EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.
By WALLACE BRUCE.
Queen Elizabeth died March 24, 1602. James the Sixth, of Scotland, became James the First of the United Kingdoms. According to ancient prophecy the Scottish kings were to follow the Stone of Scone, which, it will be remembered, was removed to London by Edward the First. The prophecy was three hundred years in being fulfilled. The same strange Nemesis of fate, which, in the last generation, placed the grandson of Josephine upon the throne of France, handed the scepter of the haughty Elizabeth to the son of her unfortunate rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. But the good fortune of James only emphasizes the general misfortune of the Stuart family. His ancestral record was not a cheerful retrospect. James the First of Scotland was murdered. James the Second was killed by the bursting of a cannon. James the Third was privately slain. James the Fourth fell on the disastrous field of Flodden. James the Fifth died of a broken heart. Mary was beheaded. His father Darnley was murdered.
Could he have foreseen the history of the next three generations—the execution of his son, Charles the First; the debauched reign of his grandson, Charles the Third, after his return from exile; and the banishment of James the Second, he would have found the outlook even more sad than the retrospect. The lines of the Stuart family did not fall in pleasant places. Some writer has observed that they suffered for the crimes of the Tudors. It may be that England had piled up a century of wrong which demanded atonement, but, without prejudice, the proverb was emphatically true, “Sufficient unto each reign was the evil thereof.” It must also be remembered that all Europe was in a ferment. The celebrated Thirty Years’ War was raging in Germany. Religious enthusiasm was asserting its power in Britain. The English and Scotch people were jealous of their political rights. The reign of a Scottish-born king, after so many centuries of bitter hate, could not be entirely acceptable to the English race. Both sides accused the king of partiality. Needy lords and nobles poured down from the north, and London resembled our own National Capital at the inauguration of a new president. The king was supplicated in Court, in the street, on horseback, at every doorway; ay, the very plate that contained his food was adorned with urgent request from some impatient relative of fifteenth or twentieth cousinship. As the Court had removed from Edinburgh and Scotland it seemed that Edinburgh and Scotland had removed to the Court. The ancient prejudice between Scot and English broke out in street, palace and inn. These are the historic events which preface the “Fortunes of Nigel,” and the fray between the Scottish servant and the ’prentice boys of London, at the opening of the volume, strikes the keynote of universal discord.
It was a constitutional defect of James the First to be without money. As Nigel, the Scottish lord, happened to need the loan which his father had made to the king, he presented himself with the old fashioned assurance of a man justly demanding his rights, although at the hands of a monarch. The king was incensed, but the young lord fortunately falls in with George Heriot, the wealthy Scotch jeweler “to His Majesty,” whose princely bequests still adorn the city of Edinburgh; but, unmindful of good counsel, he gradually lapses from duty, becomes a murderer in what he considers a matter of honor, is compelled to find refuge in Alsatia or Whitefriars, a sort of privileged den of iniquity. The portrayal of his experience in this nest of outlaws is true to the London of 1620.
It is this blending of Scott’s dramatic and descriptive power which gives even to his minor works an enduring value. We have, as it were, a photograph of the great city as it appeared two hundred and sixty years ago. We see the Strand, a quiet street, unlike the noisy thoroughfare of to-day, lined on the river-side with palaces and pleasure grounds reaching to the Thames. We see Whitehall, with its rich gates designed by Holbein, and stately court planned by Inigo Jones. We walk in the park with the courtly Duke of Buckingham, talk face to face with the king in the palace, on the chase, in the parlor of the wealthy Londoner; and at the close of the volume we feel that Scott has justly summed up his character in this striking paragraph of the fifth chapter: “He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom; fond of his power, yet willing to resign the direction of that, and himself, to the most unworthy favorites; a big and bold asserter of his rights and words, yet one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds; a lover of negotiations, in which he was always outwitted; and one who feared war, where conquest might have been easy. He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labor, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated. Even his timidity of temper was not uniform; and there were moments of his life, and those critical, in which he showed the spirit of his ancestors. He was laborious in trifles, and a trifler where serious labor was required; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often profane in his language; just and beneficent by nature, he yet gave way to the iniquities and oppressions of others.”
“Rokeby,” a poem, comes next in historic order. The scene is laid at Rokeby, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, and the date is immediately subsequent to the great battle of Marston Moor, July 3, 1644. It was here that the bold cavaliers learned a lesson never to be forgotten, at the hand of Puritan and Roundhead. The poem abounds with notable and vigorous passages. It throws light on the stormy years of the great Civil War; but so many of Scott’s novels are related to this period that we must dismiss the poem with a single quotation—a tribute to the genius of Chaucer:
“O for that pencil, erst profuse
Of Chivalry’s emblazoned hues,
That traced of old in Woodstock bower
The pageant of the Leaf and Flower,
And bodied forth the tourney high,
Held for the hand of Emily!
Then might I paint the tumult broad,
That to the crowned abbey flowed;
Paint the dejected cavalier,
Doubtful, disarmed and sad of cheer;
And his proud foe, whose formal eye
Claimed conquest now and mastery;
And the brute crowd, whose envious zeal
Huzzas each turn of Fortune’s wheel.”
“The Legend of Montrose” takes us once more into the Highlands of Scotland, where the same deadly feuds divide the clans which we witnessed in reading the “Fair Maid of Perth.” The Northern Highlanders, under the leadership of Montrose, espouse the side of King Charles. The Western Highlanders, under Argyle, rally on the side of Parliament. The picture of these two leaders is admirably drawn, as well as the character of their bold followers, who seemed unconscious of hardship; who were not only willing “to make their couch in the snow, but considered it effeminate luxury to use a snow-ball for a pillow.”
The principal character of the book is Captain Dalgetty. A critic in the Edinburgh Review complained that there was perhaps too much of Dalgetty; that he engrossed too great a proportion of the work. But in the very next line he says that “the author has nowhere shown more affinity to that matchless spirit, who could bring out his Falstaffs and his Pistols, in act after act, and play after play, and exercise them every time with scenes of unbounded loquacity, without exhausting their humor, or varying a note from its characteristic tone, than in his large and reiterated specimens of the eloquence of the redoubted Dalgetty.” Like many of the Scottish soldiers the captain had served under Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and never lost his enthusiasm for the Lion of the North, the bulwark of the Protestant faith. Dalgetty is a rare specimen of Scotch “canniness,” willing to hire out to the side that paid the most, but true to his contract when made. To him war was a sort of drama, and he merely engaged himself as one of the “star actors.” We dismiss the captain with reluctance, and we imagine the reader will likewise when he closes the volume.
In one of the last chapters Scott treats us to a specimen of the lofty eloquence and undying hate of an old highland chief in his last words to his grandson: “In the thicket of the wilderness, and in the mist of the mountain, keep thou unsoiled the freedom which I leave thee as a birthright. Barter it neither for the rich garment, nor for the stone roof, nor for the covered board, nor for the couch of down—on the rock or in the valley, in abundance or in famine—in the leafy summer, and in the days of the iron winter—son of the mist! be free as thy forefathers. Own no lord—receive no law—take no hire—give no stipend—build no hut—enclose no pasture—sow no grain; let the deer of the mountains be thy flocks and herds—if these fail thee, prey upon the goods of our oppressors—of the Saxon and of such Gael as are Saxon in their souls. Remember those who have done kindness to our race, and pay their services with thy blood, should the hour require it. Farewell, beloved! and mayst thou die like thy forefathers, ere infirmity, disease, or age shall break thy spirit.”
Robert Aytoun in his poem on the “Execution of Montrose,” which occurred a few years subsequent to our story, caught the true spirit of the Gael, in the Highlander’s address to Evan Cameron:
“’Twas I that led the Highland host
Through wild Lochaber’s snows,
What time the plaided clans came down
To battle with Montrose.
I’ve told thee how the Southrons fell
Beneath the broad claymore,
And how we smote the Campbell clan
By Inverlochy’s shore.
I’ve told thee how we swept Dundee,
And tamed the Lindsey’s pride;
But never have I told thee yet
How the great Marquis died.
A traitor sold him to his foes;—
O deed of deathless shame!
I charge thee, boy, if e’er thou meet
With one of Assynt’s name—
Be it upon the mountain side,
Or yet within the glen:
Stand he in martial gear alone,
Or backed by armed men—
Face him, as thou wouldst face the man
Who wronged thy sire’s renown;
Remember of what blood thou art,
And strike the caitiff down!”
Between the “Legend of Montrose” and “Woodstock” stands a scaffold: a window is opened in the Palace of Whitehall; a brave but fickle king, who never lost his dignity, and rarely kept a promise, walks forth attended by two executioners: he speaks but one word to his attendant, places his head upon the block, and by the bravery of his death half atones for the crimes and mistakes of his life. As to his private character historians, for the most part, regard Charles the First as a brave, virtuous and religious man; but he entertained “extravagant ideas of the royal power, unsuitable to the time in which he lived.” His attempt to establish a National Church, to force upon the Presbyterians of Scotland the Common Prayer, and introduce a Liturgy similar to that used in England produced its logical result. The Star Chamber with its arbitrary arrests and punishments, and his idea of kingly prerogative, were not suited to the temper of his people; and finally he alienated his best friends by disregarding his word and most solemn contracts. The House of Commons, led by bold and determined men, asserted the supreme doctrine of liberty, so grandly emphasized one hundred years later in our Declaration of Independence, that “The power of the king, like any other power in the Constitution, was limited by the laws; and was liable to be legally resisted when it trespassed beyond them.”
It must also be remembered, before we read the story of “Woodstock,” that the party which controlled the Parliament of England and finally brought the king to the scaffold, was divided into two factions: Presbyterians and Independents. Among the Independents were Sir Harry Vane, John Milton and Oliver Cromwell. So much for the introduction to “Woodstock,” which opens with a picture showing the cavaliers crushed under the iron heel of Cromwell. The time of the tale is 1652; and the story begins with a rather discordant service in the church or chapel of St. John. The defaced walls and broken windows reveal the fanaticism or spite which too often attends the spirit of liberty. We are presented with a rude scuffle between a Presbyterian and Independent preacher in a pulpit formerly belonging to the Established Church, in which the Independent preacher wins the victory; and the chapter is symbolic of the great struggle, not only in the religious, but also in the political condition of Britain. The incident is a fitting preface to the book, in which Independent, Presbyterian and Royalist are shaken together as in a kaleidoscope.
The story humorously gives us the old-time belief that Woodstock was a haunted spot; and Scott refers in his preface to a book, printed in London in the year 1660, bearing the sombre title of “The Just Devil of Woodstock; or a true narrative of the several apparitions, the fights and punishments inflicted upon the rumpish commissioners sent thither to survey the manors and houses belonging to his Magestie.” The sad story of the fair Rosamond, murdered here by Queen Eleanor, was well calculated to make the ghostly apparitions more real; at least, the place was tragic enough to impress the superstitious of that generation. But the great value of this novel, apart from the picture of the times, consists in the portrayal of a living, breathing Cromwell; such a Cromwell as no history gives, but the Cromwell who appears as the resultant of them all; a man of deep emotion, wary in council and unwavering in execution, a man without a single grace of oratory, who, by the force of character, assumed and kept the leadership of the House of Commons; in whose presence the bravest men stood lost in fear and wonder. Or, as Scott beautifully puts it: “So true it is, that as greater lights swallow up and extinguish the display of those which are less, so men of great, capacious, and overruling minds, bear aside and subdue, in their climax of passion, the more feeble wills and passions of others; as, when a river joins a brook, the fiercer torrent shoulders aside the smaller stream.”
There is one other sketch which claims our attention—that of the disguised wanderer, Charles the Second, revered by Royalist, and pursued by the ruling party as an outcast. “No person on earth,” Scott says, “could better understand the society in which he moved; exile had made him acquainted with life in all its shades and varieties—his spirits, if not uniform, were elastic—he had that species of Epicurean philosophy which, even in the most extreme difficulties and dangers, can in an interval of ease, however brief, avail itself of the enjoyments of the moment—he was, in short, in youth and misfortune, as afterward in his regal condition, a good-humored but hard-hearted voluptuary, wise, save where his passions intervened, beneficent, save where prodigality had deprived him of the means, or prejudice of the wish to confer benefits—his faults such as might have often drawn down hatred, but that they were mingled with so much urbanity, that the injured person felt it impossible to retain the full sense of his wrongs.”
During his wandering he was entertained for a time at the home of the old knight, Sir Henry Lee, proprietor of Woodstock. The attachment formed for the old knight and his family affords Scott material for one of those dramatic descriptions in which he always so much delighted.
It was the 29th of May. All England sang. “The king enjoys his own again.” “He made his progress from Rochester to London, with a reception on the part of his subjects so unanimously cordial, as made him say gaily, it must have been his own fault to stay so long away from a country where his arrival gave so much joy. On horseback, betwixt his two brothers, the dukes of York and Gloucester, the restored monarch trode slowly over roads strewn with flowers—by conduits running wine, under triumphal arches, and through streets hung with tapestry. There were citizens in various bands, some arrayed in coats of black velvet, with gold chains, some in military suits of cloth of gold, or cloth of silver, followed by all those craftsmen, who, having hooted the father from Whitehall, had now come to shout the son into possession of his ancestral palace. On his passage through Blackheath he passed that army, which, so long formidable to England herself, as well as to Europe, had been the means of restoring the monarchy which their own hands had destroyed. As the king passed the last files of this formidable host he came to an open part of the heath, where many persons of quality, with others of inferior rank, had stationed themselves to gratulate him as he passed toward the capital.
“There was one group, however, which attracted particular attention from those around, on account of the respect shown to the party by the soldiers who kept the ground, and who, whether Cavaliers or Roundheads, seemed to contest emulously which should contribute most to their accommodation; for both the elder and younger of the party had been distinguished in the Civil War.
“It was a family group, of which the principal figure was an old man seated in a chair, having a complacent smile on his face, and a tear swelling to his eye, as he saw the banners wave on in interminable succession, and heard the multitude shouting the long-silenced acclamation, ‘God save King Charles!’ His cheek was ashy pale, and his long beard bleached like the thistle down; his blue eye was cloudless, yet it was obvious that his vision was failing. His motions were feeble, and he spoke little, except when he answered the prattle of his grandchildren or asked a question of his daughter, who sat beside him, matured in matronly beauty. A gigantic dog, which bore the signs of being at the extremity of canine life, with eyes dim, and head slouched down, exhibiting only the ruin of his former appearance, formed a remarkable figure in the group.
“And now the distant clarions announced the royal presence. Onward came pursuivant and trumpet—onward came plumes and cloth of gold, and waving standards displayed, and swords gleaming to the sun; and, at length, heading a group of the noblest in England, supported by his royal brothers on either side, onward came King Charles. The monarch gazed an instant on the party, sprung from his horse, and walked instantly up to the old knight, amid thundering acclamations of the people, when they saw Charles with his own hand oppose the feeble attempts of the old man to rise to do him homage. Gently placing him on his seat—‘Bless,’ he said, ‘father—bless your son, who has returned in safety, as you blessed him when he departed in danger.’
“‘Excuse me for having made you wait, my lords,’ said the king as he mounted his horse. ‘Indeed, had it not been for these good folks, you might have waited for me long enough to little purpose. Move on, sirs.’ The array moved on accordingly; the sound of trumpet and drum again rose amid the acclamations; but the knight had relapsed into earthly paleness; his eyes were closed and opened not again. They ran to his assistance, but it was too late. The light that burned so low in the socket had leaped up and expired, in one exhilarating flash.”
