The chapel of St. Anthony, of which now only a fragment remains, was once a Gothic structure, with a tower forty feet high, in which a light was kept for the guidance of mariners. A hermitage, of which scarcely a trace remains, was partly formed of one of the sheltering crags near by. The lofty site, commanding an extensive prospect of sea and sky was supposed to be favourable for pious meditations. The sight of the palace below was expected to make an impression in the minds of the monks of the 'striking contrast between the court, so frequently assaulted by an unprincipled rabble, and their own tranquil situation in which they were gladly preparing for the regions of everlasting repose.' Although overlooking a populous city, the residents of the hermitage had all the 'advantages' of life in a wilderness, as secluded and peaceful as a Highland desert.
On the opposite side of the intervening valley we visited St. Leonard's Crags at the southwest edge of the King's Park. A neat cottage, with a little garden on the slope below, passes as the house of David Deans. Whether Scott had in mind this particular building is immaterial. It is in the exact locality described in the novel, and we thought it pleasant to stand on the side of the hill overlooking the same extensive sheep pasture, and the same crags and mountain beyond, that met the eyes of Jeanie Deans when she stood at the cottage door anxiously looking along the various tracks which led to their dwelling, 'to see if she could descry the nymph-like form of her sister.'
A house known as 'Dumbiedykes,' so called because in Scott's time it was used as a private school for the deaf and dumb, is not far distant. The novelist borrowed only the name, which he seems to have transferred to an old farm called Peffermill, in the vicinity of Liberton.
'Douce David Deans' is an original creation, the result of Scott's absorption of the descriptions of character in Patrick Walker's biographical accounts of the Covenanters. In acknowledging his indebtedness to this authority, Scott says, 'It is from such tracts as these, written in the sense, feeling, and spirit of the sect, and not from the sophisticated narratives of a later period, that the real character of the persecuted class is to be gathered.' 'David' is just a touch of the same kind of which we have seen so much in 'Old Mortality.' His lecture to his daughters on the evil of dancing is taken from Patrick Walker's Life of Cameron:—
Dance?—dance, said ye? I daur ye, limmers that ye are, to name sic' a word at my door-cheek! It's a dissolute, profane pastime, practiced by the Israelites only at their base and brutal worship of the Golden Calf at Bethel, and by the unhappy lass who danced off the head of John the Baptist, upon whilk chapter I will exercise this night for your further instruction, since ye need it sae muckle, nothing doubting that she has cause to rue the day, lang or this time, that e'er she suld hae shook a limb on sic' an errand. Better for her to hae been born a cripple, and carried frae door to door, like auld Bessie Bowie, begging bawbees, than to be a king's daughter, fiddling and flinging the gate she did.... And now, if I hear ye, quean lassies, sae muckle as name dancing, or think there's sic' a thing in this warld as flinging to fiddle's sounds and piper's springs, as sure as my father's spirit is with the just, ye shall be no more either charge or concern of mine!
What a treat it would be to hear Douce David express an opinion of the elaborate present-day performances of 'Salome'!
Madge Wildfire, or Murdockson, was drawn from a crazy woman, called Feckless Fannie, who travelled over Scotland and England at the head of a flock of sheep. They were remarkable animals, who recognized their names as bestowed by their mistress, and responded promptly to her commands. She slept in the fields in the midst of her flock, and one very polite old ram, named Charlie, always claimed the honour of assisting her to rise. He would push the others out of the way, then bend down his head, and when Madge had taken a firm grasp upon his large horns, he would raise his head and gently lift his mistress to her feet. This and numerous other stories of Feckless Fannie were furnished the novelist by his indefatigable friend, Joseph Train.
The great popularity of 'The Heart of Midlothian' may be judged from a letter of Lady Louisa Stuart, who said, 'I am in a house where everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands and talking of nothing else,' and from Lockhart's testimony, that he had never seen such 'all-engrossing enthusiasm' in Edinburgh 'on the appearance of any other literary novelty.' Andrew Lang only voices the feeling of other Scotchmen when he declares that it is 'second to none' of the Waverley Novels and that 'no number of formal histories can convey nearly so full and true a picture of Scottish life about 1730-40 as 'The Heart of Midlothian.'
Lockhart, as usual, sets forth the true secret of the author's success and does it in a single paragraph. 'Never before,' he says, 'had he seized such really noble features of the national character as were canonized in the person of his homely heroine; no art had ever devised a happier running contrast than that of her and her sister, or interwoven a portraiture of lowly manners and simple virtues, with more graceful delineations of polished life or with bolder shadows of terror, guilt, crime, remorse, madness, and all the agony of passions.'