Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton is a nineteenth-century novelist so if you enjoy the old-fashioned verbiage of authors like Georgette Heyer and Oscar Wilde you should enjoy this novel. Lucretia Clavering wants to marry William Mainwaring but her Uncle—Sir Miles St. John--wants her to marry Charles Vernon. Since Lucretia is haughty and ambitious, her uncle assumes she wouldn’t have any desire to marry the unimportant William Mainwaring. But Charles Vernon gets proof of her desire and Sir Miles revises his will, deciding Lucretia was as good as dead to him.
Charles Vernon had a reputation as a rake, but he wants Lucretia’s money; so the slippery weasel pretends to be reformed. I was frustrated that Lucretia didn’t tell her Uncle that she wouldn’t marry Charles Vernon. Instead, she prevaricated, hoping to wait until Sir Miles died and then do as she pleased. But Sir Miles left most of his fortune to Charles Vernon the day before he died.
Sir Miles left Lucretia Clavering 10,000 pounds at his death, as the book explains, “—the usual portion which the house of St. John had allotted to its daughters”. He left the same to Susan Mivers (Lucretia’s half-sister).
But Mainwaring loves Susan Mivers rather than Lucretia and lacks the moxie to admit this to Lucretia. Lucretia has such a strong personality that she fails to realize that her feelings are not reciprocated. When Charles Vernon discovers that Mainwaring loves Susan, he makes sure that Lucretia hears of Mainwaring’s true feelings and ruins her engagement. Vernon marries the embittered Lucretia and moves to Paris. He ostensibly plots to place the politician George Cadoudal in political power. Vernon’s cousin, Jean Bellanger, profited from the French Revolution and Vernon seeks to emulate him and profit from politics as well.
Gabriel Varney is Vernon’s illegitimate son and the reader can’t help but despise him. He’s cruel to animals and never misses an opportunity to do someone a wrong. The author uses this wonderfully descriptive phrase about Gabriel: he “plunged prematurely into the stream of vicious pleasure that oozed through the mud of Paris.” The trio are aptly compared by the author to birds of ill omen moving through ransacked post-revolutionary France. Vernon betrays Cadoudal and benefits from his perfidy, rising high; but Sir Miles’ money is never enough for him. Vernon wants power as well.
Lucretia discovers that Vernon plans to poison her and marry a widow with more money—he is subsequently murdered in a grisly fashion. Lucretia and her stepson return to England where they are happier, and she married a man by the name of Bradell and has a son. She then poisoned Bradell. Before dying, Bradell sent their son Vincent away with his friend, Ardsworth, to rescue him from his evil mother. Lucretia spends years trying to track down Vincent.
Lucretia discovers that she has a niece. Since her sister and husband have passed, Lucretia sends for the niece, Helen, to live with her in Brompton. Lucretia’s plans to poison Helen are discovered and justice is done—at the very last the servant who foiled her plans is revealed to be her son. The last line of the book is worth repeating: “Our acts our angels are, for good or ill, the fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
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