Old Mortality, Illustrated, Volume 1. - Sir Walter Scott
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[Illustration: Bookcover]
[Illustration: Spines]
OLD MORTALITY
by Sir Walter Scott
[Illustration: Titlepage]
[Illustration: Dedication]
[Illustration: First Series]
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO OLD MORTALITY.
The origin of "Old Mortality," perhaps the best of Scott's historical
romances, is well known. In May, 1816, Mr. Joseph Train, the gauger from
Galloway, breakfasted with Scott in Castle Street. He brought gifts in
his hand,--a relic of Rob Roy, and a parcel of traditions. Among these
was a letter from Mr. Broadfoot, schoolmaster in Pennington, who
facetiously signed himself "Clashbottom." To cleish, or clash, is to
"flog," in Scots. From Mr. Broadfoot's joke arose Jedediah Cleishbotham,
the dominie of Gandercleugh; the real place of Broadfoot's revels was the
Shoulder of Mutton Inn, at Newton Stewart. Mr. Train, much pleased with
the antiques in "the den" of Castle Street, was particularly charmed by
that portrait of Claverhouse which now hangs on the staircase of the
study at Abbotsford. Scott expressed the Cavalier opinions about Dundee,
which were new to Mr. Train, who had been bred in the rural tradition of
"Bloody Claver'se."
[The Editor's first acquaintance with Claverhouse was obtained
through an old nurse, who had lived on a farm beside a burn where,
she said, the skulls of Covenanters shot by Bloody Claver'se were
still occasionally found. The stream was a tributary of the
Ettrick.]
"Might he not," asked Mr. Train, "be made, in good hands, the hero of a
national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince
Charlie?" He suggested that the story should be delivered "as if from the
mouth of Old Mortality." This probably recalled to Scott his own meeting
with Old Mortality in Dunnottar Churchyard, as described in the
Introduction to the novel.
The account of the pilgrim, as given by Sir Walter from Mr. Train's
memoranda, needs no addition. About Old Mortality's son, John, who went
to America in 1776 (? 1774), and settled in Baltimore, a curious romantic
myth has gathered. Mr. Train told Scott more, as his manuscript at
Abbotsford shows, than Scott printed. According to Mr. Train, John
Paterson, of Baltimore, had a son Robert and a daughter Elizabeth. Robert
married an American lady, who, after his decease, was married to the
Marquis of Wellesley. Elizabeth married Jerome Bonaparte! Sir Walter
distrusted these legends, though derived from a Scotch descendant of Old
Mortality. Mr. Ramage, in March, 1871, wrote to "Notes and Queries"
dispelling the myth.
According to Jerome Bonaparte's descendant, Madame Bonaparte, her family
were Pattersons, not Patersons. Her Baltimore ancestor's will is extant,
has been examined by Old Mortality's great-grandson, and announces in a
kind of preamble that the testator was a native of Donegal; his Christian
name was William ("Notes and Queries," Fourth Series, vol. vii. p. 219,
and Fifth Series, August, 1874). This, of course, quite settles the
question; but the legend is still current among American descendants of
the old Roxburghshire wanderer.
"Old Mortality," with its companion, "The Black Dwarf," was published on
December 1, 1816, by Mr. Murray in London, and Mr. Blackwood in
Edinburgh.
The name of "The Author of 'Waverley'" was omitted on the title-page. The
reason for a change of publisher may have been chiefly financial
(Lockhart, v. 152). Scott may have also thought it amusing to appear as
his own rival in a new field. He had not yet told his secret to Lady
Abercorn, but he seems to reveal it (for who but he could have known so
much about the subject?) in a letter to her, of November 29, 1816. "You
must know the Marquis well,--or rather you must be the Marquis himself!"
quoth Dalgetty. Here follow portions of the letter:
I do not like the first story, "The Black Dwarf," at all; but the
long one which occupies three volumes is a most remarkable
production. . . . I should like to know if you are of my opinion as
to these new volumes coming from the same hand. . . . I wander about
from nine in the morning till five at night with a plaid about my
shoulders and an immensely large bloodhound at my heels, and stick
in sprigs which are to become trees when I shall have no eyes to
look at them. . . .
I am truly glad that the Tales have amused you. In my poor opinion
they are the best of the four sets, though perhaps I only think so
on account of their opening ground less familiar to me than the
manners of the Highlanders. . . . If Tom--[His brother, Mr. Thomas
Scott.]--wrote those volumes, he has not put me in his secret. . . .
General rumour here attributes them to a very ingenious but most
unhappy man, a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, who, many years
since, was obliged to retire from his profession, and from society,
who hides himself under a borrowed name. This hypothesis seems to
account satisfactorily for the rigid secrecy observed; but from what
I can recollect of the unfortunate individual, these are not the
kind of productions I should expect from him. Burley, if I mistake
not, was on board the Prince of Orange's own vessel at the time of
his death. There was also in the Life Guards such a person as
Francis Stewart, grandson of the last Earl of Bothwell. I have in my
possession various proceedings at his father's instance for
recovering some part of the Earl's large estates which had been
granted to the Earls of Buccleugh and Roxburgh. It would appear that
Charles I. made some attempts to reinstate him in those lands, but,
like most of that poor monarch's measures, the attempt only served
to augment his own enemies, for Buccleugh was one of the first who
declared against him in Scotland, and raised a regiment of twelve
hundred men, of whom my grandfather's grandfather (Sir William Scott
of Harden) was lieutenant-colonel. This regiment was very active at
the destruction of Montrose's Highland army at Philiphaugh. In
Charles the Second's time the old knight suffered as much through
the nonconformity of his wife as Cuddie through that of his mother.
My father's grandmother, who lived to the uncommon age of
ninety-eight years, perfectly remembered being carried, when a
child, to the field-preachings, where the clergyman thundered from
the top of a rock, and the ladies sat upon their side-saddles, which
were placed upon the turf for their accommodation, while the men
stood round, all armed with swords and pistols. . . . Old Mortality
was a living person; I have myself seen him about twenty years ago
repairing the Covenanters' tombs as far north as Dunnottar.
If Lady Abercorn was in any doubt after this ingenuous communication, Mr.
Murray, the publisher, was in none. (Lockhart, v. 169.) He wrote to Scott
on December 14, 1816, rejoicing in the success of the Tales, "which must
be written either by Walter Scott or the Devil. . . . I never experienced
such unmixed pleasure as the reading of this exquisite work has afforded
me; and if you could see me, as the author's literary chamberlain,
receiving the unanimous and vehement praises of those who have read it,
and the curses of those whose needs my scanty supply could not satisfy,
you might judge of the sincerity with which I now entreat you to assure
the Author of the most complete success." Lord Holland had said, when Mr.
Murray asked his opinion, "Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last
night,--nothing slept but my gout."
The very Whigs were conquered. But not the Scottish Whigs, the Auld
Leaven of the Covenant,--they were still dour, and offered many
criticisms. Thereon Scott, by way of disproving his authorship, offered
to review the Tales in the "Quarterly." His true reason for this step was
the wish to reply to Dr. Thomas McCrie, author of the "Life of John
Knox," who had been criticising Scott's historical view of the Covenant,
in the "Edinburgh Christian Instructor." Scott had, perhaps, no better
mode of answering his censor. He was indifferent to reviews, but here his
historical knowledge and his candour had been challenged. Scott always
recognised the national spirit of the Covenanters, which he remarks on in
"The Heart of Mid-Lothian," and now he was treated as a faithless
Scotsman. For these reasons he reviewed himself; but it is probable, as
Lockhart says, that William Erskine wrote the literary or aesthetic part
of the criticism (Lockhart, v.174, note).
Dr. McCrie's review may be read, or at least may be found, in the fourth
volume of his collected works (Blackwood, Edinburgh 1857). The critique
amounts to about eighty-five thousand words. Since the "Princesse de
Cleves" was reviewed in a book as long as the original, never was so
lengthy a criticism. As Dr. McCrie's performance scarcely shares the
popularity of "Old Mortality," a note on his ideas may not be
superfluous, though space does not permit a complete statement of his
many objections. The Doctor begins by remarks on novels in general, then
descends to the earlier Waverley romances. "The Antiquary" he pronounces
to be "tame and fatiguing." Acknowledging the merits of the others, he
finds fault with "the foolish lines" (from Burns), "which must have been
foisted without the author's knowledge into the title page," and he
denounces the "bad taste" of the quotation from "Don Quixote." Burns and
Cervantes had done no harm to Dr. McCrie, but his anger was aroused, and
he, like the McCallum More as described by Andrew Fairservice, "got up
wi' an unto' bang, and garr'd them a' look about them." The view of the
Covenanters is "false and distorted." These worthies are not to be
"abused with profane wit or low buffoonery." "Prayers were not read in
the parish churches of Scotland" at that time. As Episcopacy was restored
when Charles II. returned "upon the unanimous petition of the Scottish
Parliament" (Scott's Collected Works, vol. xix. p. 78) it is not
unnatural for the general reader to suppose that prayers would be read by
the curates. Dr. McCrie maintains that "at the Restoration neither the
one nor the other" (neither the Scotch nor English Prayer Books) "was
imposed," and that the Presbyterians repeatedly "admitted they had no
such grievance." No doubt Dr. McCrie is correct. But Mr. James Guthrie,
who was executed on June 1, 1661, said in his last speech, "Oh that there
were not many who study to build again what they did formerly
unwarrantably destroy: I mean Prelacy and the Service Book, a mystery of
iniquity that works amongst us, whose steps lead unto the house of the
great Whore, Babylon, the mother of fornication," and so forth. Either
this mystery of iniquity, the Book of Common Prayer, "was working amongst
us," or it was not. If it was not, of what did Mr. Guthrie complain? If
it was "working," was read by certain curates, as by Burnet, afterwards
Bishop of Salisbury, at Saltoun, Scott is not incorrect. He makes Morton,
in danger of death, pray in the words of the Prayer Book, "a circumstance
which so enraged his murderers that they determined to precipitate his
fate." Dr. McCrie objects to this incident, which is merely borrowed, one
may conjecture, from the death of Archbishop Sharpe. The assassins told
the Archbishop that they would slay him. "Hereupon he began to think of
death. But (here are just the words of the person who related the story)
behold! God did not give him the grace to pray to Him without the help of
a book. But he pulled out of his pocket a small book, and began to read
over some words to himself, which filled us with amazement and
indignation." So they fired their pistols into the old man, and then
chopped him up with their swords, supposing that he had a charm against
bullets! Dr. McCrie seems to have forgotten, or may have disbelieved the
narrative telling how Sharpe's use of the Prayer Book, like Morton's,
"enraged" his murderers. The incident does not occur in the story of the
murder by Russell, one of the murderers, a document published in C. K.
Sharpe's edition of Kirkton. It need not be true, but it may have
suggested the prayer of Morton.
If Scott thought that the Prayer Book was ordained to be read in Scotch
churches, he was wrong; if he merely thought that it might have been read
in some churches, was "working amongst us," he was right: at least,
according to Mr. James Guthrie.
Dr. McCrie argues that Burley would never have wrestled with a soldier in
an inn, especially in the circumstances. This, he says, was inconsistent
with Balfour's "character." Wodrow remarks, "I cannot hear that this
gentleman had ever any great character for religion among those that knew
him, and such were the accounts of him, when abroad, that the reverend
ministers of the Scots congregation at Rotterdam would never allow him to
communicate with them." In Scott's reading of Burley's character, there
was a great deal of the old Adam. That such a man should so resent the
insolence of a soldier is far from improbable, and our sympathies are
with Burley on this occasion.
Mause Headrigg is next criticised. Scott never asserted that she was a
representative of sober Presbyterianism. She had long conducted herself
prudently, but, when she gave way to her indignation, she only used such
language as we find on many pages of Wodrow, in the mouths of many
Covenanters. Indeed, though Manse is undeniably comic, she also commands
as much respect as the Spartan mother when she bids her only son bear
himself boldly in the face of torture. If Scott makes her grotesque, he
also makes her heroic. But Dr. McCrie could not endure the ridiculous
element, which surely no fair critic can fail to observe in the speeches
of the gallant and courageous, but not philosophical, members of the
Covenant's Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie talks of "the creeping loyalty of the
Cavaliers." "Staggering" were a more appropriate epithet. Both sides were
loyal to principle, both courageous; but the inappropriate and
promiscuous scriptural language of many Covenanters was, and remains,
ridiculous. Let us admit that the Covenanters were not averse to all
games. In one or two sermons they illustrate religion by phrases derived
from golf!
When Dr. McCrie exclaims, in a rich anger, "Your Fathers!" as if Scott's
must either have been Presbyterians or Cavaliers, the retort is cleverly
put by Sir Walter in the mouth of Jedediah. His ancestors of these days
had been Quakers, and persecuted by both parties.
Throughout the novel Scott keeps insisting that the Presbyterians had
been goaded into rebellion, and even into revenge, by cruelty of
persecution, and that excesses and bloodthirstiness were confined to the
"High Flyers," as the milder Covenanters called them. Morton represents
the ideal of a good Scot in the circumstances. He comes to be ashamed of
his passive attitude in the face of oppression. He stands up for "that
freedom from stripes and bondage" which was claimed, as you may read in
Scripture, by the Apostle Paul, and which every man who is free-born is
called upon to defend, for his own sake and that of his countrymen. The
terms demanded by Morton from Monmouth before the battle of Bothwell
Bridge are such as Scott recognises to be fair. Freedom of worship, and a
free Parliament, are included.
Dr. McCrie's chief charges are that Scott does not insist enough on the
hardships and brutalities of the persecution, and that the ferocity of
the Covenanters is overstated. He does not admit that the picture drawn
of "the more rigid Presbyterians" is just. But it is almost impossible to
overstate the ferocity of the High Flyers' conduct and creed. Thus
Wodrow, a witness not quite unfriendly to the rigid Presbyterians, though
not high-flying enough for Patrick Walker, writes "Mr. Tate informs me
that he had this account front Mr. Antony Shau, and others of the
Indulged; that at some time, under the Indulgence, there was a meeting of
some people, when they resolved in one night . . . to go to every house
of the Indulged Ministers and kill them, and all in one night."
This anecdote was confirmed by Mr. John Millar, to whose father's house
one of these High Flyers came, on this errand. This massacre was not
aimed at the persecutors, but at the Poundtexts. As to their creed,
Wodrow has an anecdote of one of his own elders, who told a poor woman
with many children that "it would be an uncouth mercy" if they were all
saved.
A pleasant evangel was this, and peacefully was it to have been
propagated!
Scott was writing a novel, not history. In "The Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border" (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the
persecutions. "Had the system of coercion been continued until our day,
Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only
discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along a
deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted
became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious." He did not, in his romance,
draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by
that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish
blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie's mind, is
"a mere farce," because it is enlivened by Manse's declamations. Scott
displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature
may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the
tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have
been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that
Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the
Covenanters themselves called "the language of Canaan," which is put into
their mouths, "a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of
Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in
ecclesiastical politics." But what other language did many of them speak?
"Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord's people to try, by mourning
and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for
we fear, he will depart from it." This is the theology of a savage, in
the style of a clown, but it is quoted by Walker as Mr. Alexander
Peden's.' Mr. John Menzie's "Testimony" (1670) is all about "hardened
men, whom though they walk with you for the present with horns of a lamb,
yet afterward ye may hear them speak with the mouth of a dragon, pricks
in your eyes and thorns in your sides." Manse Headrigg scarcely
caricatures this eloquence, or Peden's "many and long seventy-eight years
left-hand defections, and forty-nine years right-hand extremes;" while
"Professor Simson in Glasgow, and Mr. Glass in Tealing, both with Edom's
children cry Raze, raze the very foundation!" Dr. McCrie is reduced to
supposing that some of the more absurd sermons were incorrectly reported.
Very possibly they were, but the reports were in the style which the
people liked. As if to remove all possible charge of partiality, Scott
made the one faultless Christian of his tale a Covenanting widow, the
admirable Bessie McLure. But she, says the doctor, "repeatedly banns and
minces oaths in her conversation." This outrageous conduct of Bessie's
consists in saying "Gude protect us!" and "In Heaven's name, who are ye?"
Next the Doctor congratulates Scott on his talent for buffoonery. "Oh, le
grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire." Scott is later accused of not
making his peasants sufficiently intelligent. Cuddie Headrigg and Jenny
Dennison suffice as answers to this censure.
Probably the best points made by Dr. McCrie are his proof that biblical
names were not common among the Covenanteers and that Episcopal eloquence
and Episcopal superstition were often as tardy and as dark as the
eloquence and superstition of the Presbyterians. He carries the war into
the opposite camp, with considerable success. His best answer to "Old
Mortality" would have been a novel, as good and on the whole as fair,
written from the Covenanting side. Hogg attempted this reply, not to
Scott's pleasure according to the Shepherd, in "The Brownie of Bodsbeck."
The Shepherd says that when Scott remarked that the "Brownie" gave an
untrue description of the age, he replied, "It's a devilish deal truer
than yours!" Scott, in his defence, says that to please the friends of
the Covenanters, "their portraits must be drawn without shadow, and the
objects of their political antipathy be blackened, hooved, and horned ere
they will acknowledge the likeness of either." He gives examples of
clemency, and even considerateness, in Dundee; for example, he did not
bring with him a prisoner, "who laboured under a disease rendering it
painful to him to be on horseback." He examines the story of John Brown,
and disproves the blacker circumstances. Yet he appears to hold that
Dundee should have resigned his commission rather than carry out the
orders of Government? Burley's character for ruthlessness is defended by
the evidence of the "Scottish Worthies." As Dr. McCrie objects to his
"buffoonery," it is odd that he palliates the "strong propensity" of Knox
"to indulge his vein of humour," when describing, with ghoul-like mirth,
the festive circumstances of the murder and burial of Cardinal Beaton.
The odious part of his satire, Scott says, is confined to "the fierce and
unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians," Wodrow's High Flyers. "We have
no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people
whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution."
To sum up the controversy, we may say that Scott was unfair, if at all,
in tone rather than in statement. He grants to the Covenanters dauntless
resolution and fortitude; he admits their wrongs; we cannot see, on the
evidence of their literature, that he exaggerates their grotesqueness,
their superstition, their impossible attitude as of Israelites under a
Theocracy, which only existed as an ideal, or their ruthlessness on
certain occasions. The books of Wodrow, Kirkton, and Patrick Walker, the
sermons, the ghost stories, the dying speeches, the direct testimony of
their own historians, prove all that Scott says, a hundred times over.
The facts are correct, the testimony to the presence of another, an
angelic temper, remains immortal in the figure of Bessie McLure. But an
unfairness of tone may be detected in the choice of such names as
Kettledrummle and Poundtext: probably the "jog-trot" friends of the
Indulgence have more right to complain than the "high-flying" friends of
the Covenant. Scott had Cavalier sympathies, as Macaulay had Covenanting
sympathies. That Scott is more unjust to the Covenanters than Macaulay to
Claverhouse historians will scarcely maintain. Neither history or fiction
would be very delightful if they were warless. This must serve as an
apology more needed by Macaulay--than by Sir Walter. His reply to Dr.
McCrie is marked by excellent temper, humour, and good humor. The
"Quarterly Review" ends with the well known reference to his brother
Tom's suspected authorship: "We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic
confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a
different author to those volumes than the party suspected by our
Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused for seizing upon the
nearest suspected person, or the principle happily expressed by
Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems,
in search of a gifted weaver who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I
sent for the webster, they brought in his brother for him: though he,
maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well
principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give
him the trouble to go to jail with the rest.'"
Nobody who read this could doubt that Scott was, at least, "art and part"
in the review. His efforts to disguise himself as an Englishman, aided by
a Scotch antiquary, are divertingly futile. He seized the chance of
defending his earlier works from some criticisms on Scotch manners
suggested by the ignorance of Gifford. Nor was it difficult to see that
the author of the review was also the author of the novel. In later years
Lady Louisa Stuart reminded Scott that "Old Mortality," like the Iliad,
had been ascribed by clever critics to several hands working together. On
December 5, 1816, she wrote to him, "I found something you wot of upon my
table; and as I dare not take it with me to a friend's house, for fear of
arousing curiosity"--she read it at once. She could not sleep afterwards,
so much had she been excited. "Manse and Cuddie forced me to laugh out
aloud, which one seldom does when alone." Many of the Scotch words "were
absolutely Hebrew" to her. She not unjustly objected to Claverhouse's use
of the word "sentimental" as an anachronism. Sentiment, like nerves, had
not been invented in Claverhouse's day.