Lochinvar: A Novel — Reading Notes

A Heroine Who Refuses the Script

Mehitabel Smith enters not through a door but from the branches, landing "lightly as a brown squirrel." She immediately seizes control of the encounter. When Wat Gordon delivers a flowery speech in "the manner of the time," she yawns and dismisses it. Her father's house is a wooden structure with wide eaves, decorated with shells and "outlandish curiosities"—a setting that matches her own unconventional nature. She interrogates the newcomers directly, demanding their "degree and your business," and warns that Wise Jan Pettigrew's recommendation is no guarantee. The scene establishes a pattern: formal gestures are met with deflation, and the women in this novel may not stay in the roles assigned to them.

Wat Gordon's Temper and Scarlett's Ribaldry

The partnership between Wat Gordon and Jack Scarlett is built on friction. After Mehitabel's rebuff, Wat turns on Scarlett with a "snarl so fierce" that the older soldier thinks better of teasing him. Wat threatens to set his knife in Scarlett's back if he cracks "one of your rusty japes." Scarlett, meanwhile, laughs inwardly and follows in "covertly smiling silence." Their dynamic—the hot-headed young exile versus the wry veteran—provides much of the scene's comic energy. Wat's courtesy to women is described as natural, yet it fails utterly here, while Scarlett's bluntness fares no better. The excerpt suggests that neither approach fully works, and that the novel will test both men's assumptions.

Setting as Character: Branksea and the Wooden House

The Isle of Branksea is introduced through its oddities. The house is built entirely of wood, with eaves extending five or six feet to form a continuous shelter. Inside, a scrubbed wooden floor is covered with mats of foreign grasses, and niches display "twisted shells, shining stones, and many other remarkable and outlandish curiosities." This is not a typical Scottish stronghold but a place of collected fragments, hinting at a world beyond the Covenanters' conflicts. The girl's appearance—"her kirtle was not much longer than many a boy's Sunday coat"—echoes the house's blend of the practical and the strange. The setting reinforces the novel's interest in characters and places that resist easy categorization.

Readers should attend to the way Crockett uses dialogue to puncture formality. Mehitabel's yawn, Scarlett's muttered asides, and Wat's sullen threats all work against the novel's own period trappings. The excerpt offers no clear villain or simple romance; instead, it presents a world where first impressions are unreliable and where a girl in a tree may have more authority than any exiled gentleman. Watch for how these early tensions echo in later chapters.

Mehitabel Smith’s sharp tongue put me in mind of another stubborn soul I once met in print, the kind who hides their softness behind a brusque word. Their grins and grumbles felt like old friends. I found myself reaching for Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great — Reading Notes, and it felt like remembering rather than discovering.