There is a wonderful opening, where Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns (The Antiquary) tackles Mrs. Macleuchar, that sharp-looking old dame, who inhabited and dispensed the tickets for the Queensferry Diligence, or Hawes Fly, and castigates her as an old doited hag...abominable woman.. (and a member of the ) trollopping sex for the failure of the coach to be on time - Diligence, quoth I? Thou should have called it the Sloth - Fly! Mrs Macleuchar and, later, Mackitchinson, mine host at the Hawes Inn, give as good as they get in some cracking exchanges. And then, with his companion 22 year-old William Lovel, we are away to Monkbarns itself, to meet Oldbuck's maiden sister, Miss Grizzy (a superlative description again) and his orphan niece Maria Mcintyre.
The description of the old house at Monkbarns, in particular Oldbuck's study, with a chaos of maps, engravings, scraps of parchment, bundles of papers, pieces of old armour, swords, dirks, helmets, and highland targets, is Scott at his most Scottian! When the John Buchan Society members were shown round Abbotsford a year ago, our attention was drawn by our excellent guide to Scott's own cabinet of curiosities. Several items' provenance were very much allegedly - rather like Oldbuck's revered pieces! I had absolute empathy with Scott's description of Oldbuck's foraging for volumes for his library, often resulting in the white moments of life. I thought again: this is why I read and love Sir Walter! Has there ever been a truer word spoken than that by Monkbarns - the clergy live by our sins, the medical faculty by our diseases, and the law gentry by our misfortunes?
A classic piece of comedy writing occurs in Chapter IV, when Oldbuck tries to convince Lovel that a recently purchased plot of land (which he exchanged for an acre of the laigh crofts, good corn land) held the remnants of an ancient Roman camp. A voice from behind interrupted his extatic description - "Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't." Worse, the letter A.D.L.L. on a stone found by Oldbuck there prove not to stand for Agricola Dicavit Libens Lubens but Aiken Drum's Land Ladle. Wonderful! Scott here introduces one of his hall-mark characters - Edie Ochiltree, the mendicant, a physiognomist by profession. To Oldbuck, he is a sort of privileged nuisance. I found the Scots hard to understand at times, but Edie's refusal of money from Lovel, occasions a marvellous self-cameo: "a' the siller I need is just to buy tobacco and sneeshin, and maybe a dram at a time in a cauld day, though I am nae dram-drinker to be a gaberlunzie [licensed beggar] - Sae take back your notes, and just gie me a lily-white shilling." Halfway through Volume III, there is an accurate summary of Edie by Oldbuck: he is, to a certain extent, the oracle of the district through which he travels - their genealogist, their newsman, their master of the revels, their doctor at a pinch, or their divine... We also meet Sir Arthur Wardour, of Knockwinnock, Bart., (a joint, and similarly testy, labourer with Oldbuck in his antiquarian pursuits) and his daughter, Isabella; and, much later, Captain Hector M'Intyre, Oldbuck's nephew, who admits he has something of Hotspur in me.
Luckie Mucklebacket (Scott's names can jar, as can Charles Dickens's, on occasion), the fishwife, is another well-drawn character: fisher-wives ken better - they keep the man, and keep the house, and keep the siller too... them that sell the goods guide the purse - them that guide the purse rule the house.
The descriptions of the dreadful sea-storm and subsequent rescue of Lovel and the Wardours from the hair-raising cliffs; Lovel's night in the ghost-ridden Green Room at Monkbarns; the discussion between Mrs. Mailsetter, Mrs. Shortcake and Mrs. Heukbane about 'opening' others' mail in the Post Office; Edie Ochiltree's midnight gulling of the dastard Dunstandsnivel at the ruined monastery of St. Ruth; the funeral gathering for Steenie at the Mucklebackets' cottage in Mussel-crag; these are all worthy of positive comment.
The bursts of verse, the regular inserts of Latin all jar with a typical 21st century reader. Both Lovel/Major Neville and Miss Wardour are colourless characters, compared with Oldbuck, Edie Ochiltree, Sir Arthur Wardour, even Glenallen and Dousterswivel; while minor characters such as Lieutenant Taffril and and Captain Wardour are only lightly pencilled in. The plot, as the critic John Lauber has said, is 'chaotic'; the story is really a series of miscellaneous occurrences, with loose ends and irrelevances; the love story is insipid (Lovel disappears for 200 pages!); Scott's verbosity gets the better of him, and the tale, too often; and the wrapping up of the story of the 'lost heir' is perfunctory. However, one finishes the reading with the characters of Oldbuck and Ochiltree, of Sir Arthur and Glenallan, firmly etched in one's memory. So much so, that I will be choosing another of Sir Walter's books to while 'lock down' away e'er long.
According to his son-in-law, Lockhart, The Antiquary was Scott's favourite among his works. As John Buchan says, It is primarily a comedy of Scottish country life, and the main characters , though carefully and truthfully drawn, are all given their "humours" - fantastic traits several degrees above reality - Oldbuck's pedantry, his sister's notableness, Sir Arthur's pride of race, Hector MacIntyre's inflammable conceit. The comedy key is perfectly maintained...the book is richer perhaps than any of the others in cunning detail, for Scott wrote of a world which he knew intimately...and it is inspired throughout by the spirit of a large and sympathetic understanding.
I never 'cheat', by looking to the end of a book, but I wish I had this time. There is a 16 page Glossary of the Scottish words requiring explanation in the Novels of Waverley, Guy Mannering, and the Antiquary. I would have used it, had I known earlier.
ADDENDUM (2nd May)
I add an interesting 'take' on the novel - from an article by Ian Duncan: Scotland and the novel
Conservative skepticism Scotland and the novel receives Scott’s most exuberant treatment in The Antiquary (1816), a metaWaverley Novel or Shandification of historical romance in which, despite the invocation of an unusually intricate plot, nothing happens: or rather, sensational events – manslaughter, infanticide, incest, a discovery of buried treasure, a French invasion, the repulse of a Roman invasion, the writing of an epic poem – turn out not to have happened, covering the one big event that must on no account be admitted to constitute the plot of the present: revolution.
I must admit, I hadn't picked up on the sizeable list of what hadn't actually occurred!
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