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.
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