literary work, constitutes dull reading; fortunately a happier period is
now reached. In 1820, Mr Blackwood accepted _The Ayrshire Legatees_ for
his magazine, and this book proved to be Galt's first real literary
success. Perhaps it is also the first deliberate attempt in our
literature to delineate, for their own sake, contemporary Scottish
manners and character. It will be seen that the mechanism of the story,
though of the simplest, is well contrived for supplying to these the
necessary relief. Dr Pringle, the minister of a secluded rural parish in
Ayrshire, having to his surprise been appointed residuary legatee of a
wealthy Indian cousin deceased, betakes himself to London to attend to
his affairs in person. He is accompanied by his wife and family--the
latter consisting of a son just called to the Scottish bar, and a
daughter. The Scottish characters are thus detached against an English
background, and the letters in which they describe their experiences in
the metropolis to their several correspondents at home make up the
staple of the book. The characters of this little group--of the simple,
but truly pious and kind-hearted minister, with his sturdy
presbyterianism and quaint traditional phraseology of the pulpit; of
that notable managing woman his spouse, like whom there was not another
within the jurisdiction of the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr; and of the
really able and acute young advocate, with his Scottish magniloquence,
and his pose as a man of the world even whilst betraying his
inexperience--all these are well conceived and well drawn, their
unconscious self-revelation being cleverly and naturally managed. The
high-flown and romantic young lady, who so soon adapts herself to her
new circumstances, though a pleasing enough portrait, is less
distinctively Scottish than the rest. Fragments of narrative
interpolated among the letters serve to introduce us to the audience
before whom these are read out, and at the same time to present a second
series of slighter, though not less racy, character-sketches. The hint
of the book, with its unanswered correspondence, is obviously drawn from
_Humphrey Clinker_, and, as in that masterpiece, real persons and
events--such as the funeral of George the Third and the trial of Queen
Caroline, Braham the singer and Sir Francis Burdett--supply much of the
epistolary subject-matter. As in Smollett's novel, too, the same
subjects are at times discussed in turn by the different writers--a plan
which, though it serves the purpose of contrasting character, is not
entirely free from objection.
_The Ayrshire Legatees_ was followed in the next year by the yet more
original _Annals of the Parish_. The history of the growth of this book
is identical with that of _Waverley_--it had been begun years before,
laid aside, and then resumed and completed--only that Galt has told us
that his reason for discontinuing it was that he had been assured that a
Scotch novel had no chance of success--an assurance which the case of
_Waverley_ has proved untrue. The _Annals_ stands in somewhat the same
relation to Scott's novel as does a Dutch to an Italian masterpiece, a
tale of Crabbe's to an Elizabethan tragedy. It is given out as an
account of the ministry of Micah Balwhidder, parish priest of Dalmailing
(Dreghorn), written by himself. Mr Balwhidder had happened to be
inducted on the very day on which King George the Third came to the
throne; and, irrespective of its merit as a work of fiction, his
narrative possesses real historical value as a record of the progress of
a rural parish during the half-century succeeding that event. Indeed,
with some omissions, the book might almost be printed as an appendix to
the old Statistical Account of the parishes of Scotland, drawn up by the
ministers. When rumours of great events--such as the American War of
Independence or the French Revolution--reach the secluded hamlet, their
sound is softened and their influence subdued. But the records of such
local matters as floods and bad seasons, improvement of land, making of
roads and planting of hedges, development of mineral resources, and so
on, are also in their degree the stuff of which history is made, and as
here set down they are worthy the attention of an Arthur Young. Then we
are incidentally informed of the fluctuations of prices, of the rise of
new industries, and the change of fashions--information which to the
ordinary novel-reader would appear dry, but for the human and personal
interest by which it is pervaded. For the history of the parishioners is
interwoven with that of the parish, and over the whole is cast the charm
of the kindly Doric and the simple and guileless personality of the
minister. In theory an uncompromising stickler for orthodoxy of
doctrine, and a terror to evil-doers in the abstract, Mr Balwhidder's
instinct is wiser than his creed, and where the two are at variance the
stronger insensibly gains the day. The tone of his fragmentary narrative
is of itself proof sufficient of his fatherly interest in his villagers.
And among those villagers, or at least within the narrow bounds of his
parish, he can exhibit a sufficiently motley and picturesque variety in
character and the experience of life. First of all we have Lord
Eaglesham, the kind landlord, genial gentleman and free liver; Mr
Cayenne, the irascible business-man, whose bark is worse than his bite,
and Lady Macadam, the flighty and high-handed Great Lady of the old
school. Then there is Mrs Malcolm, the pattern widow left with a large
young family, her son Charles, the frank sailor, and her handsome
daughter Kate; old Nanse Banks, the school-mistress, and her more
advanced successor, Miss Sabrina Hookey; Colin Mavis, the youthful poet;
the labourer who deserts his slatternly wife and family in order to
enlist; the 'naturals,' Jenny Gaffaw and her fantastic ill-fated
daughter; pious Mizy Mirkland, and many more. And if these figures be
not drawn life-size and set direct in the reader's eye, it is for the
sake of artistic keeping: the book is deliberately pitched in a lower
key than the ordinary novel, and its persons are shown to us, as it
were, afar off. But, none the less, every history is life-like, every
character consistent within itself--living as with the life of those
real people who flourished before our time, and of whom we have all of
us heard in fireside stories as children. In this respect the author's
aim is perfectly realised, and his work is a perfect work of art.
As is the _Annals_ to ministerial and parochial life, so is _The
Provost_ (published in the following year) to the life of magistrates
and municipalities. Yet a greater contrast to the ingenuous pastor of
Dalmailing than that presented by the long-headed Provost of the Royal
Burgh of Gudetown it would be almost impossible to conceive. Either of
the two, in fact, presents a happy illustration of the respective shares
of personality and environment in the formation of character: each is in
part God's work, in part the world's. But it is in the magistrate that
the world has the larger share. Provost Pawkie, who is Galt's
masterpiece in the delineation of character, is worldly wisdom
incarnate. Entering public life at a period when jobbery and corruption
are rife, he simply takes the world as he finds it, and turns it to the
best account he can. Only, as nature has endowed him with a sharper wit
than his brother bailies and councillors, he is enabled to tread the
paths of policy to much better advantage than they, whilst in the midst
of very questionable transactions retaining the appearance of clean
hands. A fortunate geniality of temper, which is partly the cause and
partly the result of his prosperity, keeps him even at the worst from
entirely forfeiting our regard; while, strange as it may seem, the
warmth and rightness of his feeling in public or private matters where
his own interest is not concerned prove that his heart remains
unperverted by the element in which he works. As time goes on, the
public life around him becomes purer, and he himself keeps pace with the
times. Is this because he has seen the error of his ways, and like all
people who are good in the main grows better as he grows older; or is it
merely the result of policy trimming his sails to catch the popular
breeze? Perhaps the balance of the doubt is in his favour; yet assuredly
he is far too clear-sighted to persevere in methods which have become
publicly discredited. Galt's artistic instinct was too true to allow
him to make perfectly clear to us all the workings of so subtle a mind;
but the worthy cloth-mercer himself stands before us to the life,
shrewd, portly, and consequential, with the redeeming twinkle of a dry
Scotch humour in his eye and a racy Scotticism on his lip.
As in the _Annals of the Parish_, so in _The Provost_ a chronicle of
external progress forms the background to the narrator's experiences,
and in the latter case this chronicle deals with improvements in the
burgh, sanitary enactments, paving and lighting, repairing the Tolbooth
steeple, and so forth. These affairs, though in their own way typical
also, are of narrower interest than the changes in a countryside, but
their inferiority in this respect is more than made up for by such
admirable passages of interpolated narrative as, for instance, those
which describe the execution of Jean Gaisling for child-murder, the
Windy Yule with its disasters on the sea and heart-break on land, the
duel, and the visit of the press-gang, or, in humorous vein, the fracas
with the strolling players in the change-house, and the incident of the
supposed French spy.
Few writers have possessed a greater native gift of story-telling than
Galt, and few, it must alas! be added have used their gift more
carelessly. In the very slightest of his numberless tales, traces of
this gift are apt to appear, and perhaps in none of his writings is it
seen to greater advantage than in the incidental reminiscences of _The
Provost_. But, in fact, this little book possesses the merit, so rare
among our author's writings, of perfection as an artistic whole. In
reviewing Galt we are too apt to find ourselves driven to the naive
conclusion of the man in the anecdote, 'that the work would have been
better if the craftsman had taken more pains.' But in this case he
either _did_ take more trouble than usual, or else, which is more
likely, his inspiration was better sustained.
The period now under consideration may be defined as that of Galt's
masterpieces; yet even now a slight decline in his workmanship begins to
be manifest. In the same year with _The Provost_, he published _The
Steamboat_, and _Sir Andrew Wylie_, thus already betraying a tendency to
over-write. _The Steamboat_ consists mainly of an account of the
experiences of one Thomas Duffle, burgess of the Saltmarket, at the
Coronation of George the Fourth--which is described in detail--the said
experiences being couched in the racy autobiographical style already
familiar to readers of _The Provost_, and relieved by a series of short
stories supposed to be related by Duffle's fellow-travellers. In many of
these stories--and notably in those told by the Sailor Boy and the
Soldier's Mother, in _Deucalion of Kentucky_ and _The Dumbie's
Son_--Galt's powers are seen to advantage. Unfortunately their effect is
marred by the singularly ill-conceived and irritating device on the part
of the author of 'leaving off at the most interesting point.' In a
single instance this trick might have been tolerated, but the reader
loses patience when he finds it repeated again and again. This, however,
is but a single example out of many which might be cited from Galt's
writings of his propensity to ill-timed joking, and his seeming
inability to take his own work seriously.
It has been asserted that, of all Galt's novels, _Sir Andrew Wylie_ was
the most popular south of the Tweed. If this was so, its popularity was
due far less to intrinsic desert than to the accident that a great part
of the action of the story takes place in England, whilst the principal
actors--among whom is included a portrait of Lord Blessington--instead
of belonging to the Scottish lower or middle classes, are members of the
English aristocracy. A success based upon such grounds as these has of
course no real value, and besides being of tedious length, the novel in
question falls in other ways far short of the author's best
achievements. Andrew Wylie is intended as the type of the canny young
Scot who goes up to London and makes his fortune. We see him first as a
queer 'auld-farrant' urchin, and then as an eident thrifty youth. He
fully means to get on, he has the sharpest of eyes to see on which side
his bread is buttered, and, above all, he has none of the ordinary
failings of youth, and sows no wild oats. In fact he is rich in all
those serviceable qualities of which perhaps the perfect exemplar in
real life is no Scot but the Yankee Benjamin Franklin, and he has a
quaint vein of native humour thrown in. And yet, notwithstanding so many
qualities and so few infirmities, he is no prig, but, like Franklin,
compels not only our respect, but our liking. So far the author has done
well. But when he goes on to describe 'Wheelie's' rise in the world, we
feel that the means of his advancement are altogether too phenomenal.
With such a friend as the Earl to help him, what young man might not
have risen? But this is only a single instance of his luck. Throughout
his career, the hero meets with the consistent and amazing good-fortune
of a prince in a fairy-tale, making conquests at first sight not only of
lackadaisical Riversdales and scatter-brain Dashingwells, but of the
King and of Pitt himself. And so, as the story progresses, its
improbability increases, until in the scenes between Andrew and the
dowager, and Andrew and the baronet, it becomes flatly and absolutely
incredible. In this particular--I mean in the entire disproportion
between the effect produced by the hero upon the reader and that which
he is supposed to exercise on the other characters in the book--the
story shares the fundamental defect of another Scottish novel, the work
of a much more pains-taking hand--_The Little Minister_.
Galt's next publication of importance was _The Entail_--a novel of which
the theme is 'gear,' a Scotsman's pertinacity in gathering it, and his
tenacity in holding it when gathered--a matchless subject for the
illustration of national character. And in this case the mere desire of
acquisition is elevated and to some extent humanised by being associated
with another characteristic passion of the Scot--to wit, the pride of
family. The story turns upon the disinheriting, for estate reasons, by
Claud Walkinshaw, Laird of Grippy, of his eldest son, and on the events
which spring therefrom. Walkinshaw, who is the representative of an old
but ruined family, has been brought up in penury, but at an early age
has set before himself as his aim in life the reconquest of the family
estates. Towards this object every step he takes is directed; in its
interest every secondary consideration is sacrificed. His youth has been
spent in haggling as a pedlar, and when, having by his own exertions
established himself in trade, he decides to marry, he goes, of course,
'where money is.' His firstborn, Charles, is his favourite son; but even
paternal affection must give way before the ruling passion. Watty, the
second son (a masterly sketch) has been a 'natural' from his birth. But
he is heir to the estate of his maternal grandfather, and it is only
through a transaction depending on the possession of this property that
a Walkinshaw can be reinstated in possession of the undiminished
Walkinshaw estates. To these circumstances Charles is without hesitation
sacrificed, and his father's dream seems at last to be realised. But,
though he has gained his point, the old man finds himself further than
ever from contentment. The stars in their courses seem to fight against
him, the consequences of his unjust act recoil upon him, and he is even
driven to believe himself an object of heavenly vengeance. Thus--in his
character as a father visited by retributive justice through his
children--Claud Walkinshaw may be considered the Pere Goriot of Scottish
fiction. And so far the book is fine; but unfortunately, from this
point--about midway--the level of excellence is not sustained. In the
midst of his woes, Claud is carried off by a shock of paralysis; but the
evil he has done lives after him, thus supplying material for the
remainder of the novel. But the calculating business-man, the youngest
of the three brothers, who now succeeds to the role of principal
character, is colourless in comparison with his father. The writing,
too, though relieved by the delightful sallies of the 'Leddy
Grippy'--one of the very best of Scotchwomen in fiction--becomes diffuse
to such a point that we wax impatient for the expiation of the old man's
misdeeds by his disinterested grandson. Both Scott and Byron are said to
have read this book three times, but the modern reader will probably
rest content with a single perusal.
Its shortcomings notwithstanding, _The Entail_ was favourably received,
and by this time the author is said to have been so elated by success as
to boast that his literary resources were far greater than those of
Scott, or any other contemporary.[6] Whether in deliberate rivalry or
not, certain it is that, by turning his attention to the historical
romance, he now entered the field which the Wizard had made particularly
his own. In the meantime he had taken up his abode at Esk Grove, near
Musselburgh, where, in possible emulation of Abbotsford, he is said to
have contemplated building a 'veritable fortress,' exactly in the
fashion of the oldest times of rude warfare.
The results of his bold literary enterprise were seen in _Ringan
Gilhaize_, _The Spaewife_, and _Rothelan_--the first two published in
1823, the third in the following year. In an article from the pen of Mr
Francis Espinasse, in the Dictionary of National Biography, these books
are disposed of as 'three forgotten novels'; but the description lacks
discrimination. Forgotten, for aught I know to the contrary, they may
be; but at least one of the three deserved a happier fate. _Ringan
Gilhaize_ is, in fact, a very fine historical romance, and one, it may
be said in passing, which would well repay resuscitation at the hands of
some enterprising publisher. A happy instinct had directed Galt in his
selection of a period which is certainly the most important, as it is
one of the two most romantically interesting, in Scottish history. For
though the War of Independence be the darling theme of Scottish
patriotism, what I may call the War of Religious Liberty enjoys the
two-fold advantage of a wider sympathy and a deeper intellectual
significance. Galt has skilfully conducted us through the entire period
of this struggle, for his story, opening during the regency of Marie of
Lorraine, concludes with the battle of Killiecrankie, whilst of
intermediate historical events which bear upon the main issue, the
greater number receive some notice in passing. Of course the danger of
such a proceeding is lest fiction become subordinate to fact, thus
making the main interest of the book an historical rather than an
imaginative one. But this danger Galt has cleverly avoided. His method
is to bring bygone times home to us through the imagination--as, for
instance, in the scene of the gathering of devout persons in Gilhaize's
house, or the open air preaching near Lasswade--whilst at the same time
quickening our interest in historical occurrences--such as the battle of
Drumclog, or the march of the Covenanting forces to Edinburgh--by
causing his imaginary characters to participate in them. This, I
conceive to be the true philosophy of the historical romance. And into
the spirit of the particular movement with which he deals, it must be
acknowledged that Galt has penetrated further than Scott. For the true
aim of the writer of a novel treating of these times in Scotland was
obviously to disregard such a non-essential as sporadic insincerity, to
penetrate the outer crust of dourness and intolerance, and whilst
maintaining the balance of perfect fairness, to compel the reader to
sympathise with the best of the Covenanters, not only in their bitter
resentment of cruel wrongs, but in their most earnestly cherished and
loftiest ideals. And this, which Scott did not care to do, Galt has
accomplished, in virtue of which achievement his book is entitled to
rank as the epic of the Scottish religious wars.
In attempting to embrace within the compass of a single novel the one
hundred and thirty years or so of his period, the author of _Ringan
Gilhaize_ was certainly assaying a very hazardous experiment. For one
thing, of course it was necessary that he should change his hero more
than once, and the risk by so doing of dispersing and losing the
reader's interest was immense. But whilst by taking the family instead
of the individual as his unit, he has preserved artistic consistency,
from this danger he has escaped unscathed. For from the time of the
mission of Michael Gilhaize to St Andrews, and his adventures with the
wanton Madam Kilspinnie, to that of the death of Claverhouse by the hand
of the half-deranged or 'illuminated' Ringan, the interest of the story
never flags. It abounds in fascinating passages of adventure--such as
the journey of the elder Gilhaize to Eglinton, or the wanderings of
Ringan and Mr Witherspoon after the fight at Rullion Green; whilst,
having already referred to an advantage possessed by Galt over Scott, I
may here add that there are passages in this book evincing a literary
style, an intensity, and a delicacy with which Sir Walter could not
compete. Such is the passage describing Gilhaize's reflections whilst
waiting, in the grey of morning, at the gate of Lord James Stuart's
house; the passage which follows, describing the spreading of the news
that John Knox has arrived in Edinburgh, and that which describes the
dalliance of the Queen of Scots with the Reformer on Loch Leven shore.
That Scott was a far greater writer, as he was a far happier man than
his contemporary, no reviewer in his senses would venture to deny. But
that Galt possessed qualities which Scott did not possess, though less
freely acknowledged, is not less true. When the number and extent of his
works is considered, it must be owned that the occasions upon which Galt
puts forth his full powers, or allows us to praise him without reserve,
are sadly few. All the more reason, therefore, that when he does give
us such an opportunity, we should avail ourselves of it with courage and
without stint! It now only remains to add that the book is written in
clear and terse old Scots, to which a dash of the peculiar phraseology
of the Reformed Church adds a touch of quaintness.
'Surely something must have come over Galt!' is one's involuntary
exclamation on reading his next book, for a greater falling off from
_Ringan Gilhaize_ than _The Spaewife_ can scarcely be imagined. Here
even the writing is slipshod; but, alas! these ups and downs are but too
characteristic of the author. Like the former work, in the cabals and
factions of the rival claimants--or, more properly, aspirants--to the
Crown of Scotland during the reign of James the First, _The Spaewife_
has a promising and powerful theme. But of the treatment of this theme
it may be said that it can boast scarcely one redeeming feature. The
conduct of the tale is involved and obscure, and abounds in incidents
and dialogues which, while tedious and perplexing in themselves, serve
neither to illustrate character nor to advance action. Indeed, the
reader is heavily taxed to remember the motives and the relations with
one another of the different persons presented. Nor is the book
appreciably stronger in the department of character-drawing. Upon the
poet-king, the romantic ill-fated lover of Joanna Beaufort, one would
suppose that a novelist might delight to lavish his best art. Instead of
this, the King and Queen of the story are mere blanks. Catherine Douglas
is no better, and such originality in character-sketching as the book
can show--and that is not much--is to be found in the portraits of
Glenfruin, the deep though simple-seeming Highland chieftain, and of the
timorous and vacillating Earl of Athol.