Belchamber (New York Review Books Classics) [Paperback]

Howard Sturgis (Author), Edmund White (Introduction), E. M. Forster (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2008 | Series: New York Review Books Classics

Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers—Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers—known familiarly as Sainty, is the scion of an ancient English aristocratic family. Behind him stretches a rogues’ gallery of picturesque upper-crust scoundrels. But he is uninterested in riding to hounds or drinking or whoring in the great tradition of his forebears, and though he admires his tough-minded puritanical Scottish mother, he lacks her unrelenting moral self-assurance. Sainty is instead a sensitive soul, physically delicate, sexually timid, intellectually inclined, utterly honest, and thoroughly decent, but constitutionally incapable of asserting himself. When it comes to assuming the responsibilities of his inheritance, to managing his feckless younger brother Albert or fathoming his sly cousin Clyde, and, above all, to the essential business of marrying and continuing the family line, Sainty hasn’t a prayer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"More Jamesian than the Master in hinting at melodrama yet keeping it at arm's length, Sturgis is an absolute modern in stirring up tensions on behalf of one of the quietest heroes in British fiction." --The New Republic

“One of the unique novels of the nineteen hundreds…praised by Henry James and Edith Wharton, and...hailed by E. M. Forster” –Los Angeles Times

"Belchamber is a curious hybrid, a masochistic Bildungsroman interwoven with a caustic and generally more enjoyable novel of high society." --Alan Hollinghurst, The London Review of Books

“As a story the thing holds the reader pretty hard–perhaps by the force of the truth that is in it. By the way, there’s a sort of old-fashioned touch about some of it, and now and then a suggestion of Thackeray.” –The New York Times

"Howard Sturgis was a friend of both Henry James and Edith Wharton. This, his third novel, is an accomplished but unassuming story about moral choices. The protagonist is barely in touch with the ways of the world and for this, he is nicknamed 'Sainty' by his family and friends, most of whom betray him in one way or another. Fortunately or unfortunately, he is also wealthy and titled, which makes him ripe for exploitation. With an intriguing cast of unreliable characters, Belchamber poses questions about good and bad behaviour and demonstrates effectively that virtue is rarely its own reward." -Anita Brookner, The Observer

"Not only one of the strongest books I have read in years, but so beautifully
written. It made an amazing impression on me and haunted me for days." –Emma Eames

"Remarkably interesting" –The Critic, March 1906

“Belchamber deserves to take its places as a true, if minor, classic, for it is a work of imagination, deeply felt, truly observed, and achieved with a sense of style and architecture.” –Gerard Hopkins

"...a strong novel...of upperclass English society, and has a most lovable and sympathetic hero, whose life from childhood up is skillfully portrayed." –The Dial

"Belchamber had a fruitful progeny in the fiction of Evelyn Waugh who used it as a model, particularly in Brideshead." –Financial Times

"Sturgis (1855-1920) was an expatriate American, a friend of Henry James and Edith Wharton who wrote three novels, of which Belchamber, a portrait of a weak but decent member of the British aristocracy, is recognized as his best." –Globe and Mail

“Neither strength nor style is lacking in this quite remarkable study…” –Outlook

“Mr. Sturgis’s little world is full of sound and movement: one learns to know how his people look, one would recognize the tone of their voices…He has shown us, in firm, clear strokes, the tragedy of the trivial: has shown us how the susceptibilities of a tender and serious spirit, hampered by physical infirmity, may be crushed and trampled under foot in the mad social race for luxury and amusement.” –The Bookman

About the Author

Howard Sturgis (1855—1920) was born to American parents in London and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He wrote three novels–Tim: A Story of Eton (1891), All That Was Possible (1894), Belchamber (1904)–and a number of short stories.

Edmund White is Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University. His most recent book is Chaos: A Novella and Stories.

E. M. Forster (1879—1970) was a novelist, short-story writer, and critic born in London. His most famous works include Howard's End, A Passage to India, and A Room with a View.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172663
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172667
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #424,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tender And Serene Despair, May 12, 2010

By 

Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Belchamber (Paperback)

This novel, in effect, offers a twist upon Shakespeare's line that, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." For Sturgis and for our protagonist, Lord "Sainty" Belchamber:

"The world is like a huge theatrical company in which half the actors and actresses have been cast for the wrong parts."

The book is very reminiscent, in many ways, of some of the works of Sturgis's friend, Henry James, except that, in James, there is always at least a hint at redemption for the main character, usually more sinned against than sinning. In fact, whilst reading the novel, I was continually reminded of the character of Ralph Touchett in A Portrait of a Lady. The difference is that whilst Ralph is taken out of the picture shortly after the off in the James novel, Sainty remains in focus throughout this essentially pessimistic gem of a novel.

Belchamber, published in 1905, is at once a shot across the bow of Victorian mores and Edwardian society, specifically the women in them, the older ones who propagate the former and the younger ones who carouse in the latter. The entire plot of the book might be effectively summed up by a reflection of Sainty's near the end:

"He saw what a puppet he had been in the hands of two strong-willed women, an instrument to satisfy the vulgar ambitions of the one, the angry revenge of the other."

The one thing that struck me as a bit off about the otherwise quite believable novel was Sainty's complete asexuality. One suspects that Sturgis would have liked to make his "hero" homosexual as he himself was, but doing so, of course, would have rendered the novel unpublishable. One suspects the same thing of James - "The nicest old lady I ever met," as Faulkner famously put it - as well.

In the event, we have to make do with the epicene Sainty who suffers no great perturbations of the heart or soul during the entire time the miscast characters of the world work perniciously upon him. When the ultimate tragedy occurs, it actually comes as a sort of relief to Sainty due to its pureness and profundity, untainted by the pettiness of the other, foregoing tragedies, and Sainty is left to reflect upon Shelley's contemplation of the statue of Niobe in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, "her tender and serene despair," as Shelley puts it.

Still, this novel deserves, I think, to be more widely read than it is currently (i.e., not at all) for the language alone, especially in the early going. The heady admixture of French into the English amongst the upper classes reminds one of nothing so much of the English used in the salons in Proust.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars criminally overlooked, June 18, 2009

By 

blackandwhitedog "mockingbird" (philadephia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Belchamber (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Edith Wharton and Henry James should be taking a few uneasy turns in their graves for their damning silence on BELCHAMBER. According to Edmund White's excellent preface to this perceptive, unsparing novel, they were his friends and frequent guests yet neither came to his rescue when the critics took the ax to BELCHAMBER. No wonder, it was decades ahead of its time in its appreciation of its effeminate central character, not to mention its depiction of upper class cruelty.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but a little too much self-pity, July 6, 2009

By 

Bamber Gascoigne - See all my reviews

This review is from: Belchamber (Paperback)

This book is too driven by pity for the protagonist -- apparently a stand-in for the author -- but it's very involving.

Sturgis was a protegé of Henry James, who however criticized the novel rather harshly, and it also failed commercially. It was his third and last novel. He was a wealthy English-born son of an American banker, who lived in a country house keeping a popular gay literary salon in the 1890s and 1900s, seeing a lot of James and Edith Wharton, and later a bit of EM Forster who seems to be the only one to really like this novel until recently.

The first half is great, about the trials of an effiminate and pure-hearted heir to a great noble house who copes with the paradox of power and powerlessness. The second half, after he's maneuvered into marrying a truly awful woman, works less well: the characters become less believable and the focus on pitying the protagonist becomes tiresome.