I have read and enjoyed all of Margaret Oliphant’s Carlingford series as well as her first novel and one other. Merkland (which has different subtitles depending on where I look at it: in my eBook it says “A Story of Scottish Life” and in my hardcopy it says “or, Self-Sacrifice”) is her second novel and shows her inexperience. I read it for my Classics Club Spin.
Although the main character of the novel is Anne Ross, it has two plots concerning the fates of two disgraced young men. At the opening of the novel, Anne learns from her unsympathetic stepmother not only that her older brother Norman Rutherford, long believed dead, may be alive, but that he is believed to be the murderer of Arthur Aytoun, who was found shot to death 18 years before. Anne is horrified when she learns that her great friend, Mrs. Catherine Douglas, has invited this man’s daughter, Alice, to stay with her, for she thinks Alice must hate her family.
Mrs. Catherine, for her part, is facing a dilemma. She has unexpectedly inherited some money and, being already wealthy herself, had intended to give it to hard-working but poor young James Aytoun, Alice’s brother. However, two old friends have come to her to ask for help for Archie Sutherland, the young local laird, who has fallen in with bad companions and is badly in debt. She decides in Archie’s favor, but before she can send him the money, he loses his entire estate gambling.
Mrs. Catherine sets about rescuing Archie by bringing him home to recover and arranging honest employment where he might eventually earn enough to buy back his heritage.
For her part, Anne discovers a letter that indicates Norman may be innocent of the crime even though the circumstantial evidence against him is strong. She makes it her goal to try to clear her brother’s name, especially important because Alice Aytoun has fallen in love with Anne’s young stepbrother, Lewis.
So far, so good. Two interesting plots plus other subplots such as the identity of a mysterious child and the fate of Rutherford’s estate in the hands of his dissolute English ex-companions. However, this novel is much longer than it needs to be, containing passage after passage of moralizing and sermonizing. Modern audiences may also be dismayed at its strong message against women’s rights. Further, the novel takes several chapters beyond the crisis to wrap up its loose ends, and by the end I was just skimming the paragraphs trying to finish.
A final note about the edition I read. I dislike reading eBooks, so even though I have Oliphant’s complete works on my iPad, I looked for a paperback version. Drat these print-on-demand books! I ended up with the edition shown above, published by Horse’s Mouth, that had all the evils except that it was corrected for misreadings by machine reading, which I have encountered before. No page numbers, no copyright or any other kind of information except a short biography and a list of other works, no formatting (the text starts at the bottom of page 2). Worst of all, it is only in about 6 pt. type at the largest, when anyone who knows anything about it knows that about the smallest you can go and still be readable is 9 pt.
What? Me Read? 