In 1775 we find Miss Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the
circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak
novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty
years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost
from all worldly concerns of dressing or dinner over the pages of
_Udolpho_," and Isabella Thorpe is collecting in her pocket-book
the "horrid" titles of romances from the German. In 1814,
apparently, the vogue of the sentimental, the scandalous, the
mysterious, and the horrid still persisted. Scott, in the
introductory chapter to _Waverley_, disrespectfully passes in
review the modish novels, which, as it proved, were doomed to be
supplanted by the series of romances he was then beginning:
"Had I announced in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, A Tale
of Other Days,' must not every novel reader have
anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
of which the eastern wing has been long uninhabited,
and the keys either lost or consigned to the care of
some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps
about the middle of the second volume were doomed to
guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts?
Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried
in my very title page? and could it have been possible
to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce
any scene more lively than might be produced by the
jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the
garrulous narrative of the heroine's
_fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of
blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's
hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance
from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image
forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and
Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls,
caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and
dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my
work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of
auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace of her
solitary hours, which she fortunately always finds
means of transporting from castle to cottage, though
she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of a
two-pair-of-stairs window and is more than once
bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without
any guide but a blowsy peasant girl, whose jargon she
can scarcely understand? Or again, if my _Waverley_ had
been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou not,
gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch
of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private
scandal ... a heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero
from the Barouche Club or the Four in Hand, with a set
of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen
Anne Street, East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow
Street Office?"
Yet Scott himself had once trodden in these well-worn paths of
romance. In the general preface to the collected edition of 1829,
wherein he seeks to "ravel out his weaved-up follies," he refers
to "a tale of chivalry planned thirty years earlier in the style
of _The Castle of Otranto_, with plenty of Border characters and
supernatural incident." His outline of the plot and a fragment of
the story, which was to be entitled _Thomas the Rhymer_, are
printed as an appendix to the preface. Scott intended to base his
story on an ancient legend, found in Reginald Scot's _Discovery
of Witchcraft_, concerning the horn and sword of Thomas of
Hercildoune. Cannobie Dick, a jolly horse-cowper, was led by a
mysterious stranger through an opening in a hillside into a long
range of stables. In every stall stood a coal-black horse, and by
every horse lay a knight in coal-black armour, with a drawn sword
in his hand. All were as still and silent as if hewn out of
marble. At the far end of a gloomy hall, illuminated, like the
halls of Eblis, only by torches, there lay, upon an ancient
table, a horn and a sword. A voice bade Dick try his courage,
warning him that much depended upon his first choosing either the
horn or the sword. Dick, whose stout heart quailed before the
supernatural terrors of the hall, attempted to blow the horn
before unsheathing the sword. At the first feeble blast the
warriors and their steeds started to life, the knights fiercely
brandishing their weapons and clashing their armour. Dick made a
fruitless attempt to snatch the sword. After a mysterious voice
had pronounced his doom he was hurled out of the hall by a
whirlwind of irresistible fury. He told his story to the
shepherds, who found him dying on the cold hill side.
Regarding this legend as "an unhappy foundation for a prose
story," Scott did not complete his fragment, which in style and
treatment is not unlike the Gothic experiments of Mrs. Barbauld
and Dr. Nathan Drake. Such a story as that of the magic horn and
sword might have been told in the simple words that occur
naturally to a shepherd, "warmed to courage over his third
tumbler," like the old peasant to whom Stevenson entrusts the
terrible tale of _Thrawn Janet_, or to Wandering Willie, who
declared:
"I whiles mak a tale serve the turn among the country
bodies, and I have some fearsome anes, that mak the
auld carlines shake on the settle, and bits o' bairns
skirl on their minnies out frae their beds."
The personality of the narrator, swayed by the terror of his
tale, would have cast the spell that Scott's carefully framed
sentences fail to create. Another of Scott's _disjecta membra_,
composed at the end of the eighteenth century, is the opening of
a story called _The Lord of Ennerdale_, in which the family of
Ratcliffe settle down before the fire to listen to a story
"savouring not a little of the marvellous." As Lady Ratcliffe and
her daughters
"had heard every groan and lifted every trapdoor in
company with the noted heroine of Udolpho, had
valorously mounted _en croupe_ behind the horseman of
Prague through all his seven translators, had followed
the footsteps of Moor through the forests of Bohemia,"
and were even suspected of an acquaintance with Lewis's _Monk_,
Scott was setting himself no easy task when he undertook to
thrill these seasoned adventurers. After this prologue, which
leads one to expect a banquet of horrors, only a very brief
fragment of the story is forthcoming. Though he gently derides
Lady Ratcliffe's literary tastes, Scott, too, was an admirer of
Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, and had been so entranced by Burger's
_Lenore_ that he attempted an English version.[111] It was after
hearing Taylor's translation of this ballad read aloud that he
uttered his dismal ejaculation: "I wish to heaven I could get a
skull and two crossbones"--a whim that was speedily gratified.
He, too, like Lady Ratcliffe, had read _Die Räuber_; and he
translated Goethe's _Gëtz von Berlichingen_. He delighted in
Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ (1801) where the verse gallops through
horrors so fearful that the "lights in the chamber burn blue,"
and himself contributed to the collection. He wrote "goblin
dramas"[112] as terrific in intention, but not in performance, as
Lewis's _Castle Spectre_ and Maturin's _Bertram_. His Latin
call-thesis dealt with the kind of subject "Monk" Lewis or
Harrison Ainsworth or Poe might have chosen--the disposal of the
dead bodies of persons legally executed. Scott continually added
to his store of quaint and grisly learning both from popular
tradition and from a library of such works as Bovet's
_Pandemonium, or the Devil's Cloyster Opened_, Sinclair's
_Satan's Invisible World Discovered_, whence he borrowed the name
of the jackanapes in _Wandering Willie's Tale_, and the
horse-shoe frown for the brow of the Redgauntlets, Heywood's
_Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels_, Joseph Taylor's _History of
Apparitions_, from which he quotes in _Woodstock_. He was
familiar with all the niceties of ghostly etiquette; he could
distinguish at a glance the various ranks and orders of demons
and spirits; he was versed in charms and spells; he knew exactly
how a wizard ought to be dressed. This lore not only stood him in
good stead when he compiled his _Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft_ (1830), but served to adorn his poems and novels.
There was nothing unhealthy in his attitude towards the spectral
world. At an inn he slept soundly in one bed of a double room,
while a dead man occupied the other. Twice in his life he
confessed to having felt "eerie"--once at Glamis Castle, which
was said to be haunted by a Presence in a Secret Chamber, and
once when he believed that he saw an apparition on his way home
in the twilight; but he usually jests cheerfully when he speaks
of the supernatural. He was interested in tracing the sources of
terror and in studying the mechanism of ghost stories.
The axioms which he lays down are sound and suggestive:
"Ghosts should not appear too often or become too
chatty. The magician shall evoke no spirits, whom he is
not capable of endowing with manners and language
corresponding to their supernatural character. Perhaps,
to be circumstantial and abundant in minute detail and
in one word ... to be somewhat prosy, is the secret
mode of securing a certain necessary degree of
credulity from the hearers of a ghost story... The
chord which vibrates and sounds at a touch remains in
silent tension under continued pressure."[113]
Scott's ghost story, _The Tapestried Chamber, or the Lady in the
Sacque_[114] which he heard from Miss Anna Seward, who had an
unexpected gift for recounting such things at country house
parties, gives the impression of being carefully planned
according to rule. As a human being the Lady in the Sacque had a
black record, but, considered dispassionately as a ghost, her
manners and deportment are irreproachable. The ghost-seer's
independence of character are so firmly insisted upon that it
seems impertinent to doubt the veracity of his story. _My Aunt
Margaret's Mirror_ was told to Scott in childhood by an ancient
spinster, whose pleasing fancy it was to read alone in her
chamber by the light of a taper fixed in a candlestick which she
had formed out of a human skull, and who was learned in
superstitious lore. She describes accurately the mood, when "the
female imagination is in due temperature to enjoy a ghost story":
"All that is indispensable for the enjoyment of the
milder feeling of supernatural awe is that you should
be susceptible of the slight shuddering which creeps
over you when you hear a tale of terror--that
well-vouched tale which the narrator, having first
expressed his general disbelief of all such legendary
lore, selects and produces, as having something in it
which he has been always obliged to give up as
inexplicable. Another symptom is a momentary hesitation
to look round you, when the interest of the narrative
is at the highest; and the third, a desire to avoid
looking into a mirror, when you are alone, in your
chamber, for the evening."[115]
In her story "Aunt Margaret" describes how, in a magic mirror
belonging to Dr. Baptista Damiotti, Lady Bothwell and her sister
Lady Forester see the wedding ceremony of Sir Philip Forester and
a young girl in a foreign city interrupted by Lady Forester's
brother, who is slain in the duel that ensues. Scott regarded
these two stories as trifles designed to while away a leisure
hour. On _Wandering Willie's Tale_--a masterpiece of supernatural
terror--he bestowed unusual care. The ill fa'urd, fearsome
couple--Sir Robert with his face "gash and ghastly as Satan's,"
and "Major Weir," the jackanape, in his red-laced coat and
wig--Steenie's eerie encounter with the "stranger" on horseback,
the ribald crew of feasters in the hall are described so
faithfully and in such vivid phrases that it is no wonder Willie
should remark at one point of the story: "I almost think I was
there mysell, though I couldna be born at the same time." The
power of the tale, which fascinates us from beginning to end and
which can be read again and again with renewed pleasure, depends
partly on Wandering Willie's gifts as a narrator, partly on the
emotions that stir him as he talks. With unconscious art, he
always uses the right word in his descriptions, and chooses those
details that help us to fix the rapidly changing imagery of his
scenes; and he reproduces exactly the natural dialogue of the
speakers. He begins in a tone of calm, unhurried narration, with
only a hint of fear in his voice, but, at the death of Sir
Robert, grows breathless with horror and excitement. The uncanny
incident of the silver whistle that sounds from the dead man's
chamber is skilfully followed by a matter-of-fact account of
Steenie's dealings with the new laird. The emotion culminates in
the terror of the hall of ghastly revellers, whose wild shrieks
"made Willie's gudesire's very nails grow blue and chilled the
marrow in his banes." So lifelike is the scene, so full of colour
and movement, that Steenie's descendants might well believe that
their gudesire, like Dante, had seen Hell.
The notes, introductions and appendices to Scott's works are
stored with material for novels of terror. The notes to
_Marmion_, for instance, contain references to a necromantic
priest whose story "much resembles that of Ambrosio in the
_Monk_," to an "Elfin" warrior and to a chest of treasure
jealously guarded for a century by the Devil in the likeness of a
huntsman. In _The Lady of the Lake_ there is a note on the
ancient legend of the Phantom Sire, in _Rokeby_ there is an
allusion to the Demon Frigate wandering under a curse from
harbour to harbour. To Scott "bogle-wark" was merely a diversion.
He did not choose to make it the mainspring either of his poems
or his romances. In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ he had,
indeed, intended to make the Goblin Page play a leading part, but
the imp, as Scott remarked to Miss Seward, "by the natural
baseness of his propensities contrived to slink downstairs into
the kitchen." The White Lady of Avenel, who appears in _The
Monastery_ (1830)--a boisterous creature who rides on horseback,
splashes through streams and digs a grave--was wisely withdrawn
in the sequel, _The Abbot_. In the Introduction Scott states:
"The White Lady is scarcely supposed to have possessed
either the power or the inclination to do more than
inflict terror or create embarrassment, and is always
subjected by those mortals who ... could assert
superiority over her."
The only apology Scott could offer to the critics who derided his
wraith was that the readers "ought to allow for the capriccios of
what is after all but a better sort of goblin." She was suggested
by the Undine of De La Motte Fouqué. In his next novel, _The
Fortunes of Nigel_, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the
magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch--not one bounce on the drum of
Tedworth--not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch
in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly
from his imagination. Apparitions--such as the Bodach Glas who
warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in _Waverley_, or
the wraith of a Highlander in a white cockade who is seen on the
battlefield in _The Legend of Montrose_--had appeared in his
earlier novels, and others appear again and again later. In _The
Bride of Lammermoor_--the only one of Scott's novels which might
fitly be called a "tale of terror"--the atmosphere of horror and
the sense of overhanging calamity effectually prepare our minds
for the supernatural, and the wraith of old Alice who appears to
the master of Ravenswood is strangely solemn and impressive. But
even more terrible is the description of the three hags laying
out her corpse. The appearance of Vanda with the Bloody Finger in
the haunted chamber of the Saxon manor in _The Betrothed_ is
skilfully arranged, and Eveline's terror is described with
convincing reality. In _Woodstock_, Scott adopted the method of
explaining away the apparently supernatural, although in his
_Lives of the Novelists_ he expressly disapproves of what he
calls the "precaution of Snug the joiner." Charged by Ballantyne
with imitating Mrs. Radcliffe, Scott defended himself by
asserting:
"My object is not to excite fear of supernatural things
in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon
the agents of the story--one a man in sense and
firmness, one a man unhinged by remorse, one a stupid,
unenquiring clown, one a learned and worthy but
superstitious divine."[116]
As Scott in his introduction quotes the passage from a treatise
entitled _The Secret History of the Good Devil of Woodstock_,
which reveals that the mysteries were performed by one Joseph
Collins with the aid of two friends, a concealed trap-door and a
pound of gunpowder, he cannot justly be accused of deceiving his
readers. There are suggestions of Mrs. Radcliffe's method in
others of his novels. In _The Antiquary_, before Lovel retires to
the Green Room at Monkbar, he is warned by Miss Griselda Oldbuck
of a "well-fa'urd auld gentleman in a queer old-fashioned dress
with whiskers turned upward on his upper lip as long as
baudrons," who is wont to appear at one's bedside. He falls into
an uneasy slumber, and in the middle of the night is startled to
see a green huntsman leave the tapestry and turn into the
"well-fa'urd auld gentleman" before his very eyes. In _Old
Mortality_, Edith Bellenden mistakes her lover for his
apparition, just as one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroines might have
done. In _Peveril of the Peak_, Fenella's communications with the
hero in his prison, when he mistakes her voice for that of a
spirit, have an air of Gothic mystery. The awe-inspiring villain,
who appears in _Marmion_ and _Rokeby_, may be distinguished by
his scowl, his passion-lined face and gleaming eye. Rashleigh, in
_Rob Roy_, who, understanding Greek, Latin and Hebrew, "need not
care for ghaist or barghaist, devil or dobbie," and whose
sequestered apartment the servants durst not approach at
nightfall for "fear of bogles and brownies and lang-nebbit things
frae the neist world," is of the same lineage. Sir Robert
Redgauntlet, too, might have stepped out of one of Mrs.
Radcliffe's romances. His niece is not unlike one of her
heroines. She speaks in the very accents of Emily when she says:
"Now I have still so much of our family spirit as
enables me to be as composed in danger as most of my
sex, and upon two occasions in the course of our
journey--a threatened attack by banditti, and the
overturn of our carriage--I had the fortune so to
conduct myself as to convey to my uncle a very
favourable idea of my intrepidity."
Jeanie Deans, the most admirable and the most skilfully drawn of
Scott's women, is a daring contrast to the traditional heroine of
romance. The "delicate distresses" of persecuted Emilies shrink
into insignificance amid the tragedy and comedy of actual life
portrayed in The Waverley Novels. The tyrannical marquises,
vindictive stepmothers, dark-browed villains, scheming monks,
chattering domestics and fierce banditti are thrust aside by a
motley crowd of living beings--soldiers, lawyers, smugglers,
gypsies, shepherds, outlaws and beggars. The wax-work figures,
guaranteed to thrill with nervous suspense or overflow with
sensibility at the appropriate moments, are replaced by real folk
like "Old Mortality," Andrew Fairservice, Dugald Dalgetty and
Peter Peebles, whose humour and pathos are those of our own
world. The historical background, faint, misty and unreal in Mrs.
Radcliffe's novels, becomes, in those of Scott, arresting and
substantial. The grave, artificial dialogue in which Mrs.
Radcliffe's characters habitually discourse descends to some of
Scott's personages, but is often exchanged for the natural idiom
of simple people. The Gothic abbey, dropped down in an uncertain,
haphazard fashion, in some foreign land, is deserted for huts,
barns inns, cottages and castles, solidly built on Scottish soil.
We leave the mouldy air of the subterranean vault for the keen
winds of the moorland. The terrors of the invisible world only
fill the stray corners of his huge scene. He creates romance out
of the stuff of real life.