Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Read online

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  Inconsistencies in language and dialect found in the original book havebeen retained. Minor punctuation errors have been changed withoutnotice. Printer errors have been changed and are listed at the end.

  RINGAN GILHAIZE

  Their constancy in torture and in death-- These on Tradition's tongue still live, these shall On History's honest page be pictured bright To latest times.

  GRAHAME'S SABBATH.

  Ringan Gilhaize

  OR

  _THE COVENANTERS_

  BY

  JOHN GALT

  AUTHOR OF

  "_Annals of the Parish_," "_Sir Andrew Wylie_," "_The Entail_," _Etc._

  EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY

  Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS, Bart.

  London GREENING & CO., LTD. 20 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road 1899

  INTRODUCTION

  A NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE

  There have, of course, been many men of genius who have united withgreat laxity and waywardness in their lives a high and perfect respectfor their art; but instances of the directly contrary practice are muchrarer, and among these there is probably none more prominent than thatof the author of _Ringan Gilhaize_. Gifted by nature with a facultywhich was at once brilliant, powerful and genial, he led an industriouslife, the upright and generally exemplary character of which has neverfor a moment been called in question. But, in the sphere of his art, itis as undeniable as unaccountable that he cared little or nothing to dohis best. The haps or whims of the moment seem, indeed, to have governedhis production with an influence as of stars malign or fortunate.Furthermore, we know that the profession of authorship--that mostdistinguished of all professions, as, speaking in sober sadness withoutarrogance, we cannot but be bold to call it--that profession from whichhe was himself so well equipt to derive honour--was held by him in lowesteem. So that, speaking of the time of his residence in Upper Canada,he thinks no shame to observe that he did _then_ consider himselfqualified to do something more useful than "stringing blethers[1] intorhyme," or "writing 'clishmaclavers' in a closet." And again says he,"to tell the truth, I have sometimes felt a little shamefaced inthinking myself so much an author, in consequence of the estimation inwhich I view the profession of book-making in general. A mere literaryman--an author by profession--stands low in my opinion." Such remarks asthese from a man of commanding literary talent are the reverse ofpleasant reading. But let us deal with the speaker, as we wouldourselves be dealt by--mercifully, and regard these petulant utterancesas a mere expression of bitterness or perversity in one much tried andsorely disappointed. Even so, the fact remains that the sum of Galt'simmense and varied production exhibits inequalities of execution forwhich only carelessness or contempt in the worker for his task canadequately account. We shall presently have occasion to speak of him inhis relation to the great contemporary writer to whose life and work hisown work and life present so many interesting points of similarity anddiversity; but we may here note that, in the glaringly disparatecharacter of his output, the author of _The Provost_ is in absolutecontrast to the author of _The Antiquary_. For, if Scott's work viewedas a whole be rarely of the very finest literary quality, its evennesswithin its own limits is on the other hand very striking indeed. For, ofhis twenty-seven novels, there are perhaps but three which fallperceptibly below the general level of excellence; whilst probably anyone of at least as many as six or eight might by a quorum of competentjudges be selected as the best of all. And hence, where in the case ofother authors we are called on to read this masterpiece or thosespecimens, and, having done so, are held to have acquitted ourselves,in the case of Scott we cannot feel that we have done our duty till wehave read through the Waverley Novels. How entirely different is it withGalt--where we find _The Omen_ occupying one shelf with _The Radical_,_The Annals of the Parish_ catalogued with _Lawrie Todd_, and _TheSpaewife_ side by side with _The Covenanters_! And obviously it is inthis inequality in its author's work--in the magnitude, that is, of therubbish-heap in which he chose to secrete his jewels--that theexplanation of the neglect, if not rather oblivion, into which the worklast-named has fallen can alone be sought and found. For, once in thethreescore years of his busy life, Galt did his best, consistently andon a large scale, with the pen; and that once was in the novel of_Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters_. What is more--however lamentablyhe may appear in general to lack the faculty of self-criticism--he knewwhen he had done his best, and among all his books this one remained hisfavourite. But a man has to pay for artistic as he has for moraldelinquencies, and it would seem that the penalty of many a carelesstome has been exacted in the obscuration of one of the finest and truestof historical romances in our language.[2] A word or two as to thegenesis and character of the book which we have ventured thus todescribe may not be out of place as preface to our endeavour to obtainfor it a second hearing.

  It was in the year 1822 or 1823 that Galt, aged then about forty-three,and having already seen much of life in various countries andcapacities, settled at Esk Grove, Musselburgh, to apply himself towriting historical fiction. He was for the moment elated--carried away,perhaps, for his temper was enthusiastic even to a fault--by the recentand deserved success of his novels of Scottish manners, _Sir AndrewWylie_ and _The Entail_; and the soaring idea appears to have enteredhis head of deliberately attempting to rival Scott in the very fieldwhich "the Wizard" had made peculiarly his own. From the point of viewof prudence, though not from that of art or of sport, this enterprisewas a mistake. For an author, serving as he does the public, shows nomore than common sense if he endeavour to study, in the proper degree,the idiosyncrasies of that employer on whose favour his reputation, nay,perhaps the payment of his butcher's bill, depends. And it has long beenobserved that when the public has once made up its mind that one man issupreme in his own line, it has generally little attention to spare forthose who seek to have it reconsider its decision. (This, by the way,was amply illustrated in the sequel of the very case now underdiscussion.) But the names of Galt and Prudence do not naturally gotogether: indeed, the two were never well or for any length of timeacquainted. At Esk Grove, either in earnest, or, as seems more likely,in banter of the architectural incongruities of Abbotsford, Galtannounced his intention of building a "veritable fortress," exactly inthe fashion of the oldest times of rude warfare. _En attendant_, heworked hard with his pen, the first fruits of his industry appearing inthe novel which is here reprinted after some six-and-seventy years.

  What of the merits of this first attempt in a line that was new to him?In the first place, he had at least been guided in his choice of subjectby an unerring historical instinct. For, surpassingly rich as isScottish history in the elements both of picturesque and romanticincident and of wild and fascinating character, it is none the less afact that there is but one period during which that history rises to thedignity of a really wide and permanent interest. And that period is ofcourse the century, or century and a half, of the national struggle forreligious liberty. It is not necessary to remind the reader that uponthat struggle, and on those who maintained it, much has been written aswell in the terms of undiscriminating eulogy as in those ofuncomprehending condemnation. Nor is it more to the purpose to add thatthe truth lies neither entirely on one side nor the other. For--as inthe earlier struggle for political independence, and, indeed, more orless in all other great national movements--the motives of most of thosewho took part were mixed, and varied with the individual. Thus it isundeniable that in the breast of many a refor
ming Scottish laird of thesixteenth century, mistrust of Rome was a subordinate feeling to thecovetousness excited by the sight of extensive and well-cultivatedChurch lands; whilst, again, there are, on the other hand, probably fewpersons now in existence who would be prepared to justify theintolerance embodied even by the martyr Guthrie in his celebratedRemonstrance--to say nothing of that which made the mere hearing of themass, under certain circumstances, a capital offence. These things are,however, more or less accidental, and supply no criterion by which thetrue character of the reforming movement may be tested; for during theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the very nature of tolerance, ifunderstood by one here and there, was beyond the comprehension of themasses of the people. And yet we believe that, notwithstanding theintolerant and implacable spirit too often manifested by theCovenanters, no candid reader will read this book to the end withoutacknowledging (what is, indeed, the truth) that the soul of theCovenanting movement was a great and noble one. And that soul we herefind personified in the younger Gilhaize--a type, if there be one inliterature, of the Covenanter of the best kind.

  For, whatever may have been the temper of his associates in theaggregate, the hero of the book holds the scales between the rivalparties with admirable evenness--and this notwithstanding the strongbias of his temper and upbringing. Indeed, until the time when he hasbecome, not metaphorically, but literally maddened by the wrongs andoutrages to which he has been subjected, the book, in so far as itconstitutes an expression of his personal sentiments, is a perfecthomily on fairness. And how much such fairness has to do with thewinning and retaining of sympathy, perhaps only a modern reader isqualified to say. Gifted with the saving graces of humour and offellow-feeling, the supposed annalist of our chronicle is no lessprepared to make allowance for the faults of the other side than toacknowledge the shortcomings of his own. In fact he is the pattern of aspirit at once upright, humble, and self-respecting, whose rulingpassion is an earnest piety, and who asks no more of those set over himthan freedom to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.And for this little boon, so harshly and unjustly withheld, we see himcalled upon to sacrifice home, kindred and estate, to know his wife anddaughters given over to death and worse than death, and finally tosurrender his liberty and his last remaining child. Unless pity andterror in a master's hand have lost their power, surely this spectacleis a moving one! Nor must we forget that, even in the culminating sceneof the tragedy--where Ringan makes his bold and inspired oration at themeeting of the Cameronian leaders with Renwick in a dell nearLasswade--the hero, for all his wrongs, remains unembittered, andretains unimpaired the gentleness and the manliness which are hischaracteristics. That there were such men as this among the Covenanters,or that they constituted the salt which gave its savour to the movement,we are forbidden to doubt. But, saving in the pages which follow, weknow not where to seek for the ideal presentment of one such. This iswhat we mean by saying, as we have said above, that Galt has in thisromance laid bare the soul of the Covenanting movement. And this, we mayadd, is what Scott in _Old Mortality_ most signally failed to do. For inthat novel--in place of Galt's subtle and penetrating analysis of themotives which animated the Covenanters nobly to dare and nobly toendure--we find the author content himself with using thecharacteristics and the disturbances of the time for the mere purpose ofproviding incident and adventure, and a strong local colour for hispuppets--in a word, for the most ordinary and conventional purposes ofthe romantic novelist. Nor is this the only instance of suchpsychological obtuseness in his work. That, in spite of this initial anddamning defect, he does succeed in producing a fine novel, is but onemore proof of the amazing fecundity of his genius. None the less doesthe fact remain that it is a novel, so to speak, without a soul--that,so far from being of the essence of the Covenant, the Burleys,Mucklewraths, Mauses and Macbrairs are but so many of its accidents, andthat thus the main issues of the historical drama are not involved inthe romance. In other words, it is as though the tragedy of _Hamlet_had been performed with great skill and _eclat_, only without theappearance of the Prince of Denmark upon the stage. And thus, if thehistorical novel is to play a part of any dignity in our literature, wemay safely predict that it is upon the stock here supplied by Galt,rather than upon that supplied by Scott in _Old Mortality_, that it willhave to be grafted.

  Having now assigned to our author the credit due to him for his choiceand general treatment of a fine subject, it remains to touch brieflyupon the technical skill which he has brought to bear upon the handlingof its details. By resorting, then, to an ingenious and yet perfectlynatural and legitimate device, he has contrived to extend his "householdmemorial" (for it is thus that he describes the story) so as to make itembrace the entire period of the religious struggle--from its inceptionunder the regency of Marie of Lorraine to its close, or practical close,under the rule of the enlightened and tolerant William of Orange,--aperiod in all of full one hundred and thirty years. For the narrative,opening with the martyrdom of Walter Mill at St Andrews in 1558, iscontinued to the death of Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689. And bythis means the varying phases of the struggle are traced almost step bystep, through the preachings of John Knox and the early image-breakingoutrages, to the comparative lull of the reign of James the First ofEngland, and thence again from the renewed exasperating of opposition bythe shifty and infatuated Martyr King to the climax of the "KillingTime" under the younger of his sons. Few incidents of really primary orrepresentative importance are omitted, and the skill shown by the Authorin stringing the pearls of history upon the thread of his narrative isnot the least of the merits he displays. But, as should be in a novel,the historical never overweights the human or fictitious interest, butis always properly subordinated to it.

  We have spoken elsewhere[3] of Galt the novelist as being "in advance ofhis time"--a facile phrase which it is expedient to use with due reserveand after due consideration. But the fact that the author with whosework we are instinctively impelled to compare the novel of _RinganGilhaize_ is the great chief of the French "Naturalistic" School wouldappear, at least so far, to support that characterisation. It is, ofcourse, undeniable that, at the outset, there confront us severalstriking points of contrast or divergence between the two authors. Forexample, of that _triste amour du laid_, which, with its concomitants,was for so long, and perhaps is even yet, regarded by the general publicas Zola's one prominent characteristic--of this, Galt has absolutelynothing, his preoccupation being uniformly with beauty in one form oranother, whether of matter or of spirit. With him, a gloom which, did wenot fear to be less than just to Galt we might denominate Byronic, fillsperhaps the place of Zola's pessimism. Next, of that misbegotten passionfor the painter's brush which has vitiated so much of modern Frenchwriting, and of which Zola in inferior works has even more than his dueshare, the novel of _Ringan Gilhaize_ shows equally no trace. On thecontrary, its brief descriptive passages, of which it is noticeable howmany are nocturnal or crepuscular, or paint effects of mist orrain-cloud--these might serve as models, at once in their breadth ofexecution, their aptness and their pregnancy, or quality ofmoral suggestiveness, of what descriptions in literatureshould be. How different from those laboured outlines, laboriouslyfilled in, of such a piece of writing as _La Curee_!

  So much, then, for the divergence of the two authors; and now as totheir relationship. It is, perhaps, in their power of putting theirsense of a multitude before the reader, of exhibiting the passions bywhich that multitude is animated, and of tracing the phases andfluctuations of that passion, that the Frenchman or Italian and the Scotcome first and most strikingly together. Witness in this book the sceneof the advance of the congregations to the trial of the Ministers, orthat of the return of the Reformer, Knox, to Scotland. This of itself,however, is not much; nor should we have felt justified in drawingspecial attention to it, but for the fact that it seems to us to be anoutward and visible sign of what is a vital, perhaps _the_ vitalcharacteristic of either writer--or, at least, that of Galt in thisbook, an
d of Zola in his masterwork. It is associated, then, as we readit, with a desire to rise in art above the limitation of the merelyindividual, and the springs of this desire we take to lie in that nobleand abounding pity which is the dominant passion of either author, or ofeither book. In either case it is an "objective" or artistic pity,called into being by the spectacle of human suffering as specific as itis intolerable to contemplate. Only that with Galt it is felt for aparticular historical group of men, with Zola for a particular sectionof his contemporaries. And from this characteristic there naturallyresults a gain of the quality of artistic grandeur in the books. For itis less the fortunes of the individual colliers than the Rights ofLabour and their chances of recognition which form the true theme of_Germinal_; whilst in _Ringan Gilhaize_ we are called to gaze uponnothing less than the grandiose spectacle of a nation in death-gripswith a race of mansworn sovereigns. Hence, in either case, theindividual characters, measured by the greatness of the issues at stake,sink into comparative insignificance. But this very insignificanceserves to illustrate a fundamental truth. For, to quote the words of agreat modern thinker, "This is the law which governs humanity: animmense prodigality in regard to the mere individual, a contemptuousheaping together of the unit of human life." He continues, "I canpicture to myself the artificer letting great quantities of his materialgo to waste--undisturbed, indeed, although three parts of it falluseless to the ground. For it is the fate of the vast majority of thehuman race to serve as a mere floor-cloth on which Destiny may celebrateher revel, or, rather, to contribute towards the making up of one ofthose numerous persons who were known to the classical drama as theChorus."[4] Impressively to exhibit this truth in art is of itself toaccomplish much; but in the infinite pathos of the individual lot thereis a converse side to every great drama too, and to this neither of ourwriters is insensible. Hence it is that, against the shadowy curtain orbackground formed by the crowded and suffering masses of humanity, arerelieved and detached such tragic silhouettes as those of Ringan and ofLa Maheude. In the nature of the long-drawn unrelenting ordeal to whicheach of these is subjected they are identical; for both of them are richonly in human affection, and of this both live to see themselvesentirely denuded. Gilhaize, who is raised above the struggle for meredaily bread, is animated by a spiritual and intellectual passion whichwould have been altogether beyond the comprehension of the miner's wifeof Montsou; but that he is on that account the nobler or moreinteresting figure of the two, we do not take upon us to say. Neither,of course, must we be understood to insist unduly on the few points ofresemblance in two books which, after all, are in so many respectsradically unlike.

  There is a lighter side to Galt's book, too, and this is seenprincipally, ere the stress of the action has become intense, in theadventures of the astute Michael Gilhaize. At this point in hisnarrative it is probably with Stevenson that Galt suggests comparison,nor is it any disparagement to the delightful author of _Kidnapped_ and_Catriona_ to say that the best of his work is to the best of Galt's asa clever boy's to that of a clever man. For whilst Galt presentsincident with all, or nearly all, the charm of Stevenson, he is master,besides, of an adult psychology to which the other, in his short life,never attained.

  GEORGE DOUGLAS.

  SPRINGWOOD PARK, _August_ 1899.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [Footnote 1: Scots expletives, signifying different varieties ofnonsense.]

  [Footnote 2: Dismissed in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, _subvoce_ Galt, as one of "three forgotten novels."]

  [Footnote 3: In "The _Blackwood_ Group": Famous Scots' Series; Essay onGalt.]

  [Footnote 4: Ernest Renan in _L'Avenir de la Science_.]

  RINGAN GILHAIZE