An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered
Presbyterians ... beside him, fed among the graves, a pony
I purchased the four volume first edition on 21st September 2020; they cost me £118. In his Chapter I, Scott argues that he might be enabled to present an unbiassed picture of the manners of that unhappy period, and, at the same time, to do justice to the merits of both parties. Does he? John Buchan calls the story a very stern and conscientious piece of realism.
Old Mortality is mainly based on events confined to two or three months during the Summer of 1679, when the Covenanters rebelled against Charles II's government. It is set in south-west Scotland.
It has been argued - and accepted by Scott himself - that for several years the author specialised in creating one passive protagonist after another. Young men become victims of plots and conspiracies engineered by others more dynamic and self-aware than themselves. In a review in the Quarterly Review (1817) Scott characterised his hero as very amiable and very insipid. This also applied to Bertram/Brown in Guy Mannering and Lovel in The Antiquary. Scot admitted, they were all brethren of a family...never actors, but always acted upon by the spur of circumstances, whose fates were uniformly determined by the agency of the subordinate persons. This is mainly the case with Harry Morton in Old Mortality, one of those gifted characters which possess a force of talent unsuspected by the owner himself.
Shooting the Popinjay at the Wappenschaw
The chapters devoted to the wappenschaw ('weaponshow'), not only detail young Morton's victory but show clearly a bitterly divided country, deeply emphasising what had become a class struggle as well as a religious conflict. Morton's moderation, based on reason and principle, becomes well-nigh impossible. I am weary of seeing nothing but violence and fury around me - now assuming the mask of lawful authority, now taking that of religious zeal. Maybe so, but he is forced into taking sides. James Sharp, appointed Archbishop of St. Andrews and Primate of Scotland in 1661, became a major focus of the extreme Presbyterians, who regarded him as a traitor to his cause. He is murdered 'offstage' at the start of the novel and one of his bitterest foes/murderers is sheltered by Morton for just one night at his home. Knowledge of this, means Morton - ever the moderate - has to side with extremist Covenanters.
John Grahame of Claverhouse is sent to put down the rebellion. However, many moderate Whigs side with Balfour, and Claverhouse is defeated at Drumclog and forced to flee. Returning, under the command of the moderate Duke of Monmouth (but accompanied also by the vengeful Dalzell), the royal troops defeat the Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge. The slaughter of innocent people after the battle lived on in popular memory for many decades. The historiography of the event is far too detailed for a simple Blog, but suffice it to say that Scott's account was not accepted by a large section of his readers. James Hogg actually wrote his The Brownie of Bodsbeck as an answer to Old Mortality. If through all the histories of that suffering period, I had discovered one redeeming quality about Clavers, I would have brought it forward, but I found none. He had the nature of a wolf and the bravery of a bull-dog.
James Graham of Claverhouse 1647/8 - 1689
Hogg's version has Claverhouse as a sadistic bully, with his soldiers shooting, pillaging, raping and torturing the peasants; very different from the character in Scott, who sees Bonnie Dundee as the first of his many Jacobite heroes. I have sympathy with the latter's portrait. The fanaticism of many of the Covenanters (mirrored in mid 17th century England and nowadays amongst Antifa, BLM, Al Qaeda etc.) is repulsive. There's no doubt that Old Mortality is a violent book depicting a violent world; ironically Morton is driven into rebellion precisely because of his moderation, as is William Maxwell, Lord Evandale in 1688. Both remind me of Lord Falkland in the English Civil War. But behind the Earls of Manchester and Essex, of Sir William Waller and Sir Thomas Fairfax, lie the extremists. It was ever thus. Morton's politics are, surely, that of Scott himself, with their fear of 'enthusiasm'; the Scott hero can never be a revolutionary.
What of the characters? Once again, it is with the gallery of the supporting cast that Scott entertains and shows his brilliance.
The two extremes, Cameronians and Malignants are identified in Burley of Balfour and Claverhouse. The latter accepts that we are both fanatics; but there is some distinction between the fanaticism of honour and that of dark and sullen superstition. One critic has said that at the end of the novel the future belongs to the colourless Morton, so overshadowed in the tale by Burley and Claverhouse. Scott's summary of Claverhouse is first seen arriving at the Tower of Tillietudlem: in the prime of life, rather low of stature, and slightly, though elegantly, formed; his gesture, language, and manners, were those of one whose life had been spent among the noble and the gay...the severity of his character, as well as the higher attributes of undaunted and enterprising valour which even his enemies were compelled to admit, lay concealed under an exterior which seemed adapted to the court or the saloon rather than to the field. Morton, later riding besides him, sees the gentleness and urbanity of his general manners, the high and chivalrous sentiments of military devotion...
John Balfour of Kinloch, or Burley, is one of Scott's remarkable characters - daring in design, precipitate and violent in execution, and going to the very extremity of the most rigid recusancy, it was his ambition to place himself at the head of the presbyterian interest. He is personally responsible for the deaths of Bothwell, Cornet Stuart, and Lord Evandale, and more than once attempts to kill Morton. As Scott writes, Burley was one who believed that the pale of salvation was open for [him] exclusively. He is the eternal fanatic.
The half-insane Habbakuk Mucklewrath: who speaks of mercy to the bloody house of the malignants? I say take the infants and dash them against the stones; take the daughters and the mothers of the house (Tillietudlum) and hurl them from the battlements of their trust, that the dogs may fatten on their blood. Nice guy. Kettledrummle, who preached two mortal hours after the successful skirmish at Drumclog and possessed in perfection a sort of rude and familiar eloquence peculiar to the preachers of that period, which, though it would have been fastidiously rejected by an audience which possessed any portion of taste, was a cake of the right leaven for the palates of those whom he addressed. Scott's description of the young firebrand preacher Ephraim MacBriar, (Ch. V in Volume III pp. 105-110) is as intense as the man himself - Up, then, and be doing; the blood of martyrs, reeking upon scaffolds, is crying for vengeance; the bones of saints, which lie whitening in the highways, are pleading for retribution... As John Buchan remarks: it is with the Covenanters that Scott reaches the height of his power...their wildest extravagences are not caricature...Macbriar's sermon in Chapter XVIII is both superb prose and historically true.
Lady Margaret Bellenden, whose main and repeated topic of conversation revolves around the morning when his Most Sacred Majesty took his disjune at her table in Tillietudlem Castle. Cuddie Headrigg - I am but a puir silly fallow - and his fanatical mother Mause, who is determined that Cuddie shall make no murgeons or jennyflections as they ca' them, in the house of the prelates and curates, nor gird him wi' armour to fight in their cause, either at the sound of kettledrums, organs, bagpipes or any kind of music whatever. Her outburst at Bothwell, when asked to take the oath of loyalty, is superb: Malignant adherents ye are to the prelates, foul props to a feeble and filthy cause, bloody beasts of prey, and burdens to the earth. Both are supremely comic creations.
A scene at Milnwood - the Morton home
Morton's miserly uncle , with his splay feet of unusual size, long thin hands, garnished with nails which seldom felt the steel, a wrinkled and puckered visage, the length of which corresponded with his person, together with a pair of little sharp bargain-making eyes, that seemed eternally looking out for their adantage..(he reminded me of uncle Ebenezer in Kidanapped).; and his old housekeeper, Ailie Wilson - a great comic creation. Here she is on Mause: ill-fard, crazy, crack-brained gowk that she is! to set up to be sae muckle better than ither folk, the auld besom. If it hadna been that I am mair than half a gentlewoman by my station, I wad hae tried my ten nails in the wizen'd hide o' her.
Edith Bellenden (Scottish National Gallery
The highly-descended serjeant of dragoons, Francis Stuart Bothwell, a little too rough in the country, is another great creation. Even Cuddie's girlfriend, and eventual wife, Jenny Dennison has more about her than the slightly insipid Edith Bellenden. Probably the right mate for Harry Morton. Her uncle, Major Bellenden, does show more spark. The local publican, the prudent and peaceful Niel Blane, who tries always to make fair weather with both parties, does end up, like Harry Morton, alive and in situ.
Old Mortality has a wonderful cast of characters and a bluidy tale to cast them in, set in landscapes vividly described. John Buchan is right to comment that at the proper moment the narrative rises to the appropriate intensity in some culminating incident, such as the death of Sergeant Bothwell at Drumclog, or Morton's escape from Burley by his leap across the chasm...there is no weak scene, except the love-making between hero and heroine. It is Scott at his best.
