Michael Scott's 'The Cruise of the Midge' 1836

 

 William Blackwood first edition - 1836

Once again, I am blogging before I have started the second volume. I am more used to Michael Scott's style now - its heaviness doesn't 'crush' me as much! In fact, so far, I am enjoying The Cruise of the Midge more than I did Tom Cringle's Log. I found the first volume more gripping than the second(and the whole of Tom Cringle). Half the book is set on the West African coast, known as the White Man's Grave - Scott's book reinforces this image. The 'Midge' is aptly renamed the 'Mosquito' when bought by Spaniards later on in the West Indies. Africans had lived with mosquitoes spreading Malaria for generations and many had built up a resistance to the foe; this was not the case with Europeans, who died in great numbers of the sickness. Through his protagonist, Benjamin Brail, the author describes the horrors of both the slave traders and the tropical environment in which they operated. His detailed description of the horrific river brought to mind aspects of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness  about the early chapters.

Perhaps the most powerful and heart rending chapters (VIII and IX:) are entitled Cape Missionaries  and Foundering of the Hermes, and describe in great detail the effects of a violent Atlantic storm and the subsequent foundering of a ship of missionaries;  all bar one small child (and his pet lamb who is lashed to him) are drowned. This little lad is nicknamed Dicky  Phantom, after the pet monkey who had just been swept away from Benjamin Brail's felucca. Another poignantly described tragedy: as his little black gibbering face, with the eyes starting from his head, and his mouth open and grinning, while he coughed and spluttered out the sea water, looked its last at us from the curling ridge of a wave... I have always disliked, been afraid of, the Sea and Michael Scott's graphic descriptions simply rammed home this fear.

Benjamin Brail is a more sympathetic character, to my mind, than Tom Cringle and by the end of the first volume, I had identified more with the other characters - they were believable and functioned as quite separate individuals, much more so than the Cringle cast. The second volume, however, was more of a struggle. Although there are several episodes with well-judged humour, too often it felt rather forced. The brute Adderfang, the unbalanced Lennox, the hearty Mr Hudson, the attractive de Walden, the lady-love of Braill, Helen Hudson, are all characters in their own right, but I found the Irishman, Listado, - with his flaunting gingham coat and potato face - tiresome and over-the-top.  More importantly, I felt that the second volume appeared to be an action-replay of the Cringle book. Yet another description of journeys into a West Indian island's interior can become boring. Incidents in  the 'Midge' have counterparts in 'Cringle'. There is a little more of a plot in the former - the Lennox-Adderfang rivalry, the mystery of de Walden's antecedents - which showed Scott was trying to write something more than a travelogue.

I can't say I found the two novels 'easy' to read, but they were worth persevering with. Michael Scott's own experience in the West Indies and his consorting with many real-life persons who were transferred into his fiction, give a reality, a verisimilitude, to his tales.

Michael Scott's 'Tom Cringle's Log' 1833

 

William Blackwood first edition - 1833

Unusually, I have decided to comment on a book after having only read the first volume of two - Michael Scott's Tom Cringle's Log. I was looking forward to reading a story with an unusual setting, particularly as it was the West Indies, where I spent eight of my first ten years. However, I have to admit, I was disappointed. The first three or four pages were fine, with some shafts of humour, but once Cringle got shifted off to Heligoland it got rather bogged in minutiae, which continued throughout the book. In fact, the placing of that first chapter around Hamburgh, appeared divorced from the rest of the volume, based in the West Indies. I began to feel that the chapters were a series of episodes, usually self-contained. Only the presence of Cringle linked them. Was that it? Written for separate articles in the Blackwood's Magazine? Which would be fine; but reading them one after the other wore me down!

Luckily, I found backing for this feeling in Sir George Douglas' The 'Blackwood' Group's' (1897) chapter on Michael Scott. The Log began to make its appearance in Blackwood's Magazine as a disconnected series of sketches, published intermittently as the author supplied them, or as the editor found it convenient to print them...the shrewd Mr Blackwood, who greatly admired the sketches, persuaded the author to give them some sort of connecting link...the young midshipman accordingly began to cut a more conspicuous figure. Douglas rightly praises Scott's talent for presentation, adding that the author's sojourns in the West Indies gave him command of rich and rare material - the area's quaint and original types of planter and seaman, the picturesqueness of its desperadoes, and the naivete of its coloured people...; but Douglas again is correct when he writes that Scott lacks constructive power - remove any one incident from one of his stories, and the reader will be the poorer by the loss of only an interesting incident, and by no more. So true.

Tom Cringle at sea

I regularly got bogged down in details where I had minimal interest and even less understanding - e.g. in the (repetitive) description of the ships' sails - shall we shake a reef out of the main and mizen-topsails, sir, and set the mainsail and spanker? These passages probably meant more to the early 19th century reader than an early 21st century one. I was confused on occasions as to which ship was which and found the sea fights also rather repetitive, as were the regular deaths; although, the sad demise of John Crow's monkey, Jackoo, touched me. I found the chapter when Cringle goes into a delirium caused by yellow fever, sheer hard going. The two chapters based in Jamaica were clearly formulated from personal experiences, and the characters Cringle comes up against, such as  Peregrine Whiffle, modelled on real life. I liked the reference to one planter, a Welshman, with a face as long as my arm, and a drawl worthy of a methodist parson... Do any of these authors have a good word for Methodism?!

 

The names of characters were often amusing or (like Charles Dickens) simply silly - Captain Deadeye; Mr Splinter, the first lieutenant; Mr Treenail, the second lieutenant; Dick Catgut, corporal of marines; Peter Mangrove, branch-pilot; Aaron Bang, planting attorney; Joe Rumbletithump, mate of the Porpoise; Mr Pepperpot Wagatail; and Mother Dingychops.

I found I couldn't keep track of Cringle's Newfoundland dog, Sneezer. He suddenly appears from nowhere (first mentioned on page 129), then disappears for long absences. The result of the chapters (episodes) being written at different times? The sudden aside about his cousin Mary, who married me, and is now the mother of half-a-dozen little Cringles, will, I assume, be fleshed out in volume two. Is it the author, or merely Cringle, who says, I don't like Americans; I never did, and never shall like them...I have no wish to eat with them, drink with them, deal with, or consort with them in any way... So, so far, I found the author's style confusing and convoluted and I could only read a couple of chapters at a time. To be fair, it did end on a high, humorous and drunken note!

Let's see what I think after Volume Two.

********************************

Well, I finished the volume after several 'bites' at it. Let's start with a positive. I thoroughly enjoyed the two chapters entitled The Pirate's Leman (II) and Scenes in Cuba (III): there was humour, pathos and the characters and scenery were not too 'overdrawn'. They revealed Michael Scott's talents for observation - e.g. the butterfly being trapped and eaten by the camelion [sic] lizard which, in turn, gorged by a snake, whose small round black snout, with a pair of little fiery lasting eyes made short work of the latter as could be perceived from the lump which gradually moved down the snake's neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach... And all the while a dying girl had watched the 'tragedies' all unfold - can you not read it yet, Mr Cringle? can you not read my story in the fate of the first beautiful fly, and the miserable end of my Federico [hanged as a pirate], in that of the lizard? Cringle's dog, Sneezer, keeps reappearing and then disappearing. The reader assumes he follows his master back to England.

The mixture of political philosophy and heavily detailed narrative swamped any feeling that this was a novel. The overlong, and repetitive, descriptions of the West Indian and Central American landscapes/geography became rather boring, as did the focus on characters' wearing apparel and features. I find that I have several times pencilled a comment in the margins - 'too detailed', 'these incidents occur too often'. The regular descriptions of the various settlements, the climate and the topography actually oppresses this reader.

Interestingly, he more than once refers to John Wilson - old Kit North himself, the hoary sinner who seduced me. There are also musings on slavery and the Slave Trade, which are well worth pondering. I was going to say Cringle's attitude on this most emotive of topics is neither black or white, but I might get 'cancelled' in these intolerant times.

Amelia Smyth's 'Probation and Other Tales' 1832

 

Adam Black first edition - 1832

 

This is a 'heavy' book, in more senses than one. Perhaps it should have been published in two volumes. I've noticed that I wrote of the same author's 'The Return' (in her Tales of the Moors, 1828) that ''It is a solid tale without a sparkle'. I had a similar feeling about this, much longer Tale; but, perhaps, this would be a unfair. The volume is solid, stolid even, and 'meaty' and well worth persevering with. The main story, Probation, is 392 pages long and it often feels that the author spends three pages describing something, when one page would have been enough. Notwithstanding this, she never lost control of the plotting.

The hero certainly experiences enough pitfalls in his early years to last him a lifetime. His father, also Edmund, marries an orphan kinswoman Emily Aspinall, and is 'cut off' by a doggedly inveterate parent. They go to India, where Edmund has secured a military appointment. Here the hero is born. The family uproots for America, where the old Doctor Aspinall - our American oddity - has a fortune of at least 200,000 dollars and not a soul to leave it to! Only the boy is allowed to visit the grizzled, uncouth old man. The family, failing to be promised anything, decide to return to England and throw themselves on the mercy of Edmund's father. Alack and alas, the boat founders; all are  lost, bar Edmund and honest Jack Norton, who not only saves young Edmund but takes him home.

The reader has to concentrate, as the story gets further entangled. Jack and Edmund, journeying to London, find that grandfather has died, so they return to Kent empty-handed. Then Providence (or the first of a serious unlikely coincidences) which had once miraculously preserved, still watched over Edmund. Knocked down, while tumbling for money, by a carriage, it turns out that the occupant is none other than his step grandmother, to whom all his grandfather's fortune was left! Years pass, under her and a tutor's care. A dull routine of visits to spas and stiff sepulchral parties follow, until, aged nineteen, Edmund, as the heir, is left £200,000 on her death (she was found one day as if asleep in her chair). For the next two years, he plunges into bacchanalian orgies, gaming and other disreputable expenses, frittering away his inheritance.

Three years rolled away in a course of idleness and extravagance. Then, another amazing coincidence. Edmund stops at a village inn and sees an advertisement: The nearest of kin, if any, to the deceased Gideon Aspinall, M.D., who settled in America...may hear something to their advantage... The fly in the ointment proves to be another claimant - Mrs Clitheroe. Edmund decides, incognito, to join her and her daughter in a coach returning to Manchester and an invalid husband. Under his nom de plume, Mr Maberly, he not only makes their acquaintance but saves the girl, Pauline, when the coach overturns. With a fractured arm, Edmund stays with the Clitheroes for some time, admits to who he really is, proposes to Pauline, is rejected, so journeys to Edinburgh on the advice of Mrs Clitheroe.

It is to meet and stay with Mrs Sydney Hume, a family friend who looked after Pauline for two years when she was younger. At last, we meet the real 'heroine' of the tale - the septuagenarian Mrs Hume. She dominates the rest of the book - rich as she was in all besides, her influence became in later like an inexhaustible mine of happiness to others, and thus of course to herself. The grand dame holds regular dinners and Edmund is introduced to none other than Walter Scott - ...with a smile escaping from beneath his shaggy eyebrows and high o'erarching forehead, like the line of  dazzling sunshine so often seen at sea just skirting the base of a beetling cliff... Edmund goes with Mrs Hume to Glen Falconer, in the Highlands, where he meets the laird, Mr Falconer - a stately ruin of one of those majestic figures of the olden time, whom we certainly do not see growing up among their degenerate descendants to replace them  and his sister, Miss Annie, quick and irritable and very mischievous, with a fund of mother wit and shrewd observation. Edmund also meets, and falls for,  the beautiful Alice Moray, mistress of a nearby castle and of thousands of acres. Sensibly, he is warned off by Mrs Hume.

Whilst in Edinburgh, another mammoth coincidence occurs. Edmund meets a disabled beggar, who turns out to be Jack Norton! Of course, Jack is helped to a future life of comfort far beyond silver or gold. The rest of the Tale can be briefly told. First Edmund thinks he has won old Dr Aspinall's fortune; then it turns out it is Pauline who is left the money due to a Will lately re-found. Thus, they marry and live at Edmund's revivified ancestral pile in Gloucestershire, with the blessing of Mrs Sydney Hume. Pauline, who rarely figures in person throughout the book, is totally outshone by the latter.

It struck me that the Tale was essentially a sequence of short stories (exemplified by The Cavaliere Servente on pages 170 to 197, which has no bearing on the main narrative). The 'other Tales' are slight; one of 61 pages - 'The Voturier's Daughter'; the other a mere 14 pages long - 'The Deserter of Castel Gandolfo'. Both merited reading, with elements of humour and pathos in each.

Galt's 'The Radical' 1832

 

James Fraser first edition - 1832

My last Galt - another fictitious autobiography; but not as satisfying as The Member, The Provost or The Annals. Like The Member, its sales were disappointing.

I dislike radicalism, whether of the left or right, and found Nathan Butt, by and large, abhorrent. Thus, I agreed with his parents! As his father said, Nathan Butt, you have been from your infancy a turbulent child; and, later, you have from your youth upward, been contumacious to reproof... He wanted to abolish marriage (an obligation...at variance with the freedom which mankind have derived from nature), law, religion and property - all, in his mind, antipathetic to 'Nature'. In practice, like most narcissists, that meant the freedom to follow 'natural' impulses applied only to himself. He is no democrat -  the wise (i.e. himself) are few, and the foolish numerous. They are the bumpkin crowd. In some ways, Galt's novel is remarkably contemporary - the humourless extremists that people the so-called social media show a tolerance only to their own viewpoint; cancelling is to be carried out on others, never themselves. Butt would find fellow worshippers these days amongst the 'woke' fraternity.

Due to the above, I struggled on with the novel, even though I understood the author's purpose. A self-regarding, humourless character taking centre stage throughout does not lead to a happy reading. I see I pencilled in at the top of page 7, "what a brat!"

There are some useful points from three modern critics:

Ian Gordon (1972) comments:  The Radical is less concerned with the politics of power (than The Member) - indeed the hero, Nathan Butt, barely gains his seat in Parliament when an election committee of the House ejects him, ruling that he has been returned by perjury. Rather, it is a skilful psychological study of the development of a natural rebel...

P. H. Scott (1985) suggests that The Radical has none of the distinctive qualities of Galt at his best....it shows how much Galt loses when he denies himself his facility in Scots...[it] is written in English in a rotund and abstract style. There is more theorising than narrative, few dialogues and such characters as there are have little life and individuality...there is self-revelation but without much subtlety, some pathos, but no comedy. Surely, Scott is correct, when he sees the novel simply as a political pamphlet. Galt deliberately carried the ideas of the Radicals to a anarchistic extreme as a plea for caution towards the dismantling of the complex restraints which society had imposed on natural impulses.

Gordon Millar (2017) says that The Radical is a wry portrait of a hypocritical extremist...who professes to love mankind in general. He cannot, however, treat those close to him with kindness...Butt's Radicalism is based not on extending the franchise as far as possible, but on rule by the wise few, of whom he thinks he is naturally a member.

Butt's behaviour towards his father and mother (I really felt that the demise of my worthy mother left me freer to pursue the course of my endeavours to improve the condition of man); towards his uncle; the girl who he seduced; his wife; all were the hallmarks of an obnoxious, selfish egomaniac. Thank goodness he was quickly booted out of Parliament! 

I found it interesting that (on page 95) Galt makes reference, through Butt, to the ineffectuality of the Scottish Radical campaign. Before I read Maggie Craig's One Week in April: The Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 (2020), I knew nothing of it. (See my Blog of 31st January).

Galt's 'The Member' 1832

             James Fraser first edition - 1832

The Member has usually ranked highly with critics and aficionados of John Galt's works. Ian Gordon, in his John Galt: The Life of a Writer (1972), heads the Chapter which includes an appraisal of the book, The fight back. Galt later recalled the middle months of 1831 as the most uncomfortable of my whole life. He was not particularly well and he wanted to escape from the 'mill of the publishers Colburn and Bentley', and write something of  his own choice. He had long thought of composing a political novel - The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie were both about power and they had sold well. Moreover, Reform was in the air. Galt appeared to have chosen well, - most reviewers thought so. The Athenaeum wished Mr Galt would do nothing but write imaginary autobiographies. The Literary Gazette admired his dry humour and shrewd observation. Yet the book did not sell well. Why? A major reason was the inexperience of the new publisher, particularly over publicity and distribution

Ian Gordon is fulsome in his praise: The Member shows Galt at his ironic best. In a self-told and self-revealing narrative, the Scots hero Archibald Jobbry returns moderately wealthy from India and decides to purchase a seat in Parliament - 'my object in being at the expense of going therein was to make power for myself...to benefit my kith and kin. His tricks allow him to win two contested elections and retire at a propitious time for himself. Christopher Harvie describes The Member as the first political novel tout court, whilst Gordon Millar (2017) argues that Galt is, in fact, vital to any discussion of political fiction because he made a pioneering, sustained contribution that drew on pre-Reform politics. The journey from parliamentary novice to skilful political operator is, indeed, well told. Millar further points out that the real-life Whigs were taken in by Galt's irony, in that the aspects of Jobbry's political behaviour that his opponents would take exception to, were ones which deep down Galt approved of. I must admit, I fell into Galt's 'trap' as well!

Why did I not like The Member as much as The Provost (or The Annals, for that matter)? Perhaps it was too earnest; Galt really meaning what he wrote. Irony is not enough to hold one's support for 272 pages. It needs more humour or wit. Yes, there were momentary shafts. When Jobbry was wondering how to dispose of the rest of the thousand pounds a year secured by him for a 'place', there anent I called to mind a son that I had in the natural way, who was in the army. Thus Captain Jobbry (of whom we heard no more) gained £300 from his 'natural' father. Another amusing throwaway line comes when, after he has been elected to Parliament for the seat of Frailtown, Jobbry mentions to Mr Spicer, a local worthy, it really gives me great pleasure to hear that you, in that part of England, are in such a very thriving condition; by the by, in what county is Frailtown? The skullduggery involved in returning Jobbry to Parliament is also droll, as is the portrait of the local patron, Lord Dilldam.

Another reason for my not 'getting on with' the novel as well I might, is that the political issues of the times -  the Corn Laws, Reform, Catholic Emancipation  - is of less interest these days and Galt, to this reader at least, gets rather bogged down in the specifics. Once or twice, I even got lost in his explanations.  It was interesting to read this passage: and whatever therefore the artifices and craft of diplomaticians may have turned the [Holy] Alliance to, there was, undoubtedly, something wise and grand in the first conception, of making the nations of the world responsible to an earthly tribunal, like individuals in private life to the courts of law. The League of and the United Nations - here we come.

As a 'moderate Tory', Galt (Jobbry) appealed to my own inclinations and I was on his side throughout. His 'slipperiness' should not be condoned, but his independence should surely be supported, not denigrated. Moreover, Jobbry, although disapproving of Reform, realised why it should proceed. I leave this Blog with a quotation from Gordon Millar: Far more than Disraeli or Trollope, for example, Galt concentrates on politicians at work, rather than in love, in debt, or on the sports field. No wonder Millar entitles his Chapter Pioneering the Political Novel in English.

Scott's 'Castle Dangerous' 1832

 

First (1832) and later editions

 

Well, I have finally crossed the Bar; I have read the Waverley series of novels (apart from Waverley itself, too expensive) all in first edition (Waverley I have recently purchased in a third edition, also published in 1814). I commenced with Guy Mannering on 15th January 2021 and have read 86 books since then, many of them in three-deckers. I have but five more novels to wrap up my Early Nineteenth Century Scottish Novels programme. Then a break until later this year, when I will mop up about half a dozen purchased subsequently to the original List. Hey ho!

What of Scott's finale - Castle Dangerous? If I start with his final paragraphs, (on pp. 328-330) it is because they are the most poignant.

The gentle reader is acquainted, that these are , in all probability, the last tales which it will be the lot of the Author to submit to the public. He is now on the eve of visiting foreign parts...to climates which he may possibly obtain such a restoration of health as may serve him to spin his thread to an end in his own country. It ends with Abbotsford, September, 1831. It was not to be. A year later, September 1832, the Author of Waverley was no more. 

Castle Dangerous is the work of a tired, ill man. The relating of the quarrel between de Walton and de Valence is overlong and is not strictly relevant to the main plot. The final combat in St. Bride's Kirk does not have the effect it could have done in the hands of a younger Scott. John Buchan argues that the oppression of the author's spirits is curiously reflected in the weather of the tale, for all the events take place under grey skies, in creeping mists and driving rain.

The two downsides for me were:

There was the usual 'flirtation' with the supernatural, viz.  a tall thin form, attired in, or rather shaded with, a long flowing dusky robe, having a face and physiognomy so wild and overgrow with hair as to be hardly human, were the only marked outlines of the phantom...but, it came from Hugonet, the violer, on retirement into a cloister near the Lake of Pembelmere in Wales - so, what can you expect.` Then there is de Valence's sight of  an apparition of a mounted horseman in full armour in the small and ruinous street of the deserted town of Douglas. No wonder his retainers were struck with a feeling like supernatural terror. One realises, later, that it was Sir James Douglas mooching about.

Secondly, there is (inevitably?) a dungeon, such as in those days held victims hopeless of escape. Yet,  the Lady of Hautlieu and the Lady of Berkely do escape. How?  A trapdoor, carefully concealed, curiously jointed and oiled, leads to a secret postern...and away they both go. The unlikelihood of such a dungeon having a trapdoor, known only to the nun is really beyond belief! At least the trapdoor in the Inn in Anne of Geierstein was understandable.

A summary of Scott's novels is really beyond me, as I am no literary expert. John Buchan can argue that Scott was a master but not a schoolmaster of language, and sometimes grammar and syntax go by the board. However, overall, they have been a source of much enjoyment over the last sixteenth months. He is of another age (one preferable to the 21st century disaster) and regarded as totally unfashionable. But so am I ! Yes, there were tedious passages (often bearing little relevance to the flow of the story) - there are certainly longueurs and excessive padding. Too often the dialogue was Scott communing with himself, whether the characters were male or female (he is no great exponent of the female mind and temperament - Buchan). Inevitably, there were sections drenched in purple prose, usually relating to descriptions of scenery. He was at his happiest and most convincing in the novels based in Scotland, with some of the non-European scenes being clearly the result of regurgitated book reading. His prejudices were usually mine - anti Roman Catholicism (in The Monastery and The Abbot) and Covenanters (in Old Mortality); a suspicion of Oliver Cromwell's motives (in Woodstock); and a deep respect for antiquarians (Jonathan Oldbuck in The Antiquary). 

Do I have a favourite novel? I find this impossible to answer, as there were aspects to all of them which I enjoyed and few did not have moments when I wanted to skip portions. The general consensus is that the half-dozen early works, exploring Scotland's past, were among his best: Guy Mannering (1815); The Antiquary (1816); Old Mortality (1816) Rob Roy (1818); The Heart of Midlothian (1818); The Bride of Lammermoor (1819). Later on, Redgauntlet (1824) and The Fair Maid of Perth (1828) could be numbered among them, especially the former. I certainly enjoyed reading all the above. As for what might be termed the 'medieval' novels - Ivanhoe (1819); Kenilworth (1820); The Fortunes of Nigel (1822); Quentin Durward (1823); The Betrothed (1825); The Talisman (1825) and Anne of Geierstein (1829) - Quentin Durward probably appealed to me the most; although none failed to disappoint, even the maligned The Betrothed. The most recently read, Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous (both 1832) do not live up to the standards of their predecessors. Then there are The Black Dwarf (1816); A Legend of Montrose (1819); The Monastery (1820); The Abbot (1820); The Pirate (1822); Peveril of the Peak (1822); St. Ronan's Well (1823);Woodstock (1826) - none in the first rank, but all with compelling characters and scenes, and interesting narratives.