Lorna Dugal Ridd

Amelia Warner, BBC production, 2000

Lorna grows up among the Doones, who occupy a valley near Exmoor in the 17th century. She believes she is the granddaughter of Ensor Doone, as she tells John Ridd when he meets her by chance while fishing. She is only eight, but a little lady with a sweet voice and large, dark eyes. Already she knows the violence of her kin. “They would kill us both, if they found us,” she tells John. “I never met anyone like you.”

Seven years later, John has grown large and powerful. He takes his uncle near the Doone valley and spies Lorna. She is nimble, smooth and elegant. “I felt I was face to face with fate,” he says. He cannot stay away. Lorna has a woodland bower where she comes to read every day. “But this place is very dangerous,” she tells him. “I’m not used to kindness.” She tells him her story. “All around me is violence, pain and reckless jokes and hopeless death. They call me ‘queen’ but I want to know what I am and why set here. You who have a quiet home and a mother cannot imagine what it is like.”

Lorna tells John Ridd that what changed her from child to adult, at 15, was the killing of a courtly young gentleman who appeared and told her he was her guardian. Carver Doone pinned him down, took him away and he was never seen again. John Ridd, a yoeman farmer, his family long resident in Exmoor, knows that his father too was killed by a Doone. John falls in love with Lorna, though she is too frightened to take the ring he has bought for her. The Doones mean to betroth her to Carver whom she hates. Sir Ensor will not let them force her, however.

John continues to visit Lorna, who puts out signs for him on the mountain. When Sir Ensor is dying, she tells him: “I shall not be taken by Carver. I shall die first.” At the time of Ensor’s death, winter brings a great snow and cold. John tries valiantly to.save his sheep and cattle. When he is able to go to Lorna, he finds her barricaded in a cabin with her maid Gwenny. They are being starved into submission. John has brought a mince pie which the two girls share. Because the Doones are drunk and celebrating, John brings a little sledge, puts the girls in it and carries them off to his farm.

At the farm, Lorna slowly revives. She loves the kitchen, “the cheerful fire, racks of bacon, the richness and the homeliness and the pleasant smells.” Her bright young wit and high spirits emerge. The Doones come to the farm and Carver shoots at Lorna in the garden, but John’s family is harboring soldiers due to unrest and none of them are hurt. Jeremy Stickles, a king’s man, tells John he has found that Lorna was kidnapped by the Doones, her mother and brother killed. She is actually Lady Dugal, very wealthy. This sickens John, as he already felt he was aiming above himself in wanting to marry her.

When John returns from helping his uncle, he finds Lorna has gone to London, becoming a ward of the court until she is 21. She leaves John a message, pledging her love. But then he hears nothing from her for a year. During this year the country rises against James, the king, who is a Catholic. John gets mixed up in the fight, but not because he wants to. He has gone to look for his brother-in-law, the noted highwayman Tom Faggis. Jeremy Stickles saves John when he is about to be shot, and takes him to London to clear his name.

Amelia Warner, 2000

In London, John goes to church, where he sees Lorna in attendance on the queen, walking modestly in a white dress. She sends him a note, requesting he come and see her. She begs to know why he has not contacted her. They find that Gwenny had not sent the letters Lorna wrote to John. Gwenny believes John too low-born to attach himself to Lorna.  

But Lorna tells John how unhappy she has been at court. “I have made up my mind that you must be my husband.” She likes his manners better than those of the court gallants. “Neither of us is very religious or educated. Nothing stands between us but worldly position.” She wants to abandon her wealth and honor. Circumstances create an opportunity for John, however, who saves the life of Lorna’s guardian. The criminals are also notorious traitors and the king rewards John with a knighthood.

John goes home and leads an expedition against the Doones, as the countrymen are finally sick of their violence. All the Doone men are killed except for Carver and his father. Lorna comes home to John’s farm, having bought her way out of chancery. “I am my own mistress!” she tells the family happily.

Lorna’s spirit, so dampened by her childhood, rises. But both she and John have an abiding fear that they are too happy for fate to ignore them. They marry in a wedding attended by all the country people around them. A shot rings out as the parson pronounces them man and wife. John is horrified by the blood on Lorna’s white dress as she sinks. He rides after Carver Doone and fights him near a slough, watching as Carver sinks into the mud.

At the farm, clever cousin Ruth manages to save Lorna. John is also injured, and Ruth must save him too. John, as narrator, tells us no more of his life with Lorna, but says that whenever they felt too happy, he had only to remind her that she was once “Lorna Doone” and now deserves the life and home she has won.

Though Lorna Doone, [published 1869] by R. D. Blackmore, with violence and peril for all the characters while ending happily, may seem to be an unapologetic romance, I loved the thickness of its characterizations, its rich prose and the wealth of country lore. Its chief strength is the insistence that alliance to a good, honest, gentle man is worth more than high rank and wealth. Lorna’s story is more one of being, rather than doing, but she exhibits courage, dignity and faithfulness in clinging to her love for a farmer and the beauties of nature in which they live, despite her high birth.