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

Susanna Gregory - Thomas Chaloner Adventure No. 14

 

First Sphere paperback edition

This is my fourteenth Thomas Chaloner 'Adventure (since A Conspiracy of Violence in 2007 [paperback]), to add to my twenty-four Matthew Bartholomew novels. Both Susanna (aka Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic who was previously a coroner's officer) and I have shown stamina along the way. She is now 63 and has retreated to writing a Chaloner story every two years (as with Bartholomew). The latter series shows definite signs of 'flagging', having commenced in 1996, and more than one Amazon reviewer suggests she has run out of steam. Chaloner is faring slightly better, but it is similarly becoming a little repetitive in plot line and dialogue.

Chaloner himself seems to be less effective and more tentative, worrying about his image and fearing his increasing association with the spymaster general's assassin, Swaddell. The latter is more fleshed out in this story, a more rounded character at last emerging out of the shadows. The two of them certainly take their time in finding the culprits. One reason for this is that the author has far too many characters popping in and out of the narrative. I found myself trying to work out who was who more than once. It is not helped by the book being so drawn out (and occasionally repetitive) - 456 pages in the paperback edition. It could have been shortened by 100 pages and been a much 'tighter' affair. Thurloe, once Cromwell's Spymaster, hardly figures this time; nor do other characters from previous books, such as the Earl of Clarendon; Spymaster Williamson; Surgeon Wiseman; Temperance North, Wiseman's paramour and her Hercules' Club; the Rainbow pub and its motley crew - Farr, Rector Thompson and Stedman. The Duchess of Newcastle may have been eccentric in real life, but her portrayal is uneven and quite unrealistic. The characters gathered around her are most unlikeable, as are the members of the Cockpit Club There are also worrying signs of 21st century issues being brought in - slavery, feminism, lesbianism, animal rights. Chaloner is, on every occasion, on the side of the Godly.

The explanation and unravelling of all the murders, on the roof of  the Newcastle house - taking a few pages to sort out the previous 400+, was tortuous and totally unlikely. Even when trying to rescue his nieces, Chaloner proves to be a failure. One begins to wonder why the Earl of Clarendown would ever employ him as his sleuth. Swaddell has a bit more about him.  Above all, the reader does not warm to any of the characters; something, surely, which helps a book along. I see the 25th Matthew Bartholomew book is due out in paperback in August 2022. And, of course, I'll be purchasing it.

Scott's 'The Talisman' 1825

 

First edition (3rd and 4th volume) - 1825

I have finished the four volumes which make up Tales of the Crusaders - now The  Talisman is under my belt with The Betrothed. I must admit to a mild charge of heresy, in that I enjoyed both. Even John Buchan was dismissive of the former: It is an indubitable failure, and the reason is plain. The theme - the intricate cross-currents in love made inevitable by the Crusades - might have made a good novel, but the interest would have lain chiefly in its psychology. Scott's strength did not lie in reading the mind of the remote past but in chronicling its deeds; so he condemned himself to a task outside his interest and beyond his powers.  Buchan says there is no swift tale of adventure to atone for its flatness and Damian is too much the chronic invalid to be a satisfactory lover.

Buchan does commend the latter tale: that novel is all book-work, for Scott knew nothing of the East, and not very much of the inner soul of the Crusades. But his imagination fired at the thought of honest English and Scots warriors in the unfamiliar desert... There is much to criticise - the landscape descriptions border on paste board scenery; the secret chapel at Engaddi is too Gothic; the two dwarfs an irritant; the hermit, Hamako aka Theodorick, too unlikely a monstrosity. 

Scott's portrayal of Richard I is well crafted, from the sick, bed-ridden lion, ill with a slow-wasting fever,  to the dictatorial and arrogant supremacist in front of the other crusading leaders - who hate him but are in awe of him.

King Richard receives his wife Berengaria 

and his kin, Edith Plantagenet

Everyone, apart from Richard, appears to be in 'disguise', for good or evil purposes. Saladin first appears as a Saracen Emir, Sheerkohf, the Lion of the Mountain, whom Sir Kenneth of Scotland, or Knight of the Leopard (the hero) unhorses on his way with a message to Saladin. He then assumes the guise of a physician or leech, who brings Richard back to health. Sir Kenneth, who at one stage is disguised as a mute Nubian slave, turns out to be Prince David of Scotland, the Earl of Huntingdon - which is lucky, as he can now marry a Plantagenet.

The Hakim and Sir Kenneth

Certain scenes smack of Ivanhoe - the Tournament, the use of disguise (Ivanhoe and Richard himself in the earlier novel); the part played by a jester or fool; the 'baddie' Templar... The dissension amongst the crusaders is well sketched out - the complex Philip of France; the treacherous Conrade of Montserrat, the oafish Archduke of Austria, the sinister Master of the Knights Templar, the slimy Bishop of Tyre. One of the few crusaders to come out of the story well is the stolid Thomas de Vaux: his stature approached the gigantic, and his hair in thickness might have resembled that of Sampson...his frame seemed of that kind which most readily defies both toil and climate, for he was thin-flanked, broad-chested, long-armed, deep-breathed, and strong-limbed. Interestingly, the work is probably the first novel in English to portray Muslims in a positive light. The one true, sagacious character throughout appears to be Roswal, the large stag greyhound belonging to Sir Kenneth.

Not Scott at his best, but certainly a novel which was commended in several respected contemporary journals.

Richard prepares to kill the traitor

Sir Kenneth of Scotland