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REDGAUNTLET (1824)
by Sir Walter Scott Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. REVIEW FOR HTTP://WWW.BARNESANDNOBLE.COM As the text appears on line: BOOK REVIEWED: Sir Walter Scott, REDGAUNTLET (1824) REVIEWED BY: Patrick Killough (patrickkillough@charter.net), Immersed in Sir Walter Scott, May 25, 2006, * * * * * (FIVE STARS) TITLE OF REVIEW: When Coded Scottish Folk Songs Saved Lives Sir Walter Scott's 1824 novel REDGAUNTLET is the greatest of the 'WAVERLEY' series of historical tales of Scotland. Such tales abound in dialog in the lowland Scots language of Scott and Robert Burns, with many learned tags from Latin and allusions to European classics in several languages. The average American reader can make better sense of REDGAUNTLET and related novels by Scott if the text is embedded in a volume fitted out with end notes, linguistic glossary and an historical setting. For this purpose there is no better series than the PENGUIN CLASSICS. *** Two very young, unworldly male friends, the dreamy Darsie Latimer and the slightly older, newly minted Scottish lawyer Alan Fairford are forced to grow up quickly. The orphaned, still under age Darsie (whose lineage is a mystery to him) is kidnapped by a rebellious uncle Hugh of the ancient house of Redgauntlet as part of a fictitious 1765 plot to place the Young Pretender back on the thrones of England and Scotland. Alan abandons his first case in Edinburgh to race to the borderlands along the Firth of Solway to find his missing friend Darsie. In the progress of this tale, Darsie discovers that a beautiful miss with whom he is briefly smitten is his sister and that he is the heir of wealth in England and of an attainted title in Scotland. The friends fall in with Quaker fishers who dam streams with nets and hostile Catholic horsemen who fish the tidal shallows with lances, with hypocritical Presbyterian smugglers and a cast of unforgettable rogues, heroes and even Prince Charles Edward Stuart himself. Memorable is the blind fiddler, Wandering Willie, who communicates with captive Darsie in a code based on popular Scottish folk songs. Shades of Richard the Lion-Hearted imprisoned in Austria and his minstrel Blondel who finds the King through song! *** When asked to say a grace before meals acceptable to their Presbyterian guest Darsie Latimer, a Catholic servant of the Laird of the Lochs pithily sets off the liturgical difference between Protestants and Catholics: 'if the gentleman is a whig, he may please himself with his own mummery. My faith is neither in word nor writ, but in barley bread and brown ale' [Catholic code words for bread and wine, elements of the Christian Eucharist], (p.28). There is also pointed debate in the novel about free will versus destiny. *** Many intertwined personalities come together in a grand finale on the shores of the Solway. REDGAUNTLET is the grandest tale by Scotland's greatest teller of tales. -OOO- Also recommended: Thornton Wilder, THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY. Sir Walter Scott, THE TALE OF OLD MORTALITY, ROB ROY, THE LADY OF THE LAKE. -OOO- =-=-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=- II. REVIEW FOR HTTP;//WWW.AMAZON.COM BOOK REVIEWED: REDGAUNTLET by Sir Walter Scott Title of this review: The muted sunset of the Stuart Dynasty of Scotland and England, May 25, 2006 RATING GIVEN TO THIS BOOK: * * * * * (FIVE STARS) Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews In his 1824 novel REDGAUNTLET, Sir Walter Scott says farewell to the dethroned Stuart Dynasty with its colorful, haughty claims to the Crowns of Scotland and England. Law and a commercial order comfortable to property owners have taken root by the time of the third Hanoverian King and displaced the older claims of personal and clan loyalty to a God-anointed sovereign. England, and increasingly Scotland, now make up a nation of shopkeepers and overseas traders and their souls are content. Even those of smugglers. The two principal characters, men in their early 20s, can be objects of gentle fun, as they hastily and clumsily grow up. Yet these youngsters (and two young women they meet and admire) represent the future of the United Kingdom. Initially, in the summer of 1765, the two, newly minted lawyer Alan Fairford and his dreamy laid-back alter-ego Darsie Latimer, are at least a little bit open to the romance of the "auld days." Like many Romantic Movement heroes, Darsie is not sure who he is. In addition to the usual reluctance to allow himself to be defined by profession, church, state, older adults, etc., Darsie does not know who were his parents. Strong hints are that he will know as soon as he turns 21. Meanwhile he is to avoid leaving Scotland at any cost. Alan has delicate health and is the dutiful son of an overbearing lawyer of Edinburgh. He uncharacteristically rebels and strikes out on his own when Darsie is violently carried away across the firth of Solway into northwestern England. That deed was done by persons unknown but increasingly suspected to be using Darsie as a pawn. Slowly, it becomes clear that Darsie's rebel uncle, Hugh Redgauntlet, is using the young hero to mobilize support for a fresh rising in England and Scotland to put the Old Pretender back on a throne that he had rolled the dice for 20 years earlier in the crushed rising of 1745. There are many ways and levels for reading Scott's historical novels. One, followed by thousands since Scott's death in 1832, is to find lessons for today's world in the pasts of England and Scotland. Many Americans grew up in a world echoing the skepticism of Nanty Ewart (Vol. II, Ch. 13, p. 250), "Tell that to the marines -- the sailors won't believe it." And might not the US in Iraq in 2006 spring to mind when Darsie Latimer is said to fall easily in and out of puppy loves like a "Mahratta conqueror, who overruns a province with the rapidity of lightning, but finds it impossible to retain it beyond a very brief space" ( Vol. III. Ch. 4, p. 290). Or we can enjoy REDGAUNTLET for its striking comparisons. Darsie, for example, has learned enough of the uncle who kidnapped him to know that his laying on violent hands had been for no personal gain. "... he could as soon have imagined Cassius picking Caesar's pocket, instead of drawing his poniard upon the Dictator" (p. 293). And "Freedom of religious opinion brings on, I suppose, freedom of political creed" ... (p. 303). REDGAUNTLET is a wise, complex tale by one of the world's greatest story tellers. ===-=-=-=-=-=-= III. Review for epinions.com Reviewer's Rating of REDGAUNTLET: * * * * * FIVE STARS Title of this Review: Bonnie Prince Charlie Lived Too Long for A Legend Pros Should Bonnie Prince Charlie have died young? Combative life on the border Firth of Solway. Cons Is it plausible that the young hero's genealogy could really have been so mysterious? The Bottom Line If you read only five books by Sir Walter Scott, then two of them must be his treatment of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the novels WAVERLEY and REDGAUNTLET. For at least a dozen reasons Scott's 1824 REDGAUNTLET is one of the greatest if not the very greatest of Sir Walter's 27 novels. The principal reason is that REDGAUNTLET is brilliant, deep, original alternative history. It asks "what if" Prince Charles Edward Stuart, having been crushed in 1746 in the battle of Culloden, had returned to England in 1765 to gain the crown? He did not, of course, actually return, of course. But, what if he had? Well, in 1765 the Young Pretender would have been 45 years old, fat, dissipated, imperious, no longer physically attractive. The aura of loser was still upon him. On his earlier comet-like appearance from nowhere in Scotland and Ireland he was 25, thin, charming, fleet as a deer, brave and he won all his battles but one. He was Bonnie Prince Charlie. Crowds sang "Charlie is My Darling." His flight from the isle of Uist with Flora MacDonald inspired the late 19th century Skye Boat Song: "Speed
bonnie boat like a bird on the wing,
Onward, the sailors cry. Carry the lad that's born to be king Over the sea to Skye." For the sake of his legend, Charlie should either have won at Culloden and lived to see his father Jame, the Old Pretender, crowned King or at least died young, like Achilles. Walter Scott knew that the old order of Stuart Kings, clan rivalries, picturesque Highlands Roman Catholicism, feudalism and chivalry was dead after Culloden. And his heroes knew it too. Heroic Highlanders were meant to die young. Hence the dying words to his young grandson by the clan chief of the Children of the Mist in A LEGEND OF MONTROSE: "Kenneth,
son of Eracht, keep thou unsoiled the freedom which I leave thee as a
birthright. ... Farewell, beloved! And mayest thou die like thy
forefathers, ere infirmity, disease, or age, shall break thy spirit --
Begone! -- begone! -- live free -- requite kindness -- avenge the
injuries of thy race!"
Prince Charles Edward's last hurrah founders for several reasons. --(1) The Hanoverian government is aware of it and courteously allows the Prince to sail away to France, with his most ardent supporter, Edward Hugh Redgauntlet. --(2) The Jacobite lords assembled to decide for or against rising on the Pretender's behalf cannot persuade him, as an act of prudence and good will to them, to give up his English mistress. ---(3) This Royal Stuart, brooking no discussion of his private life, asserts that he is King by divine right. He is no longer the charming, compromising, moderate Bonnie young man who landed with seven Irishmen on a wild Scottish island to raise the clans for his Royal father. Then, 1745-6, Charlie had canvassed humbly like a modern politician for voluntary support of the Stuart cause. Not so in 1765. Understanding the collapse of a bonnie prince who lived too long is, in my opinion, the main reason to read REDGAUNTLET. What are some other reasons? --Scott experiments with various forms of narrative, including exchange of letters and diaries. The views of many about what is going on is compactly and variously presented. --After 1746, the Hanoverian government of the United Kingdom, in the eyes of many, practiced cultural genocide in the Scottish Highlands. Wearing of clan tartans and kilts was forbidden. The Gaelic language was de facto suppressed. The feudal powers of the clan chiefs was abolished forever. Forts and government strongholds were placed and garrisoned where troops were seldom seen before. It was 50 years, according to Walter Scott, before Scotland experienced measurable positive payoff for its incorporation in 1707 into the United Kingdom (and Bonnie Prince Charlie's rising foolishly set back that progress) and another 50 before Scotland recovered from supporting Prince Charles Edward in "the '45." Scott's novel gives an abiding sense of those seminal times. --The plot is complicated but attractive. Darsie Latimer and Alan Fairford are two young Scottish friends fresh from university. Darsie disappears while vacationing in Southwest Scotland on the Firth of Solway. Alan moves heaven and earth to find him. In the process the two young men encounter Quakers at war with Catholics over fishing rights, Bible-quoting smugglers and a beautiful young woman in a green mantle with whom both young men fall in love. Darsie unravels his family identity and sorts out previously unknown inheritance rights in England which make him a great catch if his uncle Edward Redgauntlet can persuade him to swear allegiance to Prince Charles Edward. Walter Scott's other tale of Bonnie Prince Charlie is WAVERLEY, his very first novel. If, taken together, WAVERLEY and REDGAUNTLET do not turn you into an enthusiastic reader of Sir Walter Scott as well as enthsiast for for Scottish and English history, then nothing will or can. Enjoy! -OOO- Recommended: Yes -OOO- Black Mountain, North Carolina May 25, 2006 November 02, 2007 |