Sheila Kaye-Smith's 'The Tramping Methodist' 1908

 

George Bell first edition - 1908

After all the slights given to Methodism in some of the Scottish novels of the early nineteenth century, I thought I would purchase and read the prolific Sussex orientated Kaye-Smith's first novel. A slightly unsatisfactory book, though, which didn't really endear me to Methodism. (The author eventually converted to Roman Catholicism!) I have puzzled over why I found it less than satisfactory and I think a major reason lies with the central character.

The 20/21 year-old Humphrey Lyte, is one of six children of the Rector of Brede, who held in plurality the livings of  Udimore, Westfield, Piddinghoe and Southease in East Sussex.  The Rector and his eldest son, Clonmel - who assists him as curate - are unmitigated brutes, regularly kicking and beating Humphrey. Clonmel is a violent drunkard. Mind you, the rest of the family are little better: Archie and Kit were coarse and rough, Fanny and Tilly were vain and would-be genteel; my mother neglected me... It is not surprising that Humphrey is stiff, moody, sullen, and untractable, my bosom always seething with furious passions. All this appears to be an ideal background for becoming a Methodist itinerant preacher (or proselytiser, as his fellow itinerant, John Palehouse, calls them). In fact, Humphrey rather fits the caricature we read about in those Scottish novels - he is an Enthusiast. He spends much of the book in one kind of passion or another - whether it be desire for a woman or love of God; moreover, he appears to be ill - from the weather, beatings or gaol life - far too often.

Humphrey finds solace with a nearby Methodist ex-preacher Peter Winde and his daughter Mary, of similar age to Humphrey. Throughout the book I thought they would end up together. She was not beautiful, but her eyes were glowing like sparks which fly from under the smith's hammer, and her cheeks were flushing like the heart of a fire. She clearly falls in love with him, but to no avail.   I did wonder if the author intended such a match, but changed her mind as she developed the story,  She certainly deserved him. But, then, Humphrey meets a curate-in-charge of Ewehurst, Guy Shotover and, more importantly, his sister Ruth. She looked little more than child. Her stature was low, and her figure slight, and she had the dimpled cheeks and soft white throat one loves to kiss in children. Add all that to her hair - a rich, ruddy auburn, nearly red, and Humphrey is forever smitten. However, it is Mary who saves him from the hangman; not Ruth, who keeps quiet, or her cowardly brother. 

Guy and Ruth are carrying a heavy, tragic, secret (at one stage I thought they weren't siblings, but lovers); the book ensnares all the main characters in the working out of this darkness from the past. But not before Humphrey tries his hand at Methodist open-air preaching. It is eight years since John Wesley's death (in 1791) and Methodism is already showing fissures - between the more Wesleyan chapel-based ministers and the itinerant brethren (probably, though never stated by the author, who became known as the Primitives). Kaye-Smith captures the meanderings of the latter quite well, including the love of Nature and the hostile behaviour of both the local louts and some members of the Established Church. John Palehouse's religion is well described: he was not a soft preacher. Though he himself was mild and tender as a woman, his sermons were stern, rugged, and ruthless as a storm...he loved to dwell on Old Testament scenes and characters, whereas I had spoken chiefly of the New; I had preached God as the Father, loving and beloved...John Palehouse spoke of Him as Jehovah, mighty and to be feared, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

It is unlikely that such a Rector and curate as the Lytes existed (but what am I to know); Squire Enchmarsh of Kitchenhour, aka Harold Macaulay, is rather a caricature of the 'baddie' who meets a deserved death by his own hand; there is a melodramatic scene in a desolate cottage on the edge of marshes, where an eight year-old boy goes to his Maker (Dead and never called me Mother). Almost in passing, Humphrey - in criticising Methodist chapel life, for the petty interests, ambitions, and quarrels of Salem and Little Bethel - states he is a born wanderer - vagabond if you like - and always preaches badly within four walls and then lets drop, and though at the present time I am in charge of a chapel in the suburbs of London...! Where's Ruth? has he any children? Does he still link up with Mary? Most authors would answer these questions, certainly at the end of the novel. All these wobbles are acceptable in an author's first work (she was only twenty-one), but it stops it from being a first-rate one.

Scott Mariani 24 and Rosie Lear 5

 

Avon first edition - 2021

Another action-packed thriller from Mariani, to add to the other twenty-three first edition paperbacks I have. His hero, ex-SAS Ben Hope - someone who was used to encountering sudden, random outbreaks of violence - has got into more scrapes and near-death experiences than I have had the proverbial 'hot dinners'. For much of the story, the action moves no further than Hope's fortified base, Le Val in Normandy (the book doesn't leave the area until page 224 of a total of 381). Hope, with one leg in plaster due to an accident, is alone (his faithful partners, Jeff Dekker and Tuesday Fletcher are sunning themselves in Australia and Jamaica respectively), but for his pack of dogs and three men on duty at the gate. The latter are 'taken out' on Christmas Eve - in the Prologue. Sadly, the dogs - Blitz, Sabre, Diablo and Bomber - soon follow.

Storm - Hope's long-time favourite of the German shepherd dogs - is as much the hero as his master in this tightly-written tale (should it be 'tail'?), regularly coming to the rescue and recovering from a nasty wound to figure in future novels.

The story? A crusader's cross is discovered in a stone chamber just off a tunnel under Le Val's land. (Taken to the Louvre in Paris, it is identified as linked to Eleanor of Aquitaine and, thus, enormously valuable!) Unfortunately Hope breaks his ankle just after the discovery and is whisked off to the Louis Pasteur Hospital in Cherbourg, where his ex, Dr. Sandrine Lacombe gets him plastered. Off go his mates on their hols - a different 'break' from Hope's. A bunch of 'nasties', employed by a Corsican crime boss, overpower the gated trio and advance on Ben's H.Q., where they intend to purloin his armoury. No way - unbelievably (well, no, it is Hope), five of them are captured by Hope and Storm. However, a sixth, Petru Navarro, a real asshole and ultra baddie, escaped - minus an ear, but with the cross. 

The rest of the novel deals with Hope's successful pursuit in his blue Alpina D3 - which, inevitably, is written off in a James Bond/Jason Bourne chase through France to Corsica - first Porto Vecchio and then Ajaccio, the capital of of the island (is Mariani hoping for a movie tie-up at last?). He is aided by Petru's uncle, Titus, a Corsican crime boss who is trying to reform his family's ways.

Along the way,  Petru's murder trail mounts up: Victor Vermont, Hope's archaeologist friend, in Le Val itself, plus a hi-jacked car driver, four policemen, and Alcide Brambilla, an old guy with a scraggy neck like a chicken and crazy white hair sticking up at all angles; whilst Robert Blondel, who first 'cased' Le Val, Rocco Vanucci, an antiques fence in Corsica, and, Carla, a girl with dark hair, who happened to be in the wrong place, were merely 'done over'. Not to mention the four dogs, 

Hope doesn't hang on to girlfriends for long, although there are rarely hard feelings. Two help him out this time - Dr. Sandrine  and Madison Cahill, the American bounty hunter chick. Another is introduced as a possible flame for the next thriller - Nathalie from the local restaurant. But the Hope series are essentially male-orientated. 

There is an epilogue. Hope gets re-plastered by Dr. Sandrine; Storm recovers thanks to Uncle Titus (who loves dogs, so there is hope for him yet); and the Crusader's Cross is given, gratis, by Hope to the ecstatic Louvre. No reference to Nathalie, though. What is mentioned, on the next page, is Ben Hope returns in a thrilling new book, May 2022, available to pre-order now. And what have I done?

Grosvenor House first edition - 2021

I am uncertain what to say about Rosie Lear's fifth outing with her Matthias Barton Mysteries. Firstly, there is very little mystery throughout. The tall dark stranger's origin is obvious from the first and Lear's method of seeing events through all the characters' eyes means we know exactly why, how, when and where everything occurs. Admittedly, in her Author's Notes at the end, she writes: I'm sorry there is no actual murder in this book! I didn't want Sherborne and Milborne Port to become like Midsummer murders...that must be the worst possible village for murders! (Quite apart from the fact that Midsummer has several villages, she has a point). However, the result is a rather tame tale about minor misdemeanours and rather 'stock' characters. The original personnel in the previous books are not really developed, apart from getting older.  

The level is more akin to the children orientated tales of, say, Cynthia Harnett, Geoffrey Trease or Rhoda Power rather than Susanna Gregory, Sarah Hawkswood or Edward Marston. Her photograph on the back cover shows everyone's idea of a kindly grandmother. She hopes to publish a sixth, final, book in the series to reveal the political leanings of my main characters as the Cousin's War begins... Since it will be the last, I will probably purchase it to make up the set.

Scott's 'Chronicles of the Canongate' II 1828

 Well, I am on the last lap of reading Scott's Waverley novels, having just finished The Fair Maid of Perth. There are just Anne of Geierstein (1829) and the 4th series of Tales of My Landlord (1832) to go. I read the former many years ago, but have yet to sample the delights of Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous. But they are for 2022.

First edition 1828

The Fair Maid of Perth (its actual main title is Saint Valentine's Day) is packed with incident (one critic said it has no longueurs), only rarely flying towards total improbability or being too coincidental. These last two aspects the reader finds repeatedly in many of Scott's and his contemporaries' works. Mind you, they figure regularly in John Buchan's fiction and it is to him that I turn for the first comments on the Fair Maid.

...it must rank high among the novels which are based on book-work rather than on personal experience and a still living tradition. The scene was Scottish, and...the writer's imagination worked with ease and certainty...no book that I know shows so vividly the contrast, as well as the ties, between the compact municipal life and the savage outlands...the book abounds in memorable scenes, such as the trial by combat, the clan battle on the North Inch, and the murder of Rothsay, scenes which in mere narrative skill rank with the best in the earlier novels.

Other commentators with useful points include:

Hesketh Pearson, who can be overly critical of Scott, concurs with Buchan: figures being portrayed in his usual style and lifelike enough to keep the reader's interest alive. The novel was the best he wrote after Redgauntlet. Quite a good plot is embedded in the padding.

J. T. Christie: The Fair Maid, though not to be counted among the very best, deserves far more credit than it has been given.

Angus and Jenny Calder: certainly the best of his final novels...here we have for the first time a novel whose action is dominated by the solid and rising middle class, the burghers of the town of Perth.

                                            The Fair Maid and the Carthusian Monk                                                           

Catherine Glover, the Fair Maid, is too conscientiously noble, and her pacifism becomes a burden (Buchan); resembles no living creature in Perth or on earth (Pearson); a little too good to be true...but less stagy than Scott's high-born maidens. She is exposed to more adventures than most (Christie) On occasions, she is perilously near to being a religious prig - "yonder four goodly convents, with their churches, and their towers, which tell the citizens with brazen voice, that they should think on their religious duties; - their inhabitants, who have separated themselves from the world, its pursuits and its pleasures, to dedicate themselves to the service of Heaven, - all bear witness, that if Scotland be a bloody and a sinful land, she is yet alive and sensible to the claims which religion demands of the human race". Her father, Simon Glover, suggests "she is now like to be called on to be an angel in heaven, and to be transported thither in a chariot of fire", after listening to her Lollard Father.

Henry Gow is the most authoritative and active character in the novel...a mixture of the noble and courageous, and the old and the humble...a man who could contain something of the qualities of each level of society...it is chiefly the personality and function of Henry that give the novel its strength (Calders) ...though his appearance was neither dignified nor handsome, his face and figure were not only deserving of attention, but seemed in some manner to command it. 

King Robert III is well described: he had many virtues, and was not without talent; but it was his great misfortune, that, like others of his devoted line, his merits were not of a kind suited to the part which he was called upon to perform in life`

The villains like the cold-hearted, wily Duke of Albany; the ferocious Earl of Douglas; Ramorny and Bonthron and Henbane Dwining are satisfying rascals. The latter two are rightly hanged from the battlements.

Prince David of Rothsay is not a straightforward villain but a complex personality...we are to see Rothsay in many aspects - as a clever counsellor, a drunken rake, a shamefaced liar, and, finally, a figure of great pathos. (Angus and Jenny Calder) As Scott describes him, there was on his brow a haggard paleness, which seemed the effect of care or of dissipation, or of both these wasting causes combined. His eyes were sunk and dim...while his cheek was inflamed with unnatural red...

Conacher, aka Ian Eachin MacIan, son to the Chief of the Clan Quhele (in part a peace offering from Scott to the memory of his youngest brother Daniel, guilty of cowardice in Jamaica) is not held up for our admiration, but he is allowed some nobility of character...full of romantic impulse but lacking steadfast courage (Christie); Conacher who, for all his spirit, fails in the commoner kinds of courage, and is his best portrait of a character frustrate and divided (Buchan); 

Only Henbane Dwining - a prototype of the mad scientist, with his annoying 'he-he-he' outbursts - is too far-fetched a character.

I thoroughly enjoyed this 'late' Scott and place the novel certainly in his top ten. The author keeps a tighter control than usual on his storyline and his characters are all living creatures. The Fair Maid herself comes alive a little towards the end, but she is nothing like the most interesting in the cast. So, on to Anne of Geierstein in the New Year.

Scott's 'Chronicles of the Canongate' 1827

 

First edition - 1827

 

The first series of The Chronicles of the Canongate is a collection of three short (of uneven length) stories, which are linked together by a common narrator, Chrystal Croftangry. At least as interesting as the narrator's own story and his Tales is Scott's Introduction, where he not only (finally) confesses his authorship but he explains how his learned and respected friend, Lord Meadowbank, 'unfrocked' him publicly at a public meeting, called on 23rd February 1827 to establish a professional Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh. Scott acknowledged himself to be the sole and unaided author of those Novels of Waverley. The author then went on to thank those who had given him ideas for his novels (Mr Joseph Train for Old Mortality's history; an unknown lady correspondent for the story of 'Jennie Deans'; and a family member for the gist of the Bride of Lammermoor), arguing that he had always studied to generalise the portraits, so that they should still seem, on the whole, the productions of fancy, though possessing some resemblance to real individuals. He also drew attention to the originals of such castles as Wolfs-Hope and Tillietudlem. The scraps of poetry (which I rarely read!) are mainly pure invention.

As for Chrystal Croftangry - it is soon clear that much of his character is partly based on Scott himself. Chrystal's return to his family home, now turned into Castle-Treddles is poignantly done and the portrait of old Christie Steele, Chrystal's mother's body servant, now in charge of a dilapidated inn, includes some splendid dialogue. Chrystal soon retreats to Auld Reekie and decides to live there, but not in St George's Square - nor to Charlotte Square - nor to the old New Town - nor to the new New Town - nor to the Carlton Hill, but to the Canongate, scene of earlier misfortunes. Here the 60 year-old takes on as housekeeper another of Scott's indubitable characters, the forthright Mrs Janet MacEvoy, who owed nobody a bodle.

We thus approach the first Tale, which has a narrator once removed - Mrs Martha Bethune Baliol, a person of quality and fortune. Living in some old-fashioned style in the Canongate (Baliol's Lodging), she befriends Chrystal and, on her demise leave a promised Memorandum to the latter - hence The Highland Widow. Nearly 40 years earlier, Mrs Baliol had met Elspat Mactavish, the widow of MacTavish Mhor, (largely modelled on Rob Roy) one of the last of the Highland marauders, shot as a Jacobite after Culloden. Elspat had lived alone with her son, Hamish Bean Mactavish. His mother wants her son to mirror his father's way of life; he demurs, sensibly choosing to join a Government regiment destined for America. Thus he can replicate his father's courage in honour and safety. Visiting his mother on furlough, she drugs him and he sleeps beyond his leave; which means he appears to have absconded. He is then goaded by his mother into shooting the officer (and friend) sent to arrest him. Hamish is tried and executed. His mother spends the rest of her life in solitary mourning. John Buchan remarks, Elspat MacTavish is perhaps too reminiscent of Helen MacGregor, [but] there is tragedy in her stubborn savagery and the son Hamish is drawn with sober faithfulness.

The second Tale, The Two Drovers, is much shorter (64 compared to 147 pages). It is based on an account Scott had heard of the trial and execution in Carlisle of a Highland cattle drover accused of the murder of an English counterpart. Set in the late 18th century, it is an illustration of the Highland concept of honour. Robin Oig M'Combich - small of stature with an elasticity of step - travels south with his friend of some three years, Harry Wakefield, a Yorkshireman.  A conflict arises over temporary pasturage, which both thought they had been given; Harry fist-fights Robin to the floor of the Inn they are drinking at. Robin retraces his steps to retrieve a dirk, returns to the inn, and kills Harry. He gives himself up for the inevitable execution, happy to forfeit his life for the life he took. Alongside this tragedy, the author gives a compelling picture of life on the old drove-roads. Of course, there has to be a spaewife/auld Highland witch (Janet of Tomahourich, Robin's aunt) tacked on to the story, with her second-sight (Taishataragh) about Robin's dirk having English blood on it. Too true, as it turns out!   

Addendum: I have just read an essay by J. T. Christie on the Chronicles of the Canongate, which includes this perceptive piece on The Two Drovers: The contrast between the wild Highland heart and the genial short-lived pugnacity of the Southerner is a common theme in Scott: reason versus romanticism, the Hanoverian against the Highlander. He could do justice to both sides, and in his own heart they were never fully reconciled. Hence much of his grandness as a chronicler; nowhere has he put the matter more boldly and briefly than in The Two Drovers.

The third Tale, The Surgeon's Daughter, takes up the whole of the second volume. As those intellectual goliaths, football commentators, often opine - it was a tale of two halves.  In this case, Scotland and India. The Surgeon in question, Mr Gideon Grey, was based on Scott's old friend Dr. Ebenezer Clarkson of Selkirk and is lovingly described - Doctor Grey...had few wants, and these were amply supplied by a professional income which generally approached two hundred pounds a year, for which, upon an average, he travelled about five thousand miles on horseback in the course of twelve months.

For several years Grey and his wife had no children; then, tragically, his wife died giving birth to the daughter Menie, who gives her existence to the story's title. I find little to say about Menie. Apart from being beautiful and sweet, with the upright and pure integrity of her father's character, she seems to be a passive recipient of other, stronger, characters' 'love'. It is Middlemas who accurately sums Menie up: "But has she spirit - spunk - dash - a spice of the devil about her?" "Not a penny-weight - the kindest, simplest, and most manageable of human beings."

Richard Middlemas, around whom the story develops, is an anti-hero and very hard to like or admire. Admittedly, he is played bad cards but ingratitude is writ large across his character. The illegitimate child of a Northumberland army officer (one Richard Tresham, later 'hiding' under the name of General Witherington) and a wealthy Portuguese Jew's daughter, Zilia de Moncada, he grows up destined for the medical profession. Scorning the life of a country doctor, he joins the army and is, eventually, posted to India. Throughout the tale, his main focus is on gaining wealth, through any means. He kills his commanding officer in a duel and flees to the dominion of the famous Hyder Ali. He becomes the paramour of a fantastic adventuress, Adela Montreville, who concocts a plot to bring Menie to India and hand her over as a plaything to Ali's son Tippoo Sahib. Middlemas, by playing both Hyder Ali and the British against each other, meets his comeuppance (or comedownance) beneath the rather heavy feet of an elephant. As the novel progresses, Middlemas is shown in an ever-worsening light - he thoroughly deserved to be flattened. 

Adam Hartley, is the other side of the coin to Middlemas. The son of a respectable farmer on the English side of the Border...full middle size, stout, and well limbed; and an open English countenance, of the genuine Saxon mould. He, too, loved Menie, but was fated never to have her. He is shrewd in his assessment of Middlemas: Heaven has placed happiness, competence, and content within your power, and you are willing to cast them away, to gratify ambition and avarice. Were I to give an advice on this subject, either to Dr Grey or his daughter, it would be to break off all connexion with a man, who, however clever by nature, may soon show himself a fool, and however honestly brought up, may also, upon temptation, prove himself a villain. Middlemas to a tee. 

The evil counsellor, and betrayer (he steals his inheritance of £1,000 and incarcerates him in an Isle of Wight hospital) of Richard Middlemas, is Tom Hillary, bred an attorney's clerk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who at least is quotable: Tom Hillary says that the parson lives by the sins of the people, the lawyers by their distresses, and the doctor by their diseases... Alas, the good Dr Grey could not be more mistaken, when he opined twenty Tam Hillarys would not corrupt Dick Middlemas.

The coincidence of Middlemas meeting up with his parents on the Isle of Wight is 'pushing' it rather (the scene, ending in Zilia's death is worthy of a tragi-comedy) is only equalled by Hartley recognising Menie in Adela Montreville's 'harem'; but the novel has its stirring moments, especially when Hyder Ali (disguised as the holy Fakir Scheik Hali ben Khaledoun) reveals himself to his astonished son and his entourage. The novel ends with Menie, unmarried though wealthy, settled in her native village, appearing to find her only pleasure in acts of benevolence with a disinterested simplicity and affection, which were the ground-work of her character.

Thomas Hamilton's 'The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton' 1827

 

First edition - 1827

This reads very much like 'The Youth and Manhood of Thomas Hamilton'. The author was born in 1789, was schooled in the south of England, and entered Glasgow University c.1803. Wishing to enter military service, he first had to prove that he was unfitted for a commercial career; in 1810, he obtained by purchase a commission in the 29th Regiment. He saw active service in the Peninsula, where he was wounded in the thigh at the battle of Albuera. He also served in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick during the American War. He retired on half pay c.1818 and returned to Scotland to live in Edinburgh. He was a regular contributor to Blackwood's magazine. Carlyle described him as a pleasant, very courteous, and intelligently talking man, enduring, in a cheery military humour, his old Peninsula hurts. For several summers, he resided near Melrose and got on well with Scott. Much of this novel was written at his cottage near Melrose.

Sir George Douglas, in his The Blackwood Group (1897), accurately describes the book as fragments of autobiography embedded in a paste of romance. Cyril Thornton also goes to Glasgow University - in 1802 - (after accidently killing his older brother, thereby losing his father's affection); he links up with his uncle, an old, childless man, whose affection he gains (he finally inherits his estate); he visits an aristocratic connection, the Earl of Amersham (round and squab, of ungainly proportions...of a disposition insatiably restless and bustling) and falls deeply in love with the latter's 16 year-old daughter, Lady Melicent (who, apparently, returns his love). Disinherited, after his mother's death, at last he joins the army. Hamilton knows his stuff and the details of army life in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the campaigning in Spain and Portugal is brought to life (albeit at some length - I am given, I confess it, to a little tediousness and prolixity...- and it becomes a book of travels occasionally). The author clearly knew at first hand about the lines of Torres Vedras, the siege of Badajos and the battle of Albuera. Wounded and disfigured (he has lost an arm and has a huge facial sabre-cut scar), Cyril returns to England, gets the cold-shoulder from Lady Melicent but ends up with the good-egg Laura Willoughby (whose brother marries Cyril's sister).

There are scathing portraits of Glaswegian commercial types (the Lord Provost was a little squab man, with a high-powdered head and a pigtail, and an air somewhat strutty and consequential; also the coarse and fat Mr Mucklewham) - to be dissipated in Glasgow, one must cease to be a gentleman - and disgust at the dirty and miserable expanding suburbs; satirical comments on the Duke of Kent, Commander-in-Chief (head was large, but well formed, and on the upper part entirely bald. In his face there was nothing intellectual...); and gritty life-like descriptions of warfare. All positive points. I also thought some of his character drawing was commendable:

Uncle David Spreul (known by some as Auld Girnegogibby): he was certainly a hale man, and bore about him no mark of decrepitude. The features of his face were coarse, and his nose, in particular, far transcended, both in length and diameter, the ordinary and vulgar limits of nasal protuberance. His countenance was strongly marked throughout by shrewdness and intelligence, and the curvature of his upper lip, and an habitual contraction of the eyebrows, gave indication of a temper at once irascible and pertinacious.

The brisk and bustling matron, Girzy Black, Uncle Spreul's housekeeper, nearly gives as good as she gets from her master. I quite enjoyed the author's descriptions of her and her behaviour. Tak a few mae o' the collups, they'll no hurt ye...just tak ae spoonfu' mair; at your age, yer teeth's langer than yer baird. Then there are the Highland nieces of Uncle David - Peggy, Jean, David, Archy and Thomasina who are the object of much ribaldry when they mix with the haut ton of Bath.

The author pays tribute to Scott and Wordsworth in passing - both undoubtedly high authorities in everything connected with the human heart...and again, Scott or Shakespeare, the great master spirits of our national literature. John Galt is also mentioned as my friend, and there is a similarity between Hamilton's Colonel Culpepper and Galt's Mr Roopee.. There is an interesting episode involving Cyril and one Mary Brookes.  She has a violent father and the story is very similar to that of Mary Morison in John Wilson's The Foresters (1825). She, too, becomes pregnant; she, too, dies not long after. This time, though, the rotter is Cyril himself. There are touching scenes relating to his father's dementia and his sister Jane's onset of madness. Also a humorous Malvolio-like account of Mr Shortridge's attempt at dancing at Bath.

I liked the comparison between Cyril's two 'loves': There was certainly a striking contrast between the two females, by whom my feelings had been most deeply interested, and who seemed destined by turns to become the engrossing object of my thoughts and impulses. Yet, even in the influence they exercised over me, they were different. Lady Melicent had subdued my heart, by her power of exciting my imagination; Laura Willoughby excited my imagination, only from having touched my heart. There were several humorous moments, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A book well worth the effort of reading.

Galt's 'The Last of the Lairds' 1826

 

        

First edition - 1826

I must admit, I was slightly puzzled once I had finished reading the novel: there were some genuine Galtian (is there such a word?!) moments and yet other sections didn't quite 'ring true'. The chapter in P. H. Scott's biography of the author (1985) helps to explain this. Scott quotes Galt himself, who wrote in his Literary Life:

I meant it to belong to that series of fictions of manners, of which the Annals of the Parish is the beginning; but owing to some cause, which I no longer remember, instead of an autobiography I was induced to make it a narrative, and in this respect it lost that appearance of truth and nature which is, in my opinion, the great charm of such works. 

That is one nail hit on the head. The laird is filtered through a narrator (who is occasionally blessed with some interesting foibles himself) which, inevitably, means the immediacy of an autobiography disappears. In fact, Galt was (deliberately?) misremembering the involvement of his publisher Blackwood who, seemingly reflecting the 'dead hand of gentility' which was infecting the literary establishment, became more and more worried about the novel as it progressed. Galt's tendency to call a spade a spade was not the 'realism' the publisher wanted. Susan Ferrier may have spoken for many, when she had said (of Sir Andrew Wylie) I can't endure that man's writing, and I am told the vulgarity of this beats print. Galt was now about to set off for Canada and, after over thirty letters between author and publisher, he finally left Blackwood's reader and collaborator, D.M. Moir, to 'carve and change as you please'. Moir not only 'toned down' the novel but added three chapters of his own at the end. A final point about the narrator/autobiographer nature of the book - in fact, it is written in the first person, by a narrator who is very different in character from the laird, one who moves in literary circles, whereas Mailing's amateurish efforts could never have made the printed page (the narrator calls the laird's effort the auto-biography of an idiot!) The narrator himself is very much on the defensive, when accused of interfering by Mr Tansy: I am not a man of such curiosity as you seem to think, but only actuated by a liberal spirit of inquiry, the love of truth, and a constitutional penchant for fact. And later - I, good easy man, who never meddled with any other body's business - for my innocent curiosity can never be called meddling - when he compares himself with Mrs Soorocks' visitations sprung from a prying disposition and an unaccountable desire to have a finger in every pie in the neighbourhood... - I might well say the country... Mrs Soorocks, on one occasion does respond - ye hae a particular pleasure in lookin' into the catastrophes o' ither folks.

The Laird represents a symbol of old Scotland, one which is giving way to new forces in the guise of Mr Rupees. He is described early on by the narrator: He was apparelled in a dressing-gown, which had evidently been economically made out of two of his deceased lady's flagrant chintz gowns of dissimilar patterns. His head was adorned with a blue velvet cap, wadded and padded not only to supersede the use of his wig, but even to be warm enough to cause a germination of fancies, if ideas could be raised by anything like the compost in which gardeners force exotics. His purpose in writing his autobiography is to pay off one of his heritable bonds: That silly auld havering creature, Balwhidder o' Dalmailing, got a thousand pounds sterling, down on Blackwood's counter, in red gold, for his clishmaclavers; and Provost Pawkie's widow has had twice the dooble o't, they say, for the Provost's life. He should, doubtless, get much more! His favourite pastime appears to have been sitting busy with idleness on the louping-on stone at his gate. Thwarted in his aim to marry Annie Daisie - only a gairner's dochter, he had to make do with Miss Betty Graeme - the tocherless dochter o' a broken Glasgow Provost, who made her leeving by seamstress-wark and floowring lawn. The latter now long gone, the Laird is forced to cast about for another, partly in the hopes of a decent dowry

The laird's factotum, Jock, or John Dabbler as he ought to be called, is lovingly described by Galt. ...as faithful to his menial trusts as the key or the mastiff; as true as the one, and not less vigilant than the other. the Nabob, and his new built Nawaubpore, don't quite 'ring true' with me, but I assume he represented a type known to Galt at the time.

One of the undoubted pleasures of the book is revelling in the behaviour of the affecting commiseration of Mrs Soorocks (she reminded me of Mistress Niven in the Dr. Finlay television series). Her sole business and vocation in life consisted in visiting those among her neighbours who were suffering either under misfortune or anxiety, and feelingly, as she herself called it, "sympatheesing with their dispensation". She fans herself with her handkerchief - some four or five times during the operation puffed her breath with a sough somewhat between the sound of a blast and a sigh - whilst being very rude about others - I'm obliged to endure frae the contumacity o'yon twa wizzent and gaizent penure pigs o' Barenbraes. Miss Girzie, one of the 'pigs', could be caustic about her in turn: she's ane, indeed, to speak o' shaving faces - she ought to be taught to scrape her ain tongue. But it's beneath me to discompose mysell for sik a clash-clecking clypen kennawhat. She's just a midwife to ill-speaking. 

Galt's humour emerges regularly - the description of the laird's father's decease (his e'en flew up and his lip fell down); the building up of the characters of Miss Shoosie and Miss Girzie Minnygaff, maiden sisters at Barenbraes (the former only in her fiftieth year, but so mulcted of the few graces which niggard nature had so stingily bestowed, that she was seemingly already an aged creature); the portrayal of the young Dr Lounlans as one of those modern ornaments of the Scottish Church, by whom her dignity, as shown in the conduct and intelligence of her ministers, is maintained as venerable in public opinion; as Jock says, isna Dr Lounlans a capital preacher? - isna he a great gun? He is the very Mons-meg o' the presbytery. Then there is one of the many admirers of Mrs Soorocks - Captain Hawser o' the press-gang...only three parts o' a man too, for he had a tinner leg; the marriage of the laird to Miss Shoosie is very droll.

There is the occasional pointless meandering (Walter Scott is much worse, but you have to pad out three-deckers somehow), such as Mr Tansie's philosophising, but the narrative keeps a steady enough course. There are times when his humour is too belittling (vide the Laird) and bordering on the caustic. Galt does allow himself a few shafts at his usual targets: Tories in the pools of corruption; the pre-Reform electoral system; the Edinburgh literary establishment, persons so self-celebrated. All-in-all, though, there are many more hits than misses about the novel. It can't match The Annals or The Provost, but it is still worth the read.

Scott's 'Woodstock; or, The Cavalier' 1826

 I have, mistakenly, erased nearly all that I had to say about the novel. I cannot retrieve it and I simply cannot face re-doing it. So, for the first time, in this long trail of Blogs, I am simply going to say I enjoyed Woodstock - I approved of Scott's obvious partiality to the Cavaliers and the disguised Charles II; and the marked antipathy towards the Roundheads, particularly, the Fifth Monarchists and Independents, and to Cromwell. The latter, increasingly allowed a marked strain of hypocrisy and power-hunger to overtake any more laudable traits.

First  edition - 1826

I have relented slightly, as I found John Buchan's commentary on Woodstock very helpful.

Woodstock was written in a time of anxiety (Due to the famous 'crash' involving Ballantyne and Constable, Scott's liabilities were £104,081 and the estate available for realization as £48,494, meaning he had to give up his Castle Street, Edinburgh residence after 28 years; the ill health of his grandson; and the death of his wife Charlotte in May 1826) yet the book bears no mark of this sad preoccupation...the opening words of the last chapter seem to be a cry wrung from the heart - "Years rush by us like the wind. We see not whence the eddy comes, nor whitherward it is tending, and we seem ourselves to witness their flight without a sense that we are changed; and yet Time is beguiling man of his strength, as the winds rob the woods of their foliage". But for the rest the book is amazingly light-hearted, and the narrative, hammered out with a perplexed mind, is notably compact. Woodstock ranks high among the novels for the architecture of its plot...is almost the best written of the novels...If it is not to be ranked with the greatest, that is only because it rarely touches the deeper springs of life.

If there was one word I would use about the book, it is warm; a strange word, perhaps, but Scott has a warmth for his characters which few of his contemporaries match.  I bought this first edition on 13th February 1982, nearly 40 years ago. How time flies!

Robert Trotter's 'Derwentwater' 1825

 

First edition - 1825

 
 

I am not sure where to begin with this review; I suppose I could do no better than quote the author's first sentence in his Preface: This Tale is partly historical and partly romantic. Well, what should have been a straightforward account of the Jacobite Rising in 1715 and its march through Carlisle to Preston is mangled by some very odd 'romance'. To put it more simply - Robert Trotter has no idea on how to compose a novel. Luckily, his effort lasts for only 103 pages. The rest of the Volume, pages 108-272, is taken up with an Appendix which, again to quote Trotter, is formed from a large mass of materials collected for a work on heraldry, for which I am indebted to Nisbet, Douglas, and others... I am afraid, I merely glanced through the pages, which consisted of a list of names with a paragraph or paragraphs about who they were and their ancestry; these had little, if anything, to do with the preceding work of semi-fiction.

The 3rd Earl of Derwentwater

Essentially Trotter tries to tell the tale of James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, his involvement in the 1715 Rebellion and his marriage to Eliza Brougham, daughter and heiress of the stern Sir Lionel of Brougham Castle near Carlisle. This is not before (an entirely fictitious) dastardly villain, Sodom De Lasslove, attempts to seduce her and then ends up murdering all in his path on the way to, and at, Preston. He laughs, loud and horribly, whenever he can; this is not surprising, though he boasted of his name and family, he was of obscure birth and contaminated blood. He resembled a sand-glass, small in the middle and thick at both ends, with light hair and a long nose. Sir John Tenniel or Mervyn Peake could have drawn him well.

At one stage, Trotter simply copies out a long piece from a Town Directory or Gazetteer of Preston, with no comment to follow! There is an inevitable ghostly appearance (why do all Scottish novels of this period have to have spectres?). There is nothing more to say! It is the poorest novel I have read so far; the characters are badly drawn and any coherence to the narrative does not exist. I return with some relief to Sir Walter next, and his 'Woodstock'.

Grace Kennedy's 'Philip Colville; or, A Covenanter's Story' 1825

 

        

First edition 1825

This is the third of Grace Kennedy's novels which I have read and, after the didactic Dunallan, it was an improvement. As the title page states, the work was unfinished at her death, thus it only runs to one volume of 269 pages. There is a two and a half page (anonymous) addition at the end, where the novel is called a fragment and no more than the commencement of a delineation of the principles, characters, and circumstances of the persons introduced into it. Apparently, Kennedy was going to describe the fidelity of a group of individuals to the Covenanting cause over a much longer canvas, but whether that was be be done in two or three volumes will never be known.

The anonymous writer goes on to say: had she been permitted to have finished her plan, it would have been an abridged, but a most faithful and impressive account of the sufferings of the Presbyterian Church, under the execrable Charles and James, of hateful memory. Apparently, the author has done no more than transfer from Wodrow, &c. with altered names, those trees and plants of righteousness... This refers to Robert Wodrow (1679-1734), who wrote The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland... and talked of The Killing Times in the Seventeenth Century.

I felt Kennedy was more 'restrained' in her religious proselytising than in her previous two novels. Perhaps, it was because she was trying to follow and explain actual History. She had clearly read in depth about the events of 1679 and characters such as Torriswood (I know it my poor child - but, Olive, there are duties superior even to regard for the safety of those we love) and his offspring, Olive, Florence and Eric; Andrew Wellwood, the young minister forced out of his church onto the fields to preach the Word; Lindsay and Ormistoun, the Edinburgh lawyers, reacting differently to their roles in supporting the Covenanters; are all well drawn. The more extreme views of the gloomy looking person, Hackstoun of Rathillet; the fortitude of Mrs Leslie, the Lady Dalcluden, Torriswood's sister; the unnerving presence of James Sharpe, the Archbishop of St. Andrews and persecutor of Covenanters; Lady Osborne who has decided views about the latter: I protest I never saw a Covenanter at a party who did not make it seem a meeting at a funeral. Death, death. Conscience, conscience. How intolerable!; and her frightened, but brave, daughter Mary Osborne; all help to establish and bolster a convincing and realistic narrative.

 Philip Colville's own credo is clearly put: Colville's aim was single. It was simply to obey God. Could he do so, and at the same time subject himself to a human lawgiver in matters of religion?  Impossible. Could he, with the Bible in his hand, obey God by closing it, and by receiving from an earthly ruler his notions of what was the best mode of worship - and that ruler profligate and irreligious? Absurd! As the story develops, so does Philip's mindset and decision-making. And, thus, he signs the Covenant in Edinburgh.

There are several striking and realistic scenes - in particular,  the Covenanters' service in the Abbot's Glen near the Tweed and the crowded, frightening Canongate jail. Who knows how Grace Kennedy might have sustained the standard over a further one or two volumes, but the novel is probably the best of the three I have now read, and is not a bad antidote to Walter Scott's version of 'The Killing Times'.

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

 

First edition 1825

An intriguing novel, with much good to say about it but with some negative aspects as well.

It is, above all, character driven, with a convoluted plot which is untangled rather abruptly at the end.

The hero has more about him than Scott's usual fare - Amherst Oakenwold - a tall handsome person...finely-proportioned figure...luxuriantly curled black hair and whiskers gave shade to his fair, untarnished, yet manly face; as the perfect arch of his ample eyebrows added to the beauty and nobleness of his forehead, and gave fire to his large, full, and intelligent eyes.

Eliza Malcolm (aka the real Delassaux) - all loveliness, gentleness, and grace, her figure rather above middle size for a woman, but soft and delicate in its mould...her hair, radiant as the sun, partly thrown aside from her alabaster forehead, and partly shading it with natural ringlets...her oval countenance, her Grecian nose, her large and melting blue eyes, the regular arch of her eyebrows, her delicate mouth, the extreme clearness and brilliancy of her complexion... No wonder Amherst was smitten. She copes relatively well with the successive torments (including twice being told she is not who she thinks she is) she has to endure and deservedly unites with Amherst at the end. She has more about her than many of Scott's heroine's but usually reacts to, rather than controls, events.

His father, Sir Cable Oakenwold's bluff seaman's approach to life is well described - not a man to stand shilly-shally, or to keep firing round bowls at a distance from the enemy, preferring to pour a broadside into people...

Lord Eaglesholme, Eliza's 'uncle'/'father'/not a relative!, a very Scott-like character, wracked with guilt, yet with a commanding presence; owner of an enormous library, with princeps editions, unique Caxtons, and illuminated manuscripts, all in superb old bindings, and dabbling in chemistry with a table covered with phials, jars, air-pumps, and electrifying machines...; is a fascinating portrayal; as is his Gothic castle - on a broad swelling promontory jutting into the lake...bearing all the appearance of having been calculated for powerful resistance, surrounded by gigantic and grotesquely-twisted fir-trees... One thinks of 'The Pirate' and 'The Bride of Lammermoor'. 

The bulky and rather elderly Captain Cleaver, is Amherst's loyal friend and enjoyer of copious amounts of drink and food. He is another character who would be perfectly at home in the Waverley tales. 

O'Gollochar, who attaches himself to his new master Amherst like a leech, is a well-drawn, humorous character with a fund of Irish phrases; as is Sir Alisander Sanderson, a fat, ruddy, good-humoured gentleman-like person, and well-rounded character both physically and metaphorically, who provides considerable humour; as does his acquaintance, Julius Caesar Macflae, a spare figure in black velvet breeches, whose tout ensemble bore a strong resemblance to those memento moris who walk before funeral processions, known in Scotland by the name of saulies. Another, splendidly drawn, Bacchanalian associate of Sanderson, is Dr Partenclaw, a little man with a large jowl, pig's eyes, red hooked nose, sack belly, spindle thighs, cased in dirty leather breeches, and limbs bound in a sort or black leather greaves, fastened with iron clasps. Lauder is quite adept at injecting humour: Sir Alisander's party was augmented by the august presence, and illuminated by the rubicund nasal promontory of Dr Partenclaw, who came puffing up to the door some hours before dinner, mounted on a tall, lean, wind-galled horse, that looked like a piece of animated timber. I can see him now!

The villains are also well-drawn: Brandywyn (aka Harrison) a tall, swaggering, sea-faring man...his black curly hair, and his large whiskers and eyebrows, gave uncommon fierceness to features, naturally handsome, had they not been disfigured by an expression of libertinism, mingled with certain touches of depravity...; Antonio the Neapolitan - almost a pantomime baddie, but compelling all the same and who pops up everywhere. Miss Olivia Delassaux, at first fomenting bewitching sensations in Amherst's unpractised mind, soon blots her copybook by unveiling her true unfeeling character (no wonder, as the tale progressed,  we read of the no small deterioration of her fortune, as well as of her face); and her aunt, Lady Delassaux, a cold-hearted, intriguing bitch, who rightly gets her comeuppance by finally taking her own poisonous cake!

Then there is the Dwarfie Carline o' the Cove, who first appears on page 10 of Volume I, described as a creature, for human being it could hardly be denominated...was about three feet and a half high, and who regularly pops up in the most unlikely but useful places, for a long time seemed to be a caricature of Scott's unearthly (and often grating) beings. Although all her 'supernatural' exploits are explained towards the end of the tale, she is still too far-fetched a character. 

All the above, seemingly, at first, with little to do with each other, are brought together by the end of the third volume. It is a winding track, with too many byways, needing drawn-out explanatory passages. This reader feels a story in two volumes would have been tighter, sharper and more enjoyable. 

As for the plotting and coherence of the novel: the first 84 pages are set in the wild, Bacchanalian countryside of Scotland; there is a Chapter introducing the mysterious Captain Brandywyn to the assembled party at Sir Alisander's; it then switches to Sir Cable's Oakenwold Manor in Kent, some time prior to the previous chapters, and introduces Antonio the Neapolitan, Lady Deborah and Miss Olivia Delassaux. Luckily for Amherst, having rumbled the latter's character, he hies away to Scotland with Cleaver and O'Gollachar. and stumbles on the Gothic fortress of Lord Eaglesholme. Here, of course, he meets 'Eliza Malcolm' - the course of true love never did run smooth, and the rest of the volumes are taken up with reinforcing that point. There are the usual clutch of orphans to pull at the reader's heartstrings.

Travelogue? Too many long 'asides', occasioned perhaps to give a full-round characters to the various participants. It only succeeds in drawing attention away from the main plot. The drawn out description of Scottish scenery is a case in point; but the best example is Chapter IX in Volume III. A major weakness in the novel's construction is the author tries to pack in far too much explanatory material. Everything doesn't need to be detailed! 

Coincidence is once or twice carried too far, even for a work of fiction. The most obvious examples are, first, the sheer chance that Brandywyn's (now unmasked as a George Harrison from Durham) partially-deranged and cast-off paramour just happens to be in York to see him carted off to jail; and, secondly, the clergyman sent to minister to the prisoner turns out be his long-estranged younger brother Henry. It rivals John Buchan's crashing coincidences or a Gilbert and Sullivan opera!

One of the strangest aspects about the novel is the title. Why call it Lochandhu? The reader first encounters him as Macgillivray, tall, bony, and athletic, appeared to be of middle age...he wore a small gold-laced cocked hat, from beneath which an enormous queue of black hair dangled between his broad shoulders. We soon discover he is in the shady business of smuggling and cattle-running, with a small estate in the Highlands some 50 miles from the coast. However, he is just one of the several secondary players. Why not call the work Oakenwold or Eaglesholme?

Oddments:

The tall, stout, good-looking, but extremely dirty hostess of a run-down public house, Mrs McClaver was ay been unco fond o' the Inglishers ever sin' Captain Clutterbuck lodged wi' me (His creator Scott would be proud!)

Two words I had to learn.

Somerset was also used in the nineteenth century to describe what we know as a somersault.

Megrim, another form of migraine.

Grace Kennedy's 'Dunallan; or Know What You Judge' 1825

 

     Second edition - 1825

This is the second of the three novels of Grace Kennedy which I possess. The other two - Father Clement (the most well-known) and Philip Colville; or A Covenanter's Story - were published in 1823 and 1825 respectively, the latter posthumously. Whereas I have both of them in first edition, I have - so far - only managed to track down a second edition of Dunallan. It is the only one published as a three-decker; but, I feel, its purpose would have been more effective it if had been pruned to two volumes.

The nadir is reached in a missive of enormous length - Dunallan's letter to his wife Catharine on pp. 1-83 of Volume II.  I have occasionally sprinkled the margin with pencilled comments, such as a first class-prig (he wrote, My taste was really too refined to tolerate open vice, and my morals still too pure to contemplate without disgust many scenes...); and theological masochism. Dunallan is affected (infected?) by his dying youthful pastor friend Churchill's morbid desire for death. After his demise, Churchill's mother says, how profoundly peaceful! I would not bring him back for a thousand worlds. Oh, God, only permit me soon to follow him! Revelation, apparently, trumped all. Dunallan's own epiphany occurs by a Swiss lakeside - rather like John Wesley's heart being 'strangely warmed' in Aldersgate. His next letter was, mercifully, short and hurried! However, the imprint of piety is now even more marked on Catherine - who immediately set about that exact scrutiny of her own character, and constant attention to its improvement, which she thought necessary to fit her for a companion to Dunallan. The latter appears, all too often, to be a religious control freak.

Catharine, indeed, has much to live up to. Dunallan's mother was cast in the same pious clay. Each morning, for two hours, she passed chiefly on her knees - examining her heart in the presence of her God - its every motive - its every desire... the events of the day she considered as guided, or overruled by the providence of God and Saviour... Thus, Catharine herself prays for submission to the Divine will - to all its dispensations, however painful, however mortifying... And there's the rub - mortification, a besetting aspect of Christianity. There seems to be minimal genuine, natural happiness involved. More often, life seems to entertain painful apprehensions. Catharine is all too often pale and trembling. Her husband regularly reminds her in whose merciful and compassionate hands his, and all our lives are, and trust all your anxieties and fears to him. It might be more positive to eschew such anxieties and fears in the first place! During Dunallan's fight for life, after being seriously wounded, he is grieved at not being more anxious to leave this world and all it has to offer for another, which, in my soul, I believe to be far preferable. He has a wife, for God's sake! He is sanctimonious, insufferable and a prig. (He says to Catharine, tenderly as I feel for you, there is yet a want, a defect in your character which I have never clearly expressed. Get away!)

Catharine is even castigated for her sentiments becoming quite methodistical. When cousin Elizabeth is charged to explain what she meant, she says, I mean that narrow uncharitable spirit which limits all goodness to a few strict, and, to people who live in the world, - impracticable rules...never stirring out on a Sunday unless to go half a dozen times to hear some canting preacher - never opening your mouth but to pronounce some religious sentence...(sounds horribly like Dunallan!!) Miss Morven, a new acquaintance, then admits to being a Methodist, causing some little embarrassment.  In fairness, on another occasion, Catharine realises that her former prejudice against a sect she had thought dull, gloomy, degrading superstition, and hypocrisy, which I have long joined in regarding with scorn and contempt, and instead remarks to herself, Surely this must be true religion.

The most 'alive' characters are those who are not drenched in religion. Catharine's cousin Elizabeth, who chides her: you get such gloomy dismal notions about everything. Sunday was surely intended for a day of rest and happiness, not of melancholy deprivations. Hear, hear! say I. Helen Graham, the uncultivated romantic, who prefers Shakespeare to the Bible; Mr Melville who complains that the ladies are too violently anxious to be right, I think, and see more evil in some things than really exists. Harcourt, Dunallan's rakish brother-in-law; and, the firebrand from hell, St. Clair. His dastardly plan to counterfeit Catherine's letters to Dunallan nearly worked and his explosive denouement in the court at the end is quite exciting! Lady Fitzhenry, aka Dunallan's Aspasia, the naughty adulteress, is full of vim and vigour. If it was not for the latter two's earthly behaviour the novel would have sunk under the weight of its didactic downpour.

Revelation rather than experience is held up to be the key to Heaven. If Grace Kennedy hoped that her novel would encourage readers to embrace Christianity, she might well have suffered disappointment. A consistently dour and humourless approach to life rather cancels out the more positive Justification By Faith Alone that is an element in the Dunallan credo. Roman Catholicism is given short shrift - superstitious notions - if not as harsh as in the author's Father Clement. Catharine, alas, is dragged down to Dunallan's near-fanatical and gloomy mind-set. What the author sees as spiritual nourishments, some readers would tax as being more akin to sanctimonious smothering. Catharine is first introduced as of high birth, and immense fortune, very beautiful, and in general, amiable in temper, she was indisputably the most charming and most admired young lady in that part of the country. She ends, shackled to a gloomy religious monomaniac. If there are children (there has been no evidence of any physical relationship with Dunallan) then let us hope that some semblance of amiability and happiness return to her. Grace Kennedy is not a positive or encouraging proselytiser for her faith.

John Wilson's 'The Foresters' 1825

 

First edition - 1825

I have now read John Wilson's three novels - Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life (1822); The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823); and The Foresters (1825). As Sir George Douglas, in his The 'Blackwood Group' (1897), remarks, ...of course, it is not to the department of fiction that Wilson's most conspicuous literary achievements belong. Outside of his philosophy classes at Edinburgh University, he was best known as 'Christopher North', the copious and indefatigable contributor to Blackwood's Magazine.

The Foresters has all the strengths and weaknesses of his previous two novels. It is worth quoting Douglas again, as his is a most apt summary of the book's foibles: [It] is the history of one Michael Forester, who is exhibited in turn in his relation as a dutiful son, a kind self-sacrificing brother, a loving and faithful husband, and a wise affectionate father; whilst from time to time we are also enabled to trace his beneficent influence in the affairs of other members of the small community in which he lives. The tone of the book is peaceful and soothing; it inculcates cheerfulness and resignation, and holds up for our edification a picture of that contentment which springs from the practice of virtue. A group of faultless creatures - for none but the subordinate characters have any faults - pursue the tenor of their lives amid fair scenes of nature, and, when sorrow or misfortune falls to their lot, meet it with an inspiring fortitude.

Throughout the novel, goodness and virtue prevail. Michael's marriage to the much younger (15 years) Agnes Hay, is blissfully happy, marred only by her brief serious illness - dearer was she to him than all his other best and happiest possessions - than all other remembrances - all other hopes; his father, Adam, is a benign old man, tending his lowly property, Dovenest in the romantic scenery of the Esk, between Roslin and Lasswade; Agnes' aunt, Isobel, who joins the household, was indeed the most lively and cheerful of all possible old ladies, blest with untameable good spirits; the local clergyman, Mr Kennedy, exemplifies the goodness and charity of his Christian beliefs. Emma Cranstoun, the Lady of the Hirst, 16 years old when we first encounter her, may be consumptive and near death on one occasion ('saved' by Lucy's sojourn at the Hirst), is another paragon of goodness - as soon as her eyes had been open to the knowledge, however limited, of humble rural life...thenceforth, all the precepts of Christianity, either of will or deed, seemed to call upon her for obedience and practice.. It is apt that she eventually marries the calf-lover of  Lucy Forester, Edward Ellis, the son of an English gentleman of fortune.

 

Above all, there is Lucy Forester, Michael's daughter and main heroine of the tale. As a young girl, she is in features the very image of her mother, but the most gleesome of children, and wild as the fawn in the wood. Her marriage, at the end of the story, to Miles Colinson, the son of the vicar of Ellesmere  -, another of admirable character and who ran a vicarage where each member of the family was alike estimable - unites two families of proven virtue.

The clouds, often brief, on this blissful world, include 

• Michael's young brother, Abel, who commits forgery and felony, forcing Michael and his wife (his father has died) to move from their beloved Dovenest to pay Abel's debts - but, to another lovely homestead Bracken-Braes. Abel returns, much later in the story, laden with guilt, as was the wretched man, yet in our Father's house there are many mansions - all of them happier and blessed than the most untroubled recesses of any earthy household. Abel dies, but all his knowledge of the Bible revived with his restored power of memory - and he was told, that great as had been his sins, he might hope for the salvation Heaven offered to all believers. When Michael and Agnes travel to the English Lake District - to Ellesmere, hard by Windermere (where the author actually had a home), to collect Scotch Martha, Abel's orphan daughter, they find a wholesome child, to join the other paragons of the tale. She, too, finds love - with Hamish Fraser, a Highlander and another virtuous character.
• Lucy, aged six, is snatched by a gipsy woman, but is restored to the family by a neighbour, Jacob Mayne. Jacob's brother, Richard, notwithstanding his considerable wealth, has been stealing from the church's poor plate. However, he repents and leaves his money to Michael who, in turn, enables it to go to the poorer Jacob. The Maynes were not out of the wood yet. Jacob's son, Isaac, pride of the countryside...a boy of surpassing genius, a boy of many thousand, goes to College and the wider world leads him astray. He returns home, ashamed and shameful, to expire young. His last words were "God bless Lucy Forester!" 
• Mary Morrison, is Lucy's closest friend, but has to live with a brutal father, Abraham, with whom the world had gone hardly. She succumbs to one of the only two real villains in the book -  Mark Thornhill - who subsequently repudiates his lawful marriage to her, ensuring her father's vengeful behaviour. On his deathbed, Thornhill admits the truth. Mary is re-admitted into 'good' society and ends up serving Lucy and her husband at their new home in the Lake District. Moreover, her father becomes a changed man - patient, even mild - and under the power of a pious penitence.
• Emma Cranston's brother, Henry, long detained in a French fortress, returns to the Hirst soon after his sister's own return from Italy. He is an absolute bounder, a deep-dyed rogue...his passions had run riot in early indulgence...he had formed wild, irregular, and disorderly habits...his had seemed to be the very worst kind of selfishness. His kidnapping of Lucy is swiftly foiled and, although protesting repentance, is soon after found cleanly-dispatched in a duel by a man whose sister he had seduced. He polluted the book!
• The darkest cloud appears to be Michael's loss of sight, after a virulent lightning storm. And yet, there is the silver lining even in what appeared to be a tragedy. Chapter XII, which deals with the immediate aftermath is one of the most moving in the whole novel.

Once again, the author's purple passages - usually commenting on the local scenery - are easy targets for ridicule. The best defence, is that they are sincerely written. The umbrella over the whole book, is that of Christianity, whether it be the Presbyterian version of Mr Kennedy, or the Anglican pathway of Mr Colinson. To the 21st century mind, it is hard to swallow the occasional over-the-top piety. Agnes Forester appears at near-death at Ellesmere. Michael gives in to natural despair. The author contrasts such unhappy beings with Happy mortals! who  may come to know that even into the deepest wounds those affections can suffer, there is a Divine hand that can pour a balm that flows in the fountains of heaven! (Hmm! It is interesting to note that John Wilson's last years were melancholic and despondent.)

There is a revealing passage in Chapter XLIV, when Michael - just after he hears Dovenest was to be restored to him - muses on his life and circumstances:

...there also came over him a deep sense of the goodness of his Maker. How had all things wrought together for the good of himself and family! His father had died quite happy at last, and full of years - poor Abel, after much suffering no doubt which his errors incurred, had found, when all his wanderings were over, a hopeful death-bed, and a quiet grave - Martha, the orphan, although far away, had prospects of happiness in that peaceful foreign land [Canada] - who was so good, and so happy, as his  beautiful Lucy - Agnes Hay had brought blessings into his house which none enjoyed more than that gentle spirit - in extreme age, Aunt Isobel was cheerful as a new-stirred fire - and Mary Morrison, in her meekness, was like a child of their own at Bracken-Braes.

Wilson's statue in Princes Street Gardens

Edinburgh