Cadell and Co. first edition - 1829
Walter Scott, of his composition of Anne of Geierstein, wrote I muzzled on. I can call it little better. The materials are excellent, but the power of using them is failing. Apparently, he began to fall asleep over his work and found the going tough, even loathing the work before completion. However, the story of the last few years of Charles the Bold's (I prefer 'the Rash') Burgundy - the novel runs from the Autumn of 1474 to Charles' death at the battle of Nancy in January 1477) - is a thrilling one.
There appears to be three main aspects to the novel.
Firstly, the Gothic.
As Hesketh Pearson writes, Scott's youthful love of witches sorcery, apparitions and demons, remained with him to the end...he touches [here] on superstitions, visions, secret societies (I found the chanting of the Secret Tribunal/Holy Vehme simply daft) dungeons (Arthur has to experience a typical Scott basement), portentous ritual, mysterious disappearances, and all the other dramatic devices that enthral the juvenile mind, including a trapdoor and a sinister priest (thanks to the ill-omened master of the Golden Fleece, John Mengs, placing Oxford in the correct room of his inn). I find this aspect of Scott's novels the most irritating! (the 'apparition' of Anne leaving the fortress at night and passing a shocked Arthur stifled a yawn from this reader) and the drawn out tale by Rudolf Donnerhugel about Anne's ancestry again bored me; but, as A.N. Wilson sensibly writes: since we do not belong to a 'Gothic generation', how can we read and appreciate his novels? On the other hand, I don't mind the mysterious identity aspect, adopted by Oxford and his son, as in the Black Knight - Lionheart - in Ivanhoe; Maître Pierre - Louis XI - in Quentin Durward; or Saladin in The Talisman.
Arthur hangs on!
The second major theme, of course, is Romance. George Saintsbury puts the romance of Arthur and Anne above, not below, the usual hero and heroine. It begins with one of Scott's strengths as a storyteller - the marrying of the environment with humankind; in this case, Arthur's rescue by Anne from a precipice above a torrent, which he heard raging at the depth of a hundred yards beneath, with a noise like subterranean thunder. These first few chapters are excellent and we are drawn into this budding romance to a background of powerful Alpine scenery. No matter that Anne's father the Count is a wizard...her grandmother was a will-of-wisp, Anne is the one for Arthur. She is missing from nearly all of Volume III, but reappears at the end for her nuptials. The subsidiary romance between Annette Veilchen (a sparkling young lady!) and her beau Louis Sprenger is a happy vignette.
Thirdly, there is the History. Scott knew his history well, and he explains the relevance of Charles the Bold's importance to the England of Lancaster v. York and the events leading up to the Treaty of Picquigny between Edward IV and Louis XI in 1475. Given the loyalties of Oxford and his son, the bias is firmly Lancastrian. Edward is variously described (by Oxford) as a voluptuous usurper...sensual debauchee supported by (says Margaret of Anjou) the false, the traitorous, the dishonoured George, whom he calls Duke of Clarence - the blood-drinker, Richard - the licentious Hastings...
He also gives an accurate account of the breakdown of relations between Charles and the Swiss Cantons. Scott's portrayal of Charles is compelling, on a par with that of Louis XI in Quentin Durward. Charles mixed cruelty with justice, magnanimity with meanness of spirit, economy with extravagance, and liberality with avarice...The other dominating portrayal is that of Margaret of Anjou: whose noble and majestic features, which even yet, - though care, disappointment, domestic grief, and humbled pride, had quenched the fire of her eye, and wasted the smooth dignity of her forehead, - even yet showed the remains of that beauty which once was held unequalled in Europe.
Admittedly, he allows poetic licence to trump the facts - with the deaths of Margaret of Anjou and her father King René. Margaret died near Anjou on 25 August 1482 not 1476, whilst René died two years earlier, in July 1480. Moreover, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, had no children, apart from an illegitimate daughter, Katherine, and, between 1474 and 1478, he was imprisoned in Hammes Castle near Calais. So was Philipson really Oxford!
John Buchan suggests Anne of Geierstein has never had its merits fully recognized...it is not one of the great novels, but it is a vigorous and competent one...there is no sadness in the book; its spirit is happy. Well, yes - if you discount Margaret of Anjou's desperate state; the failure of the Earl of Oxford's plans and Charles the Bold's disintegration! A.N. Wilson praises what he calls 'the set pieces' - as in the conclave of the Vehm-gericht and King René's artistic court in Provence and the Troubadours. George Saintsbury does, however, suggest the novel's chief fault, in fact, lies with the too great predominance of merely episodic and unnecessary things and persons, like the Vehmgericht and King René's court.
There are the usual well-drawn minor characters - Arnold Biederman, with the broad shoulders and prominent muscles of a Hercules...the steady sagacious features, open front, large blue eyes, and deliberate resolution which it expressed, more resembled the character of the fabled King of Gods and men; Sigismund, Biederman's son and the dullest of the family, with the limited intellect of a simple mind, but who comes up trumps more than once; Rudolph of Donnerhugel, the bold and jealous rival of Arthur for Anne's heart; the sinister Priest of Saint Paul's (aka the Carmelite aka Count Albert of Geierstein, Anne's father); Brother Bartholomew, the sanctimonious but ill-intentioned lay brother aiming to rob Oxford on the road; the evil henchman of Charles, Archibald de Hagenbach (fit applicant for a part in a Hammer Horror film), with his wonderful lines in black humour, meeting a thoroughly deserved end on the makeshift scaffold (rather horrifically described by Scott).
Bye bye Hagenbach
I'll forgive Scott his forays into the supernatural; his drawn-out dialogues (such as between Annette and Anne, whilst Arthur waits patiently below!), and his off piste chapters; for, nonetheless, I did enjoy Anne of Geierstein. I bought this first edition on 20th February 1989, and remember reading it 33 years ago, again with pleasure.
I noticed more mistakes in the text than usual, e.g. Albert for Arthur; 1376 for 1476; 1466 (twice) for 1476; and two Chapter VIIIs in Volume I.
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