Hector Macneill's 'The Scottish Adventurers' 1812

 

William Blackwood 2nd edition - 1812

I think this is the first novel I have read where there are no chapters to punctuate the text. It means there are 579 pages of uninterrupted  prose. I don't think it affected one's reading adversely, apart from not quite knowing when to break off to do something else. The other major issue is that the whole of Volume I and up to page 37 in Volume II is a straightforward tale of two young Edinburgh born Scotsmen, making their way in the British navy and, later, successfully in India. Then, suddenly, the story concentrates on a totally different family - over 90 pages on what the author calls an 'anecdote'. Only on page 128 does the focus return to the original two  men.

My copy is the second edition, published in the same year as the first, just a few months later. The 'Advertisement' in the former states that it is an 'improved Edition' and it contains a letter from the author to a Mrs ---, dated Edinburgh, April, 1812. In fact, it is a very useful letter, as it contains an explanation of the very purpose of the novel.

...the chief object is to illustrate the improprieties and absurdities of our MODERN EDUCATION in this part of the kingdom, by introducing, as often as possible, anecdotes, private histories, and remarks, applicable and explanatory of these improprieties. Among a number of others, which might be easily pointed out, what has struck me as the most glaring, is the teaching all descriptions of boys Latin, and all girls without any exception whatever Music. 

Thus, the main story of Tom Drysdale, the son of a shoemaker, and Andrew Cochrane, the son of a tailor rams home the consequences or effects of the first; and the minor, inserted, tale of Arabella Timbertone and her family illustrates the second. After a brief rendition of the two boys' education in Edinburgh, where Andrew is sent to the Hie School to study, above all, Latin and Tom is apprenticed to a cabinet maker/joiner, the author's didactic approach hits top gear. Tom's father cannot help thinking, that such parts of education [the Classics] belong not to tradesmen's sons, I am determined to give mine useful instruction, and no more. Both their histories seemingly take a turn for the worse when, only on page 34, they are pressganged into the British Navy.

In his Dedication to John Campbell at the start of Volume I, Macneill refers to his own early life in the British Navy, apologising for the occasional, but necessary and characteristic, swearing attached to such a life. Whereas Tom takes to the seafaring life quite easily and soon proves the worth of his practical skills, Andrew is 'all at sea'. His Latin companion, Horace, is valueless and it is only his friend's sustained support that at last gets him into a useful job in the ship's secretariat. Both young men do well in India, Andrew being the fortunate, but rather convoluted, beneficiary from the death of a young widow. Tom marries his own true love, Susan, and also gains considerable wealth from a grateful family after he rescued a mother and her two children  from a shipwreck.

Tom and Susan move to Edinburgh and this gives the author not only an excuse to narrate the 'anecdote' about Arabella Timbertone (the name gives the game away) and her disastrous foray into Music, a skill she has absolutely no aptitude for, but also to decry the mores of that city. Edinburgh's elite are fashionable and showy - this folly pervaded, less or more, almost every description of the inhabitants. Susan looked in vain for a renewal of those happy social hours she formerly enjoyed in the dock-yard of Portsmouth...she even perceived, that the simplicity of her own manners and conversation ...often produced a sneer of ridicule and a look of contempt...Fortuitously, Tom is able to purchase a small holding in the countryside: It was now that the important branches of his early instruction came usefully and smiling to his aid. His geometrical and mathematical knowledge enabled him, not only to lay out his pleasure-ground with judgement and correctness, but to construct his house and offices  with convenience and taste. No wonder he was delighted to welcome his old, by now widowed, father to live with them. Andrew returns from India, fabulously wealthy, marries a slightly stuck-up woman (referred to by the author as Mrs Cochran, compared with just Susan) and also comes north to Scotland. Of course, following Hector Macneill's didactic plan, both Cochrans come to realise the Drysdales have found the right Eden and settle down nearby themselves. Moreover, their daughter Harriet later marries a Captain Mitchell, the earlier beneficiary of influential support from Andrew. All's well with the Drysdale/Cochran world.

Macneill has to give a final, didactic flourish:

...instead of blindly adhering to established Custom, and Fashionable Example [i.e studying Latin and Music at all costs], "THE WAY TO RISE", and succeed in life, is to give an education suitable to Station and Circumstances, and, as far as these will admit, conformable to the natural capacity and genius of the child. If only the various UK governments since, particularly, 1997 had adhered to this obvious dictum. 

Benjamin Chapman - 1st USA edition - 1812

The author, Hector Macneill (1746-1818) also had a fascinating life. Son of a poor army captain, he got a job as a clerk at the age of fourteen. He was sent to the West Indies and served as an assistant secretary from 1780 to 1786. Returning to Scotland, he wrote various political pamphlets, two novels and several poems. He is best known for his Songs. He died in Edinburgh in 1818.

William Golding's 'The Spire' 1964

 

Faber and Faber first edition - 1964

Reading Golding's novel brought home to me why I was right to choose History rather than English to study for my university degree. Whilst I feel I am a competent enough researcher, analyst and non-fiction writer, I think the creativity and literary imagination needed to appreciate such works as Golding's is simply not there, or hardly there. By and large, I like straightforward narrative, not unduly encumbered with nuance, irony or philosophy. To be blunt, I struggled with The Spire - I found Dean Jocelin, the central (almost only character of any weight) simply boring. Towards the end of the book, Brother Anselm complains to Jocelin that You've lain on us like a blight. Empathy oozed from me.

I am not keen on stream-of-consciousness writing (I hated Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse at 'A' Level), and the novel reeks of this. The story is a simple one: Dean Jocelin, directs the construction of a 404-foot-high spire (slightly based on Salisbury), funded by his aunt Lady Alison, a wealthy mistress of the late king (it is not clear which century it is set in - there is mention of a steel girdle to go around the lower reaches of the spire). The cathedral has insufficient foundations to support such a spire and Jocelin is regularly warned not to proceed by not only other clergy but by the master builder, Roger Mason. The latter is forced to continue with the project because Jocelin has made it impossible for him to work elsewhere (Malmesbury Abbey is mentioned). Jocelin's obsession deepens with the progression of the novel. But so does a pain in his spine (he regards this as an angel alternately comforting or punishing him). His obsession means that he neglects his duties as Dean, fails to pray and ignores those who most need him. Meanwhile, the four main tower pillars begin  to 'sing'. Shades of John Meade Falkner's Minster in his The Nebuly Coat, where 'the arch never sleeps'.

Jocelin also lusts after Goody Pangall, the wife of the crippled and impotent cathedral servant, Pangall. He is distrought when he realises Goody is having an affair with Roger Mason. Pangall disappears (a pagan sacrifice buried in the base earth of the tower?) Goody dies in childbirth (Roger's); Roger descends into alcoholism. Jocelin dies of consumption, only after being told by his aunt that he was appointed, not through his merits, but by her sexual influence. One paragraph in the novel stood out for me as a sign of fine writing. It comes from the sick Jocelin being visited by his aunt:

He opened his eyes in the perfume while she was still busy about him. He examined her face from only a few inches away; and now he saw how carefully preserved and tended it was. The smooth skin was netted down by lines too fine to be seen from further off. It was a compromise between too much fat and too little, as could be seen by the deeper lines defended from becoming wrinkles at the corner of each eye and in the bland forehead. It was a face that must defend itself by dancing from expression to expression, let it should be still, and sag. Only the eyes, the little mouth, the nose, held out - bastions so strong they need not be defended.... 

I suppose I find another person's obsession of little interest. Jocelin's destroyed others' lives. He expired. Did the spire fall? Probably, but we will never know. AND I never want to see the word crossways again - I lost count in the novel!

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As an after thought, I looked at a few Reviews on Amazon UK.

One, headed simply A Dud, had this to say:

The irony of the book is the result of its enquiry into obsession. Those of others are at best inexplicable but more usually just plain boring. The Spire, I'm afraid to say as a Golding fan, is a bore.