Scott's 'The Betrothed' 1825

 

First edition 1825

The Betrothed was published with The Talisman in four volumes in 1825. I recall first reading it decades ago - perhaps even in the Sixth Form - and quite enjoying it!  I say this because when Scott's printer and publisher, Ballantyne and Constable, read the first chapters they were not keen on the story, the former finding it tiresome. Scott, even after rewriting portions of it, wanted to withdraw it from publication. The other two hit on the plan of publishing it together with The Talisman, a story they found to be far superior. The Betrothed was actually well received by both critics and public and considered a worthy companion to The Talisman. So I am not alone. However, one biographer of Scott, Hesketh Pearson, wrote: The Betrothed was clearly composed in a somnolent if not stertorous condition, and would score high marks in a competition to decide which was the dreariest and stupidest book ever produced by a writer of genius". Ouch! But also, Bah! - what a stupid comment.

The Introduction - Minutes of a Sederunt of a General Meeting...for the purpose of writing and publishing the class of works called The Waverley Novels - is typical Sir Walter. Here we meet again Jonathan Oldbuck, of The Antiquary fame; Dandie Dinmont's son of him in Guy Mannering; a letter from Mr. Dousterswivel, also of The Antiquary; the Rev. Mr Lawrence Templeton, 'editor' of Ivanhoe; and Captain Cuthbert Clutterbuck, 'editor' of The Monastery and The Fortunes of Nigel. It is the latter who opines: To the chair, then, I say it, that The Betrothed is heavy enough to break down the chair of John of Gaunt, or Cader-Edris itself. I must add, however, that, in my poor mind, The Talisman goes more trippingly off.  Well, I will be reading the latter next; we shall see.

Sir Damian de Lacy, the old Constable's loyal nephew never really comes alive (in fact, he spends much of his time in a physical/mental depression or hurt); and the heroine, Lady Eveline Berenger, daughter of the slaughtered Raymond, is only spasmodically interesting or really 'alive'. Wilkin Flammock, the mighty Fleming (Our Flemish courage is like our Flanders horses - the one needs the spur, and the other must have a taste of the wine-pot); and his daughter Roschen play important roles in the story and are well-drawn.

The villain, Randal de Lacy, once or twice briefly crosses the stage, fittingly assassinated in mistake for his brother the Constable by the other 'half-villain' - Renault Vidal aka  the Welsh chief bard Cadwallon of the Nine Lays, of the slaughtered Gwenwyn of Powis-land - are both skimpily but realistically drawn.

Of course, Scott has to bring in the usual supernatural (or dreamlike?) figure - this time` it is the Britoness Vanda who, fortuitously, only 'appears' on a few occasions, egged on by Eveline's malicious great-aunt, the Lady Ermengarde of Baldringham, proud of her Saxon heritage and contemptuous of the Normans (shades of Cedric in Ivanhoe?). The room, the chamber of the Red-Finger, is rather like the Green Room in The Antiquary. The Virgin of the Garde Doloureuse is another ethereal presence - equally unlikely for a Protestant reader. I also appreciated Scott's cynicism about the Roman Catholic Abbess's principles: Truth is, the Lady Abbess's hereditary devotion to the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse was much decayed since she had known the full merits of another gifted image, the property of her own convent. And another shaft, this time directed by the Constable Hugo de Lacy at Baldwin, the Primate of England - you of the spirituality make us the packhorses of your own concerns, and climb to ambitious heights by the help of our over-burthened shoulders...

I return to Hesketh Pearson's strictures - unjust and mistaken. Once again, I actually enjoyed the story and could see little wrong with the history of those wild days on the Marches between England and Wales in the late 12th century. In a few lines, Scotts succinctly and accurately summed up Henry II's reign: Thus spoke Henry the Second, than whom no wiser, or, generally speaking, more fortunate monarch, ever sat upon the throne of England; yet whose life is a striking illustration, how family dissensions can tarnish the most brilliant lot to which Heaven permits humanity to aspire; and how little gratified ambition, extended power, and the highest reputation in war and in peace, can do towards curing the wounds of domestic affliction.

Another useful paragraph - this time of the author's way of working, is worth quoting: But, as we profess to present to the reader not a precise detail of circumstances, according to their order and date, but a series of pictures, endeavouring to present the most striking incidents before the eye or imagination of those whom it may enliven, we therefore open a new scene, and bring other actors upon the stage.

Eveline and Rose on the battlement

of Castle Doloureuse

A final point. There are similar incidents in the novel to the much more successful Ivanhoe: both set in the late 12th century (1187 and 1194); both involve sieges of castles and treachery; both involving heroes disguised as Palmers, returning from the Holy Land. But there the similarities end - there are no Jews, not least no lovely Rebecca; no supporting outlaws, but rather perfidious Welsh; and no sustainability for a three volume tale. So, now on to The Talisman.

'Keelivine's' Tales and Sketches of the West of Scotland 1824

  

           

First edition - 1824

'Christopher Keelivine' was a pseudonym for Andrew Picken (1788-1833) - keelivine is a Scottish word for a lead pencil!  Picken was born in Paisley, grandson of James Picken, a clothier of the town. After leaving school, he was a clerk, successively, in a manufactory in Causeyside Street, in a Dublin brewery, and in a dye-works in Pollokshaws, Glasgow. He spent some time as a representative of a Glasgow mercantile firm in the West Indies. Returning to Scotland, he married Janet Coxon, daughter of an Edinburgh bookseller. He tried literary work in Glasgow, settled in Liverpool as a bookseller and, disappointed in that, moved to London He mixed with the literary world there, but, the strain of authorship took its toll on his health. He died of apoplexy in November 1833, aged only 45.

The Tales and Sketches consist of but three pieces, two fiction and one non-fiction. The most interesting and, probably, his most well-known, is the first, Mary Ogilvie. It went through several editions, of which the 6th (1840) was illustrated by Cruikshank. Used, by now, to several mournful tales, backdropped by the usual oppressive Covenanteering rigidity, I was pleasantly surprised to read a story with a happy ending. True, the hero had to experience his fair share of (mostly self-induced) travails, but he got Mary finally. The common theme to all three pieces is the comparing of (perhaps) the 'good old days' with the present money-obsessed, social climbing to be seen in the great conurbations, especially in the rapidly-growing Glasgow.

Mary Ogilvie is a love story, formed in childhood, but bedevilled by the hero's shilly-shallying when he should have 'grasped the nettle'. He grows up with Mary in the unaffected and hearty enjoyment of country people, which he compares with the stately nothingness - the insipidity, formality, and heartlessness - the envy, emulations, and humiliating chagrins - which so much mix with and embitter the glittering enjoyments of "good society". Strong stuff and, surely, autobiographical? The scenes of Mary's betrothal and subsequent wedding to a man she does not love, are well written. Later, when he is about to be married himself, William confesses, Good God! thought I, how valuable is that thing which we call feeling, to the few that possess it? Yet what a price do they pay for it? how it breaks in upon their tranquillity, and makes fools of them to the rest of the world! Again, the author knows what he is writing about.

Fortuitously, the good Lord intervenes, and Mary's spouse and William's both die in 'accidents'. The final pages recount the happy couples' marriage on the 25th August and, after five years, they have children, one a little daughter with yellow hair and William can recount my happiness. The common blessings of life - health, competence, liberty and society, are enhanced a thousand times by the presence and participation of my Mary Ogilvie.  What a heartfelt tribute. No wonder he wrote, Mary Ogilvie is the corner-stone of my happiness, and I am everything to her...the country becomes more congenial to me, as my circle of happiness narrows round my family. 

Very different in tone are the other two  pieces. Sketch of Changes in Society and Manners, in the West of Scotland during the last half-century is a near-polemic, contrasting a rather idealised past with a depressing present. The author's musings, as he sits near the old cathedral in Glasgow, pour near contempt on present day affairs. Although he can see improvements in roads (no railways yet!) and the developments of fine buildings, the pervading spirit amongst the city's inhabitants is one of a grasping of lucre. There are Galtian elements in some of his realistic descriptions - the increased circulation of newspapers; the amazing changes in cotton manufacturing; the disposition to showy and unenjoyed luxury (tea gets a mention) - all are heralds of a too hasty 'prosperity'. Above all, it is wealth for the Few, poverty for the Many (sounds familiar?!). Public (change) houses multiply, leading to low morals. At one point, Picken writes, Let me resume my keelivine... He concocts a tale of one Nathan, to typify the descent of a man and his family from respectability and prosperity to miserable poverty: ...fast descending to take their places among the working-classes; and to carry their pride, their repinings, and their acquired vice, along with them.

Money, or the love of and acquiring of it, is the new God. The author uses the example of John Thrum, Esquire to point an accusing finger:  his matters of relaxation are church and religious society meetings - the great modern manufactories of public character; where his gravity and known wealth add to the respectability of the assembly...but a man cannot expect to carry his religion into his business transactions - business is "quite another thing": besides a Christian must be "wise as a serpent", as well as harmless as a dove. Picken now turns to castigating the modern farmer: among no class, perhaps, has the general mercenary spirit obtained to a greater extent than among the farmers. The growth of Banks allowed credit, usury, and the art of gathering and gripping, so that the present race of farmers are generally the greediest, most avaricious and narrow-spirited of our once kindly and virtuous society. Only the rural working class are single out for praise by the author.

Religion (or its observance) gets it in the neck.  Glasgow is undoubtedly one of the most religious towns, of any magnitude, in the united kingdoms...but for all this; whether Glasgow is at present the most thoroughly hypocritical city in the kingdom; whether it is not as immoral, for its extent and means, as Dublin or London...let persons testify. Picken builds to his summary: we have come to the age...of suspicion and hardness of heart; when avarice, the sin of age, is fast creeping over us as a nation; teaching us the wicked perversion...that generosity, practically speaking, is folly - that benevolence is unintelligible...and that friendship and love, as they were once understood, are a juvenile and ridiculous dream.

The third piece - The Love Match, A Pedestrian's Tale - is, to some extent, a fictional rendering of the second. It opens with a man - William Allanton - being saved from suicide, when found hanging from a tree in a wood on the Woburn estate in Bedfordshire. The rest of the tale consists of his relating his life story to the man who saved him. It is full of trials and tribulation. His father, a Scotch dissenting minister, was bound down by a poverty caused by minimal salary and far too many (13 !) children. The mother becomes a veritable termagent and William recalls Religion came like an inquisitorial and ghostly tyrant...called us to punishment and to penance, and crushed our young spirits with restraint and terror.

William goes to work in Glasgow for a mean employer; marries Lydia Villiers and they descend into poverty. He meets up with a Radical, the wonderfully named Moses Mushat, who leads him into  astray into dangerous and treacherous paths; his employer, Mr Steel, forces him to reveal the radicals' secrets, personnel and whereabouts; he is captured, escapes to London, where he has prospects of a friend, returning from the West Indies, giving him a position.  Nothing occurs for weeks, so he returns northwards and to his attempted hanging. Only at the end of the story is there good news. Mr Elder, the West Indian trader, who had been looking for him in Glasgow and who had heard of his plight from  Lydia, amazingly is at the same inn that William and the narrator travel to after the suicide attempt! William is placed immediately at the head of a London establishment; with an advance of money and removed his family thither. The narrator ends his story: I have since visited him and his lovely family in London. What a picture of the pleasures of elevated minds, and of pure domestic happiness!

So, BAH to Glasgow, mean-spirited, grasping Scotch traders and Calvinist religion. No wonder Picken himself moved to London after this book; no wonder he used a pseudonym. He followed the book up with The Sectarian (1829), a study of a mind ruined by religious fanaticism, which gave further offence in dissenting circles. 

In the Closet of the Vatican

 

First edition - 2019

I spent each evening last week immersed in this 'blockbuster'. It was published simultaneously in eight languages and twenty countries - each copy probably producing arm aches and near hernias. In 555 pages Frédéric Martel rarely lets up in his devastating critique of the mores and behaviour of those in the Vatican and beyond. Almost 1,500 people were questioned at the Vatican and in 30 countries over a period of four years. Among them were 41 cardinals, 52 bishops and monsignori, 45 apostolic nuncios and foreign ambassadors, often on the record. These interviews took place in person, none by telephone or email. A team of 80 researchers, correspondents, advisers, fixers and translators was mobilized to complete the research.

Here, as a good Historian, I must state my own prejudice. Both my father (a Methodist Minister) and my mother looked askance at the Roman Catholic Church, the latter more than the former. My father loved preaching the Gospel; like all Protestants, he based his faith on the Word - but understood that it could be, and was, interpreted by humans.  On Thursday 1st November 1950, whilst our family were stationed in Montserrat, British West Indies, Pius XII proclaimed that the Virgin Mary having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. Pius, in the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, invoked papal infallibility. My father felt so strongly about this, that he typed out a five-page rebuttal, which I believe was issued as a pamphlet (I have the former but not the latter). I quote from it:

In accordance with vows made at our Ordination Service, Ministers of Religion, whether Anglican or Methodist, pledge themselves to teach nothing but that which may be concluded and proved by Holy Scripture; be ready with all due diligence to drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word. Dad then focused  on the new doctrine which maintained let him be anathema who would deny this truth. He called it unscriptural and absurd... I do not wish to interfere with another's manner of worship - religious liberty is a treasure we highly prize, an inheritance bought with blood - but when a particular denomination presumes to dictate, shows an eagerness to suppress other Christian groups, and, further, demands assent to strange and unscriptural doctrines invented to fit a certain scheme in theology, we must protest, if we are Protestants...reverence and respect are [Mary's] due but there is no need to invent pious, but untrue, doctrines...such pronouncements must be labelled as false and foolish.

I agree with every word my father wrote. Moreover, when I add to this my study, as a teacher of History, of the Roman Catholic church's behaviour over the centuries - cruel, licentious, financially grasping and corrupt - and witnessing with my own eyes the juxtaposition of people's poverty with the obscene wealth (flaunted in their buildings and clergy's dress), I cannot be other than contemptuous of the whole edifice. And now this - a veritable maelstrom of corruption, sexual shenanigans and deceit. The present pope, Francis I, rightly remarked: Behind rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life. Of the three words in the subtitle - Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy - the most damning is the latter. The extreme homophobia expressed by so many priests, from John Paul II and Benedict XVI downwards, was too often a cloak, a screen, for at the least closeted homophilia and, at worst, blatant and active homosexuality.

Page after page, nearly always backed up with quotations (but no foot or end notes) rams home this schizophrenia. I never liked John Paul II and am not surprised to read he surrounded himself with corrupt cardinals and servants; strangely, I preferred Josef Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI. Vatileaks (allegedly leaked by a Vatican butler acting alone, but far more likely to have been alienated cardinals) exposed for sure what so many knew or guessed. It is alleged that up to 80% of the Vatican inhabitants are homosexual! It aimed to destabilise Benedict - it did (with the additional horror of his visits to Latin America and Cuba). Vatileaks II aimed to rock Francis I's hold on power.

So many stories, so many priests, cardinals, bishops, fill one with disgust. Their depravity and lying was/is disgusting. 'Gorgeous' Georg Gänswein, the ever-present side-kick to Benedict (and still living with him in his Vatican retirement), whose nickname among Germans is gay.org; Cardinals Angelo Sodano (he is the 'villain' of the book); Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul's close adviser; the paedophile Fernando Karadimo abusing Chilean boys; Paul Markinkus, shady Vatican Bank financier and homosexual; Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who died of AIDS; and Marcel Maciel, probably the most diabolical figure that the Catholic Church has given birth to and raised over the last 50 years.

And so it goes on, and still goes on, I have no doubt. At the root of this hypocrisy is the unnatural (for nearly all) doctrine of celibacy. The Church can thunder against divorce, abortion, extra-marital affairs, and active same sex; but it is near mute on homophilia. Membership is in free fall - especially in the once-Roman Catholic strongholds of Ireland, Latin America and Italy. If you pontificate on the wrong issues, hold on to nonsensical doctrines (with anathemas attached), wallow in ostentatious wealth amidst the poverty of your 'flock', you will decline. And thoroughly deserve to.

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By chance, a long article appeared in today's Daily Telegraph  (20th October)

The Papal Paradox: is the woke Pope alienating his flock?

The 84 year-old pontiff may be popular with many younger Catholics, but he is a divisive figure within the Church he leads

By Melanie McDonagh 20 October 2021

Pope Francis is complicated – but he can still inspire enormous loyalty P ope Francis: 'Not to put too fine a point upon it, lots of Catholics can’t stand him – liberals, as well as conservatives'. It’s not that often that a video message from a Pope to a global gathering goes viral, but that is what happened this weekend, when Pope Francis addressed the World Meeting of Popular Movements in the US. To an audience of community leaders, anti-poverty campaigners and environmental groups, he began arrestingly: “Dear social poets… that is what I like to call you: social poets. You are social poets because you have the ability and the courage to create hope where there appears to be only waste and exclusion.” He went on to attack social media companies for encouraging “hate speech, grooming, fake news” and to condemn agribusiness and mining for destroying habitats. He then called for a basic income and shorter working hours… And that wasn’t even the half of it.

When the 84-year-old Jesuit Pope gets the bit between his teeth, he can be very good value, a genuine populist. He is much less of an intellectual than his predecessor, Pope Benedict, but he gets on the radar: after one visit to the EU, he left in a battered old Fiat. It’s a real pity that he isn’t attending the climate conference in Glasgow, because he would have lambasted all the global leaders there for inaction and we could have had another picture of him and Greta Thunberg together – the last one was in 2019 – beaming. He is popular with many younger Catholics. In a survey last year by Stephen Bullivant and Ben Clements, 55 per cent of young Catholics in Britain (especially mass-goers) thought he was a change for the better for the papacy. My daughter, 14, says that her age cohort likes him. “He’s liberal, “she says. “And he interacts with you.” But while he can reach parts few other modern Popes reach, he is still a divisive figure within the Church, of which he is head.

Not to put too fine a point upon it, lots of Catholics can’t stand him – liberals, as well as Conservatives. This week, in a riveting piece for The Spectator website headlined “Is the Pope a Protestant?”, Damian Thompson argues that you could indeed say the Pope has “gone Protestant”. He says: “Francis may be pursuing a liberal policy agenda, but it’s also quirky and incoherent. He is Jesuitical in the pejorative sense of the term, constantly shifting his position in order to keep both his opponents and supporters on their toes. But his leadership has none of the positive attributes of his order: it has created an intellectual mess.” This is strong stuff, though not half as strong as a priest he quotes, who expressed the hope that the Pope would drop dead that very night. Francis himself intimated that there are people who’d like to see him off. After his colon operation in July, someone asked him how he was. “Still alive,” he replied, “though some people want me to die.” If you’re Pope, being paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.

The groups he most often sees as the enemy are conservatives hostile to his approach. And he doesn’t pull his punches with them. Though he didn’t mention them by name, he referred to America’s biggest religious broadcaster, EWTN, recently as “the work of the devil”. They speak well of him, too.

He’s especially combative towards “backward-looking” critics of his new direction for the Church – towards a synodal structure in which grassroots parishioners have a say in how the Church is run. We’ll see how that turns out.

Most of the people who are uneasy with the direction of the papacy are indeed conservatives. But some are liberals, like the former Irish president, Mary McAleese, who declared earlier this year that she was unimpressed by the Pope whose “chummy words to the press often quite reasonably raise hopes of church reform which are subsequently almost invariably dashed by firm restatements of unchanged church teaching”. He raises hopes, but “he is the Pope who toes the old hard line”. McAleese’s particular preoccupation is gay rights. On this and on the question of whether divorced and remarried people can receive communion, the Pope can give off mixed messages. He’s undoubtedly genuinely anxious to be receptive and welcoming to gay people in the Church, but he’s never blessed same-sex unions or suggested that the Church could do so. As for giving communion to people who would be traditionally considered to be living in adultery – those who remarry while their previous spouse is alive – he has told bishops and priests to be “pastoral” and consider the people in front of them. Is that yes or no?

And what about politicians who vote to make abortion accessible, including late-term abortions? Can they receive communion? On the actual issue, Francis is unequivocal. “Abortion is homicide,” he declared to journalists recently, which is clear. But then he went on to declare that, as a priest, he had never refused communion to anyone, which isn’t much use to US bishops who must decide what to do when pro-choice Joe Biden pitches up for communion. He talks tough on abortion, but then gives a warm reception to pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi when she came to the Vatican. As for the really terrible succession of scandals around child abuse by members of the Church, most recently in France, Francis is as shocked as anyone. Asked for his reaction to the report on abuse in France, he said simply: “Shame.” And yet it took forever for his commission dealing with the issue to reach conclusions and for them to be put into effect. He is a reformer who often seems to lack the organisational drive to see his reforms through.

But it would be unfair just to focus on negatives. The Pope is eloquent and genuinely committed to environmental issues; his encyclical, Laudato Si’, was an attempt to explore how people can be stewards of creation. On giving admission to migrants, he’s liberal, probably more liberal than many Catholic congregations. And when it comes to the position of women, no one has appointed more women to senior positions within the Church, ever, including important areas, like finance and governance, though he has not gone in the direction of women’s ordination as priests and bishops. The paradox of the pope is that he is reformist and liberal, and yet, when it comes down to it, supportive of tradition because he has to be; the Pope may be a Protestant in some ways, but he is still a Catholic.

But has he actually done anything to broaden the appeal of the Church in a secular culture? Professor Stephen Bullivant, a sociologist at St Mary’s University, observes: “If you ask people why they like him, then you often discover that they – paradoxically – see him as being/embodying everything that they think the Catholic Church isn’t – ie, they see him as a pro-science, pro-LGBTQ, pro-environment, religious and moral relativist. The trouble is, of course, that those general impressions aren’t terribly accurate either of Francis or the Church. “This means two things. Firstly, that people’s attraction to (their construction of) Pope Francis doesn’t end up making them any more attracted to the Catholic Church. And secondly, they end up constantly being disappointed by things Pope Francis actually does or says. (My favourite example of this whole phenomenon is a Rolling Stone article, ‘Guess the Cool Pope Isn’t So Cool After All’).”

Another paradox of the Pope is that he may be liberal, but he’s a liberal authoritarian. This was particularly evident in his crackdown on those who attend mass celebrated according to the so-called Tridentine rite, which was the norm before the Second Vatican Council. Here, nice Pope Francis showed his SS side, in obliging congregations who wanted to hear mass in the old rite to get permission from their bishops and newly ordained priests to obtain permission from the Vatican. Trouble is, those congregations include many families and young people. He’s complicated, then, Pope Francis – but he inspires enormous loyalty. Eamon Duffy, the historian whose book on the papacy, Saints and Sinners (Yale University Press), stops before Francis, says simply that “he’s the Pope I’ve been waiting for my entire life”. And by the looks of things, Francis hasn’t run out of steam.

Galt's 'Rothelan' 1824

 

First edition - 1824

I think Galt struggled with this one; certainly, I did. There were two tales here: firstly, the uneven storyline of the fictitious Rothelan; secondly, a history lesson on Edward III and his times - his passion for the Countess of Salisbury, his setting up of the Round Table, the capture of Calais and the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, and the Black Death. It felt almost as if Galt was copying from an actual History book.  The narrative veered from one tale to another, rarely seamless and often jarring. His use of "the Author", "the Chronicler" and "The Book" as the pretended authority was crude and did not disguise the fragmentary feeling throughout. 

At the start of Part V, Chapter I, we read: Again we find ourselves obliged to acknowledge, that the story of Rothelan does not run altogether quite so clear in THE BOOK as we could have wished; which makes us regret we had not resolved to present it in detached fragments, for no better are they, from which this work is constructed, rather than in that regular and well-digested form so much to be admired by the reader... This is a poor camouflage from an author who knows his story is not running smoothly. Galt immediately follows this by writing that he is most desirous of sending out two rather than three volumes (and meanders on about the public perhaps not being tied to the three-decker as much as the publishers). In fact, Rothelan only lasts until page 100 of Volume III, and Galt attaches three short pieces to get it to the required 314 pages.

What of the story of Rothelan? It is so uneven and spasmodic that it is hard to be positive about it. None of the characters attract the reader and the telling borders on the perfunctory.

Galt adds a Postscript, saying that his novel is but a version of the Annesley family in the reign of George II. This story is related in fourteen pages of very small type and is not very interesting.

There then followed three Tales of the Lazaretto, entitled The Quarantine. Due to the plague appearing in Malta, many inhabitants fled to Sicily, particularly to Messina. These included the riddlings of all nations; but still among them were many clever and curious adventurers, who had lived much, and seen a great deal. One of the ladies, none other than the Rev Pringle's daughter, Rachel! (still married to Captain Sabre), suggested that to lighten the sense of confinement, and to vary the monotony of living in a dull court... the gentlemen should contrive some recreation... The upshot was a decision that one or two of the party should entertain the others with the recital of some adventure, story, or song. 

Apparently, Galt had previously submitted the stories unsuccessfully to Blackwood in 1822. Ian Gordon, in his John Galt: The life of a writer (1972) wrote that the sad truth is that after Ringan Gilhaize, which did have quality, his Oliver and Boyd books are without value. I am afraid I agree. The first of the three tales - The Physiognomist - was rambling and boring and very unlikely;  The Improvisatoré, was slightly better, with some amusing episodes (especially that of Carlina and the dog); The German's Tale, dealing with the occult, did not attract me at all. Where or where was the Galt of Annals of the Parish or The Provost. I hope for a return to superior writing in his later books.