Helen MacInnes' 'The Unconquerable' 1944

 

George G. Harrap first edition - 1944

At last, I have tracked down my final Helen MacInnes novel. For years I have had twenty of her twenty-one books firmly bedded down on my Library shelves - all in first editions with their wrappers. Off and on I have searched for her third book - The Unconquerable (While We Still Live in the USA) - and finally bought it in the first week of this October. I have now read it! I started reading MacInnes' spy/thriller novels in 1970, seven that year, and continued until her last book, Ride a Pale Horse, came out in 1984.  I purchased and read them all in paperback (hence the final novel I didn't get until 1986 - by which time she was dead, of a stroke on 30 September 1985). I have kept all these paperbacks (including The Unconquerable) as well as subsequently buying all the hardback first editions. Some critics have labelled them old-fashioned, but that's probably why I like and identify with them. I grew up in the years she was writing about - the dangerous Cold War decades, when Russia and its expansionist tentacles were spreading everywhere. It was still the period when Nazis were being hunted down and non-fiction books were being published about the Second World War. MacInnes wrote about these scary times, with intelligence and an astute understanding of the complex web of foreign affairs. By the 1960s, when male authors such as Len Deighton and John Le Carré were starting out and Alistair MacLean was getting into his stride, she was into her third decade as a suspense novelist. That decade saw the publication of her Decision at Delphi, The Venetian Affair, The Double Image and The Salzburg Connection - all among her best.

Her bête noire was totalitarianism of any hue; thus her earliest novels focused on the Nazi threat and activities. Her first book, Above Suspicion (1941), was based partly on notes she had taken whilst on her honeymoon in Bavaria in 1932, and dealt with the evils of the sinister Gestapo. By the time the War broke out, MacInnes had been in New York for a year, as her husband Gilbert Highet had been made Chair of Latin and Greek at Columbia University. 1942 saw the publication of her second novel,  Assignment in Brittany, which concentrated on a battle of wits between the Nazis and the British secret service. Then came The Unconquerable, one of her longest novels (452 pages) and, possibly the most deeply felt.

It is the story of an English girl, who was staying with friends at a Polish country house in August 1939. When war broke out she was urged to leave the country but stayed on in Warsaw. Why? Perhaps it was due to the charm of Adam Wisniewski, a Polish cavalry officer, even if she would not have admitted this. She also remained to support her Polish friends, Madam Aleksander and her children, and her brother Professor Edward Korytowski in Warsaw. Her decision meant she was caught up in a sequence of dangerous events, which included getting involved with a group of patriots working secretly to organise the defence of their country. While Nazi bombs were falling and Warsaw was burning, Michal Olszak and others are putting together plans for an organised resistance movement. Sheila becomes a cog in this complicated machinery. For a short time she masquerades as Anna Braun and, called to the Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw, is sent by the Nazis as a German agent on a mission. One German, Dittmar, has his suspicions of her and, woven into the more general story of the resistance group's conflicts with the Germans, is his attempts to track her down. The denouement, when it comes, is riveting. The book gave such an accurate portrayal of the Polish Resistance movement, that some reviewers and readers thought she had been given access to classified information (by her husband, who worked for the British MI6?).

MacInnes was certainly an able teller of exciting stories, as the dustjacket on The Unconquerable put it. She is excellent at character drawing and a skilful conveyor of atmosphere and landscape. 

Some extracts:

A spy is someone who finds out information for a certain amount of money. The money smothers his conscience if he is a traitor. If he is a patriot the money softens the lack of public recognition. But there is another word which I prefer to give to men who care neither for the money nor for any recognition. Their lives are often ruined; they may meet an unpleasant death; but they fight in their own way - with their brains, secretly, courageously - because all that matters to them is what they are fighting for. I think it is only fair to give them full credit for that.

All these people [Nazis], these self-appointed lords of creation, were vulnerable. They lived with the perpetual fear that their power was threatened, because the foundation of their power was opportunity. The nouveau riche displayed his yachts and pictures to silence his doubts. The arriviste in politics displayed his brute force for the same purpose. Cruelty, like all forms of display, was the compensation for the hidden, nagging fear of inferiority...

I know how you [Sheila] feel. I came here like you, not quite believing. Guerrilla army? A story-book adventure . . . something out of the Middle Ages . . . fantastic. Perhaps we are all these things; but we are also the only army left to a conquered country. Some of us at any rate will be here to help those who start pushing the Hun back where he belongs. Then we shan't be just a story-book chapter; we'll be in the history books as well.

A firm. crisp surface formed on the deep snow. You could walk on it as you could on icy ground. The white-grey skies changed to a clear pale blue. The sun set this clean, unmarked world glittering. The very air seemed to dance with light. Only the leeward trunks of the trees with their long winter shadows, and the walls of the houses which had sheltered under broad roofs kept their dark colour in defiance of so much change...in the evening the snow was streaked with gold and orange furrows from the large round sun sinking so swiftly behind the jagged edge of the mountains. The shadows deepened to violet, the columns of smoke thickened and darkened and the day's sounds died gradually away....night walked over the mountains, sweeping its train of stars, their brightness sharpened by the keen air. The carpet of snow became a cloth of silver. The shadows were black as the windows where the lights died one by one.

The tragedy for Poland and its people was that, although the Nazis were defeated in 1945, a further forty-five years were to pass before they achieved any sort of real independence. Not until January 1990 was the Polish People's Republic disbanded. The Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved in July 1991 and the first Polish free election took place just two months earlier. One shudders to think what probably happened to Adam Wisniewski under Russian occupation - that is, if he had survived the Nazi regime. It is ironic that it is present-day Poland who is at the forefront of European democracy, once again standing up to the evils of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.   

Previous Blogs:

[All in 2020]

March 14:  Above Suspicion (1941); Assignment in Brittany (1942)

April 23:    Horizon (1945); Friends and Lovers (1948)

May 17:     Pray for a Brave Heart (1955); North from Rome (1958)

May 23:     Decision at Delphi (1961); The Venetian Affair (1964)

June 4:       The Double Image (1966); The Salzburg Connection (1968)

June 30:     Message from Malaga (1972); The Snare of the Hunter (1974)

August 2:   Agent in Place (1976); Prelude to Terror (1978)

August 5:   The Hidden Target (1980); Cloak of Darkness (1982) 

August 9:   Ride a Pale Horse (1984)

Not Blogged on:

Rest and be Thankful (1949)

Neither Five nor Three (1951)

I and my True Love (1953)

Sarah Hawkswood's 'Feast for the Ravens' 2025

Allison & Busby paperback edition - 2025

I have loyally bought Sarah Hawkswood's Bradecote and Catchpoll's mysteries each time they have appeared in the Allison & Busby paperback series. Feast for the Ravens is the thirteenth and it has kept up the high standard the author first set with the Servant of Death. The latter was based on events during the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign (1135-1153) and was commenced in June 1143. The reader has now arrived in September 1145. The two medieval sleuths - Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Cathchpoll, joined more recently by Underserjeant Walkelin - well versed in the nefarious behaviour of those of every rank and either sex, now find themselves tracking down the murderer of a Templar knight, found dead in the Forest of Wyre. A document has been found on him suggesting that an important local lord, Hugh de Mortemer of Wigmore, may be persuaded to change sides, deserting the King and going over to the Empress Maud/Matilda.

Previous stories have barely touched on the political ramifications of the Anarchy, but I found here that the issue of the rivalries of local lords and the dangers of swapping sides was well explained. Earl Robert of Gloucester (the Empress' half-brother) and his loss of Faringdon Castle and the importance of Josce de Dinan at Ludlow are mentioned, to give verisimilitude to the story. Was William fitzAlan of Oswestry, a supporter of the Empress, genuinely expecting Hugh de Mortemer to come over to Matilda's cause or was it a cleverly designed plot to cast suspicion on someone actually totally loyal to the King. We shall find out!

The de Mitton family, most of whom were wiped out in a fire, possibly started by an aggrieved sibling, Ivo, are central to the story. The eldest daughter, Rohese, raped by Eustace fitzRobert, the ruthless 'baddie' in the tale, had disappeared, apparently due to an onset of leprosy, but is actually living in Ribbesford Wood as a ghastly disfigured recluse. William de Ribbesford, her one-time beau who had expected to marry her, is the only one who knows of her existence there. He has cleverly encouraged the locals' belief that a Hrafn Wif (Raven Woman) haunts the woods - an evil combination of witch and ghost, not a creature of flesh and blood.  How Ivo and Eustace are finally brought to book is quite skilfully done by the author. On the way, we encounter other well-drawn characters, such as Herluin the Ribbesford Steward; Father Laurentius the village priest; Simon de Mitton, the surviving youngest brother; the blind and away-with-the-fairies old mother of Eustace, the lady Adela; and William de Beauchamp, the irascible Sheriff, who has figured in previous books as the unreasonable boss of the intrepid trio. Although the identity of the murderer is known from very early on, this does not curtail enjoyment of the book. The author is well versed in the period and the setting; the dialogue, and sleuthing, is not spoiled by anachronisms.

Now that Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew has 'retired' and settled down in (presumably) married bliss, Hawkswood's characters are the only medieval ones that drag my purse open.

R.D. Blackmore's 'Alice Lorraine' 1875

Sampson Low etc. first edition - 1875

After several delays, I have finally finished Alice Lorraine. Having now read half a dozen of Blackmore's novels, I am getting well acquainted with his style - strengths and weaknesses. The former includes wonderful descriptions of landscape and weather, of character and, more often than not, sound dialogue. The weaknesses? The problem of all three-decker novels - 'padding' is used to prolong the narrative and a tendency to go off piste. So much of the novel has only a slight relevance to the title character, Alice. Perhaps the story should have been called A Tale of the Lorraines.

Apparently, the story, set in 1811 to 1814, was be a tragedy (rare in Victorian fiction before Thomas Hardy addressed it as a dominant theme in his major novels). Hilary Lorraine was to become "the ruin of his friends". But how could a prankster - who threw darts in his lawyer's chambers and rode a market gardener's cart to Covent Garden to sell cauliflowers (he falls in love with the farmer's 18 year-old daughter Mabel Lovejoy - who had the loveliest, sweetest, and most expressive brown eyes in the universe), end up in the role of a tragedian? Certainly, the early chapters which dwell on the bountiful Sussex and Kent countryside, the boisterous sporting parson Struan Hales and the earthy pig-man Bottler is a typical bright prelude for bad things to come. Moreover, Hilary does quarrel with his father Sir Roland, and goes off to fight for Wellington in Spain and, furthermore, manages to disgrace himself by 'losing' a huge sum of money destined for the British troops. He does return home, physically ill and mentally distraught; but true love does not give up on him and he is happily wedded.

17 year-old Alice herself certainly bears the scars  - if relatively short-lived - of tragedy. Not only does she have to choose between marrying a scoundrel: first, to regain the Lorraine original larger estates and, secondly, to find money to retrieve her brother Hilary's honour. A third alternative is to perish (no mortgage on the Lorraine estate is possible whilst she lives). Linked with all this, is the family tradition - dating back to the early 17th century -  that if the local stream, the Woeburn, breaks out of the hillside, it is a time of danger and a family member must die: Only this can save Lorraine, / One must plunge to rescue twain. Thus, commending her soul to God in a good Christian manner, and without a fear, or tear, or sigh, she commits her body to the Death-bourne. 

The author's original aim was that Alice should sacrifice her life to save all else. He wrote to Blackwood, asking for his and the publisher's wife for their opinion - if you are unanimous against the fatal result, there is time to vary it, if you let me know speedily. The result? The near-drowned and unconscious Alice was pulled out of the dangerous waters, by the very man she goes on to marry! Poor Tess of the d'Urbervilles was still in the future, even if Maggie had met her watery end in Mill on the Floss some 15 years' earlier. 

Blackmore uses his own life to colour and progress the novel. Hilary Lorraine has much the same experience when enrolled as a student of the law, after his degree at Oxford. The novel goes into some detail of Hilary's time in the legal profession, so much clearly based on the author's own time there. Moreover, the scenes set in the fruit grower's farm in Kent and the journey to and from Covent Garden  mirror's Blackwood's own experience - of the latter: here was a wondrous reek of men before the night had spent itself. Such a Babel, of a market-morning in the berry season', as makes one long to understand the mother-tongue of nobody...Hilary even has an attack of epilepsy, which his author also suffered from.

There are some marvellous descriptive passages:

On Rev. Struan Hales:

He was a man of mark all about the neighbourhood. Everybody knew him; and almost everybody liked him. Because he was a genial, open-hearted, and sometimes noisy man; full of life - in his own form of that matter - and full of the love of life, whenever he found other people lively. He hated every kind of humbug, all revolutionary ideas, methodism, asceticism, enthusiastic humanity, and exceedingly fine language. The rector of West Lorraine loved nothing better than a good day with the hounds, and a roaring dinner-party afterwards... he hated books, and he hated a pen, and he hated doing nothing

On Sir Remnant Chapman (father to Captain Stephen Chapman, who wants to marry Alice but whom she detests):

"When I was in London [girls] turned me sick with asking my opinion. The less they know, the better for them. Knowledge of anything makes a woman scarcely fit to speak to. My poor dear wife could read and write, and that was quite enough for her. She did it on the jam-pots always, and she could spell most of it. Ah, she was a most wonderful woman!"

On the strawberry:

That is the time for the true fruit-lover to try the taste of a strawberry. It should be one that refused to ripen in the gross heat of yesterday, but has been slowly fostering 'goodness'', with the attestation of the stars. And now (if it has been properly managed, properly picked without touch of hand, and not laid down profanely), when the sun comes over the top of the hedge, the look of  that strawberry will be this - the beard of the footstalk will be stiff, the sepals of the calyx moist and crisp, the neck will show a narrow band of varnish, where the dew could find no hold, the belly of the fruit will be sleek and gentle, firm however to accept its fate; but the back that has dealt with the dew, and the sides where the colour of the back slopes downward, upon them such a gloss of cold and diamond chastity will lie, that the human lips get out of patience with the eyes in no time.

On the Sun:

The sun, in almost every garden, sucks the beauty out of all the flowers; he stains the sweet violet even in March; he spots the primrose and the periwinkle; he takes the down off the heartsease blossom; he browns the pure lily of the valley in May; and, after that, he dims the tint of every rose that he opens; and yet, in spite of all his mischief, which of them does not rejoice in him?

The novel contained a superb account of the severe winter of 1813, including the following extract about the continual snowfall.

The snow began about seven o'clock, when the influence of the sun was lost; and for three days and three nights it snowed, without taking or giving breathing-time. It came down without any wind, or unfair attempt at drifting. The meaning of the sky was to snow and no more, and let the wind wait its time afterwards. There was no such thing as any spying between the flakes at any time. The flakes were no so very large, but they came as close together as the sand pouring down in an hour-glass. They never danced up and down, like gnats or motes, as common snowflakes do, but one on the back of another fell, expecting millions after them. And if any man looked up to see that gravelly infinitude of pelting spots, which swarms all the air in a snowstorm, he might as well have shut both eyes, before it was done by snowflakes.

There are some well-drawn minor characters, such as Alice's grandmother Lady Valeria; Rector Hales' three daughters; the feral boy Bonny with his donkey Jack; Miguel de Montalvan, the Count of Zamora and his two, very different in character, daughters Claudia and Camilla; the irrepressible Major Clumps; even the Duke of Wellington; all add to the flavour and interest of the tale. Some of the best writing in in the last volume, concentrating as it does on the upshot of the Spanish campaign involving Hilary and his return to face the music with his family; the attempt of Alice to kill herself; the come-uppance of the Chapmans; and the tying of the various love-knots.

I am now on the look-out for Blackmore's other novels, apart from Lorna Doone. I haven't found Kit and Kitty, and I might make do with my single volume versions of Cripps the Carrier and Perlycross. Erema is available, but I am not drawn to tales set in America; so, that leaves Cradock Nowell and Christowell - both presently too expensive - and Clara Vaughan which is not available in first edition. However, I have two, if not three, G.P.R. James novels to attend to, so I am not downhearted. 

R.D. Blackmore's 'Tales from the Telling House' 1896

 

Sampson Low, Marston & Co first edition - 1896

The book contains four longish short stories. As one Reviewer has remarked, the least successful tale would have attracted the most readers because of its title, which the author disliked. Slain by the Doones merely recounted and episode referred to by John Ridd in passing - the murder of  the 'Squire'  in Bagworthy Forest.  The American first edition was published a year earlier, in 1895 by Dodd, Mead & Co., and was entitled Slain by the Doones and Other Stories. This first story is set in the mid 17th century. The narrator's father, Sylvester Ford of Quantock in Somerset, fought for Prince Rupert in the Civil War and then being disgusted with England as well as banished from her, and despoiled of all his property, took service on the Continent, and wandered there for many years, until the replacement of the throne. However, on returning to England he had no restitution of his estates, so took refuge in an outlandish place, a house and small property in the heart of Exmoor. His narrator daughter, Sylvia, turns eighteen and tells of a young man, living nearby, who becomes acquainted with her father and herself: handsome and beautiful he was, so that bold maids longed to kiss him, it was the sadness in his eyes, and the gentle sense of doom therein, together with a laughing scorn of it, that made him come home to our nature... But Sylvia's father orders that no more converse be had with that son of Baron de Wichelhalse, as this Marwood rideth with the Doones. Living but six miles away from the Robbers' Valley, her father was wise to be careful.

Squire Ford sets off on one of his regular fishing trips, but Sylvia is told that he was then set upon by three of the Doones and murdered where the Oare and Badgery streams ran into one another for fishing in their river. Into the young girl's life comes Bob Pring, son of Deborah Pring the Ford's only domestic. who was as fine a young trooper as ever drew sword... and who had a fine head of curly hair, and spoke with a firm conviction that there was much inside it. His commanding officer, one Captain Anthony Purvis, is brought, wounded with three broken ribs, to Sylvia's house for treatment. He falls in love with Sylvia and she receives through the good offices of Mistress Pring a proposal of marriage. She feels that must have been sadly confused by that blow on his heart to think mine so tender, so she refuses and he leaves. The final chapter sees the Doones force their entry into Sylvia's house, kill old Thomas Pring, and the infamous Carver Doone decide to take her away: she is worthy to be the mother of many a fine Doone...why even Lorna hath not such eyes. Sylvia is slung on the back of a horse  to be taken to Doone Glen to be some cut-throat's light-of-love. Reaching a bridge a vast man stood...wearing a farmer's hat, and raising a staff like the stem of a young oak tree. He dispatches Charlie Doone, then Carver himself; and in the nick of time, Captain Purvis is there to rescue Lorna. Who was that other man? Yes, that was the mighty man of Exmoor...John Ridd; the Doones are mighty afraid of him since he cast their culverin through their door. And equally brave Captain Purvis gets his girl.

The following two stories - Frida; or, The Lover's Leap and George Bowring - both have tragic denouements, perhaps unusual for the author. The first was based on a legend of the Wichalse family at Lynton during the Civil War of the mid 17th century. In the tale, Aubyn de Wichehalse, after years desiring a son, was presented with a somewhat undersized, and unhappily female child - one, moreover, whose presence cost him that of his faithful and loving wife. He gradually warms to his daughter Jennyfried (or 'Frida') and she reaches seventeen years. Her 25-year-old cousin, Albert de Wichehalse, also warms to her, and Hugh is keen that the two youngsters marry.

However, along comes an old fogy neighbour, Sir Maunder Meddleby, one of the first of a newly invented order, who persuades Hugh that he should send his daughter to Court - her wanteth the vinish of the coort. She goes to London and meets a young Lord Auberley. It is now 1642 and the Civil War has broken out and Auberley is sent West to persuade Hugh to join the King's cause and to persuade Frida of his own cause. He is winning the latter battle at least, when she commands him to return to the King (the Battle of Edgehill has been indecisive). He meets her for one final time at her favourite spot - at the end of this walk there lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all of Nature's art secluded...a little cove...here the maid was well accustomed every day to sit and think, gazing down at the calm, gray sea... Auberley successfully woos her and they pledge their troths. He goes off to Oxford but, naughty man, marries her Highness, the Duchess of B--- in France. Filthy lucre and position is the catch. Frida, distressed, walks to the same lonely spot - with one sheer fall of a hundred fathoms the stern cliff meets the baffled sea; her dog Lear, her closest companion,  has followed her. Frida leaps to her death; Lear gave one long re-echoed howl, then tossed his mane, like a tawny wave, and followed down the death-leap. There follows a brief ending. Aubyn de Wichehalse joins Parliament and, at the Battle of Lansdown, north of Bath, brings Viscount Auberley to bay and with his Gueldres ax cleft his curly head, and split what little brain it takes to fool a trusting maiden.

George Bowring. A Tale of Cader Idris, highlights a Welsh folk-belief in the power of a gold watch to delay the hour of death. A peasant girl's father murders a man to get his watch, and the criminal remains unpunished until the very end of the story. The narrator, Robert Bistre, recalls the original incident some forty years later. He accompanies his old school friend from Shrewsbury on a trip to west Wales, he to draw pictures, George to fish. Although the tale is a tragic one, there are regular bursts of humour. George's father seems to have been at some time knighted for finding a manuscript of great value that went in the end to the paper mills; ...a knight he lived, and a knight he died; and his widow found it such a comfort! George, by the time of the trip (it is 1832), is married with three young children. The two men find lodgings at the little village of Aber-Aydyr, by the river Aydyr. After some days fishing, George wants to move up into wilder and rockier districts, where the water ran deeper...a savage place, deserted by all except evil spirits... They split up and George, after a long search is found drowned in a deep black hole of the river. Local miners help to carry his body to the nearest house, where they are refused entrance by the owner, 'Black' Hopkin ap Howel. My little daughter is very ill, the last of seven. You must go elsewhere. Robert has already noticed that George's watch was missing. The subsequent coroner's jury found George had died of "asphyxia, caused by too long immersion in the water". Robert is convinced it was murder. He becomes an 'uncle' to the three children and they grow up to be splendid "members of society".

Bob Bistre Bowring, the eldest, is his apprentice and, when he was 25-years-old, asks his 'uncle' if they can return to where his father died. Once there, he makes his way to the very spot his father was last seen. He went on alone with exactly his father's step, and glance, figure, face and stature. Even his dress was of the silver-gray which his father had been so fond of...a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the dark folds of the mountain...I saw young Bowring leap uop...at his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over them. No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest. The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered. It was Hopkin ap Howel.

The final story, Crocker's Hole, recreates a situation from Blackmore's own childhood - the catching of a mighty trout in the river Culm. I liked the following sentence: In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs into a brook; and before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full-grown river. and another - the description of the famous trout: his head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back was like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. 

 

Blackmore said that "the stories were written at different times during the last thirty years; but collected and revised recently."

A Footnote: Blackmore wrote an inscription on the first flyleaf of a copy of Tales from the Telling House: ...this contains the preface, and has the proper title. Through some strange neglect, the title, and the little preface, have not yet appeared in the U.S.A., and the clumsy name Slain by the Doones - never liked by the author - seems to be the only one in vogue there.

R.D. Blackmore's 'The Maid of Sker' 1872

 

William Blackwood first edition - 1872

At last, a return to a triple-decker! It's great when you reach page 325 and realise there are two more volumes to go. Not everyone's cup of tea, but for me it is tea and cake. The Maid of Sker was regarded by Blackmore himself as his best novel. Most commentators would probably plump for the well-known Lorna Doone, but the most famous is not necessarily the best work of an author, vide. John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps. Blackmore's novel was first serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from August 1871 to July 1872, before being published in book form. The author's boyhood visits to Newton Nottage in Glamorganshire gave him both the geographical background and knowledge of an ancient legend, told in ballad form. The latter Maid of Sker bears little resemblance to the plot of the novel, but the gloomy Sker House, just west of Portcawl, is one of the central images for Blackmore.

The nominal heroine, the lost little girl Bardie, is drawn from the author's own precocious niece, whom he called by that name. She was only three years old and Blackmore transcribed her baby talk (much to my increasing irritation!). The villain of the tale, the demonic Parson Stoyle Chowne, was drawn from the Rev. John Froude, well-known in Devon as a "shocking fellow", according to Blackmore's father, "a disgrace to the Church". Chawne's muscular companion, the Rev. Jack Rambone, a boxer and wrestler, was modelled on the Rev. Jack Radford, a sporting parson who went with a scissor-grinding truck all over Wales and Cornwall, challenging all comers to fist or fore-hip.

The story is narrated by Davy Llewellyn, a late middle-aged fisherman, who rescues little Bardie from a small boat, which has drifted onto a beach in Glamorganshire, just before a raging storm. Davy parts with the girl but not the boat - the former being lodged at Sker House, the latter being tarted up for his own use. It is clear from the infant's deportment and quality of clothes that she is the offspring of a well-to-do family. Here lies one of the weaknesses of the plot - the child has to grow up to become marketable! Some 16 years have to be got through. Blackmore does this by first leaving Bardie with the Sker Household, then employing a tutor, but otherwise going off to Devon to continue his fishing trade and then re-joining the Navy. Being couched in the first person narrative, the tale becomes more one of Davy's exploits and less of Bardie's growing up. At least one Reviewer suggested a different title - Davy Llewellyn - would have been more apposite.

Davy is certainly the propelling force - a selfish old rascal who boasts his way through the narrative. He has a veritable halo of self-interest which is, however, relieved by a romantic generosity for others.  In the very first sentence of Volume I, Davy sets out his stall, with all the pathos he can muster: I am but an ancient fisherman upon the coast of Glamorgan, with work enough of my own to do, and trouble enough of my own to heed, in getting my poor living, yet he has enough time and literary capability to embark on a three volume narrative!. He moans that the work of writing must be very dull to me, after all the change of scene, and the noble fights with Frenchmen, and the power of oaths that made me jump so in his Majesty's navy. Notwithstanding this, he girds his literary loins and ploughs on, being on the whole, pretty well satisfied with myself... 

On a fishing trip for congers, lobsters, mullet and spider-crabs, he lands an unexpected fish - a smoothly-gliding boat...a finer floatage I never saw, and her lines were purely elegant, and she rode above the water without so much as parting it...the little craft was laden with a freight of pure innocence...a little helpless child...all in white, having neither cloak nor shawl...but lying with her little back upon the aftmost planking. And thus Bardie enters his life; he deposits her with Moxy Thomas (an old girlfriend, but now married to 'black' Evan, a morbid drunk, with dark face, overhung with hair)) at Sker-house - a very sad and lonesome place, close to a desolate waste of sand, and the continual roaring of the sea upon black rocks. A great grey house, with many chimneys, many gables, and many windows, yet not a neighbour to look out on, not a tree to feed its chimneys, scarce a firelight in its gables in the very depth of winter. Of course, it is said to be haunted... Tragedy soon occurs - five of the six sons of Evan and Moxy - aged from 15 to 22 - are buried in a sand drift during a violent storm. The chapter Sand-Hills turned to Sand-Holes contain some of the author's most atmospheric writing. The sky was spread and traversed with a net of crossing fires, in and out like mesh and needle...some were yellow, some deep red, and some like banks of violet...

It is as a result of this same horrendous storm, that a slave-ship is wrecked and its cargo of Africans  drowned. The description that follows would give heart attacks to 21st century reviewers. The negroes, crouching in the scuppers, or clinging to the masts and rails, or rolling over one another in their want of pluck and skill, seemed to shed their blackness on the snowy spray and curdled foam, like cuttle-fish in a lump of froth. Poor things! they are grieved to die as much, perhaps, as any white man; and my heart was overcome, in spite of all I knew of them...now I hope no man who knows me would ever take me for such a fool as to dream for a moment - after all I have seen of them - that a negro is "our own flesh and blood, and a brother immortal", as the parsons began to prate, under some dark infection. They differ from us a great deal more than an ass does from a horse. Blackmore (surely ironic that he had such a surname) even uses the now forbidden word n-----r more than once. The tale is 152 years old, but this hardly excuses such sentiments.

The novel is peppered with a goodly array of minor characters: Colonel Lougher of Candleston Court, one of the finest and noblest men it was ever my luck to come across and who takes part with his widowed sister Lady Bluett, in helping to bring up Bardie in a manner to which her obvious gentility demands. It is his nephew, the Hon. Rodney Bluett who, desperate to join the Navy (and helped every so often in his subsequent illustrious career by Davy), later becomes besotted by the teenage Bardie and eventually marries her. Davy, meanwhile, finding his fishing scarcely bringing in enough to live on, departs in a fishing vessel for Devon (the author's own spiritual home). One thing I will say of these sons of Devon: rough they may be, and short of grain, and fond of their own opinions...queer, moreover, in thought and word, and obstinate as hedgehogs - yet they show, and truly have, a kind desire to feed one well.

Devon provides the other main skein to the tale.  Here Davy meets the bête noire of the novel, Parson Chowne: it was the most wondrous unfathomable face that ever fellow-man fixed gaze upon; lost to mankindliness, lost to mercy, lost to all memory of God...disdain was the first thing it gave one to think of; and after that, cold relentless humour; and after that, anything dark and bad. It is Chowne who is responsible for the loss of two babes from the family the (one of whom one realises immediately must be Bardie), the other, a boy, finally  emerges - naked - (nicknamed Harry Savage by Davy and others) from a gipsy-looking tribe on Chowne's estate. Davy also links up with Sir Philip Bampfylde, his second son in the Navy, Captain Drake Bampfylde and the latter's long-time girlfriend, wealthy heiress Isabel Carey. Machinations amongst all these Devonians lead to Davy rejoining the British Navy, voyaging to the West Indies, fighting under Nelson (the author's undoubted hero) and the Battle of the Nile/Aboukir Bay (another marvellous descriptive chapter, Nelson and the Nile, and for which success Davy gives himself some credit) and finally returning to Glamorgan, secure in the knowledge that more people now think as highly of him as he does himself. Drake gets his Isabel, Rodney his Bardie, and Watkin Thomas, the only surviving boy from Sker House, gets Bunny, Davy's grand-daughter.

David Llewelyn's boasting:

Now I have by nature the very strongest affection for truth...but sometimes it happens so that we must do violence to ourselves for the sake of our fellow-creatures.

It is an irksome task for a man who has always stood upon his position, and justified the universal esteem and respect of the neighbourhood...

...you may go miles and miles, I am sure, to find a more thoroughly honorable, good-hearted, brave, and agreeable man.

The very next day, I was afloat as a seaman of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom...the King and the nation won the entire benefit of this.

It may be the power of honesty, or it may be the strength of character coupled with a more than usual brightness of sagacity - but whatever the cause may be, the result seems always to be the same, in spite of inborn humility - to wit, that poor old Davy Llewellyn, wherever his ups and downs may throw him, always has to take the lead!

Other humorous asides:

Joe Jenkins was a young fellow of great zeal, newly appointed to Zoar Chapel, instead of the steady Nathanial Edwards, who had been caught sheep-stealing...all the maids of Newton ran mightily to his doctrine. For he happened to be a smart young fellow, and it was largely put abroad than an uncle of his had a butter-shop, without any children, and bringing in four pounds a-week at Chepstow.

Such sentiments are to be found, I believe, in the weaker parts of the Bible, such as are called the New Testament, which nobody can compare to the works of my ancestor, King David; and, which, if you put aside Saint Paul, and Saint Peter (who cut the man's ear off) exhibit to my mind nobody of a patriotic spirit.

(About the Chaplain on board during the Battle of the Nile) "Go down, parson, go down", we said, "Sir, this is no place for your cloth". - "Sneaking schismatics may skulk", he answered, with a powder-mop in his hand, for we had impressed a Methody, who bolted below at exceeding long range, "but if my cloth is out of its placer, I'll fight the devil naked."

Description of the weather:

[September] the sky is bright and fair, with a firm and tranquil blue, not so deep of tint or gentle as the blue of springtide, but more truly staid and placid, and far more trustworthy. The sun, both when he rises over the rounded hills behind the cliffs, and when he sinks into the level of the width of waters, shines with ripe and quiet lustre, to complete a year of labour....at dusk the dew fog wavers in white stripes over the meadowland, or in winding combes benighted pillows down, and leaves its impress a sparking path for the sun's return.

Islam:

There is a most utterly pestilent race arising, and growing up around us, whose object is to destroy old England, by forbidding a man to drink. St Paul speaks against them, and all the great prophets...and although I never read the Koran, and only have heard some verses of it, I know enough to say positively, that Mahomet began this movement to establish Antichrist.

Description of landscape, regular bouts of humour, real flesh and blood characters - although Davy himself is a well-nigh impossible creation - all help to create an enjoyable tale.

The Nineteenth Century Three-Volume Novel

Palgrave Macmillan first edition - 2020

Browsing my bookshelves, as is my abiding pleasure, I picked out Troy Bassett's excellent and exhaustive analysis of the dominating effect the [in]famous three volume novel - often referred to as the three-decker - had on nineteenth century publishing.  As Troy remarks in his Introduction, nearly every canonical author of the period appeared in the ubiquitous format of three octavo volumes priced at one-an-a-half guineas, including first editions of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope. To collect any of these authors in first editions is way beyond my pocket, but I have amassed quite a selection of less well-known and (luckily) much 'cheaper' authors. Back on the 27th March 2020, I published an early Blog on my collection; over five years later, this has grown considerably. As much for my own sake as anyone else's, I have attached the updated list below. The twenty works of Sir Walter Scott I have not included, although I have all his novels in first edition, bar Waverley, which is merely a third edition, albeit published in 1814 - the same year as the first. Many of them form the backbone of my Scottish Novels 1808-1850 Collection, with John Galt, J.G. Lockhart, Mary Brunton and Susan Ferrier figuring amongst them. I have also collected 17 novels of G.P.R. James and four of R.D. Blackmore - I am actively hunting down yet more of both authors. Over the past five years ('Lockdown' did have its positive side), I have read nearly all of the novels laid out below. By next Spring, I shall have finished off the remaining Scottish books. 

NINETEENTH CENTURY TWO AND THREE VOLUME NOVELS

(Excluding Sir Walter Scott’s 20 novels)

 1810      Jane Porter                                       The Scottish Chiefs   [5 volumes]

1811      Mary Brunton                                   Self-Control

1812      Hector Macneill                               The Scottish Adventurers

1814      Mary Brunton                                  Discipline

1817      Jane Porter                                       The Pastor’s Fire-side

1818      Susan Ferrier                                    Marriage            

1818      James Hogg                                      The Brownie of Bodsbeck

1819      Alexander Balfour                          Campbell; or The Scottish Probationers

1821      David Carey                                     A Legend of Argyle

1821      John Gibson Lockhart                   Valerius

1822      [Thomas Gaspey]                           The Lollards: A Tale

1822      John Galt                                          Sir Andrew Wylie of that Ilk

1822      Allan Cunningham                         Traditional Tales

1822      John Galt                                          The Entail or The Lairds of Gippy

1823      John Galt                                          Ringan Gilhaize or The Covenanteers

1823      John Gibson Lockart                      Reginald Dalton

1823      Eliza Logan                                       St. Johnstoun; or, John, Earl Gowrie

1823      John Galt                                          The Spaewife

1824      Susan Ferrier                                    The Inheritance

1824      John Galt                                          Rothelan

1825      Grace Kennedy                               Dunallan; or Know what you Judge

1825      Thomas Dick Lauder                      Lochandhu: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century

1826      Allan Cunningham                         Paul Jones

1827      Thomas Hamilton                           The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton

1828      Allan Cunningham                         Sir Michael Scott

1829      Eliza Logan                                      Restalrig; or, The Forfeiture

1830      George Robert Gleig                      The Country Curate

1831      Susan Ferrier                                   Destiny or the Chief’s Daughter

1831      Hannah Maria Jones                      The Scottish Chieftains

1832      [Edmund Duros?]                           Otterbourne; A Story of the English Marches

1832      G.P.R. James                                   Henry Masterton

1833      Michael Scott                                  Tom Cringle’s Log

1834      G.P.R. James                                   The Life and Adventures of John Marston Hall

1835      G.P.R. James                                   The Gipsy

1835      [Peter Leicester]                             Bosworth Field; or, The Fate of a Plantagenet

1836      Michael Scott                                  The Cruise of the Midge

1838      G.P.R. James                                   The Robber: A Tale

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

1841      Major Michel                                   Henry of Monmouth: or the Field of Agincourt

1841      Catherine Sinclair                           Modern Flirtations

1842      [Major Michel]                                Trevor Hastings or the Battle of Tewkesbury

1843      G.P.R. James                                    Forest Days

1843      [Edward Bulwer-Lytton]               The Last of the Barons

1844      G.P.R. James                                    Arabella Stuart. A Romance from English History

1844      G.P.R. James                                    Agincourt. A Romance

1845      G.P.R. James                                    The Smuggler. A Tale

1845      John Brent                                        The Battle Cross: A Romance of the Fourteenth Century

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

1847      Capt. Marryat                                  The Children of the New Forest

1847      G.P.R. James                                    Russell. A Tale of the Reign of Charles II

1848      G.P.R. James                                    Beauchamp

1848      G.P.R. James                                    Margaret Graham

1849      G.P.R. James                                    The Woodman; A Romance of the Times of Richard III

1853      Rev. R.W. Morgan                          Raymond de Monthault, The Lord Marcher

1870      Benjamin Disraeli                           Lothair

1871      Trois-Etoiles                                     The Member for Paris: A Tale of the Second Empire

1872      R.D. Blackmore                               The Maid of Sker

1874      W. H. Ainsworth                             Merry England: or, Nobles and Serfs

1875      R.D. Blackmore                               Alice Lorraine

1880      R.D. Blackmore                               Mary Anerley

1887      R.D. Blackmore                               Springhaven

1888      Mrs. Humphry Ward                     Robert Elsmere

1891      Stanley Weyman                            The New Rector

1893      Stanley Weyman                            A Gentleman of France

1894      Stanley Weyman                            Under the Red Robe 

Finch Mason's 'The Tame Fox and Other Sketches' 1897

 

Hurst and Blackett first edition - 1897

'Don't judge a book by its cover' is a well known aphorism; but in this instance I should not have succumbed to the title. The Tame Fox turned out to be but the first chapter of nineteen and a mere dozen pages at that. In fact, if there was a common theme it was that of fox-hunting and a variety of personages involved in that 'sport'. Some of the stories had already appeared in the pages of several magazines and journals - to whit, Baily's Magazine, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, County Gentleman and Finch Mason's Annual - between 1895 and 1896. George Finch Mason (1850-1915), the son of an Eton schoolmaster, was a sporting artist, author and illustrator, specialising in humorous studies and caricatures. In fact, these days he is better known for his prints of fox hunts and race meetings than for his fiction. Prints of his sell for a considerable amount of money. He also worked for Punch magazine.  His books included Humours of the Hunting Field (1886), Tit Bits of the Turf (1887), The Flowers of the Hunt (1889), My Day with the Hounds (1890), The Run of the Season (1902) and Gentlemen Riders Past and Present (1909). He also edited Fores's Sporting Notes and Sketches, a quarterly magazine which ran from Volume I in 1884-5 until just before the Great War.

So, rather to my dismay, the fox merely figured as the prey of the Hunt and, only in that very first chapter, was it accorded the sympathy I was looking for. It was an unoriginal story of a tame fox, Slyboots, escaping from his mistress for the wild. It is told in the first person by her prospective partner, who has been getting increasingly downhearted as Skyboots appears higher in the pecking order than himself. Did I feel like having Foxyphobia?, he posits. Certainly, he is hard at it five and six days a week with the local Hunt when the pet vanishes. Miss Violet Goldthread's reaction? Fainting-fit on the spot, with hysteria to follow at intervals throughout the day, her butler informs the eventual hero. He manages to forestall a digging operation by the Hunt whippers to extract the cub from a drain. As a result, the loveliest of her sex has consented to be mine (a gold-mine, ha, ha!)

As for the other eleven 'sketches', I can see why they would appeal to the horse racing fraternity - of both sexes. Perhaps not so much to a vulpine audience (Fox News?). They are very much of the period, the 1890s (and why shouldn't they be) and are 'dated' in several ways. That, however, adds to their charm. Chapters include the wheeze of exchanging a squire's thoroughbred horses for local nags, lent by supportive tenantry, to fool sheriffs who were coming to seize his entire stable. The bailiffs went away empty-handed but probably the wiser. Mr. Burlington Bellamy, the millionaire from Manchester,  may have fallen head over heels with pretty Laura Lightfoot, but got nothing but chaff, and plenty of it, in return for his devotion. Instead Mrs. Kitto, (Kittums) the lively but impecunious widow, takes advantage of Burlington getting lost with her during a Hunt in Skelperdale Forest and convinces him, with artful strategies, that she is the right one. In Angels on Horseback, the Master of the Foxhounds, Mark Bramble, the popular young Master but confirmed bachelor,  meets his match in the pick of the bevy of ladies on the Hunt, Queen Mab, who has been waiting long for 'Mr. Right'. He comes to her aid when she faints after her horse just manages to clear a ragged fence to land in a gravel pit. I do not know how many kisses had been impressed upon her lips by that confirmed bachelor Mark Bramble, Esq., M.F.H., to the great edification of the field. On coming round and hearing loud cheering, Queen Mab asks what is the matter, and he told her, and she did not mind a bit. "They know who I'm going to marry now, don't they, dear Mark?"

Tubby, or not Tubby (how very Shakespearian), concerns one John Daventry, nicknamed on account of his rotundity, for all the world like a beer-barrel... his round-turned legs were the shortest of the short, and he could not stick on [a horse] at any price. Hearing that he had entered the Tallyho Steeplechase on his brown gelding Saucy Boy, he is mercilessly chaffed by the locals; in particular, by a hated rival Captain Bustard, late of the Queen's Roans, an undeniably fine horseman. A large wager is placed between them. On the day of the race, poor Tubby and his nag look also-rans up against the Captain and his chestnut mare, Lady of the Lake. However, Bustard is beaten by Tubby, who has hung on throughout. How? He had been strapped on!

I quite enjoyed the sketch The Lady at the Dragon. Young Lord Blythebury, just come of age, marries out of the county one Miss Violet Vollaire, the lovely and dashing equestrienne at Jingler's well-known circus, thereby nearly breaking his noble and venerable father's heart. Nothing more is known of their whereabouts, but considerable excitement was caused when a young, vivacious lady puts up at the Red Lion, with six horses and a pony, for the avowed purpose of hunting with Lord Harefield's hounds. This Miss Wilton - "one of the most charming and well-bred girls it has ever been my lot to meet", declared the Rev Frank Simpson - turns up for the opening day of the season at Harefield Place. She ends up riding with the Earl and a couple of others and is there to take charge when the noble lord falls off his horse when it failed to clear a brook. The earl comes round and in a faint voice, says he is dying and that his son must be sent for. Miss Wilton not only promises, but adds, "I will send for him myself. I am his wife".