his association with the 'Buchanites,' a religious sect who took their
name from a demented female, Mrs Buchan. It happened that this person
had been much impressed by the preaching of Mr White, the Relief
Minister of Irvine, and had followed him from Glasgow to that place,
where some weak-headed members of the congregation mistook her ravings
for inspiration, and made her warmly welcome. White himself participated
in their delusion, and when authoritatively required to dismiss his
adherent, chose rather to resign his church. From this time meetings
would be held in a tent, generally in the night time, and there Mrs
Buchan would hold forth, announcing herself to be the woman spoken of
in the twelfth chapter of the Revelations, and Mr White as the man-child
whom she had brought forth. The proceedings attracted public attention,
rioting followed, and it was found advisable to expel the evangelists
from the town. Some forty or fifty disciples accompanied their exodus,
who sang as they went, and declared themselves _en route_ for the New
Jerusalem, and in the company of the crack-brained enthusiasts went the
infant Galt, his imagination captivated by the strangeness of their
doings. He had not proceeded far, however, ere that sensible woman, his
mother, pounced upon him and bore him off home. Nevertheless the wild
psalmody of the occasion abode in his memory, and when in later life, in
his fine novel of _Ringan Gilhaize_, he came to describe the
Covenanters, the recollection stood him in good stead. It is also
recorded of him that, after reading Pope's Iliad, he was so deeply
impressed by the book as to kneel then and there, and humbly and
fervently pray that it might be vouchsafed to him to accomplish
something equally great. It must not be thought, however, that in him
imagination predominated to the exclusion of everything else. On the
contrary, to the love of what was beautiful or strange, he united a
pronounced mechanical and engineering turn, which led him, among other
undertakings, to construct an Aeolian harp, and to devise schemes for
improving the water-supply of Greenock, the town to which his family had
in the meantime removed. Thus was first manifested that diversity of
faculty which enabled him in later life with equal ease to pourtray men
and manners and to found cities and subdue wastes.
Meantime his education, which had been begun at home and continued at
the grammar-school of Irvine, was carried on at Greenock, where it was
supplemented with advantage by independent reading in a well-chosen
public library. In Greenock, also, where he spent some fifteen years, he
was fortunate in having as associates a group of young men whom the
spirit of intellectual emulation characterised, and of whom more than
one was destined to attain distinction. Among these were Eckford, who is
referred to as the future architect and builder of the United States'
Navy, and Spence, afterwards the author of a treatise on Logarithmic
Transcendents. But undoubtedly young Galt's most congenial companion was
one James Park, a youth of elegant and scholarly tastes, who shared in
his passion for the _belles-lettres_, and criticised in a friendly
spirit the attempts which he was now beginning to make as a poet. Would
that this young man's influence had been exerted to greater effect, for
he seems to have been just the sort of mentor of whom Galt stood in
need, and whose discipline throughout life he missed! 'He seemed,' says
the _Autobiography_, 'to consider excellence in literature as of a more
sacred nature than ever I did, who looked upon it but as a means of
influence.' A means of influence! One would gladly believe this but the
querulous insincere utterance of a disappointed man. Unhappily evidence
is but too abundant that Galt was consistently lacking in the respect
due to his high calling. Among his earliest poetical efforts was a
tragedy on the life of Mary Queen of Scots, and in course of time he
began to contribute to the local newspaper and to the _Scots Magazine_.
With Park and other young men he also joined in essay and debating
societies, a recreation which they varied by walking-tours to
Edinburgh, Loch Lomond, the Border Counties, and elsewhere. Before this
time he had been placed in the Custom House at Greenock, to acquire some
training as a clerk, whence in due course he was transferred to work in
a mercantile office. It was the period of the resumption of the war with
France, and he took a leading part in the movement for forming local
companies of volunteer riflemen.
This period of his adolescence strikes one as having been unusually
prolonged. It came to a sudden and violent end. It appears that about
this time a set of purse-proud upstarts, who stood much in need of
schooling in more ways than one, had made their appearance in Glasgow.
In relation to some matter of business, one of these had addressed an
insolent letter to the firm with which Galt was connected. It was
delivered into his hands. On discovering its contents his indignation
was boundless, and he proceeded to action with all the impetuosity of a
Hotspur. Missing the writer in Glasgow, he straightway tracked him to
his quarters in Edinburgh, and having bolted the door of the room in
which he sat, forced from him a written apology. So much was
satisfactory; but the turmoil excited in the young man's brain did not
subside immediately. He did not return to his employment, but, after
spending some time in an indeterminate sort of fashion, set off for
London 'to look about him.' In the _Autobiography_, written when he was
old and an invalid, all this is detailed in a loose and cursory manner.
There is no reference to emotion or the inner life, and the style is
that of one who, having written many books, is grown very tired of
writing. To the reader this is the reverse of stimulating; yet whatever
may be stated and whatever kept back, we may feel sure that, in so
emotional and imaginative a man, an intense inner life must have
existed, and one in all probability not of the smoothest. At the time of
leaving home, however, the writer acknowledges to having felt
exceedingly depressed. Then follows a description of sensations
experienced, whilst horses were being changed, on the road between
Greenock and Glasgow. His father accompanied him on his journey.
'I walked back on the fields,' says the young man, 'alone, with no
buoyant heart. The view towards Argyleshire, from the brow of the hill,
is perhaps one of the most picturesque in the world. I have since seen
some of the finest scenes, but none superior. At the time it seemed as
if some pensive influence rested on the mountains, and silently allured
me back; and this feeling was superstitiously augmented by my happening
in the same moment to turn round and behold the eastern sky, which lay
in the direction of my journey, sullenly overcast. On returning to the
inn, the horses had been some time in harness, and my father was a
little impatient at my absence, but conjecturing what was passing in my
mind, said little; nor did we speak much to each other till the waiter
of the inn opened the door for us to alight at Glasgow. In truth I was
not blind to the perils which awaited me, but my obstinacy was too
indulgently considered.' The above reads like a passage from _The Omen_.
In it we see the true Galt, or at least one side of him--brooding,
fantastic, the devotee of mysticism, discerning, at this momentous point
in his career, the finger of fate where another would have seen but an
ordinary process of nature!
As to the time he now spent in London, beyond an incidental admission
that it was one of the least satisfactory periods of his career, Galt
does not take us into his confidence. One guesses that had he consulted
his own feelings only, he would have enjoyed the luxury of writing
Confessions. But, after all, he was a Scotchman, though an unusual
variety of the class, and Scotchmen do not indulge in luxuries of that
kind. His Autobiography, when it came to be written, was in the main a
piece of book-making; certainly it has nothing of the confessional
character, and, indeed, what of self-revelation he at this time supplies
must be sought in his letters to Park.
He had brought with him to the metropolis a goodly number of
introductions, which procured him much civility but nothing more. Whilst
waiting, however, to see what was to be done for him in the shape of
practical assistance, he employed himself in preparing for the press a
poem which had been inspired by his studies in antiquarianism, and
written some time earlier. The title of this production was _The Battle
of Largs_, and its theme the invasion of Scotland by Haco, King of
Norway, in the year 1263,--a subject which had already prompted the
Titanic suggestions of Lady Wardlaw's _Hardyknute_. The poem, as it
survives in extracts, is turgid, crude, and immature, exhibiting the
exact reverse of what is desirable in poetry--to wit, a great
expenditure of means to produce a very small result. For 'tis in vain we
are assured that desperate deeds are doing if we find it possible to
remain completely unmoved. A strain of somewhat similar kind was
afterwards taken up by Motherwell, and by Tom Stoddart in the unbridled
fantasy of his only half-serious 'Necromaunt,' called _The Death-Wake_.
To do Galt justice, he quickly realised that he had mounted the wrong
Pegasus, and almost immediately suppressed his poem. He acted wisely,
and here once for all it may be admitted that, in the specialised sense
of the term, he was no poet. Fancy, imagination, dramatic power, and
many another fine attribute of the poet he of course possessed in high
degree, but, whether because lacking the 'accomplishment of verse,' or
for some other reason, he failed to give expression to these gifts in
poetry. Metre seems to have impeded rather than assisted him, and he is
most poetic when writing in prose--a conclusion suggested by the poem
now under consideration, and borne out by his _Star of Destiny_, his
posthumous _Demon of Destiny_, and his poetic plays. From his own frank
avowal that, when drawing up a list of his works for publication, an
epic[3] was overlooked, we judge that not much of the labour of the file
was expended upon his verse.
He waited for some months in London, whiling away the time, as he
pretends, by dabbling in astrology, alchemy, and other studies which
served to feed his love of the occult, and then at last, in despair,
decided to shift for himself. This led to his entering into partnership
with a young Scotchman named McLachlan, in a business which, for
reasons unknown, is mentioned only under the vague name of a 'commercial
enterprise.' Whatever may have been its nature, for Galt this
undertaking started badly, and after a period of better success, at the
end of three years ended in bankruptcy. The precise steps by which this
final consummation was reached are carefully detailed by Galt, yet to
minds unversed in commercial procedure they remain very far from clear.
In general terms, however, we gather that the failure was due to the
dishonesty of a debtor, occurring in conjunction with a succession of
financial misfortunes.
Having failed in commerce, Galt's next thought was of the Law. He
entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, and whilst waiting to be formally
called to the Bar, went abroad in the hope of improving his health,
which was not good at the time. He tells us that by this time he had
realised that, without friends, there is no such thing as 'getting on'
in life possible. These he was conscious of lacking, and when he now
turned his back on England it was, in his own words, half desiring that
no event might occur to make him ever wish to return. He betook himself
in the first instance to Gibraltar, where, in the well-known Garrison
Library, he had his first glimpse of a young man whose feelings, had
they been revealed, might have been found to tally strangely with his
own. Lord Byron, at that time known only as the author of a mordant
satire, was starting upon the tour which was so soon to make him famous,
and as Galt had him and Hobhouse for fellow-travellers to Malta and
Sicily, he got to know them fairly well. It is noticeable that his first
impressions of the Pilgrim betray prejudice; and that long afterwards,
when he was called on to be his biographer, he complains that Moore's
portrait reveals only the sunny side of his lordship's character, and is
'too radiant and conciliatory.'
After visiting Malta and Sicily, Galt proceeded to Athens. His active
mind, abhorring idleness, was soon at work again. It may be remembered
that this was the period of Buonaparte's endeavour to enforce his
nefarious Berlin and Milan Decrees, which had been designed with the
object of annihilating British commerce. Our traveller now conceived the
idea that they might be evaded by introducing British goods into the
Continent through Turkey. And here it may be noted that his biographers
have united in representing this scheme as the object of his going
abroad, whereas he himself distinctly, though incidentally, states that
he left England for the benefit of his health,[4] and that his scheme
first occurred to him when at Tripolizza.[5] This fact, immaterial in
itself, is of importance as affording evidence that his circumstances at
the time were fairly easy; for his travels must have been costly, yet
they do not appear to have brought him in any return until after his
written account of them had been published, when he was recouped for the
whole, or a part, of his outlay.
In pursuance of the newly-devised scheme, it was now his object to find
a locality where a depot of goods might be established. For this
purpose, after visiting various out of the way places, he selected
Mykoni, an island of the Archipelago, which possessed an excellent
harbour, where he acquired a large building, suited for a storehouse,
which had originally been erected by Orloff at a time when the Empress
Catherine the Second had designs on these islands. Hence, in the summer
of 1810, he returned to Malta, to make known and to develope his scheme,
and whilst awaiting the result of communications with England, he filled
up the time with further travels, visiting Constantinople and Widdin.
Turkey was now in arms against Russia, and in the course of his present
journey, which was performed in wintry weather, he saw something of the
hardships as well as of the pomp of war. Without presuming to question
that he kept business in view--as possibly also did George Borrow in his
rambles in Spain--we note the fact that in his own account of his
travels the details of his specific labours are kept well in the
background, if not indeed out of sight. At the worst his journeys, which
led him through some singularly wild and little known parts of the
globe, by bringing him acquainted with many picturesque and unusual
characters, must have been rich in suggestions of adventure and romance;
and, indeed, there is evidence that some of his experience of primitive
and martial life acquired at this time was afterwards turned to account
in painting similar life at home for his historical novels. His
expectations of patronage for his project were, however, disappointed,
and he resolved to return without delay to England, in the hope of there
finding support for it. In the meantime literature had not been entirely
neglected. Keeping his eyes well about him, he had amassed the notes on
which were subsequently based his _Voyages_, and _Letters from the
Levant_; whilst a translation from Goldoni, executed in a single wet day
at Missolonghi, and published in the 'New British Theatre' as _The Word
of Honour_, together with the tragedy of _Maddalen_, composed whilst
undergoing quarantine at Messina, belong also to this time.
Back in London, he had the mortification of finding his commercial
scheme--as to the presumptive value of which one would wish to have
specialist opinion--regarded coldly by the Foreign Office, whilst at the
same time he seems to have satisfied himself of the inutility of
proceeding further in his legal career. But, whatever may have been his
defects, want of resourcefulness was certainly not among them. An
outburst of literary industry followed, and the year 1812 saw the
publication of his Voyages and Travels, his Life of Wolsey, and his
Tragedies. But in justice to one who has sins enough of slipshod
composition to answer for, it must be stated that most of the Life of
Wolsey--one of the most carefully composed of his books--had been
written at an earlier date.
Of his _Voyages and Travels in the years 1809, 1810, and 1811,
containing statistical, commercial, and miscellaneous observations on
Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Cerigo and Turkey_, a competent
critic remarks that, 'while containing some interesting matter, they are
disfigured by grave faults of style and by rash judgments.' The public
received them favourably, but a contemptuous notice in the _Quarterly
Review_ was warmly resented by the author.
It was whilst standing in the quadrangle of Christchurch College, when
on a visit to Oxford, that Galt had conceived the idea of his _Life of
Wolsey_. He had worked hard at the book before he went abroad, and he
claimed that it embodied new views, and the results of much original
research. Notwithstanding this, the _Quarterly Review_ assailed him
again, and this time so libellously as to lead him to think of a
criminal prosecution. He, however, dropped the idea, with the result
that when his Tragedies saw the light, the persecution--now as in the
case of the Travels conducted by Croker in person--was renewed with
additional pungency. In the general form of his _Maddalen, Agamemnon,
Lady Macbeth, Antonia, and Clytemnestra_, the author followed Alfieri,
whose works he had studied abroad and admired enthusiastically, though
with reservations. The plays are of a tentative character, and certainly
do not deserve Scott's condemnation as the 'worst ever seen.' _Lady
Macbeth_, which the author thought the 'best or the worst' of the
series, though not lacking in imaginative touches, is without
progression or story, and besides provoking irresistible comparisons,
fails by ending just where it began. And whilst on the subject of Galt's
drama, we may mention _The Witness_, the most important of several plays
contributed by him to the 'New British Theatre,' a publication
undertaken by Colbourn at his instigation. Here the dramatist had a
powerfully dramatic if also a somewhat inconsequent story to work
upon--a subject, in fact, after his own heart. Unfortunately the
execution of the piece is hasty, and by no means equal to its
conception. It was performed for some nights in Edinburgh as _The
Appeal_, when Scott wrote an Epilogue for it, said to be the only piece
of humorous verse existing from his pen. Galt himself rehandled the
subject in narrative form, under the title of _The Unguarded Hour_.
He now embarked on a journalistic enterprise, assuming for a time the
editorship of the _Political Review_. But the work did not suit him.
After about a month he began to tire of it, and it was soon abandoned.
He also contributed lives of Hawke, Byron, and Rodney, to an edition of
Campbell's _Lives of the Admirals_; whilst, in 1813, his _Letters from
the Levant_ made their appearance. These contain 'views of the state of
society, manners, opinions, and commerce, in Greece and several of the
principal islands of the Archipelago,' and had actually been written as
letters at the places from which they are dated, being subsequently but
little altered.
Perhaps we have already seen enough of the subject of this sketch to
convince us that any lengthy perseverance in one course of conduct must
not be expected of him, and, sure enough, the next thing we hear of him
is that he is bound for Gibraltar, on another commercial enterprise.
Before setting out, he had taken occasion to revisit the scenes of his
early years, going in turn to every place which he remembered having
frequented, even to the churchyard, amid whose tombstones, like his own
Andrew Wylie, he had haunted as a boy. Taking stock of himself and his
surroundings, he tells us that he was sensible of change everywhere, but
nowhere more than in his own hopes. 'I saw that a blight had settled on
them, and that my career must in future be circumscribed and sober.'
When it is remembered that he was now touching upon what is called the
prime of life, his tone of disillusion is pathetic.
He had gone to Gibraltar as the emissary of Kirkman Finlay--a Glasgow
merchant, who afterwards bore a spirited part in the Greek War of
Independence--with a view to ascertain the feasibility of smuggling
British goods into Spain. But the victories of the Duke of Wellington in
the Peninsula were unfavourable to his mission, and much against his
will he found himself compelled to return to England, having
accomplished nothing, to seek surgical treatment for a painful malady
from which he was now suffering. Whilst in London he was married, his
wife being the daughter of a Dr Tilloch, editor of the _Philosophical
Magazine_, to which Galt was an occasional contributor. His marriage was
a very happy one, and on the principle, perhaps, that the happiest
countries have no history, his married life is not referred to in the
biographies. In 1814, at the time of the Restoration in France, we find
him visiting Holland and that country, with a view to promote yet
another 'abortive scheme.'
It had now become imperative that he should exert himself, and having,
as one may say, nothing better to do on his return from the Continent,
he resumed the labours of the pen. His first known work of fiction was
the result. It was entitled _The Majolo_, founded upon a Sicilian
superstition, and published anonymously in 1816. It was a favourite with
its author, and has been described as a 'strange flighty production,
enjoyed only by a few peculiar minds.' With it may be mentioned _The
Earthquake_, a three-volume novel written in 1820, and founded on the
Messina earthquake of 1783. The latter, though an extravagant and
ill-constructed story, is said to describe Sicilian habits and
sentiments with accuracy. _The Majolo_ was followed in the same year by
the earlier instalment of a _Life of Benjamin West_, compiled from
materials supplied by the painter himself--a work which was completed
four years later, after his death. Then the eternal commercial scheme
cropped up again. This time it emanated from Glasgow, leading Galt to
move with his family to Finnart, near Greenock, where he spent a period
afterwards characterised as the most unsatisfactory in his whole life.
As usual the scheme in which he was interested failed, and he returned
to London, having accepted employment from the Union Canal Company, in
order to assist the passing through Parliament of a bill promoted by
that body. This being accomplished, he returned to the drudgery of the
desk, and, first and last, turned out a portentous body of hack-work,
the various items of which need not be catalogued. Fortunately for
himself, if not always for his reader, he had the strength and
_insouciance_ under labour of what he physically was, a giant. Among the
tasks performed at this time were the fascinating, if fabulous, Pictures
from English, Scottish, and Irish History; _The Wandering Jew_,
described as a 'conglomerate of history, biography, travel, and
descriptive geography,' and a collection of 'All the Voyages round the
World'--the last issued under the pen-name of Samuel Prior.