Scott's 'The Abbot' 1820

 

First edition - 1820

I bought the three volume first edition as long ago as 14th March 1986, nearly five years after purchasing The Monastery. This time I had to pay £10 - what an expense! Many contemporary and more recent critics and reviewers felt that, with The Abbot, Scott had regained the reputation assigned to him with Ivanhoe. I happen to view things differently and look on The Monastery and The Abbot as a single tale. Alone among the Waverley novels, the latter was explicitly presented as the sequel to the former. I think one reason readers preferred it was the absence of the irritating White Lady. Scott acknowledges her unpopularity in his brief Introductory Epistle to the fictional Captain Clutterbuck:  I have struck out, for example, the whole machinery of the White Lady, and the poetry by which it is so ably supported (double benefit to me!). She only briefly reappears in the final paragraph of the third volume: ...and the White Lady, whose apparition had been infrequent  when the House of Avenel seemed verging to extinction, was seen to sport by her haunted well, with a zone of gold around her bosom as the baldric of an Earl. (Let her go, Scott, let her go!)

Are there negatives to the sequel? John Buchan wrote: it begins dolefully with lengthy speeches, an intolerable boy, and a religious maniac. It is not until the eleventh chapter that Catherine Seyton's sudden laughter wakes the reader to attention. The stock 'old hag' - in this case Magdalen Graeme (aka Mother Micneven) - appears to be in the right place too many times (rather like the old ex-abbot, Boniface in the final section of the last volume). These coincidences are simply too far-fetched. Catherine Seyton's brother, Henry, was clearly set up for a 'fall' from the first and was a pain in the codpiece throughout. As for the 'hero, Roland Graeme (aka Avenel), the sudden change from wilful youth to inspiring leader did not ring true in one character. I suppose the title of the sequel had to correspond with the first book; otherwise it seems strange to foist it on a character who has no more than a bit-part this time.  Once again, it was Scott's delineation of the minor characters - such as Adam Woodcock the falconer, Lilias Bradbourne, Jasper Wingate, George Douglas, Robert Dryfesdale,  Doctor Luke Lundin, the Lord Lindesay, the Lady Fleming and Veniam, the aged porter at the desolated monastery -  that shows his strengths. Mary Queen of Scots has always had a band of devoted followers and it appears as if Scott was himself very partial to her, with her sweet smiles.  Who is there, at the very mention of Mary Stuart's name, that has not her countenance before him, familiar as that of the mistress of his youth, or the favourite daughter of his advanced age? Some readers and critics did not approve of her [fictional] fondness for sarcasm or her 'coarse' language. The section based on Loch Leven was excellent and, not surprisingly, it led to an influx of visitors to the island (rather like Ivanhoe and Ashby de la Zouch). The Lady of Lochleven is well described. I think John Buchan is right, when he said of the main characters the women excel the me.

Loch Leven and its Castle today

Catherine was at the happy age of innocence and buoyancy of spirit...congenial vivacity. She is of the school of Di Vernon but more hoydenish and artificial (John Buchan).

Catherine Seyton and Roland Graeme

Margaret Graeme had a sternness of perseverance, founded on the fanaticism which she nursed so deeply, and which seemed to absorb all the ordinary purposes and feeling of mortality. ...as her grey hair floated back from under its shaggy eye-brow, the effect of her expressive, though emaciated features, was heightened by an enthusiasm approaching to insanity... She is another of Scott's sibyls.

Scott again gives full rein to his anti-Roman Catholicism: in describing Bridget, the ex-Abbess of Saint Catherine - timid, narrow-minded, and discontented, clung to ancient usages and pretensions which were ended by the Reformation. On Abbot Ambrosius (aka Edward Glendinning)...those who, with sincerity and generosity, fight and fall in an evil cause, posterity can only compassionate as victims of a generous but fatal error. The author seems to revel in his description of the boisterous behaviour of the Abbot of Unreason and his followers in their carnival-like attacks on the few remaining monks in the near-destroyed abbey.

The Seytons and their supporters with Roland Graeme

The interlude in Edinburgh is well described - such as the street fight between the Seytons and the Leslies; Roland's  meeting with Murray and Morton in the Palace of Holyrood; and the verbal tussles with Adam Woodcock. The final scenes - the escape from Loch Leven, the flight leading to the battlefield of Langside, the further removal to Dundrennan Abbey and the farewells - are well done. 

Mary of Scots' escape to Cumberland

The phrase which lodged in my memory from The Monastery - "When does love wait for the sanction of heraldry?" - had its counterpart in The Abbot: "Love, my beautiful Catherine, despises genealogies," answered Roland.