The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

To Have and To Hold (1899)

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

To Have and To Hold was written by Mary Johnston. Johnston (1870-1936) was an author and mystic. She is best-known for To Have And To Hold, which was the best-selling novel of the year 1900, and for The Silver Cross (1922), a historical novel whose mysticism gained Johnston international fame. Modern readers will quickly discover why To Have And To Hold was a bestseller; it is a well-written and superbly entertaining historical romance.

In the year 1621, in the Jamestown colony of Virginia, Ralph Percy is a captain of soldiers and a respected member of the colony. But he is unmarried, and when a ship bearing a cargo of single women looking to become wives arrives in Jamestown Ralph is reminded of the loneliness of his life and the disorder of his home. Idly throwing dice, he vows that if he tosses an “ambs ace” (two ones) on his next throw he will look for a wife among the new arrivals. The dice turn up two ones, so he goes down to meet the women. But the meat market atmosphere and the behavior of the bachelors toward the women make him scorn the entire affair, and he is getting ready to return to his home when he sees a beautiful woman in Puritan garb being kissed against her will. Ralph knocks the man out and bluntly asks the woman if she’ll marry him. She agrees, obviously unhappy but equally obviously without any other options. They marry and Ralph moves the woman, Jocelyn Leigh, into his house. For a short time they live together civilly but without any affection. Jocelyn rebuffs all attempts at friendship and Ralph contents himself with mere polite companionship. But one day a ship arrives in Jamestown. The colonists initially think that the ship’s arrival is part of a Spanish attack on the colony, but the colonists quickly discover that the ship is from England and bears Lord Carnal, the king’s favorite. Lord Carnal has come to Jamestown in search of the king’s ward, a woman who was promised to Lord Carnal in marriage by the king himself but who fled the court, London, and England itself rather than marry Carnal. That woman is, of course, Jocelyn Leigh.

Lord Carnal is unhappy that Jocelyn married Ralph and demands that she be given up to him: the king would not have sanctioned the marriage, had he known of it, and Lord Carnal feels that the marriage should therefore be ignored. Ralph is unwilling to do this, out of his own pride, Jocelyn’s obvious reluctance to have anything to do with Lord Carnal, and Ralph’s instant dislike for the haughty, insolent, and sneering Lord Carnal. Carnal and Ralph duel, but their fight is interrupted by the Governor of the Colony, who orders the duel halted. The Governor explains that the Colony takes its orders from the Company, not the king, and if the Company orders the marriage dissolved, the Governor will see that it is made so. But to get the Company to do this will require sending a ship back to London to get that order, a journey which will take several weeks to complete. Until then, Ralph and Lord Carnal must keep peace. They agree, and for a short period things are peaceful, but soon enough Lord Carnal is making attempts on Ralph’s life and trying to kidnap Jocelyn. Jocelyn begins to warm to Ralph, just a little, as Ralph protects her from Lord Carnal’s schemes. But Lord Carnal becomes a favorite in the Colony and many of Ralph’s friends abandon him, and eventually the ship returns from London with orders to return Jocelyn to London and send Ralph, in chains, with her. Ralph is warned just in time and leaves his house, Jocelyn in tow, before the Colony’s guards arrive to arrest him. Ralph, having anticipated this, has a boat packed and waiting, and he and Jocelyn, accompanied by their friend, the giant minister Jeremy Sparrow, run to the boat. Lord Carnal catches them on the docks, only to be knocked out by Sparrow and taken with the trio on the boat. From there Ralph and Jocelyn endure injury and imprisonment, encounter pirates, survive separation and attacks from Indians before being reunited and having their marriage blessed by the King, whose affections have in the meantime transferred away from Lord Carnal to Lord Buckingham. Together, and fully in love with each other, Jocelyn and Ralph leave Jamestown for England and a happy married life.

When scholars use the phrase "historical romance" it is usually in the older, more traditional sense of “romance,” meaning “an exotic adventure story.” Both the older meaning and the more modern meaning of “romance” is appropriate with To Have And To Hold. The novel is as much a love story, as much about Ralph and Jocelyn falling in love with each other, as it is a story of adventure in the Jamestown Colony. Perhaps because To Have And To Hold was written by a woman, the character of Jocelyn Leigh is more realistic and recognizable, and the development of the relationship between Jocelyn and Ralph is more emotionally accurate, than are similar characters and relationships in historical romances written by men.

Johnston does not scant on the adventure aspects of the novel. They are plentiful and well-handled. Johnston’s portrayal of the Jamestown colony combines accurate history and a welcome amount of unromantic detail. Blood, hunger, disease and starvation are all accepted and acknowledged facts of life in To Have And To Hold, which is not the case in many other swashbucklers. Johnston does, however, sentimentalize the particulars of the situation, so that the conflict between the native peoples and the white settlers, and the brutality of the conflict, functions as the backdrop to formalized duels, a love story, and a Noble Savage, the knightly Nantauquas. But Johnston is a good enough writer that even sticklers for historical accuracy won’t be bothered by the sentimental aspects of the novel. The characterization is solid and the dialogue smart and both have the feel of historical accuracy without being pedantic or long-winded. Johnston’s style is smooth and unobtrusive; she has the lean swiftness and avoidance of ponderousness of the Weyman School (see: The Historical Romance), but her use of period lingo, and the historically accurate cadence of the dialogue, is greater than theirs.

As is usually the case with nineteenth century Historical Romances, the racial politics of To Have And To Hold draw the reader’s attention. The treatment of African slaves is negligible; there is one, but she is an minor character. The Native Americans play a much larger role in the novel. Ralph often calls them “savages,” but he respects them to a certain degree and is aware of different tribes and their differing characteristics, so that the Paspahegh are brutal, torturing, vicious (albeit brave) warriors, while the Pamunkey are much more friendly and peaceable. There is also Nantauquas, Umslopogaas to Ralph’s Allan Quatermain (see: The Allan Quatermain Adventures). Nantauquas is the brother of Lady Rebekah (formerly Pocahontas), who married Ralph’s friend Rolfe but died before the events of To Have And To Hold. Ralph esteems Nantauquas, calling him “brother” and treating him as one. Ralph describes Nantauquas as “ever to my liking; a savage, indeed, but a savage as brave and chivalrous, as courteous and truthful as a Christian knight.”¹ Nantauquas and Ralph have adventured together before the events of To Have And To Hold, and Nantauquas saves Ralph’s life several times during the novel, once from a wolf and once from torture. But near the end of the novel Nantauquas breaks the friendship, in an honorable way, unleashing a long speech on Ralph describing the evils white men have done and continue to do to the natives. Ralph has no reply to this, and does not even try to justify himself–an odd and perhaps unintentional moment of political commentary on Johnston’s part.

Recommended Edition

Print: Mary Johnston, To Have and To Hold. St. Louis, MO: Webster Division, McGraw-Hill, 1972.

Online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009792606