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This month I picked up the last four installments of Simms' Santee saga, and had a fast skim through them. I'm thoroughly in agreement with Nield's observation that the "sameness in the wonderful experiences described in these tales," means "two volumes are more likely to please the average reader than seven."¹ While the books don't have an obvious surfeit of Victorian wordiness (he's no Charles Dickens), they do manage to wander on for pages and pages and pages without much of anything actually happening. The plots are sparse and the characters numbingly repetitive. Each novel has pretty much the same elements: a folksy backwoods scout or two, some kind of personal rivalry which echoes the political schism of the war, and a vapid romance between a generic young Continental officer and a genteel young woman, often of a family with fading Loyal leanings. The most notable aspect of each of these romances is that the two characters spend virtually no time together during the story, and are lucky to get so much as a single scene together. It is very much of a muchness, and anyone who makes it through the whole set has more patience than I do.

Katherine Walton finishes the trilogy begun in The Partisan and Mellichampe, but while Robert Singleton does end up a Colonel, he still searches in vain for some personality. The story takes place in Charleston during the first half of 1781, and the unmitigated slaughter Simms wreaks on the characters of Nisbet Balfour and John Cruden outdoes what most writers do even to Ban. Beyond that, I'm not sure there is anything that could be called a coherent plot or purpose, though there are plenty of random incidents, including a subplot for Katherine's father which is thinly stolen from the story is Isaac Hayne as fictionalized in RevWar mythology. (It's odd, y'know. I hadn't noticed it until I read this one, but while Simms spends an extraordinary amount of energy defaming real-world British officers, he spends very little time at all deifying the opposite group. The rebel leaders virtually never even walk on stage, far less undergo any "character development." They get an occasional mention, a line or two perhaps, and that's it. Wonder why?)

The Scout, or Black Riders of the Congaree is the only one of the four novels I'd class as worth reading, though not necessarily for reasons that would please the author. But it really is so stupid that it's downright hilarious. Set in 1781, in a period roughly centered on Lord Rawdon's relief of the siege at Ninety-Six, it is the story of two half-brothers, Edward and Clarence Conway. Edward, the elder, is Loyal, and under the name of Edward Morton he leads "the Black Riders," a partisan band. Kid brother Clarence is, of course, a rebel, and though nominally the "hero" of the piece, spends little time on stage. I won't tell you which of the pair of them is the sneaky, lowdown bastard and which one isn't, because that would spoil the surprise. (Yeah, right....)

Simms' can't seem to plot a story without being horrendously petty to some Brit or other, and this time around the victim is Lord Rawdon, who gets to do an amazing number of things that would have appalled the real man. His march to Ninety-Six happens largely off-screen. His role in the story is confined to a stopover in the neighborhood, which is of surprising duration given that he was in a bit of a hurry at the time. Unlike the wacky, strangely entertaining incarnation of Ban in Mellichampe this one has nothing in its favor, in terms of either historical or sheer entertainment value. Amazing that a man as marvelously eccentric as Rawdon can be reduced to dead boring, but Simms managed it.

The story focuses almost entirely on the two brothers and a couple of supporting characters of Simms' typical "folksy backwoodsman" type. In addition to disagreeing politically, the two men are also rivals for the hand of Flora Middleton, though Edward's suit is complicated by the presence of his mistress, Mary Clarkson. Mary's family think she committed suicide after Edward "dishonored" her, but in fact she's running with the Black Riders, disguised as a man. That only begins the weirdness of the Riders, who are riding the countryside, hiding their identities with "false scalps" (I'm going to assume for my own peace of mind that Simms means wigs, though I wouldn't make book on it) and long beards. The way Simms describes them, one is left with an inescapable mental image of a group of ZZ Top impersonators on horseback. (Yes, I know. Dated pop culture reference. Some of you will be old enough to get it.)

Having set up this strong rivalry between the brothers, Simms then goes off on a strange tangent, introducing a foppish, amusingly eccentric young British army surgeon named Hillhouse, who arrives at Flora's family home to tend to Edward (badly wounded in an encounter with his brother), and promptly falls madly and histrionically in love with Flora himself. Amazingly, Hillhouse comes through the novel with both his person and his elaborate wardrobe intact, but he is a typical example of Simms' plotting problems. It's hardly giving anything away to say that Flora ends up married to Clarence, but the lion's share of her scenes are with Edward or the clingingly attentive Dr. Hillhouse.

The Forayers and Eutaw finish up the series, covering the period from Lord Rawdon's slow retreat from the Upcountry and ending with the British withdrawal from Charleston. Again, each book has a predictable romance, some folksy characters, slaves speaking dialect so thick it's virtually incomprehensible, a bit of Rawdon bashing, and a lot of holier-than-thou Brit-o-phobia. I can't say I did more than flip through and read little bits here and there. My advice is either skip the whole series or just pick one at random. By the time you're done it, you've pretty much read them all.

Notes:

¹ Jonathan Nield, A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales; (New York: Burt Franklin, 1929). He says seven books, but he's counting one that takes place before the Revolution. [ back ]