Mary Brunton The Forgotten Scottish Novelist, is the title of a biography by Mary McKerrow, published posthumously in 2001.
The Orcadian Limited first edition - 2001
The title is, unfortunately, true. She does not figure in Sir Paul Harvey's The Oxford Companion to English Literature or in Margaret Drabble's later edition; neither is she in Michael Stapleton's The Cambridge Guide to English Literature. Francis Russell Hart's The Scottish Novel (1978), does not refer to her (or Elizabeth Hamilton), but has several references to Susan Ferrier, with detailed critiques of all three of her novels. As far as I can see, there is no mention of her in Nineteenth Century Scottish Fiction (1979) ed. Ian Campbell; but there is an eight-line paragraph (p.110) on her first novel Self Control in Mary Cullinan's Susan Ferrier (1984).
Mary Brunton 1778-1818
I have not been able to find an early edition of the novel, but have one published in 1832. I bought it on 23rd October 2020 for £80. Although her first two (of three) novels sold immensely well at first (240 copies of Self-Control sold within five days of publication), the very titles - suggesting an unbearable degree of Victorian respectability (Fay Weldon) - may have put off later, more emancipated (?) readers.
Mary was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour, a British Army officer and Frances Ligonier, sister of the second earl of Ligonier. Born on 1st November 1778 on Burry, an Orkney island, her early education was limited. Her mother taught her Italian and French as well as music. Aged 20, she fell in love with the Rev. Alexander Brunton, tutor to her younger brothers. Her mother disapproved of the attachment, so they eloped by boat to the mainland and got married. They later moved to Edinburgh, when Alexander became Minister at the New Greyfriars Kirk and, later, the Tron Kirk. After 20 years of marriage, Mary became pregnant, aged 40, but she died in 1818 in Edinburgh after giving birth to a still-born son.
She wrote in a letter to another author, Joanna Bailie: 'Till I began Self-Control, I had never in my life written anything but a letter or a recipe, excepting a few hundreds of vile rhymes, from which I desisted by the time I had gained the wisdom of fifteen years. I was so ignorant of the art on which I was entering, that I formed scarcely any plan for my tale. I merely intended to shew the power of religious principle in bestowing self-commend; and to bear testimony against a maxim as immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. This she surely did.
Colburn and Bentley 1832 edition
Laura Montreville, the heroine 'carries' the story. The tale runs from her seventeenth to her twenty-first year. Captivated by a military lover, she is aghast when she discovers his true [im]moral character: Where slept her discretion, while she suffered that preference to strengthen into passion? Why had she indulged in dreams of ideal perfection? Why had she looked for consistent virtue in a breast where she had not ascertained that piety resided? Well, the rest of the book simply emphasises her error. As one commentator has remarked: Although Laura bears many hallmarks of the sentimental heroine, the novel explicitly ridicules affected sensibility and dissociates itself from the increasingly unfashionable cult. Laura shows an independence of purpose that at times seems almost liberated. Yet the novel also acquiesces in conservative views on female conduct, advocating modesty, domestic virtue and selflessness as the desiderata of female existence.
Laura did, indeed, possess that which, next to the overflowing of a pious heart, confers the purest happiness on this side of Heaven. She felt that she was USEFUL. She was not ignorant of her own beauty...[but] to being the subject of observation, Laura retained that Caledonian dislike which once distinguished her country-women, before they were polished into that glitter which attracts the vulgar...
We first meet Colonel Hargrave on Laura's first walk after her mother's death. Laura was just seventeen, and Colonel Hargrave was the most ardent, the most favoured of lovers. His person was symmetry itself; his manners had all the fascination that vivacity and intelligence, joined to the highest polish, can bestow. What is there not to like? Well, everything. The man was a bounder, intent on the artless Laura's physical seduction. The only child of a widow, he was early given no constraints, of consequence, his naturally warm temper became violent, and his constitutionally strong passions ungovernable...he loved the virtues only which were associated with objects of pleasure, he abhorred the vices only which threatened him with pain. The novel is littered with examples of his evil behaviour. I confess I could not empathise with Laura's drawn-out excuses for Hargrave: yet, while the guilt was hateful in her eyes, her heart was full of love and compassion for the offender. Late in the day, after all evidence to the contrary. she hoped to become the instrument of awakening her unworthy lover to more noble pursuits. No chance!
Captain Montreville, Laura's father, takes her to London, in pursuit of recovery of an annuity which would protect her future. His subsequent decline into deep depression, apathy and then death is so real, that one wonders if the author had witnessed such an example in real life. e.g. None but they who have made the melancholy experiment, can tell how cheerless is the labour of supporting the spirit that will make no effort to sustain itself, of soliciting the languid smile, offering the rejected amusement, or striving, with vain ingenuity, to enliven the oft-repulsed conversation. Montreville had habituated his mind to images of disaster, till it had become incapable of receiving any but comfortless and doleful impressions.
Major de Courcy is a thoroughly good egg. He had saved Hargraves's life; he devotes himself to his widowed mother and feisty sister; he was a Christian from the heart; and he loves Laura. In fact, he is almost to good to be true, but he deservedly gains her after all the vicissitudes with their romance.
Lady Pelham, Laura's mother's elder sister, is a well-drawn character who, on occasions descends into a caricature. Her deceit and malevolence towards Laura is somewhat mind-boggling. Her various attempts to unite her niece with Hargrave despicable. Lady Pelham loved nothing on earth but herself...could not justly be said to love any mortal...she had had sixty years' practice in self-deceit.
Other, minor, characters are succinctly summed up. Mr Warren, who 'owes' Laura's father the annuity, is described by the latter to Laura - he talks like a parrot, looks like a woman, dresses like a monkey, and smells like a civet-cat. There are such regular touches of humour. July Dawkins's figure was short, inclining to embonpoint...her whole appearance seemed the antipodes of sentiment.
Methodism, whenever mentioned(Laura was called a methodistical hypocrite) is given as short a shrift as it was in The Cottagers of Glenburnie. Moreover, there is a short passage which could have come straight out of that novel! 'Did you return to Glasgow by the way of Loch-Lomond?" enquired Captain Montreville. "Ay," cried Mrs. Jones, "that was what the people of the inn wanted us to do; but then I looked out, and seed a matter of forty of them savages, with the little petticoats and red and white stockings, loitering and lolling about the inn-door, doing nothing in the varsal world, except wait until it was dark to rob and murder us all..."
The kidnapping of Laura - in a Georgette Heyer style descriptive passage - which leads to her enforced voyage to Quebec, then escape in a canoe to eventual freedom - is a far-fetched denouement. Jane Austen made a comment in a letter that the book was an excellently meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it...'I declare I do not know whether Laura's passage down the American River, is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she ever does'. Later, in 1814, she commented, I will redeem my credit...by writing a close Imitation of Self-Control as soon as I can - I will improve upon it - my Heroine shall not merely be wafted down an American river in a boat by herself, she shall cross the Atlantic in the same way, & never stop till she reaches Gravesent..." To be fair, Brunton had to work out a way for Hargrave to think Laura had died; only then would he show enough remorse to write a letter exonerating her from all sin. Only then would he make an end of himself. Still, the cross-Atlantic trip was far-fetched!
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