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!
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