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The Nebuly Coat

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J. Meade Faulkner is best known for Moonfleet, which is often considered a children's classic (though it can be read with enjoyment by adults, too.) However, The Nebuly Coat is a classic of its own, truly meriting that overused epithet, sui generis.

If The Nebuly Coat fits into any category it is in that small class of perfect books. Faulkner was a beautiful, understated stylist with a gift for apt, humorous, and poignant characterization. He combined these gifts with a rare skill in plotting. In short, he was good at everything.

You might say this is a murder mystery, because it involves murder, and the book is certainly mysterious. In fact, you will never know just who did it, or if anyone did it. In one sense then the book is teasing. However, in another sense the book also concludes definitively; the reader feels that story has run its course even though the mystery remains.

I urge you to read this book. Look for a used copy or search for it at your library. It really is a special book.

John Meade Falkner's 1903 cult classic THE NEBULY COAT has been the clear inspiration for many later Gothic British novels, most saliently Charles Palliser's THE QUINCUNX and (particularly) THE UNBURIED. It stands in a direct line of the Gothic and sensation traditions established by Hogg, Godwin, Collins, Le Fanu, and in particular Dickens: it will remind a reader most of EDWIN DROOD, but it also seems at the same time like no other other novel before it. Falkner explored his love of antiquarianism here to show the connections between an ancient abbey minster in a Dorset town and the aristocratic local peer, Lord Blandamer, whose heraldic symbol is the nebuly coat of arms of the title; a visiting London architect paid to restore the minster discovers that the baron's claim to the title may be in as much danger of collapse as the church itself. Falkner's portraiture of the rural Dorset folk has been compared to Hardy, although it often seems more aptly comparable to Gaskell, and does tend to go on (particularly after a major character dies midway through the narrative and Falkner seems to lose his narrative momentum). But the opening and closing thirds of the novel are absorbing, and his delineation of the three main characters--the stubborn architect Westray, the alcoholic church organist Sharnall, and the mysterious Lord Blandamer--is memorably accomplished. Best of all, he does a fine job of evoking that which a devotee of the Gothic most wants in his fiction, atmosphere, and the groaning slender arches of the Cullerne minster's tower greatly linger in the memory.

Only the third (and final) of Falkner's novels, this is an astonishing book, as close to a perfect novel as I've read.

In plotting, language, internal balance and, most of all, in the psychological delineation of character, it's not quite like anything else. Time and again, a character says or acts in a way that's startling and unpredictable, yet each time there's that inner stab that tells you the choice is exactly right. The dialogue is convincing throughout.

Though there is one "Lord" present, this is not at all the English novel of the upper class. The story focuses on a small English town with a large, ancient church. The major character is an outsider, a young architect brought in to oversee repairs to the venerable structure. Like many later novels (especially American), it presents the town as an entity filled with constricted characters often acting out of base or minor motives. Yet unlike most such cases, Falkner does not present his characters as oddballs and one-dimensional toss-offs, but as people of small ambition acting as their temperament dictates. Falkner is intensely fond of his characters and forgiving of their sins, but he is clear on the damage they can do to one another.

His satirical stabs are often fall-out-of-your-chair funny, exquisitely exact in wording and example. His critical thrusts at the broad emotional sweep of so many 19th-century novels are spot-on, as he shows how it is the little things - the misunderstandings in everyday conversation, the failure to share basic assumptions - that so often motivate action, rather than some overreaching outlook or ambition.

His earlier two novels focused on a specific mystery, as was so often the case at that period. Here, the main mystery here is whether there really is a mystery (a metamystery, I suppose). Is this just a tale of a place or is there a motivating action in the background? And once mystery does begin to peep out, you're never quite sure if foul deeds have been done or if nature has simply taken its course.

Another nice touch: The church tower becomes a character in itself (it's arches even speak to the architect), much as the walls of Loudon do in Ken Russell's film "The Devils."

Originally published in 1903, The Nubuly Coat is a rare book--yet it influenced the novels of so many other writers of Gothic fiction. The story opens when a young architect named Westray comes to the village of Cullerne to oversee the restoration of the old Norman church. The town itself is populated by an interesting array of characters: Mr. Sharnall the organist, who believes that a hidden specter with a hammer is out to kill him; the Rector and his wife, who seem as though they stepped out of an episode of Keeping Up Appearances.

There are also Miss Joliffe, the landlady; and her teenage niece, Anastasia, who seems surprisingly mature for her age. We're also introduced to, although not at firsthand, Martin Joliffe, who for many years before his death believed that he was the rightful heir of the Blandamer family fortune. There's also Lord Blandamer, the mysteries local squire, who keeps his distance from the rest of the town, though his family insignia, the "nebuly coat" of the title, covers everything in Cullerne. The townspeople are both in awe and contemptuous of him.

It's hard to characterize this novel. Mystery? Thriller? There's a murder here, but the mystery never gets solved. But there's definitely a suggestion of a solution. I was a little disappointed in that, but the atmosphere of the tale was sufficiently chilling enough that I really got into it. It's not an "easy" read, and it took about 20 pages for the story to get going, but Gothic fiction is really my thing. It's easy to see why this novel influenced writers such as Dorothy Sayers and her The Nine Tailors.

There's a lot here about church music and church politics, but it doesn't burden the story. Falkner's strength was characterization; he's a master of using even the finest of brushstrokes to depict his characters, and he's at his best when describing people at their best... and worst. He's also very, very funny in places. This novel's been on my TBR list for a long time, and it puzzles me as to why this book isn't more widely available; it's a classic.

I read this book during my college years although it wasn't a class assignment. This wonderful book has human redemption as its major theme. I think this book should be standard reading for all English majors. Beautifully written, it shows men at their weakest and greatest.