Robert Cadell first edition - 1831
I read Destiny in mid September 2019 and recall thoroughly enjoying it. Thus, I looked forward to a reacquaintance. For the first 220 pages of Volume I, I was again singing Susan Ferrier's praises. First of all, she appeared to have retained her wit. Here is the very first paragraph:
All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to a Highland Chief. He has his lochs and his islands, his mountains and his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymores, and Gaelic, and hot blood, and dirks. Delicious! And the Chief of Glenroy, at first, lives up to this - he had a tree; and as for his rent-roll, it was like a journey in a fairy tale, "longer, and longer, and longer, than I can tell...he felt himself a great man; and though he did not say it himself that he was the greatest man in the world, he certainly would have puzzled to say who was greater."
Other well-drawn and, usually, humorous characters support these early chapters The Laird of Benbowie - an elderly man...possessing no very distinguishing traits, except a pair of voluminous eyebrows, very round shoulders, a wig that looked as if it had been made of spun yarn, an unvarying snuff-coloured coat, and a series of the most frightful waistcoats that ever were seen. He is in general obtuse as a hedgehog. Mrs Macaulay - a cousin not many degrees removed from the Chief himself...now an elderly woman in years, but in nothing else...she was one of those happily-constituted beings, who look as if they could "extract sunbeams from cucumbers". Ferrier gives three or four pages of character-drawing to this unique woman. Then the Reverend Duncan M'Dow lands on the pages - a large, loud-spoken, splay-footed man, whose chief characteristics were his bad preaching, his love of eating, his rapacity for augmentations (or, as he termed it, owgmentations) and a want of tact...his hands and feet were in everybody's way: the former, indeed, like huge grappling irons...the latter...projecting into the very middle of the room, like two prodigious moles, or bastions...[his] principal object in this world was self... There is more than a touch of Scott's Dominie Sampson about him. Finally, this cast of mildly grotesque characters are joined by Mungo Malcolm, a little meagre sickly-looking man, with a sharp, bitter face, a pair of fiery, vindictive eyes, and a mouth all puckered up, who had, much to Glenroy's chagrin, inherited the Lairdship of Inch Orran. Much hilarity - for the reader, at least, ensues over the manoeverings between these disparate characters. Mrs Inch Orran is another delightful-drawn person, allowing the author full rein with her (biting) satire. As long as all the above hogged the narrative, the reader could happily be carried along à la Jane Austen.
The rot sets in early, though. Genroy's first marriage only produced a daughter, Edith, at the expense of his wife's life. HIs second was quite unsuitable - to a English woman, the Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave, who was so very affable and agreeable - such an enthusiastic admirer of tartan, and Highland bonnets, and Highland scenery... However, not only did Lady Elizabeth, on moving to Caledonia, find life there backward and boring, but she inculcated into her spoilt 5-year-old daughter Florinda similar attitudes. Eventually, Lady Elizabeth (and Glenroy) has had enough and she takes her daughter (now presumptive heir to her grandfather) back to England.
Glenroy has a son, Norman, who is joined by Reginald, a spoiled handsome boy of the same age, who is the son of Glenroy's brother-in-law, Sir Angus Malcolm. A third boy, Ronald, son of Captain Malcolm, proud father of eight children, catches the eye of Inch Orran, who leaves his estate to him, not to Glenroy! Inch Orran dies; Norman dies; Glenroy suffers a stroke, Ronald appears drowned in a shipwreck and the novel loses not only interesting characters but its humour. The long drawn out demise of Glenroy becomes tiresome; M'Dow's incessant bleating equally so; the behaviour of Lady Elizabeth and Florinda go from selfish-bad to worse; Reginald turns out to be a rotter and marries Florinda, not his early love Edith; and the feeling grows on the reader that two volumes would have been enough. Piety appears to win over humour; Captain and Mrs Malcolm may be very religious and 'good', but their platitudes are merely boring. Lucy Malcolm, their daughter - whom I thought was going to play a major role in the story, simply disappears until the very end. The Conways also lack 'spark'
Ronald marries Edith at the end; Lady Elizabeth, Florinda and Reginald get their just deserts; but, how one longs for the light-hearted, penetrative shafts of humour that the novel embarked with. There is a feeling of 'padding' about one or two chapters (after all, the novel was dedicated to Sir Walter!) and the didactic angle grates on 21st century eyes. Sir George Douglas (1897) remarked that idle pages and straggling incidents abound and in fact the sense of form which was so conspicuous in The Inheritance is in Destiny conspicuous only by absence. Other critics found the novel pietistic, with too much moralising. Mary Cullinan (1984) argues that her spontaneity and satiric humour were smothered by her growing seriousness and piety...(the novel) is a serious work by an ailing, aging woman who is coming to terms with her religious views and her own mortality. One must, therefore, value M'Dow's poor jokes, Mr Ribley's "Kitty, my dear" and all the other human foibles, as the novel would present a much less enjoyable task for the reader without them.
Ferrier had twenty-three years still to live; but, as far as we know, published no more fiction. Perhaps she realised that her attempt to concentrate more on her characters' final destinies, rather than their earthly aims and foibles, was not successful. Taking her three novels together, however, one feels that the title 'The Edinburgh Jane Austen' is not far off the mark.
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