Will The Hallmarked Man have All-Sark Epigraphs?: Part 2a; Carette of Sark I

JKR/RG has already confirmed that at least one epigraph of The Hallmarked Man will come from John Oxenham's A Maid of the Silver Sea. There are also five "sources" for epigraphs, which could mean five different books, five different authors or some other category. We can still only speculate about the other sources. They could be authors contemporary to Oxenham, other books with "silver" in the title (as suggested by Dr. Beatrice Groves) or other works by Oxenham or his writer daughter.  Another possibility is other books set on Sark or other nearby Channel Islands, of which there are several, both fiction and nonfiction.

I was enthralled enough by A Maid of the Silver Sea, that when I found two other Oxenham books set on Sark, (and available for free on Project Gutenberg) I decided to spend some of my pre-THM waiting time reading then. After all, if JKR searched one Oxenham Sark-based novel in search of epigraphs, it is likely she searched others, even if they didn't make the final cut. The second novel I want to look at is Carette of Sark. Spoilers ahead. 

The book begins in a very Dickensesque way, with the protagonist and narrator, Philip Carrè, telling the story of how he was born and how he became a fatherless child bearing his mother's surname.  

For all the world knew that if Paul Martel had never come to Sercq, Rachel Carré might have become Mistress Hamon instead of Madame Martel—and very much better for her if she had.

Short version: Paul Martel is a handsome and successful seaman, who makes his living as a smuggler, meaning regular visits to Sark, to do business with his friend, George Hamon.* Unfortunately, Monsieur Martel manages to win the heart of Hamon's beloved, Rachel Carrè, and marries her, "to the great surprise of all Rachel's friends and to the great grief of her father." This ends the friendship of Hamon and Martel, who turns out to be a scoundrel and a wife-beater. Rachel flees with her three-year-old son Philip after Martel injures her in a drunken brawl. The men of Sark are not going to put up with this from an outsider, and Martel finds himself arrested, judged, bound, tossed in a boat, exiled from the island and dumped on nearby Guernsey. Rachel returns to her father's house. George Hamon, who still loves Rachel but unfortunately cannot court a woman who is still legally married to the exile, agrees to look after her house. 

Thus, it is he who encounters Martel when Guernsey decides they don't want him either, and ship him back. George beats Martel to a pulp, and, when Martel complains to the magistrate, he gets no real help. Finding himself an outcast with no prospects for making a living on the tiny island, Martel eventually steals a boat and disappears. Happily, he is eventually forgotten, and Rachel eventually comes to be known by her maiden name again. Her son grows up strong, healthy, well-versed in boating, fishing and swimming. and with the name Philip Carrè. He also becomes close to his grandfather, his grandfather's mute servant, Krok, and George Hamon, who becomes like an uncle to him. 

Yet, withal, he was a very boy, full of life and the joy of it, and in their loving watchfulness over his development his mother and grandfather lost sight almost of the darker times out of which he had come, and looked only to that which he might in time come to be.

Young Philip is also a boy who treasures books, even though he has access to only those that belong to his grandfather and his reading is largely limited to three: the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and a book of Shakespeare plays. 

And once again I would say that to my mother, Rachel Carré, and to my grandfather and Krok, and to William Shakespeare and John Bunyan and to my grandfather's great Bible, I owe in the first place all that I know. All those books he made me read very thoroughly, and parts of them over and over again, till I knew them almost by heart

But the brightest spot in young Philip's life is his childhood friend Carette Le Marchant who he describes as, "far and away the prettiest girl in Sercq,—or in Guernsey or Jersey either, for that matter, I'll wager." Two years his junior, she shares his love for Sark's wild beauty. She lives on the tiny island Brecqhou (pictured on the left), off of Sark proper, with her father and six older brothers, having lost her mother at the age of six. Het family is quite different from Philip's:

It was not simply that they were bold and successful free-traders. Free-trade—or, as some would call it, smuggling—was the natural commerce of the Islands, and there were not very many whose fingers were not in the golden pie. My grandfather, Philip Carré, was one, however, and he would have starved sooner than live by any means which did not commend themselves to his own very clear views of right and wrong. The Le Marchants had made themselves a name for reckless daring, and carelessness of other people's well-being when it ran counter to their own, which gave them right of way among their fellows, but won comment harsh enough behind their backs. Many a strange story was told of them, and as a rule the stories lost nothing in the telling.

As her father and brothers are frequently away on "business," Carette regularly stays with Philip's neighbor, her Aunt Jeanne Falla, and so becomes his regular playmate by the time they are ten and twelve. Unlike Nance of The Silver Sea, she needs warnings not to try to swim from island to main Sark, but eventually she acquires her own small cockleshell boat, and can make the trip whenever she wants. The two remain fast friends until Carette, at age 14, is sent away to school at Peter Port in Guernsey. When he is eighteen, Philip decides to go to sea as a legitimate trader, since his family remains opposed to him smuggling, and he dislikes the idea of serving in the British Navy in the current war with France. The night before he leaves from Peter Port for the first of his four voyages on trading ships, he is able to finagle a visit with Carette at her very strict school. Over the course of his journeys, and his infrequent visits home, his feelings for Carette grow, and he returns with few thoughts other than life with her . 

His fourth voyage is, "a disastrous one all through," ending with a hurricane and shipwreck in Florida. months of travels through swampland before reaching "civilisation" and being able to catch a ship back home, by which time many on the island had given him up for dead. Two hadn't, though. One is his mother:

Ah, how good it was to feel her there, and to find her unbroken by all the terrible waiting! She had hoped and hoped, and refused to give up hoping long after the others had done so. She told me, between smiles and tears, that each time I went she had felt that she had probably seen me for the last time. "But," she said quietly, "I left you in the good God's hands, and I believed that however it was with you it would be well."

The other is Carette:

"Phil, mon cher," she cried joyously. "It is good to see you alive and home again. And some foolish ones said you were gone for good! 

As luck would have it, the very night he arrives home, Carette's aunt is throwing a party, on the eve of Riding Day, a day-long horseback ride and important occasion for initiating courtship. 

Midsummer Day is Riding Day in Sercq, and he who asks a maid to share his horse that day is understood to desire her company on a longer journey still, and her consent to the one is generally taken to mean that she agrees to the other as well.

Unfortunately, while Philip has been at sea, another suitor moved in on his beloved. 

"And who is this, Jeanne Falla?" I asked, as one came in whom I had never seen before—a young man, dark and well-looking, and very handsomely dressed compared with the rest of us. And he stood so long before the green-bed, gazing at Carette, that there sprang up in me a sudden desire to take him by the neck and drag him away, or, better still, to hurl him through the open door into outer darkness.

 

"Tiens!" said Aunt Jeanne softly, "it is the young Torode—"

 

"Torode? I do not know him. Who is he?"

 

"It is since you left. His father has settled himself on Herm. He is a great man in these parts nowadays.

...He has three of the fastest chasse-marées in the Islands, and they say he's never lost a cargo yet. And they say he has dealings with the devil and Bonaparte and all the big merchants in Havre and Cherbourg. But of late he's gone in for privateering, and the streak's growing a fat one, I can tell you. He's got the finest schooner in these waters."

Torode, Sr. has never visited Sark, but his son appears regularly. He beats Philip both in asking Carette for the first dance, and asking her to ride with him the next day. She agrees to the first, but gives only a noncommital "I'll see," to the second. Therefore, when Philip asks her to ride the next day, she agrees to ride in the morning with one and the afternoon with the other. 

Both Torode and Philip borrow horses from George Hamon. Torode, who asked first, gets Black Boy, a handsome steed who has "got more than a bit of the devil in him." Philip must settle for Gray Robin, who Uncle George describes as, "a bit heavy, maybe, but he's safe as a cart." George also cautions Philip to lead, rather than ride over the Coupeè, saying that the narrow path is, "more than a bit crumbly in places. I've made young Torode promise not to ride Black Boy across."

The next morning, to Torode's disgruntlement, Carette decides to take the first ride with Philip. Torode is clearly reckless and showing off with his rough treatment of Black Boy, and, in violation of his promise to George, chooses to ride him across the Coupeè, with tragic results. Torode takes a turn too fast, and Black Boy slips over the edge to the rocky coast below, with Torode leaping out of the saddle in time to avoid the same fate. Not only is Torode completely callous about the horse's demise, saying "Tuts then! A horse! I'll make him good to Hamon," but has the nerve to ask Philip to borrow Gray Robin for the return trip with Carette. Philip flatly refuses, backed by the rest of the men, who "cursed Torode volubly, and regretted that he had not gone with Black Boy." Having lost his chance to ride with Carette, Torode storms away, furious. 

Now that it has been established that young Torode is unsuitable a suitor for Carette, Philip vows to make enough money to marry her. Of the limited work options he sees for himself, he decides to return to sea as a privateer. As he explains to Carette's father, "Monsieur, I have spent nearly four years in the trading to the Indies, and I am about as well off as when I started—except in experience. Now I want to make something—all I can, and as quickly as I can." To that end, he applies to the most profitable privateer around, Torode Senior: 

A massive black head, and a grim dark face with a week's growth of bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache,—a strong lowering face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was Torode of Herm as I first set eyes on him.

Captain Torode flatly refuses to hire Philip, so Philip signs on with John Ozanne, who his grandfather knows and describes as a good man. As they are closing the deal, another sailor arrives with important news:

It was a notice sent out by one John Julius Angerstein, of Lloyds in the City of London, on behalf of the merchants and shipowners there, offering a reward of five thousand pounds for the capture, or proof of the destruction, of a French privateer which had for some time past been making great play with British shipping in the Channel and Bay of Biscay. She was described as a schooner of one hundred and fifty tons or thereabouts, black hull with red streak, carrying an unusually large crew and unusually heavy metal. She flew a white flag with a red hand on it, her red figure-head was said to represent the same device, and she was known by the name of La Main Rouge.

So, within a week, Philip sets sail on Ozanne's ship, the Swallow, with thoughts of this rich prize in mind. 

Tune in for Part 2 for Philip's adventures at sea, and possible connections of this book to The Hallmarked Man. 

* It's tempting to wonder if George Hamon is an ancestor of Tom Hamon, given that Carette is set roughly 45 years earlier than Maid. However, Oxenham took the surnames of his characters from a list of "Forty Men of Sark" that was published in 1840, and there were two Hamon families on that. He even includes a disclaimer at the end of Maid: NOTE.—"The names used in this book are necessarily the names still current in Sark. None of the characters presented, however, are in any way connected with any persons now living in the Island."