Scott's 'Count Robert of Paris' 1832

Robert Cadell first edition - 1832

By early 1830, Walter Scott was clearly an ill man - in February he collapsed at home after a Court Session. Throughout that year, his bodily strength ebbed. In November he had another slight apoplectic seizure, but he refused to slacken his workload. He was busy with his novel about the court of Byzantium in the late eleventh century, Count Robert of Paris. As John Buchan says, he had chosen an arid subject and he could not give the dry bones life. Neither Ballantyne nor the published Cadell liked it. Then, on 16th April 1831, Scott had a severe paralytic stroke; but, within a fortnight, he was back at his desk, struggling with the novel. It pleased nobody, so its publication was delayed. This, then, is the background to his penultimate story.

In fact, there's not much I want to say about the novel. I found it steady but not particularly inspiring reading. The most alive characters (in fact, one was quickly put to death) were the tiger and Silvan, the orang-outang and man of the woods, both first encountered in one of the author's favourite set pieces, a dungeon. Scott had clearly read up on the period; or, rather, read Gibbon and Anna's paean to her father, but the result is a rather dry regurgitation of History interspersed with the usual overlong 'dialogue' or monologues. His forays into irrelevant topics (essentially 'padding') was even more blatant than usual. Of the main characters, Bertha is the only one of the four females - Anna Comnena, her mother the Empress Irene, and Brenhilda being the others) - who elicited any sympathy from this reader; Hereward the Varangian, Count Robert and the Emperor Alexius had their moments, but the Scott of a decade earlier would surely have 'fleshed them out' to greater purpose. Nicephorus Briennius, the 'Caesar', Agelastes, the crafty philosopher who is deservedly done to death by Silvan, and Achilles Tatius also fulfilled their parts, if not much more.

Sylvan the Smart, Killer Orangutang

John Buchan argues that Count Robert is history rather than fiction, a compilation from Gibbon and the Alexiad and as prolix as Anna Comnena herself...he was too languid to reproduce the drama of the clash of West and East in the first Crusade. There are moments of vigour, like the fight with the tiger in the dungeon, but everywhere lassitude weights his pen.

Hesketh Pearson has this to say: The chief blot on both (Castle Dangerous as well) stories is their confusion and consequent tedium. There is material in Count Robert for a first-class romance of court intrigue, and the characters of 'Hereward', 'Count Robert' and 'Alexius' are well enough outlined to show that Scott could have drawn them a great deal better. The astonishing thing is that, in the author's condition, the books were produced at all...

Other reviewers are also damning: Angus and Jenny Calder suggest Count Robert is probably the least successful product of his career; Andrew Lang, apparently, thought it was Scott's worst novel. Scott himself, in a letter to Cadell, feared it would never be better than mended china.

A positive aspect of owning these four volumes is that they once belonged to John Meade Falkner, whose bookplates are on the front pastedowns (in Volume III, he clearly wasn't concentrating as he first put one on the back pastedown upside down!). I bought them as long ago as 16th August 1984 (from Robin Waterfield in Oxford, alas long closed) and have only just got around to reading them, thirty-eight years later. 

Susan Ferrier's 'Destiny; or, The Chief's Daughter' 1831

 

Robert Cadell first edition - 1831

I read Destiny in mid September 2019 and recall thoroughly enjoying it. Thus, I looked forward to a reacquaintance. For the first 220 pages of Volume I, I was again singing Susan Ferrier's praises. First of all, she appeared to have retained her wit. Here is the very first paragraph:

All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to a Highland Chief. He has his lochs and his islands, his mountains and his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymores, and Gaelic, and hot blood, and dirks. Delicious! And the Chief of Glenroy, at first, lives up to this - he had a tree; and as for his rent-roll, it was like a journey in a fairy tale, "longer, and longer, and longer, than I can tell...he felt himself a great man; and though he did not say it himself that he was the greatest man in the world, he certainly would have puzzled to say who was greater."

Other well-drawn and, usually, humorous characters support these early chapters  The Laird of Benbowie - an elderly man...possessing no very distinguishing traits, except a pair of voluminous eyebrows, very round shoulders, a wig that looked as if it had been made of spun yarn, an unvarying snuff-coloured coat, and a series of the most frightful waistcoats that ever were seen. He is in general obtuse as a hedgehog. Mrs Macaulay - a cousin not many degrees removed from the Chief himself...now an elderly woman in years, but in nothing else...she was one of those happily-constituted beings, who look as if they could "extract sunbeams from cucumbers". Ferrier gives three or four pages of character-drawing to this unique woman. Then the Reverend Duncan M'Dow lands on the pages - a large, loud-spoken, splay-footed man, whose chief characteristics were his bad preaching, his love of eating, his rapacity for augmentations (or, as he termed it, owgmentations) and a want of tact...his hands and feet were in everybody's way: the former, indeed, like huge grappling irons...the latter...projecting into the very middle of the room, like two prodigious moles, or bastions...[his] principal object in this world was self... There is more than a touch of Scott's Dominie Sampson about him. Finally, this cast of mildly grotesque characters are joined by Mungo Malcolm, a little meagre sickly-looking man, with a sharp, bitter face, a pair of fiery, vindictive eyes, and a mouth all puckered up, who had, much to Glenroy's chagrin, inherited the Lairdship of Inch Orran. Much hilarity - for the reader, at least, ensues over the manoeverings between these disparate characters. Mrs Inch Orran is another delightful-drawn person, allowing the author full rein with her (biting) satire. As long as all the above hogged the narrative, the reader could happily be carried along à la Jane Austen.

The rot sets in early, though. Genroy's first marriage only produced a daughter, Edith, at the expense of his wife's life. HIs second was quite unsuitable - to a English woman, the Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, who was so very affable and agreeable - such an enthusiastic admirer of tartan, and Highland bonnets, and Highland scenery... However, not only did Lady Elizabeth, on moving to Caledonia, find life there backward and boring, but she inculcated into her spoilt 5-year-old daughter Florinda similar attitudes. Eventually, Lady Elizabeth (and Glenroy) has had enough and she takes her daughter (now presumptive heir to her grandfather) back to England. 

Glenroy has a son, Norman, who is joined by Reginald, a spoiled  handsome boy of the same age, who is the son of Glenroy's brother-in-law, Sir Angus Malcolm. A third boy, Ronald, son of Captain Malcolm, proud father of eight children, catches the eye of Inch Orran, who leaves his estate to him, not to Glenroy!  Inch Orran dies; Norman dies; Glenroy suffers a stroke, Ronald appears drowned in a shipwreck and the novel loses not only interesting characters but its humour. The long drawn out demise of Glenroy becomes tiresome; M'Dow's incessant bleating equally so; the behaviour of Lady Elizabeth and Florinda go from selfish-bad to worse; Reginald turns out to be a rotter and marries Florinda, not his early love Edith; and the feeling grows on the reader that two volumes would have been enough. Piety appears to win over humour; Captain and Mrs Malcolm may be very religious and 'good', but their platitudes are merely boring. Lucy Malcolm, their daughter - whom I thought was going to play a major role in the story, simply disappears until the very end. The Conways also lack 'spark'

Ronald marries Edith at the end; Lady Elizabeth, Florinda and Reginald get their just deserts; but, how one longs for the light-hearted, penetrative shafts of humour that the novel embarked with. There is a feeling of 'padding' about one or two chapters (after all, the novel was dedicated to Sir Walter!) and the didactic angle grates on 21st century eyes. Sir George Douglas (1897) remarked that idle pages and straggling incidents abound and in fact the sense of form which was so conspicuous in The Inheritance is in Destiny conspicuous only by absence. Other critics found the novel pietistic, with too much moralising. Mary Cullinan (1984) argues that her spontaneity and satiric humour were smothered by her growing seriousness and piety...(the novel) is a serious work by an ailing, aging woman who is coming to terms with her religious views and her own mortality. One must, therefore, value M'Dow's poor jokes, Mr Ribley's "Kitty, my dear" and all the other human foibles, as the novel would present a much less enjoyable task for the reader without them.

Ferrier had twenty-three years still to live; but, as far as we know, published no more fiction. Perhaps she realised that her attempt to concentrate more on her characters' final destinies, rather than their earthly aims and foibles, was not successful. Taking her three novels together, however, one feels that the title 'The Edinburgh Jane Austen' is not far off the mark.

G. R. Gleig's 'The Country Curate' 1830

 

 Colburn and Bentley first edition - 1830

George Robert Gleig (1796-1888) led a remarkable life which reads like the stuff of fiction. Born in Stirling, he was educated at the local Grammar School. In 1808, his father became Bishop of Brechin. George gave up a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford to join the Duke of Wellington's army as an Ensign in the 85th Light Infantry. He fought in southern France and then was sent to the war against the United States. He took part in five battles (including New Orleans and Washington) and was three times wounded. After peace was declared, Gleig resumed a scholarship at Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1816. He married Sarah Cameron in 1819, while still at Oxford. Having taken his B.A. and M.A., he took Holy Orders in 1820. He became curate of Westwell in Kent and later gained the curacy of Ash and the rectorship of Ivychurch.

By the early 1820s Gleig was already writing for Blackwood's Magazine on his Peninsular War exploits; these articles were collected and published as The Subaltern (probably his most famous work) in 1825. He wrote nearly a dozen other works of fiction, mostly two or three volumes in length and many more, often religious, non-fiction tomes. He was the author of Lives of Warren Hastings, Robert Clive and Wellington. He had time to become the Chaplain to the Chelsea (Pensioners) Hospital; and was also Chaplain-General of the Forces (1844-1875) and Inspector-General of Military Schools (1846-1857). He died at Stratfield Turgis, Hampshire in 1888.

What of The Country Curate? The tales were clearly based on his time as a curate/rector in Kent. In fact, he writes in the Advertisement at the start of Volume I: Of the following sketches there is not one which cannot lay claim to be founded upon fact, - whilst there are several which deserve to be received as little more than plain narratives of real occurrences. 

The first story - The Pastor - relates the fifteen years spent by Abraham Williams ministering to his flock at St. Alphage (the real Westwell or Ash?) one of the most kind-hearted and pious individuals of whom the Church of England has cause to boast. Abraham entered Jesus College, and matriculated, at the same time as the principal narrator (the author?) and retained links through letter writing. Thus, not only did the narrator marry Abraham's younger sister, but he was bequeathed the former's 'papers'. The tragedy in Abraham's life is that unable to marry his childhood sweetheart Julia, as he was a Fellow of a College, he had to watch her pine away to die of consumption and a broken heart - Julia loved too warmly. For twelve long years Abraham devoted himself to his parishioners, to his garden and, to diversify that, he was in the habit of noting down all such events as appeared worthy of record within the circle of his little district. These 'papers' or 'notes, consist of  - The Poacher, The Schoolmistress, The Shipwreck, The Fatalist, The Smugglers and The Suicide in Volume I; and The Miser, The Rose of East Kent and The Parish Apprentice in Volume II.

The more I read, the more I realised that the stories were suffused with melancholia. The Poacher told of Simon Lee, dweller in a miserable hovel in the distant part of the parish, and his eldest son Joe. He was the most skilful and the most determined poacher in all the country... the Lees were notorious. Not a gamekeeper round but knew them. Thrown off his family farm of some 30-40 acres, denied parish relief, one can sympathise with his nefarious dealings. Joe ends up killing a keeper in fisticuffs, but is found guilty of only manslaughter. In revenge, other keepers manage to track the Lees to their home and Joe is shot dead. Simon went downhill mentally from that day and he wandered forth one morning, unshod and bare-headed... He was never heard of again. His wife and four surviving children fell on the poor-rates.

More miserable a tale was The Schoolmistress. Dame Tapsal, early left a widow, ran a small school in the village. She had two sons and three daughters. Four of the five infected with sickness, exchanged the mortal for the immortal state. One daughter, Eleanor remained - the prettiest and most interesting girl in the parish. Alas, a rogue entered their lives - a Captain Morton, attached to a regiment based locally. They fall in love; but Morton, having promised a marriage, goes away for months and Eleanor' health declines into consumption. Morton finally returns, but the shock kills her. 

The Shipwreck is merely an introit to The Fatalist. The only survivor of a local ship disaster is termed The Stranger throughout the first story. An unsettling character, he leaves a packet of papers with the curate, and the second tale relates his life story. This includes another melancholy section, where Charles St. Clair (the Fatalist) in uncontrolled anger strikes his girlfriend, Lucy, dead. Six years in a cell - mad, raving, outrageously mad - he is finally released and he goes to India. It is on his return journey that he is shipwrecked. Thus ended a tale as wild and extravagant as any which I ever perused. The Smugglers is a sorry story of the widow Brockman and her son Will, a 23 year-old apple of her eye. He does well in the navy, rising through able seaman, second and first mate to prospective command of his own brig, Britannia.  Alas, he falls in with a scoundrel family, the Petleys - out and out smugglers. They inveigle Will into joining in their illegal activities and, worse, frame him for the murder of an excise officer. This unbalances the widow's mental state. Condemned to death, Will awaits his fate in Maidstone gaol. One of the Petleys confesses and Will is released at the last minute. A happy ending, for once, unlike the next story, The Suicide. It refers to a mother, Eliza Thornton, who lived for twenty-four years in a lonely cottage a quarter of an hour's walk from St Alphage's vicarage, Once beautiful and married to an upright gentleman,  whom she did not love, she is seduced by her old lover, Captain Cecil - he was a villain and she ceased to be virtuous. Rather stupidly, she tells her husband Montague that her new-born child is not his but Cecil's. The latter is challenged to a duel, but flees. Eliza is placed in this lonely cottage by her unforgiving husband. Worse, her son is deaf and dumb, unable to walk without assistance and feeble minded. Finally, the idiot died. One year later, the widow followed him, found hung suspended by the neck from a beam in the roof of her apartment.

Volume II has the three stories mentioned above. The Miser is by far the longest (pages 1-185) and possibly the most interesting of all the tales. It concerns a fellow curate of Abraham Williams, one Llewellin Davies, whose local image is that of a penurious, niggardly man. An old Welshwoman, Margery Jones looks after him; both are from North Wales. After much urging (having taken Davies' services when ill and comforted him when the old woman dies), Williams gets Davies to narrate his story. His father was a spendthrift, who brought disaster on his family. The family home is to be taken from them, but young Davies gets a strange document drawn up by the local solicitors; he can repurchase the property if he can gather together enough finance. He has 30 years to do this. He is penniless. Moreover, two years after the disaster, both his brothers die, as does his mother;  then his father degenerates into a paralytic and a driveller. He, too, then dies. After miseries in a small boys' school in London, Davies gains a curacy in Kent. From then on he hoards, scrimps and saves to reach the required amount to buy back the family holding. He achieves it; hence he can explain things to Abraham. He travels to North Wales to claim his land. Sleeping in his boyhood chamber, he does not surface the following morning. An old servant does to the bedchamber: he drew back the hangings, and beheld his master a corpse; and the stiffened condition of the limbs, with the cold and clammy state of the skin, gave proof that he must have been dead at least four hours. An uplifting ending; melancholia reigns again.

Worse is to follow. The Rose of East Kent tells the sad story of Rose, daughter of Captain Wilmot, a retired officer of the navy. A paragon of virtue, and worryingly innocent, she falls for an absolute bounder, the Hon. Major Elliot. His love-making is successful in both the Captain and his daughter's eyes. It would be difficult to meet a more agreeable or gentlemanly man. A wedding is planned: BUT someone knows something and spills the beans just prior to the wedding day. Elliot is already married! The rotter skips away to London and embarks for the East Indies and is heard of no more.  Rose is not just shattered; she was stricken She takes to her bed - her life appeared to steal away, like the sands through an hour-glass... She dies and is followed by her broken-hearted father, six months later. The Parish Apprentice is of a different hue, but also ends in death. Once again, it has a story within a story. The curate is called to the dying John Bushell, late a parish apprentice, but now the richest man in the parish. Rumours abound of how he gained his wealth and he has a morbid dislike of his fellow-men and the church. It is clear that there is an enormous weight on his conscience; eventually he unburdens himself to Abraham. It is a sorry tale of two murders, including that of a pretty awful Jew. It is of note that the author has a very poor opinion of workhouse children...in nine cases out of ten, a child reared in a workhouse proves, when he attains to manhood, both idle and wicked.

I have not made up my mind about Gleig as a writer of fiction. There is a touch of the documentary about these stories. Perhaps he is correct when he terms his tales plain narratives. The author seems detached from his characters, his writing appears measured with almost a lack of warmth. There is no humour to lighten the melancholy. His framework of a story teller within storyteller - e.g. the narrator -> the curate -> the Fatalist, the Miser and the Parish Apprentice - pushes the author further away from his tale.  Unlike several of his Scottish contemporaries, he does not drench his pages with religious (didactic?) platitudes, even though he is of the cloth. His style is urbane and it flows well, so I should admire it more than I do. If I can afford it, I might try and purchase The Subaltern, to see if I can be more positive.