Four Days: the Story of a War Marriage

Four Days: the Story of a War Marriage, by Hetty Hemenway, is exactly what it says it is. We don’t get the story of Leonard and Marjorie’s courtship, beyond the basic details (she’s American, he’s English, they met in the US and their wedding plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I). We also don’t find out what happens to Leonard and Marjorie after he returns to the Dardanelles. All we get is the four days of Leonard’s leave, during which he and Marjorie are reunited, get married, briefly honeymoon, and then part again.

The Fool’s Love Story

You know how sometimes your daily life saps your will to do anything you’re not actually required to do? So, yeah. That. But I wanted to drop by to talk about “The Fool’s Love Story”, which I read on the tail end of the Sabatini kick that started with my reread of Bardelys the Magnificent.

It looks like The Fool’s Love Story might have been Sabatini’s first published story — it’s the first listed on the uncollected stories list on rafaelsabatini.com, and…it reads young. It’s about a Hofknarr, or court jester, in a small German kingdom in the mid-17th century. He’s in love with a young woman who’s engaged to an unworthy Frenchman, and it doesn’t end too well for anybody, really, unless you count the fact that I was completely delighted by it. Which was why I wanted to say something about it, but probably not in the way you think.

This is the thing: this story is pretty terrible. The plot is ridiculous, the writing is more than ridiculous, and you’re sort of plopped down in the middle of a fully formed emotional situation that never really changes. Also, dying heroically and tragically tends to go over a little better if there’s a point to it. But it’s Sabatini, who pretty much always gets me where I live, and I was totally sold by the time I hit “lean, sardonic countenance,” halfway through the first sentence.

Basically, I suspect this is one for the Sabatini devotees — and I’d be interested to know if I’m right.