Ann Radcliffe: A Sicilian Romance (1790)

View of the Castello di San Giuliano, near Trapani, Sicily by Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont (c. 1824-26)

[Image source: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/belmont-sicily-c1824-louise-josephine-sarazin-de-belmont.html . The painting is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.]


A Sicilian Romance was Ann Radcliffe's second novel (2 volumes, 1790). It trembles on the brink of the massive popular success that arrived with her third novel, The Romance of the Forest (3 volumes, 1791). All the essential components of her vision are here. I touched on some of them when I wrote about The Mysteries of Udolpho.

There's a strangely compulsive quality to Radcliffe's writing which displays itself as acts of reiteration. At times we are utterly unable to keep track of the number of gloomy corridors, rusted-up doors that may or may not yield to force, or mysterious midnight sounds and lights. Or patriarchal tyranny, or storms, or flight from pursuers, or banditti,  or dungeons, cells and ruins. The reader becomes both strangely lulled and strangely intrigued by the incessant recurrence, by the nearly identical. For example:

The confusion of Julia may be easily imagined
an agony not to be described
a state of anxious expectation not to be described
The effect of this event upon Louisa was such as may be imagined
The effect which the latter part of this sentence had upon the prisoners in the vault, may be more easily imagined than described
During this exclamation, the emotions of Julia, who sat in her closet adjoining, can with difficulty be imagined
a kind of anguish known only to those who have experienced a similar situation
The sensations of Ferdinand, thus compelled to remain in the dungeon, are not to be imagined
innumerable acts of kindness, such as the heart can quickly understand and acknowledge, although description can never reach them
The whole castle was immediately roused, and the confusion may be more easily imagined than described
The transitions of various and rapid sensations, which her heart experienced, and the strangely mingled emotions of joy and terror that agitated Hippolitus, can only be understood by experience
his grief may easily be imagined
it is not easy to imagine their horror on discovering they were in a receptacle for the murdered bodies of the unfortunate people who had fallen into the hands of the banditti
a state of mental torture exceeding all description
the joy of that moment is not to be described
his sensations on learning she was his mother cannot be described

Most of what matters in life eludes being described in words, but what a book cannot describe it can still convey, if the readers undertake, what is both so easy and so difficult, to look in their own hearts. The characters in the story are like ourselves, or the tyrants in our own lives, or its rescuers or comforters: Radcliffe rarely shows her characters displaying unexpected or counter-intuitive responses. The highly-coloured events of a story set formally in sixteenth-century Sicily; the desperate predicaments that entangle ordinary people; these are a way of inducing us to recognize the landscape of our own emotional lives.

The uncanny, after all, is best embodied not so much in the exceptional as in eruptions from the commonplace; night, doors, walls, forests. In Radcliffe's highly charged version of the world, the eerie potential in these everyday facts of our existence is constantly being unleashed. Prolonging an evening stroll beyond its usual bounds is apt to be fraught with consequences.

Julia accustomed herself to walk in the fine evenings under the shade of the high trees that environed the abbey. The dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. The innumerable roseate tints which the parting sun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic scene beneath, softly fading from the eye, as the nightshades fell, excited sensations of a sweet and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a temporary forgetfulness of her sorrows.
   The deep solitude of the place subdued her apprehension, and one evening she ventured with Madame de Menon to lengthen her walk. They returned to the abbey without having seen a human being, except a friar of the monastery, who had been to a neighbouring town to order provision. On the following evening they repeated their walk; and, engaged in conversation, rambled to a considerable distance from the abbey. The distant bell of the monastery sounding for vespers, reminded them of the hour, and looking round, they perceived the extremity of the wood. They were returning towards the abbey, when struck by the appearance of some majestic columns which were distinguishable between the trees, they paused. Curiosity tempted them to examine to what edifice pillars of such magnificent architecture could belong, in a scene so rude, and they went on.
   There appeared on a point of rock impending over the valley the reliques of a palace, whose beauty time had impaired only to heighten its sublimity. An arch of singular magnificence remained almost entire, beyond which appeared wild cliffs retiring in grand perspective. The sun, which was now setting, threw a trembling lustre upon the ruins, and gave a finishing effect to the scene. They gazed in mute wonder upon the view; but the fast fading light, and the dewy chillness of the air, warned them to return. As Julia gave a last look to the scene, she perceived two men leaning upon a part of the ruin at some distance, in earnest conversation. As they spoke, their looks were so attentively bent on her, that she could have no doubt she was the subject of their discourse. Alarmed at this circumstance, madame and Julia immediately retreated towards the abbey. They walked swiftly through the woods, whose shades, deepened by the gloom of evening, prevented their distinguishing whether they were pursued. They were surprized to observe the distance to which they had strayed from the monastery, whose dark towers were now obscurely seen rising among the trees that closed the perspective. They had almost reached the gates, when on looking back, they perceived the same men slowly advancing, without any appearance of pursuit, but clearly as if observing the place of their retreat. (A Sicilian Romance, beginning of Chapter 10)

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

I listened to A Sicilian Romance on Librivox, an excellent reading by Betsie Bush:

https://librivox.org/a-sicilian-romance-by-ann-radcliffe/

such a manifestation

In spite of their time-saving but exhausting technique the two men could not continue their rapid assault at the pace they had hoped to maintain. Heavy volleys of stones and cascades, pouring furiously down the cliffs, delayed their progress so much that they were compelled to bivouac at roughly the same elevation as had Schlunegger and Krähenbühl.
   It says much for their good sense that they did not hurry on blindly, but waited for a more favourable time of day, preferring to include an unintended bivouac rather than risk annihilation by falling stones. By doing so they acted in the true tradition of good guides.
   Next morning, July 16th, they traversed to the "Spider". I am not sure whether they followed our route exactly or whether they traversed higher up; but they negotiated that very difficult traverse in dazzling style. Just as they reached the "Spider", traditional "Eiger-weather" overtook them; but this time the storm was a particularly severe one. Terray and Lachenal, well acquainted with every kind of bad weather which visits their native Mont Blanc and the savage spires of the Chamonix Aiguilles, reported later that they had never experienced such a manifestation of tension-laden air as on the "Spider" that day. It is of course axiomatic that a climber caught in a thunderstorm should divest himself of all iron equipment -- axes, hammers, hooks, pitons and snap-links, so as not to become a human lightning-conductor. But on the North Face one cannot afford to part with one's "ironmongery"; nor is it possible to follow the rules and sit patiently under an overhang or, better still, in a cave and, safe from the flashes of lightning, wait till the storm has passed. For where on the Eiger's Face is there anywhere to sit, where is the protecting overhang -- to say nothing of a cave?
   Terray and Lachenal had to push on, with all their iron-ware on them, even if St. Elmo's fire was crackling from the points of their pitons, their axes and their hammers, and a halo of light outlined their hair.
   One must have experienced a storm high up in the mountains on an exposed ridge or a steep face to understand what an effort is called for to keep one's nerve and go on climbing, while everything about you is humming like an electricity-works and you are at the centre of the static discharge of a thunder-cloud. Terray and Lachenal had the nerve to do it. They climbed on up the "Spider", on up the exit cracks, though they were part covered in glassy ice, part overrun with cascading water. The amazingly short time in which they climbed the final wall is sufficient evidence how well qualified these two men were to attempt this terrific Face. They reached the summit at 2.15 p.m. But they paid the Face the respect it deserves, refusing to diminish their achievement by shooting a line. They candidly admitted that they never wanted to climb the Face again. Indeed it is an admission made by every party which has succeeded in climbing it -- if they were honest about it. 

(from Heinrich Harrer, The White Spider (1958), English translation by Hugh Merrick (1959). This extract is from the description of the second successful ascent of the Eiger's north face, by the French climbers Lionel Terray and Louis Lachenal, in 1947.)

shoot a line -- describe something in an exaggerated or untruthful way.

*

The White Spider is acknowledged as a classic of mountaineering literature, but nearly every reader has sought to qualify this judgment with some characterization of the book's distinctive prose; a wordy style, heavy humour, pontification; a consciousness of authority that no effort of humility can quite eliminate --  in 1938, Heinrich Harrer had himself been one of the team to make the first ascent -- ; or the lurking confrontation we sense between the book's values and our own, for instance its celebration of specific kinds of male behaviour and manners, its free assignment of spiritual value to lifestyles that might be called self-absorbed. Sometimes we uncomfortably hear echoes of the rhetoric of the Third Reich*, sometimes we hear the rearguard masculinism typical of books from the 1950s. But these ugly yet challenging features seem intrinsic to the book's identity. There's a kind of honesty, too, in its lumbering efforts to find and secure a moral position. It's a book about a mountain with one deadly face, but also about an era in European culture.

*

* [I should perhaps clarify that I am not saying there's anything Nazi about the book or its implications. I should do that because Harrer had been, for a short time, a member of the SS; he was asked to coach them in skiing. But I don't believe he ever embraced Nazism. He wasn't even racist to any exceptional degree for that time; probably less so than the average northern European. What I'm saying is more difficult: that Nazism arose out of, and was quick to leverage, the rather romantic aspirations of many young Germans and Austrians at that time. Perhaps because Harrer had been insulated in Tibet between 1944 and 1951, or because he knew Tibet had fundamentally changed him, or because his own reputation as a national hero hadn't been sullied by subsequent events, he didn't seem to feel the need to distance himself from that tainted cultural legacy in the way that so many of his compatriots did. Consequently, The White Spider conserves some of the thought-forms and highflown language of the 1930s.]

scaled out, comma

The wind dropped, the wind got up, the wind blew, hammered, it caught me off-guard, subsided, the ribbons snagged in the branches, desolate play area

tyre place

drizzled, grey street corner, they gathered round the corpse

wet mouth, paddler
wave flared, sea defences,
sprayed a cloud, there, with arc shimmer in it

universe

tram signal, Do not cross,

after it dried
barracks, boarding-houses
a toughened glass beaker, hand-towel, beeswax
rumianek.   Roman chamomile.   German chamomil

market, vane

casual migrant
journeyman day labourer
freed thrall
non-resident
pedlar, pest, scam

the sign, still

our head-scarves
exchanged babies, operas

traffic constellation grade
shouted over the music

double-breasted suit
gentleman's outfitters, gartered
pastry-cook, shipping agent

On the jetty. From what distance?
accepted muddy whelks, dogs, motorboat,
wrecks, urchins

stamped his maker's mark
coffee

in talks, health-conscious, shortcomings, insistence: fruit punch, leather punch, threw a punch

the name on the street

outskirts
back  of a chair, panties, sixty seconds
confiture

the great majority

here the stars wheel, banks recede
Compilation, Vol. 1

tear-streaked
shone
arrack
punsch

stale air
the man I knew
 wasn't looking so well
the gulls cried at the window

he could

bucked

some fine-milled source of the cod field

I always feel when you are near
That life holds nothing dear but you

look away from the electrodes
Arthur's hill town, trombone

green with dew

big bass drum

look so

martinet, Martindale, martini

the terrace the names
finery
puff of dry soil

restricted space, open 

neckerchief
carpenter pencil

Come on
come and play
there's an aeroplane
make another cloud
make a big cloud
put it in outer space
we're doing a great job
come and dig more mud

Cambyses, King of Kings

Achaemenid coin showing the king with a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right hand (c. 450 BCE)

... for instance, there was the case of Prexaspes, a man who was highly valued by the king and used to bring him his dispatches, and whose son was the king's cupbearer -- also a position of no small honour. On one occasion Cambyses said to this distinguished official: 'What sort of man do the Persians think I am, and what do they say about me?' 'Master,' Prexaspes replied, 'you are highly praised by them, and they have but one criticism to make: they say you are too fond of wine.' This enraged Cambyses. 'So now,' he said, 'the Persians say that excessive drinking has driven me mad. They said something quite different before; but I see it was a lie.' For on a former occasion, when a number of Persians were sitting with him, and Croesus was also present, he had asked what they thought of him compared with his father, and they had answered that he was better than his father, because he had kept all Cyrus' possessions and acquired Egypt and the command of the sea into the bargain. Croesus, however, was not satisfied with this opinion, and said: 'Son of Cyrus, I at least do not think you are equal to your father; for you have not yet a son like the son he left behind him in yourself.' Cambyses was delighted with this, and praised Croesus' judgement, and it was the memory of this incident which made him, on the present occasion, say in a rage to Prexaspes: 'I'll soon show you if the Persians speak the truth, or if what they say is not a sign of their own madness rather than of mine. You see your son standing there by the door? If I shoot him through the middle of the heart, I shall have proved the Persians' words empty and meaningless; if I miss, then say, if you will, that the Persians are right, and my wits are gone.'
   Without another word he drew his bow and shot the boy, and then ordered his body to be cut open and the wound examined; and when the arrow was found to have pierced the heart, he was delighted, and said with a laugh to the boy's father: 'There's proof for you, Prexaspes, that I am sane and the Persians mad. Now tell me if you ever saw anyone shoot so straight.'
   Prexaspes knew well enough that the king's mind was unbalanced, so in fear for his own safety he answered: 'Master, I do not believe that God himself is a better marksman.'  (Herodotus, The Histories, translation by Aubrey de Selincourt revised by John Marincola.)

Cambyses II was the Achaemenid "Great King" from 530 - 522 BCE. Modern historians don't take Herodotus' characterization of Cambyses as a power-drunk killer very seriously; they assume his sources were highly unfavourable. (And though archaeology tells us very little about Cambyses, that little contradicts some of Herodotus' assertions, while others may derive from cultural misunderstandings.) It's a different kind of truth that confronts us here.

Achaemenid coin showing the king with a bow in his left hand and a dagger in his right hand (c. 400 BCE)

garden geraniums

Geranium phaeum 'Marchant's Ghost'

New out in my pocket-handkerchief garden today, this subtle whisper, Geranium phaeum 'Marchant's Ghost' (distributed by Graham Gough of Marchants Hardy Plants, E. Sussex, 2005: "ghostly, pale grey-lavender flowers the texture of satin"). It retains the distinctive flower-shape, though not the chocolate colour, of Dusky Cranesbill (Geranium phaeum, Sw: Brunnäva), native to much of Europe but only a garden escape in the UK and Sweden.

Disconcertingly, it dies right back to the ground in winter, unlike most other geranium species.

Geranium phaeum 'Marchant's Ghost'

Geranium x oxonianum 'Wargrave Pink'

This variety, 'Wargrave Pink', is one of many garden selections of the hybrid Geranium x oxonianum, collectively known as Druce's Cranesbill. The parents of the hybrid are French Cranesbill (Geranium endressii) from the western Pyrenees, and Pencilled Cranesbill (Geranium versicolor) from the Mediterranean. According to Stace the hybrid can be distinguished from the former by its longer styles (>4mm) and from the latter by its petals not curving back at the tips.

When the flowers first open they are deep pink and only the stigma is seen, as in my close-up. Then they turn much paler and the ring of stamens appear, initially grey-blue.

Geranium x oxonianum 'Wargrave Pink'

Geranium nodosum

Knotted Cranesbill (Geranium nodosum), another species from southern Europe (Pyrenees, Alps, Jura). Glossy toothed leaves, the upper ones three-lobed, and an erect habit. Difficult to capture the lilac colour of the flowers unless you shade them, otherwise the camera tends to show them as bleached white, as in the breezy photo below.

Geranium nodosum

Leaves of Geranium nodosum

Geranium macrorrhizum

And yet another species from southern Europe, Rock Cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum); it's native to the SE Alps and the Balkans. The S-shaped stamens are distinctive. Bees like all cranesbills, but I think this one might be their favourite. The hairy leaves are scented. The essential oil of this species has valuable properties; but it is not the usual Geranium Essential Oil, which comes from Pelargonium graveolens.

Leaves of Geranium macrorrhizum

Geranium x cantabrigiense 'Biokovo'

Geranium x cantabrigiense is a hybrid between Rock Cranesbill (Geranium macrorrhizum, see above) and Dalmatian Cranesbill (Geranium dalmaticum), native to Croatia. It's a sterile hybrid, but that doesn't bother the bees.

Geranium lucidum

And then there are the native species.... This is Shining Cranesbill (Geranium lucidum, Sw: Glansnäva), with beautiful but small flowers of clear pink. My camera insisted on seeing the the flower as white until I draped it in heavy shade.

(Five days after this post, Bug Woman of London wrote a post about Shining Cranesbill, and here I learnt about the plant's very different character away from home territory, particularly in the Pacific NW USA where it's "diabolically invasive" in woodland.)

Geranium dissectum

Cut-leaved Cranesbill (Geranium dissectum, Sw: Fliknäva), growing on the edge of the tarmac.

Geranium robertianum

And almost in the porch, that most familiar wild species of all, Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum, Sw: Stinknäva). This one has quite an unusual petal-shape; the individuals vary greatly, while never being mistakable for anything else. The Swedish name alludes to the scent of the plant, which many people find unpleasant.

Leaf of Geranium pratense

At some point soon I'll be seeing the purple-blue flowers of Meadow Cranesbill (Geranium pratense, Sw: Ängsnäva). Twenty years ago we introduced it into Laura's garden, it spread itself around and has now made its way to mine.

Ivy-leafed Geranium (Pelargonium peltatum cultivar)

And finally, we have to talk about these! It was Linnaeus who unwittingly sowed centuries of confusion when he placed these plants in the genus Geranium. (They are indeed in the larger family Geraniaceae, but are distinct enough from true Geranium species to require a separate genus.) The damage had already been done by 1789, when  Charles L’Héritier proposed the name Pelargonium; it contains around 200 species, predominantly from southern Africa. They are unfailingly popular as bedding plants for containers and baskets, they flower all summer until the frost kills them, and they are still what most British garden enthusiasts mean when they say the word "geranium". (In horticultural circles the plants we've been talking about up to this point are usually called "hardy geraniums".)

Marianne Dashwood

Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Elinor (Emma Thompson)

 [Image source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2017/7/15/15955872/movie-of-week-sense-sensibility-jane-austen . From Ang Lee's 1995 movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.]


Two sisters; the sweet-tempered elder one is fond of drawing, the passionate younger one plays the pianoforte. That's the premise of Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance (1790). But contrasted sisters feature in many other novels of the 1790s, too.

In Radcliffe's novel the lead role in the story is very definitely taken by the younger sister Julia; after the first couple of chapters Emilia is given nothing further to do, and is finally consigned to a future in the shadows, a premonition of Sonya's fate in War and Peace. Anyway, Jane Austen reverses the emphasis. She presented Sense and Sensibility (1811) principally from the viewpoint of the elder sister, Elinor Dashwood. A balanced view of the book should probably focus much more on Elinor. Yet it's Marianne who asks the questions, who bothers us, and who gives this Jane Austen novel its distinctive flavour.

Marianne's sensibility, or rather her belief in the sensibility valorized by novels, is extreme. For Marianne is doctrinaire on these points; "her opinions are all romantic", Elinor tells Colonel Brandon (Ch 11). In that respect Sense and Sensibility, specifically Marianne's part in it, continues the critical examination of current literary values that was played out by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey (written 1798-99).

The practical difference between the sisters is perhaps better stated without using the words of the title. The sisters aren't enormously different in either sense or sensibility. But Elinor, we are told at once, has a "coolness of judgment" that contrasts with the "eagerness" and "imprudence" manifested both by Marianne and their mother (Ch 1). In a precisely similar situation, i.e. an agreeable admirer who doesn't declare himself, the sisters behave in opposite ways. Elinor, re Edward Ferrars, doesn't allow her feelings full rein (Ch 4). Marianne, re Willoughby, does just that (Chs 9 - 16).

"I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him -- that I greatly esteem, that I like him."
   Marianne here burst forth with indignation --
   "Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again and I will leave the room this moment."
   Elinor could not help laughing. (Ch 4)

And we laugh too, at this early juncture. A younger sister (Marianne isn't yet seventeen) may harmlessly give vent to vehement opinions, prejudices that are essentially literary, particularly in a matter where her own heart isn't engaged and she isn't called on to act.

Those literary prejudices continue to operate in her early opinion of Willoughby: "His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story" ... "that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue" (Ch 9).

There's still some laughter in the next dialogue of values between the sisters, but it's getting more strained. Sarcasm? Reductiveness? Neither sister can be quite exonerated from those charges.

"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for one morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary dispatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask." --
   "Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull and deceitful: -- had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared." (Ch 10)*

Elinor's unprompted comment, offered under the guise of playfulness, contains at least two grains of sand. One of them Marianne doesn't notice; the implication that Willoughby's expressed opinions chime in all too neatly with Marianne's own, that he follows her lead and, in consequence, shouldn't be taken on trust. (And, in fact, we soon see that he's loose with the truth; he "does not dislike" Colonel Brandon, and almost immediately afterwards claims the privilege of continuing to dislike him as much as ever (Ch 10).)

 The other is an older sister's mockery of the limited range of a younger sister's preoccupations. (It's the same kind of joke about the young that the narrator (or Elinor?) makes re Sir John's entertainments: "in winter his private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not suffering under the insatiable appetite of fifteen". After all, Marianne isn't so much beyond that age.)

In Marianne's reply, perhaps the word "reserve" is the key term here. For Marianne it's plainly pejorative, like the other three adjectives she uses, "spiritless, dull and deceitful". But "reserve" might also describe Elinor's behaviour throughout the novel, and particularly, of course, in regard to the undeclared Edward Ferrars of that earlier conversation.

Yet Elinor too sees "reserve" as a word with a negative valency. This is a joint judgment by the sisters, on Lady Middleton:

Her manners had all the elegance which her husband's wanted. But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to detract something from their first admiration, by shewing that though perfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark. (Ch 6)

Later, Elinor reflects on the nature of Lady Middleton's reserve: "Elinor needed little observation to perceive that her reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do" (Ch 11).

Reserve must not be cold; frankness and warmth are positive goods; but reserve arising from sense (prudence, discretion, sensitivity to others' feelings, propriety) is a practical good, a necessity. Thus, Elinor and Colonel Brandon, the moral grown-ups of the novel, both in their beliefs and in their behaviour. Here they are talking about Marianne's "romantic" opinions:

". . . A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by any body but herself."
   "This will probably be the case," he replied; "and yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."
   "I cannot agree with you there," said Elinor. "There are inconveniences attending such feelings as Marianne's, which all the charms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage." (Ch 11)

To which Colonel Brandon makes this enigmatic addendum:

". . . but a change, a total change of sentiments -- No, no, do not desire it, -- for when the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous! I speak from experience. I once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like her, but who from an inforced change -- from a series of unfortunate circumstances" -- Here he stopt suddenly . . .  (Ch 11)

The story he refers to is eventually narrated in Vol II Ch 9. But to dread youthful romanticism being succeeded by misery and even by "falling" (as happened to the not-very-similar Eliza) is scarcely an argument in favour of that romanticism.

But still, for all her bad manners, for all her wilful wrongness, for instance about the weather (twice with very fateful effects), there's some deep things to be said for Marianne's ardour, though Brandon doesn't quite manage to say them. Without her emotional candour and her eagerness, what is life for? It cannot be just a matter of prudence and reserve, of crossing the Ts, of negotiation and maintenance, of avoiding a mess. Marianne's imprudence and refusal to hold back gives meaning as well as trouble to the lives of those around her, and when she looks back on it from her own respectable married existence it may continue to give meaning to that, too.


*

* The subjects of literary discussion between Marianne and Willoughby are men: Pope, Cowper, and Scott. Scott is an interesting inclusion; he couldn't have been a topic of general conversation until 1805 at the earliest, so Austen is stretching the chronology of a tale that was originally composed and set in the late 1790s. Perhaps Austen was bent on including a current author; Cowper had died in 1800. 

After Northanger Abbey, Austen tended not to name woman authors. (The play Lovers' Vows is immensely important to Mansfield Park, but we never hear of Elizabeth Inchbald.) It's as if Austen formally cedes the traditional claim that creation is an essentially male affair. But the concession is subversive. It, so to speak, clears the decks for the real literary debate to which Sense and Sensibility contributes; a debate taking place between woman authors. The irony in Elinor's reductive report cuts not only at Marianne's youthfully limited interests but also, I sense, at the male authors under review. The gentle implication is that these official bastions of the world of letters, precisely because they are men, don't actually have much to contribute to the deeper concerns of Austen's novels. If they did, she wouldn't name them. 

home crafts

Postcard: watercolour by Carl E Johansson

Poesin är den stuvbit som blir över sedan livsekvationen lösts på ekonomisidorna och riksdagen sagt sitt.   (Source: https://www.svd.se/poeten-som-hittade-hela-varlden-i-sin-tradgard .)

Poetry is the shred of fabric that's left over when the equation of life has been solved in the economy pages and when the Riksdag has had its say.

(Werner Aspenström, 1918 - 1997)



Längre har jag inte hunnit

Nu ser jag honom åter,
gränslinjens fågel,
i ljuset dels,
i skuggan dels,
hör det dubbla ropet
från en tudelad fågel:
en svart vinge
och en vit vinge
flygande tillfälligt
bredvid varann.
Den som söker en mening
finner två meningar.
Längre har jag inte hunnit
fast våren gått,
och sommaren förrunnit.



Further I haven't gotten

Now I see him again,
the bird of the boundary,
partly in the light,
partly in the shade,
hear the divided cry
from a bird divided in two,
one black wing,
one white wing,
flying by accident
beside each other.
He who seeks a meaning
finds two.
Further I haven't gotten,
though spring has passed
and summer flown away.



(Werner Aspenström, translated by W.H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg)

The last word of the poem is often given as "förunnit"... I'm not sure if that's a recognized alternative spelling or just a typographic error.


 A couple of quick translations (by me) of poems from Werner Aspenström's collection Dikter under träden / Poems under the trees (1956)


Sommaren i Sverige

Havet och skogen och lövsångaren
som skvätter från gren till gren
-- som en utanläxa! Sömngångaraktigt,
med vintersömnen ännu i ögonen
träder jag in i den gröna kyrkan.
Någon spelar på en tvåstämmig orgel.
Det finns fruktbarhetsgudar?
Det finns dryader och källnymfer?
Jag överlämnar mig åt den gröna färgen.
Jag fyller mig med grönt som en bladlus.
Jag idisslar, säkert har jag klöver.
Låt molnen lustvandra över bergen, tänker jag,
och löjorna häpet dansa på vatten,
tids nog skall flyktigheten gripas:
i morgon!
                 Då landar på min hand
den förgänglighetens tanke
som vi kallar trollslända.
Ett gult löv lösgör sig
och faller klingande mot marken.
Sommaren måste hastigt bärgas, hösten
närmar sig med toppeld i asparna,
kråkorna driver som tung rök
över de vattensjuka fälten.
Regnet droppar från gren till gren,
snöflingan dalar från vinter till vinter
-- som en utanläxa!
Allting upprepas i mitt hjärta.
Jag väntar ingenting och väntar
dryadernas slutliga återkomst.

                                      Kymmendö, 1954


The summer in Sweden

The sea and the wood and the willow warbler
that squirts from branch to branch
-- like a lesson learnt by heart! Sleepwalker-like,
with the winter sleep still in my eyes
I step into the green church.
Someone is playing on a two-reeded organ.
Are there fertility gods?
Are there dryads and nymphs in the springs?
I surrender myself to the green colour.
I fill up with green like an aphid.
I chew the cud, surely I have hooves.
Let the clouds saunter over the mountains, I think to myself,
let the astonished shoals of bleak dance in the water,
soon enough such fleetingness is arrested:
tomorrow!
                  And now there lands on my hand
the transience-thought
that we call a dragonfly.
A yellow leaf releases itself
and falls with a clang to the ground.
The summer must be quickly gathered in, the autumn
draws near with beacon-fire in the aspens,
the crows drift like heavy smoke
over the waterlogged field.
The rain drips from branch to branch,
the snowflake descends from winter to winter
-- like a lesson learnt by heart!
Everything is repeated in my heart.
I expect nothing and I expect
the dryads' ultimate return.

                                         Kymmendö, 1954

(Kymmendö is an island in the southern part of the Stockholm archipelago.)




Åldrar

På frågan om sin ålder svarade trollet:
"Tre ekeskogar såg jag växa upp,
tre ekeskogar åter ruttna ned."

Medellivslängden his hundar är tolv år.
Tjugoåriga hästar leder man till slaktaren.
Jag antecknar min trettiosjunde födelsedag.

Sent, men ej för sent att vaska guldsand
i solrännan. Allt kött är inte hö.
-- Men gladast fotens lek i forna gräset.



Ages

On the question of his age the troll replied:
"Three oakwoods I have seen grow up,
three oakwoods once more rot down."

The average life expectancy of dogs is twelve years.
A twenty-year-old horse goes to the knacker's.
I see it's my thirty-seventh birthday.

Late, but not too late to pan the gold sands
in the sun's runnel. All flesh is not hay.
-- Yet gladdest the feet playing in the long-ago grass.


(Translation by me)

Postcard: watercolour by Carl E Johansson

Ortalaby (aka Ortala) is in Roslagen, the archipelagic coast of the historic county of Uppland, just to the north of Stockholm.

"Ortalaby" is also the name of one of Melker Stendahl's ten summer-pictures for piano:

oomph

Meadow Saxifrage, Bulbous Buttercup, Ribwort Plantain, Daisy. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Meadow Saxifrage (Saxifraga granulata, Sw: Mandelblomma). This is on the northern brow of the hill; the next four pictures are from southern slopes.


Quotidian poetry glances in this post. Giramondo Publishing are great with newsletters, they've just emailed us a sample poem from Laurie Duggan's forthcoming collection Homer Street. It's a new Afterimage of the indigenous Australian artist Dorothy Napangardi, and I hope it's OK to paste here.


It’s the double negative,
the not not there that holds you:
tracks where there seem to be none,
contours of sand, salt lines
converging in a dip.

Wavering colours behind the nets
regroup when you alter focus.
Does the dark recede or advance?

A square of linen may measure space
when the space we know is destroyed.
On a white wall, somewhere else maps itself out
and the daylight streets are not the same.





Some of the previous poems in Laurie's revelatory series were published in Afterimages (Polar Bear Press, 2018).

Mouse-ear Hawkweed. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum, Sw: Gråfibbla).


From the free Shearsman sampler of Second Tongue (2020), Keith Payne's translation of Galician poems by Yolanda Castaño:


RECICLAXE

E o azougue gastado no espello do toucador.
Dende a man que procura o pálpito
aproveito folios xa usados;
a tinta negra da outra cara advírtese por tras
e penso
que tamén se escribe así,
anotando palabras novas mentres outras
anteriores
se transparentan.


RECYCLING

And the quicksilver gone from the mirror.
From the hand feeling for the trace
I make the best of jaded pages;
the black ink from the flip side shows
and I think
this could also be writing;
scribbling new words while other
earlier words
seep through the page.

Common Rock-rose. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Common Rock-rose (Helianthemum nummularium, Sw: Solvända).

Chalk Milkwort. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Chalk Milkwort (Polygala calcarea). This species doesn't occur in Sweden. (There's a possibility it might be Common Milkwort (P. vulgaris), I'll have to go back and check.)

Poem found online by Lisa Samuels, from Foreign Native (Black Radish Books, 2018):


The city inside you


Nearby space as painting and the walls

quiet in the long car so one is bound

with one’s head and mouth    held in head

the shapely eyes and round eyeballs

curling at you minxing for a set of reasons like

when two persons spread meat kissing

from the love performance    fly the parcel




Near the station a lateral man scores his mind

en masse    a group in plastic planting

very near each other’s holders suture suture

blue light intervals keep my footage

steady like the Steady Hands of Experience

breathe for allegory    push but how can allegory

frame dear life    push out the floor

Common Twayblade. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Common Twayblade (Listera ovata, Sw: Tvåblad).




It began with snow
There was snow
I was not snow
I was in the snow

The snow was white
Cold
And wet
The snow was silent

The snow was white
Cold
And wet
The snow was silent

It was I
And it was the snow
I was not white
I was not cold
I was not wet

It was I
And it was the snow






(From Words (oomphpress, 2019), Paul Cunningham's translation of one of the two long poems in Helena Österlund's Ordet och färgerna (2010).)

Barren Brome. Cley Hill (Wiltshire), 10th May 2020.

Barren Brome (Anisantha sterilis aka Bromus sterilis, Sw: Sandlosta). (A rare coastal grass in Sweden.) This was in the farm lane leading to the hill, not on the chalk itself.

Quentin Durward again

Isabelle  (Marie-France Boyer) and Quentin (Amadeus August)

[Image source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233096/mediaviewer/rm276835840 . All the images come from the Franco-German 1971 TV serialization of Quentin Durward, adapted by Jacques Sommet and directed by Gilles Grangier.]


So for the second time recently, I've found myself re-reading a Sir Walter Scott novel about which I was somewhat critical in the past (though I said some good things too); and found myself, as before, feeling how wrong and trivial those potshots were. This time I saw only the originality and colour, the stark fact of Quentin Durward (1823) landing the fully-fledged historical novel firmly in mainland Europe and throwing open a new paintbox for any who cared to dip in: as Vigny, Mérimée, Balzac and Hugo immediately did. It's true that Scott was already famous in Europe (and his fame, unlike Byron's, resulted from genuinely being read and relished). But Quentin Durward, more than any of its predecessors, acted as a starter-pistol.

Even in recent times, Quentin Durward has left behind deeper traces of its existence in Europe than in the English-speaking nations. Of course it makes a difference that Louis XI and Charles the Bold are as vivid historical characters to French audiences as Henry VIII is to British ones.  It's symptomatic that the Hollywood swashbuckler The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955), with Robert Taylor, is only interested in the romance of the story, but the ample 1971 Franco-German TV series that I've used to decorate this post is absorbed with the historical details.

[Those with WiFi may like to know that all seven hour-long episodes are on YouTube. If you are a Scottophile and can understand a bit of French, you should definitely watch it: it's probably your only chance of seeing a Scott novel given such ample treatment. Jacques Sommet's adaptation follows Scott pretty closely. He made changes, but mostly in an expansive rather than reductive way;  for example, he invented a loyal servant (Bertrand, played by Philippe Avron) so that fight scenes could be intercut and to give Quentin someone to confide his thoughts to. The picture and sound quality and music are of their time but the acting is often superb; I was particularly taken with Louis XI (Michel Vitold), Olivier le Daim (André Valmy), Cardinal Balue (Jacques Monod) and Hayraddin (André Oumansky). Bertrand gains a dashing girlfriend in Marion (a secret agent of Louis XI). The characters of e.g. Olivier and the Countess Hameline are somewhat remodelled. I was only sorry that Les Eschelles and Petit-André could not be brought forward as they are in the novel, and that Trudchen Pavillon was not required (more on her below).]

 

*

Not that I was in any way alone in criticizing Quentin Durward, or Scott's novels in general. I was fascinated to come across an anonymous 1823 piece in the London Review that dismisses Durward as a mere rehash of earlier novels, and dismisses Scott himself as an author whose reputation was diminished by every new publication, and whose older books were no longer much read, an ephemeral entertainer. The reviewer's prediction that Scott would soon be forgotten by the reading public proved correct (eventually). It isn't very easy to defend Quentin Durward against this kind of broadside. The novel's themes are so absorbed into its adventure story that it may seem to have none. (I wonder what modern novels this slashing reviewer did admire. Only Fielding receives any praise.)

In my older note I started at the very beginning: in the case of Quentin Durward, it isn't a very good place to start. Anyway, this time I'll go to the very end, at the point when Scott  dramatically cuts away from the crowded action, in mid-conversation.

   “Nay, if it be young Durward,” said Crevecoeur, “I say no more.—Fortune has declared herself on his side too plainly for me to struggle farther with her humoursome ladyship—but it is strange, from lord to horseboy, how wonderfully these Scots stick by each other.”
   “Highlander shoulder to shoulder,” answered Lord Crawford, laughing at the mortification of the proud Burgundian.
   “We have yet to inquire,” said Charles thoughtfully, “what the fair lady's sentiments may be towards this fortunate adventurer.”
   “By the mass” said Crevecoeur, “I have but too much reason to believe your Grace will find her more amenable to authority than on former occasions.—But why should I grudge this youth his preferment? Since, after all, it is sense, firmness, and gallantry which have put him in possession of WEALTH, RANK, and BEAUTY!”
   -----
   I had already sent these sheets to the press, concluding, as I thought, with a moral of excellent tendency for the encouragement of all fair haired, blue eyed, long legged, stout hearted emigrants from my native country, who might be willing in stirring times to take up the gallant profession of Cavalieros of Fortune. But a friendly monitor, one of those who like the lump of sugar which is found at the bottom of a tea cup as well as the flavour of the souchong itself, has entered a bitter remonstrance, and insists that I should give a precise and particular account of the espousals of the young heir of Glen Houlakin and the lovely Flemish* Countess, and tell what tournaments were held, and how many lances were broken, upon so interesting an occasion; nor withhold from the curious reader the number of sturdy boys who inherited the valour of Quentin Durward, and of bright damsels, in whom were renewed the charms of Isabelle de Croye. I replied, in course of post, that times were changed, and public weddings were entirely out of fashion. In days traces of which I myself can remember, not only were the “fifteen friends” of the happy pair invited to witness their Union, but the bridal minstrelsy still continued, as in the “Ancient Mariner,” to “nod their heads” till morning shone on them. The sack posset was eaten in the nuptial chamber—the stocking was thrown—and the bride's garter was struggled for in presence of the happy couple whom Hymen had made one flesh. The authors of the period were laudably accurate in following its fashions. They spared you not a blush of the bride, not a rapturous glance of the bridegroom, not a diamond in her hair, not a button on his embroidered waistcoat; until at length, with Astraea, “they fairly put their characters to bed.” But how little does this agree with the modest privacy which induces our modern brides—sweet bashful darlings!—to steal from pomp and plate, and admiration and flattery, and, like honest Shenstone
   “Seek for freedom at an inn!”
To these, unquestionably, an exposure of the circumstances of publicity with which a bridal in the fifteenth century was always celebrated, must appear in the highest degree disgusting. Isabelle de Croye would be ranked in their estimation far below the maid who milks, and does the meanest chores; for even she, were it in the church porch, would reject the hand of her journeyman shoemaker, should he propose faire des noces, as it is called on Parisian signs, instead of going down on the top of the long coach to spend the honeymoon incognito at Deptford or Greenwich. I will not, therefore, tell more of this matter, but will steal away from the wedding, as Ariosto from that of Angelica, leaving it to whom it may please to add farther particulars, after the fashion of their own imagination.
   “Some better bard shall sing, in feudal state
   How Bracquemont's Castle op'd its Gothic gate,
   When on the wand'ring Scot, its lovely heir
   Bestow'd her beauty and an earldom fair.”

(Quentin Durward, Ch XXXVII)

The final lines are Scott's own (Isabelle's castle Bracquemont is mentioned as early as Ch XVIII), but he also looses off a firework display of cultural references that post-date the action of the narrative (a habit he had almost entirely held in check during the actual course of the narrative, except in the chapter epigraphs); so suddenly we get Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alexander Pope on Aphra Behn, William Shenstone and Ariosto, the long coach and the souchong.

The Shenstone line is hardly a quote. It refers to this delightful poem from 1735 (apparently inspired by the White Swan Hotel in Henley in Arden, Warwickshire):

Written at an INN on a Particular Occasion

To thee, fair Freedom! I retire,
From flattery, cards, and dice, and din;
Nor art thou found in mansions higher
Than the low cot, or humble inn.

’Tis here with boundless power I reign,
And every health which I begin,
Converts dull port to bright champagne;
Such Freedom crowns it, at an inn.

I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
I fly from Falsehood’s specious grin;
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings, at an inn.

Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
Which lackeys else might hope to win;
It buys what courts have not in store,
It buys me Freedom, at an inn.

Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,
Where’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome – at an inn.

(Carol Rumens wrote a lovely post about the poem in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/nov/26/poem-of-the-week-written-at-an-inn-at-henley-by-william-shenstone )

Shenstone's poem is about the liberating atmosphere of commercial establishments, about flight from pomp and circumstance, society and family. Scott's postlude is also about that, and much more. He pretends that public weddings are out of fashion and that his women readers will be offended by the account of one, but of course there's a broad wink to the men readers, who certainly don't want to hear about a wedding now there are no more fight scenes to look forward to. Still, it was true about the change of custom, to some extent. "Honeymoon" (in the particular sense of the bridal couple going on a journey straight after the wedding), was first attested in 1791; it was an idea that had arisen in Britain, but Scott is joking about its being now a universal practice; in 1823 it was still a novel and genteel idea, and no milkmaid would have contemplated a honeymoon.  He must have been right, though, in sensing a new aversion to the rather un-private consummations of the bridal couple in old-fashioned wedding festivities. The sphere of the private and personal, of what is not said and not seen, was dramatically expanding. It was a topic of acute concern to both Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen.

This acknowledges that the historical romance in which we've been engaged wasn't, of course, exactly an accurate account of the way things were done in fifteenth-century Burgundy. Quentin has a nineteenth-century sensibility, as well as sense (at least according to Crevecoeur), and is rewarded -- but a twinkle's already apparent -- with a "moral of excellent tendency": that is, to impoverished Scottish emigrants seeking a living and respectability on foreign soil.

Louis XI (Michel Vitold) and Quentin (Amadeus August)

[Image source: https://www.steffi-line.de/archiv_text/nost_serie/a_quentin_durward.htm .]


At the same time, the slightly premature dropping of the curtain (neither Isabelle nor even Quentin are present for that final conversation)  afflicts us with a momentary sense of loss and of how vivid and solid the world of Quentin Durward had become to us, in spite of its indirectness and discretion -- or perhaps because of it. This conversation follows one of Scott's strongest battle-scenes, the punitive expedition against Liège (the other, I'd say, is in A Legend of Montrose); here are a few extracts:

For a long time the cries of the soldiers repeating their signals, and seeking to join their several banners, sounded like the howling of bewildered dogs seeking their masters. But at length, overcome with weariness by the fatigues of the day, the dispersed soldiers crowded under such shelter as they could meet with, and those who could find none sunk down through very fatigue under walls, hedges, and such temporary protection, there to await for morning—a morning which some of them were never to behold. A dead sleep fell on almost all, excepting those who kept a faint and wary watch by the lodgings of the King and the Duke. . . .
   The scene was now become in the utmost degree animated and horrible. On the left the suburb, after a fierce contest, had been set on fire, and a wide and dreadful conflagration did not prevent the burning ruins from being still disputed. On the centre, the French troops, though pressed by immense odds, kept up so close and constant a fire, that the little pleasure house shone bright with the glancing flashes, as if surrounded with a martyr's crown of flames. . . .
   But at this moment the column which De la Marck had proposed to support, when his own course was arrested by the charge of Dunois, had lost all the advantages they had gained during the night; while the Burgundians, with returning day, had begun to show the qualities which belong to superior discipline. The great mass of Liegeois were compelled to retreat, and at length to fly; and, falling back on those who were engaged with the French men at arms, the whole became a confused tide of fighters, fliers, and pursuers, which rolled itself towards the city walls, and at last was poured into the ample and undefended breach through which the Liegeois had sallied. . . .
   The confusion was general in every direction. The shrieks and cries of women, the yelling of the terrified inhabitants, now subjected to the extremity of military license, sounded horribly shrill amid the shouts of battle—like the voice of misery and despair contending with that of fury and violence, which should be heard farthest and loudest. . . .
   Her call was agonizing, but it was irresistible; and bidding a mental adieu, with unutterable bitterness of feeling, to all the gay hopes which had stimulated his exertion, carried him through that bloody day, and which at one moment seemed to approach consummation, Quentin, like an unwilling spirit who obeys a talisman which he cannot resist, protected Gertrude to Pavillon's house, and arrived in time to defend that and the Syndic himself against the fury of the licentious soldiery.
   Meantime the King and the Duke of Burgundy entered the city on horseback and through one of the breaches. They were both in complete armour, but the latter, covered with blood from the plume to the spur, drove his steed furiously up the breach, which Louis surmounted with the stately pace of one who leads a procession. They dispatched orders to stop the sack of the city, which had already commenced, and to assemble their scattered troops. The Princes themselves proceeded towards the great church, both for the protection of many of the distinguished inhabitants who had taken refuge there, and in order to hold a sort of military council after they had heard high mass. (Ch XXXVII)

What Scott didn't say: "The next day, Liège surrendered, and at the command of Charles the Bold, hundreds of Liègois were tied together and thrown into the Meuse river. The city was set alight and is said to have burned for seven weeks." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_Li%C3%A8ge)

I wonder if that was the fate of Hans Glover,  the "stout young man" who was "bachelor to Trudchen Pavillon". Gertrude, the Syndic's daughter, is a character whose importance far outweighs the few paragraphs in which she appears. Here was her conversation with Isabelle, the last time we were in  Liège:

   No sooner had the Syndic and Quentin left the room than Isabelle began to ask of Gertrude various questions concerning the roads, and so forth, with such clearness of spirit and pertinence, that the latter could not help exclaiming, “Lady, I wonder at you!—I have heard of masculine firmness, but yours appears to me more than belongs to humanity.”
   “Necessity,” answered the Countess,—“necessity, my friend, is the mother of courage, as of invention. No long time since, I might have fainted when I saw a drop of blood shed from a trifling cut—I have since seen life blood flow around me, I may say, in waves, yet I have retained my senses and my self possession.—Do not think it was an easy task,” she added, laying on Gertrude's arm a trembling hand, although she still spoke with a firm voice, “the little world within me is like a garrison besieged by a thousand foes, whom nothing but the most determined resolution can keep from storming it on every hand, and at every moment. Were my situation one whit less perilous than it is—were I not sensible that my only chance to escape a fate more horrible than death is to retain my recollection and self possession—Gertrude, I would at this moment throw myself into your arms, and relieve my bursting bosom by such a transport of tears and agony of terror as never rushed from a breaking heart.”
   “Do not do so, lady!” said the sympathizing Fleming, “take courage, tell your beads, throw yourself on the care of Heaven, and surely, if ever Heaven sent a deliverer to one ready to perish, that bold and adventurous young gentleman must be designed for yours. There is one, too,” she added, blushing deeply, “in whom I have some interest. Say nothing to my father, but I have ordered my bachelor, Hans Glover, to wait for you at the eastern gate, and never to see my face more, unless he brings word that he has guided you safe from the territory.”
   To kiss her tenderly was the only way in which the young Countess could express her thanks to the frank and kind hearted city maiden, who returned the embrace affectionately, and added, with a smile, “Nay, if two maidens and their devoted bachelors cannot succeed in a disguise and an escape, the world is changed from what I am told it wont to be.”
   A part of this speech again called the colour into the Countess's pale cheeks, which was not lessened by Quentin's sudden appearance. He entered completely attired as a Flemish boor of the better class . . . . (Ch XXIII)

(Scott gave his future dramatizers splendid opportunities to display their attractive leads in a variety of costumes!)

I hope those sentences from the sack of Liège will demonstrate that the tapestry of Quentin Durward is by no means only a matter of colourful characters. But at its best it is characters, action and locale all interacting, as in this midnight departure:

Avoiding all conversation with any one (for such was his charge), Quentin Durward proceeded hastily to array himself in a strong but plain cuirass, with thigh and arm pieces, and placed on his head a good steel cap without any visor. To these was added a handsome cassock of chamois leather, finely dressed, and laced down the seams with some embroidery, such as might become a superior officer in a noble household.
   These were brought to his apartment by Oliver, who, with his quiet, insinuating smile and manner, acquainted him that his uncle had been summoned to mount guard purposely that he might make no inquiries concerning these mysterious movements.
   “Your excuse will be made to your kinsman,” said Oliver, smiling again, “and, my dearest son, when you return safe from the execution of this pleasing trust, I doubt not you will be found worthy of such promotion as will dispense with your accounting for your motions to any one, while it will place you at the head of those who must render an account of theirs to you.”
   So spoke Oliver le Diable, calculating, probably, in his own mind, the great chance there was that the poor youth whose hand he squeezed affectionately as he spoke, must necessarily encounter death or captivity in the commission intrusted to his charge. He added to his fair words a small purse of gold, to defray necessary expenses on the road, as a gratuity on the King's part.
   At a few minutes before twelve at midnight, Quentin, according to his directions, proceeded to the second courtyard, and paused under the Dauphin's Tower, which, as the reader knows, was assigned for the temporary residence of the Countesses of Croye. He found, at this place of rendezvous, the men and horses appointed to compose the retinue, leading two sumpter mules already loaded with baggage, and holding three palfreys for the two Countesses and a faithful waiting woman, with a stately war horse for himself, whose steel plated saddle glanced in the pale moonlight. Not a word of recognition was spoken on either side. The men sat still in their saddles as if they were motionless, and by the same imperfect light Quentin saw with pleasure that they were all armed, and held long lances in their hands. They were only three in number, but one of them whispered to Quentin, in a strong Gascon accent, that their guide was to join them beyond Tours.
   Meantime, lights glanced to and fro at the lattices of the tower, as if there was bustle and preparation among its inhabitants. At length a small door, which led from the bottom of the tower to the court, was unclosed, and three females came forth attended by a man wrapped in a cloak. They mounted in silence the palfreys which stood prepared for them, while their attendant on foot led the way, and gave the passwords and signals to the watchful guards, whose posts they passed in succession. Thus they at length reached the exterior of these formidable barriers. Here the man on foot, who had hitherto acted as their guide, paused, and spoke low and earnestly to the two foremost females.
   “May heaven bless you, Sire,” said a voice which thrilled upon Quentin Durward's ear, “and forgive you, even if your purposes be more interested than your words express! To be placed in safety under the protection of the good Bishop of Liege, is the utmost extent of my desire.”
   The person whom she thus addressed muttered an inaudible answer, and retreated back through the barrier gate, while Quentin thought that, by the moon glimpse, he recognized in him the King himself, whose anxiety for the departure of his guests had probably induced him to give his presence, in case scruples should arise on their part, or difficulties on that of the guards of the Castle. (Ch XIV)

Ludovic Lesly ["Le Balafré"] (Noël Roquevert) and Quentin (Amadeus August)

[Image source: https://www.steffi-line.de/archiv_text/nost_serie/a_quentin_durward.htm .]

*

*When I watched that first TV episode, I was surprised to see the lands of Isabelle de Croye briefly displayed on a map of northern France; they were shown as consisting of, approximately, the western half of Picardy, from Amiens to the coast near Dieppe.

In Quentin Durward Isabelle and Hameline are fictional characters. But the noble house of Croÿ did exist (and still does), and Scott would have come across the name (as "Croy") very early in his reading of Philippe de Commines; the house rose to prominence under the Dukes of Burgundy.  (In fact the pronunciation is disyllabic, something like "Croo-ey".) The dynastic name was adopted from the château of Crouy-Saint-Pierre, which is just to the west of Amiens. Then there was the name that Scott gave to Isabelle's castle, Bracquemont, which was another noble family name of the period (Robert de Bracquemont became Admiral of France in 1415), and is also a place-name, a commune just east of Dieppe. So you can see how the TV producers came up with their map.

Scott himself avoids specifying the location of Croye's domains, but as you can see in his Epilogue he calls Isabelle "the Flemish Countess" and my general impression from e.g. Hameline's reminiscences is indeed of a more easterly location. (For instance her favourite topic, The Passage of Arms at Haflinghem; the latter is a name Scott may have found in the Abriss einer allgemeinen Historie der Gelehrsamkeit of Johann-Andreas Fabricius, there spelled "Haflingem" and associated with Liège.)

*

The Glaswegian piano virtuoso Frederic Lamond (1868 - 1948), wrote a concert overture called From the Scottish Highlands / Aus dem schottische Hochlande (Op. 4), inspired by Quentin Durward's adventures. Lamond's career, like Quentin's, was very much a European one. 

Scott's novels: A brief guide