John Ruskin coupled "Rob Roy" and "The Heart of Midlothian" as the best of all the "Waverley Novels." The latter, constituting the second series in the "Tales of My Landlord," was published in 1818, and was composed during a period of recurrent fits of intense bodily pain. The romance gets its name from Midlothian, or Middle Lothian, an Edinburgh prison which in days gone by used to mark the centre of the district of Lothian, between the Tweed and the Forth, now the County of Edinburgh. According to Scott himself, the story of the heroism of Jeannie Deans was founded on fact. Her prototype was one Helen Walker, the daughter of a small Dumfriesshire farmer, who in order to get the Duke of Argyle to intercede to save her sister's life got up a petition and actually walked to London barefoot to present it to his grace. Helen Walker died in 1791, and on the tombstone of this unassuming heroine is an inscription by Scott himself.
I.--In the Tolbooth
In former times England had her Tyburn, to which the devoted victims of justice were conducted in solemn procession; and in Edinburgh, a large oblong square, called the Grassmarket, was used for the same purpose. This place was crowded to suffocation on the day when John Porteous, captain of the City Guard, was to be hanged, sentenced to death for firing on the crowd on the occasion of the execution of a popular smuggler.
The grim appearance of the populace conveyed the impression of men who had come to glut their sight with triumphant revenge. When the news that Porteous was respited for six weeks was announced, a roar of rage and mortification arose, but speedily subsided into stifled mutterings as the people slowly dispersed.
That night the mob broke into the Tolbooth, the prison, commonly called the Heart of Midlothian, dragged the wretched Porteous from the chimney in which he had concealed himself, and carried him off to the Grassmarket, where, as the leader of the rioters, a tall man dressed in woman's clothes said he had spilled the blood of so many innocents.
"Let no man hurt him," continued the speaker. "Let him make his peace with God, if he can; we will not kill both soul and body."
A young minister named Butler, whom the rioters had met and compelled to come with them, was brought to the prisoner's side, to prepare him for instant death. With a generous disregard of his own safety, Butler besought the crowd to consider what they did. But in vain. The unhappy man was forced to his fate with remorseless rapidity, and Butler, separated from him by the press, and unnoticed by those who had hitherto kept him prisoner, escaped the last horror, and fled from the fatal spot.
His first purpose was instantly to take the road homewards, but other fears and cares, connected with news he had that day heard, induced him to linger till daybreak.
Reuben Butler was the grandson of a trooper in Monk's army, and had been brought up by a grandmother, a widow, a cotter who struggled with poverty and the hard and sterile soil on the land of the Laird of Dumbiedikes. She was helped by the advice of another tenant, David Deans, a staunch Presbyterian, and Jeannie, his little daughter, and Reuben herded together the handful of sheep and the two or three cows, and went together to the school; where Reuben, as much superior to Jeannie Deans in acuteness of intellect as inferior to her in firmness of constitution, was able to requite in full the kindness and countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him.
While Reuben Butler was acquiring at the university the knowledge necessary for a clergyman, David Deans, by shrewdness and skill, gained a footing in the world and the possession of some wealth. He had married again, and another daughter had been born to him. But now his wife was dead, and he had left his old home, and become a dairy farmer about half a mile from Edinburgh, and the unceasing industry and activity of Jeannie was exerted in making the most of the produce of their cows.