The Young Lovell: A Romance — Themes and Context

(0 User reviews) 1358

In Category - Historical Social Novels

Authors: Ford, Ford Madox, 1873-1939 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2013 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Historical fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 95,565

Reading time 416 min

Text sections 10

The source record for The Young Lovell: A Romance — Themes and Context measures this digital text at 95,565 words, 6 hr 56 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 25.5 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Historical fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #42801

Ford Madox Ford's 1913 historical romance opens with Young Lovell's vigil in a dark chapel, where visions and demons test his resolve. The narrative shifts between interior turmoil and the political machinations of the Border lords, using dense sensory detail and abrupt scene changes to evoke the unsettled world of Tudor England.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg42801

Read the Text

ions had come to him; a perpetual flutter of wings, shuddering through the cold silence. He had seen through the thick walls, Behemoth riding amidst crystal seas, Leviathan who threw up the smoke and flames of volcanoes. Mahound had passed that way with his cortège of pagans and diamonded apes; Helen of Troy had beckoned to him, standing in the sunlight, and the Witch of Endor, an exceedingly fair woman, and a naked one, riding on a shell over a sea with waves like dove’s feathers. The Soldan’s daughter had stretched out her arms to him, and a courtesan he had seen in Venice long ago, but her smile had turned to a skull’s grinning beneath a wimple. He had known all these for demons. The hermit of Liddeside with his long beard and foul garments, such as they had seen him when they went raiding up Dunbar way, had swept into that place and had imperiously bidden him up from his knees to drive the Scots from Barnside, but he had known that the anchorite had been dead this three years and, seeing that the Warden of the Eastern Marches and the Bishop of Durham, with all his own father’s forces and all theirs, lay in the castle and its sheilings, it was not likely that the false Scots would be so near. Young gallants with staghounds, brachets and Hamboro dogs had bidden him to the chase; magicians with crucibles had bidden him come view their alembics where the philosopher’s stone stood revealed; spirits holding flames in their hands had sought to teach him the sin against the Holy Ghost, and Syrians in robes of gold, strange sins. There had come cooks with strange and alluring messes whose odours make you faint with desires, and the buttling friars from friaries with great wine-skins of sack. But all of them, too, he had known for demons, though at each apparition desire had shaken him.

All these he had taken to be in the nature of the very old chapel, since it had stood there over the tiresome and northern sea ever since Christendom had come to the land, and it was proper to think that, just as those walls had seen the murdering of blessed saint Oddry by heathens and Scots whilst he sang mass, and even as pagans and sorcerers had in the old times contended for that ground, now, having done it in the body, in their souls they should still haunt that spot and contend for the soul of a young lording that should be made a knight upon the morrow. But when the tower-warden had churned out four o’clock the bird of dawn had crowed twice....

Three times would have been of better omen. At that moment Satan himself, the master fiend, with legs of scarlet, a bull’s hide sweeping behind and horns all gold and aquamarine, had been dancing with mighty leaps above a coal fire, up through which, livid and in flaming shrouds, there had risen the poor souls of folk in purgatory. And with a charter from which there dangled a seal dripping blood to hiss in the coals and become each drop a viper—with this charter held out towards Young Lovell, Satan had offered him any of these souls to be redeemed from purgatory at the price of selling his own to Satan.

He had been about to say that he knew too much of these temptations and that the damnation of one soul would be infinitely more grievous to Our Lady than the temporary sojourn in purgatory of an infinite number. But at the crowing of the cock Satan and his firelit leer had vanished as if a candle had been blown out in a cavern....

There had begun an intolerable period of waiting. He tried to say his sixty Aves, but the perpetual whirling of wings that brushed his brow took away his thoughts. He knew them now for the wings of anxious bats that his presence disturbed. When he began upon his Paters, a rat that had crept into his harness of proof overset his helmet and the prayer went out of his head. When he would have crossed himself, suddenly his foster-brother and cousin, Decies of the South, that should have watched in the chapel porchway, began to snore and cried out in his sleep the name "Margaret." Three times Decies of the South cried "Margaret."

Then Young Lovell knew that the spirits having power between cockcrow and dawn, in the period when men die and life ebbs down the sands—that these spirits were casting their spells upon him.

Continue Reading →

The novel begins in absolute darkness: Young Lovell of the Castle kneels from midnight until the sixth hour, his vigil broken when he rises. The chapel is described as a 'stone place, like a coffer,' with windows set in walls 'a man's length deep.' Ford immediately establishes a claustrophobic, visionary atmosphere. Lovell sees Behemoth, Leviathan, Helen of Troy, and the Witch of Endor—all dismissed as demons. The prose moves between physical strain and hallucinatory clarity, with the young knight's senses overwhelmed: 'the blood made flames in his eyes and roared in his ears.' This opening sequence, dense with medieval imagery and psychological pressure, sets the tone for a romance that is as much about inner conflict as external action.

Darkness and Vision: The Chapel as Threshold

The chapel scene is not merely a prelude but a structural anchor. Ford uses the confined, lightless space to generate a catalogue of temptations: gallants with hounds, magicians with crucibles, spirits holding flames. Each apparition is a test of faith and will. The hermit of Liddeside, dead three years, appears to command Lovell to drive out the Scots—a detail that blurs the line between supernatural visitation and psychological projection. The chapel's age—'ever since Christendom had come to the land'—suggests a place saturated with history and memory. Ford's handling of time is deliberately ambiguous: Lovell expects dawn, but the darkness persists, making the vigil feel both endless and immediate. This technique recurs throughout the novel, where temporal markers are often unreliable.

The Lord Dacre's Mother and the Business of Rule

After the chapel, the scene shifts abruptly to a room in Durham, where the Lord Dacre's mother sits 'in the chair like a throne,' perusing a book of accounts. The contrast is stark: from visionary darkness to the mundane details of capons, eggs, and bolls of wheat. Ford juxtaposes the spiritual trials of the young knight with the practical governance of the old lady. Messengers arrive with offerings—a deer, two fat geese, a salmon, strawberries—and she loses her place in the accounts, scolding the old man who holds the book. The room itself is a former council chamber, its original purpose forgotten. This passage grounds the romance in the material realities of border life: rents, gifts, and the constant negotiation of power. The old lady's sharp tongue and the meticulous listing of goods create a texture of daily life that counterpoints the earlier supernaturalism.

Sir Bertram of Lyonesse: The Spy's Gaze

In the same room, Sir Bertram of Lyonesse stands in a window space, paring his nails with a little knife. He is described as 'a notable man of forty, stout and grave,' wearing a rich blue cloak and hat with a white plume. The Princess Rohtraut taunts him: 'This is very easy spying for King Henry.' Sir Bertram does not reply but instead surveys the gorge beneath, noting the fortifications of Durham—the double portcullis, the meurtrières, the towers with arches that lead to 'slanting hol...' (the text breaks off). Ford uses Sir Bertram's engineer's eye to describe the city's defenses in precise, technical detail. This character embodies the political intrigue that shadows the romance: he is a spy, a courtier, and a man of calculation. His silent observation contrasts with Lovell's visionary excess, offering a different mode of perception—one based on measurement and suspicion.

Movement Between Spaces: Castle, City, River

Ford structures the narrative through abrupt geographical shifts. The opening is locked inside the chapel; then the scene moves to Durham, with its steep bridge, black river, and fortified walls. The description of the city at night—'torch-light, over a steep bridge above a black river'—emphasizes verticality and enclosure. Sir Bertram's room faces inward, onto the cathedral's fortifications; by craning his head, he can see towers to left and right. The river Wear appears as a boundary and a vantage point. These transitions are not smooth but jarring, as if the novel itself is moving through a landscape of obstacles. The recurring images of stone, darkness, and narrow passages create a sense of being trapped or watched. Ford's romance is as much about the physical experience of space—its pressures and perspectives—as about the characters who inhabit it.

Readers should attend to the way Ford builds meaning through contrast: the visionary and the bureaucratic, the interior and the fortified exterior. The excerpts suggest a novel that resists easy categorization, blending chivalric romance with the gritty details of border politics. The incomplete text leaves many questions unanswered, but the patterns of imagery—darkness, stone, surveillance—offer a coherent thread. Approach the work as a study in perception and power, where every glance is a form of judgment.

Reading The Young Lovell, I kept thinking how its dark chapel visions feel like a distant echo of the cluttered, gentle chaos in Out of the Hurly-Burly; Or, Life in an Odd Corner — Edition Insights—both are haunted, only the demon there wears a housecoat and drops teaspoons. Odd how the same restless century could hold such different shadows.