Recent reading: bits and pieces
May. 27th, 2022 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeRedgauntlet by Walter Scott (1824). Having enjoyed Waverley and Rob Roy, I was delighted to learn that Walter Scott wrote a third Jacobite novel! This one is set in the 1760s and follows the rich and amiable orphan Darsie Latimer, whom we find in the epistolary early part of the book writing to his friend Alan Fairford, a law student in Edinburgh, while travelling in Dumfries. Darsie meets some local characters—a mysterious glowering person, apparently a gentleman come a long way down in the world, who rescues him from the perilous quicksands of the Solway; an eccentric Quaker involved in a somewhat dubious dispute with the local residents over some fishing-nets; a blind fiddle-player with an interesting repertoire of stories. But then Darsie is KIDNAPPED by the mysterious glowering gentleman! Alan, who has just become a lawyer and whose father has caused him to become embroiled in a humorously over-complicated legal case deliberately in order to keep him from going to see the apparently undesirably wayward Darsie, hears about his disappearance and literally rushes out of the courtroom to go to his assistance; and from there we follow Darsie's adventures as he discovers more about his uncongenial captor. Throughout the early part of the book there are various significant references to the Jacobites, and it eventually becomes apparent that a) Darsie's kidnapper is an old and unrepentant Jacobite and b) this is going to be very important to the plot. I enjoyed the history and the colourful adventures, and Scott's attitude to the Jacobites, who are more clearly the bad guys here than in Waverley, is interesting—he is clearly fascinated by them and seems to have some respect for their fidelity, while also ultimately believing that they should stay safely in history where they belong. The ending is a very interesting bit of speculative later-Jacobite alternate history. I also enjoyed Darsie and Alan's affectionate friendship (including many 'my dearest's and a David and Jonathan reference!) and the romance of Alan going off to rescue Darsie—although this aspect of things does peter out a bit disappointingly at the end, which never gave me the big emotional reunion I was hoping for. There's a het romance which is refreshingly perfunctory and non-focal, although I did quite like the heroine in question (whose identity is a spoiler, so I won't say anything more about her). I also liked Scott's legal humour! I found the style/format of the book annoyingly uneven—it starts out epistolary, but when the plot reaches a point where the characters can't write to each other or in a journal anymore Scott abruptly takes over as third-person omniscient narrator, which felt rather clumsy.
Also, enjoy this amusingly cheeky bit of Jacobite poetry which Darsie finds engraved upon a tankard, apparently written by Dr Byrom (father of the diarist Beppy):
About half of The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution by Frank McLynn (2012). All about failed or nearly-revolutions in British history: the chapters I've read so far cover the Peasants' Revolt, the Jack Cade rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Civil War and the Levellers, and the 1745 Jacobite rising, while the later chapters are about the Chartists and the General Strike of the 1920s. This is a good theme for a history book, and McLynn develops it interestingly—I like his style of talking about and criticising historical figures' politics as politics, assessing their various attitudes, influences and mistakes in a way that felt very current for a history book. And he reaches some fascinating conclusions—like that, if the Levellers had triumphed over the Cromwellian Roundheads, Britain might never have become a significant imperial power but instead might have developed along the lines of the Scandinavian countries. The detail in the non-Jacobite chapters went over my head a bit, knowing very little about those periods to begin with, though they were very interesting; but I was mostly here for the Jacobites, and those chapters were great. McLynn of course emphasises the 'revolutionary' aspects of Jacobitism; despite its origin as a basically reactionary movement centred upon divine right monarchy, he argues, many elements of Jacobitism as it ended up were far more radical and revolutionary. He emphasises the connections of Jacobitism to rioting, crime and the socially disadvantaged elements of society in general, and argues that—paradoxically—the very groups who had been Levellers and Diggers during the Civil War, as anti-Stuart as it got, were Jacobites a century later. Really fascinating stuff. I shall look forward to the rest of it—it is heavy going and the book was due back at the library, so I decided to have a break and come back for the remaining chapters.
Diana Victrix by Florence Converse (1897). As the title suggests, this is a thoroughly New Woman novel, about two women friends from Boston who don't get married. Enid, who writes and lectures on sociology and has all sorts of grand theories about how to improve the world, accompanies her nervous and delicate friend Sylvia, who tries to write but has never managed to get anywhere, when she goes to stay in New Orleans over the winter for her health. Actually much of the book is about the family they lodge with in New Orleans, and particularly the two stepbrothers, Jacques and Jocelin, who fall in love with Enid and Sylvia respectively. I was conflicted about the New Orleans story—on the one hand it's an interesting historical setting that was new to me (I did not know there were French-speaking communities in the US at this date! and the New Orleans local detail was enjoyable), on the other hand I really wanted more of Enid and Sylvia and their relationship. There is a bit more towards the end, where we get multiple dramatic rejected marriage proposals and a lot of stuff about the women's conflicted but ultimately decided feelings about their position in life. It was all very satisfying, as well as being interesting as a look at historical attitudes and arguments. Converse's writing style is not brilliant, and definitely tends towards the melodramatic, but on the whole this book was definitely worth reading.
I've also read, very slowly and painstakingly, the first chapter of Ronja rövardotter by Astrid Lindgren in the original Swedish. I'm very pleased with myself :D
Also, enjoy this amusingly cheeky bit of Jacobite poetry which Darsie finds engraved upon a tankard, apparently written by Dr Byrom (father of the diarist Beppy):
God bless the King!—God bless the Faith’s defender!
God bless—No harm in blessing—the Pretender.
Who that Pretender is, and who that King,—
God bless us all!—is quite another thing.
About half of The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution by Frank McLynn (2012). All about failed or nearly-revolutions in British history: the chapters I've read so far cover the Peasants' Revolt, the Jack Cade rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Civil War and the Levellers, and the 1745 Jacobite rising, while the later chapters are about the Chartists and the General Strike of the 1920s. This is a good theme for a history book, and McLynn develops it interestingly—I like his style of talking about and criticising historical figures' politics as politics, assessing their various attitudes, influences and mistakes in a way that felt very current for a history book. And he reaches some fascinating conclusions—like that, if the Levellers had triumphed over the Cromwellian Roundheads, Britain might never have become a significant imperial power but instead might have developed along the lines of the Scandinavian countries. The detail in the non-Jacobite chapters went over my head a bit, knowing very little about those periods to begin with, though they were very interesting; but I was mostly here for the Jacobites, and those chapters were great. McLynn of course emphasises the 'revolutionary' aspects of Jacobitism; despite its origin as a basically reactionary movement centred upon divine right monarchy, he argues, many elements of Jacobitism as it ended up were far more radical and revolutionary. He emphasises the connections of Jacobitism to rioting, crime and the socially disadvantaged elements of society in general, and argues that—paradoxically—the very groups who had been Levellers and Diggers during the Civil War, as anti-Stuart as it got, were Jacobites a century later. Really fascinating stuff. I shall look forward to the rest of it—it is heavy going and the book was due back at the library, so I decided to have a break and come back for the remaining chapters.
Diana Victrix by Florence Converse (1897). As the title suggests, this is a thoroughly New Woman novel, about two women friends from Boston who don't get married. Enid, who writes and lectures on sociology and has all sorts of grand theories about how to improve the world, accompanies her nervous and delicate friend Sylvia, who tries to write but has never managed to get anywhere, when she goes to stay in New Orleans over the winter for her health. Actually much of the book is about the family they lodge with in New Orleans, and particularly the two stepbrothers, Jacques and Jocelin, who fall in love with Enid and Sylvia respectively. I was conflicted about the New Orleans story—on the one hand it's an interesting historical setting that was new to me (I did not know there were French-speaking communities in the US at this date! and the New Orleans local detail was enjoyable), on the other hand I really wanted more of Enid and Sylvia and their relationship. There is a bit more towards the end, where we get multiple dramatic rejected marriage proposals and a lot of stuff about the women's conflicted but ultimately decided feelings about their position in life. It was all very satisfying, as well as being interesting as a look at historical attitudes and arguments. Converse's writing style is not brilliant, and definitely tends towards the melodramatic, but on the whole this book was definitely worth reading.
I've also read, very slowly and painstakingly, the first chapter of Ronja rövardotter by Astrid Lindgren in the original Swedish. I'm very pleased with myself :D
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Date: May. 31st, 2022 04:43 pm (UTC)Oh, that's interesting about the Cajuns—what various bits of history one discovers when doing fic research :D
ett stort grattis till att du läst första kapitlet i Ronja rövardotter!
:D Tack!