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.
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