Lockhart's 'Reginald Dalton' 1823

 

First edition - 1823

Lockhart could have entitled his book The Trials of Reginald Dalton, like his Blackwood's Magazine partner's Margaret Lyndsay. Certainly, his hero (who is not called that until Book VII - page 75 of the third volume*) tumbles from one misfortune to another; although they are mainly his fault, compared with the near-blameless Margaret. The great, and blessed, difference between the two novels is that Lockhart's is not saturated with irritating piety. True, Reginald's father is a fine, upstanding vicar, whilst his love Ellen 'Hesketh' has a guardian who is a devout Roman Catholic priest. But neither are sanctimonious, but rather fully sympathetic characters. There is a sense of worldliness in these admirable and gentle characters. As one critic has remarked: the vicar is capable or romantic self-delusion and self interest; Father Keith can momentarily be a snob and slightly drunk...in Lockhart, as in Ferrier, the satiric and the severely pious are closely linked.

We are revisiting a plotline of both Scott's Guy Mannering and The Antiquary, with the central role of the 'unknown orphan', although I guessed quite early on who Ellen's father was. Another link with another author, this time John Galt, threw up the importance of the 'Entail'; this time it is only thrown in at the very end, much to Rev Dalton's advantage, rather than dominating a whole tale. 

The baddies are Mr Frederick Chisney, a bold, gay, sprightly, and ardent youth...a considerable coxomb to boot. He was to be responsible for Reginald's early fall from grace at Oxford. Just when the reader thinks he will reform, his baser instincts regain control. He deserves his end. Sir Charles Catline, who absconded from his relationship with the teenage Lucy Lethwaite (Rev Dalton married her older sister Ellen) in St Andrews, which led to a birth of a child (the 'orphan' viz. Ellen 'Hesketh') and her death; and his partner in villainy, and overlarge and fond-of-a-drink Scotchman, Mr Macdonald; with a more understandable 'curate's egg' character in Miss Barbara Dalton.

The goodies are James Chisney, Frederick's older brother - soon to be Squire of Thorwold manor-house - albeit a rather sombre looking person (very sallow, and not a little marked with the small-pox) and his young wife whose tones of her voice were fortunately very soft and liquid, so that the frequent giggle in which she indulged was by no means so intolerable as that of a newly married young woman most commonly is; Mr Ward, who has made a decent, if not sizeable, fortune in India; and Thomas Macdonald, the painstakingly thoughtful and decent son of the old Scotchman. Others essentially on the right side of the gods, and brought to life by the author, are Squire Dalton of Grypherwast-Hall and his sister Elizabeth.

Rev John Dalton and Father Archy Keith, the old Jacobite Roman Catholic priest both have oodles of goodness to spread around. The relationship between Reginald and his father is finely drawn. Young Reginald was brought up with as much tender care as if he had not been motherless. While a child, he occupied the pillow of his dead parent by his father's side...as he grew up, he was with him almost all the hours of the day, either as a pupil, or as a plaything. It is a wrench for them both when the young man goes off to Oxford. The author is excellent at conveying the anguish felt by Reginald for letting his father down and the marvellous positive forbearance of the father.

The contrast between the placid vicarage of Lannwell and the hoary Grypherwast-Hall is well done. The Oxford scenes appear very much to lean on the author's own time spent there. Book V Chapter 1  has a very realistic account of the return of the young blood to their alma mater, and the town v gown fight is particularly life like. The withdrawn, bookish don, Mr. Burton, a very strange gentleman; 

the Principal's idiosyncracies; the misbehaviour of the students, all ring true.

There is plenty of humour lurking in the pages, from the description of  the disappointed young Rev Dalton, seemingly spurned by Barbara Dalton, his cousin, to the misunderstandings between the loquacious Mr Macdonald and the bewildered Lady Catline. Poor old Methodism is again fulminated against. Reginald is told by Squire Dalton not to come back from Oxford either a Whig or a Methodist. There is also a witty shaft against John Galt's The Steam-Boat...a stupid notion of his to write such a book! Only once did I wish for some pruning shears (Chapter VII Volume I), where Lockhart rambled to no consequence like his father-in-law often did.

 

* a mistake! Reginald is called a hero as early as page 7 in Volume 1.

John Wilson's 'The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay' 1823

 

    

First edition - published 1823.

In his late teens, John Wilson fell heavily for a young lady of great charm of person and character. The course of such attachment as there was proved to be a most troubled one. In August 1803, he wrote to a friend By heavens! I will, perhaps, some day blow my brains out, and there is the end of the matter. And again, The word happy will never again be joined to the name of John Wilson. He heard 'Margaret' was to be married to another (it did not take place) - he swallowed laudanum, lost his powers of study, indulged in 'unbridled dissipation', took sudden aimless journeys, solitary rambles in Ireland and Wales... This is part of the origin, and aspects of the story, of Margaret or the Orphan Maid. Was John Wilson, the author, portraying himself as Richard Wedderburne, the thwarted lover in the novel?

The Trials tells of a beautiful and (oh so) virtuous maiden, the daughter of Walter Lyndsay, a printer who, having become imbued with the doctrines of Tom Paine - a name doomed to everlasting infamy, falls into evil ways, is imprisoned, takes up with another woman and abandons his family. The latter - Margaret, her ailing mother, Alice Craig, aged grandmother and two sisters (one who is blind from smallpox and the other mentally afflicted due to a pernicious fever) move from Braehead, a village near Edinburgh to the city itself, to a dark and narrow wynd. Misfortune follows misfortune - grandmother breathes her last in the village (perfect peace, - features overspread with serene beauty, - smiles like the moonlight, - and lids shut as if in a happy dream); mother and both sisters die, but not before father dies in penury in Glasgow. Margaret's first sweetheart, Harry Needham, perishes by drowning (trying to save her). Margaret does get welcomed into the home of a well-to-do family, but the undesired attention of the son compels her to seek another home. Journeying to an elderly, and miserly, uncle, Daniel Craig,  all appears to improve. When he dies he leaves his estate to her; however, a seemingly happy marriage to the son of the local minister heaps more disaster on her; his previous (unknown) wife turns up, dragging a small boy with her. The dissolute bigamist flees, the first wife dies and only at the end does the soldier return from more wanderings to a sick bed in Edinburgh. Nursed by Margaret, his father and sister, the soldier 'remarries' her and they have two children. Needless to say, he then dies young. O miserabile.

I looked up my Blog on Wilson's previous work - Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life - and can only repeat what I wrote then, but with perhaps even more force. It is very hard for a 21st century reader to have an empathy for the writings of such as Wilson. The pages are drenched in religious dogmatism; and an overwhelming lachrymose atmosphere: Margaret and her mother both felt that to repine at the decrees of Providence was not only fruitless, but  sinful. Theirs was not a barren religion; but under it their hearts sent up both feelings and thoughts..

The purple passages grate repeatedly. A critic has talked of his overladen style. A few examples will suffice.

The family have moved to a garret in Edinburgh: Margaret Lyndsay and her mother brought with them meek virtues, a lowly wisdom, and a deep spirit of faith and, of course, they go regularly to church on the Sabbath, receiving into their hearts the weekly restoration of Christianity.

Esther, the sister is dying:

"O Death! where is thy sting? - O Grave! where is thy victory?" - said the blind child with her usual clear and silver voice, that sounded for a moment strong, as if she had been about to sing a hymn. Her eyelids had all along been shut - and they never opened more; her pale lips remained just as they were while she was speaking - and not even a sigh was heard when her pure spirit took its flight to heaven!

So, just Mum and daughter, and an errant son, left. Margaret returns to the garret: the Orphan entered with a smile into the Widow's house.  Ugh! 

Hannah - Ludovic's first wife is dying:

Margaret lifted up little Ludovic on the bed, and he of his own accord crept close to his mother's breast. She feebly folded her thin arms about her child, - with a convulsive motion drew his little rosy lips to hers, - and with several long deep gasps, signed out her life upon the cheeks which her dying spirit knew to be the innocent image of her guilty husband.

There are inserted paragraphs on Nature, where Wilson is at his most saccharine in describing the heavens, the clouds, the lea-fields, the bleating of lambs, the ground bees, booming by in their joyful industry... No wonder, Margaret sits awhile on her journey to Glasgow and at a sweet, solitary spot, takes out her Bible and read two or three chapters of the New Testament. Well, you would, wouldn't you? On another occasion, she turns to those chapters where she knew there were comforts promised to the afflicted...the shadow of the world to come was then brought solemnly over her thoughtful spirit; and an awe was felt, as if she were sitting more immediately in the presence of her Maker. This repeated religious blanket-bombing grates 200 years later. A passage on 'The Sabbath' is very revealing.

Above all, there is the saint-like Margaret, with her sweet mild face - eyes of softest hazel - and the very spirit of gentleness breathed over her light auburn hair. She is but 16 at the start of the story and still only 22 towards the end. At twenty, she was beautiful...her disposition was by nature gay and lively...perfectly blameless manners. However, no wonder the auburn of her hair has some threads of untimely grey!

At last, in Chapter XXXV (pp. 284-294) some humour is injected with the appearance of two would-be suitors for Margaret's hand: Mr Duncan Gray of Muirhouse, who had a soul for music framed; and the Reverend Aeneas M'Taggart of Drumluke. But the levity is brief in what is essentially a tale of woe.

The roll-call of Death:

p.130: boyfriend, Harry Needham, drowns; p.151 - Walter, the dissolute father dies; p.177 Marion, the sister, dies; p.181 Esther, the sister, dies; p.197 Alice, the mother, dies; p.281 Daniel Craig, the uncle, dies; p.349 Hannah Blantyre, Ludovic's first wife, dies; p.367ff Michael Grahame, a friend, marked out for a grave!; p.401 Ludovic, her husband dies. As for the latter, time and change had fitted him for Heaven... Well, that's okay then.

The final paragraph rather sums up the whole tenor the novel: Her children's virtue and piety was her reward from the God who had proved her in affliction, and who now shed the light of his holiest comfort on her head, which, though not old, was yet waxing grey, and seemed, in its serene and solemn beauty, not to be destined for a long life here, but an eternity of bliss hereafter. Rather ghastly.

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I have been re-reading Francis Jeffrey's Secondary Scottish Novels (Edinburgh Review, October 1823).  He has mixed feelings about the novel:

...it is too pathetic and full of sorrow for us to say much of it. It is very beautiful and tender; but something cloying, perhaps, in the uniformity of its beauty, and exceedingly oppressive in the unremitting weight of the pity with which it presses our souls.

Galt's 'Ringan Gilhaize; or The Covenanters' 1823

 

First edition - published May 1823. 

This could well be Galt's masterpiece. He extended his historical scope to analyse the Calvinistic character and the part it played in the Scotland of the 16th to 17th centuries. As John MacQueen suggests, the novel deals with a revolutionary change in social structure and intellectual history, the transformation of the hierarchical Catholic Scotland of the earlier sixteenth century, to the impoverished, obsessed, egalitarian middle class Calvinistic society of the late seventeenth century... It is a well-structured book, with a triple perspective - the author, Ringan Gilhaize (the 17thc Covenanter and Cameronian who calls himself an impartial historian) and, through the latter's conversations with his grandfather, Michael Gilhaize, the 16thc struggles between John Knox (a special creation sent down from heaven...in his life is vast and wonderful)/the Lords of the Congregation and the Queen Regent and her daughter, the fair and faulty Mary. Galt is artist enough to distinguish successfully between the style of Ringan and his grandfather.

It is a powerful, and more compelling antidote to Scott's Old Mortality. Neither James Hogg nor Galt approved of Scott's work, which portrayed the Covenanters as religious fanatics and armed rebels. The latter wrote in his Literary Life that Scott had treated the defenders of the Presbyterian Church with too much levity. Galt researched the background for his novel diligently, visiting the scenes he described (salvaging abandoned weapons at Killicrankie) and reading relevant History books. He lovingly recreated the outdoor meeting of the Covenanters: verily it was a grand sight to see the fearless religious man moving from his house in the grey of the morning, with the Bible in his hand and the sword for a staff, walking towards the hills for many a weary mile, hoping the preacher would be there, and praying as he went, that there might be no molestation. The arch villain (apart from James Sharp) is Claverhouse, whom is not the man Scott writes about: the implacable rage with which Claverhouse persecuted the Covenanters has been extenuated by some discreet historians, on the plea of his being an honourable officer deduced from his soldierly worth elsewhere; whereas the truth is, that his cruelties in the shire of Ayr, and of other western parts, were less the fruit of his instructions, wide and severe as they were, than of his own mortified vanity and malignant revenge. And again: with that scorn of public opinion and defect of all principle, save only a canine fidelity, a dog's love, to his papistical master, dominated with his dragoons, as if he himself had been regnant monarch of Scotland.  No wonder, Gilhaizie can exclaim, at the moment of his assassination of Claverhouse, there was a vision in the air as if all the angels of brightness, and the martyrs in their vestments of glory, were assembled on the walls and battlements of heaven to witness the event, and I started up and cried, "I have delivered my native land". But in the same instant I remembered to whom the glory was due, and falling again on my knees, I raised my hands and bowed my head as I said, "Not mine, O Lord, but thine is the victory!" Vengeance writ large; the God all sides worship is the God of the Old Testament - a 'book' which has done untold damage in the history of mankind.

Whilst acknowledging the commendable control of such a sweep of history ((1550s to 1690) and the empathy of the author for his subject, one must also confess the problem for a typical 21st century reader. I taught Calvin and Calvinism to the Sixth Form for many years and was, frankly, repelled by its grim determinism and predestinarianism. One looked in vain for the slightest touch of humour. To read three volumes without the latter can be soul-destroying! I missed the Galtian positives shown in the Annals, The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie. Ringan is an obsessive who firmly believe that Providence has singled him out to play the role which leads to the assassination of Claverhouse and (with the  successful 1688 Revolution) of the destruction of the prelatical House of Stewart. Gilhaizie sees his task as war with the worshippers of the Beast and his Image. Galt does suggest mental derangement as a major part of Gilhaizie's character and he is not averse to paint a near caricature of the narrowness of his (and Calvinism's) approach to life. Fanaticism is hard to admire unless one is on the same wavelength.

Occasionally, the purple passages and paeons to the 'cause' jar with modern sensibilities - Michael Gilhaizie sees numbers of poor men on a journey, his compassion was soon changed into a frame of thankfulness, at the boundless variety of mercies which are dealt out to the children of Adam, for he remarked, that, for the most part, these poor men, whose sustenance was as precarious as that of the wild birds of the air, were cheerful and jocund, many of them singing and whistling as blithely as the lark, that carries the sweet incense of her melodious songs in the censer of a sinless breast to the golden gates of the morning. Hmnn. I must look up 'jocund'.

Galt himself was a Calvinist but he did have a sense of humour and of the ridiculous. Ringan Gilhaize did not really strike a chord with the contemporary reader. I struggled to retain any sympathy for such religious fanaticism (on all sides).  A well-constructed but grim story. 

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I have been re-reading (8th August) Francis Jeffrey's Secondary Scottish Novels (Edinburgh Review, October 1823) and will quote what is a pretty hostile critique:

...the book is tiresome, and without effect. The narrative is neither pleasing nor probable, and the calamities are too numerous, and too much alike; and the uniformity of the tone of actual suffering and dim religious hope, weighs like a load on the spirit of the reader. There is no interesting complication of events or adventure, and no animating development or catastrophe. In short, the author has evidently gone beyond his means in entering the lists with the master of historical romance; and must be contented, hereafter, to follow his footsteps in the more approachable parts of his career.

Galt obviously ignored Jeffrey and produced The Spaewife that December! 

David Carey's 'A Legend of Argyle' 1821

 I think it is fair to say that David Carey (1782-1824)  is not well known, even among readers of early 19th century Scottish fiction. Most of the books of criticism of that period that I have make no mention of him. The only work in the huge Robert Lee Wolff Collection is his Lochiel; Or, The Field of Culloden (3 vols., 1820). He was the son of an Arbroath manufacturer who, after initially working in his father's counting-house, moved to Edinburgh. Here he laboured in Archibald Constable's publishing business. He then moved to London and became a fervent supporter of the Whig government. In 1807, he became editor of the Inverness Journal, but left that post in 1812 to edit the Boston Gazette. In 1822, we find him in Paris and on his return he published Life in Paris (1822), which is possibly his most-well-known work.  Wracked with ill-health, he returned to the family home in Arbroath, dying of consumption eighteen months later.

He published six novels - as well as volumes of poems. They were:-  

1806: Secrets of the Castle; or, The Adventures of Charles D'Almaine (2 vols.)                                  

1820: Lochiel; or, The Field of Culloden (3vols.)                                                                                     

1821: A Legend of Argyle; or, 'Tis a Hundred Years Since (3 vols.)                                                       

1822: Life in Paris                                                                                                                                       

1824: Frederick Morland                                                                                                                          

1834: The Nuptial Doom; or, The Witch of Scot-muir

There are several copies of Life in Paris on the Internet, and two other first editions of A Legend of Argyle, but I have been unable, so far, to trace the other four works.

First edition (G. & W.B. Whitaker) 1821

I enjoyed reading the tale. I suppose, inevitably, it reeks of Scott. One of the plot-lines is that of an infant being taken to the continent and who grows up with only a dim recollection of his origins. Hello, Guy Mannering! There are the trusty servants (a fisher family who could have graced The Antiquary), slightly anaemic damsels, who gain their lovers in a lightning-fast few pages of 'wrapping-up' at the end of Volume III. There are also, more's the pity, stanzas of mediocre verse inserted into the narrative every so often - in Latin, French, Italian, Scots and English. He also follows Sir Walter in starting each chapter with a few lines from Shakespeare, Dryden and other, lesser, scribblers. Being a novel of the '15, Rob Roy has to make an appearance, but Carey specifically references Sir Walter - as the outward man of the free-booter on this occasion, as described by tradition, differs very materially from that of a certain celebrated writer, we offer no apology for attempting to sketch an outline of it, leaving the reader to judge which is most likely to be correct.

Carey can write a good scene - the attempted (Polonius-like) assassination of Gordon in Ronay's castle; the stumbling on the brawny and gigantic Highlanders asleep in the derelict Castle of Haddo; the civic scenes in Perth and Edinburgh; but there are several chapters which are simply 'padding' and could easily be cut out.

Rorie Kennedy (junr.) the young fisherman is quite a comic character - able to sing mournful ditties (to an air inexpressibly and sweetly wild) and who would never tak' money for ony thing but fish... and whose sentences are regularly spiced with marine metaphors and who has a terror of bogles.

The hero (and 'foundling', just 20 years back) General Gordon is a bit too good to be true, gallant officer that he is, but at least he has more initiative about him than many of Scott's young heroes. His soon-to-be-friend, Major Howard, a young English officer of noble family, is not much more than a cardboard figure.

Carey also tries his hand at the stock Scott humorous (usually foreign or very Scottish) adult - this motley crew include the short, squat and pompous Reverend Principal King D.D. at Magdalen College, Oxford; Provost Mac Codrum, equally pompous and out for the main chance; the scheming but ridiculous figure of Provost Callum of Perth; the buffoon (but not very amusing) Ambassador and Plenipotentiary from Louis XIV, Monsieur Grandfourbe, who out-Scott's Sir Walter for an irritating creation; there is the caricature zealot, Saunders Knox. Duncan Buy, the vigilant Butler of Inverara and veteran in the cellar and in the field, and his drinking pal, Murdoch Ross (Ronay's henchman); Donald of the Curragh, Euphemia's manservant and auld carl, provide humorous relief; Admittedly, it's occasionally difficult to sort out the Ronalds and the Donalds. Brigadier MacIntosh, the Laird of Borlum, with his antique helmet, cuirass and pike, brings the pages alive in his journeys from Perth to Leith,  and on to Preston. Carey flirts with an old beldame figure - in this instance, Janet Gray the housekeeper of the forbidding Dunalascaig, whom young Rorie inevitably suspects of being a witch. At least, she is not a spectre.

The two 'heroines' (if that is not too strong a word) are really stock characters. General Gordon's 'squeeze', Euphemia Hamilton, not only rides well but has a figure on which a sculptor would have gazed with delight and edification...tall even to a commanding height...her gait was elastic and graceful, but firm and unconstrained...A good egg, too. Matching her for beauty, is the imprisoned damsel in the dark tower of the Castle of Dunalascaig, the fair Italian - Signorina Macellaro. 

The baddie, The Earl of Ronay, with a flashing dark eye, is unevenly written about. The Earl of Mar, the Jacobite leader, is quite well (and accurately) sketched in. James VIII, the Old Pretender, makes a fleeting appearance.

 

As for the holder of the book's title, the Duke of Argyle, (Mac Cullumore) Carey is practically a worshipper of the illustrious nobleman, and his hero (for he is the real hero) scarcely puts a foot wrong. He was a consummate general, a patriotic chief, and one of the most enlightened supporters of that civil and religious liberty which had so recently been established on the ruins of the House of Stuart. The Dictionary of Scottish History by Ian Donnachie & George Hewitt (2001) paints a different portrait under its Campbell, John, second Duke of Argyll (1678-1743) - his services were only acquired after he had been promised considerable financial rewards, promoted to major-general in the royal army and elevated to the dukedom of Greenwich...'Red John of the Battles' dealt effectively with the Jacobite Rebellion...his later life was largely devoted to politics. Here, as a result of extensive patronage as well as electoral corruption...he controlled, at his death, about half the constituencies in the country. Oh well, it was only fiction!