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Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




The manners of a rude people are always founded on nature, and
therefore the feelings of a more polished generation immediately
sympathize with them. We need no numerous notes, no antiquarian
dissertations, to enable the most ignorant to recognize the sentiments
and diction of the characters of Homer; we have but, as Lear says, to
strip off our lendings--to set aside the factitious principles and
adornments which we have received from our comparatively artificial
system of society, and our natural feelings are in unison with those
of the bard of Chios and the heroes who live in his verses. It is the
same with a great part of the narratives of my friend Mr. Cooper. We
sympathize with his Indian chiefs and back-woodsmen, and acknowledge,
in the characters which he presents to us, the same truth of human
nature by which we should feel ourselves influenced if placed in the
same condition. So much is this the case, that, though it is
difficult, or almost impossible, to reclaim a savage, bred from his
youth to war and the chase, to the restraints and the duties of
civilized life, nothing is more easy or common than to find men who
have been educated in all the habits and comforts of improved society,
willing to exchange them for the wild labours of the hunter and the
fisher. The very amusements most pursued and relished by men of all
ranks, whose constitutions permit active exercise, are hunting,
fishing, and, in some instances, war, the natural and necessary
business of the savage of Dryden, where his hero talks of being

--"As free as nature first made man,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran."

But although the occupations, and even the sentiments, of human beings
in a primitive state, find access and interest in the minds of the
more civilized part of the species, it does not therefore follow, that
the national tastes, opinions, and follies of one civilized period,
should afford either the same interest or the same amusement to those
of another. These generally, when driven to extravagance, are founded,
not upon any natural taste proper to the species, but upon the growth
of some peculiar cast of affectation, with which mankind in general,
and succeeding generations in particular, feel no common interest or
sympathy. The extravagances of coxcombry in manners and apparel are
indeed the legitimate and often the successful objects of satire,
during the time when they exist. In evidence of this, theatrical
critics may observe how many dramatic _jeux d'esprit_ are well
received every season, because the satirist levels at some well-known
or fashionable absurdity; or, in the dramatic phrase, "shoots folly as
it flies." But when the peculiar kind of folly keeps the wing no
longer, it is reckoned but waste of powder to pour a discharge of
ridicule on what has ceased to exist; and the pieces in which such
forgotten absurdities are made the subject of ridicule, fall quietly
into oblivion with the follies which gave them fashion, or only
continue to exist on the scene, because they contain some other more
permanent interest than that which connects them with manners and
follies of a temporary character.

This, perhaps, affords a reason why the comedies of Ben Jonson,
founded upon system, or what the age termed humours,--by which was
meant factitious and affected characters, superinduced on that which
was common to the rest of their race,--in spite of acute satire, deep
scholarship, and strong sense, do not now afford general pleasure, but
are confined to the closet of the antiquary, whose studies have
assured him that the personages of the dramatist were once, though
they are now no longer, portraits of existing nature.

Let us take another example of our hypothesis from Shakspeare himself,
who, of all authors, drew his portraits for all ages. With the whole
sum of the idolatry which affects us at his name, the mass of readers
peruse, without amusement, the characters formed on the extravagances
of temporary fashion; and the Euphuist Don Armado, the pedant
Holofernes, even Nym and Pistol, are read with little pleasure by the
mass of the public, being portraits of which we cannot recognize the
humour, because the originals no longer exist. In like manner, while
the distresses of Romeo and Juliet continue to interest every bosom,
Mercutio, drawn as an accurate representation of the finished fine
gentleman of the period, and as such received by the unanimous
approbation of contemporaries, has so little to interest the present
age, that, stripped of all his puns, and quirks of verbal wit, he only
retains his place in the scene, in virtue of his fine and fanciful
speech upon dreaming, which belongs to no particular age, and because
he is a personage whose presence is indispensable to the plot.

We have already prosecuted perhaps too far an argument, the tendency
of which is to prove, that the introduction of an humorist, acting
like Sir Piercie Shafton, upon some forgotten and obsolete model of
folly, once fashionable, is rather likely to awaken the disgust of the
reader, as unnatural, than find him food for laughter. Whether owing
to this theory, or whether to the more simple and probable cause of
the author's failure in the delineation of the subject he had proposed
to himself, the formidable objection of _incredulus odi_ was
applied to the Euphuist, as well as to the White Lady of Avenel; and
the one was denounced as unnatural, while the other was rejected as
impossible.

There was little in the story to atone for these failures in two
principal points. The incidents were inartificially huddled together.
There was no part of the intrigue to which deep interest was found to
apply; and the conclusion was brought about, not by incidents arising
out of the story itself, but in consequence of public transactions,
with which the narrative has little connexion, and which the reader
had little opportunity to become acquainted with.

This, if not a positive fault, was yet a great defect in the Romance.
It is true, that not only the practice of some great authors in this
department, but even the general course of human life itself, may be
quoted in favour of this more obvious and less artificial practice of
arranging a narrative. It is seldom that the same circle of
personages who have surrounded an individual at his first outset in
life, continue to have an interest in his career till his fate comes
to a crisis. On the contrary, and more especially if the events of his
life be of a varied character, and worth communicating to others, or
to the world, the hero's later connexions are usually totally
separated from those with whom he began the voyage, but whom the
individual has outsailed, or who have drifted astray, or foundered on
the passage. This hackneyed comparison holds good in another point.
The numerous vessels of so many different sorts, and destined for such
different purposes, which are launched in the same mighty ocean,
although each endeavours to pursue its own course, are in every case
more influenced by the winds and tides, which are common to the
element which they all navigate, than by their own separate exertions.
And it is thus in the world, that, when human prudence has done its
best, some general, perhaps national, event, destroys the schemes of
the individual, as the casual touch of a more powerful being sweeps
away the web of the spider.

Many excellent romances have been composed in this view of human life,
where the hero is conducted through a variety of detached scenes, in
which various agents appear and disappear, without, perhaps, having
any permanent influence on the progress of the story. Such is the
structure of Gil Blas, Roderick Random, and the lives and adventures
of many other heroes, who are described as running through different
stations of life, and encountering various adventures, which are only
connected with each other by having happened to be witnessed by the
same individual, whose identity unites them together, as the string of
a necklace links the beads, which are otherwise detached.

But though such an unconnected course of adventures is what most
frequently occurs in nature, yet the province of the romance writer
being artificial, there is more required from him than a mere
compliance with the simplicity of reality,--just as we demand from the
scientific gardener, that he shall arrange, in curious knots and
artificial parterres, the flowers which "nature boon" distributes
freely on hill and dale. Fielding, accordingly, in most of his novels,
but especially in Tom Jones, his _chef-d'oeuvre_, has set the
distinguished example of a story regularly built and consistent in all
its parts, in which nothing occurs, and scarce a personage is
introduced, that has not some share in tending to advance the
catastrophe.

To demand equal correctness and felicity in those who may follow in
the track of that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much
the power of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules;
since of this sort of light literature it may be especially
said--_tout genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux_. Still,
however, the more closely and happily the story is combined, and the
more natural and felicitous the catastrophe, the nearer such a
composition will approach the perfection of the novelist's art; nor
can an author neglect this branch of his profession, without incurring
proportional censure.

For such censure the Monastery gave but too much occasion. The
intrigue of the Romance, neither very interesting in itself, nor very
happily detailed, is at length finally disentangled by the breaking
out of national hostilities between England and Scotland, and the as
sudden renewal of the truce. Instances of this kind, it is true,
cannot in reality have been uncommon, but the resorting to such, in
order to accomplish the catastrophe, as by a _tour de force_, was
objected to as inartificial, and not perfectly, intelligible to the
general reader.

Still the Monastery, though exposed to severe and just criticism, did
not fail, judging from the extent of its circulation, to have some
interest for the public. And this, too, was according to the ordinary
course of such matters; for it very seldom happens that literary
reputation is gained by a single effort, and still more rarely is it
lost by a solitary miscarriage.

The author, therefore, had his days of grace allowed him, and time, if
he pleased, to comfort himself with the burden of the old Scots song,

"If it isna weel bobbit.
We'll bob it again."

ABBOTSFORD,
_1st November_, 1830.


* * * * *


INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE

FROM CAPTAIN CLUTTERBUCK, LATE OF HIS MAJESTY'S ---- REGIMENT OF
INFANTRY, TO THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.

Sir,

Although I do not pretend to the pleasure of your personal
acquaintance, like many whom I believe to be equally strangers to you,
I am nevertheless interested in your publications, and desire their
continuance;-not that I pretend to much taste in fictitious
composition, or that I am apt to be interested in your grave scenes,
or amused by those which are meant to be lively. I will not disguise
from you, that I have yawned over the last interview of MacIvor and
his sister, and fell fairly asleep while the schoolmaster was reading
the humours of Dandie Dinmont. You see, sir, that I scorn to solicit
your favour in a way to which you are no stranger. If the papers I
enclose you are worth nothing, I will not endeavour to recommend them
by personal flattery, as a bad cook pours rancid butter upon stale
fish. No, sir! what I respect in you is the light you have
occasionally thrown on national antiquities, a study which I have
commenced rather late in life, but to which I am attached with the
devotions of a first love, because it is the only study I ever cared a
farthing for.

You shall have my history, sir, (it will not reach to three volumes,)
before that of my manuscript; and as you usually throw out a few lines
of verse (by way of skirmishers, I suppose) at the head of each
division of prose, I have had the luck to light upon a stanza in the
schoolmaster's copy of Burns which describes me exactly. I love it the
better, because it was originally designed for Captain Grose, an
excellent antiquary, though, like yourself, somewhat too apt to treat
with levity his own pursuits:

'Tis said he was a soldier bred,
And ane wad rather fa'en than fled;
But now he's quit the spurtle blade,
And dog-skin wallet,
And ta'en the--antiquarian trade,
I think, they call it.

I never could conceive what influenced me, when a boy, in the choice
of a profession. Military zeal and ardour it was not, which made me
stand out for a commission in the Scots Fusiliers, when my tutors
and curators wished to bind me apprentice to old David Stiles, Clerk
to his Majesty's Signet. I say, military zeal it was _not_; for
I was no fighting boy in my own person, and cared not a penny to
read the history of the heroes who turned the world upside down in
former ages. As for courage, I had, as I have since discovered, just
as much of it as serve'd my turn, and not one frain of surplus. I
soon found out, indeed, that in action there was more anger in
running away than in standing fast; and besides, I could not afford
to lose my commission, which was my chief means of support. But, as
for that overboiling valour, which I have heard many of _ours_
talk of, though I seldom observed that it influenced them in the
actual affair---that exuberant zeal, which courts Danger as a
bride,--truly my courage was of a complexion much less ecstatical.

Again, the love of a red coat, which, in default of all other
aptitudes to the profession, has made many a bad soldier and some good
ones, was an utter stranger to my disposition. I cared not a "bodle"
for the company of the misses: Nay, though there was a boarding-school
in the village, and though we used to meet with its fair inmates at
Simon Lightfoot's weekly Practising, I cannot recollect any strong
emotions being excited on these occasions, excepting the infinite
regret with which I went through the polite ceremonial of presenting
my partner with an orange, thrust into my pocket by my aunt for this
special purpose, but which, had I dared, I certainly would have
secreted for my own personal use. As for vanity, or love of finery for
itself, I was such a stranger to it, that the difficulty was great to
make me brush my coat, and appear in proper trim upon parade. I shall
never forget the rebuke of my old Colonel on a morning when the King
reviewed a brigade of which ours made part. "I am no friend to
extravagance, Ensign Clutterbuck," said he; "but, on the day when we
are to pass before the Sovereign of the kingdom, in the name of God I
would have at least shown him an inch of clean linen."

Thus, a stranger to the ordinary motives which lead young men to make
the army their choice, and without the least desire to become either a
hero or a dandy, I really do not know what determined my thoughts that
way, unless it were the happy state of half-pay indolence enjoyed by
Captain Doolittle, who had set up his staff of rest in my native
village. Every other person had, or seemed to have, something to do,
less or more. They did not, indeed, precisely go to school and learn
tasks, that last of evils in my estimation; but it did not escape my
boyish observation, that they were all bothered with something or
other like duty or labour--all but the happy Captain Doolittle. The
minister had his parish to visit, and his preaching to prepare, though
perhaps he made more fuss than he needed about both. The laird had
his farming and improving operations to superintend; and, besides, he
had to attend trustee meetings, and lieutenancy meetings, and
head-courts, and meetings of justices, and what not--was as early up,
(that I detested,) and as much in the open air, wet and dry, as his
own grieve. The shopkeeper (the village boasted but one of eminence)
stood indeed pretty much at his ease behind his counter, for his
custom was by no means overburdensome; but still he enjoyed his
_status_, as the Bailie calls it, upon condition of tumbling all
the wares in his booth over and over, when any one chose to want a
yard of muslin, a mousetrap, an ounce of caraways, a paper of pins,
the Sermons of Mr. Peden, or the Life of Jack the Giant-Queller, (not
Killer, as usually erroneously written and pronounced.--See my essay
on the true history of this worthy, where real facts have in a
peculiar degree been obscured by fable.) In short, all in the village
were under the necessity of doing something which they would rather
have left undone, excepting Captain Doolittle, who walked every
morning in the open street, which formed the high mall of our village,
in a blue coat with a red neck, and played at whist the whole evening,
when he could make up a party. This happy vacuity of all employment
appeared to me so delicious, that it became the primary hint, which,
according to the system of Helvetius, as the minister says, determined
my infant talents towards the profession I was destined to illustrate.

But who, alas! can form a just estimate of their future prospects in
this deceitful world? I was not long engaged in my new profession,
before I discovered, that if the independent indolence of half-pay was
a paradise, the officer must pass through the purgatory of duty and
service in order to gain admission to it. Captain Doolittle might
brush his blue coat with the red neck, or leave it unbrushed, at his
pleasure; but Ensign Clutterbuck had no such option. Captain Doolittle
might go to bed at ten o'clock, if he had a mind; but the Ensign must
make the rounds in his turn. What was worse, the Captain might repose
under the tester of his tent-bed until noon, if he was so pleased; but
the Ensign, God help him, had to appear upon parade at peep of day. As
for duty, I made that as easy as I could, had the sergeant to whisper
to me the words of command, and bustled through as other folks did. Of
service, I saw enough for an indolent man--was buffeted up and down
the world, and visited both the East and West Indies, Egypt, and other
distant places, which my youth had scarce dreamed of. The French I
saw, and felt too; witness two fingers on my right hand, which one of
their cursed hussars took off with his sabre as neatly as an hospital
surgeon. At length, the death of an old aunt, who left me some fifteen
hundred pounds, snugly vested in the three per cents, gave me the
long-wished-for opportunity of retiring, with the prospect of enjoying
a clean shirt and a guinea four times a-week at least.

For the purpose of commencing my new way of life, I selected for my
residence the village of Kennaquhair, in the south of Scotland,
celebrated for the ruins of its magnificent Monastery, intending there
to lead my future life in the _otium cum dignitate_ of half-pay
and annuity. I was not long, however, in making the grand discovery,
that in order to enjoy leisure, it is absolutely necessary it should
be preceded by occupation. For some time, it was delightful to wake at
daybreak, dreaming of the reveill?--then to recollect my happy
emancipation from the slavery that doomed me to start at a piece of
clattering parchment, turn on my other side, damn the parade, and go
to sleep again. But even this enjoyment had its termination; and time,
when it became a stock entirely at my own disposal, began to hang
heavy on my hand.

I angled for two days, during which time I lost twenty hooks, and
several scores of yards of gut and line, and caught not even a minnow.
Hunting was out of the question, for the stomach of a horse by no
means agrees with the half-pay establishment. When I shot, the
shepherds, and ploughmen, and my very dog, quizzed me every time that
I missed, which was, generally speaking, every time I fired. Besides,
the country gentlemen in this quarter like their game, and began to
talk of prosecutions and interdicts. I did not give up fighting the
French to commence a domestic war with the "pleasant men of
Teviotdale," as the song calls them; so I e'en spent three days (very
agreeably) in cleaning my gun, and disposing it upon two hooks over my
chimney-piece.

The success of this accidental experiment set me on trying my skill in
the mechanical arts. Accordingly I took down and cleaned my landlady's
cuckoo-clock, and in so doing, silenced that companion of the spring
for ever and a day. I mounted a turning-lathe, and in attempting to
use it, I very nearly cribbed off, with an inch-and-half former, one
of the fingers which the hussar had left me.

Books I tried, both those of the little circulating library, and of
the more rational subscription collection maintained by this
intellectual people. But neither the light reading of the one, nor the
heavy artillery of the other, suited my purpose. I always fell asleep
at the fourth or fifth page of history or disquisition; and it took me
a month's hard reading to wade through a half-bound trashy novel,
during which I was pestered with applications to return the volumes,
by every half-bred milliner's miss about the place. In short, during
the time when all the town besides had something to do, I had nothing
for it, but to walk in the church-yard, and whistle till it was
dinner-time.

During these promenades, the ruins necessarily forced themselves on my
attention, and, by degrees, I found myself engaged in studying the
more minute ornaments, and at length the general plan, of this noble
structure. The old sexton aided my labours, and gave me his portion
of traditional lore. Every day added something to my stock of
knowledge respecting the ancient state of the building; and at length
I made discoveries concerning the purpose of several detached and very
ruinous portions of it, the use of which had hitherto been either
unknown altogether or erroneously explained.

The knowledge which I thus acquired I had frequent opportunities of
retailing to those visiters whom the progress of a Scottish tour
brought to visit this celebrated spot. Without encroaching on the
privilege of my friend the sexton, I became gradually an assistant
Cicerone in the task of description and explanation, and often (seeing
a fresh party of visiters arrive) has he turned over to me those to
whom he had told half his story, with the flattering observation,
"What needs I say ony mair about it? There's the Captain kens mair
anent it than I do, or any man in the town." Then would I salute the
strangers courteously, and expatiate to their astonished minds upon
crypts and chancels, and naves, arches, Gothic and Saxon architraves,
mullions and flying buttresses. It not unfrequently happened, that an
acquaintance which commenced in the Abbey concluded in the inn, which
served to relieve the solitude as well as the monotony of my
landlady's shoulder of mutton, whether roast, cold, or hashed.

By degrees my mind became enlarged; I found a book or two which
enlightened me on the subject of Gothic architecture, and I read now
with pleasure, because I was interested in what I read about. Even my
character began to dilate and expand. I spoke with more authority at
the club, and was listened to with deference, because on one subject,
at least, I possessed more information than any of its members.
Indeed, I found that even my stories about Egypt, which, to say truth,
were somewhat threadbare, were now listened to with more respect than
formerly. "The Captain," they said, "had something in him after
a',--there were few folk kend sae muckle about the Abbey."

With this general approbation waxed my own sense of self-importance,
and my feeling of general comfort. I ate with more appetite, I
digested with more ease, I lay down at night with joy, and slept sound
till morning, when I arose with a sense of busy importance, and hied
me to measure, to examine, and to compare the various parts of this
interesting structure. I lost all sense and consciousness of certain
unpleasant sensations of a nondescript nature, about my head and
stomach, to which I had been in the habit of attending, more for the
benefit of the village apothecary than my own, for the pure want of
something else to think about. I had found out an occupation
unwittingly, and was happy because I had something to do. In a word,
I had commenced local antiquary, and was not unworthy of the name.

Whilst I was in this pleasing career of busy idleness, for so it might
at best be called, it happened that I was one night sitting in my
little parlour, adjacent to the closet which my landlady calls my
bedroom, in the act of preparing for an early retreat to the realms of
Morpheus. Dugdale's Monasticon, borrowed from the library at A------,
was lying on the table before me, flanked by some excellent Cheshire
cheese, (a present, by the way, from an honest London citizen, to whom
I had explained the difference between a Gothic and a Saxon arch,) and
a glass of Vanderhagen's best ale. Thus armed at all points against my
old enemy Time, I was leisurely and deliciously preparing for bed--now
reading a line of old Dugdale--now sipping my ale, or munching my
bread and cheese--now undoing the strings at my breeches' knees, or a
button or two of my waistcoat, until the village clock should strike
ten, before which time I make it a rule never to go to bed. A loud
knocking, however, interrupted my ordinary process on this occasion,
and the voice of my honest landlord of the George was heard
vociferating, [Footnote: The George was, and is, the principal inn in
the village of Kennaquhair, or Melrose. But the landlord of the period
was not the same civil and quiet person by whom the inn is now kept.
David Kyle, a Melrose proprietor of no little importance, a first-rate
person of consequence in whatever belonged to the business of the
town, was the original owner and landlord of the inn. Poor David, like
many other busy men, took so much care of public affairs, as in some
degree to neglect his own. There are persons still alive at
Kennaquhair who can recognise him and his peculiarities in the
following sketch of mine Host of the George.] "What the deevil, Mrs.
Grimslees, the Captain is no in his bed? and a gentleman at our house
has ordered a fowl and minced collops, and a bottle of sherry, and has
sent to ask him to supper, to tell him all about the Abbey."