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[Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1830]

This wasn't the first novel written about the Southern Campaign, but it's the oldest one I've tracked down and read. And, wonder of wonders, it gets a pretty good review. It's dreadful, it's flawed, it's got a cartload of faults -- but it's also extreme amounts of fun. I knew it was going to be an odd, idiosyncratic book just from the author's introduction. He wrote it, says he, then he showed the manuscript to his friends and they quite universally told him it was terrible:

[T]here existeth a schism of magnitude between me and my friends, so called in courtesy, about the merits of this history -- they being so stupid that they can't -- or so malicious that they won't, see its merits, and all of them, to a fraction, discourteously affirming that it containeth but little learning, and still less wit. (1:iv)

Disappointed by this reaction, he decided the only thing to do was to publish it, and therefore put it in front of a less partisan audience. I have to wonder whether the reaction he got back from strangers was any friendlier.

Anyway, he also claimed to have picked up this "true tale" of one family's experiences around Camden from the summer of 1780 through to the end of the war from talking to old veterans, so I went into it thinking that it might be interesting as another variation on oral history. As I was flipping through before I settled down to read -- that's "flipping" in a figurative sense, since the copy I read is on microcard -- I stumbled over a highly detailed description of Christian Huck --

With remarkably light colored hair, a strongly marked Roman profile, light grey eyes and high cheek bones, he united a height considerably exceeding six feet, a thin, yet remarkably firm person;... (1:100)

-- and thought, who knows, maybe it came down to McClung from someone who had actually met the man. Wouldn't that be a hoot? But then, of course, I found the introduction of Ban --

At another inn... the legion of Tarleton was quartered, and its officers, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, were still at table enjoying all that pleasure which wine, nuts, the song, and conversation could afford. Colonel Tarleton was present and conspicuous by his superior size, his large whiskers, and the air of deference and respect, with which all his remarks were received. (1:99)

-- and surrendered all notions that McClung's "true" tale might actually have some "true" imbedded in it. Then again, I have to wonder if he didn't just get the names confused, because there is a character running around the story whose description fits Ban to a "T": "He was of the ordinary height or rather below it, slightly yet elegantly formed, and remarkable for appearing to advantage in any dress..." (1:186) It just happens to be one of his original characters, an officer of the Maryland Continentals. Maybe that character was supposed to be the big guy with whiskers, and it was a copy editing glitch. (Either that or Ban heard about all the fun the Black Riders were having over in that truly awful Simms novel, and bought himself a ZZ Top costume, too.)

Giving McClung his due, though, while the physical description of Ban -- the "superior size" and "large whiskers" -- may be ludicrous, the rest of the introduction is actually well above the norm:

His appearance corresponded well with his general military character, his air and manner was free, affable, and such as showed that he had mingled long in polished society. There were no traces of deep thought or care on his countenance. It was rather that of a frank, spirited, adventurous soldier, who was better qualified for the tumult of battle, than the higher and more refined efforts of stratagem. Neither were his remarks generally of a character which evinced much reflection, or knowledge of his profession. In short, to sum up his character at once, colonel Tarleton, was the Murat of the British army, equally vain, equally courageous, and equally unqualified for supreme command. (1:99-100)

Not a bad summary of strengths and flaws, really.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if McClung's "research" really did consist of sitting around the local general store, listing to old codgers recounting their war stories. We all know how quickly such things part company from history, and the mixture of good and bad elements in the history seems to fit that sort of origin. I.e., there is some strange history here. Christian Huck lives on an extra month, so he can die after the battle of Camden. Lord Cornwallis was in America through part of the French and Indian Wars. (He may have been with Braddock's expedition, in fact. I wasn't quite clear on that.) And so on and so forth. But still, for all the flubs, McClung doesn't give the impression that he's world-altering for political reasons, which makes it far more funny than annoying.

As well as having some pretty dubious history, there are some thoroughly dubious storytelling techniques. Passing asides to the audience of a "Bear with me, dear reader..." nature were very acceptable in this period, but McClung does take them a bit over the top, sometimes bringing the action to a screeching halt in the midst of a battle scene so he can spend a few pages talking about his own interests, or military theory, or whatever. And if he doesn't do it as an aside, his characters do it. General Lethbridge, the old Whig patriarch of the focal family, is obsessed with military theory, and will happily bore the other characters to sleep (not to mention the reader, if she doesn't skim forward quickly) with lectures on it at any odd time of the day or night. Some of them are fun -- the author's opinions on the similarities between Horatio Gates' advance to Camden and Hannibal's crossing of the Alps are really worth preserving -- while others are just... even stranger.

McClung focuses most of the story on his fictional cast, with (pseudo-)real events as a background, though real-world people play larger roles here than they do in the Simms novels. Chris Huck has the strongest case for suing him from beyond the grave. Ban gets off relatively easily, with little worse than an occasional "that dreadful Colonel Tarleton" from the heroine and one or two nasty-but-passing references. He's actually quite a bit of fun, shown partying and drinking with his officers as well as working. (After a night in the mess, it's a wonder Tarleton's guys can find their horses, but that's okay because their rebel opposite numbers are ten miles down the road, snoring under their tables, too.) McClung obviously liked Horatio Gates, who gets what is perhaps his most sympathetic role ever in fiction, and his version of (ahem) "Marquis" Cornwallis is, if wildly inaccurate in detail, well done on a general level: every inch a gentleman, easy going and sympathetic.

As for the fictional cast, he uses many of the same stock characters as Simms, though in general he does them better, to a point where one can actually grow interested in their lives and fates. At the center of the tale we have the stalwart young Continental, William Templeton, in love with the well-bred Miss Caroline Lethbridge. We have the Perfidious Rival, Colonel Carson, but -- amazingly -- he is also a Continental, a Maryland lieutenant-colonel in fact. (The same one who got Ban's description.) We have the proto-simian GoodOleBoy swamp rat, who is better than the Simms versions, though still enough of a sociopath that you wouldn't care to meet him:

Sam Dusky attended by four or five riflemen in hunting shirts, with large powder horns and bullet pouches hanging by their sides, sallied into the street, and turning up the bodies of the troopers who had fallen, examined them for the shots, with as much indifference, as if they had been bucks in season.

But despite the stock cast -- and factoring in that the novel was written in 1830, of course -- his characterization is pretty good. Lacking the full weight of Victorian stereotyping, he surpasses either Simms or Cooper. Perhaps being an amateur actually helped him. He wasn't caught up in what was expected of each role. One of his women, Emily, is even halfway likeable, with some backbone and a brain or two -- and from a male writer of the day, that's little short of miraculous. (Caroline plays the more typical role, sobbing and shrinking and blushing and fainting at the drop of a corset bone, but then her stays are likely too tight, poor thing.)

Where McClung really outdistances Simms -- not to mention winning my heart -- is with his three main Loyal/British characters: Captain Talbot, his sixteen-year-old brother, Will, and Smith, a scout for Tarleton. The two Talbots are, without qualification, nice guys and -- is everyone sitting down? I wouldn't want anyone to emulate Caroline by fainting -- they're both officers in the British Legion. Smith, the Tory, is generally presented unsympathetically, seen through the eyes of various Whig characters as a "traitor." Yet when he dies, lynched on the roadside by rebels, it is his captors who are the ravening mob. Smith faces death with quiet courage, his last words simply, "I have been true to my king." (1:32) There are also an interesting band of neutrals in play, whose sufferings at the hands of both Whigs and Tories have stripped them of all political allegiances and reduced them to bare survival at any cost.

Like Simms' Santee Saga, the novel lacks what Hollywood calls a high-concept plot. People live their lives, chase each others' tails and/or fortunes (genteelly, of course), shoot at each other, duck the odd cavalry charge, and so on. In the middle of the story, finishing out volume 1 and starting volume 2, is the battle of Camden, which is the real, if radically misplaced, climax of the plot. We see it through the perspective of Templeton and some of his friends, but in another of his surprise segues into neutrality, McClung uses it as an opportunity to show the personal side of war through the misfortunes of two teenaged cast members, Cornet Will Talbot of the Legion and Henry Lethbridge, the General's youngest and only surviving son. Will dies of a musket ball wound whereas Henry barely survives having his skull sliced open by a saber, but in each case the waste and human tragedy is recognized as such by cast members in both camps.

The second volume seems almost to be the world's longest afterthought. At the end of the battle, Templeton and several of his friends are taken captive -- most politely(!!) -- by the British Legion and fall into the care of a British officer and his wife until they're released on parole. While in the British camp, Templeton comes to the attention of Cornwallis, who takes an unusual interest in him. Let me back up and point out that young Templeton has one major bump in the road of his courting of Caroline, at least from her father's perspective: he's illegitimate... maybe. He "bears his mother's name" and there's a deep mystery about his father, though common gossip is that he is the son of a young English lord who seduced and abandoned Templeton's mother during the French and Indian Wars. I swear, at this point, I was just waiting for Cornwallis to turn out to be his dad. I mean, it had already been proven that little things like historical fact weren't a hindrance to the plot, and matters really seemed to be heading that way. But nope, not quite -- and, of course, his lineage turns out to be a bit more reputable than previously believed.

After Our Gang are released on parole, the war moves pretty much off-stage, and the story focuses on the triangle between Templeton, Caroline, and Colonel Carson (the Perfidious Rival), who will stop at nothing to gain the lady's hand (and, incidently, her fortune). His increasingly deadly attempts to get Templeton out of the picture play out against an occasional incident such as the Dog Days expedition, but after the battle of Camden, the book really does largely abandon military events to become a domestic story set in wartime.

This novel brings out in me a more typical reaction than many I've reviewed. It has a percentage of offensive, infuriating and J.D. wrong material, but there are also good bits to notice and enjoy for a change, and that's what sticks in my memory. I had fun with it, sometimes laughing at it for its silly, over-the-top melodrama, at others times enjoying it as the author intended. And despite its myriad age spots, it remains quite readable. (Except, of course, in cases where those "age spots" are literally ink stains and mildew, which render several pages of the microcard version quite unreadable.)

For anyone interested in the mythological stylization that crept into RevWar novels over a few generations, this would make a good first example, followed by Simms' Mellichampe, then one of the super-shallow, super-predictable modern versions, such as Jakes' Charleston or (shudder) Cast Two Shadows.