Old Mortality, Complete by Walter Scott (christmas read aloud .txt) 📗

wind tormented trees of Iron Gray. Concerning these Manes Presbyteriani, “Guthrie’s and Giffan’s Passions” and the rest, Scott had a library of rare volumes full of prophecies, “remarkable Providences,” angelic ministrations, diabolical persecutions by The Accuser of the Brethren,—in fact, all that Covenanteers had written or that had been written about Covenanteers. “I’ll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in his true colours,” he says to Terry (November 12, 1816). He certainly was not an unprejudiced witness, some ten years earlier, when he wrote to Southey, “You can hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these people, according to the accounts they have themselves preserved. But I admit I had many prejudices instilled into me, as my ancestor was a Killiecrankie man.” He used to tease Grahame of “The Sabbath,” “but never out of his good humour, by praising Dundee, and laughing at the Covenanters.” Even as a boy he had been familiar with that godly company in “the original edition of the lives of Cameron and others, by Patrick Walker.” The more curious parts of those biographies were excised by the care of later editors, but they may all be found now in the “Biographia Presbyteriana” (1827), published by True Jock, chief clerk to “Leein’ Johnnie,” Mr. John Ballantyne. To this work the inquirer may turn, if he is anxious to see whether Scott’s colouring is correct. The true blue of the Covenant is not dulled in the “Biographia Presbyteriana.”

With all these materials at his command, Scott was able almost to dwell in the age of the Covenant hence the extraordinary life and brilliance of this, his first essay in fiction dealing with a remote time and obsolete manners. His opening, though it may seem long and uninviting to modern readers, is interesting for the sympathetic sketch of the gentle consumptive dominie. If there was any class of men whom Sir Walter could not away with, it was the race of schoolmasters, “black cattle” whom he neither trusted nor respected. But he could make or invent exceptions, as in the uncomplaining and kindly usher of the verbose Cleishbotham. Once launched in his legend, with the shooting of the Popinjay, he never falters. The gallant, dauntless, overbearing Bothwell, the dour Burley, the handful of Preachers, representing every current of opinion in the Covenant, the awful figure of Habakkuk Mucklewrath, the charm of goodness in Bessie McLure, are all immortal, deathless as Shakspeare’s men and women. Indeed here, even more than elsewhere, we admire the life which Scott breathes into his minor characters, Halliday and Inglis, the troopers, the child who leads Morton to Burley’s retreat in the cave, that auld Laird Nippy, old Milnwood (a real “Laird Nippy” was a neighbour of Scott’s at Ashiestiel), Ailie Wilson, the kind, crabbed old housekeeper, generous in great things, though habitually niggardly in things small. Most of these are persons whom we might still meet in Scotland, as we might meet Cuddie Headrigg—the shrewd, the blithe, the faithful and humorous Cuddie. As to Miss Jenny Dennison, we can hardly forgive Scott for making that gayest of soubrettes hard and selfish in married life. He is too severe on the harmless and even beneficent race of coquettes, who brighten life so much, who so rapidly “draw up with the new pleugh lad,” and who do so very little harm when all is said. Jenny plays the part of a leal and brave lass in the siege of Tillietudlem, hunger and terror do not subdue her spirit; she is true, in spite of many temptations, to her Cuddie, and we decline to believe that she was untrue to his master and friend. Ikuse, no doubt, is a caricature, though Wodrow makes us acquainted with at least one Mause, Jean Biggart, who “all the winter over was exceedingly straitened in wrestling and prayer as to the Parliament, and said that still that place was brought before her, Our hedges are broken down!” (“Analecta,” ii. 173.) Surely even Dr. McCrie must have laughed out loud, like Lady Louisa Stuart, when Mause exclaims: “Neither will I peace for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it be painted as red as a brick from the tower o’ Babel, and ca’ itsel’ a corporal.” Manse, as we have said, is not more comic than heroic, a mother in that Sparta of the Covenant. The figure of Morton, as usual, is not very attractive. In his review, Scott explains the weakness of his heroes as usually strangers in the land (Waverley, Lovel, Mannering, Osbaldistone), who need to have everything explained to them, and who are less required to move than to be the pivots of the general movement. But Morton is no stranger in the land. His political position in the juste milieu is unexciting. A schoolboy wrote to Scott at this time, “Oh, Sir Walter, how could you take the lady from the gallant Cavalier, and give her to the crop-eared Covenanter?” Probably Scott sympathised with his young critic, who longed “to be a feudal chief, and to see his retainers happy around him.” But Edith Bellenden loved Morton, with that love which, as she said, and thought, “disturbs the repose of the dead.” Scott had no choice. Besides, Dr. McCrie might have disapproved of so fortunate an arrangement. The heroine herself does not live in the memory like Di Vernon; she does not even live like Jenny Dennison. We remember Corporal Raddlebanes better, the stoutest fighting man of Major Bellenden’s acquaintance; and the lady of Tillietudlem has admirers more numerous and more constant. The lovers of the tale chiefly engage our interest by the rare constancy of their affections.

The most disputed character is, of course, that of Claverhouse. There is no doubt that, if Claverhouse had been a man of the ordinary mould, he would never have reckoned so many enthusiastic friends in future ages. But Beauty, which makes Helen immortal, had put its seal on Bonny Dundee. With that face “which limners might have loved to paint, and ladies to look upon,” he still conquers hearts from his dark corner above the private staircase in Sir Walter’s deserted study. He was brave, he was loyal when all the world forsook his master; in that reckless age of revelry he looks on with the austere and noble contempt which he wears in Hell among the tippling shades of Cavaliers. He died in the arms of victory, but he lives among

The chiefs of ancient names
Who swore to fight and die beneath the banner of King James,
And he fell in Killiecrankie Pass, the glory of the Grahames.

Sentiment in romance, not in history, may be excused for pardoning the rest.

Critics of the time, as Lady Louisa Stuart reminds Sir Walter, did not believe the book was his, because it lacked his “tedious descriptions.” The descriptions, as of the waterfall where Burley had his den, are indeed far from “tedious.” There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into mountains “his own grey hills,” the bosses verdatres as Prosper Merimee called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn “dang the deil” are not exaggerated.

“Old Mortality” was the last novel written by Scott before the malady which tormented his stoicism in 1817-1820. Every reader has his own favourite, but few will place this glorious tale lower than second in the list of his incomparable romances.

ANDREW LANG.