Kennedy King's 'Love and a Sword' 1899

 

John Macqueen first edition - 1899

Kennedy King was the pseudonym which George Douglas Brown had used for his many articles for Blackwood's Magazine etc.. He is better known for his famous corrective of the kailyard school of Ian Maclaren, S. R. Crockett, and James Barrie - The House with the Green Shutters (1901), which he published under his real name. He had planned a third novel, to be called The Incompatibles, but contracted pneumonia and died, aged only 33, in 1902.

Love and a Sword. A Tale of the Afridi War is essentially a love story embedded in tales of derring-do on the North-West Frontier, those (still) inhospitable lands bordering modern Pakistan and Afghanistan.  A brother and sister, Jack and Jessica Martin, are on their way out to India - he to join his regiment, she, an 18 year-old, to marry the best friend and contemporary of her deceased father, the widower and much older man (as old as her father), Mr. Raleigh. The train they are on is derailed due to flooding in Italy and Jessica is rescued by the hero of the tale, Roderick Gordon - the last of the race of General Gordon - an old dare-devil who rode with Cardigan in the charge of the Light Brigade and followed Havelock into Lucknow. The general's three eldest boys were killed - one at the Cape, one in Burmah, and one two years ago on the North-West Frontier of India. So, no pressure, Roderick m'boy. In fact, Roderick when he rescues Jessica, promptly falls in moon-struck love with her. They get to India, meet up with Mr. Raleigh, prepare for the wedding, and then...Jessica is captured by the Afridi. Worse, she is in the hands of Russian spies.

Roderick rescues Jessica

Petroff - one of the three evil Russians - with dirty, podgy fingers covered with flashy rings...hairless eyelids...in the corner between the cheek and the fleshy part of the nose was a huge mole, out of which grew a rank tuft of hair...glistening white-way up; the tip of the tuft was jet black...Ugh! With his henchmen, Alsakoff, who desperately wants Jessica too, and Ferreida. They attempt, more than once, to murder Roderick and Jack on the way out to India. After much travail amongst the inhospitable mountains of the Afridi territory, Roderick not only rescues Jessica, but in the process kills all three Russians. Gordon had inherited a great deal of fatalistic Calvinism with his Scotch blood, and he felt it a duty to God and man to stamp these scoundrels out wherever he should find them. The description of the fight between Roderick and Petroff, ending in the latter being thrown over a cliff, is particularly well written. At the end, Mr. Raleigh, being the English gentleman he was, releases Jessica so she can marry Roderick. 

What to make of the tale? 

Kennedy (Brown) had clearly read up on the recent Tirah campaign/expedition (September 1897 to April 1898). At one point, he gives us a four-page History lesson: Now the North-West Frontier of India is the pulse, so to speak, of the whole situation. We must keep our finger on that. For Russia wants the India peninsula to round off her empire; if she had that, she might hold the whole of Asia and dominate the whole of the Pacific; acquiring a power such as is unknown to the memory of man - a Colossus to bestride the world. And the Afridi passes to Afghanistan and Russia are the key to the situation... There are moments of pathos. Thus, the first blood was shed in the Afridi War. Only a fair-haired lad lying stiff among the dust in the fresh air of dawn! Only a name flashed swiftly to England! Only a widowed mother in Somerset with the tears raining down her wrinkled cheeks, when the sunset slanted through her lonely room, breaking her heart because her only boy was lost among the Pathan Hills! The frequent and accurate descriptions of the brutal campaign are well drawn.

It is a novel very much of his time. When Roderick defeats Petroff, in front of a great swarm, a multitude of black faces, he raises a huge goblet of crystal above his head and cries, in a great voice "To the Queen of England!" Perhaps, he should have called her "Empress". The 'n' word (as we have to say these days) is used twice ("these ignorant n-----s think I have been trying to fight unfairly - I, an Englishman!"  actually, he is a Scotsman); the Russians are dastardly; the British soldiers have more pluck in them than a row of professional turkey workers. Only once does Roderick seem to see the native point of view; Roderick and Jack intend to shout out "Supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race", when they confront the enemy. What's not to cheer? Well, this reader got fed up with the name 'Jessica' being bleated every few pages. Roderick's a British soldier - man up. What would the General say? The descriptions of the fighting got rather repetitive, but, of course, that was due to its accuracy. If I was a public schoolboy at the turn of the century, I would be thrilled to read this novel - and be ready to go out and fight the Boers.