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Sir Walter Scott ROKEBY (1813) reviewed by Patrick Killough I. For barnesandnoble.com Reviewer's Rating of ROKEBY: * * * THREE STARS TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: 1644 Was A Difficult Year for Retired Buccaneers For centuries three neighboring noble Northumbrian families had fought side by side against incursions by the Scots. In war-torn England of 1644 the older generation of those three families are represented by a retired buccaneer, Philip Mortham, his brother-in-law Sir Richard Rokeby and by Oswald Wycliffe, Mortham's near kin and onetime closest friend, now enemy. Into this mixture add a fourth man with a large role to play: Bertram Risingham, longtime loyal follower of Mortham in England, and as brother buccaneers on the Spanish Main. Rokeby is for King and Bishops. Mortham, Wycliffe and Risingham fight for Parliament and the Gospel. It is July 1644. The siege of York in Northeastern England by Scots and Parliamentarians in rebellion against King Charles I has been relieved by Royalist forces under Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Rupert's troops and the large Royalist garrison no longer penned in York then attack the Parliamentarians who had retreated a few miles away to Marston Moor. Initially the Royalists are driving towards sweeping victory. But Major General Oliver Cromwell turns the tide for Parliament. On July 3, 1644 the King's men are routed. After Marston Moor fortune begins to frown against the only English King ever publicly executed. The main story line is a list of well thought out dirty tricks which Oswald Wycliffe plays to consolidate his family estate by acquiring Rokeby castle and Mortham's lands after having him murdered. Complications abound. Two decades earlier, Philip Mortham, incited to jealousy by Oswald Wycliffe, not understanding what he was doing, had killed with a crossbow his Irish wife Edith while she was embracing her brother who had come from Ireland to make peace between Mortham and her father, the Ulster leader Turlough O'Neale. When his young son was shortly taken away by mysterious armed men, a despairing Mortham went to the Caribbean where he won great wealth warring against the Spaniards. He had brought back to England with him both vast booty as well as Bertram Risingham, the most daring of his buccaneer subordinates. A younger generation also play their parts: beautiful young Matilda, Rokeby's daughter, Redmond O'Neale, sent by his grandfather to live with Rokeby and Wilfrid Wycliffe, old greedy Oswald's last surviving and feeblest son. The story is about Oswald Wycliffe's scheme to acquire for his family the other two neighboring great estates. He persuades Bertram Risingham to shoot Bertram's one-time mentor and leader Philip Mortham. As nearest kin, Oswald will thus acquire Mortham's keep. And by compelling his assigned captive, the defeated royalist Rokeby, to give his daughter's hand to young Wilfrid, the Wycliffes will become the grandest power along the Tees River. But there are factors at work to foil this nefarious scheme. Read on! COMMENT: Sir Walter Scott in ROKEBY attempted an analysis of the psycho-pathology of evil which was too heavy and complex for the traditional genre of narrative poetry. Perhaps with those limitations of poetry now in mind, Scott soon wrote the first of his 27 novels. ROKEBY is a poem for advanced students of Sir Walter Scott, not for beginners. -OOO- Also recommended: --Sir Walter Scott: THE PIRATE, THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, THE LADY OF THE LAKE. --Jerome MITCHELL: THE WALTER SCOTT OPERAS, MORE SCOTT OPERAS. -OOO- 11/29/2007 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. For epinions.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: England's Civil War Draws in Retired Pirates Pros Watch the embers glow again in the conscience of brave, amoral, superstitious Bertram Risingham. Cons Wooden abstract characters, representing psychological states rather than flesh and blood. The Bottom Line Want to watch Sir Walter Scott doing depth psychology? Read ROKEBY. See how a civil war brings out the worst in some men. Not for beginning readers of Scott. Full Review I first read Sir Walter Scott's ROKEBY 13 months ago. I took notes. I planned two book reviews. But, to my enormous surprise, I could not keep the characters straight in my mind. So I laid ROKEBY aside. In November 2007 I read a second time this long narrative poem set in England in July and August 1644. There were characters and relationships I still could not grasp or explain to myself. So I did a third reading and a fourth. Finally I started drafting my by now customary three reviews. In the draft of review number one I found that I was still confusing two of the characters. My point: ROKEBY is the most difficult and untypical thing I have ever read by Sir Walter Scott. Only now do I begin to understand why: his characters, with one evil but repentant exception, are literary types, not creatures of flesh and blood. The men and women are almost allegorical, more suited to PILGRIM'S PROGRESS or a medieval mystery play than a poem about the English Civil War. The only epinions "friends" to whom, therefore, I can recommend ROKEBY are graduate students of English. I cannot commend it to someone who has read and enjoyed either nothing or at best two or three other Scott prose or verse works. Others who might draw fruit from this poem are religiously or philosophically inclined adults who like slow, meditative, reflective reading of Walter Scott's sometimes deep probings of good and evil, conscience, loyalty, greed, gorgeous local color and the impact on English history of Vikings, Scots, Irish and buccaneers. Here and there throughout the six cantos are fascinating snippets on such topics, with insights well worth pondering. But they do not cohere well into a unity. The burden of all this psychologizing and even philosophizing by Sir Walter is simply too heavy for even the well developed framework of a good Walter Scott poem. The Wizard of the North was at his best as narrative poet in THE LADY OF THE LAKE, almost as good in THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. But with ROKEBY, in my opinion, Sir Walter all but lost it in abstractions. Allow me, then, simply to sketch the plot, a few characters and present samples of more memorable verses. I leave it entirely to you then to decide whether to read ROKEBY now, later or never. THE PLOT: For centuries three neighboring families along the Tees River in northern England have stood together against their country's raiding invaders from Scotland. Now they are divided by the English Civil War of King Charles I against Parliament, Oliver Cromwell and others. Sir Richard of Rokeby is for the King. Living with him is a beautiful daughter Matilda and a young Irish warrior, Redmond O'Neale, whom he has raised as a member of his own family. Rokeby's long dead wife, Matilda's mother, was the sister of Philip Mortham. And for many years Mortham and Rokeby were comrades in arms. Fighting in Ireland, both had been taken prisoner by the great Ulster lord Turlough O'Neale, Redmond's maternal grandfather. Near kin to Mortham, and long his closest friend but now a deadly enemy is a third River Tees neighbor, Oswald Wycliffe. It was once understood by their parents that Matilda of Rokeby would wed young Wilfrid Wycliffe. But the Wycliffes and the Morthams took arms against the King on the side of the Parliamentarians. And Sir Richard would never let his daughter wed traitor's son. In some ways resembling Milton's Satan, the hero of ROKEBY is one who should of right be no more than a minor disgruntled former follower of Philip Mortham: Bertram Risingham. Bertram had been Mortham's right-hand man fighting against Spaniards in the Caribbean, but, once back in England, the two later fell out over division of rich spoils which Mortham brought home with him. The poem is about utterly unscrupulous efforts by Oswald Wycliffe to take control of the neighboring estates of the Morthams and the Rokebys and their successful efforts to thwart him. Of all the interwoven characters -- including more than those mentioned above -- only Bertram Risingham stays in my memory, somewhat in the mould of Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert of IVANHOE. ROKEBY is also a tale of a missing heir, three young men in love with the same young woman, treachery, piracy, , minstrelsy, snippets of English and Irish history, efforts of three bad men to do justice to their troubled consciences and good local color of rivers, cliffs, forests and animals. SOME VERSES: Any youthful virtues Bertram Risingham once had are long gone: "All
that gives gloss to sin, all gay
Light folly, past with youth away, But rooted stood, in manhood's hour, The weeds of vice without their flower." (Canto I.ix, p. 34) On dreamy, effeminate Wilfred Wycliffe: "For his was
minstrel's skill, he caught
The art unteachable, untaught;" (Canto I.xxvi, p. 53) How Matilda of Rokeby differed from less noble young women: "And
ne'er in cottage-maid was seen
The easy dignity of mien, Claiming respect, yet waiving state, That marks the daughters of the great." (Canto V.xxv, p. 193) Oswald Wycliffe to Guy Denzil, a lesser villain Oswald whom will use: "'List
to me, Guy, Thou know'st the great
Have frequent need of what they hate; Hence, in their favour oft we see Unscrupled, useful men like thee." (Canto VI, vii, p. 214) -OOO- Recommended: Yes =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=== II. For amazon.com Title of this review: Bertram Risingham: "The Master Fiend that Milton drew" (Canto III.xiv) Do you remember GONE WITH THE WIND's Rhett Butler? Then meet a somewhat nastier predecessor of Mr Butler 200 years earlier in ROKEBY's Bertram Risingham. Early in Canto I, Risingham has raced from the as yet undecided Northern England battle of Long-Marston Moor (July 3, 1644). He reports to the villainous Oswald Wycliffe that he has fulfilled the latter's commission to kill Philip Mortham. Mortham is one of the subordinate leaders of Parliamentary forces in arms against King Charles I. All three men: Risingham, Wycliffe and Mortham are neighbors in the Tees river valley. All fight for the same rebel side. So, by shooting Mortham, his own Parliamentary commander and longtime patron, Bertram Risingham commits a great crime. Sir Walter Scott tells us little of Risingham's earliest history or social standing. Like all other major characters, including the eponymous Royalist, Sir Richard of Rokeby, his beautiful young daughter Matilda and her admirer the young Irishman Redmond O'Neale, Bertram is a resident of the Tees valley. His background, Sir Walter does say, would never have lifted him as high as sainthood. But there had been a time when Bertram had the potential to reach higher and choose honorable fame over what he did choose: a degrading lust for gold developed as a buccaneer under Mortham on the Spanish Main. Although fighting for Parliament, Scripture and the Covenant against King, Divine Right and the Bishops, Bertram thinks both sides in the Civil War are idiots to spill blood for mere ideology. Let Risingham somehow become leader of all those thousands of troops at Marston Moor and he would soon return to the New World as a conqueror to win incomparable renown: "Chii had heard me through
her states,
And Lima oped her silver gates, RIch Mexico I had marched through, And sacked the splendours of Peru, Till sank Pizarro's daring name, And, Cortez, thine in Bertram's fame." (Canto I.xii.) Bertram looks at every situation in terms of what he might make of it for himself rather than God, religion, King or patriotism. Thus, later in the poem, his treacherous assassination of Mortham is inadvertently revealed and he is pursued as a criminal. Thirsting for a means to wreak vengeance on several people, but mostly on Oswald Wycliffe who had persuaded him to do the deed, Bertram is unexpectedly offered leadership of a local band of 40 or so brigands, former fighters for both King and Parliament. Their pay being long in arrears, they have therefore turned to robbing local undefended households. He finds that sudden offer of even a small command most timely: "I called on hell, and hell
has heard!
What lack I, vengeance to command, But of staunch comrades such a band?" (Canto III. xiii.) The rogues just want money. Bertram wants vengeance. When he first enters their hidden cave above the river Greta, Risingham stands out as their natural leader: "While Bertram show'd, amid
the crew,
The Master Fiend that Milton drew." (Canto III.xiv) There are no great nobles among ROKEBY's principal characters. The three most prominent are mere local gentry. Bertram Risingham is a self-made warrior and natural leader. He and the three local notables all have crimes to repent. Always second string, Bertram's conscience thaws a bit at the end, but not nearly as much as that of his old leader at home and abroad, Philip Mortham. Mortham in a rage had slain his wife and her brother, goaded to do so by ROKEBY's Iago, Oswald Wycliffe. But Mortham's conscience tortures him and, under instruction from Puritans, Mortham repents, even forgiving his kinsman Wycliffe for making him kill his wife. Wycliffe repents of nothing. The most Bertram can bring himself to do is to sanctify his need for revenge by preventing Wycliffe from executing his old chief and Philip Rokeby's newly rediscovered son. This he does by riding at a gallop into Wycliffe's castle at Barnard and killing him. Bertram is superstitious (Canto II.xi.) from youth and only gets worse. Mortham's growing religiosity is interpreted by Bertram and Wycliffe as superstition. But most Christians would credit Mortham with a sincere repentance. ROKEBY is a difficult poem to follow. In other poems, notably THE LADY OF THE LAKE and THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL, there are many three-dimensional, red-blooded characters who stay in readers' memories. Not so in ROKEBY. Other than Rhett Butler-like Bertram Risingham, all others are abstract embodiments of vices: greed, pride and worse or of psychological states: cowardice, divided conscience, fear, love. -OOO- =-=-=-=-= For more background on the poem see http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/poetry/rokeby.html file: http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/sirws_rokeby.html 12/01/2007 |