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THE ENTAIL
by
JOHN GALT
Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University
[Illustration]
THE ENTAIL
Or
The Lairds of Grippy
by
JOHN GALT
With an Introduction by John Ayscough
[Illustration]
Henry Frowde
Oxford University Press
London, Edinburgh, Glasgow
New York, Toronto, Melbourne & Bombay
JOHN GALT
Born, Irvine, Ayrshire May 2, 1779
Died, Greenock April 11, 1839
_‘The Entail’ was first published in 1822. In ‘The World’s Classics’ it
was first published in 1913._
INTRODUCTION
For many years I have been wondering why John Galt’s works are fallen
into such neglect: that they should be almost wholly forgotten, even by
readers to whom Scott and Jane Austen, Fanny Burney and Miss Edgeworth
are indispensable, is what I cannot understand. If his Autobiography
were not a rare book, an explanation might suggest itself. For
supposing that the public, before reading _The Entail_, _Annals of the
Parish_, or _The Ayrshire Legatees_, had been so unfortunate as to
attempt the reading of the Autobiography, no one could be surprised
that it made up its mind to read no more of him. A more tedious,
flat, and dull book was never written by a man of genius: it is never
interesting, never amusing, and always exasperating to any one who
knows what he could do, and has done. To wade through it is very nearly
impossible, and there is nothing to be gained by the achievement.
Galt’s life was not particularly interesting in itself, but many lives
less eventful have been so written as to be worth reading, and easy to
read.
There is, however, little danger of Galt’s now losing possible admirers
by the unlucky accident of their stumbling on his Autobiography before
making his acquaintance in the right way--by reading his really
excellent works of fiction: for copies of the Autobiography are not
at all easy to come at. I suppose they have mostly been burned by his
admirers.
There is not much to be told about him; his life does not matter to
my purpose. John Galt was one of the sons of a sea-captain, in the
West India trade, and was born on May 2, 1779, at Irvine in Ayrshire.
When he was ten years old the family moved to Greenock, where the boy
had his schooling and became a clerk in the Custom House. At five
and twenty he carried himself and an epic poem to London, in quest
of literary fame. The epic, on the Battle of Largs, he had printed,
but it did not establish his repute as a poet, and, to judge by the
specimens I have read, the indifference of the public was not a
malicious affectation. Later on he produced half a dozen dramas, which
deserved, and met with, as much success as the epic. Falling into bad
health he made a tour through the Mediterranean and Levant, and had
Byron and Hobhouse for fellow-travellers during a part of it. In the
Autobiography he does not heap flattery on either ‘Orestes or Pylades’:
perhaps, though he does not confess it, he extracted from his brother
poet an opinion on his own muse. His experiences of travel were given
to the world in _Letters from the Levant_, and the book was by no means
a failure, and is much easier reading than the Autobiography. In 1820
appeared, in _Blackwood_, _The Ayrshire Legatees_: and in it he first
showed the real power that was in him. It has been reprinted in recent
years and can easily be read, and should be read by every one. The book
has the rather tiresome form of letters: and the letters of the young
lady and young gentleman are not always particularly entertaining:
those of Dr. Pringle and his wife are invariably excellent. None
better of the sort exist anywhere in fiction. It is astounding that a
man of genius, whose fiction is so extraordinarily real, could, when
writing of his own real life, make it inhumanly dull and artificial.
In the Autobiography there is nothing quaint, and nothing witty: Dr.
and Mrs. Pringle are inimitably quaint and funny. It would seem that
when Galt looked at life, at men and manners, and things, through
imaginary eyes he could see everything there was to be seen, and see
it in a light intensely simple and vivid and real: that when he looked
at anything through his own eyes he saw nothing at all. The doctor and
Mrs. Pringle are indispensable to all readers who love dear oddities,
and they are Galt’s very own: you shall not find them anywhere else.
He borrowed them nowhere, but made them himself in a jocund humour of
affectionate creation.
In 1821 _The Ayrshire Legatees_ was followed up by the _Annals of the
Parish_, which displayed Galt’s singular and original genius in fuller
perfection. That his epic failed, and the _Annals_ marked a literary
success, is much to the credit of his contemporaries. Perhaps if Crabbe
had not perversely insisted on being a poet we might have had country
tales of his as worthy of immortality as the _Annals of the Parish_.
The book is commonly said to be Galt’s masterpiece: which it is not.
But it is unique and perfect. That _The Entail_ is really Galt’s
masterpiece seems to me clear: nevertheless there are weak parts in it,
and the less good chapters are lamentably unequal to the best: whereas
the _Annals of the Parish_ has no weak chapters, and the balance of
excellence is maintained throughout. But there is no story in the
_Annals_; and, though it is a long gallery of perfect portraits, it
has no characters that can even be compared with Watty and the Leddy o’
Grippy.
Where the _Annals_ peculiarly excel is in the rare quality of _charm_:
it has no hero, and the central figure is enriched with foibles that
do not lean to heroism’s side: but they are quaintly attractive, and
no one but Galt has given to literature any one like him. Of pathos
Galt is shy in the _Annals_; nowhere is he at all disposed to ‘wallow’
in it: but he draws reverently near, and moves away as reverently.
Nor is he boisterously funny: his wit is all his own, and it crops up
at every corner, but not noisily: it cuts few capers, and has a pawky
discretion. It is singularly void of malice and haughtiness, and has
a Shakespearian humanity and blandness that fails to remind one of
Thackeray. The _Annals of the Parish_ prove that a great writer can
make a whole book intensely amusing and extraordinarily amiable: that
perfectly clear sight need not be merciless, nor wit remorselessly
cruel.
The great and just success of the _Annals of the Parish_ made Galt
prolific: and in rapid sequence came _Sir Andrew Wylie_, _The Entail_,
_The Steamboat_, _The Provost_, _Ringan Gilhaize_, _The Spaewife_,
_Rothelan_, and _The Omen_.
Almost all of these are worth reading, and to read them is no trouble:
but they are of very unequal merit: and only one of them is worthy
of being grouped with _The Ayrshire Legatees_ and the _Annals_.
_Sir Andrew Wylie_ is extremely good, and much of it shows Galt in
his best vein. The more romantic tales, _Ringan Gilhaize_, _The
Spaewife_, _Rothelan_, and _The Omen_, have the defects of their
qualities, and the more Galt submits to those qualities the less we
are pleased. To be romantic was, perhaps, a pardonable compliance
with fashion: but Galt had little to make with romance, and idealism
was his easiest road to failure. To be Ossianic may have seemed to him
a literary duty, but the performance of some duties is hard on the
public: as the district-visited might plead, to whom the perfecting
of district-visitors appeals less than it ought. Galt had not a rich
imagination; what he possessed in a rare degree was the faculty of
representation. In his works of fiction we find a gallery of portraits
of singular variety and perfection: of all of them he had seen the
originals. When he chose to add characters invented by himself his
success was not great. It must not, however, be supposed that he could
only reproduce with pedestrian fidelity: there can be no doubt that
from a mere hint in actual experience he could draw a vivid portrait of
absolute and convincing reality.
He himself placed _The Provost_ higher than the _Annals of the
Parish_ and _The Ayrshire Legatees_, but no one will agree with him.
Almost the only interesting thing he tells us in the Autobiography is
that the _Annals_, though published in 1821, the year following the
appearance of _The Ayrshire Legatees_, were written in 1813, and laid
aside and forgotten. Of _The Entail_ he tells us little, except that
the scene of the storm was introduced to admit of the description of
a part of Scotland he had never seen. He speaks complacently of the
praise accorded to that description, but betrays no pride in Watty or
the Leddy, whom, indeed, he does not mention. He has plenty to say
about _Ringan Gilhaize_, and evidently believes that the book was not
accorded its due proportion of praise; chiefly, it would seem, because
the thing he tried to do in it was difficult, and success the more
meritorious. Probably Watty and the Leddy were thoroughly spontaneous,
as they are inimitably real, and Galt thought the less of them on that
account.
He left England for Canada in 1826, _The Last of the Lairds_ appearing
just before his departure. Three years later he came back ruined, and
set to work again, his pen being as industrious as ever. _Lawrie Todd_
was followed by _Southennan_, and these two novels by his _Life of Lord
Byron_. In 1839, on April 11, he died at Greenock.
Anthony Trollope injured himself with critics of a certain class by a
too frank disclosure of his methods of production: and Galt may well
have done his literary reputation harm by his oft-repeated assertion
that with him literature was always a secondary interest. Commerce,
he would have us believe, was what came first. He never depreciates
his own literary work, but he so speaks of it as to tempt others to
belittle it: this was not modesty but sheer blundering. Congreve in
his old age was more eager to shine in Voltaire’s eyes as a social
personage than as a famous dramatist; and Galt appears to have cared
more to be regarded as a statistician than as an unequalled master of
fiction in his own region of it. These perversities in men of genius
are not so rare as they are provoking.
_The Entail_ was published in 1822, and, disregarded as it has long
been, its merit was not ignored then. Gifford, Mackenzie, Lord Jeffrey,
and Sir Walter Scott helped to spread its fame. In January, 1823,
‘Christopher North’ reviewed it at great length in _Blackwood_, and
declared it ‘out of all sight the best thing he [Galt] has done’--_The
Ayrshire Legatees_ and the _Annals of the Parish_, be it remembered,
having already appeared. The Professor says that he had read ‘the work
on its first publication through from beginning to end in one day’, and
about a fortnight afterwards devoured ‘all the prime bits’ again.
The conclusion of the whole matter, in Professor Wilson’s opinion, was
that Galt had now proved himself ‘inferior only to two living writers
of fictitious narratives--to him whom we need not name, and to Miss
Edgeworth’.
That Galt was inferior to Scott as a romanticist is what no one would
deny. As a romanticist he should not be brought in comparison with Sir
Walter at all; but as a painter of _genre_ he is not surpassed even
by him whom ‘Christopher North’ would not name. That Miss Edgeworth
was a romanticist of high rank does not appear: _Castle Rackrent_
and _The Absentee_ are unequalled, but as presentations of original,
quaint, and absolutely living Irish character: Galt was not inferior
to her, or a rival of her, for his realm and hers were far apart: in
his presentation of certain types of Scottish character he is equally
original, equally quaint, and equally true and vivid. Scottish humour
and Irish wit are singularly unlike; to compare them must be a barren
labour; perhaps the same reader will never fully appreciate both;
but to no critic who knows and loves Scots types of character will
it be easy to confess that Galt had an inferior revelation to that
of the inestimable Maria: the subject-matter was different, that was
all. To try and pose them as rivals is the folly. In Galt is none
of the rollicking pathos that is the miracle of _Castle Rackrent_:
Scots pathos is as different from Irish as flamboyant Irish wit is
different from Scottish pawkiness. But if the daft laird of Grippy be
not pathetic then I know of no pathos outside the pathos that exposes
itself naked to the public to obtain recognition. If the Leddy o’
Grippy be not inimitably comic, then can there be no comedy short of
screaming farce.
The reader is asked to remember that any comparison of Galt with Scott,
or of Galt with Maria Edgeworth, was not initiated by the present
writer, but by ‘Christopher North’.
Sir Walter Scott himself gave the best proof possible of appreciation
by reading _The Entail_ three times: and Byron had read it three times
within a year of its appearance. To the Earl of Blessington he said
that ‘the portraiture of Leddy Grippy was perhaps the most complete and
original that had been added to the female gallery since the days of
Shakespeare’.
Were this an essay on _The Entail_ it would not suffice to quote the
criticism of great writers upon the work: the essayist would need to
justify his own admiration of it by quotation from the book itself.
And this he has done at full length in (as Cousin Feenix said) another
place. But in an Introduction there can be no occasion to detain the
reader from making acquaintance on his own account with the Leddy and
Watty, Claud, and the Milrookits. He will not, with the book in his
hand, need to be told which scenes are inimitable. There are many which
he will never be content to read but once: though I venture to think
that he will not arrive at Lord Jeffrey’s conclusion that the drowning
of George Walkinshaw is the most powerful single sketch in the work.
Powerful all the same it is; and, since Lord Byron’s dictum concerning
the Leddy has given the hint, we may be the more readily forgiven for
thinking that there is, in that grim passage, something Shakespearian
about the little cabin-boy.
JOHN AYSCOUGH.
THE ENTAIL
TO THE KING.
_SIRE_,
_With the profoundest sense of your Majesty’s gracious condescension,
the Author of this work has now the honour to lay it, by permission, at
your Majesty’s feet._
_It belongs to a series of sketches, in which he has attempted to
describe characters and manners peculiar to the most ancient, and
most loyal, portion of all your Majesty’s dominions;--it embraces a
great part of the last century, the most prosperous period in the
annals of Scotland, and singularly glorious to the administration of
your Majesty’s Illustrious Family;--it has been written since the era
of your Majesty’s joyous Visit to the venerable home of your Royal
Ancestors;--and it is presented as a humble memorial of the feelings
with which the Author, in common with all his countrymen, did homage to
the King at Holyrood._
_He has the happiness to be,
SIRE,
Your Majesty’s
Most dutiful and most faithful_
SUBJECT AND SERVANT.
Edinburgh, 3d December 1822.
THE ENTAIL
CHAPTER I
Claud Walkinshaw was the sole surviving male heir of the Walkinshaws of
Kittlestonheugh. His grandfather, the last Laird of the line, deluded
by the golden visions that allured so many of the Scottish gentry to
embark their fortunes in the Darien Expedition, sent his only son, the
father of Claud, in one of the ships fitted out at Cartsdyke, and with
him an adventure in which he had staked more than the whole value of
his estate. But, as it is not our intention to fatigue the reader with
any very circumstantial account of the state of the Laird’s family, we
shall pass over, with all expedient brevity, the domestic history of
Claud’s childhood. He was scarcely a year old when his father sailed,
and his mother died of a broken heart, on hearing that her husband,
with many of his companions, had perished of disease and famine among
the swamps of the Mosquito shore. The Kittlestonheugh estate was soon
after sold, and the Laird, with Claud, retired into Glasgow, where
he rented the upper part of a back house, in Aird’s Close, in the
Drygate. The only servant whom, in this altered state, he could afford
to retain, or rather the only one that he could not get rid of, owing
to her age and infirmities, was Maudge Dobbie, who, in her youth,
was bairnswoman to his son. She had been upwards of forty years in
the servitude of his house; and the situation she had filled to the
father of Claud did not tend to diminish the kindliness with which she
regarded the child, especially when, by the ruin of her master, there
was none but herself to attend him.
The charms of Maudge had, even in her vernal years, been confined to
her warm and affectionate feelings; and, at this period, she was
twisted east and west, and hither and yont, and Time, in the shape
of old age, hung so embracingly round her neck, that his weight had
bent her into a hoop. Yet, thus deformed and aged, she was not without
qualities that might have endeared her to a more generous boy. Her
father had been schoolmaster in the village of Kittleston; and under
his tuition, before she was sent, as the phrase then was, to seek her
bread in the world, she had acquired a few of the elements of learning
beyond those which, in that period, fell to the common lot of female
domestics: and she was thus enabled, not only to teach the orphan
reading and writing, but even to supply him with some knowledge of
arithmetic, particularly addition and the multiplication table. She
also possessed a rich stock of goblin lore and romantic stories, the
recital of which had given the father of Claud the taste for adventure
that induced him to embark in the ill-fated expedition. These, however,
were not so congenial to the less sanguine temperament of the son,
who early preferred the history of Whittington and his Cat to the
achievements of Sir William Wallace; and ‘Tak your auld cloak about
you,’ ever seemed to him a thousand times more sensible than ‘Chevy
Chace.’ As for that doleful ditty, the ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ it was
worse than the ‘Babes in the Wood’; and ‘Gil Morrice’ more wearisome
than ‘Death and the Lady’.
The solitary old Laird had not been long settled in his sequestered
and humble town-retreat, when a change became visible both in his
appearance and manners. He had been formerly bustling, vigorous,
hearty, and social; but from the first account of the death of his
son, and the ruin of his fortune, he grew thoughtful and sedentary,
and shunned the approach of strangers, and retired from the visits
of his friends. Sometimes he sat for whole days, without speaking,
and without even noticing the kitten-like gambols of his grandson; at
others he would fondle over the child, and caress him with more than
a grandfather’s affection; again, he would peevishly brush the boy
away as he clasped his knees, and hurry out of the house with short and
agitated steps. His respectable portliness disappeared; his clothes
began to hang loosely upon him; his colour fled; his face withered; and
his legs wasted into meagre shanks. Before the end of the first twelve
months, he was either unwilling or unable to move unassisted from the
old arm chair, in which he sat from morning to night, with his grey
head drooping over his breast; and one evening, when Maudge went to
assist him to undress, she found he had been for some time dead.
After the funeral, Maudge removed with the penniless orphan to a
garret-room in the Saltmarket, where she endeavoured to earn for him
and herself the humble aliment of meal and salt, by working stockings;
her infirmities and figure having disqualified her from the more
profitable industry of the spinning-wheel. In this condition she
remained for some time, pinched with poverty, but still patient with
her lot, and preserving, nevertheless, a neat and decent exterior.
It was only in the calm of the summer Sabbath evenings that she
indulged in the luxury of a view of the country; and her usual walk
on those occasions, with Claud in her hand, was along the brow of
Whitehill, which she perhaps preferred, because it afforded her a
distant view of the scenes of her happier days; and while she pointed
out to Claud the hills and lands of his forefathers, she exhorted him
to make it his constant endeavour to redeem them, if possible, from
their new possessors, regularly concluding her admonition with some
sketch or portrait of the hereditary grandeur of his ancestors.
One afternoon, while she was thus engaged, Provost Gorbals and his wife
made their appearance.
The Provost was a man in flourishing circumstances, and he was then
walking with his lady to choose a site for a country-house which they
had long talked of building. They were a stately corpulent couple, well
befitting the magisterial consequence of the husband.
Mrs. Gorbals was arrayed in a stiff and costly yellow brocade,
magnificently embroidered with flowers, the least of which was peony;
but the exuberance of her ruffle cuffs and flounces, the richness of
her lace apron, with the vast head-dress of catgut and millinery,
together with her blue satin mantle, trimmed with ermine, are items in
the gorgeous paraphernalia of the Glasgow ladies of that time, to which
the pencil of some abler limner can alone do justice.
The appearance of the Provost himself became his dignity, and
corresponded with the affluent garniture of his lady: it was indeed
such, that, even had he not worn the golden chains of his dignity,
there would have been no difficulty in determining him to be some
personage dressed with at least a little brief authority. Over the
magisterial vestments of black velvet, he wore a new scarlet cloak,
although the day had been one of the sultriest in July; and, with
a lofty consequential air, and an ample display of the corporeal
acquisition which he had made at his own and other well furnished
tables, he moved along, swinging at every step his tall golden-headed
cane with the solemnity of a mandarin.
Claud was filled with wonder and awe at the sight of such splendid
examples of Glasgow pomp and prosperity, but Maudge speedily rebuked
his juvenile admiration.
‘They’re no worth the looking at,’ said she; ‘had ye but seen the last
Leddy Kittlestonheugh, your ain muckle respekit grandmother, and her
twa sisters, in their hench-hoops, with their fans in their han’s--the
three in a row would hae soopit the whole breadth o’ the Trongate--ye
would hae seen something. They were nane o’ your new-made leddies,
but come o’ a pedigree. Foul would hae been the gait, and drooking
the shower, that would hae gart them jook their heads intil the door
o’ ony sic thing as a Glasgow bailie--Na; Claudie, my lamb, thou maun
lift thy een aboon the trash o’ the town, and ay keep mind that the
hills are standing yet that might hae been thy ain; and so may they
yet be, an thou can but master the pride o’ back and belly, and seek
for something mair solid than the bravery o’ sic a Solomon in all his
glory as yon Provost Gorbals.--Heh, sirs, what a kyteful o’ pride’s
yon’er! and yet I would be nane surprised the morn to hear that the
Nebuchadnezzar was a’ gane to pigs and whistles, and driven out wi’ the
divors bill to the barren pastures of bankruptcy.’