EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.
By WALLACE BRUCE.
It has been truly said that Walter Scott’s novels have done more to warm the hearts of the English people toward their northern brethren than any other influence during the last century. The two races, unlike in national traditions and social characteristics, differing as to climatic influence and formation of country, with a blood-stained record since the days of Keneth Mac Alpine, were not naturally allied, or well prepared for immediate and lasting friendship. To borrow the language of surgery: It was not a national break to be easily “knitted,” but a sort of compound fracture.
For thirty generations English and Scot had literally “glowered” across the border. Constrained in the narrow island of Britain, they had struggled like Roman gladiators in a wave-washed Coliseum, from which there was no escape. In the world’s history there is no other record of two races, with so many divergent points, and so much ancestral hatred, solidifying into one harmonious nation; and it is to the glory of Scott to have contributed to so grand a consummation. “All war,” Bulwer says, “is a misunderstanding.” It seemed to be the mission of our novelist to introduce England and Scotland to each other, and to make future misunderstanding impossible. Some of the volumes and characters, which we are to consider in this and in the following paper, emphasize and illustrate this conclusion.
“The Pirate,” next in historic sequence, has little to do with the history of reigns and dynasties. With the exception of a single paragraph, which refers incidentally to the commotion between Highlanders and Lowlanders, between Williamites and Jacobites, one would not dream that there was such a thing as a government in the world. The reader, in spite of the warlike title, finds himself in a northern Arcadia. In the hospitable home of Magnus Troil we have a picture of a Norwegian Udaller—one of the last survivors, who kept alive the customs of Scandinavia in the Orkney and Zetland Islands. What Cedric, the Saxon, was to his people, as a prototype of antique manners in the reign of Richard, the Lion Hearted, Magnus Troil is to the few surviving Norwegians at the close of the last century in the stormy islands of the north. We sit at his board, and hear Sagas rehearsed by fishermen, who preserved among themselves the ancient Norse tongue. We listen to the dark romance of other days when the black raven banner ruled the seas. We are taken back in fancy to moonlit bays, where mermaids mingle their voices with the moaning waves. The monstrous leviathans of the deep again seem real, and the sea-snake, with towering head, girdles with its green folds the misty islands of Shetland. We find captains negotiating for favorable voyages with weird hags and insane witches—antique insurance brokers, who were willing to take payment without giving indemnity. We find in Norna—the wild prophetess—who half believed her own divinations, a legitimate descendant of the Voluspæ, or divining women, who, from Hebraic and Delphic times, have wielded power through centuries of superstition. We find Christian inhabitants of well governed and hospitable villages, who regard the spoils of the sea, and castaway wrecks, as kindly dispensations of Providence. We are introduced to a primitive people still clinging to the belief that a supernatural race, allied to the fairies, sometimes propitious to mortals, but more frequently capricious and malevolent, worked below the earth as artificers of iron and precious metals. We see lovers still pledging their troth and taking the Promise of Oden at the Standing Stones of Stennis, and note the patriotism and proud spirit of Minna Troil, as she responds to her lover’s description of other lands of palm and cocoa,
Fair realms of continual summer,
And fields ever fragrant with flowers.
“No,” she answers, “my own rude country has charms for me, even desolate as you think it, and depressed as it surely is, which no other land on earth can offer to me. I endeavor in vain to represent to myself those visions of trees and of groves, which my eye never saw; but my imagination can conceive no sight in nature more sublime than these waves, when agitated by a storm, or more beautiful, than when they come, as they now do, rolling in calm tranquility to the shore. Not the fairest scene in a foreign land—not the brightest sunbeam that ever shone upon the richest landscape, would win my thoughts for a moment from that lofty rock, misty hill and wide rolling ocean. Haitland is the land of my deceased ancestors, and of my living father, and in Haitland will I live and die.”
The Bride of Lammermoor reveals the iniquitous administration of law in Scotland during the closing years of King William’s reign. The Scottish vicegerents, raised to power by the strength of faction, had friends to reward and enemies to humble. The old adage was literally verified: “Show me the man, and I will show you the law.” It is said that officers in high stations affected little scruple concerning bribery. “Pieces of plate, and bags of money, were sent in presents to the King’s counsel, to influence their conduct, and poured forth,” says a contemporary writer, “like billets of wood upon the floors, without even the decency of concealment.” The story opens with a burial and its attendant ceremony; and this key-note of sadness gives the tone or concert pitch to the sorrowful drama. The ready wit and crafty subterfuges of the old butler, Caleb Balderstone, somewhat relieve and lighten up the somberness of the tragedy. But it is not our purpose to trace the plot, or to point the moral of the swift and awful punishment which follows pride and injustice.
As in “The Pirate,” we find but one paragraph relating to concurrent history, so in the “Bride of Lammermoor” we have but one historic glimpse of passing events, when the Tory party obtained, in the Scottish, as in the English councils of Queen Anne, a short lived ascendancy. There were at this time three parties in Scotland: the Unionists, who were destined providentially to triumph; the Jacobites, who desired the national independence of the kingdom; the third party, who were waiting to see the course of events. The reign of William, just completed, was not favorably regarded by the Scottish nation. His memory was justly honored in England, and revered by the Protestants of Ireland as a deliverer from civil and religious servitude. In Scotland he had likewise rendered great service to the right of worshiping God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, but in civil matters he had infringed upon the prerogatives of the people—an infringement not speedily to be forgotten. Scott, in his “Tales of a Grandfather,” calls attention to this long cherished national resentment in the following paragraph: “On the fifth of November, 1788, when a full century had elapsed after the Revolution, some friends to constitutional liberty proposed that the return of the day should be solemnized by an agreement to erect a monument to the memory of King William, and the services which he had rendered to the British kingdoms. At this period an anonymous letter appeared in one of the Edinburgh newspapers, ironically applauding the undertaking, and proposing as two subjects of the entablature, for the base of the projected column, the massacre of Glencoe, and the distresses of the Scottish colonies at Darien. The proposal was abandoned as soon as the insinuation was made public.”
When Queen Anne came to the throne it was thought prudent to make some provision which would insure a Protestant government for all time to Britain. The English Parliament therefore passed an Act of Succession in June, 1700: “Settling the crown, on the failure of Queen Anne and her issue, upon the grand-daughter of King James the First, of England—Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, and her descendants. Queen Anne, and her statesmanlike adviser, Godolphin, saw the necessity of uniting Scotland in this agreement; but the Scottish people complained that they were not only required to surrender their public rights, according to the terms proposed, but also to yield them up to the very nation who had been most malevolent to them in all respects; who had been their constant enemies during a thousand years of almost continual war; and who, even since they had been united under the same crown, had shown in the massacre of Glencoe, and the disasters of Darien, at what a slight price they held the lives and rights of their northern neighbors.”
“The Tale of the Black Dwarf” is related to the time of this fierce discussion in Scotland, as to the adoption or rejection of this proposed union; when mobs and rabbles crowded High Street; when the hall of meeting, contrary to the privileges of Edinburgh, was surrounded by guards and soldiery; when the debaters were often “in the form of a Polish Diet, with their swords in their hands, or at least their hands on their swords.” After a vain struggle the Scottish commissioners were compelled to submit to an incorporating union, and on the twenty-second of April the Parliament of Scotland adjourned forever. For the moment all parties were indignant. Papists, Prelatists, and Presbyterians were united in the common feeling that the country had been treated with injustice. Lord Belhaven, in a celebrated speech, which made the strongest impression on the people, declared that he saw, in prophetic vision, “The peers of Scotland, whose ancestors had raised tribute in England, now walking in the Courts of Requests, like so many English attorneys, laying aside their swords, lest self-defense should be called murder—he saw the Scottish barons with their lips padlocked to avoid the penalties of unknown laws—he saw the Scottish lawyers struck mute and confounded at being subjected to the intricacies and technical jargon of an unknown jurisprudence—he saw the merchants excluded from trade by the English monopolies—the artisans ruined for want of custom—the gentry reduced to indigence—the lower ranks to starvation and beggary. ‘But above all, my lord,’ he continued, ‘I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Cæsar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking around her, covering herself with her royal mantle, awaiting the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with the exclamation, “And thou too, my son.”’” These prophetic words made the deepest impression, until the effect was in some degree dispelled by Lord Marchmount, who rising to reply, said: “I have been much struck with the noble lord’s vision, but I conceive that the exposition of it might be given in a few words: I woke, and behold it was a dream.”
If in these critical times the King of France had kept his promise to the son of James the Second, or if his Scottish friends had been more united or possessed a leader of distinguished talent, the House of Stuart might have repossessed their ancient throne of Scotland. The French fleet indeed brought the Pretender with an army of five thousand men to the Frith of Forth, but, frightened by the English fleet, returned to France without landing. It was an enterprise entirely devoid of spirit, and the closing chapters of the “Black Dwarf” reveal a pitiful picture of the apathy of the movement, and the indecision and incapacity of the Pretender’s adherents.
“Rob Roy” introduces us to the wild fastnesses which lie between Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine. The state of the country is still unsettled. The Highlanders have been kept comparatively quiet since the days of King William by giving pensions to the leading chiefs, upon the principle of feeding the wilder and fiercer animals in order to keep them tractable; but, like a rock poised on a precipice, the clans seem ready at an instant to break loose and precipitate themselves upon the lowlands; the Jacobites still retain hope of restoring the Stuart line. The Whigs, continually on the alert, anticipate every movement; the slightest whisper in Paris is heard at the London Court; it also appeared that Louis the Fourteenth was nowise disposed to encourage any plot to disturb the reigning monarch of England; the Pretender hastened to Paris upon receiving tidings of the death of Queen Anne, but his reception was so unfavorable that he returned to Lorraine, “with the sad assurance that the monarch of France was determined to adhere to the treaty of Utrecht, by an important article of which he had recognized the succession of the House of Hanover to the Crown of Great Britain.”
George the First landed at Greenwich, September seventeenth, 1714, and quietly assumed the government; but the seething plot of Macbeth’s witches was not yet skimmed. The rebellion known as “The Affair of 1715” was organized and guided by the Earl of Mar. The clans were again in arms, and the Pretender again hailed as king. In the battle of Sheriffmuir, which followed soon afterward, an outlawed clan whose name for generations was only mentioned in whisper, “nameless by day” and fierce through oppression, remained inactive upon the field. They were ordered by the Earl of Mar to charge the enemy, but the bold chieftain answered with haughty indifference: “If you can not win without us you will not with us.” The speaker was Robert Mac Gregor, more generally known as Rob Roy. Like Robin Hood of England he is said to have been a kind and gentle robber, who harried the rich and relieved the poor. As Scott says in his introduction to the romance: “He maintained through good report and bad report a wonderful degree of importance in popular recollection. He owed his fame in a great measure to his residing on the very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning of the eighteenth century as are usually ascribed to the freebooters of the middle ages—and that within forty miles of Glasgow, a great commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus a character like his, blending the wild virtues, the subtle policy, and unrestrained license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George the First—the sept of Mac Gregor claimed a descent from Alpin, King of Scots, who ruled about 787. Hence their original patronymic is Mac Alpine. They occupied at one period very extensive possessions in Perthshire and Argyleshire, which they imprudently continued to hold by the right of the sword. Their neighbors, the Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane, managed to have this property engrossed in deeds and charters, which they easily obtained from the crown.” In plain English, they stole it, and obtained a commission by an Act of Privy Council in 1563 to pursue the claim with fire and sword. No wonder that the Mac Gregors came to have little regard for the law which had little regard for them. In sympathy for the oppressed outlaw, Wordsworth breaks out in enthusiastic tribute:
Say then that he was wise as brave,
As wise in thought as bold in deed;
For in the principles of things
He sought his moral creed.
Said generous Rob, “What need of books?
Burn all the statutes and their shelves!
They stir us up against our kind,
And worse, against ourselves.
The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind;
With them no strife can last; they live
In peace and peace of mind.
For why? because the good old rule
Sufficeth them; the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
Blackstone would probably have regarded this as a feeble tenure of property, and Scott was too good a lawyer to excuse the robber and blackmailer on such primitive and poetic principles. He puts a more natural and sensible excuse in the mouth of the honest bailie, Nicol Jarvie: “Robin was anes a weel-doing, pains-taking drover, as ye wad see amang ten thousand. It was a pleasure to see him in his belted plaid and brogues, wi’ his target at his back, and claymore and dirk at his belt. And he was baith civil and just in his dealings; and if he thought his chapman had made a hard bargain, he would gie him back five shillings out o’ the pund sterling. But the times came hard, and Rob was venturesome, and the creditors, mair especially some grit neighbors o’ his, grippit to his living and land; and they say his wife was turned out o’ the house to the hillside, and sair misguided to the boot. Weel, Rob cam hame, and fand desolation, God pity us! where he left plenty; he looked east, west, south, north, and saw neither hauld nor hope—neither beild nor shelter, sae he e’en pu’d the bonnet ower his brow, belted the broadsword to his side, took to the brae-side, and became a broken man.”
He had indeed suffered, and the harsh treatment which his wife had received from the soldiery was enough to have roused a less ferocious man to revenge. Her spirit seems to have been cast in the same mould, and Scott presents her in heroic guise, assuming the command of the clan in her husband’s absence. “Stand,” she said, with a commanding tone to the English soldiers, “and tell me what ye seek in Mac Gregor’s country?” “She wore her plaid, not drawn around her head and shoulders, as is the fashion of the women in Scotland, but disposed around her body, as the Highland soldiers wear theirs. She had a man’s bonnet, with a feather in it, an unsheathed sword in her hand, and a pair of pistols at her girdle.”
“What seek ye here?” she asked again of Captain Thornton, who had himself advanced to reconnoiter. “We seek the outlaw, Rob Roy Mac Gregor Campbell,” answered the officer, “and make no war on women; therefore offer no vain opposition to the king’s troops, and assure yourself of civil treatment.”
“Ay,” retorted the Amazon, “I am no stranger to your tender mercies. You have left me neither name nor fame—my mother’s bones will shrink aside in their grave when mine are laid beside them—ye have left me neither house nor hold, blanket nor bedding, cattle to feed us, or flocks to clothe us—ye have taken from us all—all! The very names of our ancestors have ye taken away, and now ye come for our lives.”
There is another character which lives long and pleasantly in the reader’s memory—the warm hearted bumptious bailie, Nicol Jarvie, a Scotchman profoundly impressed with a sense of his own extraordinary ability, who never forgot to quote from his father, the deacon, and never lost his appreciation of the “siller.” Scott has drawn this character with marvelous art. It stands out like a living portrait, and the reader loves him because he is as brave as he is canny. The scene in the Highland inn, where he found his sword rusted fast in the scabbard, and seized the red hot poker for a weapon, is at once dramatic and humorous.
The shifting of the scene of the story from the north of England to Glasgow, and thence to the Highlands, is naturally done, and without creaking of machinery. We have just enough of the villain Rashley and his nefarious plotting to give the continuous interest of uncertainty; and Die Vernon (pardon me, reader, for compressing her in a closing paragraph), with ready wit and sterling sense, flits about like a hoydenish angel—but in spite of eccentricities a ministering angel of peace and comfort. In the happiness of Frank Osbaldistone, who wins her hand in the closing chapter, we forget the defeat of the Jacobite party, or the fact that the Pretender is again an exile from the throne of his fathers.
“The Heart of Midlothian” opens with a description of the celebrated Porteous Mob at Edinburgh, in 1736. Two smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, who were reduced to poverty, robbed the collector to make good their own loss. They were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. As the Parliament was endeavoring to make the income of Scotland a source of revenue to the common exchequer, smuggling was not looked upon by the people as a very heinous offense. In fact, it was almost universal in every port north of the Tweed during the reigns of George the First and George the Second. The people, unaccustomed to duties, considered them in the light of national oppression; and the sentence of death pronounced against Wilson and Robertson was considered severe and unjust. The prisoners attempted an escape, but were discovered. The day of execution came. It was customary for persons sentenced to death to attend preparatory service at the kirk. On this occasion the church was thronged. Wilson, who was a very powerful man, at the conclusion of the exercises seized two of the guards with his hands, at the same time catching the collar of the third with his teeth. He cried to his companion to run, and the crowd, whose sympathies were with the prisoners, allowed Robertson to mix with the people and escape. Wilson was executed. The City Guard, under the command of Porteous, was insulted by the citizens. The Guard fired upon them with deadly aim. Porteous was tried and condemned for murder. King George at this time was on the Continent, and Queen Caroline, acting in his absence, sent a reprieve to Porteous. Edinburgh was now thoroughly aroused. They asked if a poor smuggler, accused of stealing, should hang without a reprieve, while a hard hearted and despised man, who shot down the people of their chief city without mercy, should go scathless. A mob, apparently of the better class of citizens, too orderly to need even a leader, attacked the Tolbooth. Porteous was taken by force and hung at night in the Grassmarket.
The Queen was incensed. “A bill was prepared and brought into Parliament for the punishment of the city of Edinburgh, in a very vindictive spirit, proposing to abolish the city charter, demolish the city walls, take away the town guard, and declare the provost incapable of holding any office of public trust.” Scotland was fortunate at that time in possessing a great leader, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not without ambition, but “without the illness that attends it”—that irregularity of thought and aim which often excites great men to grasp the means of raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into confusion. Pope has distinguished him as
“Argyle, the state’s whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.”
Soaring above the petty distinctions of faction, his voice was raised, whether in office or opposition, for those measures which were at once just and lenient. His independent and haughty mode of expressing himself in Parliament, and acting in public, were ill calculated to attract royal favor; but his high military talents enabled him, during the memorable year 1715, to render such services to the House of Hanover, as, perhaps, were too great to be either acknowledged or repaid. His spirited and witty reply to the queen was quoted and chuckled over from Berwick to Inverness: “Sooner than submit to such an insult as this Porteous Mob,” said the Queen to the Duke, “I will make Scotland a hunting field.” “In that case,” answered Argyle, “I will take leave of your Majesty, and go down to my own country to get my hounds ready.”
His speech in Parliament in reference to the dismantling of Edinburgh reveals the straightforward character of the man. He retorted upon the Chancellor, Lord Hardwick, the insinuation that he had stated himself in this case rather as a party than as a judge: “I appeal,” said Argyle, “to the House—to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy of being a jobber or a partisan. Have I been a briber of votes? a buyer of boroughs? the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of any party? Consider my life, examine my actions in the field and in the cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attach to my honor. I have shown myself the friend of my country—the loyal subject of my king. I am ready to do so again, without an instant’s regard to the frowns or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with indifference for either. I have given my reasons for opposing this bill, and have made it appear that it is repugnant to the international treaty of union, to the liberty of Scotland, and, reflectively, to that of England, to common justice, to common sense, and to the public interest. Shall the metropolis of Scotland, the capital of an independent nation, the residence of a long line of monarchs, by whom that noble city was graced and dignified—shall such a city, for the fault of an unknown body of rioters, be deprived of its honors and privileges—its gates and its guards? And shall a native Scotsman tamely behold the havoc? I glory, my lords, in opposing such unjust rigor, and reckon it my dearest pride and honor to stand up in defense of my native country, while thus laid open to undeserved shame and unjust spoliation.” In this tribute of Scott, and this speech, which he has recorded in one of his best known novels, Argyle stands out as a noble representative of a family powerful through centuries; ay, so thoroughly revered to-day in Scotland that an old Scotch woman on a comparatively recent wedding morn remarked that the Queen must be a happy woman noo, since her daughter has married the son of Argyle.
So much for the historic setting of this well known story, which makes the reader acquainted with Arthur’s Seat, with High Street, the Old Tolbooth, the Grassmarket and the Church of St. Giles. We see in the unbending and uncompromising character of David Deans a descendant of the Covenanters, who could hardly understand how a Presbyterian could acknowledge a government that did not acknowledge the Solemn League and Covenant. We see his house made desolate by the misfortune and misguidance of his daughter Effie. We trace the unswerving rectitude of Jeanie’s character, destined to triumph at last over all obstacles. We witness the dramatic scene in the court room, and read her eloquent appeal before the Queen in the great park of Richmond. We go with her through strange villages, and over solitary heaths. But through insult and disaster we find her serenely relying upon that Providence which she knew was all-kind and all-powerful.
She accomplished her mission and lived to enjoy the blessedness of well doing. And Effie, ah! poor Effie! she inherited wealth and possession, but lived to see her husband shot by a Gypsy band; while her son, reared among outlaws, became a wanderer, lost to the view of herself and the world. In the contrast of these sisters’ lives we recognize the truth of the oft-quoted lines:
“’Tis better to be lowly born
And range with humble livers in content,
Than wear a golden sorrow.”
Scott closes this dramatic story with these words: “This tale will not be told in vain, if it shall be found to illustrate the great truth, that guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; that the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; and that the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.”
