Review of "Time of Hope: Strangers and Brothers #1" by C.P. Snow

 

I first read C.P. Snow's 'Strangers and Brothers' series some time ago, and it became a favorite. The novels focus on an English barrister/civil servant, Lewis Elliot, who rises from poverty to a position of influence in the early-to-mid 1900s. Elliot is present in the entire eleven-book series, but he's not always the central character.

I think Anglophiles and fans of historical fiction would enjoy the series.

*****

As 'Time of Hope' opens in June 1914, nine-year-old Lewis Eliot - ambling home after an afternoon with friends - is seized with a feeling of dread.



Lewis soon learns his father Bertie's leather merchant business has gone bankrupt. This is especially difficult for Lewis's mother Lena, a proud woman whose hopes had been lofty. "She had a romantic, surging, passionate imagination....as a girl she had expected a husband who would give her love and luxury and state." Deprived of personal success, Lena infuses Lewis with her dreams.



After Bertie's bankruptcy is made public, Lena can hardly show her face in public. Bertie, however, was born with a cheerful disposition, and carries on as a low-paid traveling salesman.



Lena makes budgets and pinches shillings, but the war makes everything more difficult.



Then, when Lewis is eleven, Lena swallows her pride to ask Aunt Milly (Bertie's sister) for the fees she promised for Lewis's secondary school. Aunt Milly agrees, but she's a 'kindly curmudgeon' who tells Lewis, "You've got too good an opinion of yourself....It's your mother's fault for letting you think you're something out of the ordinary."



Lewis observes, "Aunt Milly would consider that her money had been well invested if I contrived to scrape through my years at school without drawing unfavorable attention to myself. And once more I was to listen to her message. My first duty, if ever my education provided me with a livelihood, was to save enough money to pay twenty shillings on the pound on my father's liabilities, and so get him discharged from bankruptcy."

When Lewis finishes secondary school he's almost sixteen, and there's no money for university. Having done well in his studies, Lewis lands a job as a junior clerk in the local Council Education Office, which has possibilities for advancement.



With this in mind, Lewis enrolls in law classes at the local College of Art and Technology (aka the School). There Lewis meets George Passant, a solicitor/managing clerk who teaches a night class in Fundamentals of Criminal Law. George is destined to play an important part in Lewis's life.



Lewis's hopes for a brighter future are bolstered when he inherits 300 pounds from his mother's uncle. Aunt Milly wants Lewis to pay down his father's debts, but his mother, who's terminally ill, insists Lewis is to spend the money to 'get a start.'

After his mother dies, Lewis asserts his independence by taking a room in a boardinghouse. He observes, "I had brought all my possessions in two old suitcases - another suit, two pairs of flannels, some underclothes, a few books and school photographs. I felt despondent in the strange, cheerless room, and yet hopeful with the hope that I saw so often in my mother."



Lewis continues working at the Council Education Office, and starts fraternizing with young people (called 'the group') that George Passant - now in his mid-twenties - is collecting around him. All the group, both men and women, are students at the School. Lewis recalls, "We sat hour after hour at night or on Sunday afternoons in dingy cafés up and down the town, the cafés of cinemas or, late at night, the lorry drivers' caff beside the railway station....soon we developed the practice of all going to spend weekends in a farmhouse ten miles away, where we would cook our own food, pay a shilling a night for a bed, and talk until daybreak."



It's now that Lewis has his next life-altering experience. He observes, "It was in those happy days that, attuned so that my imagination stirred to the sound of a girl's name, I first heard the name of Sheila Knight....attuned because of the amorous climate which lapped around our whole group on those summer evenings....One warm and cloudy midsummer evening, I had met [my friend] Jack out of the newspaper office, and we were walking slowly up the London Road. A car drove by close to the pavement, and I had a moment's sight, blurred and confused, of a young woman's face, a wave. The car passed us, and I turned my head, but could see no more. Jack was smiling. He said 'Sheila Knight'."



For Lewis, it's love at first sight. He and Sheila occasionally go out together, but on Sheila's part it's much more platonic than romantic. Sheila exhibits erratic behavior, suffers from some kind of antisocial personality disorder, and torments Lewis with other men. Still, Lewis is obsessed with Sheila, and their relationship forms a large and important part of this novel (and Lewis's story going forward).



Meanwhile, from age nineteen, Lewis takes steps to further his professional ambitions. George Passant is a solicitor/managing clerk at the firm 'Eden & Martineau', and he urges Lewis to apply for an apprenticeship there. This would cost Lewis a considerable sum, and George insists, "If there's any snag, I should expect you to look on me as your banker. I don't see how you could possibly need more than a hundred pounds on top of your [300 pounds]. Somehow or other, that will have to be found. I insist that you don't let a trivial sum affect your decision."



Lewis meets Mr. Eden and Mr. Martineau and makes a good impression, but ultimately decides to go in another direction. Lewis decides that, instead of becoming a solicitor, he wants to read for the bar (become a barrister). Lewis gets admitted to the Chambers of Herbert Getliffe, where he'll have to pay 208 pounds down, and then pupil's fees - which is more than his entire inheritance. Lewis must borrow money to help with his education and living expenses, and Aunt Milly is cajoled into providing a loan.



Lewis's education/experiences at Herbert Getliffe's Inn occupies a large part of the novel, and provides most of the lighter moments. Getliffe is a memorable character: he's good-natured, but also arrogant; stingy (he never pays for drinks); takes credit for other people's work; is wary about juniors moving up the ladder....and he usually manages to slide out of his promises.



Lewis has to deal with all this during his years at the Inn, and then must 'study study study' to take his bar exams. George Passant, who has extensive knowledge about the law, coaches and encourages Lewis, and is instrumental in Lewis's success.



Towards the end of the novel, Lewis is a London barrister representing a client, and this is the subject of the next book in the series, titled 'George Passant.'

Though the book encompasses the WWI years, there's not much about the conflict aside from the deprivation this causes in Britain. This seems like a hole in the story, since some characters would surely lose loved ones and talk about it. On the upside, the novel has a good bit of British slang, archaic words, and fancy language, which is always fun.

For instance:

➤ George tells Lewis, "You'd become an incomparably better solicitor than most of the bellwethers and sunkets who disfigure what I still consider a decent profession." (In this context, sunket means an idiot.)



➤ When Lewis applies to apprentice in Getliffe's chambers, Getliffe tells him, "It's not easy for me to take you, but I shall. I make it a matter of principle to take people like you, who've started with nothing but their brains....Also, it keeps the others up to it." Lewis observes, "He grinned at me: his mood had changed, his face was transformed, he was guying all serious persons." (Guying means teasing, making fun of.)



➤ Lewis is suffering in his relationship with Sheila, but can't break it off. He observes: "I had seen something of myself, and something of my fate. In detail, I did not burke the certain truths." (Burke originally meant 'to murder by suffocation without leaving marks' but now means suppress the truth/ kid yourself.)



➤ When Lewis is an apprentice barrister and looking for business at police courts, he notes, "I used to attend several....Those courts were only a few miles apart, but in society the distance was vast - from the smart businessmen showing off their cars on the way home from the tennis court, to the baffled, stupid, foreign prostitutes, the ponces and bullies, the street bookmakers, the blowsy ladies of the Pimlico backstreets." (Ponces refers to pimps.)



➤ Mrs. Eden admires Sheila, and Lewis observes, "She was quite unembarrassed by her admiration; it was easy to think of her as a girl, concentrated and intent, unrestrained in a schwärmerei, bringing some mistress flowers and gifts. (In this context, schwärmerei means a crush.)



This debut novel in the series establishes Lewis Eliot's background; conflicted feelings about his mother; confidence in himself; ability to read people; willingness to suffer for Sheila; and deep loyalty to his friends.

This book is set in a time when climate change; pollution; oil reserves; nuclear bombs; etc. weren't issues. People had different worries then, but many concerns - like family; education; professional success; relationships; corruption; poverty; and so on - remain significant.

I like the book and recommend it. 

Rating: 4 stars