Not to suggest that he didn't deserve it, but has there ever been a more tortured soul in all of Canadian literature than Sir Jasper Kingswood? The first words of this novel – "And there is danger of death – for mother and child?" – are his. The mother is wife Olivia, who is struggling greatly to give birth. Doctor Godroy is sympathetic, but is "sorry to say...." Sir Jasper calls to a servant: "Ride to the village – ride for your life!... fetch the Reverend Cyrus Green here at once."
The baronet is certain his wife is going to die. I was certain his wife would die. Yet Lady Olivia survives as does the newborn, the future baronet.
Sir Jasper receives the blessed news in his library, but the joy is short-lived. He is soon arrested by the sight of a man in the swirling snow standing outside looking in one of the room's many windows. With heart warmed by a miraculous birth, he bids the mysterious figure take shelter in the Kingswood family seat.
Identifying himself as Achmet the Astrologer, the visitor informs the baronet that he has come to "look into the future of your newborn son."
To prove his otherworldly abilities, Achmet takes Sir Jasper's hand. The baronet's palm tells of a troubled childhood in which the early deaths of his parents figure. Brief mentions of Rugby and Cambridge follow, after which Achmet describes in great detail a grand tour of the continent that followed Sir Jasper's studies:
“It is in Spain – glowing, gorgeous Spain – and she is one
of its loveliest children. The oranges and pomegranates
scent the burning air, the vineyards glow in the tropic sun,
and golden summer forever reigns. But the glowing southern sun is not more brilliant than the Spanish gypsy’s flashing black eyes, nor the pomegranate blossoms half so ripe
and red as her cheeks. She is Zenith, the Zingara, and you
love her!”
“In the fiend’s name!” Sir Jasper Kingsland cried, “what
jugglery is this?”
After looking up the definition of "jugglery" in my OED, I couldn't help by agree.
Achmet continues:
She is
beautiful as the angels above, and as innocent, and she loves
you with a mad abandon that is worse than idolatry – as
only women ever love. And you? You are grand and noble,
a milor Inglese, and you take her love – her crazy worship – as a demi-god might, with uplifted grace, as your birth right; and she is your pretty toy of an hour. And then,
careless and happy, you are gone.
The baronet is spooked: “No living mortal knows what you have told me this night!” Though tempted to toss the old man out into the the snow, Sir Jasper simply must know what is to befall his newborn heir. And so he leads the visitor up sweeping staircases to the battlements atop Kingsland Manor, leaving the astrologer alone to study the stars. Achmet descends in the approaching dawn, handing over the horoscope of Sir Jasper's infant son.
It was all an act.
Once out of sight, aged Achmet becomes spry, striding toward a hovel on desolate Hunsden's Heath where he is welcomed by the "dark face lighted up into the splendor of absolute beauty" of a woman named Zara. The astrologer Achmet is in reality her husband Pietro. Of more importance to the plot, he is Zenith's son-in-law. Zara is the result of that hour of pleasure some two decades earlier.
Meanwhile, back at the manor, Sir Jasper lies unconscious on the library floor clutching Achmed's horoscope. He manages to recover in time to attend the christening of his son at the village church, the Reverend Cyrus Green officiating. Lady Olivia is too weak to attend, which is probably a blessing because no sooner is the ceremony is very nearly interrupted by the arrival of an uninvited guest:
A weird
and unearthly figure – like one of Macbeth’s witches – with
streaming black hair floating over a long, red cloak, and
two black eyes of flame. All recoiled as the spectral figure rushed up like a mad thing and confronted Sir Jasper
Kingsland.
“At last!” she shrilly cried, in a voice that pierced even
to the gaping listeners without – “at last, Sir Jasper
Kingsland! At last we meet again!”
There was a horrible cry as the baronet started back,
putting up both hands, with a look of unutterable horror.
“Good God! Zenith!”
The abandoned lover says many unchristian things before collapsing in the church floor. She is taken to the manse and is soon retrieved by dedicated daughter Zara. It says much about Sir Jasper the horoscope, and not the scene in the church, is what so haunts his remaining twelve years. In what is the first of the novel's five – five – deathbed scenes, Sir Jasper Kingswood confesses to "one hour of mad, brief bliss" with Zenith. In doing so, he acknowledges that the woman he denied knowing in his own church – on the occasion of his son's christening – not only saved his life, but had been his lover. He also acknowledges that Zara, whom he has seen only once – coming to the aid of her mother on the occasion of his son's christening – is in fact his daughter.
That's a lot for Lady Olivia to take in, but I'd argue that it is even more for his twelve-year-old heir Everard.
This is not Sir Jasper's story – he dies not one-fifth of the way into the novel – rather the results of the seed he has sown. The Baronet's Bride; Or, A Woman's Vengeance concerns two women, the first being Harriet Hunsden, a sporty young thing who looks every bit as lovely and at home in a ball gown as she does her fox hunting garb. Lady Louise, sister of Lord Carteret, likens her to Diana Vernon in Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy.
 |
Rob Roy
Sir Walter Scott
Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1893 |
Lady Kingwood desires Lady Louise as a daughter-in-law. At twenty-two, Everard (now Sir Everard), is so taken by Lady Louise's beauty, charm, poise, and intelligence that he comes within a minute of proposing marriage. Lord Carteret's sister is expecting it, I was expecting it, but just as the words are about to leave his lips the nearly-betrothed are intruded upon by jealous rival George Grosvenor. This is just as well, as seventeen-year-old Harriet Hunsden, whom Everard has only just met, is waiting in the wings. The baronet is so smitten by "Harrie" that at their second meeting he proposes to her instead.
Harriet Hunsden is The Baronet's Bride. The woman of the alternate title, A Woman's Vengeance, is not Zenith, rather her daughter's daughter, known affectionately as "Sunbeam." She'll later appear onstage as the enchanting "La Sylphine." As "Sybilla Silver," she saves the life Sir Everard by shooting an assailant. She could've just as well killed the baronet, but that would not have been enough. She must fullfil the prophesy left by her father Pietro two decades earlier: Sir Everard Kingswood will be convicted of murder and die by hanging, bringing disgrace upon the family.
I've spoiled little in that last sentence. The faux horoscope left by Achmet the Astrologer, known only by Sir Jasper and Lady Olivia, is kept secret for pretty much the entire novel. But that is of little consequence, the reader knows that A Woman's Vengeance involves nothing so simple as murder.
The Baronet's Bride; Or, A Woman's Vengeance is typical of May Agnes Fleming novels in that female characters are the strongest. Lady Kingswood not only survives giving birth to her husband's heir, but but guides his young life. Such is her influence that young Sir Everard is perfectly happy to propose to Lady Louise. Though just seventeen years of age, I might consider Harriet, later Lady Harriet, the most remarkable of the author's women were it not for the woman who has no name: Sunbeam, La Sylphine, Sybilla Silver...
Sins of the father visited upon the children and all that, but the women rule.
Bloomer:
"I do admire a spirited lady rider,
and I do think a pretty girl never looks half so pretty as
when well mounted."
Object: An attractive yet cheap hardcover, the last eight pages are devoted to adverts for other Donohue books. I found the one devoted to G. Harvey Ralphson's Boy Scout Series to be the most interesting, not only because only because Ralphson didn't exist, but for its nods to American imperialism. Of lesser interest, but only slightly, is the inclusion of of Black Rock by our own Ralph Connor in Donohue's Choice Fiction Library.
Access: The Baronet’s Bride was first published from 3 October 1868 and 26 December 1868 in Philadelphia
Saturday Night. It first
appeared as a book published that same year by Donohue. Several more Donohue editions followed. It was first published in the UK as
Heir of Kingsland Court; Or, The Baronet’s Bride (London: Henderson, 1887). In 1891, New York publisher George Munro included the novel in paperback as volume #41 in his Library of American Author's series. Nine years later, Street and Smith followed with its own paperback edition. My guess is that the novel last saw print in 1910 in a volume shared by
Who Wins? published by the New York Book Co.
Ignoring all print on demand vultures, there are just three copies of the novel listed for sale online. At US$18.50, a 1909 New York Book Co edition – this one without Who Wins? – is the least expensive. It's on offer from a Yankee bookseller. A Nova Scotia bookseller offers a Donohue edition with pictorial cover at US$25.00.
A second Yankee bookseller has listed a third Donohue edition at US$28.00. It's in excellent shape, but the cover features only text.
