G.P.R. James' 'The King's Highway' 1840

Longman first edition - 1840

Back to one of my old favourites, G.P.R. James. In fact, this in the first of four first editions (three of which are triple-deckers and one of only two volumes) which I hope to read before Christmas. As the weather draws in, our open fire is lit, the heated blanket is placed over the recliner and our Border Collie nestles nearby, the author is a perfect companion to accompany the occasional sips of Talisker or Highland Park. One of the pleasures of reading James is that he takes you up Historical byways you may not have known about, let alone thought about.

After the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, which placed William III and Mary II on the throne, the new monarchs may have thought matters would settle down. Mission accomplished. Not a bit of it; from the start there were a series of plots by the disgruntled Jacobites (so named after their deposed king, James II). After their army's failure in Ireland, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, their attention turned to either kidnapping or assassinating William. Between 1695 and 1696, what became known as the Fenwick Plot merged into an assassination plot in the latter year. Sir John  Fenwick (c.1645-1697) had served in the English army and was a long-time meddler in politics. He was M.P. for Northumberland from 1677 to 1687 and made no secret of his allegiance to James II, although he remained in England after the Revolution of 1688. As early as 1689, he began to plot seriously against William and was imprisoned briefly in that year. He was certainly involved in even more dangerous plotting  thereafter and went into hiding when others, such as Robert Charnock, Sir John Friend and George Porter, were seized and several afterwards executed. Eventually he was caught and accused of treason. To save his skin, he charged several leading Whig noblemen with treachery. A special Act of Attainder was passed through Parliament to convict him and he was beheaded on 28 January 1697 (the last person ever executed under an Act of Attainder). William personally disliked Fenwick intensely.

G.P.R. James' tale begins on the shore of the Irish coast, immediately after the Battle of the Boyne. Two men - not quite reached the middle age - and a young boy of perhaps eight years old or a little more, are gazing out to sea, clearly waiting for a ship. The reader knows the boy is going to figure prominently in the ensuing story, as it was scarcely possibly to conceive any thing more beautiful than his countenance, or to fancy a form more replete with living grace than his. Step forward the undoubted hero of the tale. The story that follows is one of the author's more convoluted ones. A severe storm seemingly sinks the small boat one of the men and the boy embark on to take them out to a brig; we know this won't be correct, as the hero has to survive! Sure enough, they had turned back and, ever and anon, we find them both in England and Lennard Sherbrooke, the adult, after an encounter on 'The King's Highway' with highwaymen, hands over the lad to the Earl of Sunbury for safe keeping and an education. We now enter the not unusual realm (for 19th century fiction) of the boy being given an assumed name - Wilton Brown. And such he is known as until near the very end of the third volume.

The next chapter leaps forward some seven or eight years; Wilton is schooled, including at Oxford University, and grows up as a loyal Protestant servant of the present monarch. On one of his travels between Oxford and London, he encounters an overturned coach, with its occupants at bay from yet more highwaymen. The gentleman who had been riding with him and who helps in the rescue is none other than Sir John Fenwick; the rescued? - the Duke of Gaveston and his fair daughter, the Lady Laura. For Wilton, this will prove to be a match made, if not in heaven, at least on the King's Highway. He was struck with surprise by the vision of radiant loveliness which her face and form presented.

We are soon introduced to the Earl of Byerdale, who takes Wilton on as an amanuensis. Neither we nor Wilton are entirely sure of this earl's nature or honesty and one of the themes of the novel is the working out of what hidden motives lie behind his less than pleasing behaviour. More than once, Wilton remarked the eyes of the Earl fixed stern and intent upon him from beneath their overhanging brows. Those eyebrows should give Wilton and the reader fair warning that something is not quite kosher. The Earl's son, Lord Sherbrooke (a big clue, surely, in the name) is a spendthrift tearaway, who rarely sees eye to eye (or eyebrow) with his father, but gets on well enough with Wilton.

Once all the main characters have been given their moment in the tale, it now speeds on to get them all enmeshed in the real 1695/6 assassination plot. It is too convoluted to explain in a few sentences here; suffice to say that there is a most convincing pen portrait of King William, an exciting section where the dastardly plotters nearly finish off Wilton; an equally exciting escape for him and his beloved Laura; a different 'escape' for the Duke of Gaveston, who was stupid enough to attend an earlier meeting with the plotters; and a great finale when Wilton's true identity is revealed (I guessed that as early as Volume I); Lennard is also unmasked; and the 'Earl of Byerdale' gets his deserved comeuppance. 

There are rather more Jamesian paragraphs - i.e. musing and ruminating on the weather, the countryside, life in general, true love - than the normal modern reader would like; even this one, who is much more attuned to the prolixity of Scott et al, occasionally skipped another philosophical outburst. However, I still regard him as a skilled storyteller - a strong narrative drive supported by flesh-and-blood characters, whom the reader grows more attached to, or more disgusted by, as we turn the pages. 

I now turn to another James triple decker: The Step-Mother, published six years' later. Two more of his novels await after that!

Dan Jones' 'Henry V' 2024

first  edition - 2024

It's been quite some time since I have read a book relating to Henry V - fiction or non-fiction (or movie). I found Dan Jones' biography refreshing and and packed of information I hadn't previously fully 'taken on board'. Unusually, half the book (just under 200 pages) deals with Henry's life before he became king, viz. 1386-1413. Jones convincingly shows how a long, eventful and invaluable apprenticeship to the office of monarchy, where Henry learned as much from his and other's mistakes as from any successes, shaped his ruling modus operandi. Secondly, through a narrative style, the author writes Henry's biography in the present tense. Henry rides. He fights. He prays. He plans, He rules. And it works! It is almost as if the story is presented in 'real time'.

Jones details the importance of Henry's mother, Mary de Bohun; of his grandfather, John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster; and, most importantly, of his father, Henry Bolingbroke, who, in 1399, usurps the crown as Henry IV from Richard II. From his mother, Henry inherits his love of books and, above all, music. A devotee of fine cloths and good living, she is also pious; this will be one of her eldest son's traits throughout his life. Henry is 12/13 years old, a most impressionable age, when his father is banished from the kingdom for a decade. But just a year later, and his father, only recently made Duke of Hereford, has returned and overthrown Richard. A bewildering sequence of events, as Jones emphasises young Henry's attachment to the deposed monarch.

The years of his father's time on the throne are a helter-skelter of opportunities and dangers for Henry. He narrowly misses death, from an arrow lodged in his skull during the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury; he fights wearying skirmishes and conducts sieges in Wales, attempting to put down the tiresome rebellion of Owen Glendower; he watches as his father's health degenerates and he, for a while, is virtually reigning in his stead; and he becomes evermore determined to root out the heresy of the Lollards, even if it means dealing with his old friend and fellow warrior, Sir John Oldcastle. What Jones has successfully done is to make the reader feel that they are there with Henry in 1413, having followed him, almost as a companion, through the previous decade or more.  

As the author writes: 

In March 1413 Henry ascends to his father's throne better prepared for rule than any king in living memory. He arrives at a moment of extraordinary opportunity. Yet he succeeds with some doubts still remaining about his fitness for office, entrenched financial, religious and political challenges, and lingering resentment of the Lancastrian dynasty at large. The fourteen chapters and Epilogue which follow, guide the reader through the vicissitudes of the reign. The image of the playboy Hal transforming into monarchical gravitas is over-egged. Any newfound seriousness does not require a wholesale changing of his ways, for gravity, religiosity and intensity of focus are already essential parts of his character.  We see him cajoling various Parliaments into granting yet more funds for his increasingly expensive military campaigning in France; dealing ruthlessly with plotters at Southampton (his close friend Lord Scrope is summarily executed), on the very eve of his voyage to Harfleur; by force of personality leading his weary and sickly troops towards Calais and the 'miracle' of Agincourt; and the long, drawn-out aftermath of mainly siege warfare which leads not only to the Regency of the French crown and a marriage to the daughter of the permanently 'unwell' French king, Charles VI; but to his early death from dysentery on 31st August 1422 at the chateau of Bois-de-Vincennes.

I hadn't realised how important Henry's younger brothers were to the success of his reign. John, created Duke of Bedford, shaped in the same mould as Henry, who served as warden of the north-east, 'managed' England as lieutenant whilst Henry was abroad, and who took up the mantle in France - achieving at the Battle of Verneuil in 1424 a victory as splendid as that of Agincourt. Moreover, four years before his death in 1435, he had overseen the crowning of his nephew, Henry VI, as king of France. Thomas, created Duke of Clarence, a headstrong but brave soldier who was killed in March 1421 at Baugé, the first defeat for an English army in a major battle in France in nearly eight decades. Humphrey, created Duke of Gloucester, the youngest brother, under-occupied and inexperienced before the Agincourt campaign, who becomes one of Henry's ablest supporters and who is sent back to England in 1420 to take over the reins of domestic government and who excels in the tricky task of cajoling parliaments to grant yet more money. Moreover, in his uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Henry V has another consummate politician, who regularly provides finance for his nephew from his wealthy bishopric's coffers. All these men are consistently loyal to the king and, in no small part, contribute to the successes of his reign, whether on the battlefield or in the politics at home.

Jones has an interesting Summary of Henry's posthumous image. Curated and maintained by his younger brother Humphrey - who commissioned a Latin biography known as Vita Henrici Quinti -  enthusiastically aped by a young Henry VIII and further embroidered by Shakespeare, only from the 19th century was the warrior king looked at with a critical eye. Whereas William Stubbs maintained the king was the noblest and purest man who ever ruled England, J.R. Green accused Henry of wanton aggression and a failure to make good on his miraculous victory at Agincourt. Whilst C.L. Kingsford called Henry a typical medieval hero, and K.B. McFarlane stated that he was the greatest man that ever ruled England; Ian Mortimer, a 'popular writer', in his 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (2009), lays into the king from a 21st century viewpoint: Henry was a deeply flawed individual, a misogynist, a religious fundamentalist, a reckless spender of other people's money and a second-rate military commander! As a fellow History alumni of University College, London, I feel a trifle embarrassed by his over-the-top anachronistic strictures. He appears to belong to the Desmond Seward 'school' of slanted history. Rather, I agree with Dan Jones who, siding with McFarlane, suggests that he has presented a Henry who is a little more rounded and human...Henry's contemporaries saw in him a paragon of Christian, knightly virtue and the living embodiment of traditional kingship. They perceived - rightly - a ruler who made the systems of English government work as they were supposed to without resorting to novelty or swindling the system...

Other Biographies of Henry V in my Library:

1703/4:  The History of the Reign of Henry the Fifth

1838:  J. Endell Tyler - Henry of Monmouth (Richard Bentley)

1889:  The Rev. A.J. Church - Henry the Fifth (Macmillan and Co.)

1901:  C.L. Kingsford - Henry V. The Typical Medieval Hero (G.P. Putnam's Sons)

1919:  R.B. Mowat - Henry V (Constable & Company)

1934:  Philip Lindsay - King Henry V. A Chronicle (Ivor Nicholson & Watson)

1935:  J.D. Griffith Davies - Henry V (Arthur Barker)

1937:  L.A.G. Strong - Henry of Agincourt (Thomas Nelson and Sons)

1947:  E.F. Jacob - Henry V and the Invasion of France (Hodder & Stoughton)

1967:  Harold F. Hutchinson - King Henry V (The John Day Company)

1968:  C.T. Allmand - Henry V (The Historical Association)

1972:  Peter Earle - The Life and Times of Henry V (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)

1975:  Margaret Wade Labarge - Henry V. The Cautious Conqueror (Secker & Warburg)

1985:  G.L. Harriss - Henry V. The Practice of Kingship (Alan Sutton)

1987:  Desmond Seward - Henry V as Warlord (Sidgwick & Jackson)

1992:  Christopher Allmand - Henry V (Methuen London)

2004:  Keith Dockray - Henry V (Tempus Publishing)

2009:  Ian Mortimer - 1415. Henry V's Year of Glory (The Bodley Head)

2015:  Teresa Cole - Henry V. The Life of a Warrior King (Amberley Publishing) 

I also have 25 Novels on Henry V's reign, which, not surprisingly, tend to concentrate on the Agincourt campaign. One of these, Monmouth Harry by A.M. Maughan (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956), I first read as an impressionable teenager - it got me 'hooked' for evermore on both the king and Agincourt. 

Susan Ferrier revisited

 

National Library of Scotland - 1982

Searching for another book on a top shelf last week, I came across the above pamphlet, published by the National Library of Scotland to commemorate the bicentenary of Susan Ferrier's birth. Before cataloguing details of the Exhibition put on at the National Library, there is an Appreciation of my four times great-aunt by His Honour Judge James E.M. Irvine; a Commentary on the Novels of Susan Ferrier by Dr. Ian Campbell of the University of Edinburgh; and a synopsis of Maplehurst Manor, an undeveloped novel of Ferrier's, very possibly written after the success of her three published books, again by Dr. Campbell.

What I find interesting is the refrain that Susan Ferrier appeared to be balancing her quality as a comic satirist with that of an intrusive moralist. The usual argument is that the latter wins out, particularly as regards her last novel, Destiny. Here is Judge Irvine in his Introduction to her middle novel, The Inheritance (Three Rivers Books, 1984): All three novels have the same faults and virtues... they are all too full of sententious digressions (fortunately easily skipped)... In her last novel, Destiny, written at the time of her father's death the didactic moralist seems to have gained the ascendant over the comic satirist. It is my contention that Ferrier's didactic stance has been increasingly exaggerated in recent criticism.

However, back in 1929, Margaret Sackville, in her Introduction to Ferrier's Destiny, would not have agreed with the last sentence: 

[It] has a brilliant beginning but unfortunately becomes tedious as the story proceeds on account of the heavy masses of indigestible moralising which it contains... So it happens that side by side with her magnificent humour are passages of the same depressing piety which made what were called the Sunday-books of my childhood so formidable, in which dreadful little prigs lived (or more usually died) for the edification of their worldly relatives.

I have Blogged on all three of Ferrier's novels - Marriage on 2nd March 2021; The Inheritance on 25th September 2021; and Destiny on 23rd March 2021; as well as a Blog on Ferrier's homes and burial place under the heading An Edinburgh Pilgrimage (14th September 2021). I must say, when I read the books, the humour far outweighed the moralising in the majority of cases. Ian Campbell makes some valid points in his  assessment of the author and her works:

No celebratory exhibition will raise her to the rank of a Scott or a Galt...she remains a Scottish novelist of the second rank, deserving some revival of her earlier popularity and certainly deserving to be read...what has emerged is the thoughtful observation of Scottish life, the manipulation of points of view and the admission of the necessity of change...she has the wit (and the inventiveness) to catch the tone of her time and her society, the skill to make several societies interesting, the tact to make the didactic intentions tolerable, and the finesse to handle the Scottish content of her novels. I could not have put it better myself!

Susan Ferrier's bust in the National Library

In my Library:

1897: Sir George Douglas - The 'Blackwood' Group (Miss Ferrier)  (Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier)

1929: ed. John A. Doyle - Memoir and Correspondence of Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (Eveleigh Nash & Grayson)

1957: Aline Grant - Susan Ferrier of Edinburgh (Alan Swallow)

1965: W.M. Parker - Susan Ferrier and John Galt (The British Council)

1982: Judge Irvine et al. - Susan Ferrier 1782-1854 (National Library of Scotland)

1984: Mary Cullinan - Susan Ferrier (Twayne Publishers)

1988: Aileen M. Riddell - At the Verge of their proper sphere: early Nineteenth Century Scottish Women Novelists. Chapter Five (University of Glasgow PhD. Submission)

2009: Victoria Chance - The Romantic Novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (Lambert Academic Publishing)

2013: Andrew Monnickendam - The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations. Chapter Two 'Susan Ferrier and Lucre-banished Clans' (Palgrave Macmillan) 

Kieran Molly's 'Yorkist Pretenders to the Tudor Throne' 2024

 

Pen & Sword History first edition - 2024

Ever since the [in]famous 1066 and All That was published in 1930, Lamnel/Wermkin Simkin and Percy Warmneck/Warmnel/Wimneck have attracted mirthful attention. As Kieran Molloy says in his Introduction, ‘Who, it might credibly be asked, would back a Lambert or a Perkin to be king of England?’  Randolph Jones, in several Bulletin articles (including the most recent September issue – ‘Jehan le Sage. The boy who would be king’); Ian Arthurson; Nathen Amin; and, especially, Anne Wroe in her ‘The Perfect Prince’, all have tackled this conundrum. 

Molloy’s book, part prose part playscript (courtroom drama), posits several interesting surmises. He argues that the identity of Lambert Simnel is a greater mystery than that of Perkin Warbeck, and produces a ‘part detective story…with a dose of speculation layered on top’. The traditional narrative concerning Simnel owes much to Polydore Vergil, but Molloy also highlights the chroniclers Adrian de But, Jean de Molinet and Bernard André. He suggests there are three realistic possibilities for Simnel’s identity: one of the two Princes in the Tower, Edward, Earl of Warwick and an imposter. The evidence for it being Richard of Shrewsbury is ‘almost non-existent’ (only André refers to the crowning of Edward IV’s second son in Dublin); whilst Vergil does write that the Germans had come to restore (ad resitiuendum) the boy Edward. What of Warwick?  Of note is the Act of Attainder, issued when Clarence was on trial for treason in 1478, stating that the duke had caused ‘a straunge childe to have been brought into his Castell of Warwyck, and there to have putte and kept the likenesse of his Sonne and Heire’, whilst the real heir was sent to Ireland. Did this happen? Molloy points to the odd case of Ankarette Twynyho, where this possibly suspicious servant was silenced. Did the real Warwick, brought up in Ireland from the age of two, re-emerge to be crowned, whilst Henry’s ‘Warwick’ in the Tower was the ‘straunge’ young man?

Molloy next puts a forensic eye on the traditional tale of Lambert Simnel, whose name only came to light in the Act of Attainder issued in November 1487. Discrepancies in the official narrative are numerous. Could such a boy have been tutored by a humble priest, during a maximum of nine months, to impersonate one of the three possible contenders in Dublin? Why would Margaret of Burgundy support someone of non-royal blood for king?  Why would the Earl of Lincoln defer his legal claim to the throne in favour of a parvenue or even the real Warwick, who was legally debarred?  Who was Elizabeth Woodville backing? ‘There is only one person who, as king, would make such a move worthwhile: her son, Edward V.’ No wonder she was suddenly confined to Bermondsey Abbey! Molloy suggests that there were two plots: one in Ireland, backed by supporters of the Earl of Warwick, and a second, based in England, backing Edward V. He further suggests two different outcomes for Edward V, if it was he – transforming into a John Clement, who enrolled at Louvain University some seven months after Stoke Field; or a John Evans, buried in the remote north Devon village of Coldridge. Molloy summarises: first, that the real Earl of Warwick was alive, probably living in Ireland in 1486; secondly, the support for the 1486 rebellion by both Elizabeth Woodville and John de la Pole, ‘can only be rationalized by including a son of Edward IV – Edward V – at the centre of the rebellion. It was not a case of either/or, but both…no serious analysis of the Simnel affair could doubt Henry VII’s version was fiction.’

As for the drama – the trial of ‘Perkin Warbeck’ is placed in a framework of sixth form debate, where the Earl of Oxford presides and the prosecution is led by Cardinal Morton and the defence by Dean William Worsley. Witnesses include Giles Daubenay, Jean le Sauvage and Katherine Gordon. Initially wary, I found myself being carried along by the arguments and counter arguments. It was even handed, if occasionally verbose. There was little new but it was effective. Molloy admits there are still ‘loose ends’, and the drama concludes with the jury still out. So is this Reviewer.

The author is a retired Professor of Inorganic Chemistry; this brings to mind C.P. Snow’s lecture and subsequent book ‘The Two Cultures’ (1959), which highlighted the deleterious effect of a division between Science and the Humanities. Kieran Molloy is an admirable antidote. 

R.H. Forster's 'Down by the River' 1901

 

E. Johnson first edition - 1901

A year ago, I purchased a lovely copy of the above - in full blue morocco with red and brown morocco onlays to the upper board depicting a pair of crossed oars above a river motif in gilt - from Sky Duthie Rare Books of York. I am not particularly interested in rowing, but I have punted on both the Cam and the Cherwell. The book is a collection of short pieces of poetry and prose originally published in the Eagle - St. John's College, Cambridge annual review founded by the poet Thomas Ashe in 1859 and still going strong. It includes not only an overview of the previous academic year, but also articles and reports on sports activities and other features. The reason I bought Down by the River (I had searched for it for many years) was because it was written by Robert Henry Forster, an author I had been collecting for over thirty years . Born in March 1867 at Backworth, Northumberland, he was the fourth son of George Baker Forster, a mining engineer. Robert went to Harrow and then up to St. John's in 1885. He achieved a Law Tripos. As a student he rowed in the first Boat of his college's Lady Margaret Boat Club, between 1887 and 1888, at stroke and then at bow, not only at Cambridge but also in the  famous Henley Regatta. His boat won the Thames Cup at Henley. His father had rowed for St. John's in 1852 and 1853. In 1890, Robert published the official History of the Lady Margaret Boat Club 1825-1890. My copy has on its fly leaf John Merivall fr G.B. Forster, July 1890. It is interesting to note that both father and son won the "Bateman" Pairs: in 1853 and in 1889 and 1890.

"Bill" (Vanity Fair Supplement)

Robert maintained his love for rowing by becoming joint secretary of the Thames Rowing Club in 1892 with his friend L.H.K. Bushe-Fox, Starting out with a legal career in mind, he was called to the Bar in 1892; however, his writing soon took precedence, to be joined by his archaeological interests. His fascination with the past was already evident in the papers that made up The Amateur Antiquary  (1899). It was consolidated in his series of historical novels, nearly all set in the North-East, and by his academic papers, but found its greatest expression working on the Corstopitum excavations at Corbridge in Northumberland. Robert became Treasurer of the British Archaeological Association in 1905 and a vice-president in 1911.

He married Margaret Hope, quite late in life, and eventually settled in Devon. He died at Rest Dod, Combeinteignhead on 6th June 1923, aged only 56. The last of his volumes of poetry, A Devonshire Garden (1923) was published posthumously. Despite their evident popularity in his day, Robert's books are relatively hard to come by (particularly in good condition). Fame is a transient thing!

What of Down by the River? I must admit I struggled with parts of it. The poetry, often mixed in with the prose, rarely rose above good amateur verse. The first two articles are set on the River Cam and would surely appeal to the rowing fraternity. Throughout the book, the prose is leavened with touches of humour:  "There ain't a river in the land / I'd swop for my dear old Ditch".

In fact, it is just these peculiarities that constitute its principal charm, as supplying in the first place an inexhaustible source of what I may call grumbling material - without which no pleasure in life is complete - and secondly a never failing excuse for bad rowing, being efficiently aided in the latter respect by the eccentricities of boats and oars, and still more by the shortcomings of other people... (In The Eagle, December 1893).

And this poem concerning a fractious Pair:

Stroke.

"Why did I row in a pair?

Why wasn't I sooner beheaded?

Why is bow's oar in the air,

While mine in the mud is embedded?"...

Bow.

"Difficult 'tis top discern

Why o'er the stretcher stroke lingers.

Why does he bury the stern,

And bark on the gunwale my fingers?"...

And again:

"Ah!" murmured the poet,

"There once was a captain who steered,

But his second appearance is feared;

or two funnies, one whiff,

Three fours, and a skiff

Are said to have quite disappeared."

And this:

"His attitudes are quaint

His back is bent and flabby,

Suggestive of a saint

In some flamboyant abbey;

In weird spasmodic jerks

He does his clumsy toiling,

As though his rusty works

Most sadly wanted oiling."

Other pieces are more 'miss' than 'hit' with me - e.g. The Debutante and Grandfather Nile, the latter trying to prove the earliest use of oars was in ancient Egypt. It ends: To the Egyptians may be ascribed the honour of being the inventors of rowing; but it was the Phoenicians who rescued the art from Egyptian conservatism, and had the largest share in its extension and development.

The penultimate piece (from The Eagle for March 1901) the story of Ag the Boatman, and his desire for wedded bliss with Isca, who lived on the other side of a wide river with her grudging father Urt, is the most interesting section in the book - to the non-rower, that is. His trials and tribulations until he works out how to construct a boat from logs etc. is quite well done. The final article, On the Tideway (the only one not to have featured in the College magazine) is a simple story of the Thames and its river users.

Down by the River now joins the rest of my R.H. Forster collection; I am pleased I finally tracked it down and quite enjoyed reading a book on a subject I did not have much interest in!

First editions in my Library:-

Historical Novels:

1898:  The Hand of the Spoiler

1902:  A Tynedale

1903:  The Last Foray

1904:  In Steel and Leather

1905:  Strained Allegiance

1906:  The Arrow of the North

1907:  The Mistress of Aydon

1908:  A Jacobite Admiral

1909:  Harry of Athol

1911:  Midsummer Morn

1913:  The Little Maister

Poetry:

1903:  Idylls of the North

1905:  In Old Northumbria

1914:  War Poems of a Northumbrian 1st series

1915: War Poems of a Northumbrian 2nd series

1920:  The Double Realm

1922:  Two Romances in Verse

1923:  A Devonshire Garden

Miscellaneous:

1890:  The History of the Lady Margaret Boat Club

1895:  The Postgraduates, A Suggestion for a Comic Opera

1899:  The Amateur Antiquary

1901:  Down by the River

+ several papers in Journals on Archaeology.

Those in red I have not been able to collect yet.

ed. Tim Bacon's 'Robert Bakewell. Britain's Foremost Livestock Breeder' 2025

 

Brewin Books first edition - 2025

This magisterial work builds on Patricia Stanley’s original publication of the mid-1990s; she is also a major contributor here. She writes of Bakewell (1725-1795) in the first chapter: ‘He was a man of great qualities, amongst which were to be found in abundant quality, enthusiasm, perseverance, observation, judgement and, above all, great kindness to both men and beasts’. When he took over the management of Dishley Grange from his father in 1760, his aim was to improve every class of farm livestock. That his family had good pedigree in farming can be traced in Sue Brown’s very useful chapter, which amply illustrates not only the value of judicious research in Inventories, Wills, Leases etc., but also the skills needed for extrapolating a coherent story from such basic source material. The family can be traced back to 1575, when Thomas Bakewell of Normanton le Heath, near Ashby de la Zouch, made his will. His descendants consolidated their agricultural holdings in the area around Normanton, until Robert Bakewell [2] (c.1643-1716), the grandfather of the more famous agriculturist moved to Dishley in 1707, attracted by its comparatively large size, with the fields all lying together. His son, also Robert [3] (c.1685-1773) was noted for being ‘an ingeneous [sic] & able farmer’; but by the time his namesake son was thirty-five, the latter is reputed to have taken over the running of the farm. An extensive summary of Robert’s [4] character was given in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1894. It included the following: ‘From his father Bakewell had an excellent training for practical & experimental farming…his manners had a rustic yet polite & pleasing frankness…[he] had a store of anecdotes & stories…[his] kindness to brute animals was proverbial, & being in constant practice at Dishley was rewarded with extreme docility in the farm animals’.

There follow several very detailed and often highly technical chapters on Bakewell and the New Leicester Sheep, Ram Letting and his legacy relating to Horses, Pigs and Poultry. The writers – Pat Stanley, Janet Spavold and Hilary Matthews are to be congratulated on the depth of their research and their facility in explaining it to the general reader. Their sources range from the contemporary - for example Arthur Young’s ‘A Farmer’s Tour through the East of England’ and the late 18^th century Encyclopaedia Britannica - to modern publications such as K. Chivers’ ‘The Shire Horse’ (1976) and ‘The Journal of the Rutland History Society’ (1981). The 18th century was the time when beef and mutton were to be more important than ‘the power of draught and the fineness of wool’, and Robert Bakewell is probably best remembered for developing the New Leicester Sheep. That  he was also a shrewd husbandman can be seen in the precautions he took to make sure that even his cull sheep could not be kept for breeding by butchers and his involvement in the formal setting up of the Dishley Society for breeders in 1789 to protect and advance their interests.

The five chapters on the Longhorn cattle not only pay due homage to Bakewell but also to other individuals such as Sir Thomas Gresley of Drakelow Hall, Burton upon Trent; Richard Astley of Odstone Hall; the Chapman Family of Nuneaton; and, of particular interest to this Reviewer, Sir George Crewe and his son, Sir John Harpur-Crewe on their Calke Abbey estate. The latter can be classed as a Longhorn Revivalist – in February 1874, the Sporting Gazette, paid an official visit to see Sir John’s herd and, in a most poetic fashion, extolled both the man and his beasts. The baronet’s favourite cow, Tulip, (whose picture adorns page 215) took first prizes at both Birmingham and London in 1868 and a butcher offered the price of 60 guineas for her. Sir John declined the offer, took her back to Calke, where she amply repaid his faith in her by founding the outstanding Tulip tribe. As the Sporting Gazette’s journalist wrote, “No prettier animal can be a denizen of a park”. However, Sir John left instructions in his Will that on his death, his beloved herd of Longhorns was to be sold as his son, Sir Vauncey, did not share his passion for agriculture.

Other chapters deal with the cautionary tale of Bakewell’s bankruptcy in the 1770s – seemingly not previously addressed; and the family’s active membership of the local Unitarian congregation.

What of the present and future? Stanley – a breeder of Longhorn cattle herself - and Spavold are relatively optimistic for the Longhorn breed’s survival. ‘On the basis of its history of coming into and going out of fashion, it may well do, providing it continues to find its own niche in our modern world.’ This Reviewer’s regular strolls around the Calke Abbey estate are enhanced by the present Longhorn herd, one of which he saw giving birth in early August. As for the New Leicester, it continues – particularly in Leicestershire.  The Leicesters are a more direct parent of breeds such as the Hexham or Bluefaced Leicester and the Border Leicester. However, with fewer than 500 registered ewes, the Leicester Longwools are one of the rarest native breeds left in the UK. It can take heart that ‘there is scarcely a breed which has not felt the influence of the Leicester’ – Southdowns, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Shropshires, Hampshire Downs etc.

Brewin Books has used quality paper, with clear text and wide margins, and excellent colour and b & w photographs, prints and maps. John Boultbee’s painting of Bakewell’s Black Cart Horse Stallion and the 2025 photographs of the Blackbrook Longhorns are particularly impressive. There are twelve detailed Appendices, including Bakewell Family Trees, 19^th century Sale of Stock records and Stilton Cheese: History and Recipe. Perhaps Jethro Tull, Turnip Townshend and Coke of Norfolk are more widely known, but the New Dishley Society and the authors are to be highly commended, not only on such a superb production, but also being at the forefront in keeping Robert Bakewell and his legacy alive today. 

Helen MacInnes' 'The Unconquerable' 1944

 

George G. Harrap first edition - 1944

At last, I have tracked down my final Helen MacInnes novel. For years I have had twenty of her twenty-one books firmly bedded down on my Library shelves - all in first editions with their wrappers. Off and on I have searched for her third book - The Unconquerable (While We Still Live in the USA) - and finally bought it in the first week of this October. I have now read it! I started reading MacInnes' spy/thriller novels in 1970, seven that year, and continued until her last book, Ride a Pale Horse, came out in 1984.  I purchased and read them all in paperback (hence the final novel I didn't get until 1986 - by which time she was dead, of a stroke on 30 September 1985). I have kept all these paperbacks (including The Unconquerable) as well as subsequently buying all the hardback first editions. Some critics have labelled them old-fashioned, but that's probably why I like and identify with them. I grew up in the years she was writing about - the dangerous Cold War decades, when Russia and its expansionist tentacles were spreading everywhere. It was still the period when Nazis were being hunted down and non-fiction books were being published about the Second World War. MacInnes wrote about these scary times, with intelligence and an astute understanding of the complex web of foreign affairs. By the 1960s, when male authors such as Len Deighton and John Le Carré were starting out and Alistair MacLean was getting into his stride, she was into her third decade as a suspense novelist. That decade saw the publication of her Decision at Delphi, The Venetian Affair, The Double Image and The Salzburg Connection - all among her best.

Her bête noire was totalitarianism of any hue; thus her earliest novels focused on the Nazi threat and activities. Her first book, Above Suspicion (1941), was based partly on notes she had taken whilst on her honeymoon in Bavaria in 1932, and dealt with the evils of the sinister Gestapo. By the time the War broke out, MacInnes had been in New York for a year, as her husband Gilbert Highet had been made Chair of Latin and Greek at Columbia University. 1942 saw the publication of her second novel,  Assignment in Brittany, which concentrated on a battle of wits between the Nazis and the British secret service. Then came The Unconquerable, one of her longest novels (452 pages) and, possibly the most deeply felt.

It is the story of Sheila, an English girl, who was staying with friends at a Polish country house in August 1939. When war broke out she was urged to leave the country but stayed on in Warsaw. Why? Perhaps it was due to the charm of Adam Wisniewski, a Polish cavalry officer, even if she would not have admitted this. She also remained to support her Polish friends, Madam Aleksander and her children, and her brother Professor Edward Korytowski in Warsaw. Her decision meant she was caught up in a sequence of dangerous events, which included getting involved with a group of patriots working secretly to organise the defence of their country. While Nazi bombs were falling and Warsaw was burning, Michal Olszak and others are putting together plans for an organised resistance movement. Sheila becomes a cog in this complicated machinery. For a short time she masquerades as Anna Braun and, called to the Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw, is sent by the Nazis as a German agent on a mission. One German, Dittmar, has his suspicions of her and, woven into the more general story of the resistance group's conflicts with the Germans, is his attempts to track her down. The denouement, when it comes, is riveting. The book gave such an accurate portrayal of the Polish Resistance movement, that some reviewers and readers thought she had been given access to classified information (by her husband, who worked for the British MI6?).

MacInnes was certainly an able teller of exciting stories, as the dustjacket on The Unconquerable put it. She is excellent at character drawing and a skilful conveyor of atmosphere and landscape. 

Some extracts:

A spy is someone who finds out information for a certain amount of money. The money smothers his conscience if he is a traitor. If he is a patriot the money softens the lack of public recognition. But there is another word which I prefer to give to men who care neither for the money nor for any recognition. Their lives are often ruined; they may meet an unpleasant death; but they fight in their own way - with their brains, secretly, courageously - because all that matters to them is what they are fighting for. I think it is only fair to give them full credit for that.

All these people [Nazis], these self-appointed lords of creation, were vulnerable. They lived with the perpetual fear that their power was threatened, because the foundation of their power was opportunity. The nouveau riche displayed his yachts and pictures to silence his doubts. The arriviste in politics displayed his brute force for the same purpose. Cruelty, like all forms of display, was the compensation for the hidden, nagging fear of inferiority...

I know how you [Sheila] feel. I came here like you, not quite believing. Guerrilla army? A story-book adventure . . . something out of the Middle Ages . . . fantastic. Perhaps we are all these things; but we are also the only army left to a conquered country. Some of us at any rate will be here to help those who start pushing the Hun back where he belongs. Then we shan't be just a story-book chapter; we'll be in the history books as well.

A firm. crisp surface formed on the deep snow. You could walk on it as you could on icy ground. The white-grey skies changed to a clear pale blue. The sun set this clean, unmarked world glittering. The very air seemed to dance with light. Only the leeward trunks of the trees with their long winter shadows, and the walls of the houses which had sheltered under broad roofs kept their dark colour in defiance of so much change...in the evening the snow was streaked with gold and orange furrows from the large round sun sinking so swiftly behind the jagged edge of the mountains. The shadows deepened to violet, the columns of smoke thickened and darkened and the day's sounds died gradually away....night walked over the mountains, sweeping its train of stars, their brightness sharpened by the keen air. The carpet of snow became a cloth of silver. The shadows were black as the windows where the lights died one by one.

The tragedy for Poland and its people was that, although the Nazis were defeated in 1945, a further forty-five years were to pass before they achieved any sort of real independence. Not until January 1990 was the Polish People's Republic disbanded. The Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved in July 1991 and the first Polish free election took place just two months earlier. One shudders to think what probably happened to Adam Wisniewski under Russian occupation - that is, if he had survived the Nazi regime. It is ironic that it is present-day Poland who is at the forefront of European democracy, once again standing up to the evils of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.   

Previous Blogs:

[All in 2020]

March 14:  Above Suspicion (1941); Assignment in Brittany (1942)

April 23:    Horizon (1945); Friends and Lovers (1948)

May 17:     Pray for a Brave Heart (1955); North from Rome (1958)

May 23:     Decision at Delphi (1961); The Venetian Affair (1964)

June 4:       The Double Image (1966); The Salzburg Connection (1968)

June 30:     Message from Malaga (1972); The Snare of the Hunter (1974)

August 2:   Agent in Place (1976); Prelude to Terror (1978)

August 5:   The Hidden Target (1980); Cloak of Darkness (1982) 

August 9:   Ride a Pale Horse (1984)

Not Blogged on:

Rest and be Thankful (1949)

Neither Five nor Three (1951)

I and my True Love (1953)

Sarah Hawkswood's 'Feast for the Ravens' 2025

Allison & Busby paperback edition - 2025

I have loyally bought Sarah Hawkswood's Bradecote and Catchpoll's mysteries each time they have appeared in the Allison & Busby paperback series. Feast for the Ravens is the thirteenth and it has kept up the high standard the author first set with the Servant of Death. The latter was based on events during the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign (1135-1153) and was commenced in June 1143. The reader has now arrived in September 1145. The two medieval sleuths - Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Cathchpoll, joined more recently by Underserjeant Walkelin - well versed in the nefarious behaviour of those of every rank and either sex, now find themselves tracking down the murderer of a Templar knight, found dead in the Forest of Wyre. A document has been found on him suggesting that an important local lord, Hugh de Mortemer of Wigmore, may be persuaded to change sides, deserting the King and going over to the Empress Maud/Matilda.

Previous stories have barely touched on the political ramifications of the Anarchy, but I found here that the issue of the rivalries of local lords and the dangers of swapping sides was well explained. Earl Robert of Gloucester (the Empress' half-brother) and his loss of Faringdon Castle and the importance of Josce de Dinan at Ludlow are mentioned, to give verisimilitude to the story. Was William fitzAlan of Oswestry, a supporter of the Empress, genuinely expecting Hugh de Mortemer to come over to Matilda's cause or was it a cleverly designed plot to cast suspicion on someone actually totally loyal to the King. We shall find out!

The de Mitton family, most of whom were wiped out in a fire, possibly started by an aggrieved sibling, Ivo, are central to the story. The eldest daughter, Rohese, raped by Eustace fitzRobert, the ruthless 'baddie' in the tale, had disappeared, apparently due to an onset of leprosy, but is actually living in Ribbesford Wood as a ghastly disfigured recluse. William de Ribbesford, her one-time beau who had expected to marry her, is the only one who knows of her existence there. He has cleverly encouraged the locals' belief that a Hrafn Wif (Raven Woman) haunts the woods - an evil combination of witch and ghost, not a creature of flesh and blood.  How Ivo and Eustace are finally brought to book is quite skilfully done by the author. On the way, we encounter other well-drawn characters, such as Herluin the Ribbesford Steward; Father Laurentius the village priest; Simon de Mitton, the surviving youngest brother; the blind and away-with-the-fairies old mother of Eustace, the lady Adela; and William de Beauchamp, the irascible Sheriff, who has figured in previous books as the unreasonable boss of the intrepid trio. Although the identity of the murderer is known from very early on, this does not curtail enjoyment of the book. The author is well versed in the period and the setting; the dialogue, and sleuthing, is not spoiled by anachronisms.

Now that Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew has 'retired' and settled down in (presumably) married bliss, Hawkswood's characters are the only medieval ones that drag my purse open.

R.D. Blackmore's 'Alice Lorraine' 1875

Sampson Low etc. first edition - 1875

After several delays, I have finally finished Alice Lorraine. Having now read half a dozen of Blackmore's novels, I am getting well acquainted with his style - strengths and weaknesses. The former includes wonderful descriptions of landscape and weather, of character and, more often than not, sound dialogue. The weaknesses? The problem of all three-decker novels - 'padding' is used to prolong the narrative and a tendency to go off piste. So much of the novel has only a slight relevance to the title character, Alice. Perhaps the story should have been called A Tale of the Lorraines.

Apparently, the story, set in 1811 to 1814, was be a tragedy (rare in Victorian fiction before Thomas Hardy addressed it as a dominant theme in his major novels). Hilary Lorraine was to become "the ruin of his friends". But how could a prankster - who threw darts in his lawyer's chambers and rode a market gardener's cart to Covent Garden to sell cauliflowers (he falls in love with the farmer's 18 year-old daughter Mabel Lovejoy - who had the loveliest, sweetest, and most expressive brown eyes in the universe), end up in the role of a tragedian? Certainly, the early chapters which dwell on the bountiful Sussex and Kent countryside, the boisterous sporting parson Struan Hales and the earthy pig-man Bottler is a typical bright prelude for bad things to come. Moreover, Hilary does quarrel with his father Sir Roland, and goes off to fight for Wellington in Spain and, furthermore, manages to disgrace himself by 'losing' a huge sum of money destined for the British troops. He does return home, physically ill and mentally distraught; but true love does not give up on him and he is happily wedded.

17 year-old Alice herself certainly bears the scars  - if relatively short-lived - of tragedy. Not only does she have to choose between marrying a scoundrel: first, to regain the Lorraine original larger estates and, secondly, to find money to retrieve her brother Hilary's honour. A third alternative is to perish (no mortgage on the Lorraine estate is possible whilst she lives). Linked with all this, is the family tradition - dating back to the early 17th century -  that if the local stream, the Woeburn, breaks out of the hillside, it is a time of danger and a family member must die: Only this can save Lorraine, / One must plunge to rescue twain. Thus, commending her soul to God in a good Christian manner, and without a fear, or tear, or sigh, she commits her body to the Death-bourne. 

The author's original aim was that Alice should sacrifice her life to save all else. He wrote to Blackwood, asking for his and the publisher's wife for their opinion - if you are unanimous against the fatal result, there is time to vary it, if you let me know speedily. The result? The near-drowned and unconscious Alice was pulled out of the dangerous waters, by the very man she goes on to marry! Poor Tess of the d'Urbervilles was still in the future, even if Maggie had met her watery end in Mill on the Floss some 15 years' earlier. 

Blackmore uses his own life to colour and progress the novel. Hilary Lorraine has much the same experience when enrolled as a student of the law, after his degree at Oxford. The novel goes into some detail of Hilary's time in the legal profession, so much clearly based on the author's own time there. Moreover, the scenes set in the fruit grower's farm in Kent and the journey to and from Covent Garden  mirror's Blackwood's own experience - of the latter: here was a wondrous reek of men before the night had spent itself. Such a Babel, of a market-morning in the berry season', as makes one long to understand the mother-tongue of nobody...Hilary even has an attack of epilepsy, which his author also suffered from.

There are some marvellous descriptive passages:

On Rev. Struan Hales:

He was a man of mark all about the neighbourhood. Everybody knew him; and almost everybody liked him. Because he was a genial, open-hearted, and sometimes noisy man; full of life - in his own form of that matter - and full of the love of life, whenever he found other people lively. He hated every kind of humbug, all revolutionary ideas, methodism, asceticism, enthusiastic humanity, and exceedingly fine language. The rector of West Lorraine loved nothing better than a good day with the hounds, and a roaring dinner-party afterwards... he hated books, and he hated a pen, and he hated doing nothing

On Sir Remnant Chapman (father to Captain Stephen Chapman, who wants to marry Alice but whom she detests):

"When I was in London [girls] turned me sick with asking my opinion. The less they know, the better for them. Knowledge of anything makes a woman scarcely fit to speak to. My poor dear wife could read and write, and that was quite enough for her. She did it on the jam-pots always, and she could spell most of it. Ah, she was a most wonderful woman!"

On the strawberry:

That is the time for the true fruit-lover to try the taste of a strawberry. It should be one that refused to ripen in the gross heat of yesterday, but has been slowly fostering 'goodness'', with the attestation of the stars. And now (if it has been properly managed, properly picked without touch of hand, and not laid down profanely), when the sun comes over the top of the hedge, the look of  that strawberry will be this - the beard of the footstalk will be stiff, the sepals of the calyx moist and crisp, the neck will show a narrow band of varnish, where the dew could find no hold, the belly of the fruit will be sleek and gentle, firm however to accept its fate; but the back that has dealt with the dew, and the sides where the colour of the back slopes downward, upon them such a gloss of cold and diamond chastity will lie, that the human lips get out of patience with the eyes in no time.

On the Sun:

The sun, in almost every garden, sucks the beauty out of all the flowers; he stains the sweet violet even in March; he spots the primrose and the periwinkle; he takes the down off the heartsease blossom; he browns the pure lily of the valley in May; and, after that, he dims the tint of every rose that he opens; and yet, in spite of all his mischief, which of them does not rejoice in him?

The novel contained a superb account of the severe winter of 1813, including the following extract about the continual snowfall.

The snow began about seven o'clock, when the influence of the sun was lost; and for three days and three nights it snowed, without taking or giving breathing-time. It came down without any wind, or unfair attempt at drifting. The meaning of the sky was to snow and no more, and let the wind wait its time afterwards. There was no such thing as any spying between the flakes at any time. The flakes were no so very large, but they came as close together as the sand pouring down in an hour-glass. They never danced up and down, like gnats or motes, as common snowflakes do, but one on the back of another fell, expecting millions after them. And if any man looked up to see that gravelly infinitude of pelting spots, which swarms all the air in a snowstorm, he might as well have shut both eyes, before it was done by snowflakes.

There are some well-drawn minor characters, such as Alice's grandmother Lady Valeria; Rector Hales' three daughters; the feral boy Bonny with his donkey Jack; Miguel de Montalvan, the Count of Zamora and his two, very different in character, daughters Claudia and Camilla; the irrepressible Major Clumps; even the Duke of Wellington; all add to the flavour and interest of the tale. Some of the best writing in in the last volume, concentrating as it does on the upshot of the Spanish campaign involving Hilary and his return to face the music with his family; the attempt of Alice to kill herself; the come-uppance of the Chapmans; and the tying of the various love-knots.

I am now on the look-out for Blackmore's other novels, apart from Lorna Doone. I haven't found Kit and Kitty, and I might make do with my single volume versions of Cripps the Carrier and Perlycross. Erema is available, but I am not drawn to tales set in America; so, that leaves Cradock Nowell and Christowell - both presently too expensive - and Clara Vaughan which is not available in first edition. However, I have two, if not three, G.P.R. James novels to attend to, so I am not downhearted. 

R.D. Blackmore's 'Tales from the Telling House' 1896

 

Sampson Low, Marston & Co first edition - 1896

The book contains four longish short stories. As one Reviewer has remarked, the least successful tale would have attracted the most readers because of its title, which the author disliked. Slain by the Doones merely recounted and episode referred to by John Ridd in passing - the murder of  the 'Squire'  in Bagworthy Forest.  The American first edition was published a year earlier, in 1895 by Dodd, Mead & Co., and was entitled Slain by the Doones and Other Stories. This first story is set in the mid 17th century. The narrator's father, Sylvester Ford of Quantock in Somerset, fought for Prince Rupert in the Civil War and then being disgusted with England as well as banished from her, and despoiled of all his property, took service on the Continent, and wandered there for many years, until the replacement of the throne. However, on returning to England he had no restitution of his estates, so took refuge in an outlandish place, a house and small property in the heart of Exmoor. His narrator daughter, Sylvia, turns eighteen and tells of a young man, living nearby, who becomes acquainted with her father and herself: handsome and beautiful he was, so that bold maids longed to kiss him, it was the sadness in his eyes, and the gentle sense of doom therein, together with a laughing scorn of it, that made him come home to our nature... But Sylvia's father orders that no more converse be had with that son of Baron de Wichelhalse, as this Marwood rideth with the Doones. Living but six miles away from the Robbers' Valley, her father was wise to be careful.

Squire Ford sets off on one of his regular fishing trips, but Sylvia is told that he was then set upon by three of the Doones and murdered where the Oare and Badgery streams ran into one another for fishing in their river. Into the young girl's life comes Bob Pring, son of Deborah Pring the Ford's only domestic. who was as fine a young trooper as ever drew sword... and who had a fine head of curly hair, and spoke with a firm conviction that there was much inside it. His commanding officer, one Captain Anthony Purvis, is brought, wounded with three broken ribs, to Sylvia's house for treatment. He falls in love with Sylvia and she receives through the good offices of Mistress Pring a proposal of marriage. She feels that must have been sadly confused by that blow on his heart to think mine so tender, so she refuses and he leaves. The final chapter sees the Doones force their entry into Sylvia's house, kill old Thomas Pring, and the infamous Carver Doone decide to take her away: she is worthy to be the mother of many a fine Doone...why even Lorna hath not such eyes. Sylvia is slung on the back of a horse  to be taken to Doone Glen to be some cut-throat's light-of-love. Reaching a bridge a vast man stood...wearing a farmer's hat, and raising a staff like the stem of a young oak tree. He dispatches Charlie Doone, then Carver himself; and in the nick of time, Captain Purvis is there to rescue Lorna. Who was that other man? Yes, that was the mighty man of Exmoor...John Ridd; the Doones are mighty afraid of him since he cast their culverin through their door. And equally brave Captain Purvis gets his girl.

The following two stories - Frida; or, The Lover's Leap and George Bowring - both have tragic denouements, perhaps unusual for the author. The first was based on a legend of the Wichalse family at Lynton during the Civil War of the mid 17th century. In the tale, Aubyn de Wichehalse, after years desiring a son, was presented with a somewhat undersized, and unhappily female child - one, moreover, whose presence cost him that of his faithful and loving wife. He gradually warms to his daughter Jennyfried (or 'Frida') and she reaches seventeen years. Her 25-year-old cousin, Albert de Wichehalse, also warms to her, and Hugh is keen that the two youngsters marry.

However, along comes an old fogy neighbour, Sir Maunder Meddleby, one of the first of a newly invented order, who persuades Hugh that he should send his daughter to Court - her wanteth the vinish of the coort. She goes to London and meets a young Lord Auberley. It is now 1642 and the Civil War has broken out and Auberley is sent West to persuade Hugh to join the King's cause and to persuade Frida of his own cause. He is winning the latter battle at least, when she commands him to return to the King (the Battle of Edgehill has been indecisive). He meets her for one final time at her favourite spot - at the end of this walk there lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all of Nature's art secluded...a little cove...here the maid was well accustomed every day to sit and think, gazing down at the calm, gray sea... Auberley successfully woos her and they pledge their troths. He goes off to Oxford but, naughty man, marries her Highness, the Duchess of B--- in France. Filthy lucre and position is the catch. Frida, distressed, walks to the same lonely spot - with one sheer fall of a hundred fathoms the stern cliff meets the baffled sea; her dog Lear, her closest companion,  has followed her. Frida leaps to her death; Lear gave one long re-echoed howl, then tossed his mane, like a tawny wave, and followed down the death-leap. There follows a brief ending. Aubyn de Wichehalse joins Parliament and, at the Battle of Lansdown, north of Bath, brings Viscount Auberley to bay and with his Gueldres ax cleft his curly head, and split what little brain it takes to fool a trusting maiden.

George Bowring. A Tale of Cader Idris, highlights a Welsh folk-belief in the power of a gold watch to delay the hour of death. A peasant girl's father murders a man to get his watch, and the criminal remains unpunished until the very end of the story. The narrator, Robert Bistre, recalls the original incident some forty years later. He accompanies his old school friend from Shrewsbury on a trip to west Wales, he to draw pictures, George to fish. Although the tale is a tragic one, there are regular bursts of humour. George's father seems to have been at some time knighted for finding a manuscript of great value that went in the end to the paper mills; ...a knight he lived, and a knight he died; and his widow found it such a comfort! George, by the time of the trip (it is 1832), is married with three young children. The two men find lodgings at the little village of Aber-Aydyr, by the river Aydyr. After some days fishing, George wants to move up into wilder and rockier districts, where the water ran deeper...a savage place, deserted by all except evil spirits... They split up and George, after a long search is found drowned in a deep black hole of the river. Local miners help to carry his body to the nearest house, where they are refused entrance by the owner, 'Black' Hopkin ap Howel. My little daughter is very ill, the last of seven. You must go elsewhere. Robert has already noticed that George's watch was missing. The subsequent coroner's jury found George had died of "asphyxia, caused by too long immersion in the water". Robert is convinced it was murder. He becomes an 'uncle' to the three children and they grow up to be splendid "members of society".

Bob Bistre Bowring, the eldest, is his apprentice and, when he was 25-years-old, asks his 'uncle' if they can return to where his father died. Once there, he makes his way to the very spot his father was last seen. He went on alone with exactly his father's step, and glance, figure, face and stature. Even his dress was of the silver-gray which his father had been so fond of...a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the dark folds of the mountain...I saw young Bowring leap uop...at his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over them. No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest. The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered. It was Hopkin ap Howel.

The final story, Crocker's Hole, recreates a situation from Blackmore's own childhood - the catching of a mighty trout in the river Culm. I liked the following sentence: In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs into a brook; and before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full-grown river. and another - the description of the famous trout: his head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back was like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. 

 

Blackmore said that "the stories were written at different times during the last thirty years; but collected and revised recently."

A Footnote: Blackmore wrote an inscription on the first flyleaf of a copy of Tales from the Telling House: ...this contains the preface, and has the proper title. Through some strange neglect, the title, and the little preface, have not yet appeared in the U.S.A., and the clumsy name Slain by the Doones - never liked by the author - seems to be the only one in vogue there.

R.D. Blackmore's 'The Maid of Sker' 1872

 

William Blackwood first edition - 1872

At last, a return to a triple-decker! It's great when you reach page 325 and realise there are two more volumes to go. Not everyone's cup of tea, but for me it is tea and cake. The Maid of Sker was regarded by Blackmore himself as his best novel. Most commentators would probably plump for the well-known Lorna Doone, but the most famous is not necessarily the best work of an author, vide. John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps. Blackmore's novel was first serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from August 1871 to July 1872, before being published in book form. The author's boyhood visits to Newton Nottage in Glamorganshire gave him both the geographical background and knowledge of an ancient legend, told in ballad form. The latter Maid of Sker bears little resemblance to the plot of the novel, but the gloomy Sker House, just west of Portcawl, is one of the central images for Blackmore.

The nominal heroine, the lost little girl Bardie, is drawn from the author's own precocious niece, whom he called by that name. She was only three years old and Blackmore transcribed her baby talk (much to my increasing irritation!). The villain of the tale, the demonic Parson Stoyle Chowne, was drawn from the Rev. John Froude, well-known in Devon as a "shocking fellow", according to Blackmore's father, "a disgrace to the Church". Chawne's muscular companion, the Rev. Jack Rambone, a boxer and wrestler, was modelled on the Rev. Jack Radford, a sporting parson who went with a scissor-grinding truck all over Wales and Cornwall, challenging all comers to fist or fore-hip.

The story is narrated by Davy Llewellyn, a late middle-aged fisherman, who rescues little Bardie from a small boat, which has drifted onto a beach in Glamorganshire, just before a raging storm. Davy parts with the girl but not the boat - the former being lodged at Sker House, the latter being tarted up for his own use. It is clear from the infant's deportment and quality of clothes that she is the offspring of a well-to-do family. Here lies one of the weaknesses of the plot - the child has to grow up to become marketable! Some 16 years have to be got through. Blackmore does this by first leaving Bardie with the Sker Household, then employing a tutor, but otherwise going off to Devon to continue his fishing trade and then re-joining the Navy. Being couched in the first person narrative, the tale becomes more one of Davy's exploits and less of Bardie's growing up. At least one Reviewer suggested a different title - Davy Llewellyn - would have been more apposite.

Davy is certainly the propelling force - a selfish old rascal who boasts his way through the narrative. He has a veritable halo of self-interest which is, however, relieved by a romantic generosity for others.  In the very first sentence of Volume I, Davy sets out his stall, with all the pathos he can muster: I am but an ancient fisherman upon the coast of Glamorgan, with work enough of my own to do, and trouble enough of my own to heed, in getting my poor living, yet he has enough time and literary capability to embark on a three volume narrative!. He moans that the work of writing must be very dull to me, after all the change of scene, and the noble fights with Frenchmen, and the power of oaths that made me jump so in his Majesty's navy. Notwithstanding this, he girds his literary loins and ploughs on, being on the whole, pretty well satisfied with myself... 

On a fishing trip for congers, lobsters, mullet and spider-crabs, he lands an unexpected fish - a smoothly-gliding boat...a finer floatage I never saw, and her lines were purely elegant, and she rode above the water without so much as parting it...the little craft was laden with a freight of pure innocence...a little helpless child...all in white, having neither cloak nor shawl...but lying with her little back upon the aftmost planking. And thus Bardie enters his life; he deposits her with Moxy Thomas (an old girlfriend, but now married to 'black' Evan, a morbid drunk, with dark face, overhung with hair)) at Sker-house - a very sad and lonesome place, close to a desolate waste of sand, and the continual roaring of the sea upon black rocks. A great grey house, with many chimneys, many gables, and many windows, yet not a neighbour to look out on, not a tree to feed its chimneys, scarce a firelight in its gables in the very depth of winter. Of course, it is said to be haunted... Tragedy soon occurs - five of the six sons of Evan and Moxy - aged from 15 to 22 - are buried in a sand drift during a violent storm. The chapter Sand-Hills turned to Sand-Holes contain some of the author's most atmospheric writing. The sky was spread and traversed with a net of crossing fires, in and out like mesh and needle...some were yellow, some deep red, and some like banks of violet...

It is as a result of this same horrendous storm, that a slave-ship is wrecked and its cargo of Africans  drowned. The description that follows would give heart attacks to 21st century reviewers. The negroes, crouching in the scuppers, or clinging to the masts and rails, or rolling over one another in their want of pluck and skill, seemed to shed their blackness on the snowy spray and curdled foam, like cuttle-fish in a lump of froth. Poor things! they are grieved to die as much, perhaps, as any white man; and my heart was overcome, in spite of all I knew of them...now I hope no man who knows me would ever take me for such a fool as to dream for a moment - after all I have seen of them - that a negro is "our own flesh and blood, and a brother immortal", as the parsons began to prate, under some dark infection. They differ from us a great deal more than an ass does from a horse. Blackmore (surely ironic that he had such a surname) even uses the now forbidden word n-----r more than once. The tale is 152 years old, but this hardly excuses such sentiments.

The novel is peppered with a goodly array of minor characters: Colonel Lougher of Candleston Court, one of the finest and noblest men it was ever my luck to come across and who takes part with his widowed sister Lady Bluett, in helping to bring up Bardie in a manner to which her obvious gentility demands. It is his nephew, the Hon. Rodney Bluett who, desperate to join the Navy (and helped every so often in his subsequent illustrious career by Davy), later becomes besotted by the teenage Bardie and eventually marries her. Davy, meanwhile, finding his fishing scarcely bringing in enough to live on, departs in a fishing vessel for Devon (the author's own spiritual home). One thing I will say of these sons of Devon: rough they may be, and short of grain, and fond of their own opinions...queer, moreover, in thought and word, and obstinate as hedgehogs - yet they show, and truly have, a kind desire to feed one well.

Devon provides the other main skein to the tale.  Here Davy meets the bête noire of the novel, Parson Chowne: it was the most wondrous unfathomable face that ever fellow-man fixed gaze upon; lost to mankindliness, lost to mercy, lost to all memory of God...disdain was the first thing it gave one to think of; and after that, cold relentless humour; and after that, anything dark and bad. It is Chowne who is responsible for the loss of two babes from the family the (one of whom one realises immediately must be Bardie), the other, a boy, finally  emerges - naked - (nicknamed Harry Savage by Davy and others) from a gipsy-looking tribe on Chowne's estate. Davy also links up with Sir Philip Bampfylde, his second son in the Navy, Captain Drake Bampfylde and the latter's long-time girlfriend, wealthy heiress Isabel Carey. Machinations amongst all these Devonians lead to Davy rejoining the British Navy, voyaging to the West Indies, fighting under Nelson (the author's undoubted hero) and the Battle of the Nile/Aboukir Bay (another marvellous descriptive chapter, Nelson and the Nile, and for which success Davy gives himself some credit) and finally returning to Glamorgan, secure in the knowledge that more people now think as highly of him as he does himself. Drake gets his Isabel, Rodney his Bardie, and Watkin Thomas, the only surviving boy from Sker House, gets Bunny, Davy's grand-daughter.

David Llewelyn's boasting:

Now I have by nature the very strongest affection for truth...but sometimes it happens so that we must do violence to ourselves for the sake of our fellow-creatures.

It is an irksome task for a man who has always stood upon his position, and justified the universal esteem and respect of the neighbourhood...

...you may go miles and miles, I am sure, to find a more thoroughly honorable, good-hearted, brave, and agreeable man.

The very next day, I was afloat as a seaman of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom...the King and the nation won the entire benefit of this.

It may be the power of honesty, or it may be the strength of character coupled with a more than usual brightness of sagacity - but whatever the cause may be, the result seems always to be the same, in spite of inborn humility - to wit, that poor old Davy Llewellyn, wherever his ups and downs may throw him, always has to take the lead!

Other humorous asides:

Joe Jenkins was a young fellow of great zeal, newly appointed to Zoar Chapel, instead of the steady Nathanial Edwards, who had been caught sheep-stealing...all the maids of Newton ran mightily to his doctrine. For he happened to be a smart young fellow, and it was largely put abroad than an uncle of his had a butter-shop, without any children, and bringing in four pounds a-week at Chepstow.

Such sentiments are to be found, I believe, in the weaker parts of the Bible, such as are called the New Testament, which nobody can compare to the works of my ancestor, King David; and, which, if you put aside Saint Paul, and Saint Peter (who cut the man's ear off) exhibit to my mind nobody of a patriotic spirit.

(About the Chaplain on board during the Battle of the Nile) "Go down, parson, go down", we said, "Sir, this is no place for your cloth". - "Sneaking schismatics may skulk", he answered, with a powder-mop in his hand, for we had impressed a Methody, who bolted below at exceeding long range, "but if my cloth is out of its placer, I'll fight the devil naked."

Description of the weather:

[September] the sky is bright and fair, with a firm and tranquil blue, not so deep of tint or gentle as the blue of springtide, but more truly staid and placid, and far more trustworthy. The sun, both when he rises over the rounded hills behind the cliffs, and when he sinks into the level of the width of waters, shines with ripe and quiet lustre, to complete a year of labour....at dusk the dew fog wavers in white stripes over the meadowland, or in winding combes benighted pillows down, and leaves its impress a sparking path for the sun's return.

Islam:

There is a most utterly pestilent race arising, and growing up around us, whose object is to destroy old England, by forbidding a man to drink. St Paul speaks against them, and all the great prophets...and although I never read the Koran, and only have heard some verses of it, I know enough to say positively, that Mahomet began this movement to establish Antichrist.

Description of landscape, regular bouts of humour, real flesh and blood characters - although Davy himself is a well-nigh impossible creation - all help to create an enjoyable tale.