Review: The Cockermouth Mail by Dinah Dean (1982)

I absolutely loved this book, every last word of it. It’s a very simple story, but our hero and heroine are lovely, there’s a strong backup cast and a wealth of local detail that I found fascinating.

Here’s the premise: Miss Dorcas Minster, the daughter of a disgraced baronet now employed as a governess, is on her way north to take up a new position. It doesn’t sound very appealing, but nothing else offered, and what else can she do? She takes the mail coach, along with a mixed bunch of other passengers. Chief among them is Sir Richard Severall, a colonel in the dragoons, now invalided out with a knee injury, travelling by mail because his own coach has broken down.

Needless to say, since it’s almost Christmas, there’s soon snow falling and before too long the coach is off the road, and everyone has to walk to the nearest inn. Sir Richard, with his bad leg, is too slow to keep up with the rest, and Dorcas stays with him, but gradually the treacherous conditions overcome their strength, and they’re forced to huddle together in the meagre shelter of a large boulder, while they await rescue. Barely conscious, Sir Richard kisses her, to her great shock. Happily, rescue arrives and they are carted off to the inn to be revived, and to meet a couple of other stranded travellers.

I have to say that the inn turns out to be astonishingly well provided with food for so remote a location, so the refugees spend Christmas in great comfort, and even manage to go to church. There’s a bit of a dance with the locals, and the kissing bough makes a timely appearance. This could have been rather dull in other hands, but the book is replete with detail, not just about the inn and the surrounding countryside, but the difficulties of travelling by mail coach over difficult and (in winter) treacherous roads. The author makes the Lake District sound like a foreign and rather hostile country, and the heroine’s rather plaintive longing to return to the south doesn’t seem at all misplaced.

All this being cooped up in an inn cut off from the outside world naturally throws the mail coach passengers together somewhat, and Dorcas, being the only female, finds herself the subject of a certain interest from some of the gentlemen. She’s in a curious position, being the daughter of a baronet by birth, but now a humble governess by trade, and so hard up that she has to borrow money from Sir Richard to pay her shot at the inn, and then there’s the lowering thought: what will he want in return? She can’t afford to assume it’s simple kindness, and since he has no dishonourable thoughts in his head, it doesn’t occur to him to reassure her on the point. And he is so self-effacing that when another passenger starts taking an interest in Dorcas, one he thinks is perhaps a better match for her, he does nothing to press his own suit.

With the romance bubbling along nicely, despite the question of honourable intentions, there’s another problem: there’s a highwayman on the loose somewhere, and one of their fellow passengers is a Bow Street Runner, sent to catch the miscreant. And it’s just possible that one of the passengers is the villain…

So everything boils up nicely to the inevitable conclusion, although with some fun twists that I didn’t see coming at all. Not that I was paying much attention, being so caught up in the gentle but very sweet romance between Dorcas and Sir Richard that the rest was almost irrelevant. I liked very much that Sir Richard’s bad knee was a serious problem that brought him real grief occasionally, and wasn’t just a slight limp that got mentioned three times and then forgotten. I liked, too, the delicate way that Sir Richard tried to show his growing feelings for Dorcas, but without making her feel uncomfortable — although sometimes his enthusiasm got the better of him! Of the side characters, I liked Mr Tupper, the pedantic solicitor who plays a starring a role in the romance eventually, and also Jem, Sir Richard’s mouthy batman from his army days, who spoke his mind in the most colourful language (fortunately most incomprehensibly) yet was fiercely loyal to his quiet master. There is a lot of Heyer-esque cant in this, and local dialect, only some of which is translated, so you have been warned.

A lovely, lovely story, with wonderful low-key characters that it would surely be impossible to dislike. Every word was a joy to read – yes, even the cant! And for those who like that sort of thing, there’s a heart-warming epilogue, too. Five stars, and I’d give it more if I could.