THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE - Book review

 

The Maid of Buttermere is Melvyn Bragg’s twelfth novel and was published in 1987; my copy is a fourth impression, 1988. It’s a fictional account about the historical figures of a shepherdess Mary Robinson, the Maid of the story, and her suitor, Colonel Hope.

Taking place in 1802, the tale is told in the measured language of the period, and the point of view is omniscient.

It is clear early on (even if you haven’t read the giveaway blurb) that the main male character is suspect. He recounts to himself and the empty Morecambe Bay sands his identity: ‘I am Alexander Augustus Hope, Colonel, Member of Parliament for Linlithgowshire and brother to the Earl of Hopetoun’ (p20). Interesting to me, he also states: ‘now Lieutenant Governor of Tynemouth’ (p21) which is just down the road from where I live. Though carrying himself as a gentleman and of high birth, he is not averse to talk with anyone on an equal footing. He meets a fish-woman on the shoreline and tells her, ‘If they bathed you in oils, Anne Tyson, and put you in silk gowns, you’d be as fine a lady as them all’ (p24). In short, he’s a sweet-tongued womaniser. Not long after this conversation, he is having sex al fresco with a local woman Sally, and they depart, he promising to see her on the morrow, but lying.

Hope has a confederate, Newton, who seems to have a peculiarly strong hold over Hope. Their joint intention is for Hope to find and marry a rich heiress and as soon as possible afterwards run off with the loot to America. Newton’s dark presence hovers even when he is absent, like the black dog of depression. It is hinted at that he has committed murder, but I must have missed the actual revelation. A list or real characters is listed at the back; Newton’s name does not appear there, so it is possible he is to all intents and purposes Hope’s conscience.

In Chapter Two we encounter Mary Robinson who is a beautiful shepherdess and helper for her father in the Fish Inn. She has been discovered by poets and artists and her fame has spread and she gained the sobriquets ‘Mary of Buttermere’, the ‘Maid of the Lakes’ and the ‘Beauty of Buttermere’. Yet she has managed to repel all suitors, while attracting customers to her father’s hostelry. A local lad, Richard Harrison, is too tongue-tied to be her suitor, but at their first meeting he realises ‘She was everything they said she was’ (p41).  

While visiting the ancient upright stones of Castlerigg, Hope encounters a group comprising Colonel Moore, his wife and their ward, Miss Amaryllis D’Arcy. The young woman seems the ideal prospect for his purpose.

Mary is not short of friends, one of whom is Kitty, an old woman who lives in the wood, was ‘gypsy brown, the tan so shiny on the mild skin that it was like a fresh varnish. She sat in front of her turfed tepee like a re-located squaw – the mass of brown hair loosely braided and heaped on her head like a parcel carelessly tied with twine, her forget-me-not blue eyes looking at Mary only when she thought she was unobserved…’ (p97). Another friend is Alice, who married Tom, a boy who Mary had rejected.

Hope is referred to in several ways, among them ‘the man who called himself Hope’, John-Augustus, John, and Hope. This may imply that there is a touch of schizophrenia harbouring in the conman Colonel’s psyche. Indeed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge stated: ‘It is not by mere Thought, I can understand this man’ (p291).

Hope also makes the acquaintance of the attorney Mr Crump and his wife who constantly interrupts him, affording us a few humorous scenes: ‘ “We are in fact,” continued her husband, who took no offence at her interruptions, indeed, in these foreign circumstances, counted on them as if his sentences were much improved for being broken into…’ (p149).

Bragg’s descriptions naturally evoke the place, his own beloved Cumbria, as well as the period. ‘It was still damp, a little drizzle now and then, the fells purpling with misty mizzle, the greens of trees drenched greener, their green swan song before the winds and colds of autumn drained them yellow and blew them down’ (p252).

This is a true tragic and notorious story, fictionalised, and inevitably true love does not run smoothly: ‘The future had become impenetrable as any of the large darkening silent fells between which the coach rocked and waddled its way’ (p301).

Bragg has masterfully insinuated himself into all the characters – thanks to the POV he has employed – and given them depth and imbued them all with sympathetic traits and human flaws.

Note: My wife and I have visited the Lake District a number of times. It was fascinating to come across so many familiar places and names, such as Honister Pass, Derwent Water, Cockermouth, Lorton and Grasmere, to name but a few that crop up in the novel. I actually began reading this book for the first time during our latest trip there (18-22 July this year).