Jaffery

by William John Locke

ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. MATANIA.

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

William John Locke was a British novelist, dramatist and playwright, best known for his short stories. His works have been made into 24 motion pictures, the most recent of which was Ladies in Lavender, filmed in 2004 and starring Dame Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Probably the most famous of Locke's books adapted to the screen was the 1918 Pickford Film Corporation production of Stella Maris starring Mary Pickford. In addition, four of his books were made into Broadway plays, two of which Locke wrote and were produced by Charles Frohman.

Reviews

[Dorcas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodreads just ate my looong review for this and I really don't have the drive to write it all again, so, in a nutshell:


Four friends from childhood. The first becomes a successful something-or-other and is the staid gentlemen who narrates this tale. The second of the quad dies. The third is a bit of a wet rag who somehow catapults into instant stardom by writing a blockbuster novel, much to the flabbergastion of his friends. And the fourth is a larger than life manly -man who gets his zest for life from danger, privation, and foreign parts, so as you can imagine, he makes an excellent war correspondent. He is the Jaffery of whom the novel gets its title.


Thrown into the mix are two women (besides the narrator's wife and daughter), one an elfin young lady that most men trip over themselves to support, and the other an Albanian widow nearly six feet tall who is a...let's say...a stately barbarian.


Now most readers will instantly put the barbarian "princess" with Jaffery but it's the elfin creature, Doria who he's besotted with, which creates a good but head slapping tale.


I dare not say another word for fear of spoilers but you get the general idea of what could happen here...


CONTENT: Clean

[L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written like the author ate the Oxford English Dictionary for lunch and then threw it up all over his manuscript.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not, I fear, one of Locke’s best. It felt overworked, overconstructed, laboured-at rather than written with the joie de vivre of ‘The Beloved Vagabond’ or ‘The Town of Tombarel’.

The plot – and it did seem to go on and on rather – is narrated by Hilary Freeth, a man of private means. He is a bit of a belle-lettrist, and one of four friends who attended Cambridge University, the others being Jaffery Chayne, Adrian Boldero and Tom Castleton. Tom, alas, has died, but will figure significantly in the plot. Jaffery is a hearty, hail-fellow-well-met intelligent athlete of a confident can-do type, constantly adventuring abroad. Adrian, by contrast, is described as having a ‘queer, silky way’ about him, but he nevertheless was awarded a First by Cambridge.

When the novel opens, Adrian has just published a novel titled ‘The Diamond Gate’. It has been a storming success. On the strength of this, he is successful in earning the admiration of the father of his beloved, Doria Jornicroft. They are duly married, and Adrian sets about writing his follow up novel.

In the meantime, Jaffery has written Hilary a letter saying that he is returning to England from the Balkans and will be bringing another man’s wife – hohoho – who is actually the widow of a mutual friend called Prescott who has died of typhoid. This woman turns out to be Liosha, ‘Junoesque’, and Albanian, but brought up in Chicago. On returning to Albania with her parents when she was 12, they were murdered. “One day,” she says, “I’m going back [to Albania] to do a little murdering on my own account.”

From here on the plot becomes elaborated in a way that was, I felt, intended to fulfil the role, in 1915, of a 12+ episode TV drama series. It was okay - mostly when Hilary was reporting what other people said - but felt pretty padded. I found myself jotting things down which, on rereading them, I realise must have expressed my frustration at the time: ‘contrived preciousness? Or just the narrator’s privileged voice?’; ‘trying hard to be amusing’; ‘constructed eccentric idiosyncrasies? Quill pen’; ‘dreadful studied self-conscious dialogue of leisured classes’; ‘a “contented and inoffensive man” makes a dull narrator’; ‘Hilary complacent and patronisingly appreciative of women’; ‘snobbery towards Mr Fendihook’. And so on. At one point Doria exclaims to Hilary, “I’m not going to listen any longer… to your silly old early Victorian platitudes!” I agreed with her, and I think much of my displeasure lay in the persona of Locke’s chosen narrator.

Anyway, if I am a self-styled Lockian proto-otaku, I have to try to read everything he wrote. And he continues to delight me with his variety of rare words. In this novel I liked finnikin, merchantate, episcopicide, fustanella, yataghan, subfuse, omoplate and lobscouse. Nevertheless, one of those novels that’s for the superfan rather than the ordinary reader, I suspect.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the LibriVox version narrated by Simon Evers. (Very well narrated, although his American accent leaves much to be desired.) :)

An enjoyable tale, although I agree with the one reviewer who (I assume) complains about the wordiness and high-flown language. The narrator of the story translates ancient Persian poetry in his leisure hours, so his constant references to ancient Greek figures and other such top-crust wordiness is in character, if tedious. Listening to the audiobook helps with that, I think - one can gloss over it a bit.

The story itself was very enjoyable. The contrast between the characters - the burly, loud, adventurous Jaffrey; the settled, comfortable, conventional Hilary (narrator); the flighty, egotistical, romantic Adrian; the delicate, adoring Doria; the practical, insightful Barbara; and the semi-barbaric, stately Liosha - makes for great comedy and pathos as they interact.