The 'Blackwood' Group

The plot of The Inheritance, of which the above is a sketch, is a model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the narrative is perfect. Indeed the form of the story could not be improved – a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction; and though the book is a long one, it contains not a superfluous page. Among the numerous authors quoted in the course of it are Shakespeare and the Greek dramatists, and perhaps, without stretching probability too far, we may assume that the authoress had studied the latter as well as the former. In any case The Inheritance in its own degree unites principal characteristics of the Greek and the Shakespearian drama, for the web of circumstance inexorably woven about the innocent and unconscious heroine is entirely in the manner of the first, whilst the indifferent, life-like alternation of tragic and ludicrous incident in the narrative is of a piece with Shakespeare's irony. No finer example of the latter could be cited than the impressive scene in which Lord Rossville, looking blankly from his window one snowy afternoon, is amazed to see a hearse approaching the Castle. Out of the vehicle, when it has reached the door, steps his lordship's pet aversion and the reader's delight – the undaunted and ubiquitous Miss Pratt. The voluble lady has a long story to tell of the circumstances which have compelled her to resort to this unconventional mode of conveyance, whilst the pompous Earl is scandalised at the general impropriety of the proceedings, and especially at thought of the hearse of Mr McVitae, the Radical distiller, putting up for the night at the Castle. However there is no help for it; nor as it turns out is the visit so ill-timed as had seemed, for the next morning Lord Rossville is discovered dead upon his bed.

But if the book is remarkable for its admirable story, certainly not less remarkable is it for the extraordinary wealth of character which it portrays. Probably few 'novels of plot' are so rich in character, few 'novels of character' so strong in plot. It may be that some carping critic of the ungentle sex will be found to object to Lyndsay and to Delmour, the contrasted lovers of the heroine, as to 'a woman's men' – to urge that their demeanour is too consistently emotional, too demonstrative, to be founded upon any very solid base of character or of disposition. But supposing (which I am far from granting) that there were some truth in this, here at any rate all ground even for hypercriticism must end. And where in fiction is there a heroine more charming and more lovable than Gertrude St Clair – gentle yet high-spirited as she is, natural, and the soul of truth? Her pretended mother – ambitious and worldly-minded, violent, embittered by the slights and mortifications of her youth and bent vindictively upon retaliation – rises to the dignity of tragedy. Then we have the inimitable rattle and busybody, Miss Pratt, at home everywhere except in her own house, and incessantly referring to the sayings and doings of an invisible 'Anthony Whyte' – a very masterpiece of humorous delineation; and old Adam Ramsay, the cross-grained, misanthropic, Indian uncle, who yet compels our sympathy by his sentimental attachment to the home of his boyhood, and his constancy to the memory of his ill-starred love. Miss Bell Black, afterwards Mrs Major Waddell, is delightful in her perfect inanity and fatuity; and though her creator may not yet have learned to suffer fools gladly, she certainly has by this time mastered the art of portraying 'as though she loved' them. The Earl of Rossville, puffed up by a sense of his own importance, long-winded, sesquepedalian and null; Miss Lilly, the poetess, her Cockney lover and her brothers; gentle Anne Black; Miss Becky Duguid, the accommodating poor relation; Mrs Fairbairn, the materfamilias; and the peasant-woman whose misguided foresight leads her to prepare betimes her ailing husband's dead-clothes, – all of them are admirable, and all bear evidence of being freshly observed from the life. But the writer has learnt the lesson of substituting poetic for local truth; and if any portraits appear in this gallery – and it is stated that Adam Ramsay to some extent represents the authoress's father – they are such as can no longer rightly give offence to anyone. Miss Ferrier had reached middle life when she wrote The Inheritance, and perhaps the laughter which it provokes is less boisterous than that aroused by the first essays of her youth. But for a scene of high comedy – to select one from many – the first conversation of Miss Pratt and Uncle Adam would certainly be difficult to surpass. Finally, we have abundant evidence that in all that she wrote our authoress was actuated by a genuine desire for the moral and religious welfare of her reader; but in comparison to that of Marriage, her tone in this book is as is the influence of a well-guided life to a sententious homily delivered from a pulpit. In one word, there is no single point in her art in which she has not risen from what is crude and tentative to what is finished and masterly.

As it well deserved to be, The Inheritance was a great success, and amongst those from whom it elicited warm commendation the names of Jeffrey and Sir Walter Scott may be particularised. Some of the chief comic actors of the day wished to have it produced upon the stage, with which object the manager of Covent Garden Theatre applied to Mrs Gore, the novelist, for a dramatic version of the story. But that lady's intentions were anticipated by one Fitzball, a purveyor of transpontine wares in the kind, to whose unfitness for his task the complete failure of the play, when it came to be produced, may probably be ascribed. For in its strong, well-developed plot, and diversified characterisation, the story possesses in a high degree the chief requisites of a successful stage-play. The Inheritance has also the distinction of having furnished to Tennyson the outline of his beautiful ballad of Lady Clare.

Miss Ferrier was a very careful craftswoman – a fact to which much of her success has been attributed – and it was not until 1831 that her next book, Destiny, appeared. Much of it was written at Stirling Castle, while she was on a visit to the wife of the Governor of the garrison. The new novel was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, to whom the authoress had good reason to feel obliged, for it was largely in consequence of his skilful bargaining that she had received for it the large sum of £1700 from Cadell. The prices paid to her by Blackwood for her two previous books had been £150 and £1000 respectively.

As The Inheritance represents the meridian of the writer's powers, so Destiny represents their decline – not because there are not some as good things, or very nearly as good things, in the latter as in the former, but because the whole is very much less good. The construction of Destiny is loose and inartificial, and almost from the outset the want of a strong frame-work which shall hold the contents together and keep them in place makes itself felt. Properly speaking, there are two stories in the story, – namely, that which centres in the disposal of the Inch Orran property and the adventures of Ronald Malcolm, and that which concerns itself with the development of the relations between Edith and her recalcitrant lover. In itself of course this would be no defect, but instead of being interwoven, or subordinated one to the other, the two stories are allowed to run parallel and distinct until near the end of the book. Thus their interest is dissipated – an effect which diffuseness of treatment materially increases. 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.

If we judge it as an essay in character-painting, rather than as a story, no doubt the novel comes off better. Again, as in The Inheritance, we have a gallery of masterly portraits – though this time the collection is smaller, and the paintings less highly-finished; and again we feel that these portraits are drawn, not from some conventional limbo of the novelist's, but from observation of life itself, backed up by true imagination. Among the group, the Reverend Duncan M'Dow bears off the palm from all competitors. This insufferable person, imperturbable in his own conceit – with his horse-laugh over his own jocularity, his grossness of manners, his greed for 'augmentation,' and his wounded self-love mingling with overweening vanity at the end of the book – is a piece of life itself, and the description of his luncheon-party is as good as anything accomplished by the authoress. The incarnation of fashionable selfishness and frivolity in the person of Lady Elizabeth Malcolm runs him close; but she is probably a less entirely original creation than the Minister – not that she is in any sense a copy, but that the same sort of model has been oftener studied. If we seek for something pleasanter to contemplate, the simple warm-hearted Molly Macauley, the dreamer of dreams, and the devoted adherent of the Chief who snubs her, is an endearing figure. The Chief himself, who loves good eating, and does not disdain to truckle to his rich childless kinsman, is a conspicuous example of materialisation and degeneracy, though the dotage of his 'debilitated mind and despotic temper' becomes almost as tiresome to the reader as it became to Edith and Sir Reginald. The key to the character of Benbowie, Glenroy's echo, is not quite apparent, and we should have liked to be assured (as we believe) that it was mere ineptitude, and not meanness, which caused him to disappear so hastily on an important occasion when money was required, and to return bringing it with him when it could no longer be of use. The vignettes of Inch Orran, the 'particular man,' and his wife, also stand out in the memory, as does that of the odious Madame Latour. And from this it will be seen that, with one or two exceptions, the more disagreeable personages of the book remain the most in evidence, for the Conways and the family of Captain Malcolm fade into insignificance beside those whose names are enumerated above. And, though the crux is an old one, where the high purpose of the writer is so much insisted on, perhaps it may not be unfair to enquire how far exactly she can be held to succeed in her aims, when even the regenerate reader is ill at ease in the company of her good characters and enjoys himself among her awful examples. The artificiality of some of its dialogues and the triteness of some of its reflections are further symptoms of the enervation which has begun to invade the book.

Miss Ferrier's history is the history of her books, and to these remarks upon her final literary production little need be added. Her mother being dead, and her three sisters married, it fell to her lot to keep house for her father, to whom she was devotedly attached, and with him she continued to reside until his death in January 1829. Her life, which was divided between Morningside House and Edinburgh, and varied by occasional visits to her sisters, is described as a very quiet one, and if we may accept the Adam Ramsay of The Inheritance as at all a close portrait of Mr Ferrier, it must have had its grim side too. She had long suffered from her eyes, and in 1830 she paid her final visit to London, in order to consult an oculist. From his treatment, however, she seems to have derived little benefit; her eyesight failed, and it became necessary for her to spend much of her time in a darkened room; and though she still continued occasionally to receive a few friends at tea in the evening, her life from henceforth was a very retired one. She died in Edinburgh, on the 5th November 1854, at the house of her brother, Mr Walter Ferrier, and was interred in St Cuthbert's Churchyard.

Her dislike of publicity characterized her to the last. It was not until 1851, when a new edition of her works was published, that she consented to allow her name to appear upon the title-page, whilst her unwillingness to be made the subject of a biography led her to destroy all letters which might have been used for such a purpose, and in particular a correspondence with one of her sisters, which contained much biographical matter. The records of her life are consequently few, but the following testimony of an intimate friend is interesting: —

'The wonderful vivacity she maintained in the midst of darkness and pain for so many years, the humour, wit, and honesty of her character, as well as the Christian submission with which she bore her great privation and general discomfort, when not suffering acute pain, made everyone who knew her desirous to alleviate the tediousness of her days; and I used to read a great deal to her at one time, and I never left her darkened chamber without feeling that I had gained something better than the book we might be reading, from her quick perception of its faults and its beauties, and her unmerciful remarks on all that was mean or unworthy in conduct or expression.'

Still more interesting is the sentence in Scott's diary which describes her as 'A gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante of any author-female, at least, whom I have ever seen among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee, and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking.' Of her considerate kindness to the author of Waverley, then in failing health, on the occasion of her last visit to Abbotsford, Lockhart gives this pleasing description: —

'To assist in amusing him in the hours which he spent out of his study, and especially that he might make these hours more frequent, his daughter had invited his friend the authoress of Marriage to come out to Abbotsford; and her coming was serviceable. For she knew and loved him well, and she had seen enough of affliction akin to his to be well skilled in dealing with it. She could not be an hour in his company without observing what filled his children with more sorrow than all the rest of the case. He would begin a story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of the hesitation in his speech, to tell it with highly picturesque effect; but before he reached the point, it would seem as if some internal spring had given way. He paused and gazed around him with the blank anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped his staff. Unthinking friends sometimes gave him the catchword abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care not to use her glasses when he was speaking, and she affected also to be troubled with deafness, and would say, "Well, I am getting as dull as a post, I have not heard a word since you said so and so," being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy, as if forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady's infirmity.'

In conclusion, if Miss Ferrier's work lacks the sweetness and delicacy of Miss Austin's, it has at its best a strength to which her English sister's makes no pretension. The portraits of the former are bitten in with a powerful acid unknown in the chemistry of the latter. But if she was sometimes downright to the verge of cruelty, Miss Ferrier's view of life was a sound one. She strikes unsparingly at the rawness and self-sufficiency which are characteristic defects of such large numbers of our countrymen; yet she remains without rival as a painter of Scottish society, and one at least of her novels deserves to rank with the masterpieces of British fiction.

MICHAEL SCOTT

There used to be a tradition at Cambridge to the effect that an undergraduate, being called on in examination to give some account of John the Baptist, returned the answer, 'Little or nothing is known of this extraordinary man,' – a reply which probably did not go far enough to satisfy the examiner. Scarcely more satisfying, however, must be the response of the biographer who is called on to gratify natural curiosity regarding the author of Tom Cringle's Log– scarcely more satisfying, though with apparently so much less of excuse. For it is only a little over sixty years since the death of Michael Scott. Neither was his a case of posthumous reputation, or of rehabilitation after long neglect, which might have accounted for the obscuring of biographical detail – his work, though it has lost nothing of popularity, or certainly of readableness in the interim, having been received with acclamation on its first appearance. And yet, after diligent and eager enquiry, the present writer finds himself forced to acknowledge that all but a meagre outline of the facts of Scott's life is lost. This is the more remarkable in that he was obviously no bookworm or literary recluse, and that all who know his writings will feel instinctively that one so characterised by humour and the love of good company – to say nothing of practical joking – should have strewn anecdote thick behind him wherever he went. But if this was so, his traces have been most effectually expunged. The sort of find which now rewards, or mocks, his would-be biographer is, for example, such a tradition as that which records that he was fond of whisky punch – a solitary survival in the mind of one who remembers him in Glasgow, but a trait which, considering the times and the society in which Scott lived, can scarcely be held as individual. This, however, is not the worst. The writer has reason to believe that the glorious sea masterpiece with which Scott's name is chiefly associated was written, or at least partly written, in a house now belonging to himself – namely, the secluded cottage of Birseslees, situated on the banks of Ale, in Roxburghshire. Such, at least, is the tradition which he received from his father, one constitutionally averse to random statement, who had himself occupied the cottage within ten years of Scott's decease, and who, as an enthusiastic yachtsman, familiar with the West Indies, had special reasons for being interested in his writings. Such testimony – as Mr Mowbray Morris, Scott's biographer, remarks – is at least as good as that on which rest most of the statements regarding his life, and no apology is made for adducing it here. Yet, in despite of this testimony, a careful search, recently conducted among the oldest inhabitants of the neighbourhood, has failed to bring to light any but the vaguest and most uncertain references to the author of the Log. Under these conditions, what is left for a biographer to do? He has no choice but to content himself with a recapitulation of the few facts already current. One person, indeed, there is in whose power it almost certainly lies, by enlightening our ignorance, to gratify our by no means unkindly curiosity; but it is generally understood that, for reasons which we have no right to challenge, and which at least in no wise concern the fair fame of the author, that person's lips are sealed. It therefore now only remains to consider whether the darkness which surrounds Scott's life is the result of intention or of accident, and in support of the former conclusion it may be stated that, among men-of-letters of the time, taking their cue from the author of Waverley, and the practice of Maga, there existed an undoubted taste for mystification; whilst that the younger Scott shared in it is proved by the facts that his true name was never known to his publisher otherwise than by hearsay, and that in his own family circle and that of his immediate acquaintances the identity of Tom Cringle was unknown. One suggestion is that these measures were taken from a prudential point of view, in the interest of his business as a merchant, which might possibly have suffered had it been known to receive but divided attention. But as he avoided publicity in authorship, he may also have chosen to do so in other things. Otherwise, if internal evidence counts for anything, we should certainly suppose him to have been the least self-conscious of men, and one of the last in the world to trouble his head – unless he did it as a joke – as to what might be known, or not known, about himself.

Under existing circumstances, to write the life of Scott is to reproduce the narrative of Mr Mowbray Morris. Born at Cowlairs, near Glasgow, on the 30th October 1789, he was his father's fifth and youngest son. To that father, Allan Scott by name, the estate of Cowlairs had come from an elder brother, Robert, described as a Glasgow merchant of good family, who had purchased it in 1778, – at which time the house stood in the country, though its site has long since been swallowed up by the encroachments of the town. Young Scott was sent first to the Grammar School, as the High School of Glasgow was then called, and afterwards to the University, where he matriculated when just twelve years of age. Aird states that he was at school with John Wilson. At the University he remained four years, during the latter part of which he had as his inseparable companion the future author of Cyril Thornton, a fellow-student of tastes akin to his own, who has furnished in that novel a picture of the college life of the time. At the University Scott does not appear to have gained distinction. Perhaps, like many another author in embryo, he preferred miscellaneous reading to the college course; at any rate, the few literary allusions scattered over the pages of his books are generally apt and appreciative. However his taste seems to have been for active life, spiced if possible by adventure, and accordingly, in 1806, we find him leaving Scotland for the West Indies.

At this point Mr Morris, our authority, makes a digression in order to describe the magnitude and antiquity of the Clyde shipping-trade, and the effect exercised upon it by the revolt of our American colonies, which, by diverting it from Virginia to the West Indies, had changed its staple from tobacco to sugar. It happened that a family friend of the Scotts, Bogle by name – a Glasgow merchant and the descendant of Glasgow merchants – had at that time a nephew resident in Jamaica, where he was occupied as an estate-agent, and on his own account as a trader. To the care of this gentleman young Scott is now supposed to have been consigned, that he might be taught an estate-agent's duties. The agent's name was George William Hamilton, and one feels sure that no admirer of the Log will hear with indifference that in him Scott found the original of the most individual of his many droll planter portraits – the portrait of Aaron Bang.

After profiting for three or four years by the instructions of Hamilton, who combined with his humorous propensities a very decided talent for business, in the year 1810 Scott entered a mercantile house at Kingston, in the employment of which he continued for seven years more. 'These years,' says Mr Morris, 'were the making of the Log. His business, coupled with Hamilton's friendship, not only brought him into contact with every phase of society in Jamaica, but sent him on frequent voyages among the islands and to the Spanish Main; and certainly few travellers can have carried a more curious pair of eyes with them than Michael Scott, or entered more heartily into the spirit of the passing hour.' In 1817 he returned to Scotland, and in the year following married Margaret, daughter of the Mr Bogle previously referred to, and consequently first cousin to Hamilton. He was soon back in Jamaica, however, and it was presumably at this time that he occupied the house – situated high up among the Blue Mountains, in midst of some of the finest scenery in the world – which is still shown to visitors as his. He remained in Jamaica till 1822, when he finally returned to his native land to start business on his own account. This he seems to have combined with a share in other mercantile concerns, being at the time of his death a partner in a commission-house in Glasgow, as well as in a Scottish commercial house in Maracaybo, on the Spanish Main.

It was in 1829 that he first appeared as an author, in which year – again to quote Mr Morris – 'the Log began to make its appearance in Blackwood's Magazine as a disconnected series of sketches, published intermittently as the author supplied them, or as the editor found it convenient to print them. The first five, for instance, appeared in September and November, 1829, and in June, July and October, 1830, under the titles of "A Scene off Bermuda," "The Cruise of H.M.S. Torch," "Heat and Thirst – a Scene in Jamaica," "Davy Jones and the Yankee Privateer," and the "Quenching of the Torch"; and these five papers now constitute the third chapter.' But shrewd Mr Blackwood, who greatly admired the sketches, persuaded the author to give them some sort of connecting link, 'which, without binding him to the strict rules of narrative composition, would add a strain of personal and continuous interest in the movement of the story. The young midshipman accordingly began to cut a more conspicuous figure; and in July, 1832, the title of "Tom Cringle's Log" was prefixed to what is now the eighth, but was then called the eleventh chapter. Henceforward the Log proceeded regularly each month, with but one intermission, to its conclusion in August, 1833'; and a few months later, after some final touches, it made its appearance as a book. Its success was immediate. It was hailed with applause in particular by Coleridge, Christopher North, and Albany Fonblanque – the first-named of whom pronounced it 'most excellent.' Lockhart in the Quarterly Review, in an article on 'Monk' Lewis's West Indian travels, also speaks of it as the most brilliant series of magazine papers of the time; whilst the Scottish Literary Gazette for November 1833 concludes a glowing notice by adjuring the writer, whatever he may undertake next, to remember that he is the author of Tom Cringle's Log.