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A Man For All Seasons

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall begins sometime in 1500 in Putney: a young Thomas Cromwell — still in his early teens, though neither he himself nor the reader is ever told when exactly he was born — is being brutally beaten up by his ill-tempered father, Walter, until he “knocks the last breath out of him; he thinks it may be his last”.

Walter survives the assault, packs what is left of himself (“Two arms, two legs: what more do you want?”) off to foreign shores, and returns to England in the 1520s to shape the destiny of the Tudor regime as it were.

Over 650 pages of this 2009 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Mantel takes us through the rise and rise of a man without a pedigree, a man mocked for his lack of ancestry, to become one of the most powerful men of 16^th century England, the most trusted confidante of King Henry VIII.

His early days in Venice, Antwerp, Florence and his journeys across the seas have taught him one important survival lesson: “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.”

So, Cromwell gets on. Lawyer, accountant, trader, scholar, strategist, master manipulator, and, finally, chief architect of the Reforms that weaken the influence of Rome and the Pope over the Church of England. “He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury.”

Mantel’s is a brilliant recreation — a re-reading, in fact — of a man often vilified and depicted as a ruthless sinner. Cromwell is shown as a loving husband to Liz Wykys, a doting father to not just his children but to his nieces and nephews as well, and he is always willing to provide a roof over an orphan’s head and enough learning to help them get on in life. The dog named Bella — every dog he has had since his Putney days is called that — is an almost poignant constant in his life as it goes through its ups and downs.

Inextricably linked to Cromwell’s tale is the story of the Tudor court and Henry VIII’s long 
battle to break free of Papal control, triggered partly by his desire for a male heir and largely because he wants Rome to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he may marry his latest object of affection, Anne Boleyn.

As Henry takes on the Pope — and indeed his own people in the bargain — countless characters walk in and out of the thickening plot, each with their own motive, their own prejudices and their own human frailty: the Duke of Suffolk, the 
Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Wolsey (Cromwell’s patron, who falls out of favour with Henry for his failure to negotiate the annulment), George Cavendish, Thomas More (the remorseless, self-righteous Lord Chancellor who orders the torture and burning of ‘heretics’), Mary Boleyn (Anne’s sister and Henry’s former mistress), Jane Seymour (lady-in-waiting and Anne Boleyn’s successor), the poet Thomas Wyatt and, of course, Catherine of Aragon herself and her daughter, Mary.

Mantel refuses to paint her characters in anything but shades of grey — even Anne Boleyn, who is drawn as ambitious, scheming and cold, is allowed her moment of tenderness as she looks at her new-born daughter, Elizabeth, and “a sideways grin of infatuation takes over her whole face”.

In Wolf Hall, Mantel creates for us the dazzling grandeur and dark intrigue of the Tudor Court, from dances, celebrations and coronations to executions, deceptions and dungeons in the Tower. She takes us back and forth in time, telling, re-telling her captivating story: “Beneath every history, another history.”

Through it all emerges the story of a man who “learns to read and write from the scribbled orders for wheat flour or dried beans, for barley and for ducks’ eggs, that come out of the stewards’ pantries” and make himself a name by writing the laws that changed the history of England.

And it is a story well told. Despite its length 
and the great number of characters, Wolf Hall succeeds in retaining the reader’s attention 
right through.

Mantel never lets the pace slow down; the contemporary language and the universality of emotions makes it a story relevant for us even today, five centuries after Henry VIII defied the Pope to marry Anne Boleyn.

The story ends soon after 
the execution of Thomas 
More, but there’s already a hint — almost a premonition — of the future, as Thomas Cromwell jots down his next stop in his diary: “Early September. Five days. Wolf Hall.” For those who know English history will know that Wolf Hall was the residence of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s queen after the execution of Anne Boleyn.

patrick@khaleejtimes.com

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