First edition - May 1822
For once, I read one of Scott's Introductory Epistles and found it quite interesting! The fictional Captain Clutterbuck is writing to his friend the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust and almost at once starts to discuss the effect The Monastery has had on him (he was involved in that novel's Introduction). He then turns to his imaginary meeting with the Author of Waverley. The Captain tells Scott that there is a general - feeling - that the White Lady is no favourite. Scott's rejoinder is that I think she is a failure myself; but rather in execution than conception...I must invest my elementary spirits with a little human flesh and blood - they are too fine-drawn for the present taste of the public. Revealingly, the Author then states that no one shall find me rowing against the stream. I care not who knows it - I write for the public amusement...I will not...be pertinacious in the defence of my own errors against the voice of the public. Clutterbuck, naturally, queries whether you abandon, then, in the present work, the mystic, and the magical...? Scott has a wonderful response: Not a cock-lab scratch, my son - not one bounce on the drum of Tedworth - not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch in the wainscoat. All is clear and above board - a Scotch metaphysician might believe every word of it. And, in The Fortunes of Nigel, the Author is true to his word - although I wondered a little when the Lady Hermione was first introduced; but she was flesh, if very little blood. One more extract from the Introductory Epistle, which is a neat riposte to those critics/readers who complain about Scott's prolixity and wayward plotting:...I think there is a demon who seats himself on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand; incidents are multiplied; the story lingers, while the materials increase; my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly, and the work is complete long before I have attained the point I proposed... Fair enough - if the reader is put off by prolixity, don't read Sir Walter Scott.
What of Nigel Olifaunt, Lord Glenvarloch, and his 'Fortunes'? Scott has written worse tales and he has written better. The main story is relatively straightforward. Nigel travels from Scotland to London to reclaim a large sum of money lent to King James VI and I - this is in order to prevent the sale of his ancestral estates and castle. However, not only does the royal favourite, Steenie (the Duke of Buckingham) wish the land for himself, but his acolyte, Lord Dalgarno, steers Nigel into disrepute. When Nigel realises this, he strikes him in St James' royal park; the offence means flight to the sanctuary of Alsatia, then a further attempt to solicit the king's favour in Greenwich Park. This time the result is imprisonment in the Tower. A complicated sequence of events, involving minor characters who have been attached to the story previously, leads to Nigel's release, his estates redeemed, Dalgarno's fall and death, and the hero's marriage to Margaret Ramsay, the daughter of an old watch-maker.
Prince Charles, Nigel and Sir Mungo
Nigel is another of Scott's young heroes, who (although making a better fist of it than some of his predecessors) is usually tossed and turned by events. Scott gives an excellent summary of his character: he had not escaped the predominant weakness of his country, an overweening sense of the pride of birth, and a disposition to value the worth and consequence of others according to the number and fame of their deceased ancestors...Once or twice, the reader wants to shake him - his stupid behaviour both in St James' and Greenwich parks. Nigel does realise his reactive nature: I have been, through my whole life, one who leant upon others for that assistance, which it is more truly noble to derive from my own exertions.
Sir Nigel in the Tower
Perhaps the most interesting, most well-drawn character is that of King James I and VI., with his dagger-proof quilted dress, and an air of distortion to his figure. Scott is clearly fascinated by the monarch and spends several pages describing his character and fortunes and his feeble attempts to curb his son and his favourite's influence upon him. With his Latin and Greek phrases, his parsimony, his terror of any sort of weaponry and his pathetic desire to be seen as a latter-day King Solomon, he warrants sympathy from the reader.
As usual with Scott, the minor characters are fascinating in their individuality:
David Ramsay - maker of watches and horologes to his Majesty, with a tall, thin, lathy skeleton, who would extend his lean jaws into and alarming grin, and indicate, by a nod of his yard-long visage... and who was constantly grimed with smoke, gilded with brass fillings, and smeared with lamp-black and oil...; his apprentices Jenkin Vincent and Frank Tunstall (who plays a negligible part in the story). Jenkin - or Jin Vin as we was known - eminent for his feats upon holidays at the foot-ball, and other gymnastic exercises; scarce rivalled in broad-sword play...he knew every lane, blind alley, and sequestered court of the ward, better than his Catechism. Alas, he is desperately in love with his master's beautiful daughter, Margaret. No chance, son! (She calls him a clown - a cockney!)
Richie Moniplies, of the old and honourable house of Castle Collop, weel kenn'd at the West Port of Edinburgh. Richie is a well-rounded Scott character, with a marvellous turn of phrase and fascinating imagination; John Christie and his wife Dame Nell, who is a score of years younger, a round, buxom, laughter-loving dame, with black eyes, a tight well-laced bodice...; George Heriot, the goldsmith (James' Jingling Geordie), warmly befriended, and introduced into the employment of the royal family of Scotland, more than twenty years since, by your (Nigel's) excellent father...
Margaret Ramsay
Margaret Ramsay, who Heriot says is dutiful girl to her god-father, though I sometimes call her a jill-flirt. Margeret was a girl about twenty years old, very pretty, very demure, yet with lively black eyes, that ever and anon contradicted the expression of sobriety... She falls headlong in love with the unsuspecting Nigel and is a mainspring to his release from the Tower.; That strange, almost ethereal being, Lady Hermione, deadly pale,...long black hair...dress of pure white...penetrating eyes; Lord Dalgarno,is a triple-dyed, deceitful villain of the piece. I couldn't quite swallow the likelihood of his behaviour in front of his monarch, Charles and Buckingham, his own father and the rest of the Court. Surely, the Tower would have followed. He, with his cold, calculated malice, is too near a caricature of a baddie to be believable.
Even the very minor ones are well drawn: Andrew Skurliewhitter, the scrivener, a young man with lank smooth hair, combed straight to his ears, and then cropped short...; Dame Ursula Suddlechop, with her person plumped out with the remains of beauty in the wane; Lord Huntinglen; Reginald Lowestoffe a young gentleman of the Temple; Duke Jacob Hildebrod, the potentate of Alsatia - a monstrously fat old man, with only one eye; and a nose which bore evidence to the frequency, strength, and depth of his potations - an absolute sand-bed; Trapbois, the usurer; Captain Colepepper or Peppercull, with his predetermined effrontery and innate cowardice; and Master Laurie Linklater, the king's cook, who could kittle up his Majesty's most sacred palate with our own gusty Scotch dishes.
There is usually at least one character who grates on this reader this time it is Sir Mungo Malagrowther, of Girnigo Castle, the whipping-boy of the king. A bitter, caustic, and back-biting humour, a malicious wit...I could have done without his presence.
Nigel shoots Trapbois' murderer
Some scenes stick in one's mind: Nigel's escape into Whitefriars/Alsatia (where desperadoes of every description, - bankrupt citizens, ruined gamesters, irreclaimable prodigals, desperate duellists, bravoes, homicides, and debauched profligates of every description, all leagued together to maintain the immunities of their asylum); his killing of one of the two robbers and the description of the dead body of Trapbois; the distraught behaviour of daughter Martha (with her faded complexion, grey eyes, thin lips, and austere visage); the unlikely, but gripping, denouement with Dalgarno's fall.
There is also less of Scott's, often execrable, verse.
Contemporary critical reception was mixed. The Lady Hermione sub-plot was felt to be clumsy and a non-essential distraction. The Quarterly found the plot obscure and improbable and many of the characters dull but praised the portrayal of King James. John Buchan adds some useful points. George Heriot is the Edinburgh burgher whom Scott had known, Richie Moniplies the familiar serving man...the wrongs of Lady Hermione is most clumsily conceived...but the impression given of the colour and pageantry of life is as vivid as the middle chapters of Monte Cristo. Alsatia is brilliantly depicted, and the murder is an eerie business...there are many admirable comedy interludes...on a higher plane stand George Heriot, one of the most solidly realised merchants in fiction...Richie Moniplies...insolent and kindly, sycophantic and independent, sordid and chivalrous, greedy and unselfish...but the masterpiece is the King...there is dignity even in his panics, and his buffoonery has a substratum of hard good sense.
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