The remaining scenery of 'Peveril of the Peak' is London in the time of Charles II. The 'dark and shadowy' city had now attracted nearly all the personages of the story. In St. James's Park, adjoining the Palace of Whitehall, Fenella danced with wondrous grace and agility before the King. As in 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' the Thames is the great highway of traffic, and Julian Peveril is carried by coach to the river from old Newgate Prison, and thence by boat to the Tower, which, like Nigel, he enters through the Traitor's Gate.
The Savoy, a dilapidated old pile, where Julian unexpectedly meets Fenella, was once a great palace. It was built by Simon de Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester, in 1245. In the following century it was almost demolished by a mob, but in 1509 King Henry VII restored and rebuilt the palace and converted it into a hospital. Half a century later, Queen Mary refounded and reëndowed the institution. In the time of the story the building was probably not so antiquated and ruinous as Scott describes it. Charles II, after the Restoration, used it as the meeting-place of the Savoy conference for the revision of the Liturgy. In Scott's time it was ruinous enough and since then has entirely disappeared. Westminster Hall, where the trial of the Peverils was held, is now the vestibule of the Houses of Parliament. It was originally built by William Rufus, son of the Conqueror, in 1097, but afterward destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In it some of the earliest English Parliaments were held and it has been the scene of many coronation festivals.
The novel gives a graphic picture of the gay, dissipated, and scandalous court of Charles II, and an excellent portrait of that selfish, indolent, and sensual, but witty and good-natured monarch. His chief favourite, George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, is painted in no more flattering colours. He was a statesman of fickle character who could not long be trusted by any one. He was a writer of verses, farces, and comedies, a musician, and a man of great talent and accomplishments; but he was a profligate, absolutely insincere and without principle.
'Peveril of the Peak' cannot be considered one of Scott's best novels. It has never been popular. Scott himself tired of it, and even Lockhart can find little to say in its praise.
Lady Louisa Stuart, who was one of Scott's most valued friends, summarized it all, at the end of a good-natured criticism, with the remark: 'However, in all this I recognize the old habit of a friend of mine, growing tired before any of his readers, huddling up a conclusion anyhow, and so kicking the book out of his way; which is a provoking trick, though one must bear it rather than not have his book, with all its faults on its head. The best amends he can make is to give us another as soon as may be.'
CHAPTER XXIV
QUENTIN DURWARD
The true 'Scott Country' is limited strictly to Scotland, England, and Wales. So long as he remained upon the soil of his own native kingdom, Sir Walter wrote of what he had seen and for the most part traversed only familiar ground. In Scotland, he was equally at home in the Lowlands or Highlands. He visited England often enough to know well the inspiring mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the hills and valleys of Northumberland, the broad expanse of Yorkshire, with its delightful scenery and many historical associations, the moorlands of Derby, the charming roads and pleasant villages of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and Oxford, and the highways and by-ways of the ever-fascinating London. With the history, the legends and the poetry of his own country he was as familiar as a child would be with the environment of his own home. They were a part of the mental equipment that had been developing steadily from the time he was three years old.
When he stepped out of this familiar region, for the first time, there came a remarkable change, and in January, 1823, when he began the composition of 'Quentin Durward,' we find him floundering about in a sea of gazetteers, atlases, histories, and geographies. On the 23d of that month he wrote to Constable:—'It is a vile place, this village of Plessis les Tours, that can baffle both you and me. It is a place famous in history ... yet I have not found it in any map, provincial or general, which I have consulted.... Instead of description holding the place of sense, I must try to make such sense as I can find, hold the place of description.'