The Antiquary Volume 01 - Вальтер Скотт 2 стр.

"Item, to the said Sir Peter, to buy breid and drink to the said puir men vj li. xiij s. iiij d.

"Item, to the said Sir Peter, to be delt amang uther puire folk j cli.

"Item, upoun the last day of Junii to Doctor Young, Deane of Winchester, Elimozinar Deput to his Majestic, twentie fyve pund sterling, to be gevin to the puir be the way in his Majesteis progress Inde, iij c li. "

I have only to add, that although the institution of King's Bedesmen still subsists, they are now seldom to be seen on the streets of Edinburgh, of which their peculiar dress made them rather a characteristic feature.

Having thus given an account of the genus and species to which Edie Ochiltree appertains, the author may add, that the individual he had in his eye was Andrew Gemmells, an old mendicant of the character described, who was many years since well known, and must still be remembered, in the vales of Gala, Tweed, Ettrick, Yarrow, and the adjoining country.

The author has in his youth repeatedly seen and conversed with Andrew, but cannot recollect whether he held the rank of Blue-Gown. He was a remarkably fine old figure, very tall, and maintaining a soldierlike or military manner and address. His features were intelligent, with a powerful expression of sarcasm. His motions were always so graceful, that he might almost have been suspected of having studied them; for he might, on any occasion, have, served as a model for an artist, so remarkably striking were his ordinary attitudes. Andrew Gemmells had little of the cant of his calling; his wants were food and shelter, or a trifle of money, which he always claimed, and seemed to receive as his due. He, sung a good song, told a good story, and could crack a severe jest with all the acumen of Shakespeare's jesters, though without using, like them, the cloak of insanity. It was some fear of Andrew's satire, as much as a feeling of kindness or charity, which secured him the general good reception which he enjoyed everywhere. In fact, a jest of Andrew Gemmells, especially at the expense of a person of consequence, flew round the circle which he frequented, as surely as the bon-mot of a man of established character for wit glides through the fashionable world, Many of his good things are held in remembrance, but are generally too local and personal to be introduced here.

Andrew had a character peculiar to himself among his tribe for aught I ever heard. He was ready and willing to play at cards or dice with any one who desired such amusement. This was more in the character of the Irish itinerant gambler, called in that country a "carrow," than of the Scottish beggar. But the late Reverend Doctor Robert Douglas, minister of Galashiels, assured the author, that the last time he saw Andrew Gemmells, he was engaged in a game at brag with a gentleman of fortune, distinction, and birth. To preserve the due gradations of rank, the party was made at an open window of the chateau, the laird sitting on his chair in the inside, the beggar on a stool in the yard; and they played on the window-sill. The stake was a considerable parcel of silver. The author expressing some surprise, Dr. Douglas observed, that the laird was no doubt a humourist or original; but that many decent persons in those times would, like him, have thought there was nothing extraordinary in passing an hour, either in card-playing or conversation, with Andrew Gemmells.

This singular mendicant had generally, or was supposed to have, much money about his person, as would have been thought the value of his life among modern foot-pads. On one occasion, a country gentleman, generally esteemed a very narrow man, happening to meet Andrew, expressed great regret that he had no silver in his pocket, or he would have given him sixpence.  "I can give you change for a note, laird," replied Andrew.

Like most who have arisen to the head of their profession, the modern degradation which mendicity has undergone was often the subject of Andrew's lamentations. As a trade, he said, it was forty pounds a-year worse since he had first practised it. On another occasion he observed, begging was in modern times scarcely the profession of a gentleman; and that, if he had twenty sons, he would not easily be induced to breed one of them up in his own line. When or where this laudator temporis acti closed his wanderings, the author never heard with certainty; but most probably, as Burns says,

The author may add another picture of the same kind as Edie Ochiltree and Andrew Gemmells; considering these illustrations as a sort of gallery, open to the reception of anything which may elucidate former manners, or amuse the reader.

The author's contemporaries at the university of Edinburgh will probably remember the thin, wasted form of a venerable old Bedesman, who stood by the Potterrow-Port, now demolished, and, without speaking a syllable, gently inclined his head, and offered his hat, but with the least possible degree of urgency, towards each individual who passed. This man gained, by silence and the extenuated and wasted appearance of a palmer from a remote country, the same tribute which was yielded to Andrew Gemmells' sarcastic humour and stately deportment. He was understood to be able to maintain a son a student in the theological classes of the University, at the gate of which the father was a mendicant. The young man was modest and inclined to learning, so that a student of the same age, and whose parents where rather of the lower order, moved by seeing him excluded from the society of other scholars when the secret of his birth was suspected, endeavoured to console him by offering him some occasional civilities. The old mendicant was grateful for this attention to his son, and one day, as the friendly student passed, he stooped forward more than usual, as if to intercept his passage. The scholar drew out a halfpenny, which he concluded was the beggar's object, when he was surprised to receive his thanks for the kindness he had shown to Jemmie, and at the same time a cordial invitation to dine with them next Saturday, "on a shoulder of mutton and potatoes," adding, "ye'll put on your clean sark, as I have company." The student was strongly tempted to accept this hospitable proposal, as many in his place would probably have done; but, as the motive might have been capable of misrepresentation, he thought it most prudent, considering the character and circumstances of the old man, to decline the invitation.

Such are a few traits of Scottish mendicity, designed to throw light on a Novel in which a character of that description plays a prominent part. We conclude, that we have vindicated Edie Ochiltree's right to the importance assigned him; and have shown, that we have known one beggar take a hand at cards with a person of distinction, and another give dinner parties.

I know not if it be worth while to observe, that the Antiquary,2 was not so well received on its first appearance as either of its predecessors, though in course of time it rose to equal, and, with some readers, superior popularity.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

"THE ANTIQUARY" was begun in 1815; the bargain for its publication by Constable was made in the October of that year. On December 22 Scott wrote to Morritt: "I shall set myself seriously to 'The Antiquary,' of which I have only a very general sketch at present; but when once I get my pen to the paper it will walk fast enough. I am sometimes tempted to leave it alone, and try whether it will not write as well without the assistance of my head as with it,  a hopeful prospect for the reader!'" It is amazing enough that he even constructed "a general sketch," for to such sketches he confesses that he never could keep constant. "I have generally written to the middle of one of these novels without having the least idea how it was to end,  in short, in the hab nab at a venture style of composition" (Journal, Feb. 24, 1828). Yet it is almost impossible but that the plot of "The Antiquary" should have been duly considered. Scott must have known from the first who Lovel was to turn out to be, and must have recognised in the hapless bride of Lord Glenallan the object of the Antiquary's solitary and unfortunate passion. To introduce another Wandering Heir immediately after the Harry Bertram of "Guy Mannering" was rather audacious. But that old favourite, the Lost Heir, is nearly certain to be popular. For the Antiquary's immortal sorrow Scott had a model in his own experience. "What a romance to tell!  and told, I fear, it will one day be. And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain." The dead, as Aristotle says, if they care for such things at all, care no more than we do for what has passed in a dream.

The general sketch probably began to take full shape about the last day of 1815. On December 29 Scott wrote to Ballantyne:

In "The Antiquary" Scott had a subject thoroughly to his mind. He had been an antiquary from his childhood. His earliest pence had been devoted to that collection of printed ballads which is still at Abbotsford. These he mentions in the unfinished fragment of his "Reliquiae Trotcosienses," in much the same words as in his manuscript note on one of the seven volumes.

"This little collection of Stall tracts and ballads was formed by me, when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into its present decent binding it had such charms for the servants that it was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since, and, I dare say, many that could not now be procured for any price (1810)."

Nor did he collect only

"Walter had soon begun to gather out-of-the-way things of all sorts. He had more books than shelves [sic]; a small painted cabinet with Scotch and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe, given him by old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince Charlie; and Broughton's Saucer was hooked up on the wall below it." He had entered literature through the ruined gateway of archleology, in the "Border Minstrelsy," and his last project was an edition of Perrault's "Contes de Ma Mere l'Oie." As pleasant to him as the purchase of new lands like Turn Again, bought dearly, as in Monkbarns's case, from "bonnet lauds," was a fresh acquisition of an old book or of old armour. Yet, with all his enthusiasm, he did not please the antiquaries of his own day. George Chalmers, in Constable's "Life and Correspondence" (i. 431), sneers at his want of learning. "His notes are loose and unlearned, as they generally are." Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, his friend in life, disported himself in jealous and ribald mockery of Scott's archaeological knowledge, when Scott was dead. In a letter of the enigmatic Thomas Allen, or James Stuart Hay, father of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, this mysterious person avers that he never knew Scott's opinion to be held as of any value by antiquaries (1829). They probably missed in him "a sort of pettifogging intimacy with dates, names, and trifling matters of fact,  a tiresome and frivolous accuracy of memory" which Sir Arthur Wardour reproves in Monkbarns. Scott, in brief, was not as Dry-as-dust; all the dead bones that he touches come to life. He was as great an archeologist as a poet can be, and, with Virgil, was the greatest antiquary among poets. Like Monkbarns, he was not incapable of being beguiled. As Oldbuck bought the bodle from the pedlar at the price of a rare coin, so Scott took Surtees's "Barthram's Dirge," and his Latin legend of the tourney with the spectre knight, for genuine antiquities. No Edie Ochiltree ever revealed to him the truth about these forgeries, and the spectre knight, with the ballad of "Anthony Featherstonhaugh," hold their own in "Marmion," to assure the world that this antiquary was gullible when the sleight was practised by a friend. "Non est tanti," he would have said, had he learned the truth; for he was ever conscious of the humorous side of the study of the mouldering past. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as a trifling discourse about antiquarian oldwomanries. It is like knitting a stocking,  diverting the mind without occupying it." ("Journal," March 9, 1828).

Begun about Jan. 1, 1816, "The Antiquary" was published before May 16, 1816, when Scott writes to say that he has sent Mr. Morritt the novel "some time since." "It is not so interesting as its predecessors; the period does not admit of so much romantic situation. But it has been more fortunate than any of them in the sale, for six thousand went off in the first six days, and it is now at press again." The Preface of the first edition ends with the melancholy statement that the author "takes his respectful leave, as one who is not likely again to solicit favour." Apparently Scott had already determined not to announce his next novels ("The Black Dwarf" and "Old Mortality") as "by the Author of Waverley." Mr. Constable, in the biography of his father, says (iii. 84): "Even before the publication of 'The Antiquary,' John Ballantyne had been impowered by the Author to negotiate with Mr. Murray and Mr. Blackwood for the first series of the 'Tales of my Landlord.'" The note of withdrawal from the stage, in the first edition of "The Antiquary," was probably only a part of another experiment on public sagacity. As Lockhart says, Mr. Murray and Mr. Blackwood thought that the consequent absence of the Author of "Waverley's" name from the "Tales of my Landlord" would "check very much the first success of the book;" but they risked this, "to disturb Constable's tenure."

Scott's temporary desertion of Constable in the "Tales of my Landlord" may have had various motives. There was a slight grudge against Constable, born of some complications of the Ballantynes' affairs. Perhaps the mere amusement of the experiment on public sagacity was one of the more powerful reasons for the change. In our day Lord Lytton and Mr. Trollope made similar trials of their popularity when anonymous, the former author with the greater success. The idea of these masquerades and veils of the incognito appears to have bewitched Constable. William Godwin was writing for him his novel "Mandeville," and Godwin had obviously been counselled to try a disguise. He says (Jan. 30, 1816) "I have amused my imagination a thousand times since last we parted with the masquerade you devised for me. The world is full of wonder. An old favourite is always reviewed with coldness... 'Pooh,' they say; 'Godwin has worn his pen to the stump!'.. But let me once be equipped with a significant mask and an unknown character from your masquerade shop, and admitted to figure in with the 'Last Minstrel,' the 'Lady of the Lake,' and 'Guy Mannering' in the Scottish carnival, Gods! how the boys and girls will admire me! 'Here is a new wonder!' they will say. 'Ah, this is something like! Here is Godwin beaten on his own ground.. Here is for once a Scottish writer that they cannot say has anything of the Scotchman about him.'"

However, Mr. Godwin did not don the mask and domino. "Mandeville" came out about the same time as "Rob Roy;" but the "craziness of the public" for the Author of "Waverley" was not changed into a passion for the father-in-law of Shelley.

"'The Antiquary,' after a little pause of hesitation, attained popularity not inferior to 'Guy Mannering,' and though the author appears for a moment to have shared the doubts which he read in the countenance of James Ballantyne, it certainly was, in the sequel, his chief favourite among all his novels.'"

As Scott said to Terry, "If a man will paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it." The years which saw the first appearance of "Guy Mannering" also witnessed that of "Emma." By the singular chance, or law, which links great authors closely in time, giving us novelists in pairs, Miss Austen was "drawing from nature" at the very moment when Scott was wedding nature with romance. How generously and wisely he admired her is familiar, and it may, to some, seem curious that he never deliberately set himself to a picture of ordinary life, free from the intrusion of the unusual, of the heroic. Once, looking down at the village which lies on the Tweed, opposite Melrose, he remarked that under its roofs tragedies and tales were doubtless being lived. 'I undertake to say there is some real romance at this moment going on down there, that, if it could have justice done to it, would be well worth all the fiction that was ever spun out of human brains.' But the example he gave was terrible,  "anything more dreadful was never conceived by Crabbe;" yet, adds Lockhart, "it would never have entered into his head to elaborate such a tale." He could not dwell in the unbroken gloom dear to some modern malingerers. But he could easily have made a tale of common Scotch life, dark with the sorrow of Mucklebackit, and bright with the mirth of Cuddie Headrigg. There was, however, this difficulty,  that Scott cared not to write a story of a single class. "From the peer to the ploughman," all society mingles in each of his novels. A fiction of middle-class life did not allure him, and he was not at the best, but at his worst, as Sydney Smith observed, in the light talk of society. He could admire Miss Austen, and read her novels again and again; but had he attempted to follow her, by way of variety, then inevitably wild as well as disciplined humour would have kept breaking in, and his fancy would have wandered like the old knights of Arthur's Court, "at adventure." "St. Ronan's Well" proved the truth of all this. Thus it happens that, in "The Antiquary," with all his sympathy for the people, with all his knowledge of them, he does not confine himself to their cottages. As Lockhart says, in his admirable piece of criticism, he preferred to choose topics in which he could display "his highest art, that of skilful contrast."