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