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[Revised edition, Chicago: Donohue, Henneberry & Co.; 1890]

The Partisan is a tale about the internecine war in and around the community of Dorchester, South Carolina, roughly from the fall of Charleston to the battle of Camden. I can't be more specific than that, because there isn't a more focused plotline aside from a routine boy-meets-girl thread. It was first published around 1835, so it's pretty much what one would expect: pompous, pretentious and very, very wordy. Simms doesn't rival Charles Dickens in the "never use one word when forty will do" department, but he tries. Combine this with the fact that he's inclined to meander on for pages without getting anywhere, and you get a fairly soporific read.

As one would expect, Simms is also racist, chauvinistic, blindly biased, and all the other things which are inevitable products of the period when he was writing. On the other hand, he lived close enough to the conflict involved to understand its brutality, so even his good guys don't get entirely whitewashed. Let an example of both his writing style and the period viewpoint speak for itself:

The company had listened to one of those stories of brutality, which -- in the fierce civil warfare of the South, when neighbours were arrayed against one another, and when, on one side, negroes and Indians formed allies, contributing, by their lighter sense of humanity, additional forms of terror to the sanguinary warfare pursued at that period -- were of almost daily occurrence. Huck, the infamous tory captain, of whom we have already obtained a slight glimpse in the progress of our narrative, was himself a character well fitted, by his habitual cunning and gross want of all the softening influences of humanity, to give countenance, and even example, to crimes of this nature.¹

Simms presents a particularly odd version of Christian Huck. He seems to believe that Huck was a local boy, and lines like "[Y]ou don't know Huck. He's an old scout, and knows where the best picking lies" imply that he envisioned him as a hardened backwoodsman rather than a young Philadelphia-area lawyer, which is what he actually was. I'd be curious to know the source for his particular version of the folk lore, because it's rather non-standard. Interestingly, while this version of Huck is one mean son of a bitch, he's closer to human than the one you find in Cast Two Shadows. So, for that matter, are Cornwallis and Tarleton.

Aside from Huck's minor role near the beginning of the book and a two-chapter-long description of the battle of Camden near the end, none of the real-world people get more than an occasional cameo. A multitudinous fictional cast holds center stage in their place. The heroic archetypes of this period can be fun because they're just so over the top, but while overwrought descriptions are plentiful, Simms fails to breathe any spark into them. Even Major Robert Singleton, Our Hero, never rises above stalwart and noble wallpaper. "Singleton was no sentimentalist," says Simms, "but a man of sterling character, and deep, true feeling. He was one of those who never trifle[.]" Too bad; a little trifling could have livened him up immensely. He trots around through the story, playing a role somewhere between Continental officer and partisan leader -- despite the title, he isn't entirely confined to the latter category -- and courting the daughter of a local Whig leader, but he never does find his missing personality.²

Ban Tarleton is mostly an off-screen bogeyman, with only a couple of short appearances and a few lines of dialogue -- but for whatever reason, he gets a particularly lengthy introduction just prior to the battle of Camden:

[C]onspicuous, though neither tall nor commanding in person, stood one to whom the references of Cornwallis were made with a degree of familiarity not often manifested by the commander. His person was of the middle size, rather slender than full, but of figure well made, admirably set, and in its movements marked alike by ease and strength. He was muscular and bony -- though not enough so to command particular attention on this account. The face alone spoke, and it was a face to be remembered. It was rather pale and thin, but well chiseled; and the mouth was particularly small and beautiful. Its expression was girlish in the extreme, and would have been held to indicate effeminacy as the characteristic of its owner, but for its even quiet, its immobility, its calm indifference of expression. The nose was good, but neither long nor large: it comported well with the expression of the mouth. But it was the eye that spoke; and its slightest look was earnestness. Every glance seemed sent forth upon some especial mission -- every look had its object. Its movements, unlike those of the lips, were rapid and irregular. His hair was light and unpowdered; worn, singularly enough, at that period, without the usual tie, and entirely free from the vile pomatum which disfigured the fashionable heads of the upper classes. His steel cap and waving plume were carried in his hand, and he stood, silent but observing, beside Cornwallis, as Lord Rawdon, followed by the brave Lieutenant-Colonel Webster, and other officers, came up to the conference. The warrior we have endeavoured briefly to describe, was one whose name, for a time, was well calculated to awaken in the souls of the Southern whigs, an equal feeling of hate and dread. He was the notorious Colonel Tarleton, the very wing of the British invading army: a person, striking and commanding in aspect, gentle and dignified in deportment, calm and even in his general temper; but fierce and forward in war, sanguinary in victory, delighting in blood, and impatient always until he beheld it flowing.³

Now that is a worthy misuse of adjectives!

All in all, The Partisan is a disappointment, not because it's bad, but because it fails to rise (sink?) to the "so bad it's good" layer. It's just sort of lies there in a torpid puddle. As a contrast, I would recommend checking out another obscure and forgotten novel from roughly the same time period, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton by Thomas Hamilton. Hamilton, a veteran of the Peninsular War, uses many of the same outmoded literary devices, from page-long character introductions to lengthy and irrelevant asides, and yet the book is lively and enjoyable -- something which simply cannot be said about The Partisan.⁴

The Partisan is the first installment of a six-part saga, which continues with Mellichampe.

Notes:

¹ p53-4. [ back ]

² Dudley Do-Right types can have personality. Look at John Carter of Mars. Okay, perhaps it's not exactly personality in the modern fictional sense, but he's enormous good fun. [ back ]

³ p461-2. [ back ]

⁴ Thomas Hamilton, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton (London, 1827; Reprint: Ed. Maurice Lindsay, Aberdeen: The Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990). Yes, this recommendation is totally out of left field. I happened to read the two books back-to-back and thought they made an interesting contrast. They're each generally forgotten obscurata, but Hamilton's storytelling has aged far better than Simms'. General O'Hara, in his later-life role as Governor of Gibraltar, plays a small role in the Hamilton book. [ back ]