St. Ronan\'s Well

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> St. Ronan\'s Well

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

[Illustration]

_Standard Edition_

St. Ronan's Well

By

Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

[Illustration]

With Introductory Essay and Notes

by Andrew Lang

_Illustrated_

Dana Estes and Company
Publishers ... Boston

The Standard Edition

of the Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott. Limited to one thousand
numbered and registered sets, of which this is

No. 835

_Copyright, 1894._
BY ESTES AND LAURIAT

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ST. RONAN'S WELL

VOLUME I.

PAGE
Meg Dods (p. 13) _Frontispiece_
The Meeting in the Wood 137
Preparing for the Duel 198

* * * * *

VOLUME II.

Reappearance of Tyrrel 127
Clara entering Tyrrel's Room 307

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

TO

ST. RONAN'S WELL.

"'St. Ronan's Well' is not so much my favourite as certain of its
predecessors," Lady Louisa Stuart wrote to Scott on March 26, 1824. "Yet
still I see the author's hand in it, _et c'est tout dire_. Meg Dods, the
meeting" (vol. i. chap. ix.), "and the last scene between Clara and her
brother, are marked with the true stamp, not to be matched or mistaken.
Is the Siege of Ptolemais really on the anvil?" she goes on, speaking of
the projected Crusading Tales, and obviously anxious to part company
with "St. Ronan's Well." All judgments have not agreed with Lady
Louisa's. There is a literary legend or fable according to which a
number of distinguished men, all admirers of Scott, wrote down
separately the name of their favourite Waverley novel, and all, when the
papers were compared, had written "St. Ronan's." Sydney Smith, writing
to Constable on Dec. 28, 1823, described the new story as "far the best
that has appeared for some time. Every now and then there is some
mistaken or overcharged humour--but much excellent delineation of
character, the story very well told, and the whole very interesting.
Lady Binks, the old landlady, and Touchwood are all very good. Mrs.
Blower particularly so. So are MacTurk and Lady Penelope. I wish he
would give his people better names; Sir Bingo Binks is quite
ridiculous.... The curtain should have dropped on finding Clara's
glove. Some of the serious scenes with Clara and her brother are very
fine: the knife scene masterly. In her light and gay moments Clara is
very vulgar; but Sir Walter always fails in well-bred men and women, and
yet who has seen more of both? and who, in the ordinary intercourse of
society, is better bred? Upon the whole, I call this a very successful
exhibition."

We have seldom found Sydney Smith giving higher praise, and nobody can
deny the justice of the censure with which it is qualified. Scott
himself explains, in his Introduction, how, in his quest of novelty, he
invaded modern life, and the domain of Miss Austen. Unhappily he proved
by example the truth of his own opinion that he could do "the big
bow-wow strain" very well, but that it was not his _celebrare domestica
facta_. Unlike George Sand, Sir Walter had humour abundantly, but, as
the French writer said of herself, he was wholly destitute of _esprit_.

We need not linger over definition of these qualities; but we must
recognise, in Scott, the absence of lightness of touch, of delicacy in
the small sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done,
the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the
wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore,
are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the
word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more
conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The
insults lavished on Lady Binks are violent and cruel; even Clara Mowbray
taunts her. Now Lady Binks is in the same parlous case as the
postmistress who dreed penance "for ante-nup," as Meg Dods says in an
interrupted harangue, and we know that, to the author's mind, Clara
Mowbray had no right to throw stones. All these jeers are offensive to
generous feeling, and in the mouth of Clara are intolerable. Lockhart
remarked in Scott a singular bluntness of the sense of smell and of
taste. He could drink corked wine without a suspicion that there was
anything wrong with it. This curious obtuseness of a physical sense, in
one whose eyesight was so keen, who, "aye was the first to find the
hare" in coursing, seems to correspond with his want of lightness in the
invention of _badinage_. He tells us that, for a long while at least, he
had been unacquainted with the kind of society, the idle, useless
underbred society, of watering-places. Are we to believe that the
company at Gilsland, for instance, where he met and wooed Miss
Charpentier, was like the company at St. Ronan's? Lockhart vouches for
the snobbishness, "the mean admiration of mean things," the devotion to
the slimmest appearances of rank. All this is credible enough, but, if
there existed a society as dull and base as that which we meet in the
pages of "Mr. Soapy Sponge," and Surtees's other novels, assuredly it
was no theme for the great and generous spirit of Sir Walter. The worst
kind of manners always prevail among people whom moderns call "the
second-rate smart," and these are drawn in "St. Ronan's Well." But we
may believe that, even there, manners are no longer quite so hideous as
in the little Tweedside watering-place. The extinction of duelling has
destroyed, or nearly destroyed, the swaggering style of truculence;
people could not behave as Mowbray and Sir Bingo behave to Tyrrel, in
the after-dinner scene. The Man of Peace, the great MacTurk, with his
harangues translated from the language of Ossian, is no longer needed,
and no longer possible. Supposing manners to be correctly described in
"St. Ronan's," the pessimist himself must admit that manners have
improved. But it is not without regret that we see a genius born for
chivalry labouring in this unworthy and alien matter.

The English critics delighted to accuse Scott of having committed
literary suicide. He had only stepped off the path to which he presently
returned. He was unfitted to write the domestic novel, and even in "St.
Ronan's" he introduces events of romantic improbability. These enable
him to depict scenes of the most passionate tragedy, as in the meeting
of Clara and Tyrrel. They who have loved so blindly and so kindly should
never have met, or never parted. It is like a tragic rendering of the
scene where Diana Vernon and Osbaldistone encounter each other on the
moonlit moor. The wild words of Clara, "Is it so, and was it even
yourself whom I saw even now?... And, all things considered, I do carry
on the farce of life wonderfully well,"--all this passage, with the
silence of the man, is on the highest level of poetic invention, and
Clara ranks with Ophelia. To her strain of madness we may ascribe,
perhaps, what Sydney Smith calls the vulgarity of her lighter moments.
But here the genius of Shakspeare is faultless, where Scott's is most
faulty and most mistaken.

Much confusion is caused in "St. Ronan's Well" by Scott's concession to
the delicacy of James Ballantyne. What has shaken Clara's brain? Not her
sham marriage, for that was innocent, and might be legally annulled.
Lockhart writes (vii. 208): "Sir Walter had shown a remarkable degree of
good-nature in the composition of this novel. When the end came in view,
James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular feature in
the heroine's history. In the original conception, and in the book as
actually written and printed, Miss Mowbray's mock marriage had not
halted at the profane ceremony of the church; and the delicate printer
shrank from the idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the
possibility of any personal contamination having occurred to a high-born
damsel of the nineteenth century." Scott answered: "You would never
have quarrelled with it had the thing happened to a girl in gingham--the
silk petticoat can make little difference." "James reclaimed with double
energy, and called Constable to the rescue; and, after some pause, the
author very reluctantly consented to cancel and re-write about
twenty-four pages, which was enough to obliterate, to a certain extent,
the dreaded scandal--and, in a similar degree, as he always persisted,
to perplex and weaken the course of his narrative, and the dark effect
of its catastrophe."

From a communication printed in the "Athenaeum" of Feb. 4, 1893, extracts
from the original proof-sheets, it seems that Lockhart forgot the
original plan of the novel. The mock marriage _did_ halt at the church
door, but Clara's virtue had yielded to her real lover, Tyrrel, before
the ceremony. Hannah Irwin had deliberately made opportunities for the
lovers' meeting, and at last, as she says, in a cancelled passage, "the
devil and Hannah Irwin prevailed." There followed remorse, and a
determination not to meet again before the Church made them one, and, on
the head of this, the mock marriage shook Clara's reason. This was the
original plan; it declares itself in the scene between Tyrrel and Clara
(vol. i. chap, ix.): "Wherefore should not sorrow be the end of sin and
folly?" The reviewer in the "Monthly Review" (1824) says "there is a
hint of some deeper cause of grief (see the confession to the brother),
but it is highly problematical." For all this the delicacy of James
Ballantyne is to blame--his delicacy, and Scott's concessions to a
respectable man and a bad critic.

The origin of "St. Ronan's Well" has been described by Lockhart in a
familiar passage. As Laidlaw, Scott, and Lockhart were riding along the
brow of the triple-peaked Eildon Hills, Scott mentioned "the row" that
was going on in Paris about "Quentin Durward." "I can't but think I
could make better play still with something German," he said. Laidlaw
grumbled at this: "You are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your
foot is on your native heath; and I have often thought that if you were
to write a novel, and lay the scene _here_ in the very year you were
writing it, you would exceed yourself." "Hame's hame," quoth Scott,
smiling, "be it ever sae hamely," and Laidlaw bade him "stick to Melrose
in 1823." It was now that Scott spoke of the village tragedy, the
romance of every house, of every cottage, and told a tale of some
horrors in the hamlet that lies beyond Melrose, on the north side of
Tweed. Laidlaw and Lockhart believed that this conversation suggested
"St. Ronan's Well," the scene of which has been claimed as their own by
the people of Innerleithen. This little town is beautifully situated
where the hills of Tweed are steepest, and least resemble the _bosses
verdatres_ of Prosper Merimee. It is now a manufacturing town, like its
neighbours, and contributes its quota to the pollution of "the
glittering and resolute streams of Tweed." The pilgrim will scarce rival
Tyrrel's feat of catching a clean-run salmon in summer, but the scenes
are extremely pleasing, and indeed, from this point to Dryburgh, the
beautiful and fabled river is at its loveliest. It is possible that a
little inn farther up the water, "The Crook," on the border of the
moorland, and near Tala Linn, where the Covenanters held a famous
assembly, may have suggested the name of the "Cleikum." Lockhart
describes the prosperity which soon flowed into Innerleithen, and the
St. Ronan's Games, at which the Ettrick Shepherd presided gleefully.
They are still held, or were held very lately, but there will never come
again such another Shepherd, or such contests with the Flying Tailor of
Ettrick.

Apart from the tragedy of Clara, doubtless the better parts of "St.
Ronan's Well" are the Scotch characters. Even our generation remembers
many a Meg Dods, and he who writes has vividly in his recollection just
such tartness, such goodness of heart, such ungoverned eloquence and
vigour of rebuke as made Meg famous, successful on the stage, and
welcome to her countrymen. These people, Mrs. Blower and Meg, are
Shakspearean, they live with Dame Quickly and Shallow, in the hearts of
Scots, but to the English general they are possibly caviare. In the
gallant and irascible MacTurk we have the waning Highlander: he
resembles the Captain of Knockdunder in "The Heart of Mid Lothian," or
an exaggerated and ill-educated Hector of "The Antiquary." Concerning
the women of the tale, it may be said that Lady Binks has great
qualities, and appears to have been drawn "with an eye on the object,"
as Wordsworth says, and from the life. Lady Penelope seems more
exaggerated now than she probably did at the time, for the fashion of
affectation changes. The Winterblossoms and Quacklebens are accurate
enough in themselves, but are seen through a Blackwoodian atmosphere, as
it were, through a mist of the temporary and boisterous Scotch humour of
the day. The author occasionally stoops to a pun, and, like that which
Hood made in the hearing of Thackeray, the pun is not good. Indeed the
novel, in its view of the decay of the Border, the ruined Laird, the
frivolous foolish society of the Well, taking the place of sturdy
William of Deloraine, and farmers like Scott's grandfather, makes a
picture of decadence as melancholy as "Redgauntlet." "Not here, O
Apollo, are haunts meet for thee!" Strangely enough, among the features
of the time, Scott mentions reckless borrowings, "accommodation," "Banks
of Air." His own business was based on a "Bank of Air," "wind-capital,"
as Cadell, Constable's partner, calls it, and the bubble was just about
to burst, though Scott had no apprehension of financial ruin. A horrid
power is visible in Scott's second picture of _la mauvaise pauvre_, the
hag who despises and curses the givers of "handfuls of coals and of
rice;" his first he drew in the witches of "The Bride of Lammermoor." He
has himself indicated his desire to press hard on the vice of gambling,
as in "The Fortunes of Nigel." Ruinous at all times and in every shape,
gambling, in Scott's lifetime, during the Regency, had crippled or
destroyed many an historical Scottish family. With this in his mind he
drew the portrait of Mowbray of St. Ronan's. His picture of duelling is
not more seductive; he himself had lost his friend, Sir Alexander
Boswell, in a duel; on other occasions this institution had brought
discomfort into his life, and though he was ready to fight General
Gourgaud with Napoleon's pistols, he cannot have approved of the
practices of the MacTurks and Bingo Binkses. A maniac, as his
correspondence shows, challenged Sir Walter, insisting that he was
pointed at and ridiculed in the character of MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.)
It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from
Scott's hand--Meg Dods remains among his immortal portraits; but a novel
in which the absurd will of fiction and the conventional Nabob are
necessary machinery can never be ranked so high as even "The Monastery"
and "Peveril." In Scotland, however, it was infinitely more successful
than its admirable successor "Redgauntlet."

ANDREW LANG.
_December 1893._

INTRODUCTION

TO

ST. RONAN'S WELL.

The novel which follows is upon a plan different from any other that the
author has ever written, although it is perhaps the most legitimate
which relates to this kind of light literature.

It is intended, in a word--_celebrare domestica facta_--to give an
imitation of the shifting manners of our own time, and paint scenes, the
originals of which are daily passing round us, so that a minute's
observation may compare the copies with the originals. It must be
confessed that this style of composition was adopted by the author
rather from the tempting circumstance of its offering some novelty in
his compositions, and avoiding worn-out characters and positions, than
from the hope of rivalling the many formidable competitors who have
already won deserved honours in this department. The ladies, in
particular, gifted by nature with keen powers of observation and light
satire, have been so distinguished by these works of talent, that,
reckoning from the authoress of Evelina to her of Marriage, a catalogue
might be made, including the brilliant and talented names of Edgeworth,
Austin, Charlotte Smith, and others, whose success seems to have
appropriated this province of the novel as exclusively their own. It was
therefore with a sense of temerity that the author intruded upon a
species of composition which had been of late practised with such
distinguished success. This consciousness was lost, however, under the
necessity of seeking for novelty, without which, it was much to be
apprehended, such repeated incursions on his part would nauseate the
long indulgent public at the last.

The scene chosen for the author's little drama of modern life was a
mineral spring, such as are to be found in both divisions of Britain,
and which are supplied with the usual materials for redeeming health, or
driving away care. The invalid often finds relief from his complaints,
less from the healing virtues of the Spa itself, than because his system
of ordinary life undergoes an entire change, in his being removed from
his ledger and account-books--from his legal folios and progresses of
title-deeds--from his counters and shelves,--from whatever else forms
the main source of his constant anxiety at home, destroys his appetite,
mars the custom of his exercise, deranges the digestive powers, and
clogs up the springs of life. Thither, too, comes the saunterer, anxious
to get rid of that wearisome attendant _himself_, and thither come both
males and females, who, upon a different principle, desire to make
themselves double.

The society of such places is regulated, by their very nature, upon a
scheme much more indulgent than that which rules the world of fashion,
and the narrow circles of rank in the metropolis. The titles of rank,
birth, and fortune, are received at a watering-place without any very
strict investigation, as adequate to the purpose for which they are
preferred; and as the situation infers a certain degree of intimacy and
sociability for the time, so to whatever heights it may have been
carried, it is not understood to imply any duration beyond the length of
the season. No intimacy can be supposed more close for the time, and
more transitory in its endurance, than that which is attached to a
watering-place acquaintance. The novelist, therefore, who fixes upon
such a scene for his tale, endeavours to display a species of society,
where the strongest contrast of humorous characters and manners may be
brought to bear on and illustrate each other with less violation of
probability, than could be supposed to attend the same miscellaneous
assemblage in any other situation.

In such scenes, too, are frequently mingled characters, not merely
ridiculous, but dangerous and hateful. The unprincipled gamester, the
heartless fortune-hunter, all those who eke out their means of
subsistence by pandering to the vices and follies of the rich and gay,
who drive, by their various arts, foibles into crimes, and imprudence
into acts of ruinous madness, are to be found where their victims
naturally resort, with the same certainty that eagles are gathered
together at the place of slaughter. By this the author takes a great
advantage for the management of his story, particularly in its darker
and more melancholy passages. The impostor, the gambler, all who live
loose upon the skirts of society, or, like vermin, thrive by its
corruptions, are to be found at such retreats, when they easily, and as
a matter of course, mingle with those dupes, who might otherwise have
escaped their snares. But besides those characters who are actually
dangerous to society, a well-frequented watering-place generally
exhibits for the amusement of the company, and the perplexity and
amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by
the newspapers eccentric characters--individuals, namely, who, either
from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much more
frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing
themselves by some striking peculiarity in dress or address,
conversation or manners, and perhaps in all. These affectations are
usually adopted, like Drawcansir's extravagances, to show _they dare_;
and I must needs say, those who profess them are more frequently to be
found among the English, than among the natives of either of the other
two divisions of the united kingdoms. The reason probably is, that the
consciousness of wealth, and a sturdy feeling of independence, which
generally pervade the English nation, are, in a few individuals,
perverted into absurdity, or at least peculiarity. The witty Irishman,
on the contrary, adapts his general behaviour to that of the best
society, or that which he thinks such; nor is it any part of the shrewd
Scot's national character unnecessarily to draw upon himself public
attention. These rules, however, are not without their exceptions; for
we find men of every country playing the eccentric at these independent
resorts of the gay and the wealthy, where every one enjoys the license
of doing what is good in his own eyes.

It scarce needed these obvious remarks to justify a novelist's choice of
a watering-place as the scene of a fictitious narrative. Unquestionably,
it affords every variety of character, mixed together in a manner which
cannot, without a breach of probability, be supposed to exist elsewhere;
neither can it be denied that in the concourse which such miscellaneous
collections of persons afford, events extremely different from those of
the quiet routine of ordinary life may, and often do, take place.

It is not, however, sufficient that a mine be in itself rich and easily
accessible; it is necessary that the engineer who explores it should
himself, in mining phrase, have an accurate knowledge of the _country_,
and possess the skill necessary to work it to advantage. In this
respect, the author of Saint Ronan's Well could not be termed fortunate.
His habits of life had not led him much, of late years at least, into
its general or bustling scenes, nor had he mingled often in the society
which enables the observer to "shoot folly as it flies." The consequence
perhaps was, that the characters wanted that force and precision which
can only be given by a writer who is familiarly acquainted with his
subject. The author, however, had the satisfaction to chronicle his
testimony against the practice of gambling, a vice which the devil has
contrived to render all his own, since it is deprived of whatever pleads
an apology for other vices, and is founded entirely on the cold-blooded
calculation of the most exclusive selfishness. The character of the
traveller, meddling, self-important, and what the ladies call fussing,
but yet generous and benevolent in his purposes, was partly taken from
nature. The story, being entirely modern, cannot require much
explanation, after what has been here given, either in the shape of
notes, or a more prolix introduction.

It may be remarked, that the English critics, in many instances, though
none of great influence, pursued Saint Ronan's Well with hue and cry,
many of the fraternity giving it as their opinion that the author had
exhausted himself, or, as the technical phrase expresses it, written
himself out; and as an unusual tract of success too often provokes many
persons to mark and exaggerate a slip when it does occur, the author was
publicly accused, in prose and verse, of having committed a literary
suicide in this unhappy attempt. The voices, therefore, were, for a
time, against Saint Ronan's on the southern side of the Tweed.

In the author's own country, it was otherwise. Many of the characters
were recognised as genuine Scottish portraits, and the good fortune
which had hitherto attended the productions of the Author of Waverley,
did not desert, notwithstanding the ominous vaticinations of its
censurers, this new attempt, although out of his ordinary style.

_1st February, 1832._

ST. RONAN'S WELL.

CHAPTER I.

AN OLD-WORLD LANDLADY.

But to make up my tale,
She breweth good ale,
And thereof maketh sale.

SKELTON.

Although few, if any, of the countries of Europe, have increased so
rapidly in wealth and cultivation as Scotland during the last half
century, Sultan Mahmoud's owls might nevertheless have found in
Caledonia, at any term within that flourishing period, their dowery of
ruined villages. Accident or local advantages have, in many instances,
transferred the inhabitants of ancient hamlets, from the situations
which their predecessors chose with more respect to security than
convenience, to those in which their increasing industry and commerce
could more easily expand itself; and hence places which stand
distinguished in Scottish history, and which figure in David M'Pherson's
excellent historical map,[I-A][I-1] can now only be discerned from the wild
moor by the verdure which clothes their site, or, at best, by a few
scattered ruins, resembling pinfolds, which mark the spot of their
former existence.