Book 788: Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1) – Hilary Mantel

I clearly was not in a hurry to read this one. It has been on my Kindle since I purchased it in December of 2011 and that was TWO years after it won the Booker Prize! I avoided it for some time because I was waiting for the remaining two books: Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020), but I also avoided it because it’s a freakin’ tome. It comes it at just under 560 pages.* Thankfully the next one is shorter (436), but the last is 200 pages more coming in at 764 pages! OOF that is going to be a commitment when I get around to it.

I also actively avoided it because that was around the time that I came to realize that in general I find myself enjoying the runners up to the Booker Prize more often than the actual winner. There’s like a mental hurdle I don’t think I can quite make the leap over to fully appreciate and see the beauty in most of the winners. I knew this was long and I knew that it had A LOT of description and the formatting was weird (minimal quotation marks, the point of view), so I knew it would be a big challenge for me.

Long story short, challenge conquered and this was a freakin’ fantastic novel. Mantel luxuriates in the English language. She plays with words and passages in such a beautiful way I found myself consciously re-reading passages or scenes to feel the language flow through me again because of how beautiful it was. And her vocabulary, I mean seriously ya’ll she’s like SAT words hyped up to the nth degree. She actually used words like prestidigitations in context and they fit in seamlessly and not like someone had too much fun with a thesaurus. Take the following passage,

In the year before he came back to England for good, he had crossed and recrossed the sea, undecided; he had so many friends in Antwerp, besides good business contacts, and as the city expanded, which it did every year, it seemed more and more the right place to be. If he was homesick, it was for Italy: the light, the language, Tommaso as he’d been there. Venice had cured him of any nostalgia for the banks of the Thames. Florence and Milan had given him ideas more flexible than those of people who’d stayed at home. But something pulled at him—curiosity about who was dead and who’d been born, a desire to see his sisters again, and laugh—one can always laugh somehow—about their upbringing. He had written to Morgan Williams to say, I’m thinking of London next. But don’t tell my father. Don’t tell him I’m coming home. (90)

There’s nothing really important you need to know here and if you read it once you’re like WTF is she talking about, but read it out loud and her cadence and the sentence structure it’s just wonderful.

He is the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell. (465)

Wolf Hall covers Thomas Cromwell’s life from 1500-1535 starting with a pretty harsh scene where his father is faces from his father and following his meteoric rise from river rat to right hand man of King Henry VIII. His scheming and politicking, the relationships he made and lost (the death of his wife and children was so incredibly sad), the religion he built protected and abandoned, and the foundations he laid knowing that the world was going to continue moving forward regardless of what his specific thoughts were on any opinion so better to secretly support all sides and then come out on top either way.

These three passages really highlighted Cromwell’s impact on England and the King’s reign. All of his machinations in the background and the legwork he did growing up throughout his career was astounding:

The world is not run from where he thinks. Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall. The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot. (309)

“I am always translating, he thinks: if not language to language, then person to person. Anne to Henry. Henry to Anne. Those days when he wants soothing, and she is as prickly as a holly bush. Those times—they do occur—when his gaze strays after another woman, and she follows it, and storms off to her own apartments. He, Cromwell, goes about like some public poet, carrying assurances of desire, each to each.” (345)

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman’s sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh. (499)

I mean theoretically you could just read those three and get the gist of the novel. I mean you miss out on all the flavor and essence of the story and the luxury of Mantel’s writing, so you should still read it.

The most fascinating part of the book was how Mantel wrote the changing world around Cromwell and his influence on it. She took her time and the slow pace really highlighted how much was changing and how fast, in reality, it was changing.  For example, the first introduction of Wolf Hall is around page 200, with the introduction of Jane Seymour and then it’s only mentioned in passing until the very last line of the book when they’re getting ready to visit it. And knowing what happens to Anne and who Henry marries next I am WAITING for that opening scene.

He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made, no one could circulate their words in a printed book or bill, because printed books were not thought of. He feels a moment of jealousy toward the dead, to those who served kings in slower times than these; nowadays the products of some bought or poisoned brain can be disseminated through Europe in a month. (403)

And honestly, let’s face it this could’ve been an incredibly boring work. I mean he’s a politician helping his king get out of his current marriage, marry his next wife and toss the Catholic church out of England. I mean it’s not exactly riveting page turning material, but Mantel described it beautifully:

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them. (470)

And I feel like this kind of describer her own work and writing. She was able to make a somewhat boring historical moment come alive in a way that I’ve found so many other authors couldn’t. AND she’s got jokes:

They will believe it, Rafe says. The word in the city is that Thomas Cromwell has a prodigious . . . Memory, he says. I have a very large ledger. A huge filing system, in which are recorded (under their name, and also under their offense) the details of people who have cut across me. (393)

I mean who doesn’t love a dick joke, right? And to have it come in a work that’s so well written and has super SAT words littered throughout, it was just the perfect moment of levity and innuendo.

There was just so much in this book it’s hard to even write about it other than to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m definitely interested in reading more of Mantel’s work, but I’ll definitely have to parse them out because if they are anywhere near as long or intense as this one I’m not sure I can handle them!

And last but not least I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I spent most of the time reading this book humming the songs from Six (Wikipedia link) the British musical about the wives of Henry VIII. Seriously, I sang the Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn (YouTube links) songs dozens of times. If you haven’t heard of the musical or listened to it GO DO IT NOW, it’s only 45 minutes and fully available on YouTube.

Recommendation: 100% worth the read if you can persevere. I cannot overstate how luxurious Mantel’s writing is and how engrossed I was with the book as I read it. I’m a firm believer that a book will call to you to read it at the right time. I knew I would read this at some point (after it sat on my Kindle for almost a decade) and after two random people asked me about it over a very short period of time I knew it was time to read this. If you’re going to try it and are daunted, I’d recommend settings small goals X number of chapters or pages to break it up into smaller chunks, and even read something when you get to a clear break point.

*In the past THREE years I’ve only read 12 books that have more pages than that with four being in The Dark Tower series: Wolves of the Calla [820], Wizard and Glass [752], The Dark Tower [740], The Waste Lands [612]; four in the Harry Potter series Order of the Phoenix [901], Deathly Hallows [791], Goblet of Fire [735], and Half-Blood Prince [668]; two others being part of series: Lethal White (Cormoran Strike #4) [656] and A Conjuring of Light (Shades of Magic #3) [624]; and two standalones: Crashed [720] and Quietus [608].

Opening Line: “So now get up.”

Closing Line: “Early September. Five days. Wolf Hall.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Wolf Hall
“He picks up the money. He says, ‘Hwyl, Morgan Williams. Diolch am yr arian.’ Thank you for the money. ‘Gofalwch am Katheryn. Gofalwch am eich busnes. Wela i chi eto rhywbryd. Poblwc.'” (10)

“For what’s the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before?” (36)

“Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don’t get on by being original. You don’t get on by being bright. You don’t get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook . . .” (49)

“The idea that he or anyone else might come to have Wolsey’s hold over the king is about as likely as Anne Cromwell becoming Lord Mayor. But he doesn’t altogether discount it. One has heard of Jeanne d’Arc; and it doesn’t have to end in flames.” (71)

“If you have been in the street in Paris or Rouen, and seen a mother pull her child by the hand, and say, ‘Stop that squalling, or I’ll fetch an Englishman,’ you are inclined to believe that any accord between the countries is formal and transient. The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island. English armies laid waste to the land they moved through. As if systematically, they performed every action proscribed by the codes of chivalry, and broke every one of the laws of war. The battles were nothing; it was what they did between the battles that left its mark. They robbed and raped for forty miles around the line of their march. They burned the crops in the fields, and the houses with the people inside them. They took bribes in coin and in kind and when they were encamped in a district they made the people pay for every day on which they were left unmolested. They killed priests and hung them up naked in the marketplaces. As if they were infidels, they ransacked the churches, packed the chalices in their baggage, fueled their cooking fires with precious books; they scattered relics and stripped altars. They found out the families of the dead and demanded that the living ransom them; if the living could not pay, they torched the corpses before their eyes, without ceremony, without a single prayer, disposing of the dead as one might the carcasses of diseased cattle.” (96)

“They take comfort from a belief that since the infection killed so many last year, it won’t be so violent this year; which he does not think is necessarily true, and he thinks they seem to be endowing this plague with a human or at least bestial intelligence: the wolf comes down on the sheepfold, but not on the nights when the men with dogs are waiting for him. Unless they think the plague is more than bestial or human—that it is God behind it—God, up to his old tricks.” (122)

“He thinks the Bible a book unnecessary for laypeople, though he understands priests make some use of it. He thinks book-reading an affectation altogether, and wishes there were less of it at court. His niece is always reading, Anne Boleyn, which is perhaps why she is unmarried at the age of twenty-eight. He does not see why it’s a gentleman’s business to write letters; there are clerks for that.” (134)

“‘No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They’re not affordable things. No prince ever says, “This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.” You enter into one and it uses up all the money you’ve got, and then it breaks you and bankrupts you.'” (150)

“In the forest you may find yourself lost, without companions. You may come to a river which is not on a map. You may lose sight of your quarry, and forget why you are there. You may meet a dwarf, or the living Christ, or an old enemy of yours; or a new enemy, one you do not know until you see his face appear between the rustling leaves, and see the glint of his dagger. You may find a woman asleep in a bower of leaves. For a moment, before you don’t recognize her, you will think she is someone you know.” (184)

“I’m John Seymour’s daughter. From Wolf Hall.” (200)

“But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.” (294)’

“Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.” (333)

“Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.” (386)

“Henry says, ‘Do what you have to do. I will back you.’ It’s like hearing words you’ve waited all your life to hear. It’s like hearing a perfect line of poetry, in a language you knew before you were born.” (437)

“You learn nothing about men by snubbing them and crushing their pride. You must ask them what it is they can do in this world, that they alone can do.” (437)

“And look, Gregory, it’s all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.” (458)

“Who will swear the hobs and bogarts who live in the hedges and in hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.” (471)

“Between one dip of the pen, Petrarch writes, ‘between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed toward death. We are always dying—I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying.'” (530)

“There are maps, of a kind; castles stud their fields, their battlements prettily inked, their chases and parks marked by lines of bushy trees, with drawings of harts and bristling boar. It is no wonder Gregory mistook Northumbria for the Indies, for these maps are deficient in all practical respects; they do not, for example, tell you which way is north. It would be useful to know where the bridges are, and to have a note of the distance between them. It would be useful to know how far you are from the sea. But the trouble is, maps are always last year’s. England is always remaking herself, her cliffs eroding, her sandbanks drifting, springs bubbling up in dead ground. They regroup themselves while we sleep, the landscapes through which we move, and even the histories that trail us; the faces of the dead fade into other faces, as a spine of hills into the mist.” (531)