Coralie

I’ve spent too long reading poetry, and now I’m taking a break to talk about bad prose. I mean, I like Tennyson, but In Memoriam is kind of long. And Coralie, by Charlotte M. Braeme, is neither long nor complex.

Coralie is narrated by Edgar Trevelyan, a poor young man of good family who works as a clerk to support himself and his invalid sister Clare. They’re barely making ends meet, and Clare has one of those mysterious fictional illnesses: a spinal ailment that can only be cured by expensive food and freedom from worry.

The Coquette’s Victim

A few days ago, I read a couple of truly terrible novellas by Charlotte M. Braeme, a writer of love stories for the English lower classes in the mid to late 19th century.

The first was called The Coquette’s Victim, and it starts with an aristocratic-looking young man being brought before a judge and charged with attempting to steal a watch. The judge is surprised, because it is well known in this kind of fiction that people with aristocratic faces never commit crimes. The guy also gives his name as John Smith. Why do these people bother? Can’t they come up with anything less obviously false?