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.
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