The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd

Title: The Cardboard Crown
Author: Martin Boyd (1893-1972)
Publication: Text Publishing, trade paperback, originally published in 1952
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: England and Australia

Description: Guy Langton, the narrator and author’s alter ego, is a writer who fought in WWI and became a published author in England. When he returns to Australia in 1949, he tries to restore his grandparents’ home, Westhill, about 30 miles from Melbourne, but he realizes this project isn’t really helping him reestablish his roots. The discovery of his grandmother’s diaries gives him a new creative interest and he begins to write her story, which begins with her marriage in 1855 to an attractive but otherwise unimpressive young man, a judge’s son who likes her looks and her fortune. Together, they travel to England where he is the heir to a country home in Wiltshire, and over the course of their lives together they inhabit both worlds – their wealth (even when it fluctuates) ensures they are welcomed by their English relatives and are respected at home in Australia, but never seem fully comfortable in either place. The novel wryly blends Langton’s recollections of his grandparents and other relatives, gossip he hears, and snippets from the diaries. Langton also describes a love affair that enriched his grandmother’s life and her conscientious return to her sometimes unappreciative family.

My Impression: I was unfamiliar with this author until my friend Emily G told me of her fascination with the Langton Quartet, a series of novels about an Anglo-Australian family. Because we like so many of the same books, I couldn’t believe I had never heard of an author she was, shall we say, actively collecting; curious, I immediately ordered the first book. Like his characters, Martin Boyd was educated in Australia but spent time living in England as an adult; in fact, the introduction says his work was far more acclaimed in the UK than in his own country. The leisurely lives of the Boyd and Langton families are an incredible contrast to The Secret River which I read recently, in which a convict and his family homestead in Australia, bitterly feuding with the natives, barely more than a generation earlier. Interestingly, Boyd’s great-grandfather was a convict who had made his fortune. I have read that families now take pride in being able to trace their ancestry to transported convicts but that would not have been the case in 1855.

I was a little puzzled how Alice (for most of the book in legal battles with her mother over her father’s fortune but spends freely) was able to control her inheritance, given that the Married Women’s Property Act, which enabled married women to hold property of their own, was not passed in Victoria until 1884. Perhaps her father had tied it up somehow or her husband did not object so long as he benefitted. The way Alice finances her growing family and connections is an interesting aspect of the book – all the travel and maintaining homes at opposite ends of the world and purchasing expensive clothes and furniture in England to ship home (now it is very expensive just to send a book to Australia!). Although she worries about money, it’s not the same worry the rest of us have (and, unlike the Thornhills in The Secret River, never has to fear indigenous people attacking her home or herself). The depiction of an affluent, sometimes eccentric Australian family is clearly what won the series comparison to the Forsyte Saga. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says:

The first three novels won high praise in Britain and the U.S.A.; in spite of their Anglo-Australian themes and settings, they were scarcely noticed by Australian reviewers.

Lonely and restless again in England, Boyd went to Rome in 1957 and lived for the rest of his life in a series of pensiones and apartments, on a diminishing income. The last Langton novel was a critical failure. . .

That may explain why Emily had such a hard time locating the fourth book! This is my sixth book for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by The Intrepid Reader.

Source: Personal copy. This Australian edition emphasizes the imprint, Text Classics, more than the author’s name, as you can see from the cover above. The founder of Text is called a ‘visionary’ on the back cover, which seems a little over the top for cover copy and, usually, if someone is praised, it is the author! I hope the copywriter got a raise – remind me to call my boss a visionary this week!