G.P.R. James' 'The Step-Mother' 1846

 

Smith, Elder & Co first edition - 1846

The scene is narrow, certainly, but very important things are often enacted in a very confined space...which is, in this case, a small Midlands village called Mallington. We are introduced to a variety of village inhabitants, including Dr. Western, the rector and his wife; Mr. Nethersole, the doctor; and the lawyer, Mr. Middleton. Included are the Misses Martin, two maiden sisters, somewhat past their prime, who employed a portion of each day in settling the business of everyone in the place. I was slightly reminded of the gossips in John Galt's stories or, at a more extreme level, the busybodies in The House with the Green Shutters of George Douglas Brown. 

What of the step-mother of the Tale, Mrs Emily Latimer? - on first meeting, she is a widow: the lady herself did not look more than two or three and thirty...a very pretty woman, moreover, with bright blue eyes, fine teeth, a good complexion, soft clear skin, a chin somewhat too prominent perhaps, a beautiful hand and arm, and as smart a foot and ankle as ever was seen. She was tall...well formed, plump, but not stout, with a very charming fall of the neck and shoulders, and a waist of a mere span. A catch, then. In fact, the catcher proved to be a wealthy man, much older than her, Mr. Charlton, a widower who lived at Mallington House, the large red building at the top of the hill above the village. He had a daughter, Louisa, of some ten years of age; she had a son, Alfred of about twelve or thirteen, strong, and active, but with something unpleasant in the expression of his face.. Louisa is to prove the heroine of James' story, Alfred the arch villain amongst several. By the end of Chapter III, Mrs Latimer has become Mrs Charlton and has embarked on her increasingly nefarious career as Step-Mother to Louisa. It is not long before Mr Charlton flees this mortal coil, and the two-time widow (unsurprisingly, as we shall eventually discover) proves to have the control of her wealthy step-daughter's matrimonial prospects. She, with another guardian, is arbiter of whom Louisa marries, gaining one half of the inheritance if it is with her approved but the entire fortune if her step-daughter flouts her wishes! 

The years roll by. Louisa is now nineteen, Alfred into his twenties. The latter is regularly in trouble, usually supported by two other blackguards; initially it is merely a question of poaching from the estate of nearby Mallington Hall. Its childless owner has died and the mansion is slowly degrading, if not to ruin certainly to rack, and the grounds reverting to wilderness. Onto the pages comes the hero of the story, one Edmond Morton - his complexion was dark, with hair, eyes, and whiskers nearly black, and the eyebrows strongly marked. His forehead was both wide and high, rising straight from the brow, and surrounded by wavy curls...in age, perhaps, six or seven and twenty. No, not Lord Byron or, even, Mr. Darcy. Well, even if Louisa didn't twig who he was until much later (her step-mother far too late and the Misses Martin not until near the end), I guessed almost immediately who he was - and that he would end up marrying Louisa, out foxing the Step-Mother in the process.

I liked the regular touches of humour:

The fair widow (Mrs. Latimer/Charlton) was all smiles and graciousness, though, to say sooth, some part of her youthful grace had fled, for she had become rather fuller in her proportions than was altogether consistent with exact symmetry.

The constable made his appearance; a keen stout man, with hawk's nose, and a pair of sharp bright eyes, not altogether parallel in their direction. The degree of obliquity which they possessed could hardly be called a squint, but nevertheless, the effect was a certain cunning and not very satisfactory expression, which conveyed to the mind of the beholder, perhaps wrongly, the idea of a shrewd but not very sincere character.

Mrs. Dixon, who was a tall, large-boned, gaunt woman, with the frame of a life-guardsman, and the face of a hyena.

There are many varieties, indeed, of the post-boy genus: the loquacious, the taciturn, the observing, the stolid, the drunken, the grave, the smart, the slow, the impassable, the picturesque, and the poetical...

There is a nice depiction of small town Society:

...they all met and they all played cards, and they all drank tea and ate cakes and bread and butter, it is true; but they all tore one another to pieces with their tongues, if not with their teeth; and, as in most other societies, the grand, though secret object of meeting seemed to be for every pair to say some ill-natured thing to each other of a third, whose back was turned... what a happy and fortunate thing it is for certain classes of society that there are vices and wickedness, accidents, misfortunes, and sorrows, in this good world that we inhabit!

On why Mallington residents were not keen on Morton: the body of the rest of the townsfolks hated him for two very sufficient reasons - first, because he did not deal with them; and, secondly, because they knew nothing about him, and would have liked to know something about him.

There are kidnappings, burglaries, gaol breaking, a Bow Street runner; Mr Tobias Gibbs a travelling vendor of Balm of Trinidad for a brilliant head of hair (and the only really irritating character in the novel!); a murder or two and plenty of excitement to sustain a three-decker novel. Moreover, the main cast are admirably supported by a range of fascinating support characters.

On the Misses Martin:  malignity scorns all the bounds of probability, and is not checked by gross absurdity itself...

Captain Tankerville, a very dangerous person, a villain; Jack Williams,  a seafaring gentleman and sturdy rogue; and two unpleasant henchmen, Billy Maltby and Tom Brown. They were all very different scoundrels one from the other...

Mr Timothy Quatterley Esq., the lawyer  - whose upper part was large, round, and bulky; the lower part minute enough to make an almost ludicrous contrast with the rest - could have come straight out of a Charles Dickens novel.

There is a trace of anti-semitism again in a James story: Moses Levi is a little fat, dirty, blear-eyed Jew who knowingly accepts the stolen good of Mallington Hall from the villans.

The novel could as well have been entitled The Step-Brother, as a major theme is the decline of a rascal into an out-and-out criminal who meets a deserved end.

Bankrupt in purse and reputation, contemned by those who might have loved and esteemed him, alienated from those classes of society in which he was born to move, cut off from all chance of raising himself above that rank from which he had chosen his companions, hopeless of improving his means but by adding crime to vice, with nothing to look back upon in the past but wasted advantages and evil passions pampered, with nought to hope for in the future but a wild life of feverish pleasure, mingled with deadly peril, and intervals of sickly lassitude, he was going to take the first profound plunge into the dark ocean of crime...Such was Alfred Latimer, burglar, thief and murderer.

A fascinating story of true love, deceit, villainy and good triumphing over all. James keeps control of the narrative, with several major strands. I now move on to another of his three-deckers - The Forgery, published three years' later, in 1849. 

G.P.R. James' 'The King's Highway' 1840

Longman first edition - 1840

Back to one of my old favourites, G.P.R. James. In fact, this in the first of four first editions (three of which are triple-deckers and one of only two volumes) which I hope to read before Christmas. As the weather draws in, our open fire is lit, the heated blanket is placed over the recliner and our Border Collie nestles nearby, the author is a perfect companion to accompany the occasional sips of Talisker or Highland Park. One of the pleasures of reading James is that he takes you up Historical byways you may not have known about, let alone thought about.

After the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, which placed William III and Mary II on the throne, the new monarchs may have thought matters would settle down. Mission accomplished. Not a bit of it; from the start there were a series of plots by the disgruntled Jacobites (so named after their deposed king, James II). After their army's failure in Ireland, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, their attention turned to either kidnapping or assassinating William. Between 1695 and 1696, what became known as the Fenwick Plot merged into an assassination plot in the latter year. Sir John  Fenwick (c.1645-1697) had served in the English army and was a long-time meddler in politics. He was M.P. for Northumberland from 1677 to 1687 and made no secret of his allegiance to James II, although he remained in England after the Revolution of 1688. As early as 1689, he began to plot seriously against William and was imprisoned briefly in that year. He was certainly involved in even more dangerous plotting  thereafter and went into hiding when others, such as Robert Charnock, Sir John Friend and George Porter, were seized and several afterwards executed. Eventually he was caught and accused of treason. To save his skin, he charged several leading Whig noblemen with treachery. A special Act of Attainder was passed through Parliament to convict him and he was beheaded on 28 January 1697 (the last person ever executed under an Act of Attainder). William personally disliked Fenwick intensely.

G.P.R. James' tale begins on the shore of the Irish coast, immediately after the Battle of the Boyne. Two men - not quite reached the middle age - and a young boy of perhaps eight years old or a little more, are gazing out to sea, clearly waiting for a ship. The reader knows the boy is going to figure prominently in the ensuing story, as it was scarcely possibly to conceive any thing more beautiful than his countenance, or to fancy a form more replete with living grace than his. Step forward the undoubted hero of the tale. The story that follows is one of the author's more convoluted ones. A severe storm seemingly sinks the small boat one of the men and the boy embark on to take them out to a brig; we know this won't be correct, as the hero has to survive! Sure enough, they had turned back and, ever and anon, we find them both in England and Lennard Sherbrooke, the adult, after an encounter on 'The King's Highway' with highwaymen, hands over the lad to the Earl of Sunbury for safe keeping and an education. We now enter the not unusual realm (for 19th century fiction) of the boy being given an assumed name - Wilton Brown. And such he is known as until near the very end of the third volume.

The next chapter leaps forward some seven or eight years; Wilton is schooled, including at Oxford University, and grows up as a loyal Protestant servant of the present monarch. On one of his travels between Oxford and London, he encounters an overturned coach, with its occupants at bay from yet more highwaymen. The gentleman who had been riding with him and who helps in the rescue is none other than Sir John Fenwick; the rescued? - the Duke of Gaveston and his fair daughter, the Lady Laura. For Wilton, this will prove to be a match made, if not in heaven, at least on the King's Highway. He was struck with surprise by the vision of radiant loveliness which her face and form presented.

We are soon introduced to the Earl of Byerdale, who takes Wilton on as an amanuensis. Neither we nor Wilton are entirely sure of this earl's nature or honesty and one of the themes of the novel is the working out of what hidden motives lie behind his less than pleasing behaviour. More than once, Wilton remarked the eyes of the Earl fixed stern and intent upon him from beneath their overhanging brows. Those eyebrows should give Wilton and the reader fair warning that something is not quite kosher. The Earl's son, Lord Sherbrooke (a big clue, surely, in the name) is a spendthrift tearaway, who rarely sees eye to eye (or eyebrow) with his father, but gets on well enough with Wilton.

Once all the main characters have been given their moment in the tale, it now speeds on to get them all enmeshed in the real 1695/6 assassination plot. It is too convoluted to explain in a few sentences here; suffice to say that there is a most convincing pen portrait of King William, an exciting section where the dastardly plotters nearly finish off Wilton; an equally exciting escape for him and his beloved Laura; a different 'escape' for the Duke of Gaveston, who was stupid enough to attend an earlier meeting with the plotters; and a great finale when Wilton's true identity is revealed (I guessed that as early as Volume I); Lennard is also unmasked; and the 'Earl of Byerdale' gets his deserved comeuppance. 

There are rather more Jamesian paragraphs - i.e. musing and ruminating on the weather, the countryside, life in general, true love - than the normal modern reader would like; even this one, who is much more attuned to the prolixity of Scott et al, occasionally skipped another philosophical outburst. However, I still regard him as a skilled storyteller - a strong narrative drive supported by flesh-and-blood characters, whom the reader grows more attached to, or more disgusted by, as we turn the pages. 

I now turn to another James triple decker: The Step-Mother, published six years' later. Two more of his novels await after that!

Dan Jones' 'Henry V' 2024

first  edition - 2024

It's been quite some time since I have read a book relating to Henry V - fiction or non-fiction (or movie). I found Dan Jones' biography refreshing and and packed of information I hadn't previously fully 'taken on board'. Unusually, half the book (just under 200 pages) deals with Henry's life before he became king, viz. 1386-1413. Jones convincingly shows how a long, eventful and invaluable apprenticeship to the office of monarchy, where Henry learned as much from his and other's mistakes as from any successes, shaped his ruling modus operandi. Secondly, through a narrative style, the author writes Henry's biography in the present tense. Henry rides. He fights. He prays. He plans, He rules. And it works! It is almost as if the story is presented in 'real time'.

Jones details the importance of Henry's mother, Mary de Bohun; of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster; and, most importantly, of his father, Henry Bolingbroke, who, in 1399, usurps the crown as Henry IV from Richard II. From his mother, Henry inherits his love of books and, above all, music. A devotee of fine cloths and good living, she is also pious; this will be one of her eldest son's traits throughout his life. Henry is 12/13 years old, a most impressionable age, when his father is banished from the kingdom for a decade. But just a year later, and his father, only recently made Duke of Hereford, has returned and overthrown Richard. A bewildering sequence of events, as Jones emphasises young Henry's attachment to the deposed monarch.

The years of his father's time on the throne are a helter-skelter of opportunities and dangers for Henry. He narrowly misses death, from an arrow lodged in his skull during the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury; he fights wearying skirmishes and conducts sieges in Wales, attempting to put down the tiresome rebellion of Owen Glendower; he watches as his father's health degenerates and he, for a while, is virtually reigning in his stead; and he becomes evermore determined to root out the heresy of the Lollards, even if it means dealing with his old friend and fellow warrior, Sir John Oldcastle. What Jones has successfully done is to make the reader feel that they are there with Henry in 1413, having followed him, almost as a companion, through the previous decade or more.  

As the author writes: 

In March 1413 Henry ascends to his father's throne better prepared for rule than any king in living memory. He arrives at a moment of extraordinary opportunity. Yet he succeeds with some doubts still remaining about his fitness for office, entrenched financial, religious and political challenges, and lingering resentment of the Lancastrian dynasty at large. The fourteen chapters and Epilogue which follow, guide the reader through the vicissitudes of the reign. The image of the playboy Hal transforming into monarchical gravitas is over-egged. Any newfound seriousness does not require a wholesale changing of his ways, for gravity, religiosity and intensity of focus are already essential parts of his character.  We see him cajoling various Parliaments into granting yet more funds for his increasingly expensive military campaigning in France; dealing ruthlessly with plotters at Southampton (his close friend Lord Scrope is summarily executed), on the very eve of his voyage to Harfleur; by force of personality leading his weary and sickly troops towards Calais and the 'miracle' of Agincourt; and the long, drawn-out aftermath of mainly siege warfare which leads not only to the Regency of the French crown and a marriage to the daughter of the permanently 'unwell' French king, Charles VI; but to his early death from dysentery on 31st August 1422 at the chateau of Bois-de-Vincennes.

I hadn't realised how important Henry's younger brothers were to the success of his reign. John, created Duke of Bedford, shaped in the same mould as Henry, who served as warden of the north-east, 'managed' England as lieutenant whilst Henry was abroad, and who took up the mantle in France - achieving at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424 a victory as splendid as that of Agincourt. Moreover, four years before his death in 1435, he had overseen the crowning of his nephew, Henry VI, as king of France. Thomas, created Duke of Clarence, a headstrong but brave soldier who was killed in March 1421 at Baugé, the first defeat for an English army in a major battle in France in nearly eight decades. Humphrey, created Duke of Gloucester, the youngest brother, under-occupied and inexperienced before the Agincourt campaign, who becomes one of Henry's ablest supporters and who is sent back to England in 1420 to take over the reins of domestic government and who excels in the tricky task of cajoling parliaments to grant yet more money. Moreover, in his uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry V has another consummate politician, who regularly provides finance for his nephew from his wealthy bishopric's coffers. All these men are consistently loyal to the king and, in no small part, contribute to the successes of his reign, whether on the battlefield or in the politics at home.

Jones has an interesting Summary of Henry's posthumous image. Curated and maintained by his younger brother Humphrey - who commissioned a Latin biography known as Vita Henrici Quinti -  enthusiastically aped by a young Henry VIII and further embroidered by Shakespeare, only from the 19th century was the warrior king looked at with a critical eye. Whereas William Stubbs maintained the king was the noblest and purest man who ever ruled England, J.R. Green accused Henry of wanton aggression and a failure to make good on his miraculous victory at Agincourt. Whilst C.L. Kingsford called Henry a typical medieval hero, and K.B. McFarlane stated that he was the greatest man that ever ruled England; Ian Mortimer, a 'popular writer', in his 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (2009), lays into the king from a 21st century viewpoint: Henry was a deeply flawed individual, a misogynist, a religious fundamentalist, a reckless spender of other people's money and a second-rate military commander! As a fellow History alumni of University College, London, I feel a trifle embarrassed by his over-the-top anachronistic strictures. He appears to belong to the Desmond Seward 'school' of slanted history. Rather, I agree with Dan Jones who, siding with McFarlane, suggests that he has presented a Henry who is a little more rounded and human...Henry's contemporaries saw in him a paragon of Christian, knightly virtue and the living embodiment of traditional kingship. They perceived - rightly - a ruler who made the systems of English government work as they were supposed to without resorting to novelty or swindling the system...

Other Biographies of Henry V in my Library:

1703/4:  The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth

1838:  J. Endell Tyler - Henry of Monmouth (Richard Bentley)

1889:  The Rev. A.J. Church - Henry the Fifth (Macmillan and Co.)

1901:  C.L. Kingsford - Henry V. The Typical Medieval Hero (G.P. Putnam's Sons)

1919:  R.B. Mowat - Henry V (Constable & Company)

1934:  Philip Lindsay - King Henry V. A Chronicle (Ivor Nicholson & Watson)

1935:  J.D. Griffith Davies - Henry V (Arthur Barker)

1937:  L.A.G. Strong - Henry of Agincourt (Thomas Nelson and Sons)

1947:  E.F. Jacob - Henry V and the Invasion of France (Hodder & Stoughton)

1967:  Harold F. Hutchinson - King Henry V (The John Day Company)

1968:  C.T. Allmand - Henry V (The Historical Association)

1972:  Peter Earle - The Life and Times of Henry V (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)

1975:  Margaret Wade Labarge - Henry V. The Cautious Conqueror (Secker & Warburg)

1985:  G.L. Harriss - Henry V. The Practice of Kingship (Alan Sutton)

1987:  Desmond Seward - Henry V as Warlord (Sidgwick & Jackson)

1992:  Christopher Allmand - Henry V (Methuen London)

2004:  Keith Dockray - Henry V (Tempus Publishing)

2009:  Ian Mortimer - 1415. Henry V's Year of Glory (The Bodley Head)

2015:  Teresa Cole - Henry V. The Life of a Warrior King (Amberley Publishing) 

I also have 25 Novels on Henry V's reign, which, not surprisingly, tend to concentrate on the Agincourt campaign. One of these, Monmouth Harry by A.M. Maughan (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), I first read as an impressionable teenager - it got me 'hooked' for evermore on both the king and Agincourt. 

Susan Ferrier revisited

 

National Library of Scotland - 1982

Searching for another book on a top shelf last week, I came across the above pamphlet, published by the National Library of Scotland to commemorate the bicentenary of Susan Ferrier's birth. Before cataloguing details of the Exhibition put on at the National Library, there is an Appreciation of my four times great-aunt by His Honour Judge James E.M. Irvine; a Commentary on the Novels of Susan Ferrier by Dr. Ian Campbell of the University of Edinburgh; and a synopsis of Maplehurst Manor, an undeveloped novel of Ferrier's, very possibly written after the success of her three published books, again by Dr. Campbell.

What I find interesting is the refrain that Susan Ferrier appeared to be balancing her quality as a comic satirist with that of an intrusive moralist. The usual argument is that the latter wins out, particularly as regards her last novel, Destiny. Here is Judge Irvine in his Introduction to her middle novel, The Inheritance (Three Rivers Books, 1984): All three novels have the same faults and virtues... they are all too full of sententious digressions (fortunately easily skipped)... In her last novel, Destiny, written at the time of her father's death the didactic moralist seems to have gained the ascendant over the comic satirist. It is my contention that Ferrier's didactic stance has been increasingly exaggerated in recent criticism.

However, back in 1929, Margaret Sackville, in her Introduction to Ferrier's Destiny, would not have agreed with the last sentence: 

[It] has a brilliant beginning but unfortunately becomes tedious as the story proceeds on account of the heavy masses of indigestible moralising which it contains... So it happens that side by side with her magnificent humour are passages of the same depressing piety which made what were called the Sunday-books of my childhood so formidable, in which dreadful little prigs lived (or more usually died) for the edification of their worldly relatives.

I have Blogged on all three of Ferrier's novels - Marriage on 2nd March 2021; The Inheritance on 25th September 2021; and Destiny on 23rd March 2021; as well as a Blog on Ferrier's homes and burial place under the heading An Edinburgh Pilgrimage (14th September 2021). I must say, when I read the books, the humour far outweighed the moralising in the majority of cases. Ian Campbell makes some valid points in his  assessment of the author and her works:

No celebratory exhibition will raise her to the rank of a Scott or a Galt...she remains a Scottish novelist of the second rank, deserving some revival of her earlier popularity and certainly deserving to be read...what has emerged is the thoughtful observation of Scottish life, the manipulation of points of view and the admission of the necessity of change...she has the wit (and the inventiveness) to catch the tone of her time and her society, the skill to make several societies interesting, the tact to make the didactic intentions tolerable, and the finesse to handle the Scottish content of her novels. I could not have put it better myself!

Susan Ferrier's bust in the National Library

In my Library:

1897: Sir George Douglas - The 'Blackwood' Group (Miss Ferrier)  (Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier)

1929: ed. John A. Doyle - Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (Eveleigh Nash & Grayson)

1957: Aline Grant - Susan Ferrier of Edinburgh (Alan Swallow)

1965: W.M. Parker - Susan Ferrier and John Galt (The British Council)

1982: Judge Irvine et al. - Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (National Library of Scotland)

1984: Mary Cullinan - Susan Ferrier (Twayne Publishers)

1988: Aileen M. Riddell - At the Verge of their proper sphere: early Nineteenth Century Scottish Women Novelists. Chapter Five (University of Glasgow PhD. Submission)

2009: Victoria Chance - The Romantic Novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Lambert Academic Publishing)

2013: Andrew Monnickendam - The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations. Chapter Two 'Susan Ferrier and Lucre-banished Clans' (Palgrave Macmillan) 

Kieran Molly's 'Yorkist Pretenders to the Tudor Throne' 2024

 

Pen & Sword History first edition - 2024

Ever since the [in]famous 1066 and All That was published in 1930, Lamnel/Wermkin Simkin and Percy Warmneck/Warmnel/Wimneck have attracted mirthful attention. As Kieran Molloy says in his Introduction, ‘Who, it might credibly be asked, would back a Lambert or a Perkin to be king of England?’  Randolph Jones, in several Bulletin articles (including the most recent September issue – ‘Jehan le Sage. The boy who would be king’); Ian Arthurson; Nathen Amin; and, especially, Anne Wroe in her ‘The Perfect Prince’, all have tackled this conundrum. 

Molloy’s book, part prose part playscript (courtroom drama), posits several interesting surmises. He argues that the identity of Lambert Simnel is a greater mystery than that of Perkin Warbeck, and produces a ‘part detective story…with a dose of speculation layered on top’. The traditional narrative concerning Simnel owes much to Polydore Vergil, but Molloy also highlights the chroniclers Adrian de But, Jean de Molinet and Bernard André. He suggests there are three realistic possibilities for Simnel’s identity: one of the two Princes in the Tower, Edward, Earl of Warwick and an imposter. The evidence for it being Richard of Shrewsbury is ‘almost non-existent’ (only André refers to the crowning of Edward IV’s second son in Dublin); whilst Vergil does write that the Germans had come to restore (ad resitiuendum) the boy Edward. What of Warwick?  Of note is the Act of Attainder, issued when Clarence was on trial for treason in 1478, stating that the duke had caused ‘a straunge childe to have been brought into his Castell of Warwyck, and there to have putte and kept the likenesse of his Sonne and Heire’, whilst the real heir was sent to Ireland. Did this happen? Molloy points to the odd case of Ankarette Twynyho, where this possibly suspicious servant was silenced. Did the real Warwick, brought up in Ireland from the age of two, re-emerge to be crowned, whilst Henry’s ‘Warwick’ in the Tower was the ‘straunge’ young man?

Molloy next puts a forensic eye on the traditional tale of Lambert Simnel, whose name only came to light in the Act of Attainder issued in November 1487. Discrepancies in the official narrative are numerous. Could such a boy have been tutored by a humble priest, during a maximum of nine months, to impersonate one of the three possible contenders in Dublin? Why would Margaret of Burgundy support someone of non-royal blood for king?  Why would the Earl of Lincoln defer his legal claim to the throne in favour of a parvenue or even the real Warwick, who was legally debarred?  Who was Elizabeth Woodville backing? ‘There is only one person who, as king, would make such a move worthwhile: her son, Edward V.’ No wonder she was suddenly confined to Bermondsey Abbey! Molloy suggests that there were two plots: one in Ireland, backed by supporters of the Earl of Warwick, and a second, based in England, backing Edward V. He further suggests two different outcomes for Edward V, if it was he – transforming into a John Clement, who enrolled at Louvain University some seven months after Stoke Field; or a John Evans, buried in the remote north Devon village of Coldridge. Molloy summarises: first, that the real Earl of Warwick was alive, probably living in Ireland in 1486; secondly, the support for the 1486 rebellion by both Elizabeth Woodville and John de la Pole, ‘can only be rationalized by including a son of Edward IV – Edward V – at the centre of the rebellion. It was not a case of either/or, but both…no serious analysis of the Simnel affair could doubt Henry VII’s version was fiction.’

As for the drama – the trial of ‘Perkin Warbeck’ is placed in a framework of sixth form debate, where the Earl of Oxford presides and the prosecution is led by Cardinal Morton and the defence by Dean William Worsley. Witnesses include Giles Daubenay, Jean le Sauvage and Katherine Gordon. Initially wary, I found myself being carried along by the arguments and counter arguments. It was even handed, if occasionally verbose. There was little new but it was effective. Molloy admits there are still ‘loose ends’, and the drama concludes with the jury still out. So is this Reviewer.

The author is a retired Professor of Inorganic Chemistry; this brings to mind C.P. Snow’s lecture and subsequent book ‘The Two Cultures’ (1959), which highlighted the deleterious effect of a division between Science and the Humanities. Kieran Molloy is an admirable antidote. 

R.H. Forster's 'Down by the River' 1901

 

E. Johnson first edition - 1901

A year ago, I purchased a lovely copy of the above - in full blue morocco with red and brown morocco onlays to the upper board depicting a pair of crossed oars above a river motif in gilt - from Sky Duthie Rare Books of York. I am not particularly interested in rowing, but I have punted on both the Cam and the Cherwell. The book is a collection of short pieces of poetry and prose originally published in the Eagle - St. John's College, Cambridge annual review founded by the poet Thomas Ashe in 1859 and still going strong. It includes not only an overview of the previous academic year, but also articles and reports on sports activities and other features. The reason I bought Down by the River (I had searched for it for many years) was because it was written by Robert Henry Forster, an author I had been collecting for over thirty years . Born in March 1867 at Backworth, Northumberland, he was the fourth son of George Baker Forster, a mining engineer. Robert went to Harrow and then up to St. John's in 1885. He achieved a Law Tripos. As a student he rowed in the first Boat of his college's Lady Margaret Boat Club, between 1887 and 1888, at stroke and then at bow, not only at Cambridge but also in the  famous Henley Regatta. His boat won the Thames Cup at Henley. His father had rowed for St. John's in 1852 and 1853. In 1890, Robert published the official History of the Lady Margaret Boat Club 1825-1890. My copy has on its fly leaf John Merivall fr G.B. Forster, July 1890. It is interesting to note that both father and son won the "Bateman" Pairs: in 1853 and in 1889 and 1890.

"Bill" (Vanity Fair Supplement)

Robert maintained his love for rowing by becoming joint secretary of the Thames Rowing Club in 1892 with his friend L.H.K. Bushe-Fox, Starting out with a legal career in mind, he was called to the Bar in 1892; however, his writing soon took precedence, to be joined by his archaeological interests. His fascination with the past was already evident in the papers that made up The Amateur Antiquary  (1899). It was consolidated in his series of historical novels, nearly all set in the North-East, and by his academic papers, but found its greatest expression working on the Corstopitum excavations at Corbridge in Northumberland. Robert became Treasurer of the British Archaeological Association in 1905 and a vice-president in 1911.

He married Margaret Hope, quite late in life, and eventually settled in Devon. He died at Rest Dod, Combeinteignhead on 6th June 1923, aged only 56. The last of his volumes of poetry, A Devonshire Garden (1923) was published posthumously. Despite their evident popularity in his day, Robert's books are relatively hard to come by (particularly in good condition). Fame is a transient thing!

What of Down by the River? I must admit I struggled with parts of it. The poetry, often mixed in with the prose, rarely rose above good amateur verse. The first two articles are set on the River Cam and would surely appeal to the rowing fraternity. Throughout the book, the prose is leavened with touches of humour:  "There ain't a river in the land / I'd swop for my dear old Ditch".

In fact, it is just these peculiarities that constitute its principal charm, as supplying in the first place an inexhaustible source of what I may call grumbling material - without which no pleasure in life is complete - and secondly a never failing excuse for bad rowing, being efficiently aided in the latter respect by the eccentricities of boats and oars, and still more by the shortcomings of other people... (In The Eagle, December 1893).

And this poem concerning a fractious Pair:

Stroke.

"Why did I row in a pair?

Why wasn't I sooner beheaded?

Why is bow's oar in the air,

While mine in the mud is embedded?"...

Bow.

"Difficult 'tis top discern

Why o'er the stretcher stroke lingers.

Why does he bury the stern,

And bark on the gunwale my fingers?"...

And again:

"Ah!" murmured the poet,

"There once was a captain who steered,

But his second appearance is feared;

or two funnies, one whiff,

Three fours, and a skiff

Are said to have quite disappeared."

And this:

"His attitudes are quaint

His back is bent and flabby,

Suggestive of a saint

In some flamboyant abbey;

In weird spasmodic jerks

He does his clumsy toiling,

As though his rusty works

Most sadly wanted oiling."

Other pieces are more 'miss' than 'hit' with me - e.g. The Debutante and Grandfather Nile, the latter trying to prove the earliest use of oars was in ancient Egypt. It ends: To the Egyptians may be ascribed the honour of being the inventors of rowing; but it was the Phoenicians who rescued the art from Egyptian conservatism, and had the largest share in its extension and development.

The penultimate piece (from The Eagle for March 1901) the story of Ag the Boatman, and his desire for wedded bliss with Isca, who lived on the other side of a wide river with her grudging father Urt, is the most interesting section in the book - to the non-rower, that is. His trials and tribulations until he works out how to construct a boat from logs etc. is quite well done. The final article, On the Tideway (the only one not to have featured in the College magazine) is a simple story of the Thames and its river users.

Down by the River now joins the rest of my R.H. Forster collection; I am pleased I finally tracked it down and quite enjoyed reading a book on a subject I did not have much interest in!

First editions in my Library:-

Historical Novels:

1898:  The Hand of the Spoiler

1902:  A Tynedale

1903:  The Last Foray

1904:  In Steel and Leather

1905:  Strained Allegiance

1906:  The Arrow of the North

1907:  The Mistress of Aydon

1908:  A Jacobite Admiral

1909:  Harry of Athol

1911:  Midsummer Morn

1913:  The Little Maister

Poetry:

1903:  Idylls of the North

1905:  In Old Northumbria

1914:  War Poems of a Northumbrian 1st series

1915: War Poems of a Northumbrian 2nd series

1920:  The Double Realm

1922:  Two Romances in Verse

1923:  A Devonshire Garden

Miscellaneous:

1890:  The History of the Lady Margaret Boat Club

1895:  The Postgraduates, A Suggestion for a Comic Opera

1899:  The Amateur Antiquary

1901:  Down by the River

+ several papers in Journals on Archaeology.

Those in red I have not been able to collect yet.

ed. Tim Bacon's 'Robert Bakewell. Britain's Foremost Livestock Breeder' 2025

 

Brewin Books first edition - 2025

This magisterial work builds on Patricia Stanley’s original publication of the mid-1990s; she is also a major contributor here. She writes of Bakewell (1725-1795) in the first chapter: ‘He was a man of great qualities, amongst which were to be found in abundant quality, enthusiasm, perseverance, observation, judgement and, above all, great kindness to both men and beasts’. When he took over the management of Dishley Grange from his father in 1760, his aim was to improve every class of farm livestock. That his family had good pedigree in farming can be traced in Sue Brown’s very useful chapter, which amply illustrates not only the value of judicious research in Inventories, Wills, Leases etc., but also the skills needed for extrapolating a coherent story from such basic source material. The family can be traced back to 1575, when Thomas Bakewell of Normanton le Heath, near Ashby de la Zouch, made his will. His descendants consolidated their agricultural holdings in the area around Normanton, until Robert Bakewell [2] (c.1643-1716), the grandfather of the more famous agriculturist moved to Dishley in 1707, attracted by its comparatively large size, with the fields all lying together. His son, also Robert [3] (c.1685-1773) was noted for being ‘an ingeneous [sic] & able farmer’; but by the time his namesake son was thirty-five, the latter is reputed to have taken over the running of the farm. An extensive summary of Robert’s [4] character was given in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1894. It included the following: ‘From his father Bakewell had an excellent training for practical & experimental farming…his manners had a rustic yet polite & pleasing frankness…[he] had a store of anecdotes & stories…[his] kindness to brute animals was proverbial, & being in constant practice at Dishley was rewarded with extreme docility in the farm animals’.

There follow several very detailed and often highly technical chapters on Bakewell and the New Leicester Sheep, Ram Letting and his legacy relating to Horses, Pigs and Poultry. The writers – Pat Stanley, Janet Spavold and Hilary Matthews are to be congratulated on the depth of their research and their facility in explaining it to the general reader. Their sources range from the contemporary - for example Arthur Young’s ‘A Farmer’s Tour through the East of England’ and the late 18^th century Encyclopaedia Britannica - to modern publications such as K. Chivers’ ‘The Shire Horse’ (1976) and ‘The Journal of the Rutland History Society’ (1981). The 18th century was the time when beef and mutton were to be more important than ‘the power of draught and the fineness of wool’, and Robert Bakewell is probably best remembered for developing the New Leicester Sheep. That  he was also a shrewd husbandman can be seen in the precautions he took to make sure that even his cull sheep could not be kept for breeding by butchers and his involvement in the formal setting up of the Dishley Society for breeders in 1789 to protect and advance their interests.

The five chapters on the Longhorn cattle not only pay due homage to Bakewell but also to other individuals such as Sir Thomas Gresley of Drakelow Hall, Burton upon Trent; Richard Astley of Odstone Hall; the Chapman Family of Nuneaton; and, of particular interest to this Reviewer, Sir George Crewe and his son, Sir John Harpur-Crewe on their Calke Abbey estate. The latter can be classed as a Longhorn Revivalist – in February 1874, the Sporting Gazette, paid an official visit to see Sir John’s herd and, in a most poetic fashion, extolled both the man and his beasts. The baronet’s favourite cow, Tulip, (whose picture adorns page 215) took first prizes at both Birmingham and London in 1868 and a butcher offered the price of 60 guineas for her. Sir John declined the offer, took her back to Calke, where she amply repaid his faith in her by founding the outstanding Tulip tribe. As the Sporting Gazette’s journalist wrote, “No prettier animal can be a denizen of a park”. However, Sir John left instructions in his Will that on his death, his beloved herd of Longhorns was to be sold as his son, Sir Vauncey, did not share his passion for agriculture.

Other chapters deal with the cautionary tale of Bakewell’s bankruptcy in the 1770s – seemingly not previously addressed; and the family’s active membership of the local Unitarian congregation.

What of the present and future? Stanley – a breeder of Longhorn cattle herself - and Spavold are relatively optimistic for the Longhorn breed’s survival. ‘On the basis of its history of coming into and going out of fashion, it may well do, providing it continues to find its own niche in our modern world.’ This Reviewer’s regular strolls around the Calke Abbey estate are enhanced by the present Longhorn herd, one of which he saw giving birth in early August. As for the New Leicester, it continues – particularly in Leicestershire.  The Leicesters are a more direct parent of breeds such as the Hexham or Bluefaced Leicester and the Border Leicester. However, with fewer than 500 registered ewes, the Leicester Longwools are one of the rarest native breeds left in the UK. It can take heart that ‘there is scarcely a breed which has not felt the influence of the Leicester’ – Southdowns, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Shropshires, Hampshire Downs etc.

Brewin Books has used quality paper, with clear text and wide margins, and excellent colour and b & w photographs, prints and maps. John Boultbee’s painting of Bakewell’s Black Cart Horse Stallion and the 2025 photographs of the Blackbrook Longhorns are particularly impressive. There are twelve detailed Appendices, including Bakewell Family Trees, 19^th century Sale of Stock records and Stilton Cheese: History and Recipe. Perhaps Jethro Tull, Turnip Townshend and Coke of Norfolk are more widely known, but the New Dishley Society and the authors are to be highly commended, not only on such a superb production, but also being at the forefront in keeping Robert Bakewell and his legacy alive today.