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.