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The Tory Lover
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1901
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About the author
Sarah Orne Jewett
399 books179 followersSarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist and short story writer, best known for her local color works set in or near South Berwick, Maine, on the border of New Hampshire, which in her day was a declining New England seaport.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 10, 2019
Note: The edition I read this in the second time was the one digitized by Cornell Univ. Library, but it's also a quality exact reproduction of the original.
I first read this Revolutionary War-era historical novel (Jewett's only foray into that genre) as a young teen, probably around 1966-67; it was my first introduction to the author's work. I remembered liking it, and recalled one big plot development and a few bits of dialogue and narrative, but realized I needed to reread it in order to do it justice in a review.
Chronologically, our setting is 1777-78. Events take place in the area of Jewett's beloved Berwick, Maine (then still part of Massachusetts), on the Atlantic Ocean, and in France and England. As usual for Jewett, the narrative is in third-person, from an omniscient point of view. At the novel's opening, wealthy Berwick merchant Col. Jonathan Hamilton is about to welcome Capt. John Paul Jones to a lavish dinner at his mansion, on the eve of the maiden voyage of the ship Ranger, scheduled to sail to France with news of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. Jones, of course, was an actual person; he plays a prominent role in the book, and (from what I've gleaned from Wikipedia) the narrative doesn't violate any known facts about his career at this time. Col. Hamilton was likewise a real-life person, whose mansion is a museum today (http://www.oldberwick.org/oldberwick/... ). A few other real historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin make cameo appearances, and I suspect that several Berwick residents or natives besides Hamilton who appear here really lived as well, though I don't have the knowledge of Berwick local history to identify which ones. Jewett, however, did have that knowledge; and her enthusiasm for realistically portraying her native region extended to its history, which she obviously took pride in.
For a Realist author, however, historical fiction was a problematic genre. It had gotten its start through the Romantic movement, so most Realist writers and critics automatically distrusted it. A canon of Realist ideology of that day was that only the present is a proper focus for the fiction writer's pen; the writer must depict only the here-and-now, since anything else is "escapist." To add to the problem, if a writer describes wartime combat, and related things like espionage, these are by definition not the approved "ordinary events happening to ordinary people" that's the "true" mission of literature to describe; by definition, these are unusual events that don't occur in peacetime, and involve people who may be ordinary but are playing extraordinary roles. Jewett's friend Henry James, for instance, told her that "he considered the historical novel a fatally cheap genre" (Richard Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett), and her fellow Realist writer Frank Norris scorned the book on the same grounds. Modern critics like Cary (who calls this Jewett's worst novel) echo this attitude. Not all readers, however (including this reviewer), share a dogmatic adherence to that kind of wooden critical ideology. Ironically, in Jewett's own day, this actually proved to be her most popular novel. (Published in 1901, it was also, sadly, her last; a carriage accident in 1902 left her crippled and unable to produce fiction until her death in 1909.)
The book would probably not be equally popular with readers today, however, even if more of them knew of its existence; though my overall view of the novel isn't as jaundiced as Cary's, and I think many of his specific criticisms simply boil down to the fact that he subjectively didn't get into the writing. (For the first part of the time when I was reading it the second time, I considered a two-star rating, though it picked up enough to earn three.) Personally, Jewett's flowery diction didn't particularly bother me, but the narrative pace is very slow, especially in the beginning, and a lot of time is spent in description, with many references to localities around Berwick (which, without a map, didn't mean much to me). As usual, she makes her characters come alive through everyday interactions and dialogue, which is a useful skill, but here overtips the balance too far at the expense of advancing the plot. (Unlike Cary, I don't think this was because she had "no stomach" for the action elements --and I like her handling of these a great deal better than he does; I'd have preferred more emphasis on these, rather than leaving them out!-- but I do feel she could have used a more rigorous editor. This is also not a great novel with any profound message to convey.
It does, however, succeed in telling an entertaining story, in which I came to care about the two principal characters, Col. Hamilton's sister Mary and title character Roger Wallingford (after having regarded them, in the beginning, as somewhat immature; but I do think they grew significantly in the course of the book), and to be invested in what would happen to them, and other characters, enough to find some parts genuinely suspenseful. (You have to remember that my first reading of the book was so long ago I'd forgotten a lot of the plot!) There's a bit of a "romantic triangle" aspect which I usually don't care for in books, but it ultimately wasn't overdone here, and I thought the romance was believable, with a character's recognition of the feeling coming slowly, through time and circumstance. I appreciated that Jewett doesn't demonize the Tories. (Hmmm --but IS Roger a Tory? His family certainly are; but.... :-) ) We also get some enlightening glimpses of attitudes in that era. Hamilton and the other New England gentry are slave owners, and don't have any problem with it (though it's not hard to pick up, in one place, that Jewett does!) and they see themselves as the "betters" of the less well-to-do. They also don't tend to think of the Patriot cause in terms of the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence; for them, the issues are fair treatment for colonial economic interests, and a basic "us, who live here, against foreigners" --which is probably a pretty fair reflection of many actual Patriot's attitudes at the time. (Jewett was also aware that mob mentality isn't a very pretty thing, whatever its ostensible motivation.)
A short note on the vocabulary here is worthwhile. In 18th and long-19th-century usage, "lover" simply means "romantically interested suitor," not (usually illicit) "bed partner." And the frequently used adjective "gay" here simply means gay (merry, cheerful, carefree), not "homosexual." The book is a window into a time when popular speech and thought was vastly less obsessively sex-centered than it is (and is culturally taken for granted that it should be) today.
I first read this Revolutionary War-era historical novel (Jewett's only foray into that genre) as a young teen, probably around 1966-67; it was my first introduction to the author's work. I remembered liking it, and recalled one big plot development and a few bits of dialogue and narrative, but realized I needed to reread it in order to do it justice in a review.
Chronologically, our setting is 1777-78. Events take place in the area of Jewett's beloved Berwick, Maine (then still part of Massachusetts), on the Atlantic Ocean, and in France and England. As usual for Jewett, the narrative is in third-person, from an omniscient point of view. At the novel's opening, wealthy Berwick merchant Col. Jonathan Hamilton is about to welcome Capt. John Paul Jones to a lavish dinner at his mansion, on the eve of the maiden voyage of the ship Ranger, scheduled to sail to France with news of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga. Jones, of course, was an actual person; he plays a prominent role in the book, and (from what I've gleaned from Wikipedia) the narrative doesn't violate any known facts about his career at this time. Col. Hamilton was likewise a real-life person, whose mansion is a museum today (http://www.oldberwick.org/oldberwick/... ). A few other real historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin make cameo appearances, and I suspect that several Berwick residents or natives besides Hamilton who appear here really lived as well, though I don't have the knowledge of Berwick local history to identify which ones. Jewett, however, did have that knowledge; and her enthusiasm for realistically portraying her native region extended to its history, which she obviously took pride in.
For a Realist author, however, historical fiction was a problematic genre. It had gotten its start through the Romantic movement, so most Realist writers and critics automatically distrusted it. A canon of Realist ideology of that day was that only the present is a proper focus for the fiction writer's pen; the writer must depict only the here-and-now, since anything else is "escapist." To add to the problem, if a writer describes wartime combat, and related things like espionage, these are by definition not the approved "ordinary events happening to ordinary people" that's the "true" mission of literature to describe; by definition, these are unusual events that don't occur in peacetime, and involve people who may be ordinary but are playing extraordinary roles. Jewett's friend Henry James, for instance, told her that "he considered the historical novel a fatally cheap genre" (Richard Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett), and her fellow Realist writer Frank Norris scorned the book on the same grounds. Modern critics like Cary (who calls this Jewett's worst novel) echo this attitude. Not all readers, however (including this reviewer), share a dogmatic adherence to that kind of wooden critical ideology. Ironically, in Jewett's own day, this actually proved to be her most popular novel. (Published in 1901, it was also, sadly, her last; a carriage accident in 1902 left her crippled and unable to produce fiction until her death in 1909.)
The book would probably not be equally popular with readers today, however, even if more of them knew of its existence; though my overall view of the novel isn't as jaundiced as Cary's, and I think many of his specific criticisms simply boil down to the fact that he subjectively didn't get into the writing. (For the first part of the time when I was reading it the second time, I considered a two-star rating, though it picked up enough to earn three.) Personally, Jewett's flowery diction didn't particularly bother me, but the narrative pace is very slow, especially in the beginning, and a lot of time is spent in description, with many references to localities around Berwick (which, without a map, didn't mean much to me). As usual, she makes her characters come alive through everyday interactions and dialogue, which is a useful skill, but here overtips the balance too far at the expense of advancing the plot. (Unlike Cary, I don't think this was because she had "no stomach" for the action elements --and I like her handling of these a great deal better than he does; I'd have preferred more emphasis on these, rather than leaving them out!-- but I do feel she could have used a more rigorous editor. This is also not a great novel with any profound message to convey.
It does, however, succeed in telling an entertaining story, in which I came to care about the two principal characters, Col. Hamilton's sister Mary and title character Roger Wallingford (after having regarded them, in the beginning, as somewhat immature; but I do think they grew significantly in the course of the book), and to be invested in what would happen to them, and other characters, enough to find some parts genuinely suspenseful. (You have to remember that my first reading of the book was so long ago I'd forgotten a lot of the plot!) There's a bit of a "romantic triangle" aspect which I usually don't care for in books, but it ultimately wasn't overdone here, and I thought the romance was believable, with a character's recognition of the feeling coming slowly, through time and circumstance. I appreciated that Jewett doesn't demonize the Tories. (Hmmm --but IS Roger a Tory? His family certainly are; but.... :-) ) We also get some enlightening glimpses of attitudes in that era. Hamilton and the other New England gentry are slave owners, and don't have any problem with it (though it's not hard to pick up, in one place, that Jewett does!) and they see themselves as the "betters" of the less well-to-do. They also don't tend to think of the Patriot cause in terms of the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence; for them, the issues are fair treatment for colonial economic interests, and a basic "us, who live here, against foreigners" --which is probably a pretty fair reflection of many actual Patriot's attitudes at the time. (Jewett was also aware that mob mentality isn't a very pretty thing, whatever its ostensible motivation.)
A short note on the vocabulary here is worthwhile. In 18th and long-19th-century usage, "lover" simply means "romantically interested suitor," not (usually illicit) "bed partner." And the frequently used adjective "gay" here simply means gay (merry, cheerful, carefree), not "homosexual." The book is a window into a time when popular speech and thought was vastly less obsessively sex-centered than it is (and is culturally taken for granted that it should be) today.
December 30, 2019
Interesting to see a turn-of-the-19th century perspective on the Revolutionary War.
August 22, 2014
This story went on a little too long. I have read quite a few of Jewett's books and, in my opinion, this one was too wordy. (Read on my Nook).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews