This historical novel, published in 1869 and set in the late 1600s, is satisfyingly long, entertaining and suspenseful, and thoroughly wholesome.
I love the narrator, John. He feels really honest and solid. But he’s not dumb, even though he says people say he’s slow. As a narrator, he’s full of observations about people and circumstances, and a bit of poetry, too. Interestingly, he still counts as an unreliable narrator! I usually don’t like those. But he’s not unreliable very often. I noticed it only in some scenes where the author indirectly suggests that a woman loves him but that he hasn’t noticed.
It’s a challenging book from the standpoint of the dialect passages, which you kinda have to squint at, and because there are some old words, or words relating to the country setting, that are unfamiliar even to me, and I read a lot. But these vocabulary-related challenges are welcome, in my view.
I kinda wished I knew more about the historical setting, but actually you don’t need to, because the focus is on the main characters. You don’t really have to care about the other stuff that’s happening.
When John goes off to find a friend of the family in the middle of a small war, I kept thinking it would be great to see a Steven Spielberg movie of the book, like the one he made of War Horse, which has some of the same themes. The movie War Horse was absolutely gorgeous. There have been several TV and film adaptations of Lorna Doone, but I haven’t seen any of them. It probably makes more sense as a TV series, given the length of the story. A movie would have to cut a lot.
See below for some passages that stood out.
What stood out when I read Lorna Doone
Going fishing:
“A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, went my little self that day on man’s choice errand— destruction. All the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God’s certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was aware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his breast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream likening himself to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as it does when a sample of man comes. Now let not anyone suppose that I thought of these things when I was young, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth I was at the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I myself must have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It is all very pretty to see the trees big with their hopes of another year, though dumb as yet on the subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety, and the banks spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this to heart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can never charge upon me), and he would liefer have a good apple, or even a bad one, if he stole it.”
The value of gratitude:
“[N]ow I had learned the joy of quiet, and the gratitude for good things round us, and the love we owe to others (even those who must be kind), for their indulgence to us. All this, before my journey, had been too much as a matter of course to me; but having missed it now I knew that it was a gift, and might be lost.”
The value of constancy:
“I have contempt for a man whose heart is like a shirt-stud (such as I saw in London cards), fitted into one today, sitting bravely on the breast; plucked out on the morrow morn, and the place that knew it, gone.”
Pigs everywhere, lol:
“While I was wondering how my chance of having Lorna could depend upon my power to carry pig’s wash, and how Betty could have any voice in the matter (which seemed to depend upon her decision), and in short, while I was all abroad as to her knowledge and everything, the pigs, who had been fast asleep and dreaming in their emptiness, awoke with one accord at the goodness of the smell around them. They had resigned themselves, as even pigs do, to a kind of fast, hoping to break their fast more sweetly on the morrow morning. But now they tumbled out all headlong, pigs below and pigs above, pigs point-blank and pigs across, pigs courant and pigs rampant, but all alike prepared to eat, and all in good cadence squeaking.”
Some clever psychology:
“‘Oh, John! speak one good word for me,’ she cried with both hands laid in mine, and her tearful eyes looking up at me. ‘Not one, my pet, but a hundred,’ I answered, kindly embracing her: ‘have no fear, little sister: I am going to make your case so bright, by comparison, I mean, that mother will send for you in five minutes, and call you her best, her most dutiful child, and praise Cousin Tom to the skies, and send a man on horseback after him; and then you will have a harder task to intercede for me, my dear.’ ‘Oh, John, dear John, you won’t tell her about Lorna— oh, not today, dear.’ ‘Yes, today, and at once, Annie. I want to have it over, and be done with it.’ ‘Oh, but think of her, dear. I am sure she could not bear it, after this great shock already.’ ‘She will bear it all the better,’ said I; ‘the one will drive the other out. I know exactly what mother is. She will be desperately savage first with you, and then with me, and then for a very little while with both of us together; and then she will put one against the other (in her mind I mean) and consider which was most to blame; and in doing that she will be compelled to find the best in either’s case, that it may beat the other; and so as the pleas come before her mind, they will gain upon the charges, both of us being her children, you know: and before very long (particularly if we both keep out of the way) she will begin to think that after all she has been a little too hasty, and then she will remember how good we have always been to her; and how like our father. Upon that, she will think of her own love-time, and sigh a good bit, and cry a little, and then smile, and send for both of us, and beg our pardon, and call us her two darlings.’ ‘Now, John, how on earth can you know all that?’ exclaimed my sister, wiping her eyes, and gazing at me with a soft bright smile. ‘Who on earth can have told you, John? People to call you stupid indeed! Why, I feel that all you say is quite true, because you describe so exactly what I should do myself; I mean— I mean if I had two children, who had behaved as we have done. But tell me, darling John, how you learned all this.’”
Poetic description:
“It was very pleasant there in the copse, sloping to the west as it was, and the sun descending brightly, with rocks and banks to dwell upon. The stems of mottled and dimpled wood, with twigs coming out like elbows, hung and clung together closely, with a mode of bending in, as children do at some danger; overhead the shrunken leaves quivered and rustled ripely, having many points like stars, and rising and falling delicately, as fingers play sad music. Along the bed of the slanting ground, all between the stools of wood, there were heaps of dead brown leaves, and sheltered mats of lichen, and drifts of spotted stick gone rotten, and tufts of rushes here and there, full of fray and feathering. All by the hedge ran a little stream, a thing that could barely name itself, flowing scarce more than a pint in a minute, because of the sunny weather. Yet had this rill little crooks and crannies dark and bravely bearded, and a gallant rush through a reeden pipe— the stem of a flag that was grounded; and here and there divided threads, from the points of a branching stick, into mighty pools of rock (as large as a grown man’s hat almost) napped with moss all around the sides and hung with corded grasses. Along and down the tiny banks, and nodding into one another, even across main channel, hung the brown arcade of ferns; some with gold tongues languishing; some with countless eardrops jerking, some with great quilled ribs uprising and long saws aflapping; others cupped, and fanning over with the grace of yielding, even as a hollow fountain spread by winds that have lost their way. Deeply each beyond other, pluming, stooping, glancing, glistening, weaving softest pillow lace, coying to the wind and water, when their fleeting image danced, or by which their beauty moved— God has made no lovelier thing; and only He takes heed of them.”
A metaphor:
“When thy mind is made up, to argue with thee is pelting a rock with peppercorns.”
Fair warning:
“All marriage is a wretched farce, even when man and wife belong to the same rank of life, have temper well assorted, similar likes and dislikes, and about the same pittance of mind. But when they are not so matched, the farce would become a long, dull tragedy, if anything were worth lamenting.”
The spirit of exploration:
“She told me that in the Arctic Regions, as they call some places, a long way north, where the Great Bear lies all across the heavens, and no sun is up, for whole months at a time, and yet where people will go exploring, out of pure contradiction, and for the sake of novelty, and love of being frozen— that here they always had such winters as we were having now.”
People are different:
“Our Eliza was meant for books; our dear Annie for loving and cooking; I, John Ridd, for sheep, and wrestling, and the thought of Lorna; and mother to love all three of us, and to make the best of her children.”
Reminds me of the Bard:
“[I]f it could be done at all, it could not be too quickly done.”
A pun:
“‘And how was it you were struck by a bullet, and only shaken in your saddle? Had you a coat of mail on, or of Milanese chain-armour? Now, Master Stickles, had you?’ ‘No, Mistress Lizzie; we do not wear things of that kind nowadays. You are apt, I perceive, at romances. But I happened to have a little flat bottle of the best stoneware slung beneath my saddle-cloak, and filled with the very best eau-de-vie, from the George Hotel, at Southmolton. The brand of it now is upon my back. Oh, the murderous scoundrels, what a brave spirit they have spilled!’ ‘You had better set to and thank God,’ said I, ‘that they have not spilled a braver one.’”
Thoughts on women in general:
“But Master Stickles told me afterwards, when there was no one with us, to have no faith in any woman, whatever she might seem to be. For he assured me that now he possessed very large experience, for so small a matter; being thoroughly acquainted with women of every class, from ladies of the highest blood, to Bonarobas, and peasants’ wives: and that they all might be divided into three heads and no more; that is to say as follows. First, the very hot and passionate, who were only contemptible; second, the cold and indifferent, who were simply odious; and third, the mixture of the other two, who had the bad qualities of both. As for reason, none of them had it; it was like a sealed book to them, which if they ever tried to open, they began at the back of the cover. Now I did not like to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, I knew, both from my own sense, and from the greatest of all great poets, that there are, and always have been, plenty of women, good, and gentle, warmhearted, loving, and lovable; very keen, moreover, at seeing the right, be it by reason, or otherwise. And upon the whole, I prefer them much to the people of my own sex, as goodness of heart is more important than to show good reason for having it.”
The bird he’s thinking of is pink:
“My mother, the very best of women, was (as I could well perceive) a little annoyed and vexed with things. For this particular occasion, she had procured from Dulverton, by special message to Ruth Huckaback (whereof more anon), a headdress with a feather never seen before upon Exmoor, to the best of everyone’s knowledge. It came from a bird called a flaming something— a flaming oh, or a flaming ah, I will not be positive— but I can assure you that it did flame; and dear mother had no other thought, but that all the congregation would neither see nor think of any other mortal thing, or immortal even, to the very end of the sermon.”
A super useful phrase:
“‘I am sure I do not know, sir,’ I answered according to a phrase which has always been my favourite, on account of its general truth.”
Indoors vs. outdoors:
“I love not a house with too many windows: being out of house and doors some three-quarters of my time, when I get inside a house I like to feel the difference.”
Definition of hope:
“And herein differs fact from fancy, things as they befall us from things as we would have them, human ends from human hopes; that the first are moved by a thousand and the last on two wheels only, which (being named) are desire and fear. Hope of course is nothing more than desire with a telescope, magnifying distant matters, overlooking near ones; opening one eye on the objects, closing the other to all objections. And if hope be the future tense of desire, the future of fear is religion— at least with too many of us.”
Narration after the fact:
“Now I do not mean to say that all this, or the hundred other things which came, crowding consideration, were half as plain to me at the time, as I have set them down above. Far be it from me to deceive you so. No doubt my thoughts were then dark and hazy, like an oil-lamp full of fungus; and I have trimmed them, as when they burned, with scissors sharpened long afterwards. All I mean to say is this, that jogging along to a certain tune of the horse’s feet, which we call ‘three-halfpence and twopence,’ I saw my way a little into some things which had puzzled me.”
Well no, but actually yes:
“‘Very well. One quevart of be-or;’ she called out to a little maid, who was her eldest child, no doubt. ‘It is to be expected, sir. Be-or, be-or, be-or, all day long, with you Englishmen!’ ‘Nay,’ I replied, ‘not all day long, if madam will excuse me. Only a pint at breakfast-time, and a pint and a half at eleven o’clock, and a quart or so at dinner. And then no more till the afternoon; and half a gallon at suppertime. No one can object to that.’”
Strange simile:
“[H]er white arm shone, coming out of it, as round and plump and velvety, as a stalk of asparagus, newly fetched out of the ground.”
Easier said than done:
“more easy to attempt than to achieve”
Oops:
“[W]hy should my new friends fight for me, when I had paid for the ale, and therefore won the wrong tense of gratitude?”
Imagine putting words on clothing:
“[I]f tailors would only print upon waistcoats, I would give double price for a vest bearing this inscription, ‘No information can be given about the Duke of Marlborough.’”
Dignity:
It seemed unfit that I should go, and waylay her, and spy on her, and say (or mean to say), ‘Lo, here is your poor faithful farmer, a man who is unworthy of you, by means of his common birth; and yet who dares to crawl across your path, that you may pity him. For God’s sake show a little pity, though you may not feel it.’ Such behaviour might be comely in a lovelorn boy, a page to some grand princess; but I, John Ridd, would never stoop to the lowering of love so.
An old saying:
“‘Master John Ridd, you shall tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Another metaphor:
“A life without Lorna; a tadpole life. All stupid head; and no body.”
When and Why I Read Lorna Doone
Another public domain classic. A long one this time!
Genre: Classic English literature
Date started / date finished: 31-Mar-25 to 17-Apr-25
Length: 606 pages
ISBN:
Originally published in: 1869/2006/2023
