The Judgment House
1913
A dazzling opening at Covent Garden. The opera singer Al'mah's voice fills the theater when flames erupt onstage, and a wealthy South African named Rudyard Byng charges into the fire to save her. This is how Gilbert Parker's 1913 novel announces itself: as a story about people who act decisively in crisis, and those who calculate from the shadows. Jasmine Grenfel stands at the center of the novel's web. She's torn between two men: Ian Stafford, who loves her steadily, and Byng, whose boldness is irresistible. Around them orbits Adrian Fellowes, a man whose self-satisfaction masks something colder. What unfolds is a novel about desire and ambition in an era when empire and art collide, when passion and politics interweave, and when a single dramatic night sets lives on irreversible courses. Parker's Edwardian prose crackles with social tension and romantic restraint, making this a quiet tragedy of manners where a single choice in Act One reverberates through every scene that follows.
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“I was willing to pay the price--any price--just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my life. But you were true to nothing--to nothing--to nobody.””
— Gilbert Parker
“War was part chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil.””
— Gilbert Parker
“Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!””
— Gilbert Parker
“When I kissed you, I set the seal upon my eternal offering to you.””
— Gilbert Parker
“If you had lived a thousand years ago, you would have had a thousand lovers.””
— Gilbert Parker
“He saw that there had been a scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be better arranged by a third disinterested person.””
— Gilbert Parker
“What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds or bodies.””
— Gilbert Parker
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Parker, Gilbert. The Judgment House. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-judgment-house-54454844-5850-4428-929b-ea9a43d622d9.Parker, G. (1913). The Judgment House. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-judgment-house-54454844-5850-4428-929b-ea9a43d622d9Parker, Gilbert. The Judgment House. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-judgment-house-54454844-5850-4428-929b-ea9a43d622d9.
