Scott's 'The Black Dwarf' 1816

 

The Black Dwarf - in Volume I of Tales of My Landlord - 1816

This is my first reading of The Black Dwarf. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, as the general consensus amongst the literati is that the short work is very much a minor canon in the Waverley series. Scott himself says he tired of the ground I had trode so often before...I quarrelled with my story, & bungled up a conclusion.  In his anonymous review of the book, Scott further lamented that the explanation of the Dwarf's conduct was too long delayed from an obvious wish to protract the mystery, and then dealt with so hastily as to be almost incomprehensible. Most reviews were not particularly favourable either, but I quite enjoyed the tale! I'm backed up by the contemporary The Edinburgh Review, The British Review and The New Monthly Magazine - the last publication even judging it much better and more original than Old Mortality!

The story is set in Scott's beloved Borders, in the Liddesdale hills, in 1707/8 and has as its background a planned Jacobite Rising after the Act of Union. The main interest of the book lies in the Dwarf's character, from when Halbert or Hobbie Elliott, a substantial young farmer, and Patrick Earnscliff, a gentleman of some fortune,  first espy him silhouetted against the moon on the spooky moor, to his appearance in the castle chapel at the end.  When Hobbie returns in the daylight, he sees the dwarf in all his native deformity. His head was of uncommon size, covered with a fell of shaggy hair, partly grizzled with age; his eye-brows, shaggy and prominent, overhung a pair of small, dark, piercing eyes, set far back in their sockets, that rolled with a portentous wildness, indicative of a partial insanity...his body, thick and square, like that of a man of middle size, was mounted upon two large feet; but nature seemed to have forgotten the legs and thighs....

The National Gallery, Scotland

As for his name, he gave neighbours to understand that his name was Elshender the Recluse; but his popular epithet soon came to be Canny Elshie, or the Wise Wight of Mucklestane-Moor. Hobbie returns more than once to the Dwarf's abode on the Moor; once to ill effect, when his large deerhound attacks and kills one of the hermit's pet goats.

"Wretch! your cruelty has destroyed one of the only

creatures in existence that would look on me with kindness."

One cannot but feel sorry for the Dwarf (in reality, Sir Edward Mauley)  - I am a poor miserable outcast, fitter to have been smothered in the cradle than to have been brought up to scare the world in which I crawl.

"Forbear!"

The scene in the castle chapel at the end, when the Dwarf steps from behind the monument to Isabella's mother and confronts her despicable father, is well done. In fact, the Dwarf dominates the novel, even if there are several episodes (chapters) where he does not figure. As for the others in the book? The Jacobite Mareschal is an engaging character - Why, I love this poor exiled king will all my heart; and my father was an old Gilliecrankie-man, and I long to see some amends on the courtiers that have bought and sold old Scotland, whose crown has been so long independent. Hobbie and Westburnflat are certainly drawn with care; Earnscliff is spirited but rarely appears; Vere's treachery is hard to stomach; Sir Frederick Langley is pleasingly odious; and Hubert Ratcliffe is stolid but dull. They are all clearly defined, without being particularly interesting. The Introduction by Jedidiah Cleishbotham, I can take or leave and, once again, the young females are not particularly well delineated. Oh for Brunton or Ferrier!

The origin of Scott's Elshender the Recluse was David Ritchie, known locally as Bow'd Davie of Wudhus. His story as as interesting as his fictional succubus. Born at Easter Happrew farm in 1741, David was deformed and misshapen from birth, with a very large head and long hair. His feet were twisted, his legs were very short and his body was large and fat. He had an angry and sour facial expression. He was very strong - near Manor Village, near Peebles, there is a big stone in a roadside wall, said to have been carried and placed there by David. It is known as the Black Dwarf's stone. He was an unpleasant man: A jealous, misanthropical, and irritable temper was his most prominent characteristic (Robert Chambers). He died in 1811 and is buried in Manor churchyard. A collection of his personal possessions are held in the Tweeddale Museum. Scott certainly met him at least once.