This is by Charles James Lever (1806-72), and no, I'd not heard of him either. Born in Dublin, his first career was in medicine. He enjoyed reasonable success, but the need for more extensive funds (he had a growing family, liked to live well, and had incurred gambling debts) induced him in 1837 to move from Ireland to Brussels, where he not only attracted better-heeled patients, but also increased his literary output. His early works were popular, and eventually he left Brussels, began to write full-time, and returned to Dublin. Which is where he stayed until 1845, when he took his family on a two-year Grand Tour of continental Europe (now I would LOVE to do that...) To meet the expenses of all this travelling, he wrote feverishly.

It must have been something of a relief, financially, to be appointed British vice-consul in La Spezia (in 1858), and then promoted to the consulship in Trieste (in 1867).

Of course, it's that latter circumstance that drew me to the book. But Lever was not a fan of Trieste. In fact, he was quite harsh about it: "Of all the dreary places it has been my lot to sojourn in, this is the worst!"

Having loved Trieste, I find that bizarre. But then, he had had a number of headwinds to contend with. His son Charles, whose profligate lifestyle had caused Lever endless financial problems, had died in 1863, at the age of just 26. Lever himself had health problems, and felt more and more isolated -- a problem made worse by the death of his wife, Kate, in 1870. I guess with all that going on, it's easy to find no joy in your surroundings.

Despite all this adversity, he completed what many regard as his best novel, Lord Kilgobbin, just before he died.

Both Charles and Kate are buried in the British cemetery in Trieste, and of course next time we go, we'll need to find the gravestone...


Trieste, 2023. How could anyone not like this place...?

That Boy of Norcott's was published in 1869, during his Trieste phase. In fact, the dedication (to Baron Emile Erlanger) is signed and dated Trieste, 20 February.

The story, which is a trifle far-fetched, goes like this:

Sir Roger Norcott marries beneath his noble station, regrets it, and repudiates Mary, his sweet, long-suffering Irish wife. But what to do with the only child of the marriage, Digby? The question of custody goes to trial, and it is decided that the child will live with his mother until he is 12, and then the matter will be considered again.

Mary is not rich, and the boy (who, now grown up, is our narrator) initially finds it difficult to adjust to a different social environment. But he gets used to it; she is a gentle and patient soul, and takes great pains with his education; and when he turns 12, and the court's custody order goes in favour of his father, Digby misses her. (According to Shenkar Keshet, Mary is the symbolic representation of an Ireland that has been abused, abandoned, and yet still left subject to control...)

Anyway, Digby goes to live with Sir Roger in a villa near Brussels. We have already formed a fairly bad opinion of our nobleman, because of the custody business, and he doesn't improve. He is vengeful; he glories in flouting convention; likes nothing better than to be contrary; and loves to tempt fate. And he is horribly overbearing and manipulative towards his son, whom he wants to turn into a "gentleman". Those around him say he loves "that boy". But he certainly has a strange, cruel way of showing it.

Still, Digby, as children will, sets out to gain his father's esteem.

Digby himself is a bit irritating. He's obviously bright, and a fast learner. But he's terribly quick, even as a youngster, to stand on ceremony, take offence, and imagine his honour slighted; he's a little cold when left to his own devices, a little manic when favoured by society; and he's an incorrigible show-off.

But then he has had a strange upbringing. His father's household "was a finishing school for every sort of dissipation, and all who frequented it were people who only lived for pleasure... Life presented itself to me as one series of costly pleasures, dashed only with such disappointments as loss at play inflicted, or some project of intrigue baffled or averted." Sir Roger is surrounded by hangers-on, the extent of whose loyalty is hard to determine.

A man called Cleremont, by profession a diplomat ("secretary to the legation"), acts as a kind of steward to the establishment. His wife becomes a kind of informal tutor to Digby (as his real tutor, Eccles, is something of a lazybones).



A key turning-point comes when an entertainment is planned for Digby's 16th birthday. Swathes of the local nobility are invited, but don't come (because they don't regard Sir Roger as quite comme il faut, and disapprove of Madame Clermont's role as hostess). After the sparsely attended dinner, the host takes himself off to his quarters in high dudgeon. For the ball that is to follow the dinner, however, the other members of the household obey the biblical injunction, go out into the highways and byways, and compel all they can find -- tradesmen, embassy staff, travellers -- to come and make merry.

The following day, Sir Roger takes great umbrage at this. He berates Digby, who has had a rip-roaring time with all these also-rans, and decides that his dignity has been so offended that he can no longer reside here. He will sell the villa, and send Digby off on a bit of a grand tour with his useless tutor. This does all seem a bit melodramatic, but then Sir Roger has not been noted for understatement.

Digby and Eccles don't get very far, however, before disaster strikes. They learn that Sir Roger has eloped with Madame Cleremont (a bit of a bolt from the blue, as the two had been unfailingly hostile to each other). Cleremont, meanwhile, by way of revenge, has used his stewardship powers to draw enough cheques to empty Sir Roger's bank account. All the nobleman's assets are seized.

So Digby, now unsupported, gets a job. With Herr Ignaz Oppovich, in a trading house in Fiume. This city (now known as Rijeka) is situated on the northern Adriatic coast, and our Digby reached it by way of Trieste.



The young man starts to learn his trade. He also makes the acquaintance of his boss's daughter, Sara. Now, she's interesting in that she's very much involved in the business, and is totally across all the details that drive it. She's also very kind. Having happened upon the secret of Digby's mother (whose whereabouts Digby only spasmodically seems to know), Sara ensures (clandestinely) that "Lady Norcott" is provided for.

A birthday party is thrown for Sara, in a villa across the bay from Fiume (in Abazzia, now Opatija). Whereas Digby's party blew everything apart, Sara's draws various threads together, and launches the young man on the next part of his career.

Digby is promoted, and sent off on a journey. Before he goes, he is warned by his predecessor that the Oppovich firm is in trouble, Ignaz having somehow displeased the lords and masters who have the financial system in Europe sewn up.

We follow Digby through Croatia, and up into Hungary. The story becomes overwhelmingly theatrical at this point. The Hungarian lord of the manor (with whom Digby has to transact his business) is away. So the young man has to wait around for a while in this picturesque environment, which is a veritable Piccadilly Circus of hospitality: "There was a barbaric grandeur, on the whole, in the vast building; its crowds of followers, its hordes of retainers who came and went, apparently at no bidding but their own; in the ceaseless tide of travellers who, hospited for the night, went their way on the morrow, no more impressed by the hospitality, to all seeming, than by a thing they had their own valid right to."

He proves a great hit with some of his fellow-residents. So much so that he arouses the jealousy of some of the others, and before we know it, our boy is fighting a duel. He's wounded (but then so is the other guy, so that's all right).

But is there more to all this than meets the eye? Because guess who else we have as guests in the house... Sir Roger (unseen because away on a hunting trip with the head of the household), and Madame Cleremont (unseen because prostrated by illness and forced to keep to her room). The latter seems to have undergone a personality transplant. She was formerly kind to Digby, but is now trying to get Sir Roger to declare his first marriage invalid (thereby making Digby illegitimate, and clearing the way for her to marry Sir Roger herself). On learning that Digby is right there -- and in a position to expose the falseness of her current situation -- she has apparently encouraged the duel scenario. True, if Digby hadn't been so ridiculously sensitive, the duel would never have happened, but I guess she'd have come up with another scheme -- indeed, she does now quite specifically threaten him. But her wicked plans come to nothing because Sir Roger is killed in a hunting accident. That's handy, as it turns out he has a reasonable estate to bequeath (what happened to the penury of earlier...?). Madame Cleremont quietly disappears; Digby inherits, and is reunited with his mother; and he goes off to marry Sara, who is probably relieved, as her father's business crashed while Digby was still at that very exhausting castle.

So, it's a bit of a potboiler, really. I found it enjoyable as a quick period read; some of the descriptions of the Adriatic coast are lovely; there are a few memorable characters (Sir Roger in particular); and the novel's central tussle -- between loyalty to the simple Irish mother or to the wealthy, cosmopolitan, continental father -- is intriguing. But it was too uneven to be really satisfying.



Lever is one of those writers (Hall Caine springs to mind as another example) who were successful and famous in their day, but have largely disappeared into oblivion. To Elizabeth Barrett Browning he was "the famous Irish Lever". Yeats dissed him, it's true, but George Bernard Shaw was an admirer. And lately some movement of critical reappraisal has begun, with one scholar speaking of "a shared conviction that Lever genuinely deserves to be restored to his place among the eminent Victorian novelists". He was arguably a source for James Joyce, and John McCourt has described him as "a figure ahead of his time".

Not that any of this praise particularly seems to take in That Boy of Norcott's... It is generally other novels that are singled out for re-evaluation, and Roger McHugh even harrumphs about "such ill-written productions as A Day's Ride or That Boy of Norcott's".

The most interesting angle of the story, as far as I was concerned, was that the Oppovich family are Jews. Plenty of the period's anti-Semitism is expressed in the novel -- but also countered. Before Digby meets his future employer, he hears his charitable work being praised. And when someone contemptuously comments that "he's a Jew", the first speaker replies: "A Jew that could teach many a Christian the virtues of his own faith... A Jew that never refused alms to the poor, no matter of what belief, and that never spoke ill of his neighbour."

When Digby is at Sara's birthday party, he has the opportunity to observe members of the Jewish community: "There was greed, craft, determination, at times even violence, to be read in the faces; but never weakness, never imbecility; and so striking was this that the Christian physiognomy seemed actually vulgar when contrasted with those faces so full of vigorous meaning and concentration." This is a bit of an essentializing view, admittedly, but it shows more openness than many of its contemporaries.

They're all traders, these guests -- as, of course, is Oppovich -- and they are Hungarian, Styrian, Dalmatian, and Albanian: "They were the warriors of commerce; and they brought to the battle of trade resolution a boldness and persistence and daring not a whit inferior to what their ancestors had carried into personal conflict."

Prejudice is everywhere, though. "Wealth is nobility nowadays," comments one casual observer, "and if Ignaz Oppovich was not a Jew, he might have the best blood of Austria for a son-in-law".

As Shenkar Keshet points out, Sara is compared favourably to Christian women such as Madame Cleremont and Pauline (Digby's first love interest). But Lever can't quite sustain his picture of the tough, self-reliant Jewish woman: "Despite Sara's initial show of strength, she ultimately proves in need of saving by the hero, the classic 'damsel in distress'."

In all, I don't think I've seen the best of Lever. But he was entertaining enough to make another attempt a distinct possibility.