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!