Flight of the Heron read-along: Part IV chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Lots of drama in this week's chapters...!

Next week we'll continue with Part IV chapters 3 and 4.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Jnvg, gung npghnyyl JNF Ynpuyna? Guvf er-ernq, vg bppheerq gb zr gung vg zvtug or, ohg gura jura Xrvgu ybbxrq ng uvz evtug va gur snpr naq gur nffnvynag'f rlrf jrer bcra naq svkrq naq fgnevat, V svtherq vg pbhyqa'g or ohg vg jbhyq unir orra tbbq vs vg jnf.

Ohg abj er-ernqvat gur raq ntnva, V frr jr'er gbyq gung Ynpuyna znqr na nggrzcg ng Ynxr Gness, fb V fhccbfr vg jnf Ynpuyna nsgre nyy. Uhu. V fhccbfr guvf vyyhfgengrf ubj yhpxl Rjra jnf onpx ng gur fuvryvat gung ur'q unq n funir, vs guvf vf ubj onq Xrvgu vf ng erpbtavfvat orneqrq crbcyr...

In other news, Keith continues to be phenomenally bad at identifying his feelings. He needs a set of those cards with various expressions on it that they use to teach little kids to name their feelings.

I wonder how his initial plan for getting Cumberland to personally intervene would have worked out. Do we believe that Keith "I Got Personal Feelings All Over My Debt of Honour" Windham would have been able to keep his cool that long?

[hyarrowen]

wrt to your ROT'd paras - it never occurred to me that Keith would recognise the assailant. I'm dreadfully bad at faces myself. And good as Broster is at describing landscapes, ducks, etc, she does have characters recognising each other by voice rather than appearance a couple of times that I can remember. eg Keith suddenly realising who Ewen is in Edinburgh, and someone has a similar experience in GitN. I wonder if she was slightly face-blind?

[sanguinity]

I can't speak to Broster herself, but now that you point it out, I would agree that the hypothesis that Keith is at least a bit face-blind is supported by the text!

(omg, what must it be like to be faceblind in the military, when everyone is in identical uniform all the time?)

[hyarrowen]

I got dreadfully confused when watching Band of Brothers. Who is this young, white, dark-haired, uniformed fellow with an American accent who's wearing an enormous helmet? I really had no idea most of the time...

[sanguinity]

Yeah, my wife is a bit face-blind, and can struggle with TV. A couple of shows (such as The Terror) I've not bothered suggesting for just that reason: a whole cast of medium-build bearded dark-haired white men in very similar uniforms.

[tgarnsl]

As someone who is reasonably face blind, I can never get into any media where there are a bunch of similar looking people in uniforms. The Terror is a good show but I can recognise like three people on it.

I wholeheartedly support the notion that Keith is face blind, however, and am now amused/horrified at the thought of him not recognising Ewen at the shieling until it was too late.

[osprey_archer]

I'M GLAD IT WASN'T JUST ME. I watched it with my brother and had to ask him to identify every character almost every episode, and by the end I could STILL only reliably identify three of them. And one of them was the one guy who had lighter hair, of course.

[regshoe]

Oh, I like the idea of Keith (and, yeah, perhaps Broster) being face-blind! Also in the bits where he admires Ewen at amusing length, the focus tends to be on Ewen's body and manner rather than his handsome face (apart from the blue eyes, which I suppose are distinctive enough to stand out even without much face-recognition ability), which fits with that too.

I'm only slightly bad at faces, and the combination of identical uniforms and eighteenth-century wigs/hats obscuring hair makes me find trying to picture soldier characters a bit of a puzzle!

[regshoe]

Lrnu, vg'f nyjnlf fgehpx zr nf irel fgenatr gur jnl gung cnffntr frrzf gb tb bhg bs vgf jnl gb qrfpevor Ynpuyna nf boivbhfyl qrnq va n jnl gung jbhyqa'g or rnfl gb snxr, naq gura gur ovg yngre ba ernyyl qbrfa'g chg nal rzcunfvf ba ubj nznmvat vg jnf gung ur fheivirq—ohg NSNVPG vg vf fhccbfrq gb or uvz. (Xrvgu abgvprf gur Pnzreba gnegna ntnva, gbb!).

Keith's inability to identify his feelings is very endearing. I especially like the way he'll come to an awareness of his feelings, not by thinking about how he feels and understand it that way but by observing how he acts and then realising that he must have been motivated by these feelings he hadn't noticed before.

Do we believe that Keith "I Got Personal Feelings All Over My Debt of Honour" Windham would have been able to keep his cool that long?

Yeah, judging by his behaviour to Lord Loudon—and imagining the way Cumberland would probably have responded to a request like that—I doubt it a little...

[sanguinity]

Gur Pnzreba gnegna jnf n avpr vebavp gbhpu. Xrvgu unf graqre srryvatf sbe nalbar jrnevat vg, orpnhfr vg erzvaqf uvz bs Rjra. Jurernf gur yblnygvrf flzobyvmrq ol gung gnegna ner RKNPGYL jul guvf zna nggrzcgrq gb nffnffvangr uvz!

[luzula]

Ha, that is very true!

[regshoe]

Oh dear, good point :(

[hyarrowen]

Oof. So true.

[sanguinity]

Re his plan to petition Cumberland for Keith's freedom, I ran across this in a history of Culloden that I'm reading (Trevor Royle, Culloden: Scotland's Last Battle and the Forging of the British Empire):

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Whiteford was one of the more chivalrous and caring officers in Cumberland's army... He distinguished himself as a volunteer at Prestonpans, where he gallantly refused to abandon his position with the artillery after his gunners had fled, and was saved from summary execution by Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle, a Jacobite officer in the Appin Regiment. In the aftermath of Culloden Whitefoord repaid the debt by using his influence with Cumberland to save the life of Stewart of Invernahyle and his family.

(It then goes on to say that Walter Scott learned of the incident, and Whitefoord became the basis of Colonel Talbot in Waverley.)

Anyway, maybe Keith's plan to ask for Cumberland's intervention was better than we're giving him credit for?

[luzula]

Ah yes, I recognize that story from Duffy. In general a lot of people were trying to save Jacobites by using the patronage system and appealing to influential Whigs that they had some connection to, which in many cases was successful. So yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable for Keith to expect to be able to save Ewen that way.

Heee, I'm glad to see you're getting sucked into research reading. *g*

[sanguinity]

There was also a page or so in here about Loudoun, asserting that he was notably better than most of the government officers about treating surrendered Jacobites with decency. I note, too, that Loudoun was a Campbell, and thus surmise -- connecting the dots with something I think you said elsewhere -- that he was one of the Campbells in particular that Jacobites would insist on surrendering to, if they were going to surrender at all.

Which makes me wonder if Keith might have had a chance of success with Loudoun, had he 1) kept his cool, and 2) had this interview on his first pass through the fort.

[luzula]

Yeah, Loudoun was a pretty decent guy, from what I've read! I see why Broster apologized for slandering him...but hey, the plot needed to go where it needed to go. : D

Albemarle, who is seen sympathetically in FotH because he likes Keith (which he mostly does because he has the hots for Lady Stowe), was actually much worse.

Let's see if I can dig up a quote by Albemarle...okay, here we go: I [...] always feared from the bad inclination of the people in most of the northern counties and from their stubborn, inveterate disposition of mind, nothing could effect it but laying the whole country waste and ashes, and removing all the inhabitants (excepting a few) out of the kingdom.

[sanguinity]

Something to keep in mind when we see Albemarle. I wish I could say that is the only quote like that I've read from the government officers, but sadly, it's very much not. :-/