Elizabeth Hamilton. Anna Porter. Jane Porter
Elizabeth Hamilton was also an Irish writer, but through her one novel she will always be associated with Scotland. In The Cottagers of Glenburnie she did for the Scotch people what Maria Edgeworth had done for the Irish, and represented for the first time in fiction the life of the common people. It is a story of poor people of the serving class. Mrs. Mason, who had been an upper servant in the family of a lord, has been pensioned and takes up her abode with a cousin in the village of Glenburnie. She was among the earliest of our settlement workers. This little village with the pretty name, situated in a beautiful country, had accumulated about its homes as much filth as the tenements of the poorest ward of a large city, and for the same reason, that its inhabitants did not understand the value of cleanliness. Its thatched cottages, had it not been for their chimneys and the smoke issuing from them, would have passed for stables or hog-sties, for there was a dunghill in front of every door.
Mrs. MacClarty's cottage, where Mrs. Mason was to live, was like all the rest. It was as dirty inside as out. Mrs. MacClarty picked up a cloth from the floor beside her husband's boots, with which to wipe her dishes, and made her cheese in a kettle which had not been washed since the chickens had eaten their last meal from it, although the remains of their feast still adhered to the sides. When Mrs. MacClarty put her black hands into the cheese to stir it, Mrs. Mason reminded her gently that she had not washed them:
"'Hoot,' returned the gudewife, 'my hands do weel eneugh. I canna be fash'd to clean them at ilka turn.'"
When Mrs. Mason proposed that the windows should be hung on hinges and supplied with iron hooks, so that they could be opened at pleasure, Mr. MacClarty objected to the plan:
"'And wha do you think wad put in the cleek?' returned he. 'Is there ane, think ye, aboot this hoose, that would be at sic a fash?'
"'Ilka place has just its ain gait,' said the gudewife, 'and ye needna think that ever we'll learn yours. And, indeed, to be plain wi' you, cusine, I think you hae owre mony fykes. There, didna ye keep Grizzy for mair than twa hours, yesterday morning, soopin' and dustin' your room in every corner, an' cleanin' out the twa bits of buird, that are for naething but to set your foot on after a'?'"
It may be well to explain that the chickens had been roosting in this chamber before Mrs. Mason's arrival.
The story of Mr. MacClarty's death is pathetic. He is lying ill with a fever in the press-bed in the kitchen, where not a breath of air reaches him. The neighbours have crowded in to offer sympathy. The doors are tightly closed, and his wife has piled blankets over him and given him whiskey and hot water to drink. When Mrs. Mason, who knows that with proper care his life can be saved, urges that he be removed to her room where he can have air, all the neighbours violently oppose her advice. But Peter MacGlashon, the oracle of the village, looks at it more philosophically:
"'If it's the wull o' God that he's to dee, it's a' ane whar ye tak him; ye canna hinder the wull o' God.'"
But upon Mrs. Mason's insisting that we should do our best to save the life of the sick with the reason God has given us, Peter becomes alarmed:
"'That's no soond doctrine,' exclaimed Peter. 'It's the law of works.'"
Elizabeth Hamilton had been a teacher and had written books on education, so that her description of the school which Mrs. Mason opened in the village gives an accurate idea of the Scottish schools for the poorer classes. Each class was divided into landlord, tenants, and under-tenants, one order being responsible for a specific amount of reading and writing to the order above it. The landlord was responsible to the master both for his own diligence and the diligence of his vassals. If the tenants disobeyed the laws they were tried by a jury of their mates. The results of the training at Mrs. Mason's school might well be an aim of teachers to-day: "To have been educated at the school of Glenburnie implied a security for truth, diligence and honesty."
The pupils in the school gradually learned to love cleanliness and order. The little flower-garden in front gave pleasure to all. The villagers declared, "The flowers are a hantel bonnier than the midden and smell a hantel sweeter, too." With this improvement in taste, the "gude auld gaits" gave way to a better order of things.
The Cottagers of Glenburnie is more realistic in detail than anything which had yet been written. It is a short simple story told in simple language. There is a slight plot, but it is the village upon which our attention is fastened. One individual stands out more strongly than the rest: that is Mrs. MacClarty with her constant expression, "It is well eneugh. I canna be fashed."
This little book was read in every Scotch village, and many of the poor people saw in it a picture of their own homes. But its sound common-sense appealed to them. It was reasonable that butter without hairs would sell for more than with them, and that gardens without weeds would produce more vegetables than when so encumbered. The book did for the cottagers of Scotland what Mrs. Mason had done for those of Glenburnie.
The lives of Anna Maria and Jane Porter resemble in a few particulars that of Elizabeth Hamilton. Like her they belonged, at least on the father's side, to Ireland, and like her they lived in Scotland, and their names will always be associated with that country. But Elizabeth Hamilton wrote the first novel of Scotland's poor, the ancestor of The Window in Thrums and Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush; Jane Porter wrote the first novel of Scotland's kings, the immediate forerunner of Waverley, The Abbot, and The Monastery.
Upon the death of Major Porter, who had been stationed for some years with his regiment at Durham, Mrs. Porter removed to Edinburgh, where her children were educated. Their quick lively imaginations found food for growth on Scottish soil. At that time Caledonia was a land of cliff and crag, inhabited by a quarrelsome people, whom the English still regarded with something the same aversion which Dr. Johnson had so often expressed to Boswell. But every castle had its story of brave knights and fair ladies, and every brae had been the scene of renowned deeds of arms. In every cottage the memory of the past was kept alive, and fathers and mothers related to their children stories of Wallace and of Bruce, until the romantic past became more real than the living present. Mrs. Porter's servants delighted to relate to her eager children stories of Scotland's glory. The maids would sing to them the songs of "Wallace wight," and the serving-man would tell them tales of Bannockburn and Cambus-Kenneth.
Rarely have stories fallen on such fertile soil. In a short time, three of these children became famous. Sir Robert Ker Porter, the brother of Anna and Jane, followed closely in the footsteps of Scotland's heroes, and became distinguished as a soldier and diplomat, as well as a famous painter of battles. He painted the enormous canvas of The Storming of Seringapatam, a sensational panorama, one hundred and twenty feet in length, the first of its kind, but in a style that has often been followed in recent years. The idol of his family, it would seem that he was endowed with many of those qualities which his sisters gave to the heroes of their romances.
Anna Maria Porter, the youngest of the group, was the first to appear in print. At the age of fifteen, she published a little volume called Artless Tales. From this time until her death, at least every two years a new book from her pen was announced. She wrote a large number of historical romances, which were widely read and translated into many languages. This kind of story, in the hands of Sophia Lee, was tame and uninteresting. Anna Porter increased its scope and its popularity. Her plots are well worked out with many thrilling adventures. Her imagination, however, had been quickened by reading, not by observation, and although her scenes cover many countries of Europe and many periods of history, they differ but little in pictorial detail, and her characters are lifeless. Her style of writing is, moreover, so inflated that it gives an air of unreality to her books.
She thus describes the Hungarian brothers: "They were, indeed, perfect specimens of the loveliness of youth and the magnificence of manhood." This novel, dealing with the French Revolution, was one of the most popular of all her stories. It went through several editions both in England and on the continent. Superlative expressions seem to have been fashionable in that age which was still encumbered by much that was artificial in dress and manners. Miss Porter with proper formality thus writes of her heroine as she was recovering from a fainting fit: "With a blissful shiver, Ippolita slowly unclosed her eyes, and turning them round, with such a look as we may imagine blessed angels cast, when awakening amid the raptures of another world, she met those of her sweet and gracious uncle."
Some of her society novels are witty and have a lively style, which suggests the truth of Mr. S. C. Hall's description of the sisters. Anna, a blonde, handsome and gay, he named L'Allegro, in contrast to Jane, a brunette, equally handsome, but with the dignified manners of the heroines of her own romances, whom he styled Il Penseroso.
Jane Porter took a more serious view of the responsibilities of authorship than her sister. Her first novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw, was written while England was agitated against France and excited over the wrongs of Poland. It grew out of popular feeling. Miss Porter had become acquainted with friends of Kosciusko, men who had taken part with him in his country's struggle for liberty, and made him the hero of the story. The scenery of Poland was so well described that the Poles refused to believe that she had not visited their country; and events were related in a manner so pleasing to them that they distinguished the author by many honours. It is one thing to write an historical novel of people and events that have long been buried in oblivion; but to write a story of times so near the present that its chief actors are still living, is, indeed, a rash task. And for any history to meet with the approval of its hero and his friends bespeaks rare excellence in the work.
In the light of the classic standing of the historical novel, due to the genius of Scott and Dumas, it is interesting to read how Thaddeus of Warsaw came to be published. Miss Porter wrote the romance merely for her own amusement, with no thought of its being read outside the circle of her family and intimate friends. They urged her to publish it. But for a long time she resisted their importunities on the ground that it did not belong to any known style of writing: stories of real life, like Tom Jones, or improbable romances, like The Mysteries of Udolpho, were the only legitimate forms of fiction. Thaddeus of Warsaw had the exact details of history with a romance added to please the author's fancy. Thus did Jane Porter discover to the world the possibilities of the historical novel.
Her next novel, The Scottish Chiefs, grew out of the stories she had heard in her childhood. Besides the tales of Scotland's struggle for independence which she heard from the servants in her own home, a venerable old woman called Luckie Forbes, who lived not far from Mrs. Porter's house, used to tell her of the wonderful deeds of William Wallace. Of the influence these stories had upon her childish mind, Jane Porter has thus written:
"I must avow, that to Luckie Forbes's familiar, and even endearing, manner of narrating the lives of William Wallace and his dauntless followers; her representation of their heart-sacrifices for the good of their country, filling me with an admiration and a reverential amazement, like her own; and calling forth my tears and sobs, when she told of the deaths of some, and of the cruel execution of the virtuous leader of them all;—to her I must date my early and continued enthusiasm in the character of Sir William Wallace! and in the friends his truly hero-soul delighted to honour."
Before writing The Scottish Chiefs, Miss Porter read everything she could find bearing upon the history of England and Scotland during the reigns of the first two Edwards. She personally visited the places she described. She wrote in the preface: "I assure the reader that I seldom lead him to any spot in Scotland whither some written or oral testimony respecting my hero had not previously conducted myself." Besides these sources of information, Miss Porter was familiar with the poem of Wallace by Blind Harry the Minstrel, the biographer of Scotland's national hero. Blind Harry lived nearly two centuries after the death of Wallace, but he had access to books now lost, and collected stories about Scotland's struggle for independence while it was still prominent in the public mind. Although he tells many exalted stories of the numbers whom Wallace overcame by his single arm, the poem is on the whole authentic. Sheriff Mackay in the Dictionary of National Biography writes that the life of Wallace by Blind Harry "became the secular bible of his countrymen, and echoes through their later history." Miss Porter introduced love scenes to vary the deeds of war, but there is nothing else in The Scottish Chiefs which is not true to history, or to that more legitimate source of romance, the traditions common among the people.
From the opening chapter, in which Wallace is described as an outlaw because he had refused to take the oath of allegiance to an English king, to his death in London and the final crowning of Bruce, there is not a dull page. Especially interesting is the scene between William Wallace and the Earl of Carrick, after the battle of Falkirk, and the appearance of Robert Bruce, who overheard this conversation, fighting by the side of Wallace. The truth of this incident has been denied, but it is related by Blind Harry. The trial of William Wallace in the great hall at Westminster for treason, and his defence that he had never acknowledged the English government, is most impressive, and is a matter of record.
The Scottish Chiefs is the first historical novel in which the author made diligent research in order to give a truthful representation of the times. It has the atmosphere of feudal days. Notwithstanding the ridicule cast upon Wallace as a lady's hero, he is drawn in heroic proportions. Miss Mitford declared that she scarcely knew "one herós de roman whom it is possible to admire, except Wallace in Miss Porter's story." The work is written in the style of the old epics. The many puerile attempts of the last few years to write an historical romance in which Washington or Lincoln should figure have shown how difficult is the task. How weak and commonplace have these great men appeared in fiction! It requires a nature akin to the heroic to draw it. In 1810, when it was published, The Scottish Chiefs was the only great historical romance. Four years later Waverley was published, the first of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. This was superior in imagination and in craftsmanship to Miss Porter's novel, but not in interest. The Scottish Chiefs has since been excelled by many others of the Waverley novels, though not by all, by Henry Esmond, and A Tale of Two Cities, but it preceded all these in time, and still holds a place as a classic of the second rank.
Critics of to-day smile at its enthusiastic style, but Miss Porter speaks with no more enthusiasm than did the poor folk from whom she heard the story. As long as enthusiastic youth loves an unblemished hero, The Scottish Chiefs will be read. It is impossible to analyse these early impressions or to test their truth. One can only remember them with gratitude. Jane Porter has, however, taught the youth of other lands to reverence Scotland's popular hero, so that the mention of his name awakens a thrill of pleasure, and the hills and glades associated with his deeds glow with the light of romance.
In 1815, Jane Porter wrote a third historical novel, The Pastor's Fireside. This is far inferior to The Scottish Chiefs. It has the same elevated style, and the mystery which surrounds the hero awakens and holds the attention. But the novel deals with the later Stuarts, and one feels that the author herself was but little interested in the historical events about which she was writing. The book has no abiding qualities.
In 1832 was published a book bearing the title Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative of His Shipwreck and Consequent Discovery of certain Islands in the Caribbean Sea, with a Detail of many extraordinary and highly interesting Events in his Life from the year 1733 to 1749 as written in his Own Diary. Edited by Jane Porter. In the preface Miss Porter explains how the manuscript was given to her by the relatives of Sir Edward. The story reads like a second Robinson Crusoe. It has all the minute details that give an air of verisimilitude to the writings of Defoe. In the opening chapter, Edward Seaward supposedly gives this account of himself:
"Born of loyal and honest parents, whose means were just sufficient to give a common education to their children, I have neither to boast of pedigree nor of learning; yet they bequeathed to me a better inheritance—a stout constitution, a peaceable disposition, and a proper sense of what is due to my superiors and equals; for such an inheritance I am grateful to God, and to them."
In the story he is married to a woman of his own rank, and she embarks with him for Jamaica, but they are shipwrecked on an island near Lat. 14 deg. 30 min. N. and Long. 81 deg. W. They find bags of money hidden on the island, some negroes come to them, and a schooner is driven to their haven. Edward sees in this a purpose which afterward is fulfilled. He says to his wife: "I should be the most ungrateful of men, to the good God who has bestowed all this on me, if I did not feel that this money, so wonderfully delivered into my hands, was for some special purpose of stewardship. The providential arrival of the poor castaway negroes, and then of the schooner,—all—all working together to give us the means of providing every comfort, towards planting a colony of refuge in that blessed haven of our own preservation,—seem to me, in solemn truth, as so many signs from the Divine Will, that it is our duty to fulfil a task allotted to us, in that long unknown island."
This island becomes inhabited by a happy people, and Seaward is knighted by George the Second.
Everybody read the book. A second edition was called for within the year. Old naval officers got out their charts, and hunted up the probable locality of the places mentioned. Nobody at first doubted its veracity. The Quarterly, however, decided that no such man had ever existed and that the whole story was a fiction. It hunted for a schooner mentioned and the names of the naval officers. The latter had never served in his Majesty's navy and the former had not timed her voyages according to the story. The uniform of a naval officer described in the narrative was not worn until thirteen years after these adventures had taken place, and no man by the name of Seaward had been knighted during this time, nor was there any village in England having the name of the village which he gave as his birthplace. Supposing the editor had changed names and dates, the Quarterly criticism becomes valueless. Although the magazine declared it a work of fiction, it gave both the story and the style high praise, and declared it far superior to her romances. When Miss Porter was asked about it, she declined to answer, but said that Scott had his great secret and she might be permitted to have her little one.
It is generally considered now to have been the work of Jane Porter. No two books differ more in style than The Scottish Chiefs and Sir Edward Seaward. But twenty-two years had elapsed between them. The former is written in dignified, stately language; the latter in simple homely words, and both its invention and its style entitle it to a place among English classics.