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.
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