Micah Clarke (article 12 march 1889)
Micah Clarke is an article published in The Manchester Guardian on 12 march 1889.
Review of Arthur Conan Doyle's nove : Micah Clarke (1889).
Review
Micah Clarke, By A. CONAN DOYLE. London: Longmans. 8vo, pp. vi. 421.
The unfortunate rising in 1685 which came to an end at Sedgemoor has been the subject of several interesting novels, but we do not remember one in which the story is told with greater skill and talent than in this by Mr. Doyle. The narrative is written as an autobiography, and is supposed to be told fifty years after the event by one who took part in the fight — by a grandfather, in fact, writing to his grandchildren. Micah, the hero, is a manly, healthy, young fellow, a fine type of the strength and honesty of the Puritan character without any of its drawbacks. One day when out sailing with a friend they took on board a man apparently swimming to escape the bullets of his shipmates, who proved to be the bearer of letters from Rumbold to the Hampshire malcontents, informing them that Monmouth's standard would shortly be raised in the west. The rescued man, Decimus Saxon, is a soldier of fortune, sufficiently like Dugald Dalgetty to make his presence, language, and principles almost familiar, but with a distinctive individuality of his own. The elder Clarke is too old to join Saxon, but Micah willingly consents to go out, and the two are afterwards joined by the young man's most intimate friend. The journey from Havant to Taunton and the numerous adventures which befell the bold recruits by the way are described with remarkable narrative power. The incidents are exciting enough to satisfy the lover of sensation, but they are nearly all within the sphere of probability. Some of these adventures are such as Charles Kingsley would have loved to tell, and in Micah Clarke's story there are not a few lively and dramatic passages that would have done no discredit to the author of "Westward Ho!" Pleasant pictures of old English towns and quiet villages vary the narrative, and while the author seldom interrupts his story by long digressions, the contrast between the peaceful surroundings of the rural life and the cruel times that were soon to follow is frequently suggested by a few telling reflections. The account of the gathering and drilling of the peasants is very animated, the triumphal entry of King Monmouth is vividly described, and the divided interests and counsels which destroyed the feeble chance of success which the ill-starred young man's enterprise offered are defined with accuracy and discrimination. And not the least successful chapters of the story are those in which the eyes of the more disinterested in the army of Monmouth are gradually and unwillingly opened to the weakness and worthlessness of their champion's character. The description of the fight at Sedgemoor is very clear, and though Mr. Doyle wisely dwells as little as possible on the horrors of the battle and of the more awful slaughter which followed during the Bloody Assize, enough is said to enable even the less instructed to understand the detestation with which the names of Jeffreys and his master were regarded in the West by after-generations. Micah Clarke is a chronicle, and its interest depends rather on the successive adventures and escapes of the principal characters than on anything like continuous and connected interest of plot, but the reader will be sufficiently interested in the hero himself. The dialogue is bright and lively, and though there is only an occasional flavour of the local dialects and of the speech of the period, it is frequently sufficient to add piquancy to the story. Mr. Conan Doyle has, in fact, written a very interesting and very readable historical novel, and we look forward with pleasure and confidence to his next essay.
