A Son of the Rock

A Story of Contemporary Life, Virago, 1974, 497 p, plus xiii p Introduction by Jenny Uglow. First published 1883.

Vernon’s bank is an institution in the town of Redborough. Its stability threatened once by the injudicious conduct – and subsequent flight – of the founder’s grandson, John Vernon, it was saved by the injection of cousin Catherine Vernon’s cash, as a result of which she is held in reverence. The never married Catherine dispenses largesse in the form of grace and favour houses to her relatives but has turned over the bank into the care of her nephews, Harry and Edward Vernon, the first of whom she considers almost as a son. He in turn sees her interest in him as unwarranted surveillance.

After the death of her husband, Mrs John Vernon has returned from abroad with their fourteen-year-old daughter Hester, who knows nothing of her father’s reprehensible conduct, to take up residence in what is referred to as the Vernonry. On their first meeting Hester and Catherine do not hit it off and the two remain more or less antipathetic for the rest of the book.

As the years go by Hester slowly integrates into the life of the town and strikes up a friendship with near neighbours Captain and Mrs Morgan, relatives of Catherine on the non-Vernon side. Their grandson Roland comes to visit and it looks as if he may be a romantic interest for Hester but the plot is to be a little more complicated. Harry and Edward Vernon’s married sister, Ellen Merridew, starts up a series of thé dansants, which are set to be the hub of Redborough’s social life. On Hester’s first attendance, her mother’s pearls (which her mother insisted she wear,) incite some comment. On a later visit to the Morgans, Roland’s sister, Emma, procures an invitation to these events and throws herself into the fray in her search for a husband.

Harry falls for Hester but she isn’t charmed, finding Edward more interesting, if also more annoying. The sustaining of her continuing ignorance of her father’s conduct throughout the book begins to seem unlikely the more things progress but it is tied up with the book’s main thrust as inevitably the bank is threatened once more, Edward succumbing to the excitement of speculative investments. The resolution, though, has at least one aspect not foreshadowed.

The above is only a brief summary – the whole thing is as wordy as to be expected of a Victorian novel – but there is at times a subtle feminism to Oliphant’s prose – there are strong women here and the men can be weak – though the subtlety is at one point betrayed by Catherine’s remark to Captain Morgan, “‘You are only a man, which is a great drawback, but it is not to be helped.’”

Oliphant’s novels are solid pieces of fiction though her prolificity means that perhaps they don’t reach the heights other Victorian authors did.

Pedant’s corner:- a few old usages – inuendo (innuendo,) dulness (dullness,) grumphy (grumpy,) vulgarer (more vulgar,) sha’n’t, secresy. Otherwise; missing commas before pieces of direct speech, “the Miss Vernon Ridgways” (the Misses Vernon Ridgway,) ditto the Miss Ridgways (Misses Ridgway) and “the Miss Bradleys” (Misses Bradley,) “‘a step further that I saw him’” (than I saw him,) wont (won’t,) “‘and she, was far more disposed” (no need for that comma,) “thé dansante” (dansant,) “getting under weigh” (it wasn’t a ship, ‘under way’.)