Book review by Greenacre Writer Mumpuni Murniati
Jonah Hancock has lived a merchant’s life.
From his wedge-shaped counting-house in Deptford he sends vessels to the Far
East that return with valuable commodities. He continues in the tradition of
bringing fortunes from the investments his father and his grandfather built. He
knows no other way. In autumn 1785, one thing makes him anxious: for eighteen
months there has been no news of The Calliope. Nor does he receive any communications
from the ship’s captain. Until on a stormy night Captain Jones knocks on his door
bringing in the most peculiar creature the merchant has ever seen.
Somewhere a tide is turning. In that place
where no land can be seen, where horizon to horizon is spanned by shifting
twinkling faithless water, a wave humps its back and turns over with a sigh,
and sends its salted whispering to Mr Hancock’s ear.
This voyage is special, the whisper says, a
strange fluttering in his heart.
It will change everything.
Sitting at her dressing table, Angelica Neal
stares at her reflection in the mirror. After three years with her patron and
following his death, her ‘term of employment’ has ended. What’s more, he seems
to have forgotten her in his will. The high-class courtesan is pondering
over her options; her money is dwindling and yet there is also a new sense of
freedom whereby no man has claim to her body but her. Either she is to return to Elizabeth
Chappell’s Temple of Venus or hasten to seek another patron. This time,
however, she wishes for a lover and dreams of marriage.
In Eighteenth Century London, Hancock and Neal
would have brushed past each other on the streets. One a widower and childless,
a man who knows money but does not spend it in the embrace of women. The other
carries on an ‘adventurous’ life in the embrace of men and values them by how
much they would spend on her. In a
nutshell, their worlds are like two blinds that stand parallel. Nevertheless, Imogen
Hermes Gowar believes they should meet.
Coined as Vintage’s Lead Debut for 2018, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock spins a
bewitching narrative with a fairy tale thrown in. Based on a classic legend
sung in various rhymes by seafarers and in the dreams of explorers, it’s
something familiar to everyone but a kind of tale that might have been unheard of before.
Imogen yarns the plot that entices readers to
regard a period of time years before Andersen’s Little Mermaid was published
but some time after the tales of the Mermaid of Amboina reached the ears of Tsar
Peter The Great and George III of England.
It might have surprised Imogen that there
hasn’t been a mermaid character in English fairy tales, but the public have an insatiable curiosity of the mysterious embodiment. And so it goes: how about a
London mermaid - her own very tale?
‘But what am I to do with it?’
‘Why, exhibit it!’
‘I am not a showman,’ says Mr Hancock primly.
‘I shall notify the Royal Society. This must be an important development for
science, and I am not a scientific man either.’
Captain Jones waves his hand in disgust. ‘And
then how will you recoup your cost? Listen, ‘tis common sense. Find a
coffee-house, charge a shilling per view, and say three hundred view it in a
day – I am being conservative- why that s ninety pounds in a week. ‘You might
tour the country with it. Take it to fairs. The provinces’ appetite for such
things has never been quenched.’
‘Ninety a week, though?’ wonders Mr
Hancock.
Mermaid for profit. A dead mermaid for hire.
Imogen might have had this idea after she set eyes on a mermaid taxidermy at
the British Museum where she used to work. The idea of hiring a place to display a curio, let alone artefacts
in designated premises might possibly be far-fetched. Through her depictions Imogen is inviting us to
foresee particular circumstances wearing
different thinking hats.
Imogen is painstaking in her details. Her fruitful labour gives
birth to a new tale that is brought
together because of her protagonists’ distinguished viewpoints. Her mermaid has
a voice; she conjures not a prince for the immortal soul but men with attitudes; an unscrupulous abbess for a mer-grandmother
and the sisterhood of the Temple of Venus’ girls to replace the Little
Mermaid’s sisters. Consequently, she shies herself not from dwelling into
judgment on moralities; racism and class or hypocrites and thieves. Her minor characters are
assertive and audacious, seemingly strong but vulnerable people that shadow
Hancock the mermaid man and Neal the courtesan and pull them in different
directions.
There’s more to Imogen’s mermaid than meets
the eyes; pages that oftentimes would be understood better after a second
reading. Her approach in blurring
the world between the mer-people and humans’ is a departure from Andersen’s
firm inclination to the opposite.
In the excitements of unfolding events, however,
Imogen’s subplots are ripped at the seams. In spite of flowing dialogues, she
makes the audience extend their patience a little while anticipating the climax.
After so much has happened, is the denouement going to be a little flat?
‘Mr. Hancock?’ Mrs. Neal turns restlessly, and
lays her face upon her arm. ‘Were you ever in love?’
He tugs his cravat. He feels that Henry has
walked beside him all the day, and many hours after waking, his mind is still
so distracted that the word love on the lips of a beautiful woman puts him in
mind of nothing that it ought, but instead lays in his arms once more the
weight of his little boy, Henry, as he cradled him that one and only morning.
The child was already dead at that time, his poor blood crisping at the jag in
his head that the instrument had made.
Be that as it may, Imogen is skilful at
building up moments which then deliver unusual openness as the above depiction
would testify. Her stitches might occasionally be imperfect, but they will hold
together. More importantly, the book is far from a saga of a young mermaid
giddy in love and chasing her immortal prince at all cost. After all, a happy
ever after isn’t what the book has intended.
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is published by Harvill Secker, we'd like to thank them for the review copy.
Follow Imogen on Twitter: @girlhermes
