British Library, Day Six

Only one of my requests had fallen prey to the bomb that took out several religious novels, so I wound up reading quite a few tracts today, along with starting a (terrible, of course) triple-decker.

Incidentally, I think I should start a "body count" feature, given all the deaths that religious fiction tends to rack up.

“Florence,” The Stepmother: Or, Will She Be a Nun? (James Blackwood, n.d. [c. 1851]). One of those novels in which the author forgets about the plot, or gets sidetracked, or something. It sounds like the novel is going to be about the varied fates of cousins Gertrude Stapleton (very proud) and Mary Hamilton (unloved by her mother), but the novelist simply forgets about Mary in favor of Gertrude's plot. Gertrude is given to jealousy (bad); her father is given to being short-tempered (bad); and her mother has spent the past several years lying about being, well, Gertrude's mother instead of her stepmother (well-intentioned, but bad). Their cousin Eugenie, a Catholic (bad), conspires to destroy all of them by, among other things, claiming that hunky distant cousin Gerald had proposed to marry her; Gertrude rejects him when he really proposes to her instead, and so he goes off and dies (offstage, no lingering speeches). Gertrude, meanwhile, converts to Catholicism (bad) and decides to become a nun (worse), but changes her mind in the nick of time and is rescued by the cavalry (almost literally) when the convent refuses to let her go. Eugenie is horribly burnt, which kills her father (instantly), and eventually dies herself (concisely). At the end, everyone is forgiven. Moral of the story: don't hate people. The most interesting thing is that the novelist elects to kill off Gerald, instead of giving Gertrude a second chance (as many Protestant novelists would have done). BODY COUNT: Three.
The Young Crusader: A Catholic Tale (James Duffy, n.d.). Catholic historical novel about the Children's Crusade, serving as yet another warning against pride. Boy believes (wrongly) his father has been killed by the Saracens; boy falls prey to conniving knight Peter Archibald; boy (and his brother) trek off to the Holy Land with other kids to avenge Dad; boy...does not do that. Various forms of death (swords, drowning, leprosy, starvation, cold...), torture, and slavery ensue. After being suitably punished (see: torture &c.), boy returns home and becomes a successful warrior during the invasion of Spain. Some Walter Scott-ish reconciliation occurs at the end when boy's sister marries a converted Saracen, although the character who really lives happily ever after is the son who becomes a Cistercian monk. Moral of the story: listen to your elders. BODY COUNT: One among the named characters, although there are lots of children who die unpleasantly and anonymously.
East Kingsford (SPCK, n.d.). A Christian doctor helps the impoverished drunkard Peter Edwards. Peter, however, is wrongly accused of murdering his employer, but is saved at the very last minute when the real murderer submits a written confession (conveniently, said murderer is also in the USA). He reforms and, of course, converts; his employer's daughter converts; and everyone lives happily ever after when the doctor marries the employer's daughter. Does double duty as a temperance tract advocating for reading rooms in place of public houses, when it isn't lecturing poor readers on the necessity of being charitable to the rich. There are some similarities here to Mary Barton, although literary quality isn't one of them. Moral of the story: don't spend all your money on alcohol. BODY COUNT: One.
Milly Fenton (SPCK, n.d.). An orphan girl struggles against her sin of impatience as she deals with an irritating ill grandmother and then, when she becomes an lady's maid, an even more irritating fellow servant. When the tract isn't discussing the dangers of impatience, it discusses the dangers of lying and sneaking out on the Sabbath. Also, there's some aggravatingly obvious symbolism involving the theft of some apples. Moral of the story: control your impatience at all times. BODY COUNT: One.
A. Colbeck, The Fall of the Staincliffes (Sunday School Union, 1891). Published as the prize-winning entry in a competition about the dangers of gambling. The Methodist John Staincliffe is a self-made man who leaves his son, also John Staincliffe, a thriving business; the son in turn buys a nice property. But trouble ensues when two things happen: John Staincliffe Jr. decides to sell toys that may or may not have prizes inside, which leads to dissension with his foreman, Cresswell, a staunch Methodist who objects to gambling; and his son, Herbert, becomes a gambling addict himself. Irate when the Methodist clergyman refuses to discipline Cresswell, Staincliffe abandons the Methodists, and BAD STUFF HAPPENS. John plays the stock market; Herbert gambles, gets drunk, and falls in with a bad crowd who ultimately rob the Staincliffe house and (worse still) kill their dog. In the end, John, who appears to have turned into a Mr. Merdle/John Sadleir wannabe, dies in a fire at his offices that is probably suicide; Herbert, after relapsing into his gambling addiction, drowns in a fashion that is also probably suicide. Everyone else becomes a good Christian and gets over it. Besides its obvious complaint about gambling, the novella is also critical of the idea that, as John says, "business is business." Moral of the story: don't gamble, unless you want to die horribly. BODY COUNT: Three (including the dog).
The Little Christian; Or, the Distressed Family: A Tale from Real Life. Calculated for Young Persons, but Particularly Addressed to the Benevolent Public (Swinborne and Walter, 1823). Presented as a fundraising text, although it's not clear how the funds wold be raised. Mother runs out of cash; kids help raise money; one kid dies (at moderate length); the eponymous kid dies (at greater length); mom tries to start a school, but doesn't succeed. The tract ends on a note of suspense--what will happen to these people? The eponymous kid, Edward, is a classic evangelical child, capable of remarkable feats of Biblical exegesis (even the narrator concedes that this may strike some readers as...implausible). This was actually a relatively popular tract, reprinted several times. Moral of the story: good Christians focus their attention on the next world, not this one. BODY COUNT: Two.
The Soldier's Daughter; Or, the History of Charlotte Alcester. Chiefly Addressed to Sunday-School Children, 2nd ed. (J. Nisbet, 1820). A relatively plotless tract about the importance of going to Sunday School and what happens there; rather useful for its list of (implicitly) recommended books for a Sunday School library. Also includes a number of hymns. Much to my astonishment, given how angelic Charlotte becomes, she's still alive at the end of the tract. Moral of the story: good children who pay attention in Sunday School will become even better Christians.
The Two Sunday School Boys; or the History of Thomas & Joseph (H. Teape, n.d.). Two boys go to a Sunday School. Joseph, the good student, undergoes religious conversion at a young age and becomes an excellent apprentice, eventually going on to have a successful career as a shoemaker; Thomas, the bad student, becomes a lousy apprentice, steals money, and escapes imprisonment by going off to sea, never to be heard from again. The plot seems to be loosely inspired by George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), only without the sex. Or the hanging. Again, to my astonishment, nobody is dead at the end. Moral of the story: good children who pay attention in Sunday School will become even better Christians (didn't I just say that a second ago?); bad children become thieves and worse.

Total body count for the day: eleven.