Classics Narrated

A dashing kinsman rescues an animal, allows John to try to ride his fine horse, and ingratiates himself with the family.

This chapter, in which fourteen year-old John kisses eight year-old Lorna, made me uncomfortable. The strangeness persisted to a certain extent as I narrated the chapter, but both John and Lorna were uncomfortable with the kiss, bashful, unselfconscious, and each innocently drawn to the other. No carnal element in the mutual interest can be discerned, only a preoccupation as John remembers. Indeed, Blackmore clearly states that John at that age found kissing in general repugnant, which makes his impulsive salute to Lorna all the more exceptional, almost an unwilling tribute to her precocious beauty.

Fourteen year-old John meets eight year-old Lorna, who helps him escape the Doones' stronghold. He returns to the family farm, never forgetting her.

We learn more about the Ridd household, John's preparation for defense, and a fishing trip that leads him astray, into danger.

Young John learns his father's fate, his mother pleads for justice, and we learn how the Doones came to Exmoor.

John Fry and young John Ridd encounter two very different groups of travelers on their way home.

"...a simple tale told simply..." begins the story of John Ridd, in his maturity, looking back at his schoolboy days, before he met the lovely and mysterious Lorna.

Continuously in print since its publication (though not an immediate bestseller), here are a few of R.D. Blackmore's prefaces, still of interest, at least to the scholar.

Owen Johnson tells how an unlikely hero achieved schoolboy immortality.

This is for my wife, whose pancakes are unsurpassed, and for one of my old college roomates, who attended the great boarding school of this story at just about the time it took place - I think.

The Old Man of the Mountain, also known as "The Great Stone Face," in Hawthorne, fell to earth in May, 2003. Few seem to have recalled Hawthorne's tale, and the feelings of wisdom, patience, and serenity he attributed to the Old Man.

Plans are afoot to restore him to his mountainside. I hope they go forward, for his fall seems like a rebuke from Nature itself, as if his sorrow over the state of humanity, which borrowed his image, were so great that his own existence became insupportable. For more information, visit franconianotchstatepark.com/oldman

It's been a week or so since I recorded the last chapter, so all I wanted to do was set down a few thoughts that may not be commonplace. The touchstone for this is the most recent novel in the great Tony Hillerman's Indian Country mysteries, "The Shape Shifter." (SPOILER WARNING!) Writing about a hundred years after Kipling, he turns the story inside out. Of course, the comparison between these two may be only coincidental. In Kim, the student or orphan/protege is white, and a master of disguise; he is educated, and even brought to salvation and holiness, by his mentor, the Tibetan Teshoo Lama. In Hillerman's "The Shape Shifter," the mentor is a white American psychopathic serial killer, who fancies himself a predator, and ordinary people nothing more than sheep to feed on. His southeast-Asian orphan/protege is trained only to cook and clean, being too decent to exploit others routinely. Justice, in the end, is meted out by people of color. That's really something both books share, and the reason Kipling's story goes beyond mere jingoistic "Rule Brittania" blather, though traces of it coming from the Indian characters do occur in the book, and may be wishful thinking on his part. In the end, the love the characters feel for each other, beautifully shown in action (the Sahiba, Teshoo Lama, Kim) and restraint (Mahbub Ali), pushes the issues of color, creed, and caste completely off stage.