John Galt

“ For supposing that the public, before reading The Entail, Annals of the Parish, or The Ayrshire Legatees, had been so unfortunate as to attempt the reading of the Autobiography, no one could be surprised that it made up its mind to read no more of him. A more tedious, flat, and dull book was never written by a man of genius: it is never interesting, never amusing, and always exasperating to any one who knows what he could do, and has done. To wade through it is very nearly impossible, and there is nothing to be gained by the achievement. ”

“ Never did Nature show herself better pleased on any festival than on Walter’s wedding-day. The sun shone out as if his very rays were as much made up of gladness as of light. The dew-drops twinkled as if instinct with pleasure. The birds lilted—the waters and the windows sparkled; cocks crowed as if they were themselves bridegrooms, and the sounds of laughing girls, and cackling hens, made the riant banks of the Clyde joyful for many a mile. ”

“ Pringle are inimitably quaint and funny. It would seem that when Galt looked at life, at men and manners, and things, through imaginary eyes he could see everything there was to be seen, and see it in a light intensely simple and vivid and real: that when he looked at anything through his own eyes he saw nothing at all. The doctor and Mrs. Pringle are indispensable to all readers who love dear oddities, and they are Galt’s very own: you shall not find them anywhere else. He borrowed them nowhere, but made them himself in a jocund humour of affectionate creation. ”

“ Some years after he had settled in Glasgow, his savings and gathering enabled him to purchase the farm of Grippy, a part of the patrimony of his family.
The feelings of the mariner returning home, when he again beholds the rising hills of his native land, and the joys and fears of the father’s bosom, when, after a long absence, he approaches the abode of his children, are tame and calm, compared to the deep and greedy [12] satisfaction with which the persevering pedlar received the earth and stone that gave him infeftment of that cold and sterile portion of his forefathers’ estate. ”

“ Walky and Robina accordingly took possession in due form of her father’s mansion. Their succession was unquestioned, and they mourned in all the most fashionable pomp of woe for the loss they had sustained, receiving the congratulatory condolence of their friends with the most befitting decorum. To do the lady, however, justice, the tears which she shed were immediate from the heart; for, with all his hereditary propensity to gather and hold, her father had many respectable domestic virtues, and was accounted by the world a fair and honourable man. ”

“ It was not because the waves rolled in more tremendous volumes than any of the party had ever before seen, and burst against the iron precipices of Noss-head with the roar and the rage of the falls of Niagara—the whole [375] expanse of the ocean was enveloped with spindrift, and, as it occasionally opened, a vessel was seen. At first it was thought she was steering for the bay of Wick, but it soon appeared that she drifted at random towards Sinclair’s Bay, and could, by nothing less than some miraculous change of the wind, reach the anchorage opposite to Kiess Castle. ”

“ But there is no story in the Annals; and, though it is [viii] a long gallery of perfect portraits, it has no characters that can even be compared with Watty and the Leddy o’ Grippy.
Where the Annals peculiarly excel is in the rare quality of charm: it has no hero, and the central figure is enriched with foibles that do not lean to heroism’s side: but they are quaintly attractive, and no one but Galt has given to literature any one like him. Of pathos Galt is shy in the Annals; nowhere is he at all disposed to ‘wallow’ in it: but he draws reverently near, and moves away as reverently. ”

“ Walkinshaw! ye hae received a singular manifestation of the goodness of God. Your son, we’re to hope, is removed into a better world. He’s exposed no more to the temptations of this life—a’ care wi’ him is past—a’ sorrow is taken from him. It’s no misfortune to die, but a great risk to be born; and nae Christian should sorrow, like unto those who are without hope, when Death, frae ahint the black yett, puts forth his ancient hand, and pulls in a brother or a sister by the skirts of the garment of flesh. ”

“ The horse, at the same moment, started forward into that pleasant speed at which the pilgrims of yore were wont to pass from London to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury (which, for brevity, is in vulgar parlance called, in consequence, a canter) ; and Claud dragged the terrier at his whip-string end, like an angler who has hooked a salmon that he cannot raise out of the water, until he met with Johnny Drizen, the Ayr carrier, coming on his weekly journey to Glasgow. ”

“ Walkinshaw, that the two hands make all the difference between a man and a parrot?’
‘No, no, sir,’ replied Walter, ‘I dinna think that,—for ye ken the beast has feathers.’
‘And why have not men feathers?’
‘That’s no a right question, sir, to put to the like o’ me, a weak human creature;—ye should ask their Maker,’ said Walter gravely.
The advocate was again repulsed; Pitwinnoch sat doubting the intelligence of his ears, and George shivering from head to foot: a buzz of satisfaction pervaded the whole Court. ”

“ We were not then quite so well versed in the secrets of human nature as experience has since so mournfully taught us, and the words of Claud at the time sounded strangely and harshly in our ear, especially when he inquired, with a sharp, and as it were a greedy voice, whether it was practicable to get Walter to conjoin with him in a deed that would unite his inheritance of Plealands to the Grippy, and thereby make a property as broad and good as the ancestral estate of Kittlestonheugh? ”

“ Charles,—‘I’ll leave Mary to-night, and come, after the burial to-morrow, with James, and stay a few days.’
‘Ye’ll stay a’ your days,’ exclaimed Walter; ‘and as ye’re a leddy o’ mair genteelity than my mother, ye shall hae the full rule and power o’ the house, and mak jam and jelly;—a’ the cast o’ her grace and skill gangs nae farther than butter and cheese.’
His mother was confounded, and unable for some time to utter a word. At last, putting her hands firmly into her sides, she said,—
‘My word, but thou’s no blate. But it’s no worth my while to gang intil a passion for a born idiot. ”

“ Walkinshaw!’ exclaimed the [18] carrier, as he drew his horse aside—‘in the name of the Lord, whare are ye gaun, and what’s that ye’re hauling ahint you?’
‘For the love of Heaven, Johnny,’ replied the distressed cloth-merchant, pale with apprehension, and perspiring at every pore,—‘for the love of Heaven, stop this desperate beast!’
The tone of terror and accent of anguish in which this invocation was uttered, had such an effect on the humanity and feelings of the Ayr carrier, that he ran towards Claud with the ardour of a philanthropist, and seized the horse by the bridle rings. ”

“ Leddy Grippy was one of those worthy gentlewomen who, without the slightest interest or feeling in any object or purpose with which they happen to be engaged, conceive themselves bound to perform all the customary indications of the profoundest sympathy and the deepest sensibility. Accordingly, no sooner did she receive the message of her son’s melancholy condition, than she proceeded forthwith to prepare herself for going immediately to Glasgow. ”

“ But why need we advocate any revision of the sentence pronounced upon the limbs of the law? for, grasping, as they do, the whole concerns and interests of the rest of the community, we think they are sufficiently armed with claws and talons to defend themselves. All, in fact, that we meant by this apologetic insinuation, was to prepare the reader for the introduction of Mr. Keelevin, on whom the corrosive sublimate of a long and thorough professional insight of all kinds of equivocation and chicanery had in no degree deteriorated from the purity of his own unsuspicious and benevolent nature. ”

“ Walkinshaw hung his head, still more and more confused. There was too much truth in the remark not to be felt as a just reproach; and, moreover, he thought it somewhat hard, as his folly had been on her account, that she should so taunt him. But Ellen, perceiving she had carried the joke a little too far, threw off her disguise, and, with one of her most captivating looks and smiles, said,—‘Now that I have tamed you into rational sobriety, let’s hear what you have got to say. Men should never be spoken to when they are huzzaing. ”

“ But in an Introduction there can be no occasion to detain the reader from making acquaintance on his own account with the Leddy and Watty, Claud, and the Milrookits. He will not, with the book in his hand, need to be told which scenes are inimitable. There are many which he will never be content to read but once: though I venture to think that he will not arrive at Lord Jeffrey’s conclusion that the drowning of George Walkinshaw is the most powerful single sketch in the work. ”

“ I’m sure Beenie’s fortune will be a better bargain than a landless lad like you can hope for at ony other hand.’
‘True, but I’ll never marry for money.’
‘And what will ye marry for, then?’ exclaimed the Leddy. ‘Tak my word o’ experience for’t, my man,—a warm downseat’s o’ far mair consequence in matrimony than the silly low o’ love; and think what a bonny business your father and mother made o’ their gentle-shepherding. ”

“ No calm of the ocean is there without a swell, and no swell without horror. The sea-birds, that love to build on the wildest cliffs and precipices of that coast of ruins, shun Noss-head, for the ocean laves against it in everlasting cataracts, and the tides, whether in ebb or flow, hurl past in devouring whirlpools. ”

“ I feel that Isabella and I are one; Heaven has made us so, and no human interposition can separate minds which God and Nature have so truly united. The very reason that you urge against the continuance of my attachment, is the strongest argument to make me cherish it with greater devotion than ever. ”

“ Like his father, he was firm and persevering; but he wanted something of the old man’s shrewdness; and there was more of avarice in his hopes of wealth than in the sordidness of his father, for they were not elevated by any such ambitious sentiment as that which prompted Claud to strive with such constancy for the recovery of his paternal inheritance. In fact, the young merchant, notwithstanding the superiority of his education and other advantages, we may safely venture to assert, was a more vulgar character than the old pedlar. ”

“ The constant animadversions of his wife, respecting his partiality for Charles and undisguised contempt for Watty, had the effect of first awakening the powers of that dormant engine. They galled the sense of his own injustice, and kept the memory of it so continually before him, that, in the mere wish not to give her cause to vex him for his partiality, he estranged himself from Charles in such a manner, that it was soon obvious and severely felt. ”

“ Charles and the children to her own house, and earnestly entreated her daughter the Leddy, who continued to reside at Grippy, managing the household cares there as usual, to exert her influence with Walter to make some provision for his unfortunate relations. Even George, who, engrossed by his business and his own family, cared almost as little as any man for the concerns of others, felt so ashamed of his father’s conduct, that, on the Sunday after the funeral, he went to pay a visit of condolence to his mother, and to join his exhortations to hers, in the hope that something might be done. ”

“ Congreve in his old age was more eager to shine in Voltaire’s eyes as a social personage than as a famous dramatist; and Galt appears to have cared more to be regarded as a statistician than as an unequalled master of fiction in his own region of it. These perversities in men of genius are not so rare as they are provoking.
The Entail was published in 1822, and, disregarded as it has long been, its merit was not ignored then. Gifford, Mackenzie, Lord Jeffrey, and Sir Walter Scott helped to spread its fame. ”

“ His circumstances were in the most ruinous condition; his little patrimony was entirely consumed, and he acknowledged on his death-bed, while he implored with anguish the pardon of his daughter, that the thought of leaving her in poverty had so overset his reason, that he could think of nothing but of securing her against the horrors of want. A disclosure so painful should have softened the harsh nature of her husband towards her, but it had quite a contrary effect. ”

“ The evening, in consequence, was spent by them with all the happiness which the children of men so often enjoy with the freest confidence, while the snares of adversity are planted around them, and the demons of sorrow and evil are hovering unseen, awaiting the signal from destiny to descend on their blind and unsuspicious victims. ”

“ Milrookit, who was totally uninformed either of the circumstances of her situation, or of what had taken place, scarcely felt more amazement than terror at this speech, and in perceiving that her grandmother was acquainted with the business which had brought her husband and Pitwinnoch to such high words, that their voices were heard before the carriage reached the door.
‘What has happened?’ was the anxious exclamation of her alarm.
‘Only a discovery that has been made among the Faculty o’ Advocates, that a dochter’s no a male-heir. ”

“ Beyond a distant vista of the dark hills of Ross, the sun had retired, but the clouds, in glorious masses of golden fires, rose in a prodigality of splendid forms, in which the military imagination of the young enthusiast had no difficulty in discovering the towers, and domes, and pinnacles of some airy Babylon, with burnished chariots on the walls, and brazen warriors in clusters on the battlements. ”

“ Walkinshaw, to you and yours, is an earnest of what we have all to look for in this world. But we should not be overly cast down by the like o’t, but lippen to eternity; for the sorrows of perishable human nature are erls given to us of joys hereafter. I trust, therefore, and hope, that you will soon recover this sore shock, and in the cares of your young family, find a pleasant pastime for the loss of your worthy father, who, I am blithe to hear, has died in better circumstances than could be expected, considering the trouble he has had wi’ his lawing ”

“ This notion was as oil to his agitation, and hope restored soon brought sleep and soothing dreams to his pillow; but his slumbers were not of long duration, for before sunrise he awoke; and, in order to avoid the garrulous remonstrances of the Leddy, he rose and went to Camrachle for the purpose, as he persuaded himself, to consult his mother; but, for all that we have been able to understand, it was in reality only to communicate his determination. But these sort of self-delusions are very common to youths under age.
The morning air, as he issued from Glasgow, was cold and raw. ”

“ George in affluent circumstances?’ said the advocate, dryly.
‘He is but a young man; the house, however, in which he is a partner is one of the most flourishing in Glasgow,’ was the answer.
‘He has, perhaps, a large family?’
‘O dear no; only one daughter; and his wife,’ said Gabriel, ‘is, I understand, not likely to have any more.’
‘She may, however, have sons, Pitwinnoch,’ rejoined the advocate, wittily—at the same time taking snuff. ‘But you say it is the mother that has chiefly incited Mr. Walkinshaw to this action.’
‘So he told me,’ replied the writer. ”

“ There are few things more ludicrous, and at the same time more interesting, than the state of a young man in love, unless, perhaps, it be that of an old man in the same unfortunate situation. The warmth of the admiration, the blindness of the passion, and the fond sincerity of the enthusiasm, which gives grace and sentiment to the instinct, all awaken sympathy, and even inspire a degree of compassionate regard ”

“ For some time after the funeral of Mrs. Walter Walkinshaw, the affairs of the Grippy family ran in a straight and even current. The estrangement of the old man from his first-born suffered no describable increase, but Charles felt that it was increasing. The old Leddy, in the meanwhile, had a world of cares upon her hands in breaking up the establishment which had been formed for Walter at the house on the Divethill, and in removing him back with the infant and the nurse to Grippy. ”

“ Why a gentleman, so well advanced in life, should have thought of offering himself as a candidate for a lady’s love, against his nephew, we must leave to be accounted for by those who are able to unravel the principles of the Earl of Caithness’s enmity to his son, particularly as we are in possession of no reasonable theory, adequate to explain how he happened to prefer Ellen Frazer to the numerous beauties of the royal city. ”