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.

The Nineteenth Century Three-Volume Novel

Palgrave Macmillan first edition - 2020

Browsing my bookshelves, as is my abiding pleasure, I picked out Troy Bassett's excellent and exhaustive analysis of the dominating effect the [in]famous three volume novel - often referred to as the three-decker - had on nineteenth century publishing.  As Troy remarks in his Introduction, nearly every canonical author of the period appeared in the ubiquitous format of three octavo volumes priced at one-an-a-half guineas, including first editions of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope. To collect any of these authors in first editions is way beyond my pocket, but I have amassed quite a selection of less well-known and (luckily) much 'cheaper' authors. Back on the 27th March 2020, I published an early Blog on my collection; over five years later, this has grown considerably. As much for my own sake as anyone else's, I have attached the updated list below. The twenty works of Sir Walter Scott I have not included, although I have all his novels in first edition, bar Waverley, which is merely a third edition, albeit published in 1814 - the same year as the first. Many of them form the backbone of my Scottish Novels 1808-1850 Collection, with John Galt, J.G. Lockhart, Mary Brunton and Susan Ferrier figuring amongst them. I have also collected 17 novels of G.P.R. James and four of R.D. Blackmore - I am actively hunting down yet more of both authors. Over the past five years ('Lockdown' did have its positive side), I have read nearly all of the novels laid out below. By next Spring, I shall have finished off the remaining Scottish books. 

NINETEENTH CENTURY TWO AND THREE VOLUME NOVELS

(Excluding Sir Walter Scott’s 20 novels)

 1810      Jane Porter                                       The Scottish Chiefs   [5 volumes]

1811      Mary Brunton                                   Self-Control

1812      Hector Macneill                               The Scottish Adventurers

1814      Mary Brunton                                  Discipline

1817      Jane Porter                                       The Pastor’s Fire-side

1818      Susan Ferrier                                    Marriage            

1818      James Hogg                                      The Brownie of Bodsbeck

1819      Alexander Balfour                          Campbell; or The Scottish Probationers

1821      David Carey                                     A Legend of Argyle

1821      John Gibson Lockhart                   Valerius

1822      [Thomas Gaspey]                           The Lollards: A Tale

1822      John Galt                                          Sir Andrew Wylie of that Ilk

1822      Allan Cunningham                         Traditional Tales

1822      John Galt                                          The Entail or The Lairds of Gippy

1823      John Galt                                          Ringan Gilhaize or The Covenanteers

1823      John Gibson Lockart                      Reginald Dalton

1823      Eliza Logan                                       St. Johnstoun; or, John, Earl Gowrie

1823      John Galt                                          The Spaewife

1824      Susan Ferrier                                    The Inheritance

1824      John Galt                                          Rothelan

1825      Grace Kennedy                               Dunallan; or Know what you Judge

1825      Thomas Dick Lauder                      Lochandhu: A Tale of the Eighteenth Century

1826      Allan Cunningham                         Paul Jones

1827      Thomas Hamilton                           The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton

1828      Allan Cunningham                         Sir Michael Scott

1829      Eliza Logan                                      Restalrig; or, The Forfeiture

1830      George Robert Gleig                      The Country Curate

1831      Susan Ferrier                                   Destiny or the Chief’s Daughter

1831      Hannah Maria Jones                      The Scottish Chieftains

1832      [Edmund Duros?]                           Otterbourne; A Story of the English Marches

1832      G.P.R. James                                   Henry Masterton

1833      Michael Scott                                  Tom Cringle’s Log

1834      G.P.R. James                                   The Life and Adventures of John Marston Hall

1835      G.P.R. James                                   The Gipsy

1835      [Peter Leicester]                             Bosworth Field; or, The Fate of a Plantagenet

1836      Michael Scott                                  The Cruise of the Midge

1838      G.P.R. James                                   The Robber: A Tale

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

1841      Major Michel                                   Henry of Monmouth: or the Field of Agincourt

1841      Catherine Sinclair                           Modern Flirtations

1842      [Major Michel]                                Trevor Hastings or the Battle of Tewkesbury

1843      G.P.R. James                                    Forest Days

1843      [Edward Bulwer-Lytton]               The Last of the Barons

1844      G.P.R. James                                    Arabella Stuart. A Romance from English History

1844      G.P.R. James                                    Agincourt. A Romance

1845      G.P.R. James                                    The Smuggler. A Tale

1845      John Brent                                        The Battle Cross: A Romance of the Fourteenth Century

1846      G.P.R. James                                    The Step-Mother

1847      Capt. Marryat                                  The Children of the New Forest

1847      G.P.R. James                                    Russell. A Tale of the Reign of Charles II

1848      G.P.R. James                                    Beauchamp

1848      G.P.R. James                                    Margaret Graham

1849      G.P.R. James                                    The Woodman; A Romance of the Times of Richard III

1853      Rev. R.W. Morgan                          Raymond de Monthault, The Lord Marcher

1870      Benjamin Disraeli                           Lothair

1871      Trois-Etoiles                                     The Member for Paris: A Tale of the Second Empire

1872      R.D. Blackmore                               The Maid of Sker

1874      W. H. Ainsworth                             Merry England: or, Nobles and Serfs

1875      R.D. Blackmore                               Alice Lorraine

1880      R.D. Blackmore                               Mary Anerley

1887      R.D. Blackmore                               Springhaven

1888      Mrs. Humphry Ward                     Robert Elsmere

1891      Stanley Weyman                            The New Rector

1893      Stanley Weyman                            A Gentleman of France

1894      Stanley Weyman                            Under the Red Robe 

Finch Mason's 'The Tame Fox and Other Sketches' 1897

 

Hurst and Blackett first edition - 1897

'Don't judge a book by its cover' is a well known aphorism; but in this instance I should not have succumbed to the title. The Tame Fox turned out to be but the first chapter of nineteen and a mere dozen pages at that. In fact, if there was a common theme it was that of fox-hunting and a variety of personages involved in that 'sport'. Some of the stories had already appeared in the pages of several magazines and journals - to whit, Baily's Magazine, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, County Gentleman and Finch Mason's Annual - between 1895 and 1896. George Finch Mason (1850-1915), the son of an Eton schoolmaster, was a sporting artist, author and illustrator, specialising in humorous studies and caricatures. In fact, these days he is better known for his prints of fox hunts and race meetings than for his fiction. Prints of his sell for a considerable amount of money. He also worked for Punch magazine.  His books included Humours of the Hunting Field (1886), Tit Bits of the Turf (1887), The Flowers of the Hunt (1889), My Day with the Hounds (1890), The Run of the Season (1902) and Gentlemen Riders Past and Present (1909). He also edited Fores's Sporting Notes and Sketches, a quarterly magazine which ran from Volume I in 1884-5 until just before the Great War.

So, rather to my dismay, the fox merely figured as the prey of the Hunt and, only in that very first chapter, was it accorded the sympathy I was looking for. It was an unoriginal story of a tame fox, Slyboots, escaping from his mistress for the wild. It is told in the first person by her prospective partner, who has been getting increasingly downhearted as Skyboots appears higher in the pecking order than himself. Did I feel like having Foxyphobia?, he posits. Certainly, he is hard at it five and six days a week with the local Hunt when the pet vanishes. Miss Violet Goldthread's reaction? Fainting-fit on the spot, with hysteria to follow at intervals throughout the day, her butler informs the eventual hero. He manages to forestall a digging operation by the Hunt whippers to extract the cub from a drain. As a result, the loveliest of her sex has consented to be mine (a gold-mine, ha, ha!)

As for the other eleven 'sketches', I can see why they would appeal to the horse racing fraternity - of both sexes. Perhaps not so much to a vulpine audience (Fox News?). They are very much of the period, the 1890s (and why shouldn't they be) and are 'dated' in several ways. That, however, adds to their charm. Chapters include the wheeze of exchanging a squire's thoroughbred horses for local nags, lent by supportive tenantry, to fool sheriffs who were coming to seize his entire stable. The bailiffs went away empty-handed but probably the wiser. Mr. Burlington Bellamy, the millionaire from Manchester,  may have fallen head over heels with pretty Laura Lightfoot, but got nothing but chaff, and plenty of it, in return for his devotion. Instead Mrs. Kitto, (Kittums) the lively but impecunious widow, takes advantage of Burlington getting lost with her during a Hunt in Skelperdale Forest and convinces him, with artful strategies, that she is the right one. In Angels on Horseback, the Master of the Foxhounds, Mark Bramble, the popular young Master but confirmed bachelor,  meets his match in the pick of the bevy of ladies on the Hunt, Queen Mab, who has been waiting long for 'Mr. Right'. He comes to her aid when she faints after her horse just manages to clear a ragged fence to land in a gravel pit. I do not know how many kisses had been impressed upon her lips by that confirmed bachelor Mark Bramble, Esq., M.F.H., to the great edification of the field. On coming round and hearing loud cheering, Queen Mab asks what is the matter, and he told her, and she did not mind a bit. "They know who I'm going to marry now, don't they, dear Mark?"

Tubby, or not Tubby (how very Shakespearian), concerns one John Daventry, nicknamed on account of his rotundity, for all the world like a beer-barrel... his round-turned legs were the shortest of the short, and he could not stick on [a horse] at any price. Hearing that he had entered the Tallyho Steeplechase on his brown gelding Saucy Boy, he is mercilessly chaffed by the locals; in particular, by a hated rival Captain Bustard, late of the Queen's Roans, an undeniably fine horseman. A large wager is placed between them. On the day of the race, poor Tubby and his nag look also-rans up against the Captain and his chestnut mare, Lady of the Lake. However, Bustard is beaten by Tubby, who has hung on throughout. How? He had been strapped on!

I quite enjoyed the sketch The Lady at the Dragon. Young Lord Blythebury, just come of age, marries out of the county one Miss Violet Vollaire, the lovely and dashing equestrienne at Jingler's well-known circus, thereby nearly breaking his noble and venerable father's heart. Nothing more is known of their whereabouts, but considerable excitement was caused when a young, vivacious lady puts up at the Red Lion, with six horses and a pony, for the avowed purpose of hunting with Lord Harefield's hounds. This Miss Wilton - "one of the most charming and well-bred girls it has ever been my lot to meet", declared the Rev Frank Simpson - turns up for the opening day of the season at Harefield Place. She ends up riding with the Earl and a couple of others and is there to take charge when the noble lord falls off his horse when it failed to clear a brook. The earl comes round and in a faint voice, says he is dying and that his son must be sent for. Miss Wilton not only promises, but adds, "I will send for him myself. I am his wife".

Waldo Hilary Dunn's 'R. D. Blackmore' 1956

Robert Hale first edition - 1956

I have had Kenneth Budd's brief biography of R. D. Blackmore for some years and quoted from it in my Blog (20 June 2024) on Cripps the Carrier. Recently, I found out that a more substantial biography had been written by the American author, Waldo Hilary Dunn, well-known in the first half of the 20th century for his history of biography in the UK and his own biographies of Froude, Carlyle and George Washington. An admirer of Blackmore for over fifty years, his work is very much a 'labour of love'. Dunn collected over 600 of the author's letters, covering all phrases of his life, as well as valuable reminiscences from friends and relatives. I was particularly drawn to a comment Dunn made in the first Chapter, entitled A Personal World. When I first read Lorna Doone I knew nothing whatever of the author's life. Always, however, when reading a book that appeals to me powerfully and intimately, I begin wondering what manner of man wrote it. What is the inner nature of the man from whom the work came? Is there any relation between the mind of the author and the manner of his expression? The next step is clear. I simply must know, for my own satisfaction, all that can be known about the author... A man after my own inclination. As a teacher of History, I used to say to my students, Know the Historian before his History. With fiction, so much of the best of it is based on the personal experiences of the author - they live through their work. R. D. Blackmore's intimate acquaintance with Nature, and his regular descriptions of natural scenery were not there just to adorn his pages, but revelations of the texture of his mind. He was the very incarnation of England and may well be regarded as John Bull, with all of John's virtues, idiosyncrasies, stubbornness, kindliness, gentleness, touchiness, aloofness, provincialism, patriotism, with a gentle tolerance which enabled him pretty well to understand his fellow creatures of whatever clime or race.

The next eleven chapters give a detailed account of Blackmore's life, from his birth on 7 June 1825 until his purchase of land in late 1857/early 1858 at Teddington, twenty-one miles to the south west of the heart of London, to set up a market gardening business. Born at Longworth, Berkshire, Blackmore lost his mother before he was four months old; for the next six years he was looked after at Newton Nottage in Glamorganshire by his maternal grandmother, and at Elsfield Rectory, just a dozen miles from his birthplace, where his aunt Mary Gordon and her husband the Rev. Richard Gordon lived. His father had accepted the curacy of Culmstock in East Devon and remarried - Charlotte Platt - in 1831. Blackmore and his brother Richard now moved to be with their father again. So strong a hold did the region take a hold upon Blackmore that he always regarded himself as a West Countryman. In everything, except the accident of birth, I am a Devonian. In 1835, Rev John Blackmore became curate at Ashford. For several years, Blackmore moved between family connections in Devon, and these memories were later put to good use in Lorna Doone, Perlycross and other tales. Holidays took him to the Glamorgan coast, which also took a strong hold on him, as evidenced by The Maid of Sker (which I will be reading next).

Aged twelve, Blackmore was sent to Peter Blundell's School (founded in 1604) at Tiverton. Although occasionally bullied, he was popular with his peers and remembered his school with affection. He acquired, and maintained, a particularly high standing in Greek and Latin whilst he enjoyed exploring the countryside along the boundary between Somerset and Devon. He matriculated as a member of Exeter College, Oxford in November 1843 and proceeded to the B.A. degree in December 1847. He applied himself pretty closely to his studies. His feelings for the city and its colleges can be gleaned from Cripps the Carrier and Cradock Nowell. After Oxford, Blackmore turned to the Law, being admitted to the Middle Temple, London as a student in January 1849. Aspects of his life there can be found in Alice Lorraine. Called to the Bar in June 1852, for the next five years he practised as a conveyancer. Apparently, he abandoned the profession due to ill-health, which included epileptic seizures (again one can experience this in his novel Clara Vaughan). He wedded Lucy Maguire in November 1853, and they remained happily married until her death on 3 February 1888. They were exactly suited to each other, loving quiet and seclusion, but for the last twenty years of her life she was a half-invalid - my wife, who never knows a moment free from pain (except in sleep)...

Blackmore's favourite uncle, Rev Henry Hey Knight, Rector of Neath in Glamorganshire, died on 30 September 1857. His nephew was left a considerable bequest; so much so that he was able to purchase a sixteen-acre plot and, by 1860, complete the construction of a plain but substantial home, Gomer House (Gomer was the name of a favourite dog). For the next forty years, Blackmore divided his time and industry between his writing and his market gardening. One acquaintance wrote: he seems wedded to his garden in the summer and his book-writing in winter. An image has persisted of him being anti-social and the majority of people in the neighbourhood knew almost nothing of him. However, as Waldo Dunn is at pains to show, he had very positive and long-term relationships with a small group of friends and acquaintances (both in person and by correspondence). Two chapters of the biography are entitled Gomer House Circle and American Friendships.

As a market gardener, times of disaster alternated with times of plenty. For many years Blackmore  attended the marketing of his fruit in London and the activities at the Covent Garden Market is well described in Alice Lorraine. He became widely known among fruit-growers and horticulturists and surviving correspondence shows how seriously he took his work. Equally obvious was his industry as regards his writing. Between 1854 and 1897, he published fourteen novels, seven volumes of verse, and one volume of short stories. That meant an average of one long work of fiction about every two and a half years. By 1869, Blackmore had written Clara Vaughan (1864) and Cradock Nowell (1866); both had been received with some success, but it was his next novel, (1869) which was - eventually, after a poor start - to catapult him into the literary pantheon. However, it became a little bit like an albatross around his neck, and the ensuing eleven works of fiction were always compared with Lorna Doone and came up wanting. Blackmore became fed up with the critics. In 1890, he wrote to a friend: From first to last - with a few exceptions - the English critics - if they deserve the name - have pegged away at me, like a rook at a rotten apple. Sometimes I used to be annoyed, though I never let them know it; but now it never disturbs me. And: It is hard to tell a tale, but easy to find fault with it.  (In The Maid of Sker)

Waldo Dunn summarises Blackmore's character thus: It will become apparent that his strong and abiding faith, his sterling common sense, and his abounding sense of humour always enabled him to meet [the ills of life] with equanimity and resolution. His wholesome philosophy of life sustained him through trials and difficulties and physical handicaps that would have overcome lesser men, and he continued to the end not only unembittered but resolute and content... in brief, it is perhaps only necessary to say that his temper was the logical result of his inheritance, his education, his political beliefs, and his religious faith. Blackmore died on 20 January 1900, unable to resist a prevailing influenza. On 26 April 1904, there were dedicated to his memory in Exeter cathedral a window and a portrait in marble.

R.D. Blackmore's 'Dariel' 1897

 

William Blackwood and Sons first edition - 1897

Dariel was first serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1896 to October 1897, before being published in the latter year. It was the only one of his novels which was first published in one volume. The novel contains 14 illustrations by Miss Chris Hammond, which were criticised for being rather 'flat' and lacking in movement. The novel itself received mixed reviews (no change there for the Author). The Spectator complained that Mr. Blackmore's method is too leisurely, and his canvas is crowded with characters who, though very engaging in themselves, retard the march of the story. The problem was that, whereas the author had not changed his style, the late 1890s's reader was very different from that of thirty, even twenty, years' earlier. The Publisher, at any rate, thought highly of the book: unquestionably the most important contribution made to fiction this year...the love element is singularly fresh and delightful...the characters are alive in every fibre, and there are scores of those wonderful descriptions of nature in which Mr. Blackmore has no existing peer save Mr. Hardy or Mr. Meredith. A more measured appraisal puts the novel somewhere in between these comments. It is slow to get going and the pace is leisurely, but the characters and descriptions of nature are of Blackmore's usual high standard.

Perhaps the novel's subtitle - A Romance of Surrey - disguises the fact that the last 123 pages are set in middle Europe and the far-off Caucasian mountains. In fact, the English setting could have been equally placed in several counties surrounding Surrey. The romantic element is only accidentally connected with England, where a noble Lesghian chief, Sur Imar, was exiled from the Caucasus as a result of a blood feud. He has taken refuge with his only daughter, Dariel - a girl of surpassing loveliness and, through her deceased mother, heiress to the throne of Georgia. The first person narrator of the tale, 26 year-old George Cranleigh - an athletic young gentleman-farmer, the son of an impoverished Baronet ruined, according to the author by the "farce of Free-trade", falls in love at first sight with Dariel - so much so that he leaves all at home to go on a quixotic expedition to the Caucasus to save her and her father. His subsequent adventures among Ossetian cut-throats, led by the evil sister of Sur Imar, the Osset Queen Marva, leads to a daring raid (akin to Indiana Jones) and ends with a fractured skull from the Ossets' clubs. His bravery is ultimately rewarded with the hand of the lovely Dariel. 

Does all this work as a novel? One could argue that the author spends far too long in getting to the Caucasus; the rural idyll of Surrey and the rugged landscape of the latter don't really jell (in a way, they are not meant to). The mixture of melodrama and idyll is hard to pull off. However, the introduction of what is a romantic tribe, who seemingly trace their origin to the Red Cross Knights of the Crusades. is compelling. Chapters XXII-XXVII, where Sur Imar tells George the story of his life and exile, drag rather, even though they are integral to the overall tale. What Imar's narration does do is to bind George to the family even more closely: Here was a man who never knew what fear was, suspicion, falsehood, meanness, envy, or even the love of money...it seemed to me that if ever there had lived a man of honour and kind heart, who deserved the favour of Heaven and the reverence of his fellows, it was this man long oppressed by some mysterious curse of destiny. And he had a lovely daughter.

The sub plot of  George Cranleigh's sister, Grace, being wooed and falling for the wealthy nouveau riche stockbroker, Jackson Stoneman, who has taken over the Cranleigh estate, is poetic. But the narrator, George, is too stolid and self effacing for my liking. Salt of the earth, maybe; a right little Surrey John Bull; dull, although to be saluted for his fortitude both in England and the Caucasus. His very odd brother, Harold, flits his way across two or three scenes, but adds little to the point of the tale. Dariel, however, is quite another matter. Chapter I is entitled A Nightingale and it is as early as page 6 that George meets his beloved: the silvery light of the west fell upon the face of a kneeling maiden. The profile, as perfect as that of a statue, yet with the tender curves of youth, more like the softness of a cameo...I thought that I had never heard any music like her voice, nor read any poetry to be compared to the brilliant depths of her expressive eyes. George's wooing of her is tenderly done and very natural. And they deserve each other in the end: I felt myself all right again. The strength that had been shattered by big Osset clubs, and long prostration, lonely wanderings of bloodless brain, feeble doubts of woman's truth, all flowed back, and filled my heart and life with the joy of this great love.

The author has lost none is his descriptive powers. Here he is on a ferocious local bulldog: 

...of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this Grab was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes. 

And a walk in the Surrey countryside:

It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it...how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always...Welcome to the Caucasus!

There is an interesting aside on another contemporary writer: Who is the most delightful writer of our race, since Heaven took Shakespeare away in hot haste? The answer, although so long in coming, comes louder, as every year adds to the echo - "William Makepeace Thackeray". That man of vast brain, with the fresh heart of a child... (and I have never read any of his works!)

G.P.R. James' 'The Cavalier' 1859

 

T.B. Peterson and Brothers first edition - 1859

The Cavalier was written 21 years after Charles Tyrrell  (see my Blog of 7 August) and the style hasn't changed! One could, perhaps unkindly, suggest it was set in aspic. It was James' ninety-first work, which started with the poem A Ruined City, in 1828.  James had sent off the last two chapters to the American publishers in April 1859 - from Venice, where he had been sent by the British Government as Consul-General for the Adriatic. Just over a year later on 9 June 1860, he was dead, having suffered two major strokes which left him in a state of paralysis. He died in the Palazza Ferro, on the Grand Canal, aged only fifty-eight. His last year had been a sad one - he was a complete wreck, bodily and mentally. His many ailments increased, and he was at times in a state of imbecility. He drank more alcohol than was wise or necessary. (S.M. Ellis, The Solitary Horseman, 1927).

The Cavalier was a sequel to Lord Montagu's Page (1858), which had started with the [in]famous It was a dark and stormy night - a very dark night indeed. The phrase became the archetype for bad writing, but it appears to have been first used by Bulwer-Lytton in his Paul Clifford (1830) - It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents. The Cavalier was not published in England until 1864, in two volumes by Richard Bentley and with a different title - Bernard Marsh.  Bentley was the firm which had issued his first books in 1828-9, thirty-six years previously. This last work received the usual criticism levelled at the author over all those years. Robert Louis Stevenson, writing from Saranac in February 1888, to a friend, asked the latter to send him some of the works of my dear old G.P.R. James...this sudden return of an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, The Cavalier and  Morley Ernstein.  I read the first with indescribable amusement - it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging... At least RLS wasn't as cutting as a mock Advertisement in The Comic Times for 31 August 1850: "Mr. Newby begs to announce the following new work in the press: In Three Volumes. The Old Oak Chest (made out of his own head), by G.P.R. James, Esq."  Cruel.

That James was well aware of his reputation can be gleaned from the following extracts in The Cavalier. 

I remember quite well the time when long and minute descriptions of scenery, costume, armour, personal appearance - ay, and even character - were highly palatable to the reader. The exquisite pictures afforded by the poems and romances of Sir Walter Scott were the delight of intelligent minds...but we have changed all that; we hear from the lips of every little critic deep condemnations of long and wearisome descriptions; and every sort of stimulant, from blood and thunder to philosophical infidelity, is required to excite the public taste. Fifty thousand throats cut in one chapter, five or six thousand young ladies seduced by one villain, with a reasonable admixture of gambling, swindling, drinking, and lying, form the best sauce to any story that can be told... The author, essentially, then says "Bah" and carries on with a detailed description of the countryside around mid 17th century Paris! 

And again: Now, there are a thousand different ways of falling in love in this world; and I have descanted upon this subject enough in other works to render it unnecessary to dwell upon it here...

On true love: There is an interpreter more eloquent than words, a voice more clear, more convincing, than ever issued forth from human lips, a wring of the soul upon the tablet of the face...I am fond of such themes, thought they are of things passed away from me...

We who write books - aye, even the best of us - are very much accustomed to confine our painting to a single character, instead of giving a broad view of human nature. It is especially the characteristic of the present school and day...of course I speak not of myself; for heaven knows I have rarely and incidentally attempted anything like large views...in this work I have especially devoted all my efforts to paint oner character, "The Cavalier", and have drawn the ideal from the real...

He still has a penchant for 'philosophising', which may be all very well but it does slow the pace of the narrative down. In this strange life, where every sort of pleasure has its zest from pain, either preceding or concomitant - where love has its doubts and fears for the present, and fruition its apprehensions for the future, and success too often its regrets for the past - the sudden change from eager activity to tranquil calm, seems in itself so great a happiness that the spirit springs up with a bound, and one is almost tempted to throw away the peaceful blessing, and to compensate - if such compensation were possible - the pains, anxieties, and cares just gone, by tasting the exuberant cup of joy.

and - What a wonderful and blessed thing is night, when nature withdraws the stimulus poured upon the brain through the little channel of the eye...

The novel's main action takes place from 1648, in Cardinal Mazarin/young Louis XIV's turbulent France (the period of the Fronde) to the 1651 Battle of Worcester in England. The hero, Bernard Marsh (for the early part of the book he is not using his title - the Earl of Dartmoor), a committed Royalist, is in exile only waiting for the chance to return to England to help his monarch - firstly Charles I and then Charles II. He is given succour in the mansion of Sir Edward Langdale - the hero of Montagu's Page - whose face now told tales of exposure and of strife...he was active and vigorous, however, though somewhat spare in form; and his wife, Lucette, whose face was still beautifully fair, and not a line or wrinkle showed the work of age. They have four children, two young boys of nine and ten, who Bernard is set on to tutor; a 16 year-old son, Henry, with a somewhat delicate look and slender form; and Lucy, but 17 years-old, and yes, because it is a James story, destined to fall in love and be loved by Bernard.

After a worrying fracas, where there is an attempt to abduct Lucy, whilst on a family outing, Bernard goes in search of the guilty.  He meets up with the Prince de Condé, which once again allows the author to indulge in his descriptive powers. The reader is introduced to more dark nights, interesting character studies of both good and bad personages, and an increasing desire to support Bernard in his political and love lives. He becomes the heart and soul of all the arrangements in the Langdale family and Lucy, though she was a little timid at first, called him nothing but Bernard. He is on the right track, then. As Bernard himself admits to Sir Edward, I never thought to love any one. I gave up my whole youth to one great cause, and I had thought that no one - no passion, no affection, could never alienate one thought from that cause . But I love your daughter...

When Sir Edward and Bernard are told that Charles I has been 'murdered', they are determined to help his son regain the throne. Back in England, there are several exciting scenes, where the little band of cavaliers come under attack; both Sir Edward and Bernard fight at Worcester but the young Charles II himself never appears in the novel. However, a strange monk does, who turns out to be another important string to the Langdale tale. There is a shrewd appraisal of Cromwell, much to this reader's approval. 

...a man of middle height - rather above than below it - powerful and muscular in frame, but not at all obese. He wore a simple gray coat, with a plain linen collar, and a tall, unornamented black hat. His face, as far as features and colouring went, were decidedly coarse and plain, the features generally large and heavy, and the nose especially thick and ill-shaped; but the brow was massy and powerful, and the brownish gray eye, though it had no fire, had a world of stern, grave power in it, and seemed to menace and rule all it fell upon...the whole expression, indeed - and it spread through the entire figure - was that of command. A consciousness of power was in every line and in every movement; and yet, strange to say...a look of cunning; ay; and at times a look of soft weakness.

One must remember that the whole slant of the novel favours the Cavalier side, but one still gets the feeling that the author dislikes, disapproves of Cromwell even if he admired his leadership qualities. At the very end of the book, he wrote: it is well known that the end of the great rebellion was followed by evils more terrible than those which excited it. Charles I was misled by his sycophantic advisers; Charles II and James II were not worthy of the throne (if one reads James' other works), but good times come again - according to this novel's very last words - with the more peaceful and beneficial changes of 1688. James clearly believed in the monarchy, if not particular monarchs (e.g. James I), and regarded the Interregnum with some distaste.  Sir Edward, his family, and Bernard Marsh, Earl of Dartmoor, would have totally agreed.

A Trip Down Memory Lane - Desmond Bagley, Jack Higgins, Hammond Innes, Gavin Lyall

Every so often, intense (if kindly) pressure is put on me to relieve my groaning shelves of books. The suggestion of 'one in, one out' has, thankfully, not yet come to pass; however, recently I have been having a more ruthless look at the ageing paperbacks I have cossetted since the last century. My growing collection of the 1930s Crime-Book Society 6d issues, has meant, in order to make room for them, some of these older ones have had to depart the Hillier mansion. I have already seen the removal of all the more recent Susanna Gregory series, featuring the 14th century Matthew Bartholomew and the 17th century Thomas Challoner; my entire collection of Candace Robb's books set also in the 14th century with Owen Archer as the hero; and nearly all of my Edward Marston novels. A kind bookseller lady in Derby gave me 50p a paperback, as they were all in pristine condition; but now the older ones are in the firing line.

With fond memories of Neville Shute's novels (and a re-reading not that long ago of a few), he is safe for the time being; but there are four other 'thriller' writers whose continued presence now appears shaky. Big names in the last quarter of the 20th century, perhaps they are unfamiliar to present-day readers. First up for the chop: 

1978                       1985                                1976

Jack Higgins (1929-2022), real name Henry Patterson, is best-known for his The Eagle Has Landed, but that is probably due to the much acclaimed film starring Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland (I have watched it several times on DVD). During the 1970s and 1980s, Higgins was regularly in the bestseller lists and I purchased and read six of his novels in paperback - The Testament of Caspar Schultz (1962), Night Judgement at Sinos (1970), Storm Warning (1976), Day of Judgement (1978), Confessional (1985) and The Eagle Has Landed (1975). He had written 35 thrillers before he hit the jack-pot with The Eagle, which was in the Top Ten Bestseller list for 36 weeks. Many of his books featured good guys fighting for rotten causes, as personified by Kurt Steiner and Liam Devlin. I must admit, after over a quarter of a century, I can't remember much about Higgins' books, and they are now destined for our local Charity Shop - apart from The Eagle Has Landed!

1960                                1954

Hammond Innes (1913-1998), who ended up a Major in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War, wrote 34 novels - they were mainly what I would term 'hairs on your chest', macho books. Rugged landscapes and rugged men abound. They often featured ordinary men thrust into extreme situations by circumstance. I hadn't realised I had collected, and probably read, twenty-four paperbacks - well over half of his output. They are: The Trojan Horse (1940); Attack Alarm (1941); Dead and Alive (1946)*; The Lonely Skier (1947); The Killer Mine (1947); Maddon's Rock (1947); The Blue Ice (1948); The White South (1949); Air Bridge (1951); Campbell's Kingdom (1952)*; The Strange Land (1954); The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956); The Land God Gave to Cain (1958)*; Harvest of Journeys (1960)*; The Doomed Oasis (1960); Atlantic Fury (1962); The Strode Venturer 1965); Levkas Man (1971); Golden Soak (1973); North Star (1974)*; The Big Footprints (1977)*; Solomon's Seal (1980)*; High Stand (1985)*; Medusa (1988). Those with an asterisk are also off to the Charity shop. The others have been given a reprieve - for now.

1972                                  1980  

Gavin Lyall's (1932-2003) early stories have been divided into 'aviation thrillers' and 'Euro-thrillers', usually written in the first-person narrative, Apparently feeling that he was become predictable, he changed to a series of 'espionage thrillers', starring Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer. In the 1990s, he changed literary direction again and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the British secret service before the Great War. He was married to the Observer journalist Katharine Whitehorn (1928-2021). I have a dozen of his novels in paperback and will be retaining them all for now. The Wrong Side of the Sky (1961); The Most Dangerous Game (1964); Midnight plus One (1965);  Shooting Script (1966); Venus with Pistol (1969); Blame the Dead (1972); Judas Country (1975); The Secret Serpent (1980); The Conduct of Major Maxim (1982); The Crocus List (1985); Uncle Target (1988); Flight from Honour (1996).

Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) was going to be my fourth author destined, now or eventually, for the Charity shop. However, I find that 'the birds (or, rather, books) have already flown'! They must have gone in an earlier clear-out; a pity, as I would have liked a last thumb through of his novels, as I remember enjoying them. He was usually linked with Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean for setting  a tough, resourceful but essentially ordinary hero pitted against villains determined to sow destruction and chaos for their own ends.

I realise now that I read all these authors in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them before I was married. Did they fit the image of myself as a macho man enjoying a singular and single life?! Another reason, perhaps, was the need to get away from the awful pedestrian years of the Wilson-Heath-Callaghan governments. Just as nowadays I plunge into 19th century (often three-decker) fiction to shut out the present ghastly political landscape.

NB Between 14 March and 9 August 2020, I re-read seventeen novels of  Helen MacInnes and did a series of Blogs on her work. Her world-view was very black and white: Fascists/Communists bad. the West (especially the USA) good. She might have second thoughts these days, if not about Russia perhaps about the West!