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?!
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.
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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.
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