Na, na — I cannae, I cannae

Awhile back a book meme went around that asked something like, "Which literary character would you like to marry?" Most of the bloggers I read answered, "Mr. Darcy, of course!"

Really? Darcy? I hadn't read Pride and Prejudice but I'd seen two movie versions (the one with Colin Firth and the one with Keira Knightley) and I didn't particularly like Mr. Darcy in either. He's so arrogant! He's silent. He doesn't do anything. He just travels from party to party being arrogant and silent.

Recently I heard Mr. Darcy praised again, so I thought, well, I'd better read the book. If so many people like him, clearly I'm missing something. He must have more depth than what's shown in the movie. (I planned to read the book in the San Juans but OMG! I loved it! I stayed up late to read it. I finished it before we ever reached the ferry.) And lo, I did like Mr. Darcy. I see that while he's arrogant, he is also an honorable man. He does a lot more than go to parties, too, in the book; he's got an estate to run, he has tenants and vast acreage to care for. I respect that.

I don't want to marry him, though. Do you? He has no sense of humor! He's silent!

I'll tell you which literary character I like. I wouldn't marry him, but I have a wee bit of a crush on him.

Alan Breck.

From Kidnapped? The Robert Louis Stevenson novel?

Wait, wait, I'm completely serious here. I borrowed Kidnapped from the library thinking I'd read it to the kids in the San Juans; after skimming just the first chapter I knew they'd never understand it; but after skimming just the first chapter I was totally hooked. While on vacation I kept stealing away to read parts of it, and it fair haunted me, I tell ye.

Alan Breck! What a hero! He's a great swordsman and he's brash and he's a dandy and he always carries with him the buttons off his dead father's coat. He's generous and open-hearted and would travel to the ends of the earth (or across the heather, pursued by English soldiers) for a friend. He has an impeccable sense of honor. He's a little guy but he has great reserves of strength, sleeping on rocks, traversing mountains without a whimper. But he's emotional. He sings all the time. He cries. And that scene in the heather? When he and David Balfour have been travelling in such hardship for such a long time, and young David draws his sword on him? What a lovers' quarrel! That's when I most liked Alan Breck.

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

"This is a pity" he said at last. "There are things said that cannot be passed over."

"I never asked you to," said I. "I am as ready as yourself."

"Ready?" said he.

"Ready," I repeated. "I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

"David!" he cried. "Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It's fair murder."

"That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.

"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "It's the bare truth," he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "Na, na," he kept saying, "na, na — I cannae, I cannae."

I wouldn't marry Alan Breck, though, like I said. It's only a matter of time before one government or another lops off his head.

*

David and Alan eat oatmeal. All through the book — when David first meets his uncle; as they beg a night's lodging from strangers; as they flee through the mountains — they eat oatmeal. Apparently Scottish oatmeal is stone-ground, not rolled. I thought that was interesting. I was trying to imagine eating oatmeal with water three meals a day every day for weeks on end.

When you're a mother concerned with running a household as inexpensively (but not cheaply) as possible, you notice different things in a book than you did at age 12.