Riding by H. S. Cross

New York : Fox Books, 2008

As mentioned in an earlier post, Riding by H.S. Cross is an early version or draft of her novel, Grievous (2019). While Grievous tightens up the story and improves the writing, some of the original structure of Riding is unfortunately lost. The major headings of Lent, Easter, St. Stephen's (appearing at Trinity in Grievous), Summer, Michaelmas, and Christmas remain. The individual chapter titles have been dropped in favor of simple numbering. A nod to early boy's school fiction, the chapter titles suggest what is to happen in each chapter. Many early boy's school novels were originally issued serially in publications directed to school age boys and the individual chapter titles may be an artifact of this publication process. 

Below is the original table of contents from Riding. Grievous, has 57 chapters in six sections. Riding also has six sections but is comprised of 95 chapters and issued in two volumes. 

Riding : a novel, volume 1

ISBN: 978-0-6152-1366-8 — Fox Books 2008, 513p

Lent

They Longed for the Sheltering Sky

There Was a Book

Mr. Grieves Is Not Amused

Something to Remember

She Envied Her Own Pens

The Propagation of Knowledge

Cartomania

Forgive Our Foolish Ways

Eels, the West Wind, and People Like Us

The Boredom Is No Longer Exquisite

Why Does He Deserve It?

Night

Morning

Friend Indeed

Caveats

The Trial

Perfect Gifts

Triangulation

The Tower

The Doctor is In

That Hideous Recognition

The Chair Loft

Souls of Men

Easter

Passage

Curses

London

Zapped

The Channel

The Key

Paris

Mazes, Continental and Otherwise

Drought

The Weapons of Pacifists

Quicksand, With Beacons

St. Stephen's

Return

Winds of Change

I Write This Not to the Many, but to You

Code That Sets the Miles at Naught

Stratigraphy

Touch

Heartbeat, Heartburn, Heart Attack, Heartbreak

Pursuits, Intellectual and Otherwise

The Persistence of Memory

Orders of Magnitude

Patron's Day

The Exigencies of Time

The Cure

In Which the Geomaniac Ventures, and Is Lost

Progress

Pioneers

Riding : a novel, volume 2

ISBN: 978-0-615-26248-2 — Fox Books 2008, 550p

Summer

To Wake, as if From Dreaming

Irresistible

Messages, Direct and Indirect

The Quick and the Dead

Nothing Shall Be Impossible

The Lady From the Sea

Michaelmas

Rank by Rank

A World Gone Mad

Something in Their Midst

Hounded by His Adversary

Ely

Lamentation of Swans

Venture

Chariot of Fire

Experiences

The Contract

Hypnos and Son

Crime and Punishment

The Passage of Time Vexed Them

The Encircling Gloom

Orders of Magnitude, II

The Pillar of the Cloud

The World as We Know It

The World as It Has Known Itself

This Howling Insanity

Exeat

An Approximation of the Moon

Night, II

Another Gift

The Ninety-Second Day of Michaelmas Term

Keeper of a Hundred Secrets

A Kind of Mercy

The Coming Storm

Ice

As Bad as All That

What Girls Are Made Of

The Most Brutal of Punishments

Unfamiliar Sun

Christmas Tea

Christmas

The Future

The Present

The Past

Like the Wildness of the Sea

The Winters of Your Grief

And Christmas Comes Once More

Grievous by H. S. Cross

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Taking place in 1931 at St. Stephen's Academy, five years after the events of Cross' 2015 novel, Wilberforce, Grievous is a sweeping novel with complex inter-related storylines. The central characters are Grieves, a Housemaster who finds his responsibility for disciplining students in opposition to his pacifist inclinations and Riding, a creative student who struggles more generally after the loss of his father.

As with Wilberforce, Cross pays homage to the classic boarding school novels and authors. Riding, who writes fantastic stories which, with the help of other students are acted out in secret, provides a connection to the lives of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Interestingly, while Wilberforce follows the classic form of focusing on games, they are only mentioned in passing in Grievous. The action here is focused more on choir, creative writing and acting.

A central theme of the novel is illness and death. Many characters have experienced the death of a parent or spouse and frankly none of them handle it well. Neither the students, nor the adults seem to be able to talk about their feelings, causing any number of misunderstandings and errors in judgement. Grieves' troubled personal life manifests in his impossible relationship with a married woman who is now ill and traveling with her daughter throughout Europe and America to find a cure.

Riding and Grieves are heavily involved in each others lives but this manifests itself almost exclusively in their relationships with others. Over the summer while Cordelia is traveling with her mother to find a cure, she is engaged in a one way correspondence with Riding about her days. As well, Riding's mother, a nurse, is corresponding with Grieves who is trying to help the woman he loves find a cure.

New York : Fox Books, 2008

Some have described this novel as less claustrophobic than Wilberforce since significant parts of the action take place outside the walls of St. Stephens. While there is the experience of life outside the school, the weight of life's challenges seem to follow the characters wherever they go. There's a certain melancholy and longing for connection that permeates the book in both the adult and adolescent characters. This creation of setting based on emotions or feelings as opposed to lengthy description of locations is one of the strongest elements of the novel.

Grievous is described as Cross' second novel, but it has its roots in a novel called Riding, published by Cross in 2008. Riding was issued in two volumes amounting to over 1000 pages. Following the same structure, Grievous has been tightened up and the writing generally improved. In Riding the bones are certainly there, while 10 years hence, Grievous is a much stronger work.  In a July 28, 2008 interview with Amande Green, Cross spoke about Riding and described her next work at the time as a prequel called Wilberforce.

Wilberforce by H. S. Cross

New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015

I read Wilberforce over the course of two months...not because I didn't like it...quite the opposite in fact. After each chapter, I would close the book and marvel at how amazingly well-written it was. The language, the atmosphere, it is all spot-on. Anyone who has read one of the classic English boarding school novels from the late 1800s through the 1950s will recognize the key elements in Cross's novel. Of particular importance is the cricket match...in this case between the best the school has to offer and "the old boys" (graduates of the school who have returned for a summer games day).

The novel takes place in 1926 at St. Stephen's Academy. The fags (underclassmen) are in revolt and wreaking havoc while Morgan Wilberforce along with the other upperclassmen are busy sneaking off to taverns or having romantic rendezvous. Wilberforce has set his romantic sights on Spaulding, another student, and decides to get noticed by crashing into him during a rugby match. When a tragic event occurs, everything changes at St. Stephens and Wilberforce seems unable to cope.

Cross's Wilberforce takes its place in the canon of English schoolboy novels by referencing its predecessors. When he leaves St. Stephen's Academy, Silk, a former student for whom Wilberforce had fagged, leaves him a copy of Stalky & Co. (1899) by Rudyard Kipling. In Stalky & Co., another English school novel, Eric, or Little by Little (1858) by Frederic Farrar is referenced when someone is derided for being too pious by saying they were "Ericking." This is a particularly interesting reference since our main character, Wilberforce, caused quite a scandal the year before the novel begins by refusing to be confirmed. His relationship to religious belief remains a central theme throughout the novel.

While the novel does have some degree of resolution, it remains open for a sequel. It appears that Ms. Cross is already at work on a second novel set at St. Stephens, but it is unclear if it will include young Wilberforce as a character. What she has written could become the start of a truly compelling series.