Highbrow Historical

JENKINS' EAR (474 pp.)--Odell and Willard Shepard--Macmillan ($3.50).

The opening proposition of this historical novel is one to make fans snuggle comfortably into their armchairs: a mysteriously commanding figure turns up in England one day in 1755 using the patently inappropriate pseudonym, the Rev. Mr. Blandison. Who is Parson Blandison? None other than Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender.

Naturally the Pretender is looking for friends who will help him sweep doddering old George II off his throne. So far, so good, but there is disappointment ahead for the fan of historical who expects that all this will quickly lead to an old-fashioned uphill & down dale, with the agents of the Hanoverians in hot pursuit. Bonnie Prince Charlie settles down for a lot of long, long talk in the library.

To Arms. The library in question belongs to Horace Walpole, and the Pretender's idea is to rouse Walpole and his influential friends by recitals of English glory. Bonnie Prince Charlie is particularly moved by the way the old English spirit had shown itself--small thanks to the House of Hanover--in the War of Jenkins' Ear; after the habitually insolent Spaniards cut off the ear of an English sea captain, the whole country had risen to arms.

Jenkins' Ear makes half a dozen excursions out of the library as some reminiscent veterans recite the events which followed: battles and harrowing journeys at sea, war in the colonies. Bonnie Prince Charlie himself takes over the telling of the Highlands uprising of 1745 that led him fatefully to Culloden, defeat and flight. But, alas, as he listens to Walpole & Co. in the intervals between recitals, Prince Charles decides that 1) the War of Jenkins' Ear actually led to a lot of misery for the human species in general and Englishmen in particular, and 2) the English are satisfied with things as they are, including stuffy Hanoverian George.

To Travel. The final blow comes when he learns that solid old English Seaman Jenkins (as Novelists Shepard and Shepard tell it) was really a fraud who never lost an ear at all. Disillusioned, he turns his back on the English, the throne and "the contamination of power and vulgar success," and sets off on his travels again.

The Shepards, father & son, know their 18th Century. Odell Shepard, Pulitzer Prize biographer of Bronson Alcott and onetime lieutenant governor of Connecticut, is also an eminent authority on 18th Century English prose and poetry. His son, Willard, is a specialist in early naval history. The Book-of-the-Month Club has made this learned collaboration its choice for April, but it takes a bit of special interest in either the 18th Century or Bonnie Prince Charlie to make up for all the talk in the library.

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