The One Where He Throws His Cloak Across the Puddle

Kenilworth by Walter Scott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't remember where this book came from. Probably, someone gave it to me. Possibly, I bought it, but so long ago I forgot. It was on the "books that don't fit anywhere else" shelf for years when I handled it again and thought about reading it.

The copy itself is old, well over 100 years, but I can't verify exactly which edition. It's cool, though.

And it is still a good book.

Knowing literally nothing about the novel--setting, characters, plot, nothing--I just opened and read, and then I kept reading. It's quaint, yes, but despite the archaic language, it reads very modern.

This is the story of a man, Tressilian, who loves a beautiful woman, Amy Robsart, the daughter of a country squire. He is hunting for her after she disappears. She has been taken by a powerful man, Earl Leicester, but with her consent, and she marries him in secret. The difficulty is that he keeps it a secret, and keeps her as a prisoner. Leicester, a favorite in Queen Elizabeth's court, could almost marry the queen if he had not been so foolish, and he has ambitions, while the man who loves the woman is a simple, good, and honest man.

There are a number of interesting and fun characters, including Sir Walter Raleigh, who performs his cloak-across-the-puddle act in the novel, and I finally understand what that might have looked like. Raleigh is a fun character, though minor, and his friend Blount, an honest soldier trying to play courtier with embarrassing consequences, deserves his own novel. The commoner Wayland Smith, a man of limitless wit and resources, feels like another protagonist, and the prankster referred to as Flibbertigibbet is like a force of nature whose playful sleight of hand has dire results. The antagonists, including a quick-thinking drunk, an alchemist, and Leicester's brilliant but amoral right-hand man, round out a full cast of characters.

A modern reader can hardly avoid noticing the lack of female characters and the condescension toward women. Queen Elizabeth holds her own--despite frequent asides by the narrator and actual character dialogue referring to female weaknesses and rather unattractive strengths--and Amy Robsart is a strong character in both senses, but that mostly covers it. The other women are not even secondary characters. You expect little more from a 19th Century novel set in the 16th Century, but it disappoints nonetheless. (Ivanhoe, which I read several years ago, has a similar problem, as I suspect most of the Waverly novels do. In addition, it has an odd, mixed tone toward its Jewish characters that mars an otherwise very entertaining novel. Old dead white guys, right?)

Still, the energy and inventiveness of the author is impressive, the plot brisk, and the entertainment undeniable. I liked it, and I recommend it.

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