By WALLACE BRUCE.
It has been truly said that Walter Scott’s novels have done more to warm
the hearts of the English people toward their northern brethren than
any other influence during the last century. The two races, unlike in
national traditions and social characteristics, differing as to climatic
influence and formation of country, with a blood-stained record since the
days of Keneth Mac Alpine, were not naturally allied, or well prepared
for immediate and lasting friendship. To borrow the language of surgery:
It was not a national break to be easily “knitted,” but a sort of
compound fracture.
For thirty generations English and Scot had literally “glowered” across
the border. Constrained in the narrow island of Britain, they had
struggled like Roman gladiators in a wave-washed Coliseum, from which
there was no escape. In the world’s history there is no other record of
two races, with so many divergent points, and so much ancestral hatred,
solidifying into one harmonious nation; and it is to the glory of Scott
to have contributed to so grand a consummation. “All war,” Bulwer says,
“is a misunderstanding.” It seemed to be the mission of our novelist
to introduce England and Scotland to each other, and to make future
misunderstanding impossible. Some of the volumes and characters, which
we are to consider in this and in the following paper, emphasize and
illustrate this conclusion.
“The Pirate,” next in historic sequence, has little to do with the
history of reigns and dynasties. With the exception of a single
paragraph, which refers incidentally to the commotion between Highlanders
and Lowlanders, between Williamites and Jacobites, one would not dream
that there was such a thing as a government in the world. The reader,
in spite of the warlike title, finds himself in a northern Arcadia. In
the hospitable home of Magnus Troil we have a picture of a Norwegian
Udaller—one of the last survivors, who kept alive the customs of
Scandinavia in the Orkney and Zetland Islands. What Cedric, the Saxon,
was to his people, as a prototype of antique manners in the reign
of Richard, the Lion Hearted, Magnus Troil is to the few surviving
Norwegians at the close of the last century in the stormy islands of
the north. We sit at his board, and hear Sagas rehearsed by fishermen,
who preserved among themselves the ancient Norse tongue. We listen
to the dark romance of other days when the black raven banner ruled
the seas. We are taken back in fancy to moonlit bays, where mermaids
mingle their voices with the moaning waves. The monstrous leviathans
of the deep again seem real, and the sea-snake, with towering head,
girdles with its green folds the misty islands of Shetland. We find
captains negotiating for favorable voyages with weird hags and insane
witches—antique insurance brokers, who were willing to take payment
without giving indemnity. We find in Norna—the wild prophetess—who half
believed her own divinations, a legitimate descendant of the Voluspæ, or
divining women, who, from Hebraic and Delphic times, have wielded power
through centuries of superstition. We find Christian inhabitants of well
governed and hospitable villages, who regard the spoils of the sea, and
castaway wrecks, as kindly dispensations of Providence. We are introduced
to a primitive people still clinging to the belief that a supernatural
race, allied to the fairies, sometimes propitious to mortals, but
more frequently capricious and malevolent, worked below the earth as
artificers of iron and precious metals. We see lovers still pledging
their troth and taking the Promise of Oden at the Standing Stones of
Stennis, and note the patriotism and proud spirit of Minna Troil, as she
responds to her lover’s description of other lands of palm and cocoa,
Fair realms of continual summer,
And fields ever fragrant with flowers.
“No,” she answers, “my own rude country has charms for me, even desolate
as you think it, and depressed as it surely is, which no other land
on earth can offer to me. I endeavor in vain to represent to myself
those visions of trees and of groves, which my eye never saw; but my
imagination can conceive no sight in nature more sublime than these
waves, when agitated by a storm, or more beautiful, than when they come,
as they now do, rolling in calm tranquility to the shore. Not the fairest
scene in a foreign land—not the brightest sunbeam that ever shone upon
the richest landscape, would win my thoughts for a moment from that lofty
rock, misty hill and wide rolling ocean. Haitland is the land of my
deceased ancestors, and of my living father, and in Haitland will I live
and die.”
The Bride of Lammermoor reveals the iniquitous administration of law in
Scotland during the closing years of King William’s reign. The Scottish
vicegerents, raised to power by the strength of faction, had friends
to reward and enemies to humble. The old adage was literally verified:
“Show me the man, and I will show you the law.” It is said that officers
in high stations affected little scruple concerning bribery. “Pieces of
plate, and bags of money, were sent in presents to the King’s counsel, to
influence their conduct, and poured forth,” says a contemporary writer,
“like billets of wood upon the floors, without even the decency of
concealment.” The story opens with a burial and its attendant ceremony;
and this key-note of sadness gives the tone or concert pitch to the
sorrowful drama. The ready wit and crafty subterfuges of the old butler,
Caleb Balderstone, somewhat relieve and lighten up the somberness of the
tragedy. But it is not our purpose to trace the plot, or to point the
moral of the swift and awful punishment which follows pride and injustice.
As in “The Pirate,” we find but one paragraph relating to concurrent
history, so in the “Bride of Lammermoor” we have but one historic glimpse
of passing events, when the Tory party obtained, in the Scottish, as in
the English councils of Queen Anne, a short lived ascendancy. There were
at this time three parties in Scotland: the Unionists, who were destined
providentially to triumph; the Jacobites, who desired the national
independence of the kingdom; the third party, who were waiting to see
the course of events. The reign of William, just completed, was not
favorably regarded by the Scottish nation. His memory was justly honored
in England, and revered by the Protestants of Ireland as a deliverer
from civil and religious servitude. In Scotland he had likewise rendered
great service to the right of worshiping God according to the dictates
of one’s own conscience, but in civil matters he had infringed upon the
prerogatives of the people—an infringement not speedily to be forgotten.
Scott, in his “Tales of a Grandfather,” calls attention to this long
cherished national resentment in the following paragraph: “On the fifth
of November, 1788, when a full century had elapsed after the Revolution,
some friends to constitutional liberty proposed that the return of the
day should be solemnized by an agreement to erect a monument to the
memory of King William, and the services which he had rendered to the
British kingdoms. At this period an anonymous letter appeared in one
of the Edinburgh newspapers, ironically applauding the undertaking,
and proposing as two subjects of the entablature, for the base of the
projected column, the massacre of Glencoe, and the distresses of the
Scottish colonies at Darien. The proposal was abandoned as soon as the
insinuation was made public.”
When Queen Anne came to the throne it was thought prudent to make some
provision which would insure a Protestant government for all time to
Britain. The English Parliament therefore passed an Act of Succession
in June, 1700: “Settling the crown, on the failure of Queen Anne
and her issue, upon the grand-daughter of King James the First, of
England—Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, and her descendants. Queen
Anne, and her statesmanlike adviser, Godolphin, saw the necessity of
uniting Scotland in this agreement; but the Scottish people complained
that they were not only required to surrender their public rights,
according to the terms proposed, but also to yield them up to the very
nation who had been most malevolent to them in all respects; who had been
their constant enemies during a thousand years of almost continual war;
and who, even since they had been united under the same crown, had shown
in the massacre of Glencoe, and the disasters of Darien, at what a slight
price they held the lives and rights of their northern neighbors.”
“The Tale of the Black Dwarf” is related to the time of this fierce
discussion in Scotland, as to the adoption or rejection of this proposed
union; when mobs and rabbles crowded High Street; when the hall of
meeting, contrary to the privileges of Edinburgh, was surrounded by
guards and soldiery; when the debaters were often “in the form of a
Polish Diet, with their swords in their hands, or at least their hands
on their swords.” After a vain struggle the Scottish commissioners were
compelled to submit to an incorporating union, and on the twenty-second
of April the Parliament of Scotland adjourned forever. For the moment
all parties were indignant. Papists, Prelatists, and Presbyterians
were united in the common feeling that the country had been treated
with injustice. Lord Belhaven, in a celebrated speech, which made the
strongest impression on the people, declared that he saw, in prophetic
vision, “The peers of Scotland, whose ancestors had raised tribute in
England, now walking in the Courts of Requests, like so many English
attorneys, laying aside their swords, lest self-defense should be called
murder—he saw the Scottish barons with their lips padlocked to avoid the
penalties of unknown laws—he saw the Scottish lawyers struck mute and
confounded at being subjected to the intricacies and technical jargon
of an unknown jurisprudence—he saw the merchants excluded from trade by
the English monopolies—the artisans ruined for want of custom—the gentry
reduced to indigence—the lower ranks to starvation and beggary. ‘But
above all, my lord,’ he continued, ‘I think I see our ancient mother
Caledonia, like Cæsar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully
looking around her, covering herself with her royal mantle, awaiting the
fatal blow, and breathing out her last with the exclamation, “And thou
too, my son.”’” These prophetic words made the deepest impression, until
the effect was in some degree dispelled by Lord Marchmount, who rising to
reply, said: “I have been much struck with the noble lord’s vision, but I
conceive that the exposition of it might be given in a few words: I woke,
and behold it was a dream.”
If in these critical times the King of France had kept his promise to
the son of James the Second, or if his Scottish friends had been more
united or possessed a leader of distinguished talent, the House of Stuart
might have repossessed their ancient throne of Scotland. The French
fleet indeed brought the Pretender with an army of five thousand men to
the Frith of Forth, but, frightened by the English fleet, returned to
France without landing. It was an enterprise entirely devoid of spirit,
and the closing chapters of the “Black Dwarf” reveal a pitiful picture
of the apathy of the movement, and the indecision and incapacity of the
Pretender’s adherents.
“Rob Roy” introduces us to the wild fastnesses which lie between Loch
Lomond and Loch Katrine. The state of the country is still unsettled. The
Highlanders have been kept comparatively quiet since the days of King
William by giving pensions to the leading chiefs, upon the principle of
feeding the wilder and fiercer animals in order to keep them tractable;
but, like a rock poised on a precipice, the clans seem ready at an
instant to break loose and precipitate themselves upon the lowlands; the
Jacobites still retain hope of restoring the Stuart line. The Whigs,
continually on the alert, anticipate every movement; the slightest
whisper in Paris is heard at the London Court; it also appeared that
Louis the Fourteenth was nowise disposed to encourage any plot to disturb
the reigning monarch of England; the Pretender hastened to Paris upon
receiving tidings of the death of Queen Anne, but his reception was so
unfavorable that he returned to Lorraine, “with the sad assurance that
the monarch of France was determined to adhere to the treaty of Utrecht,
by an important article of which he had recognized the succession of the
House of Hanover to the Crown of Great Britain.”
George the First landed at Greenwich, September seventeenth, 1714, and
quietly assumed the government; but the seething plot of Macbeth’s
witches was not yet skimmed. The rebellion known as “The Affair of
1715” was organized and guided by the Earl of Mar. The clans were again
in arms, and the Pretender again hailed as king. In the battle of
Sheriffmuir, which followed soon afterward, an outlawed clan whose name
for generations was only mentioned in whisper, “nameless by day” and
fierce through oppression, remained inactive upon the field. They were
ordered by the Earl of Mar to charge the enemy, but the bold chieftain
answered with haughty indifference: “If you can not win without us you
will not with us.” The speaker was Robert Mac Gregor, more generally
known as Rob Roy. Like Robin Hood of England he is said to have been a
kind and gentle robber, who harried the rich and relieved the poor. As
Scott says in his introduction to the romance: “He maintained through
good report and bad report a wonderful degree of importance in popular
recollection. He owed his fame in a great measure to his residing on the
very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning
of the eighteenth century as are usually ascribed to the freebooters
of the middle ages—and that within forty miles of Glasgow, a great
commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus a character like
his, blending the wild virtues, the subtle policy, and unrestrained
license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the
Augustan age of Queen Anne and George the First—the sept of Mac Gregor
claimed a descent from Alpin, King of Scots, who ruled about 787. Hence
their original patronymic is Mac Alpine. They occupied at one period
very extensive possessions in Perthshire and Argyleshire, which they
imprudently continued to hold by the right of the sword. Their neighbors,
the Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane, managed to have this property
engrossed in deeds and charters, which they easily obtained from the
crown.” In plain English, they stole it, and obtained a commission by an
Act of Privy Council in 1563 to pursue the claim with fire and sword.
No wonder that the Mac Gregors came to have little regard for the law
which had little regard for them. In sympathy for the oppressed outlaw,
Wordsworth breaks out in enthusiastic tribute:
Say then that he was wise as brave,
As wise in thought as bold in deed;
For in the principles of things
He sought his moral creed.
Said generous Rob, “What need of books?
Burn all the statutes and their shelves!
They stir us up against our kind,
And worse, against ourselves.
The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind;
With them no strife can last; they live
In peace and peace of mind.
For why? because the good old rule
Sufficeth them; the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”
Blackstone would probably have regarded this as a feeble tenure of
property, and Scott was too good a lawyer to excuse the robber and
blackmailer on such primitive and poetic principles. He puts a more
natural and sensible excuse in the mouth of the honest bailie, Nicol
Jarvie: “Robin was anes a weel-doing, pains-taking drover, as ye wad see
amang ten thousand. It was a pleasure to see him in his belted plaid and
brogues, wi’ his target at his back, and claymore and dirk at his belt.
And he was baith civil and just in his dealings; and if he thought his
chapman had made a hard bargain, he would gie him back five shillings out
o’ the pund sterling. But the times came hard, and Rob was venturesome,
and the creditors, mair especially some grit neighbors o’ his, grippit to
his living and land; and they say his wife was turned out o’ the house
to the hillside, and sair misguided to the boot. Weel, Rob cam hame, and
fand desolation, God pity us! where he left plenty; he looked east, west,
south, north, and saw neither hauld nor hope—neither beild nor shelter,
sae he e’en pu’d the bonnet ower his brow, belted the broadsword to his
side, took to the brae-side, and became a broken man.”
He had indeed suffered, and the harsh treatment which his wife had
received from the soldiery was enough to have roused a less ferocious man
to revenge. Her spirit seems to have been cast in the same mould, and
Scott presents her in heroic guise, assuming the command of the clan in
her husband’s absence. “Stand,” she said, with a commanding tone to the
English soldiers, “and tell me what ye seek in Mac Gregor’s country?”
“She wore her plaid, not drawn around her head and shoulders, as is the
fashion of the women in Scotland, but disposed around her body, as the
Highland soldiers wear theirs. She had a man’s bonnet, with a feather in
it, an unsheathed sword in her hand, and a pair of pistols at her girdle.”
“What seek ye here?” she asked again of Captain Thornton, who had
himself advanced to reconnoiter. “We seek the outlaw, Rob Roy Mac Gregor
Campbell,” answered the officer, “and make no war on women; therefore
offer no vain opposition to the king’s troops, and assure yourself of
civil treatment.”
“Ay,” retorted the Amazon, “I am no stranger to your tender mercies. You
have left me neither name nor fame—my mother’s bones will shrink aside in
their grave when mine are laid beside them—ye have left me neither house
nor hold, blanket nor bedding, cattle to feed us, or flocks to clothe
us—ye have taken from us all—all! The very names of our ancestors have ye
taken away, and now ye come for our lives.”
There is another character which lives long and pleasantly in the
reader’s memory—the warm hearted bumptious bailie, Nicol Jarvie, a
Scotchman profoundly impressed with a sense of his own extraordinary
ability, who never forgot to quote from his father, the deacon, and never
lost his appreciation of the “siller.” Scott has drawn this character
with marvelous art. It stands out like a living portrait, and the reader
loves him because he is as brave as he is canny. The scene in the
Highland inn, where he found his sword rusted fast in the scabbard, and
seized the red hot poker for a weapon, is at once dramatic and humorous.
The shifting of the scene of the story from the north of England to
Glasgow, and thence to the Highlands, is naturally done, and without
creaking of machinery. We have just enough of the villain Rashley and
his nefarious plotting to give the continuous interest of uncertainty;
and Die Vernon (pardon me, reader, for compressing her in a closing
paragraph), with ready wit and sterling sense, flits about like a
hoydenish angel—but in spite of eccentricities a ministering angel of
peace and comfort. In the happiness of Frank Osbaldistone, who wins her
hand in the closing chapter, we forget the defeat of the Jacobite party,
or the fact that the Pretender is again an exile from the throne of his
fathers.
“The Heart of Midlothian” opens with a description of the celebrated
Porteous Mob at Edinburgh, in 1736. Two smugglers, Wilson and Robertson,
who were reduced to poverty, robbed the collector to make good their
own loss. They were arrested, tried, and condemned to death. As the
Parliament was endeavoring to make the income of Scotland a source of
revenue to the common exchequer, smuggling was not looked upon by the
people as a very heinous offense. In fact, it was almost universal in
every port north of the Tweed during the reigns of George the First
and George the Second. The people, unaccustomed to duties, considered
them in the light of national oppression; and the sentence of death
pronounced against Wilson and Robertson was considered severe and
unjust. The prisoners attempted an escape, but were discovered. The
day of execution came. It was customary for persons sentenced to death
to attend preparatory service at the kirk. On this occasion the church
was thronged. Wilson, who was a very powerful man, at the conclusion
of the exercises seized two of the guards with his hands, at the same
time catching the collar of the third with his teeth. He cried to
his companion to run, and the crowd, whose sympathies were with the
prisoners, allowed Robertson to mix with the people and escape. Wilson
was executed. The City Guard, under the command of Porteous, was insulted
by the citizens. The Guard fired upon them with deadly aim. Porteous
was tried and condemned for murder. King George at this time was on the
Continent, and Queen Caroline, acting in his absence, sent a reprieve
to Porteous. Edinburgh was now thoroughly aroused. They asked if a poor
smuggler, accused of stealing, should hang without a reprieve, while
a hard hearted and despised man, who shot down the people of their
chief city without mercy, should go scathless. A mob, apparently of the
better class of citizens, too orderly to need even a leader, attacked
the Tolbooth. Porteous was taken by force and hung at night in the
Grassmarket.
The Queen was incensed. “A bill was prepared and brought into Parliament
for the punishment of the city of Edinburgh, in a very vindictive spirit,
proposing to abolish the city charter, demolish the city walls, take away
the town guard, and declare the provost incapable of holding any office
of public trust.” Scotland was fortunate at that time in possessing
a great leader, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a
statesman and a soldier were generally admitted; he was not without
ambition, but “without the illness that attends it”—that irregularity
of thought and aim which often excites great men to grasp the means of
raising themselves to power, at the risk of throwing a kingdom into
confusion. Pope has distinguished him as
“Argyle, the state’s whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.”
Soaring above the petty distinctions of faction, his voice was raised,
whether in office or opposition, for those measures which were at once
just and lenient. His independent and haughty mode of expressing himself
in Parliament, and acting in public, were ill calculated to attract royal
favor; but his high military talents enabled him, during the memorable
year 1715, to render such services to the House of Hanover, as, perhaps,
were too great to be either acknowledged or repaid. His spirited and
witty reply to the queen was quoted and chuckled over from Berwick to
Inverness: “Sooner than submit to such an insult as this Porteous Mob,”
said the Queen to the Duke, “I will make Scotland a hunting field.” “In
that case,” answered Argyle, “I will take leave of your Majesty, and go
down to my own country to get my hounds ready.”
His speech in Parliament in reference to the dismantling of Edinburgh
reveals the straightforward character of the man. He retorted upon the
Chancellor, Lord Hardwick, the insinuation that he had stated himself in
this case rather as a party than as a judge: “I appeal,” said Argyle,
“to the House—to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy
of being a jobber or a partisan. Have I been a briber of votes? a buyer
of boroughs? the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of
any party? Consider my life, examine my actions in the field and in the
cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attach to my honor. I
have shown myself the friend of my country—the loyal subject of my king.
I am ready to do so again, without an instant’s regard to the frowns
or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with
indifference for either. I have given my reasons for opposing this bill,
and have made it appear that it is repugnant to the international treaty
of union, to the liberty of Scotland, and, reflectively, to that of
England, to common justice, to common sense, and to the public interest.
Shall the metropolis of Scotland, the capital of an independent nation,
the residence of a long line of monarchs, by whom that noble city was
graced and dignified—shall such a city, for the fault of an unknown body
of rioters, be deprived of its honors and privileges—its gates and its
guards? And shall a native Scotsman tamely behold the havoc? I glory, my
lords, in opposing such unjust rigor, and reckon it my dearest pride and
honor to stand up in defense of my native country, while thus laid open
to undeserved shame and unjust spoliation.” In this tribute of Scott,
and this speech, which he has recorded in one of his best known novels,
Argyle stands out as a noble representative of a family powerful through
centuries; ay, so thoroughly revered to-day in Scotland that an old
Scotch woman on a comparatively recent wedding morn remarked that the
Queen must be a happy woman noo, since her daughter has married the son
of Argyle.
So much for the historic setting of this well known story, which makes
the reader acquainted with Arthur’s Seat, with High Street, the Old
Tolbooth, the Grassmarket and the Church of St. Giles. We see in the
unbending and uncompromising character of David Deans a descendant of
the Covenanters, who could hardly understand how a Presbyterian could
acknowledge a government that did not acknowledge the Solemn League
and Covenant. We see his house made desolate by the misfortune and
misguidance of his daughter Effie. We trace the unswerving rectitude
of Jeanie’s character, destined to triumph at last over all obstacles.
We witness the dramatic scene in the court room, and read her eloquent
appeal before the Queen in the great park of Richmond. We go with her
through strange villages, and over solitary heaths. But through insult
and disaster we find her serenely relying upon that Providence which she
knew was all-kind and all-powerful.
She accomplished her mission and lived to enjoy the blessedness of well
doing. And Effie, ah! poor Effie! she inherited wealth and possession,
but lived to see her husband shot by a Gypsy band; while her son, reared
among outlaws, became a wanderer, lost to the view of herself and the
world. In the contrast of these sisters’ lives we recognize the truth of
the oft-quoted lines:
“’Tis better to be lowly born
And range with humble livers in content,
Than wear a golden sorrow.”
Scott closes this dramatic story with these words: “This tale will not be
told in vain, if it shall be found to illustrate the great truth, that
guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real
happiness; that the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their
commission, and like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps
of the malefactor; and that the paths of virtue, though seldom those of
worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.”