by Walter Scott
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO ROB ROY
In the magnum opus, the author's final edition of the Waverley Novels,"Rob Roy" appears out of its chronological order, and comes next after"The Antiquary." In this, as in other matters, the present editionfollows that of 1829. "The Antiquary," as we said, contained in itspreface the author's farewell to his art. This valediction was meant asprelude to a fresh appearance in a new disguise. Constable, who hadbrought out the earlier works, did not publish the "Tales of my Landlord"("The Black Dwarf" and "Old Mortality "), which Scott had nearly finishedby November 12, 1816. The four volumes appeared from the houses of Mr.Murray and Mr. Blackwood, on December 1, 1816. Within less than a monthcame out "Harold the Dauntless," by the author of "The Bridal ofTriermain." Scott's work on the historical part of the "Annual Register"had also been unusually arduous. At Abbotsford, or at Ashiestiel, hismode of life was particularly healthy; in Edinburgh, between the claimsof the courts, of literature, and of society, he was scarcely ever in theopen air. Thus hard sedentary work caused, between the publicationof "Old Mortality" and that of "Rob Roy," the first of those alarmingillnesses which overshadowed the last fifteen years of his life. Theearliest attack of cramp in the stomach occurred on March 5, 1817, whenhe "retired from the room with a scream of agony which electrified hisguests."
Living on "parritch," as he tells Miss Baillie (for his national spiritrejected arrowroot), Scott had yet energy enough to plan a dramatic piecefor Terry, "The Doom of Devorgoil." But in April he announced to JohnBallantyne "a good subject" for a novel, and on May 6, John, after avisit to Abbotsford with Constable, proclaimed to James Ballantyne theadvent of "Rob Roy."
The anecdote about the title is well known. Constable suggested it, andScott was at first wisely reluctant to "write up to a title." Names likeRob Roy, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Cleopatra, and so forth, tell thereader too much, and, Scott imagined, often excite hopes which cannot befulfilled. However, in the geniality of an after-dinner hour in thegardens of Abbotsford, Scott allowed Constable to be sponsor. Many thingshad lately brought Rob into his mind. In 1812 Scott had acquired RobRoy's gun--"a long Spanish-barrelled piece, with his initials R. M. C.,"C standing for Campbell, a name assumed in compliment to the Argyllfamily.
Rob's spleuchan had also been presented by Mr. Train to Sir Walter, in1816, and may have directed his thoughts to this popular freebooter.Though Rob flourished in the '15, he was really a character very nearScott, whose friend Invernahyle had fought Rob with broadsword andtarget--a courteous combat like that between Ajax and Hector.
At Tullibody Scott had met, in 1793, a gentleman who once visited Rob,and arranged to pay him blackmail.
Mr. William Adam had mentioned to Scott in 1816 the use of the word"curlie-wurlies" for highly decorated architecture, and recognised thephrase, next year, in the mouth of Andrew Fairservice.
In the meeting at Abbotsford (May 2, 1817) Scott was very communicative,sketched Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and improvised a dialogue between Rob andthe magistrate. A week later he quoted to Southey, Swift's lines--Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse,--which probably suggestedAndrew Fairservice's final estimate of Scott's hero,--"over bad forblessing, and ower gude for banning."
These are the trifles which show the bent of Scott's mind at this period.The summer of 1817 he spent in working at the "Annual Register" and atthe "Border Antiquities." When the courts rose, he visited Rob's cave atthe head of Loch Lomond; and this visit seems to have been gossipedabout, as literary people, hearing of the new novel, expected the cave tobe a very prominent feature. He also went to Glasgow, and refreshed hismemory of the cathedral; nor did he neglect old books, such as "A Tourthrough Great Britain, by a Gentleman" (4th Edition, 1748). This yieldedhim the Bailie's account of Glasgow commerce "in Musselburgh stuffs andEdinburgh shalloons," and the phrase "sortable cargoes."
Hence, too, Scott took the description of the rise of Glasgow. Thus Scottwas taking pains with his preparations. The book was not written inpost-haste. Announced to Constable early in May, the last sheet was notcorrected till about December 21, when Scott wrote to Ballantyne:--
DEAR JAMES,--
With great joy I send you Roy. 'T was a tough job, But we're done with Rob.
"Rob Roy" was published on the last day of 1817. The toughness of the jobwas caused by constant pain, and by struggles with "the lassitude ofopium." So seldom sentimental, so rarely given to expressing hismelancholy moods in verse, Scott, while composing "Rob Roy," wrote thebeautiful poem "The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill," in which, for this once,"pity of self through all makes broken moan."
Some stress may be laid on the state of Sir Walter's health at thismoment, because a living critic has tried to show that, in his case,"every pang of the stomach paralyses the brain;" that he "never had a fitof the cramp without spoiling a chapter."--[Mr. Ruskin's "Fiction Fairand Foul," "Nineteenth Century," 1880, p. 955.]--"Rob Roy" is asufficient answer to these theories. The mind of Scott was no slave tohis body.
The success of the story is pleasantly proved by a sentence in a reviewof the day: "It is an event unprecedented in the annals either ofliterature or of the custom-house that the entire cargo of a packet, orsmack, bound from Leith to London, should be the impression of a novel,for which the public curiosity was so much upon the alert as to requirethis immense importation to satisfy."
Ten thousand copies of a three-volume novel are certainly a ponderouscargo, and Constable printed no fewer in his first edition. Scott wasassured of his own triumph in February 1819, when a dramatised version ofhis novel was acted in Edinburgh by the company of Mr. William Murray, adescendant of the traitor Murray of Broughton. Mr. Charles Mackay made acapital Bailie, and the piece remains a favourite with Scotch audiences.It is plain, from the reviews, that in one respect "Rob Roy" ratherdisappointed the world. They had expected Rob to be a much more imposingand majestic cateran, and complained that his foot was set too late onhis native heather. They found too much of the drover and intriguer, toolittle of the traditional driver of the spoil. This was what Scottforesaw when he objected to "writing up to a title." In fact, he did notwrite up to, it, and, as the "Scots Magazine" said, "shaped his story insuch a manner as to throw busybodies out in their chase, with a slightdegree of malicious finesse." "All the expeditions to the wonderful cavehave been thrown away, for the said cave is not once, we think, mentionedfrom beginning to end."
"Rob Roy" equals "Waverley" in its pictures of Highland and Lowlandsociety and character. Scott had clearly set himself to state hisopinions about the Highlands as they were under the patriarchal system ofgovernment. The Highlanders were then a people, not lawless, indeed, butall their law was the will of their chief. Bailie Nicol Jarvie makes astatement of their economic and military condition as accurate as it ishumorous. The modern "Highland Question" may be studied as well in theBailie's words as in volumes of history and wildernesses of blue-books.A people patriarchal and military as the Arabs of the desert weresuddenly dragged into modern commercial and industrial society. All oldbonds were snapped in a moment; emigration (at first opposed by some ofthe chiefs) and the French wars depleted the country of its "lang-leggitcallants, gaun wanting the breeks." Cattle took the place of men, sheepof cattle, deer of sheep, and, in the long peace, a population grew upagain--a population destitute of employment even more than of old,because war and robbery had ceased to be outlets for its energy. Somechiefs, as Dr. Johnson said, treated their lands as an attorney treatshis row of cheap houses in a town. Hence the Highland Question,--aquestion in which Scott's sympathies were with the Highlanders."Rob Roy," naturally, is no mere "novel with a purpose," no economictract in disguise. Among Scott's novels it stands alone as regards itspictures of passionate love. The love of Diana Vernon is no lesspassionate for its admirable restraint. Here Scott displays, withoutaffectation, a truly Greek reserve in his art. The deep and strongaffection of Diana Vernon would not have been otherwise handled by h
imwho drew the not more immortal picture of Antigone. Unlike modernnovelists, Sir Walter deals neither in analysis nor in rapturouseffusions. We can, unfortunately, imagine but too easily how some writerswould peep and pry into the concealed emotions of that maiden heart; howothers would revel in tears, kisses, and caresses. In place of all theseScott writes:--
She extended her hand, but I clasped her to my bosom. She sighed as she extricated herself from the embrace which she permitted, escaped to the door which led to her own apartment, and I saw her no more.
Months pass, in a mist of danger and intrigue, before the lovers meetagain in the dusk and the solitude.
"Mr. Francis Osbaldistone," cries the girl's voice through the moonlight, "should not whistle his favourite airs when he wishes to remain undiscovered."
And Diana Vernon--for she, wrapped in a horseman's cloak, was the last speaker--whistled in playful mimicry the second part of the tune, which was on my lips when they came up.
Surely there was never, in story or in song, a lady so loving and solight of heart, save Rosalind alone. Her face touches Frank's, as shesays goodbye for ever "It was a moment never to be forgotten,inexpressibly bitter, yet mixed with a sensation of pleasure so deeplysoothing and affecting as at once to unlock all the floodgates of theheart."
She rides into the night, her lover knows the _hysterica passio_ of poorLear, but "I had scarce given vent to my feelings in this paroxysm ere Iwas ashamed of my weakness."
These were men and women who knew how to love, and how to live.All men who read "Rob Roy" are innocent rivals of Frank Osbaldistone.Di Vernon holds her place in our hearts with Rosalind, and these airyaffections, like the actual emotions which they mimic, are not mattersfor words. This lady, so gay, so brave, so witty and fearless, so tenderand true, who "endured trials which might have dignified the history of amartyr, . . . who spent the day in darkness and the night in vigil, andnever breathed a murmur of weakness or complaint," is as immortal inmen's memories as the actual heroine of the White Rose, Flora Macdonald.Her place is with Helen and Antigone, with Rosalind and Imogen, thedeathless daughters of dreams. She brightens the world as she passes, andour own hearts tell us all the story when Osbaldistone says, "You knowhow I lamented her."
In the central interest, which, for once, is the interest of love, "RobRoy" attains the nobility, the reserve, the grave dignity of the highestart. It is not easy to believe that Frank Osbaldistone is worthy of hislady; but here no man is a fair judge. In the four novels--"Waverley,""Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," and "Rob Roy"--which we have studied,the hero has always been a young poet. Waverley versified; so didMannering; Lovel "had attempted a few lyrical pieces;" and, inOsbaldistone's rhymes, Scott parodied his own
blast of that dread horn On Fontarabian echoes borne.
All the heroes, then, have been poets, and Osbaldistone's youth may havebeen suggested by Scott's memories of his own, and of the father who"feared that he would never be better than a gangrel scrapegut." LikeHenry Morton, in "Old Mortality," Frank Osbaldistone is on the politicalside taken by Scott's judgment, not by his emotions. To make Di Vernonconvert him to Jacobitism would have been to repeat the story ofWaverley. Still, he would have been more sympathetic if he had beenconverted. He certainly does not lack spirit, as a sportsman, or "on anoccasion," as Sir William Hope says in "The Scots' Fencing Master," whenhe encounters Rashleigh in the college gardens. Frank, in short, is allthat a hero should be, and is glorified by his affection.
Of the other characters, perhaps Rob Roy is too sympathetically drawn.The materials for a judgment are afforded by Scott's own admirablehistorical introduction. The Rob Roy who so calmly "played booty," andkept a foot in either camp, certainly falls below the heroic. Hislanguage has been criticised in late years, and it has been insisted thatthe Highlanders never talked Lowland Scotch. But Scott has anticipatedthese cavils in the eighteenth chapter of the second volume. Certainly noLowlander knew the Highlanders better than he did, and his ear fordialect was as keen as his musical ear was confessedly obtuse.Scott had the best means of knowing whether Helen MacGregor would belikely to soar into heroics as she is apt to do. In fact, here "we maytrust the artist."
The novel is as rich as any in subordinate characters full of life andhumour. Morris is one of the few utter cowards in Scott. He has none ofthe passionate impulses towards courage of the hapless hero in "The FairMaid of Perth." The various Osbaldistones are nicely discriminated byDiana Vernon, in one of those "Beatrix moods" which Scott did not alwaysadmire, when they were displayed by "Lady Anne" and other girls of fleshand blood. Rashleigh is of a nature unusual in Scott. He is, perhaps, SirWalter's nearest approach, for malignant egotism, to an Iago. Of BailieNicol Jarvie commendation were impertinent. All Scotland arose, calledhim hers, laughed at and applauded her civic child. Concerning AndrewFairservice, the first edition tells us what the final edition leaves usto guess--that Tresham "may recollect him as gardener at OsbaldistoneHall." Andrew was not a friend who could be shaken off. Diana may haveruled the hall, but Andrew must have remained absolute in the gardens,with "something to maw that he would like to see mawn, or something tosaw that he would like to see sawn, or something to ripe that he wouldlike to see ripen, and sae he e'en daikered on wi' the family frae year'send to year's end," and life's end. His master "needed some carefu' bodyto look after him."
Only Shakspeare and Scott could have given us medicines to make us likethis cowardly, conceited "jimp honest" fellow, Andrew Fairservice, whojust escapes being a hypocrite by dint of some sincere old Covenantingleaven in his veins. We make bold to say that the creator of Parolles andLucie, and many another lax and lovable knave, would, had he been a Scot,have drawn Andrew Fairservice thus, and not otherwise.
The critics of the hour censured, as they were certain to censure, theconstruction, and especially the conclusion, of "Rob Roy." No doubt thecritics were right. In both Scott and Shakspeare there is often seen aperfect disregard of the denouement. Any moderately intelligent personcan remark on the huddled-up ends and hasty marriages in many ofShakspeare's comedies; Moliere has been charged with the same offence;and, if blame there be, Scott is almost always to blame. Thackeray islittle better. There must be some reason that explains why men of geniusgo wrong where every newspaper critic, every milliner's girl acquaintedwith circulating libraries, can detect the offence.
In the closing remarks of "Old Mortality" Scott expresses himselfhumorously on this matter of the denouement. His schoolmaster authortakes his proofsheets to Miss Martha Buskbody, who was the literary setin Gandercleugh, having read through the whole stock of three circulatinglibraries. Miss Buskbody criticises the Dominic as Lady Louisa Stuarthabitually criticised Sir Walter. "Your plan of omitting a formalconclusion will never do!" The Dominie replies, "Really, madam, you mustbe aware that every volume of a narrative turns less and less interestingas the author draws to a conclusion,--just like your tea, which, thoughexcellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup."He compares the orthodox happy ending to "the luscious lump ofhalf-dissolved sugar" usually found at the bottom of the cup. This topicmight be discussed, and indeed has been discussed, endlessly. In ouractual lives it is probable that most of us have found ourselves livingfor a year, or a month, or a week, in a chapter or half a volume of anovel, and these have been our least happy experiences. But we have alsofound that the romance vanishes away like a ghost, dwindles out, closeswith ragged ends, has no denouement. Then the question presents itself,As art is imitation, should not novels, as a rule, close thus? Theexperiment has frequently been tried, especially by the modern geniuseswho do not conceal their belief that their art is altogether finer thanScott's, or, perhaps, than Shakspeare's.
In his practice, and in his Dominie's critical remarks, Sir Walterappears inclined to agree with them. He was just as well aware as hisreviewers, or as Lady Louisa Stuart, that the conclusion of "Rob Roy" is"huddled up," that the
sudden demise of all the young Baldistones is ahigh-handed measure. He knew that, in real life, Frank and Di Vernonwould never have met again after that farewell on the moonlit road. Buthe yielded to Miss Buskbody's demand for "a glimpse of sunshine in thelast chapter;" he understood the human liking for the final lump ofsugar. After all, fiction is not, any more than any other art, a mereimitation of life: it is an arrangement, a selection. Scott was too kind,too humane, to disappoint us, the crowd of human beings who find much ofour happiness in dreams. He could not keep up his own interest in hischaracters after he had developed them; he could take pleasure in givingthem life,--he had little pleasure in ushering them into an earthlyparadise; so that part of his business he did carelessly, as his onlyrivals in literature have also done it.
The critics censured, not unjustly, the "machinery" of the story,--thesemysterious "assets" of Osbaldistone and Tresham, whose absence was toprecipitate the Rising of 1715. The "Edinburgh Review" lost its heart(Jeffrey's heart was always being lost) to Di Vernon. But it pronouncesthat "a king with legs of marble, or a youth with an ivory shoulder,"heroes of the "Arabian Nights" and of Pindar, was probable, compared withthe wit and accomplishments of Diana. This is hypercriticism. Diana'seducation, under Rashleigh, had been elaborate; her acquaintance withShakspeare, her main strength, is unusual in women, but not beyond thelimits of belief. Here she is in agreeable contrast to Rose Bradwardine,who had never heard of "Romeo and Juliet." In any case, Diana compelsbelief as well as wins affection, while we are fortunate enough to be inher delightful company.
As long as we believe in her, it is not of moment to consider whether hercharms are incompatible with probability.
"Rob Roy" was finished in spite of "a very bad touch of the cramp forabout three weeks in November, which, with its natural attendants ofdulness and, weakness, made me unable to get our matters forward tilllast week," says Scott to Constable. "But," adds the unconquerableauthor, "I am resting myself here a few days before commencing my newlabours, which will be untrodden ground, and, I think, pretty likely tosucceed." The "new labours" were "The Heart of Mid-Lothian."
ANDREW LANG.
ROB ROY
