Matthias Barton Mysteries 3 and 4

 

August 2019 and August 2020

I have just finished the fourth novel in the Matthias Barton Mystery series. I must admit, I searched hard this time for a 'mystery'. Any 'red flags' about potential baddies are hoisted very early on and are so obvious that the flag can only be coloured pale orange. I wouldn't go so far as one anonymous reviewer on the back cover of Spare the Rod (I can't believe Rosie Lear allowed it) "A light historical read with some strong characters - a sort of Enid Blyton for adults." Ouch! There are also two worrying signs about the production of this fourth book: there are no page numbers and the offside margins are virtually non-existent.  Did the publisher try to cut corners on a project they felt might not make a decent enough return? A really good proof reader would have picked up on the typos and tried to cut out the repetition of words and phrases too close to each other, e.g.: Travellers and traders came from miles around...hundreds of traders from miles around.

In Rosie Lear's usual Author's Notes at the end, she feels she has more to say: ...this will feature in the final book of the Sherborne Medieval mysteries.

Shaftesbury Abbey

Sherborne Abbey

Book Three in the series, A Tale of Two Abbeys, is a tighter story than the others. Characters from the previous books are further fleshed out - such as Ezekiel Jacobson, the barber surgeon - and there are good portrayals of the Lady Abbess of Shaftesbury and the naughty, very un-potential nun, novitiate Winifrith. Devil worship  in Gillingham Forest (at last maps figure in the series) is the focus of the novel, but the 'devils' are guessed almost immediately. Rosie Lear's  characters are either goodies or obvious baddies.

Although Sherborne features in this fourth novel, it is only briefly, as the Tale takes us along the south coast in pursuit of a dastardly band of smugglers of wool; amongst them is a nasty piece of work, Walter Woodman, who has not only previously murdered two people and is on the run, but has kidnapped Matthias' stepson, Luke. There is some psychology/character-drawing used in portraying the variety of emotions amongst the usual core of characters: Matthias, his new wife Lady Alice, Martin (the one-legged, one-eyed, ex-squire of Alice's previous husband), Ezekiel, the Christianised Jew and his wife, the Coroner Sir Tobias, and his wife, and so on. Once again, reference is made to the state of affairs under the young Henry VI, and we meet de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk. It is a gentle story, notwithstanding the odd murder and fight, but the author is not a challenge to the more established (and highly lucrative) historical fiction marketeers - Susanna Gregory, Paul Doherty, Candace Robb and the ubiquitous Edward Marston.

Now it's a return to a Nineteenth-century Scottish author: John Galt again and Rothelan (1824)

Methodism

 Writing yet again about the rather negative approach to Methodism and Methodists in the early 19th century Scottish novelists I have been reading, I thought I would make a few observations below.

On our weekend London trip recently, we visited the London Charterhouse. John Wesley attended there as a pupil between 1714 and 1720. There is a plaque to him on the wall of the passage leading to the chapel.

 

Just a little further down the road to St. Paul's, we noticed another plaque - this to an event eighteen years' later, when Wesley's conversion, being 'strangely warmed' took place. Being brought up in the Methodist Church - I was 'received' into its Fellowship in Marlborough as a teenager - and having attended Kingswood School, the church's premier education establishment, it is not surprising I retain an emotional (if not an intellectual) attachment to it.  

Kingswood School - mid-19th century

I have several books about the school and Methodism in general. One of my prized possessions is an 1802 Countess of Huntingdon's Chapels Hymnbook, given to my father in 1939, when he was serving in St. Maartens, West Indies. I have recently had the cover rebound, as the old one was falling to pieces. The Countess, a formidable woman, fell out with the Wesleys, but still retained many of Charles Wesley's hymns. It is fascinating, reading through some of the offerings in the 481 pages (342 hymns); many of them totally unsympathetic to present day beliefs. 

Whilst wandering through the Edinburgh churchyards recently, with their 18th and 19th century tombstones and monuments (you really should view them in mist and steady rain), and reading the youthful ages of many (most?) of the deceased, one could understand the almost morbid preoccupation with Death. One had to believe in an Afterlife and Salvation. Certainly, many of the hymns in the little book I am now looking through, focus on this final event. 

AH lovely appearance of death!

No sight  upon earth is so fair;

Not all the gay pageants that breathe

Can with the dead body compare:

With solemn delight I survey

The corpse when the spirit is fled,

In love with the beautiful clay,

And longing to lie in its stead.

I don't think I would invite the author to my convivial Dinner Party. In fact, the whole Collection reinforces the feeling of a totally different age. One can imagine the inspired members of the little Welsh chapels - Zion, Bethesda, Ebenezer, Salem - belting out such paeans to the Almighty two hundred years ago.

Ye dying sons of men,

Immerg'd in sin and woe,

The gospel's voice attend,

While Jesus sends to you:

Ye perishing and guilty, come,

In Jesu's arms there yet is room.

OR

Saviour, can'st thou love a traitor?

Can'st thou love a child of wrath?

Can a hell-deserving creature

Be the purchase of thy death?

I vividly recall, at each early January service (I think, called the Annual Covenant Service), listening to a prayer which called us miserable worms. Each time, indignant, I thought 'I'm no worm'! No wonder, J. G. Lockhart, Susan Ferrier and others had such an opinion of the Methodists.

Lockhart's 'The History of Matthew Wald' - 1824

 

 First edition - 1824

I am not quite sure how to 'pigeon hole' Lockhart's last novel of the four he wrote. It has been classed as a Gothic Tale; Lockhart himself (in a review of his own work!) wrote that everything is decidedly and entirely subordinate to the minute and anxious, although easy and unaffected, anatomy of one man's mind. Arguably, Matthew's plight can be seen as an emblem of Scotland's unstable cultural identity in the Romantic period. (I must admit, that thought never crossed my mind!) Walter Scott, writing to Lady Abercorn from Edinburgh on 4th June 1824, opined

Lockhart...wrote one or two tales of fiction uncommonly powerful in incident and language...he very lately wrote a little volume called "Matthew Wald", which is a very painful tale, very forcibly told; the worst is that there is no resting-place - nothing but misery from the title-page to the finis. 

Francis Russell Hart in The Scottish Novel, describes Matthew Wald as the manic disinherited picaro, whose intense perceptions are animated by a deeply divided self that he himself has fractured...we depend on the impulsive, anguished character...for our vision of his picaresque world. It is a grim and grotesque world in which character is almost always mysterious, surprising, the repository of secret pain and corruption.

The last three chapters, in particular, bear out Scott's prognosis of nothing but misery. I don't necessarily need a novel to finish 'happily ever after', but this ended in the 'valley of the shadow of deaths'.

Several paragraphs border on the incoherent, which does not make easy reading. On page 341, Wald's wife, Joanne, on seeing her husband with his cousin in a seeming embrace, has one convulsion after another and dies as does her new born babe.  On page 359, Wald kills his bête noire, the Hon. George Lascelyne, in a duel - "Lie there, rot there, beast"...I dipped my shoe in his blood. On page 360, his beloved cousin, Katharine, on hearing of her husband's decease, expires - Fainted? - swooned? - Dead! oh! dead. I remember no more. Chapter XXXII  starts well enough - somehow Wald is still alive, free but much older. Old I am, yet I feel strength in every fibre...I can walk, read and write, as nimbly as if I were a man of five and twenty years... There then follows an incoherent series of paragraphs, suggesting he has previously gone mad in a wilderness of horrors. 

This is not the end of the book, however. There is a 'Letter to P.R. Esq.' which is sent  by J[ohn].W.R. from London, dated August, 1816, enclosing the foregoing memoirs. It charts Wald's later life - one of seeming contentment, never visiting Scotland,  (he gave up possession of his wife's estate the moment he had recovered possession of his faculties), giving occasional dinners and joining in other festivities. Verily a "grey-haired man of glee". It also explains his decease through apoplexy. Wald is a Brontesque figure, whose passionate behaviour leads to madness, from which he recovers; his secret is not discovered  until his Memoir is found, after his death. Does the story 'work'? Not really. There are too many digressions (Wald himself admits at one stage that I have indulged in this digression...), the construction is uneven. The coincidence of Matthew ending up in London, residing in a house next to the fugitive Katharine, is really too much to accept. Moreover, it is clear that Wald's young heir wonders how much the Memoir is true.

There are, however, one or two good pen portraits - such as the old Lord of Session in his country estate, who Wald goes to see - he is in his usual rural costume of a scratch-wig, a green jacket, Shetland hose, and short black gaiters, who regularly ejaculates  "Hooly, hooly"....  The fanatical Cameronian cobbler, John M'Ewan, who murders a farmer friend, in a moment of lust for the latter's money; Mrs Bauby 'Mammy' Baird, the ancient retainer of the Barr family ; the malign preacher, Mr. Mather, who marries Matthew's aunt and drives him away from home; the rather too fat and rubicund Miss Biddy Patterson, Matthew's housekeeper when he boarded at St. Andrews; her to-be husband John Mackay, who gets the Kirk of St Dees from the College. Joanne, the eldest daughter of Sir Claud Barr, seemingly illegitimate but, as later 'proved' (by Matthew) to be the offspring of a genuine marriage, has the saddest life in many ways. The young lady had a face of singular though melancholy beauty - but her figure was extremely small and slender, and her walk seemed, I thought to hint some very slight imperfection in one of her limbs. Wald marries this meekest of women, but, too soon, their relationship is tested when she comes under the spell of the itinerant Methodists of England [who] first made their appearance in our part of the country. Although Wald can praise Whitefield as a superior orator, he soon finds the manifestation of the same growing mania objectionable; he calls it an endemic, with eternal visitations of wandering fanatics...the far greater part ignorant, uninformed, wild, raving mechanics. Methodism does not get a good press with any of these Blackwood novelists!

A tale, therefore, rather like the proverbial curate's egg - good in parts, but decidedly below average in others. I have yet to read Lockhart's first novel, Valerius. Only when I have done that, can I try to assess whether he was a good writer of fiction or not. The jury, at present, is out.

Susan Ferrier's 'The Inheritance' - 1824

 Susan Ferrier's second novel was not published until six years after Marriage. Once again, it was anonymous. In April 1823, Susan's brother John visited John Murray to discuss producing The Inheritance. When William Blackwood heard of these early negotiations, however,  he pleaded with Susan to give the work to him. His initial offer of £500 was refused, but, in September 1823, he paid her one thousand pounds sterling to be settled for by a bill at twelve months from the date of publication. The novel was published in the Spring of 1824 and it was an immediate success.

William Blackwood first edition - 1824

Readers and more professional critics were impressed. Walter Scott (according to Blackwood) spoke so much con amore and entered so completely, and at such length to me into the spirit of the book and of the characters, that showed me at once the impression it had made on him. Most readers believed that the author had grown considerably in her ability to structure a novel and develop characters. One wrote:  'Marriage' is a young book...'The Inheritance' a much maturer work, is well and carefully built. It shows the powers of Miss Ferrier at their fullest.

The intricacies of character drives the plot - the strong vein of selfishness in Mrs St. Clair; the passionate nature of Gertrude; the unpredictability of Uncle Adam; the opportunist and insensitive Mrs. Pratt; the tyrannical Lord Rossville; the comic unit that makes up the Black family - Bell, Lydia and Anne (although the latter is meant to be the ideal female figure, whom Gertrude will gradually learn from); the selfishness and vanity of Colonel Delmour; the vulgarity of Lewiston.

One interesting 'conflict' occurs between two moral themes: that children should be obedient to their parents and that one should live up to certain moral high standards. Mrs. St. Clair is unloving, grasping and vengeful; only slowly does Gertrude establish a clear and separate identity from her mother. There is still comedy to be found in Ferrier's second novel, but the concentration is more on orthodox moral concerns: the struggle between truth and deceit and the evil of vanity.

A few extracts:

Humour: Fortunately Miss Bell had no toilette duties to perform, for she was dressed for the Major in a fashionable gown made by Miss Skrimpskirt of Tattleton, from a pattern of Miss Gorewell's in Edinburgh, who got it from Miss Fleecewell of London, who had had hers direct from Madame Chefoeuvre of Paris...firmly relying on the justness of her proportions, and the orthodox length of her waist, and breadth of her shoulders, and strong in the consciousness of being flounced and hemmed up to the knees, she boldly entered, followed by her betrothed.

Miss Lilly blushed, and had no doubt that Mr Delmour was over head and ears in love with her already; and having read every novel in the circulating library at Barnford, Miss Lily was ready to be fallen in love with at a moment's warning.

Character: Mr Adam Black was a man of fair character, strong understanding, but particular temper, and unpleasing manners - with a good deal of penetration, which (as is too often the case) served no other purpose than to disgust him with his own species.

Colonel Delmour certainly was at no pains to gain the good graces of the family...and to have been at the trouble of making the agreeable to such a set of plebeians, would have required some very strong stimulus to one whose ruling principle was selfishness, and who never cared to please, unless to serve his own purpose...no views of beneficence or charity made any part of his scenes; his every idea centred in self-indulgence, and luxury and magnificence were all to which he looked as his recompense.

But it was in vain to hold this language to Lord Rossville; it was seldom an idea found entrance into his head, and when once there, it was no easy matter to dislodge it - it became, not the mere furniture of the head, to be turned or changed at will,  but seemed actually to become a part of the head itself, which it required a sort of mental scalping or trepanning to remove.

I liked the one or two references to Scott - Mrs Black was chiefly emulous of a character for her dinners, and probably laboured infinitely harder to stuff a dozen dull bodies, than the Author of Waverley does to amuse the whole world. Moreover, Uncle Adam's world has a positive change once he has surreptitiously taken up Guy Mannering!

Touches of Jane Austen? It is universally allowed, that, though nothing can be more interesting in itself than the conversation of two lovers, yet nothing can be more insipid in detail - just as the heavenly fragrance of the rose becomes vapid and sickly under all the attempts made to retain and embody its exquisite odour.

A favourable passing comment about Methodism at last! But, as has been well said by the liberal-minded Wesley...

The occasional grumble? I found the repetition of Miss Bell's a person in my situation merely tiresome. Miss Pratt, I found more irritating than comic. I also felt the last few chapters bordered more obviously on the didactic, particularly when Lyndsay was holding forth - he trusted that the influence of Divine truth would bring peace to the soul... Some commentators have suggested that it was this moral 'preaching' which led to Ferrier's works going out of favour.

The convenient deaths of Mr Delmour, then Colonel Delmour (both inheritors of the Rossville title) who was injured and betrayed by a faithless wife...fought to avenge his honour, and fell in the cause, meant that Gertrude could live happily ever after with Lyndsay, the latest Lord Rossville. What a pity he appears to be rather a prig.

Matthias Barton Mysteries 1 and 2

When we visited south Somerset in mid-August, we had half a day in the lovely market town of Sherborne, just over the border in Dorset. My purpose was to photograph the small monastic gateway

It made quite an atmospheric entrance to the lovely Abbey precinct, luckily bathed in sunlight when we were there. After a look around the Abbey itself, I spotted the Abbey shop. On the shelves were four paperbacks, written by the same author - Rosie Lear. I have long realised that I am a sucker for 'series' and, true to form, I bought all four. Another short break in North Yorkshire enabled me to read the first two in the Matthias Barton mysteries.

June 2018 and October 2018

These relatively brief novels are set in the mid-1430s; Henry VI is being persuaded to take a more active role in running the country, to no good effect. The war in France is not going well; Henry V's younger brother, the Duke of Bedford, has just died. Henry had appointed him overseer in France. Links between England and France occur in both novels, more so in the second story. There is also a town v. gown aspect (so regularly delineated in the Matthew Bartholomew stories of Susanna Gregory); this time though it is rather town v. cowl.

There is no great depth to the tales, but that is not meant as a criticism. The characters are quite well fleshed out - the two main ones, Matthias Barton, a young man trying to set up a small school in Milborne Port, and Sir Tobias Delaware, the King's Coroner for the area - a commanding man who had served in the King's army against the French, are well supported by their respective servants. Thrown into the melting plot are the Abbot Bradford of Sherborne, Father Samuel and a variety of unsavoury characters. Sherborne itself is lovingly described and those living in the area should particularly enjoy the series. Killings there are a-plenty; a burgeoning love story is on the cards; the distinctions of class are clearly drawn; the sounds and smells of medieval town life are well defined. All in all, I cantered enjoyably through the plots, pleased that I had succumbed in the little abbey shop. I look forward to reading the next two in the series. I read that there is already a fifth tale in the offing.

Pius IX - The Pope who would be King

 A weekend in London and a chance to browse in yet more bookshops. On my way to one of my favourites - Jarndyce, opposite the entrance to the British Museum, I stopped off at Judd Books. I was very pleasantly surprised; essentially it was a 'posh' remainder store, with a tremendous selection of History and Literature. I could have spent a fortune. I purchased just one volume and read it at the Caledonian Club and on the train back to Derby.

First edition - 2018

I have long been attracted to both English and European nineteenth century history - some of my most admired individuals lived through those fascinating times: Gladstone and Disraeli, Napoleon III, Cavour, Garibaldi. I can't summon up the same interest in German (Prussian?) or Russian history as I can with British, French and Italian. The USA has yet to claim any serious attention.

This 474-page concentration on one of the most important popes of Roman Catholic history, certainly held my attention. Often dramatic, it brought to its pages the rabble-rousing Charles Bonaparte (Louis Napoleon's cousin); the fervent Italian nationalist Mazzini; the Austrian web-master Metternich; Ferdinand II, King of Naples, a suspicious, superstitious, despotic character; Charles Albert, King of Savoy and Sardinia; a variety of French, Austrian and Italian diplomats and aristocrats, all with meddling fingers in the maelstrom. At the centre of all this intrigue and self-seeking, was Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, born in 1792 and made Pope Pius IX in June 1846. Surrounded and advised by  the usual mafiosi (usually referred to as cardinals), Pius moved from a youthful benevolence to a reactionary, dogmatic figure, who was responsible for elevating the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the Immaculate Conception to the central pivots of the faith. In this he was guided by Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, who would mastermind the retreat into reaction.

                         Pius IX 1792-1878                           Cardinal Antonelli 1806-1876

The three Parts of the book are headed The Beloved, The Reviled, and The Feared. Too true. Whilst I have a certain sympathy with Pius, as he turned into a fearful, vengeful being, it is difficult to feel positive towards any of the variety of unsavoury, deceitful, self-seeking characters who were involved in this unappetising tale. Garibaldi, perhaps, comes nearest to a hero. The cardinals are, in some ways, even more unsavoury than the lay leaders - they are meant to be representatives of a peace-loving, magnanimous, even poor body. They are anything but. Their clerical garbs are mere cloaks for typical human behaviour. Like the present Ayatollahs, rank hypocrisy, deceitful and power grabbing (and holding onto power) machinations predominate. 

The French get sucked in to besieging and then occupying Rome, on behalf of a Papacy they increasingly fail to identify with; the Austrians, with problems in keeping order nearer to home, spend their time, money and troops, propping up a decaying and unpopular regime; the British and American governments prate from afar. Whereas I have read quite a bit about the 1870 onward period in Italian/Papal history, I knew very little about the earlier nineteenth century. It opened my eyes and, I'm afraid to say, confirmed my prejudices. Pius, of course, excommunicated the leaders of the new Italian nation in 1870 and declared the Italian occupation of the Papal states null and void. "That they will leave Rome is a certainty" the Milan Catholic daily newspaper trumpeted. No. In fact, the popes did not set foot outside the Vatican city until 1929, when Pius XI reached a deal with Mussolini and Vatican City was formally created. Typically, Pope John Paul II beatified Pius IX in 2000 as an example of unconditional fidelity to the immutable deposit of revealed truths. 

Kertzer ends his book, the story told in these pages recounts the death throes of the popes' thousand-year kingdom....with the fall of the pope-king, the rationale for people elsewhere to accept their humble places in society as God's will, their leaders as supernaturally sanctioned, could not long survive.

An Edinburgh Pilgrimage II

 Of course, another major reason for returning to Scotland's capital city is to scour its second-hand bookshops. Alas, like everywhere else - London, Bath, York, Brighton etc. - several have closed for good; victims, not just of the recent Covid scourge, but of the Internet and a new uncultured generation. There is no time for reading if your mobile phone is beckoning.

For all that, I did manage to visit three old favourites and they delivered some interesting tomes. First to Mcnaughtan's Bookshop and Gallery at 3a Haddington Place, where I chatted to Derek Walker, who I first met at the York Book Fair. It seemed the same as ever, apart from a slight retreat from two rooms. The Scottish section (a feature of all three bookshops) was interesting, but had no great 'finds'. I did purchase two volumes published by T. N. Foulis.

                    The Life of Mansie Wauch 1911       :          The Provost 1913   

That was on the Tuesday. Wednesday afternoon, I was let loose in the West Port Area. First stop was Armchair Books, where it was a tight squeeze throughout! I did manage to find another John Galt in the same series as the two above.

Annals of the Parish 1910

Then, one hundred yards away, across the road I plunged into Edinburgh Books (once West Port Books, I think). Another great Scottish section, with more John Buchan available than in the other two. This time I bagged three volumes - one Literature and two History.

W. S. Crockett - 1932

                               A.J.P. Taylor - 1965                      Charles Spencer - 2007

All in all, a useful haul and not expensive either. They made for an interesting skim through that same evening. I also started the latest (the ninth) Sarah Hawkswood  medieval mystery novel, Wolf at the Door.

 

Sarah Hawkswood - 2020

As with all series, one finds one getting to 'know' the main personnel, and Hawkswood manages to give each of them a rounded character. She is 'drawing out' the young Wakelin as the long term successor to the grizzled Serjeant Catchpoll, and she brought Sheriff William de Beauchamp into the plot more this time. There were a few references to King Stephen, although the Anarchy 'feel' is rather slight. I finished the book on the long train journey South.

Finally, a very useful book on Edinburgh.

Published by B. T. Batsford, Spring 1947

G. Scott-Moncrieff had some trenchant views which I had no problem with, as I agreed with them! On John Knox, for instance: 

It would be difficult for anyone to make a case that Knox did other than pervert the Scottish Reformation...the impossible creed of Knox created an intellectual vacuum from which his Church can scarcely be said to have recovered....he was its saboteur rather than its genius....he was a spy for the English and their hired tool...a quisling, that is, a self-justified traitor. He was a demagogue and a liar: a man of violence who did not mind flatly contradicting himself when it suited him... And so say all of us.

It was, therefore, particularly satisfying to traipse round St Giles's cathedral, enjoying the beauty of the stained glass windows (I wasn't so sure about the Robbie Burns one, but it was another poke in the eye for Knox) and then out-staring the life-size carving of the bearded one himself. The coffee was good in thr John Knox house, too.          

An Edinburgh Pilgrimage I

 

The New Club, Princes Street, Edinburgh

We had a splendid five days in the Athens of the North last week and stayed at the New Club in Princes Street. It belies its name, as it was founded in 1787 and is Scotland's oldest and pre-eminent private Members Club. However, if we were expecting to see this rather splendid, if dour, frontage, we were to be disappointed. One has to admit, the replacement in the 1960s lived up to that foul decade's architectural standards. The 'New' building's outside is awful; the entrance is squeezed in next to an Ann Summers shop, with an outspoken window dressing; there is a grimy ATI unit and an even grimier layabout the first day we got there, begging for money. From the Edinburgh Castle battlements, on the Friday, the building stuck out like a sore thumb, particularly the bedroom block and lift shaft. To be fair, the inside was more than adequate - a very large lounge, a nicely panelled  dining room, and well-appointed, big bedrooms. Give me our Caledonian Club in London any day!

Quite apart from a week's relaxing break, I had one or two pilgrimages on my 'shopping list'. First off the block, the Monday afternoon saw us in St Cuthbert's churchyard, at the west end of Princes Street Gardens, searching for Susan Ferrier's resting-place. 

The Ferrier Family monument

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

Born 7th September 1782. Died 5th November 1854

It was a typical 19th century graveyard - best seen in the rain with heavy clouds - with memorials to the great and good, in blackened Edinburgh stone. One expected to encounter Abel Magwich skulking behind one of the gravestones. As an aside, as my wife remarked, most of the men had their careers next to their names; the women were mere daughters, wives or sisters.

Later that afternoon, we walked along George Street to search for Susan Ferrier's home at No. 25, where she kept house for her father. It had been converted into a business premises.

25 George Street (once No. 11)

The following morning, Tuesday, we visited the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. It is a red sandstone neo-gothic building, which opened in 1889. 

As with all large museums/art galleries, one eventually glazes over, after yet another florid Scottish face stares out at you. There was an excellent gallery devoted to the Jacobites and some splendid paintings of Sir Walter Scott. It was only at the very end, about to leave the entrance hall area, that I spotted the bust I had come to see.

Susan Ferrier bust by John Gall (1850)

Then it was but a short walk to Albany Street, where, at No. 38, Susan Ferrier died at her brother's house in 1854.

No 38 Albany Street

On the other side of the street was the second reason for a 'pilgrimage' - Mary Brunton. She lived with her husband, the Rev. Alexander Brunton at No. 35; she died there, on 7th December 1818, aged only 39, having given birth to a still-born son.

No 35 Albany Street 

The following morning, we climbed the hill to the Old Town and walked down the 'Royal Mile' Near the bottom is Canongate Kirk. In its kirkyard both Bruntons are buried. Their tablet is on the west wall.

Mary Brunton (née Balfour)

Born 1st November 1778. Died 7th December 1818.

It is difficult to read and the photograph above does it no favours. However, it was quite moving to stand below it and, as with Susan Ferrier's grave, think on how much pleasure her books have given me.

Two good, but virtually forgotten, Scottish novelists, helping to make their city such a cultural centre.

Scott's 'Redgauntlet' 1824

 

First edition - 1824

This is Scott 'on form' again; he is back in his beloved eighteenth century and his well-trodden paths of Dumfriesshire and Cumberland (think Guy Mannering). I agree with some reviewers, who found the double shift from Letters to Journal to usual Narrative not entirely satisfactory. John Buchan comments on the former: A common criticism is that the use of letters impedes the narrative, and no doubt there is now and then a felt hiatus, when the reader's mind has to switch back awkwardly to a different sphere. This constitutes the main artistic defect; the story is too much of a mosaic, a series of fragments of which the patter is not immediately recognised. However, Buchan argues, ...but the pattern is there, and the slow leisurely narrative of the early letters is a skilful preparation for the tumultuous speed of the later chapters. I think, on balance, he is correct. I also grasped, early on, how much of Scott himself is in the novel; surely he is both Darsie and Latimer. As Magnus Magnusson (remember him?!) wrote: its two young heroes, Alan Fairford and Darsie Latimer, between them reflect the duality of Scott's own character. Fairford, an Edinburgh advocate, is the son of a strict, ultra-conservative Edinburgh lawyer (modelled on Scott's own father), Latimer...is the young adventurer seeking to discover the secret of his parentage in the wilds of Dumfriesshire. Alan Fairford is Scott's Edinburgh self; Darsie Latimer is his Borders self. They both, like Scott, discover an ultimate commitment to the House of Hanover and its settled times (even though old Fairford felt Darsie was rather tinctured with the old leaven of prelacy...) 

The scenes along the treacherous Solway shore - the description of the incoming tide which advances with such rapidity upon these fatal sands, which could still be heard, even after Darsie's successful escape thanks to the Laird, like the roar of some immense monster defrauded of its prey; the smugglers whose main allies are darkness, treachery and brutality; the description of the inn (Scott loves his dark and winding passages!) - are superb descriptive settings.

The various characters are strongly drawn: Provost Crosbie, the fence sitter, who takes refuge in the lack of any power he has beyond the ports of the burgh  and Mr Maxwell of Summertrees/Pate-in-Peril, the old Jacobite (they both have a marvellously described dinner with Alan); Tom Trumbull, hypocrisy incarnate, a treacherous 'Covenanter'; Nanty Ewart, Captain of the Jumping Jenny (what a compelling and tragic life story); Father Crackenthorp, a man so overgrown with corpulence that he could be distinguished even in the moonlight; the Papist jades, the Miss Arthurets; the young miscreant little Benjie, the naughtiest varlet in the whole neighbourhood; Joshua Geddes, the Quaker, drawn with respect, unlike Covenanters, and his sister Rachel; Squire Foxley of Foxley Hall, who could pshaw, hem and elevate his eyebrows; Cristal Nixon, a compelling nasty piece of work, with hard and harsh countenance, who meets a thoroughly deserved end; Wandering Willie, of course, gives literature his famous Tale, for evermore in many short-story compendiums. Then, there is the cause of it all - Father Buonaventure (aka the aging Bonnie Prince) - again drawn with some skill and sympathy, as is that of General Campbell, sent to capture him but effects his escape.

Mr Herries of Birvenswork, aka the Laird of the Lakes/Laird of the Lochs of Solway, aka Hugh, the Laird of Redgauntlet is one of Scott's most powerfully drawn characters.  His features were high and prominent in such a degree, that one knew not whether to term them harsh or handsome. In either case,, the sparkling grey eye, aquiline nose, and well-formed mouth, combined to render his physiognomy noble and expressive. An air of sadness, or severity, or of both, seemed to indicate a melancholy, and, at the same time, a haughty temper.  He is the most dangerous of characters - a fanatic, who,(as Lilias remarks) in his moments of enthusiasm, knew neither remorse nor fear. His decision to follow his 'king', the less-bonnie Prince Charlie, to the continent, then enter a monastery (where, of course, he ends up as Prior) is thoroughly understandable. The Stuart line and the Roman Catholic Church are his twin pillars.

Peter Peebles, an eccentric plaintiff...an insane beggar - as poor as Job, and as mad as a March hare!, keeps popping up to drink and moan. I have decided that in every Scott novel, at least one character annoys me intensely. Usually it is the mode of speech the author gives them; here it is Peebles. Buchan describes him as the best of Scott's half-wits, a massive figure of realistic farce, not without hints of tragedy. Perhaps the clue is in the word farce - I have always disliked farce in the theatre, cinema or on the printed page.

 Green Mantle

I leave until last my lady Green Mantle. She visits Alan Fairford in Edinburgh, her figure and dress concealed by a walking-cloak of green silk, fancifully embroidered; in which, though heavy for the season, her person was enveloped, and which, moreover, was furnished with a hood.. Alan could still make out one of the prettiest countenances I have seen...I could see her complexion was beautiful - her chin finely turned - her lips coral - and her teeth rivals to ivory. Of course, he falls - Plague on her green mantle, she can be nothing better than a fairy; she keeps possession of my head yet! Darsie, in turn, meets her at a dance in Brokenburn Glen. He fantasies about the nymph's lovely eyes...she was so very beautiful, and assumed an air of so much dignity. Alas, not only does he find out her name - Lilias - but also that she is his sister.  If a hermit had proposed to him to club for a pot of beer, the illusion of his reverend sanctity could not have been dispelled more effectually than the divine qualities of Green-Mantle faded upon the ill-imagined frank-heartedness of poor Lilias. Love of a different kind takes over. Sir Arthur Darsie Redgauntlet of that Ilk is her brother - no more is Darsie Latimer.

Our homes in Ashby de la Zouch and, here, in Kings Newton bear the name Greenmantle - with reference to John Buchan's stirring tale. Now, it can have two forebears!