KEV67

My first D.H. Lawrence. I hear it is his best. I found the opening chapter a bit of a slog, but I will see how it goes.

Things worked out quite nicely for Francis Osbaldistone. Well I am glad. I don't like unhappy endings. If it's a choice between a great but unhappy ending, and a happy but not so great ending, I prefer the latter.

Sorry, I can't remember posting that. I might have had too much to drink. I finished Rob Roy. It was jolly good. I will have to read Ivanhoe some day, in part to see what the controversy is.

I am going to have to read Ivanhoe. I suspect your book group members were morons. I might be wrong. I honestly do not know any modern author who could write about people as well as Walter Scott.

A slightly interesting thing is that the picture on the front of my Penguin Classic copy of Rob Roy is a scene from the book. It was a painting called The Death of Morris the Spy (1827) by Camille Roqueplan, in the Musee des Beaux Arts, Lille. Rob Roy was first published in 1817. Presumably, it was translated into French and sold well there. I wonder how they translated all the Scots.

The chapter I read today was brilliant. It was a chapter in which a troop of Red Coats are ambushed by Rob Roy's men. Rob Roy and Waverley puts me in mind of Heart of Darkness. First Francis Osbaltistone relocates from France where it is reasonably urbane and civilised to Northumbria, close to the Scottish border. It's a bit rough and ready up then, but it's still England. Then he moves onto Glasgow, which is a little bit foreign. Then he goes out to the Highlands and he has gone back in time five centuries. Law does not really exist.

The story is set about 1715 and Sir Walter Scott wrote it about a century later. One of the characters was talking about how the Act of Union would allow Glasgow to develop, because it could participate in the trade of cotton and tobacco, so basically slave produce.

I will have to read Ivanhoe one day.

Still enjoying it. Scott does not let his main characters say a dull sentence. I don't know how he managed to get so much erudite wit into his books. Presumably he had to get so many words down a day. There is quite a bit of poetry. Characters quote it, and each chapter is prefaced by a verse. In Waverley there was a character who used to quote reams of Latin all the time. I think Walter Scott had a big brain.

He was good, so it is a bit of a surprise he is not as well regarded as he was. He used to be a literary superstar. I think Rob Roy is a little similar in theme to Waverley (so far), but he is different to just about everyone else (OK maybe not entirely different to Robert Louis Stevenson). His style is unique.

I have to say the characters of Sir Walter Scott's novels have great powers of expression. I envy them that.

Another bit of repetition from Waverley is the lovely, young lady whom young Francis Osbaltistone meets on Osbaltistone Hall. She is beautiful, clever, witty, and a Jacobite. She and young Francis have an entertaining chat at dinnertime.

Another similarity between Rob Roy and Waverley is that the narrator is a young Englishman. First he goes north to Northumbria. If it's like Waverley he crosses the border to where the wild men live.

I have started reading this. I have read one other book by Scott, Waverley, which I thought was a great book. I quite like Walter Scott's style. It is rather dense, but it is almost cinematographic. In the first couple of chapters the protagonist is holding an argument with his stern father. The protagonist does not want to be a merchant like his father. It is sort of like accountancy. The protagonist wants to be a poet. At this point there is no indication where the story is going. We just know the young fellow has a romantic and independent streak. I especially liked the bit where the lad's father found a poem his son has wrote and critiques it. It seemed like quite a reasonable poem to me.

I attended a Unitarian meeting online a fortnight ago. They seemed pleased with Adrian's birth. The average age of the Unitarians is about 65 by my reckoning. It might be higher than that. The pastor (I am not sure that is position) was intrigued to see a room full of Kazakh surrogate women.