The Bristol Riots of 1831 - two very different novels (2)

The second novel dealing with the Bristol Riots is by Stanley J. Weyman, an author I read first at Prep school and whom I have collected for the last forty years. I now have all his works in first edition, several of them with dust wrappers and some inscribed or signed. I recently produced an Illustrated Bibliography of his works, which includes letters sent by him to various people.

          

                                1st edition - 1906                         Stanley Weyman (1855-1928)

Weyman was a best seller in his heyday, both in the UK and the USA. From his first major success - A Gentleman of France in 1893 (he had already published three books) - he brought out a series of novels usually set in Europe, more often than not France, which the public lapped up: The Man in Black (1894); Under the Red Robe (1894); My Lady Rotha (1894); The Red Cockade (1895); Count Hannibal (1901); The Long Night (1903); and The Abbess of Vlaye (1904). Less successful were the stories set in England: Shrewsbury (1898); The Castle Inn (1898); Sophia (1900); and Starvecrow Farm (1905). Weyman himself felt that Shrewsbury was probably my least successful work. The narrator proved to be a poor-spirited craven; and the Duke of Shrewsbury, whom I proposed for hero, lacked, I fear, vital force... Reading them over the years, several of them more than once, I beg to differ with the late 19th century public - I rather like the ones set in England!

In 1906, he brought out Chippinge (Chippinge Borough in the USA), exactly 20 years after Mrs. Emma Marshall's Under the Mendips.  Like her, he aimed to place the Bristol Riots of 1831 centre stage towards the end of the book. Unlike her, there was little, if any, didactism and no evangelicalism. Weyman was a churchwarden at St. Meugans, near Ruthin in North Wales, and read the lesson there for many years. Like Mrs. Marshall, therefore, he was a staunch Anglican, but he did not let that affect (infect?) his writings to the same extent. Weyman wrote about Chippinge in a long Introduction to a 20 Volume (later 24) Thin Paper Edition of his Novels in 1911. He used the diaries of Croker, Creevey and Greville; biographies of Campbell, Lord John Russell, of Robert Peel and Brougham (who is a seminal figure in the novel); and more general Histories for his knowledge of the facts and opinions of the 1820s/1830s. I made an earnest effort to convey to my pages some of the aroma of the days which saw the first frock-coat, the first railway, and the first Reformed Member...I tried to depict the attitude of mind towards [Reform] of different classes - the despair of those who looked back, the hopes of those who looked forward, the ardour of the young, the doubts of the old...

The description of Chippinge, the 'rotten borough' at the centre of the tale, I recognised was based on Malmesbury (and pleasingly confirmed by Weyman in that long Introduction), lying as it does but 10 miles from the Bath Road and Chippenham: the town occupies a low, green hill, dividing two branches of the Avon, which join their waters a furlong below. Built on a ridge, and clinging to the slopes of this eminence, the stone-tiled houses look pleasantly over the gentle undulations of the Wiltshire pastures...of the Mitred Abbey that crowned the hill, and had once owned these fertile slopes, there remained but the maimed hulk, patched and botched, and long degraded to the uses of [the] parish church. In reality, Malmesbury (like the fictitious Chippinge) had sent two M.Ps to Parliament since 1275, but was to lose one of them in the 1832 Reform Act and the other in 1885, when the constituency was abolished.

The story revolves around one Arthur Vaughan, late of the 14th Dragoons, who wants to become an MP. Thanks to his uncle, Sir Robert Vermuyden, he has a steady income, the prospect of inheriting the family seat and the patronage of the borough of Chippinge. Meeting up with the Lord Chancellor, and strong proponent of Reform, Lord Brougham (old Wicked Shifts) further inspires him. He also bumps into another real-life figure, Sir Charles Wetherell, a die-hard but sincere reactionary. Both are to be important to him later in the story. Vaughan is an equally sincere believer in reform, which ensures a major rupture with his uncle and a loss of his inheritance. He stands as a Reformer and gets elected as one of the two MPs for Chippinge, much to his uncle's and others' anger.

Entwined with this political saga is the love story: Vaughan books an outside seat on the Bristol White Lion coach, which passed through Chippenham, where he intended to alight for Chippinge. Seated next to him is a young lady: a miracle had happened...in his mind...he was saying "What eyes! What a face! And, oh Heaven! what beauty! What blush-rose cheeks! What a lovely mouth!" Well, it takes over 300 pages, (the course of love rarely runs smooth), but they unite in the end. It was claimed that Weyman couldn't write about women. Nonsense! Mary Smith, the demure and badly off school mistress, who doesn't know who her parents were, is to be transformed into Mary Vermuyden, the rightful heir to the estate once thought to be Vaughan's. It is not long into the book when the reader guesses this is the case; but, no matter. There are other, well-drawn characters (which cavilling readers might say bordered on caricatures, but many real-life people are that too): Mary's estranged - and, dying - mother Lady Sybil, who her father cannot forgive for her flightiness and running away from him, ends up being cared for by her daughter on her death bed; Mary's boss, who runs a small school in Queen's Square, Bristol - the formidable (but, really, lovable!) Miss Sibson, a tall, bulky woman, with a double chin and an absurdly powdered nose, who wore a cameo of the late Queen Charlotte on her ample bosom. There is the Honourable Bob Flixton, the necessary 'baddie' who tries to upset Vaughan's chances with Mary but only succeeds in ensuring he is despised by both; and a sympathetically-drawn Colonel Brereton, who in real-life failed in his duty of protecting Bristol from the mob, was to be court-martialled but pre-empted this by committing suicide.

Vaughan, whose incipient priggishness makes him more human and not just a cardboard cut-out hero, does not distinguish himself in the House in his maiden speech (shades of Disraeli?) but is the hero of the moderate class in the Bristol Riots, leading where Colonel Brereton failed to do, thanks to his own stint as an army officer. His bravery and steadfastness leads to his uncle accepting him again and Mary forcing him to come down off his proud horse to accept her. 

Weyman, a county magistrate in Ruthin, is clearly on the side of law and order and, like Mrs Marshall, has little time for the 'rabble'. However, he is equally out of sympathy with the reactionary diehards, even if he understands why they are what they are. Chippinge is a political book, with a love story thread; Under the Mendips is a love story, placed in an evangelical format, with some politics.