns, as mine is for you?”

“Not at all. I do not hate them. The best of them are doing what honest painters have always done, which is to paint the inner vision, or to bring the inner vision to some outer subject. But in an earlier day the inner vision presented itself in a coherent language of mythological or religious terms, and now both mythology and religion are powerless to move the modern mind. So—the search for the inner vision must be direct. The artist solicits and implores something from the realm of what the psychoanalysts, who are the great magicians of our day, call the Unconscious, though it is actually the Most Conscious. And what they fish up—what the Unconscious hangs on the end of the hook the artists drop into the great well in which art has its being—may be very fine, but they express it in a language more or less private. It is not the language of mythology or religion. And the great danger is that such private language is perilously easy to fake. Much easier to fake than the well-understood language of the past. I do not want to make you dizzy with flattery, but your picture of Drollig Hansel whispered something of that very deep, dark well.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“No, not at all. As I have told you, Our Blessed Lord wanted something quite different from that dark well, and drew from it like the Master He was.”

“But the Moderns—surely one must paint in the manner of one’s day?”

“I don’t admit any such necessity. If life is a dream, as some philosophers insist, surely the great picture is that which most potently symbolizes the unseizable reality that lies behind the dream. If I—or you—can best express that in terms of mythology or religion, why should we not do so?”

“Because it’s a kind of fakery, or a deliberate throw-back, like those Pre-Raphaelites. Even if you are a believer, you cannot believe as the great men of the past believed.”

“Very well. Live in the spirit of your time, and that spirit alone, if you must. But for some artists such abandonment to the contemporary leads to despair. Men today, men without religion or mythology, solicit the Unconscious, and usually they ask in vain. So they invent something and I don’t need to tell you the difference between invention and inspiration. Supply such inventions and you may come to despise those who admire you, and play games with them. Was that the spirit of Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt? Of course, you may become something rather like a photographer. But remember what Matisse said: ‘L’exactitude ce n’est pas la vérité.’”

“Isn’t exactitude what you are devilling and driving me to achieve with this bloody piece of handwriting?”

“Only as a means of training you so that you will be able to set down, as well as lies in your power, what the Unconscious may choose to put on your hook, and offer it to those who have eyes to see.”

“You are teaching me to paint reality so well that it might deceive—like that Roman painter who painted flowers, or a jar of honey, or something so truly that bees settled on his pictures. How do you equate that with the kind of reality you are talking about—the reality that rises from the dark well?”

“Don’t despise things. Every thing has a soul that speaks to our soul, and may move it toward love. To understand that is the real materialism. People speak of our age as materialistic, but they are wrong. Men do not believe in matter today any more than they believe in God; scientists have taught them not to believe in anything. Men of the Middle Ages, and most of them in the Renaissance, believed in God and the things. God had made, and they were happier and more complete than we. Listen, Corniche: modern man wants desperately to believe in something, to have some value that cannot be shaken. This country in which we live is giving fearful proof of what mankind will do in order to have something on which to fasten his yearning for belief, for certainty, for reality.”

(hide spoiler)]

A deeper (again, anachronistic?! Or trans-historical?) concern is that art must plumb the "depths" of the human condition. It is not merely an exercise of the intellect, but an attempt at unifying our faculties and at expressing something about the totality of lived experience. One painting in particular exercises our main character in this regard, and I shall leave you with that, unless you wish to see what Cornish and his Master have to say about it in the spoiler which follows the much more reticent art work, Bronzino's Venus and Cupid….

(view spoiler)[
…I speak of possibilities, not of completed acts. Possibilities—things that merely float in the air and are never brought to earth—can be extremely influential. It is the artist’s privilege to seize such possibilities and to make pictures of them, and such pictures are among the most powerful we have. What is a picture of the Madonna—and we have seen many of them this week—but a picture of a Mother and her Son.”

“A Holy Mother and the Son of God.”

“In the worlds of myth and art all mothers are holy because that is what we feel in the depths of our hearts. No, not the heart: that is where modern people think they feel. During the Renaissance they would have said, the liver. In the gut, in fact. Worship of the Mother, real or mythical, comes from the gut. Have you never wondered why in so many of those pictures Joseph, the earthly father, looks such a nincompoop? In the very best of them Joseph is not even permitted to enter. That is one of the unspoken foundation stones of our mighty Faith, Francis; the love affair between Mother and Son, and according to the Scriptures no other woman ever challenged her place of supremacy. But in these Madonnas there is nothing overtly erotic. There is in Bronzino; in that picture he cast off the Christian chains and showed truth as he saw it, of love despised and rejected.

“Have you really looked at the picture? You have looked at the artist’s achievement, but have you understood what he is saying? Venus holds an apple in one hand, and an arrow in the other. What does that say: I tempt you, and I have a wound for you. And look at all the secondary figures—the raving figure of Jealousy behind Cupid, speaking so clearly of despair, of love despised and rejected; the little figure of Pleasure who is about to pelt the toying lovers with rose leaves—see at his feet the thorns and those masks of the concealments and cheats of the world, marked with the bitterness of age; and who is that creature behind the laughing Pleasure—a wistful, appealing face, a rich gown that might almost blind us to her lion’s feet, her serpent’s sting, and her hands that offer both a honeycomb and something beastly—that must be the Cheat—Fraude, in Latin—who can so prettily turn love to madness. Who are the old man and the young woman at the top of the picture? They are plainly Time and Truth, who are drawing aside the mantle that shows the world what is involved in such love as this. Time—and his daughter Truth. A very moral picture, is it not?”

“Certainly as you interpret it, and as I have never heard anyone else explain it I cannot quarrel with you. But I’m horrified that Bronzino thought of love in that way.”

“So you might well be. But he didn’t, you know. The picture that has enthralled you in the National Gallery in London was half of a design that was meant to be two tapestries. One tapestry is completed and you can see it in Florence, in the Arazzi Gallery. It is called L’innocentia del Bronzino and it shows Innocence threatened by a dog (for Envy), a lion (for Fury), a wolf (for Greed), and a snake (for Treachery); Innocence is being powerfully protected by Justice, a female figure with a mighty sword, and there again you will see Time with his hourglass and his wings (because he flies, as every parrot knows) and he is taking the cloak from a naked girl, who of course is Truth, his daughter. So really the pictures ought to be called the Allegories of Truth and Luxury, and they are splendid Renaissance sermons. Together they tell us much about life and about love, as it appeared to a Christian mind refreshed by the newly found classicism.”

“Maestro, you remind me very much of my dear old Aunt Mary-Ben. She insisted that pictures were moral lessons, and told stories. But you should have seen the pictures she showed me to prove it.” [...quotation complete in Comments]
(hide spoiler)] ...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Wes Christensen rated it it was amazing

An artist friend gave this book to me, years ago when we were both in school. He didn't tell me anything about it, but since I liked him and his art work, I gave the book a try and went on to be a huge fan of the author, searching out everything I could find by him to read over the years. Being an artist myself, and painting in a rather traditional manner like the protagonist, it was bracing to read Davies' account of an artist who felt out of step in a Modern era -- much like I did, trying to m ...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Ted rated it it was amazing

What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies is my favourite novel. It is the second in the otherwise unremarkable Cornish trilogy and details the life of the second Francis Cornish from birth to death, including a confusing religious upbringing by everyone but his parents in a rural Ontario town, his education from 'Spook' to Oxford, his apprenticeship in art fraud to cheat the Nazis and his secret life as a spy. Along the way, Cornish 'assassinates' an art faker as it takes one to know one, fal ...more

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Dec 03, 2009 Margaret rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-literature, 2007-read, authors-cd, magical-realism

What's Bred in the Bone is the second of a trilogy of books which are bound together by the life of one Francis Cornish, Canadian artist, critic, and collector, and by a host of other characters who are tied to him in one way or another. This book tells Cornish's life story, starting from a conversation between his heirs and his biographer and featuring interjections from a pair of supernatural beings, the Lesser Zadkiel (the Angel of Biography) and Maimon, Francis's personal daimon. The daimons ...more

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Mar 03, 2008 laura rated it really liked it

Had this one on my shelves for so long I thought I'd already read it. But, nope. It's the story of a half-provincial half-royal kid from Canada who is raised by a Catholic aunt and learns to draw in the local funeral home, then turns to Renaissance painting in the face of his family's craziness during WWII. Funny and intriguing all the way through. Must read more Robertson Davies. ...more

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Jun 07, 2014 Kristen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reread, 2014, favorites, 2018, 2020

December, 2020:

As hard as these things are to say with certainty, I've thought for a while that What's Bred in the Bone could be my favorite book. This recent rereading confirms that it's certainly in play. As I read, I tried to reflect why, of all books, I like this one so much. In addition to what I've said below, I believe it's because Davies, more than most, understands the value of non-intellectual experience in life: fate, luck, intuition, emotion, and maybe even divine intervention are th December, 2020:

As hard as these things are to say with certainty, I've thought for a while that What's Bred in the Bone could be my favorite book. This recent rereading confirms that it's certainly in play. As I read, I tried to reflect why, of all books, I like this one so much. In addition to what I've said below, I believe it's because Davies, more than most, understands the value of non-intellectual experience in life: fate, luck, intuition, emotion, and maybe even divine intervention are the touchtones of the world he's created.

Also worth noting for this reading: This was the first time I'd read What's Bred in the Bone coming right off of the first book in the Cornish Trilogy, The Rebel Angels. There were some shared themes that gave a little texture to the story, but on the whole, book one was much weaker and didn't enhance my experience significantly. I'd recommend What's Bred in the Bone as a standalone novel to anyone without reservation.

*******************
October, 2018:

Robertson Davies has the uncanny ability to convince you that not only does he understand the deepest mysteries of human existence, but that you might understand them a little bit too. I came back to this book particularly because I wanted to regain a little bit of that feeling in relation to art, particularly Renaissance painting. The novel works on a practical level, describing techniques and motifs, but also a spiritual level, delving into the ways that religion can have meaning through art, without getting bogged down by dogma or literalism. Not to mention it's simply a great book in every way: well-plotted, funny, wise, vivid -- sheer perfection!

*******************
May, 2014:

What's Bred in the Bone is the most focused and the best book in this trilogy. In telling the story of Francis Cornish, Davies revisits one of his favorite themes -- the way childhood experiences can shape a life. Davies captures the exhilaration of formative experiences, but also vividly brings out how childhood can be confusing and even terrifying. And he makes the excellent point that adults don't necessary make things better by trying to shield a child from life's realities. There's also some great exploration here of the philosophy of art and what it means to make an authentic work. ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 Wanda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian-eh, favourites, read-in-2013

It is always a wonderful experience to re-read What's Bred in the Bone. Although I have not read Davies' entire oevre, I certainly declare this to be his best novel of those I have read, possibly of all of them. It so masterfully brings together all the themes that he has played with in fiction over his writing life (which, according to him, could not begin while his parents were alive).

Francis Cornish, whose life tale this is, is a loveable scoundrel--sometimes more loveable, sometimes more sc ...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Lobstergirl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Lobstergirl by: Prayut Chan-o-cha

Shelves: own, fiction

The other Robertson Davies I tried to read was The Cunning Man and I had to abort. It just wasn't serving my needs. This one was better. In fact, at the end of the book I liked it better, much better, than at the beginning. The novel began to get interesting for me at about the three-quarters mark. Up to that point there was too much quirk, and meandering, for my taste. Quirky books should bear a sticker, like the Oprah book club sticker but for quirk, so I know to stay away from them.

At the end ...more

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Dec 20, 2009 Mag rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A perfectly nice and entertaining literary work, but definitely not Canadian the way I understand it. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he is British, and very much imperial British. He represents everything one associates with colonial times in Canada: white, male, comfortably well-off, elitist, and monarchist. His writing is very accessible, definitely not post-modern, much more in the "by-gone" 19th century style. He draws exclusively on European tradition and good solid knowledge of ...more

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Feb 28, 2018 David added it · review of another edition

Many of the same concerns as The Recognitions, but with a distinctly Canadian flavour. What is “genuine”? What is “forged”?

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Aug 07, 2014 Krista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2014, can-con

I first read What's Bred In the Bone 25 or so years ago and the only things that I remembered from it were: Francis Cornish sketching at the autopsy of the dwarf tailor; the Drollig Hansel; and the huge triptych of The Marriage at Cana. I only remembered the art: and while this book is certainly about art, it is more about those lucky few who are able to access the deep well of common experience -- the Collective Unconscious -- and drag forth images to interpret and present as their own; it's ab ...more

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Aug 18, 2016 Cathy rated it it was amazing

I read this ages ago, before goodreads. I don't remember much, but I loved it at the time. Imaginative, unusual, weird. ...more

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Jun 28, 2020 Erik rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian

The story of a man's life as told by the Recording Angel and the daimon who were put in charge of shaping his life and his character. An interesting plot device that Robertson Davies used to full effect. The daimon believes that adversity is what makes us who we are and has no problem confronting the protagonist with one character building episode after another. The Recording Angel provides him with the occasional and necessary relief that we all need to carry on.

This book had me hooked early on ...more

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May 23, 2014 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed-by-me, fiction-literature

A reminder of the pleasures (and limitations) of Davies at his best. A light novel of ideas, with perhaps somewhat schematic characters, an un-convoluted and engaging plot, and a generous helping of authorial aperçus that do not attempt to hide their provenance (i.e., they aren't clanging and unconvincing ventriloquisms from the mouths of characters).

I say "light novel of ideas" rather than "novel of light ideas" because the themes at the heart of the book (belief and the construction of the se ...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Radio2isstatic rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2011-reading-more

This was the first Davies book I ever read, during the Canadian Studies student phase of my life when all books were acquired by picking at random from the CanLit shelf at the used bookstore. I've since gone back and read the whole Cornish trilogy, and much as I love the rest of it I really never felt it was necessary for my development as a person to have read more than this book. Possibly because it's so structurally different from the other two, Bred in the Bone sticks out. Its focus holds to ...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Yuichiro rated it really liked it

Bred in the Bone is the only book I have read by Robertson Davies, but it is not for the of lack of talent on the author's part. Davies has clear control of the plot, characters, and the English language and forms a story that is creative and believable, though not something we can relate to. (at least in this case) I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books by John Irving. There are many similarities between the two authors, especially in the way the plot follows one character for much of ...more

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Apr 17, 2008 Mitch rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I have to say, the thought of Canadian governmental machinations, British secret service, and Italian art restoration did not excite me at all. And, though a slow starting book, I found myself wanting to read more and more of this one...The story ended up being fascinating, character development was adequate to the point of care, and overall, a very enjoyable read.

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Oct 17, 2008 Jesse rated it it was amazing

Very strange and wonderful. If you're interested at all in the world or art, hermeticism, history and philosophy, this is for you. One of my favorite writers :) ...more

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Sep 11, 2017 Simon Hollway rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-highs, 2017

One of the best books I have ever read. Kaboom!

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Sep 04, 2012 Sheryl Dunn rated it really liked it

I avoided Robertson Davies for many years, and the only reason I read this one was that a friend asked me to read it aloud to him. I'm glad I did.

While the writing style felt old fashioned to me, Davies' wit and charm, especially when he's being satiric, is extremely engaging. Sometimes we laughed out loud; sometimes we discussed the issues raised in the novel. If the satire had continued at the same rate through the entire novel, I would have given this five stars instead of four, but the novel ...more

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Oct 18, 2010 Bill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canlit, fiction

This is the second book in the Cornish trilogy. It basically tells the life story of Francis Cornish, with side discussions by his daimon and an angel analyzing how his life is progressing. The reason for this story is that Simon Darcourt is one of a trio, including Arthur Cornish (Francis' nephew) and Maria, Arthur's wife, are tasked with managing Francis' Trust. Darcourt is having difficulties writing Francis' biography, feels there are potential scandals in his life and finds too many secrets ...more

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Apr 10, 2012 Leslie rated it really liked it

I fell in love with Robertson Davies while in high school. The vivid strangeness of the worlds he creates, clothed in a style so sedate that it can be difficult to notice, captivated me entirely, especially in The Deptford Trilogy. I returned to What's Bred In The Bone after stumbling upon a tattered copy in a used bookstore, and, while I was still transported, I got to look at it a little more clearly. He definitely tells instead of showing at times, and may lay things out a little too clearly ...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Peter rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Although this novel has the elements and characters of any great novel including a European dimension, it is quintessentially Canadian (and in my view, only a "what's bred and bone" Canadian might realize the truth of the statement above.)
We're not talking Hockey Night in Canada here.
This is the story of Francis Cornish who emerges from a once small-town family, which has become wealthy on the exploitation of Canada's resources (human and natural) and which later, in the process, enables the fam ...more

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May 11, 2009 Sylvester rated it really liked it

I'm thinking of going back and re-rating all the Robertson Davies books I've read simply because his characters are still in my head after all these years, and that's got to count for something.

So saying, "What's Bred in the Bone" is by far my favorite. (And yes, Davies does remind me a little of John Irving.)The whole story around the art forgery is fascinating.(A topic I love - see "Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of an Art Forger" by Eric Hebborn if you want to re-examine some of your ideas abo ...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Lara rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-in-2012

Much as it pains me to rate this only 2 stars, especially when I love Robertson Davies so much and when most other people seem to really like this one, I just...well. This book bored the pants off of me. I didn't like the angels snickering in the sidelines about everything, and I didn't really much like the story-within-a-story framework of the novel. And I didn't find it anywhere near as humorous as Davies' other stuff. It just didn't work for me. But I hear the third book in the series is fant ...more

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Apr 28, 2011 Dawn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015, authors-canadian, literary-fiction, locale-canada, audiobook

I’m sure I’ve mentioned in previous reviews just how much I love this author. How he creates a story of improbable situations and makes it not only believable but ordinary seeming, is fascinating.

This is the story of Francis Cornish, a man who seems to drift through life doing what is expected of him and yet extraordinary things happen to him. All the mysterious glimpses of his life that have been brought up in the first book of the trilogy are now laid bare for the reader and it makes for a st ...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Douglas Cosby rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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About Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies

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William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toro ...more

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“The little boy nodded at the peony and the peony seemed to nod back. The little boy was neat, clean and pretty. The peony was unchaste, dishevelled as peonies must be, and at the height of its beauty.(...) Every hour is filled with such moments, big with significance for someone.” — 15 likes

“Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!” — 6 likes

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