Chapter D: M. Moir (1)

'DELTA'

'After all, how precarious a thing is literary fame! Things to which I have bent the whole force of my mind, and which are worth remembering--if any things that I have done are at all worth remembering--have attracted but a very doubtful share of applause from critics; whilst things dashed off like _Mansie Wauch_, as mere sportive freaks, and which for years and years I have hesitated to acknowledge, have been out of sight my most popular productions.' Thus wrote Moir, under date of April 12th, 1845--six years before his life's labours closed--to his friend and biographer, Thomas Aird, author of _The Devil's Dream_. And in this instance posterity has taken its cue from contemporary popularity; for it is upon the homely and genial _Mansie Wauch_, and on that alone, that the once considerable literary reputation of 'the amiable Delta' rests to-day.

David Macbeth Moir, born on the 5th January 1798, was the son of Robert Moir and Elizabeth Macbeth, whom Aird describes simply as 'respectable citizens.' His birthplace was Musselburgh, and to Musselburgh he remained faithful through life. Indeed, though lives of men-of-letters--from Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy--afford plenty of instances of local attachment, there can be few instances I should suppose of lives more closely associated with a single place. In Musselburgh Moir's life was spent; Musselburgh he served faithfully, both in his profession and as a public servant; and in the neighbourhood of Musselburgh he placed the scene of his most popular work. Gratifying is it, therefore, to know that Musselburgh has recognised him as her poet--a minor writer certainly, yet exclusively her own.

Having received his schooling in his native town, at the age of thirteen young Moir was bound apprentice to a physician in practice there. His apprenticeship lasted four years, during the latter part of which, as also during the year following, he studied medicine in the Edinburgh University. In 1816 he obtained his surgeon's diploma. In the following year he lost his father, and being then eighteen, became the partner of a Dr Brown of Musselburgh, whose practice kept him so occupied that for more than ten years to come he is said not to have spent a single night out of the town.

Meantime, having a facile pen (too facile it has proved!) he had begun to compose as far back as 1812, about which year he sent two essays to a Haddington publication entitled _The Cheap Magazine_. In 1816 he contributed to the _Scots Magazine_, and, further, commemorated the exploit of Lord Exmouth by publishing anonymously _The Bombardment of Algiers, and Other Poems_. Despite pressure of work, he did not give up literature on entering the medical profession, but in time became a contributor to Constable's and Blackwood's Magazine--to the latter of which, over the signature '[Greek: Delta],' he came regularly to furnish not only _jeux d'esprit_ but essays and serious verse as well, his contributions in all amounting to the large total of nearly four hundred. In this manner he became acquainted with John Wilson, for whose showy poetry he entertained an admiration which was doubtless less uncommon then than it would be now. Other periodicals to which he contributed were _Fraser's Magazine_ and the _Edinburgh Literary Gazette_. Between medicine and literature, his life now went on busily but uneventfully. In the end of 1824 or the commencement of the next year, he published, under his pseudonym, a volume of verse to which he gave the title of the _Legend of Genevieve_, which he dedicated to the veteran author of the _Man of Feeling_. The titular poem is a sentimental story written in the manner of Byron's Tales, the remaining pieces being on miscellaneous subjects. About the same time the first instalments of _Mansie Wauch_ made their appearance in _Blackwood's Magazine_, the completed story, with additions, being published as a book in 1828. Moir was a man of an intensely domestic disposition, and having become affianced in this year, in the following summer he took to himself a wife in the person of Miss Catherine Bell of Leith, whom he espoused in the Church of Carham in Northumberland, celebrating the occasion by a series of Sonnets on the Scenery of the Tweed. By this lady he eventually became the father of eleven children. His literary reputation was now established, and in 1829 Mr Blackwood made him an offer of the editorship of the _Quarterly Journal of Agriculture_, which, however, he declined. In remaining constant to the medical profession, he has been credited with purely philanthropic motives; but, without bating a jot of my respect for the man, the following (his own) explanation of the case seems to me the more reasonable one. 'In early youth,' says he, in a letter to David Vedder, the sailor poet of Orkney, 'I had many aspiring feelings to dedicate my life to literature, and to literature alone; but I thank God--seeing what I have seen in Galt, in Hogg, in Hood, and other friends--that I had resolution to resolve on a profession, and to make poetry my crutch and not my staff. I have, in consequence, lost the name which, probably, with due exertion, I might have acquired; but I have gained many domestic blessings which more than counter-balance it, and I can yet turn to my pen, in my short intervals of occasional relaxation, with as much zest as in my days of romantic adolescence.' This is the utterance of a sensible man who, having his way to make in the world, decides on the expediency of a certain course and adheres to it. Possibly Moir's estimate of his own powers was a juster one than that of many of his friends; at any-rate it is satisfactory to learn that, 'in spite of the common distrust of the literary character,' he succeeded in making his way as a doctor even in that place where proverbially a prophet is apt to lack honour. Mr Blackwood and others of his friends also urged him to leave Musselburgh and to set up in practice in Edinburgh, offering to use their interest in obtaining patients for him. But these offers he likewise declined. His next publication (1831) consisted of _Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine_, and was intended as the first instalment of a complete history of the subject, although increased pressure of professional duties, occasioned first by the events of the next year and then by the retirement of his partner in the year following, prevented his further execution of the design.

The period at which we have now arrived is one of those which have been rendered terribly memorable by a visitation of cholera, and in the commencement of 1832 the town of Musselburgh was attacked with special severity by the epidemic. So great was the terror prevailing throughout the country that many physicians are said to have fled from their posts, but now, as also during a later outbreak, was the time when Moir's character shone out with peculiar lustre. Rising to the height of the emergency, he was to be found night and day at his post, endeavouring both to lessen the sufferings of the sick by his medical skill, and to comfort the dying with the consolations of religion. His humane exertions on behalf of the poor were, in particular, remarkable. This is a period regarding which one would gladly supply further facts, for it is, no doubt, the most interesting in Moir's life, and it is consequently with regret that we find it passed over in a few lines in the accredited biography. When that was written, circumstantial details of his faithful labours might still have been collected, and these would have brought the man nearer to us than anything else could do. But Aird has given us nothing but generalities. During the outbreak, Moir held the post of Secretary to the Board of Health of Musselburgh, and it was as an answer to numberless enquiries addressed to him in this capacity that he now wrote and published a pamphlet, entitled 'Practical Observations on Malignant Cholera,' which, says Aird, flew like wild-fire through the country, and which he shortly supplemented by 'Proofs of the Contagion of Malignant Cholera.'

No doubt by way of recruiting after his labours, he this year attended the Meeting of the British Association, which was held at Oxford, and afterwards visited London, mainly in order to see Galt, with whom he had become friendly some years before, and who was now living in broken health at Brompton. On this occasion he had an interview with Coleridge at Highgate. The sage, who received him in bed, and treated him to 'two hours of divine monologue,' talked at first of his own early life, incidentally reciting part of his early-written Monody on the Death of Chatterton, and so far all went well. But Moir, who had a constitutional dislike of mysticism, and who ought to have known better, had the rashness to put a few questions to the poet, 'relative to his peculiar speculations in philosophy,' and from that moment, needless to say, he found himself involved in the intricacies of a labyrinth.

As that of a medical man in the full swing of a large practice, Moir's life now affords but little material to the biographer. In a letter to Robert Macnish, his dearly-loved friend and brother in medicine and the muses, he has himself described his daily existence. 'Our business,' says he, 'has ramified itself so much in all directions of the compass--save the north, where we are bounded by the sea--that on an average I have sixteen or eighteen miles' daily riding; nor can this be commenced before three or four hours of pedestrian exercise has been hurried through. I seldom get from horseback till five o'clock; and by half-past six I must be out to the evening rounds, which never terminate till after nine. Add to this the medical casualties occurring between sunset and sunrise, and you will see how much can be reasonably set down to the score of my leisure.' Still, such leisure as he had, he perseveringly devoted to literature. When driving upon his rounds, he would read in his carriage; but his chief time for study was after the house was shut up for the night, when all was quiet around him, and when he could, with some degree of comfort, sit down in his library to read and write. 'Even then, however, from the uncertainty of his profession, he was never altogether sure of his own time. Often did he remark that, whether it was the contrariety of human nature, or his own peculiar sensitiveness to interruption at such a time, he was most liable to be broken in upon when he was most deeply engaged in writing.' Under such circumstances we cannot wonder that his literary work lacks finish. The wonder is rather that he did not give up literature altogether; but we read that he loved it too well to do this, and that he never seemed so happy as when his mind was employed upon it. As a doctor of literary men, he exercised a beneficial influence. Shortly before the death of Mr Blackwood, that gentleman lay ill in Ainslie Place; whilst Galt, who was also in bad health, was living in lodgings close by. Relations between the two had been strained, and illness prevented their meeting. But it is pleasing to read that their mutual respect and esteem were now renewed, and that Moir, who was in attendance on both, carried kind messages between them.

A most affectionate parent, Moir had sustained a succession of cruel bereavements by losing three of his children, who died in early childhood, within the space of about eighteen months, in the years 1838 and 1839. To relieve his feelings on these occasions, he wrote a series of elegies, which, after being circulated among his friends, were published, with a few other poems, in 1843, under the title of _Domestic Verses_. It is as an elegiac poet--if as a poet at all--that the author is now remembered, and one of these elegies--called by the self-conferred name of one of the babes, 'Casa Wappy'--has enjoyed great popularity and is still included in anthologies, though in my own opinion a less meritorious composition than the the second of the three poems on the same subject, entitled 'Casa's Dirge':--

'Now winter with its snow departs,
The green leaves clothe the tree;
But summer smiles not on the hearts
That bleed and break for thee:
The young May weaves her flowery crown,
Her boughs in beauty wave;
They only shake their blossoms down
Upon thy silent grave.'

His elegiac muse is sweet and fluent, and breathes the consolations of Christianity. But, like Motherwell, he is apt to be over-lachrymose and to insist upon his grief, which is fatal to pathos. His touch, too, is uncertain. For instance, in one Sonnet we have this fine line,

'The bliss that feeds upon the heart destroys,'

in near juxta-position with the ridiculous figure,

'Joy's icicles melt down before Time's sun.'

Here as elsewhere, too, he freely repeats himself. Aird has named _The Deserted Churchyard_ as Moir's highest imaginative piece. But Aird is no critic, and description was not Moir's forte. He multiplies touches--each perhaps good in its way--multiplies them, indeed, to excess; but to combine and compose them into a whole is beyond him. And the same defect--the mark either of an inferior talent, or of an untutored one--is noticeable in his critical portraits. Of his poetry generally, then, it must be confessed that it belongs to that class which, finding acceptance to-day, is without significance for the morrow. But, in justice, it must be remembered that in its own day it not only pleased the general reader, but also drew warm praises from such judges as Tennyson, Jeffrey, Wordsworth, and Lockhart. Moir's time, as we have seen, was not at his disposal, but besides--or perhaps because of this--he was an impatient composer. He chose--if such things be determined by choice--to write much rather than to write well. As a whole his poetry is inferior in style to that of his less prolific contemporary, Thomas Pringle. And certainly, if poetry is intended to endure, it must be moulded in some less pliant material than that which Moir employed.

Not much now remains to tell. In the year after the publication of his _Domestic Verses_, Moir contracted a serious illness by sitting all night in damp clothes by the bedside of a patient, and in 1846 his general health suffered further from the effects of a carriage accident, which also permanently lamed him. In 1848 he made an excursion, lasting two and a half days, and meditated during seven previous years, to the Lake District with Mrs Moir; and in the following year he visited the Highlands, with Christopher North, who was 'in great force,' Henry Glassford Bell, and one or two others. In spring of 1851, he delivered a course of six lectures at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, his subject being the Poetical Literature of the Past Half Century. On appearing on the platform, he had a very warm reception, and his lectures, proving popular, were soon afterwards published; nor have they quite lost their interest yet. Of course at the present day no one would be likely to turn to them for an estimate of the genius, say, of Byron or of Shelley, or for a summing up of the poetical achievement of Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Keats. It is in the nature of things that truth in criticism, as in evidence, is arrived at by a slow process, and abler pens have dealt with these great writers since Moir's day. But should anyone wish to know the estimation in which they were held at the date in question, he will generally find a good indication of it here. And in so doing, as was inevitable, he will come across some curiosities of criticism--as, for instance, where the lecturer, speaking of Byron and Wilson together, as the two rising poetic lights of the year 1812, adds that 'it is difficult even yet to say which of the two was most distinguished for general scope of mind, for imaginative and intellectual power.' Also, should any student desire a sketch--descriptive rather than critical--of such half-forgotten literary figures as 'Monk' Lewis and his followers, or of the 'artistic artificial school' of Hayley, the 'Swan of Lichfield,' and the Della Cruscans, or seek for appreciative observations on the author of _The Farmer's Boy_, on Kirke White, or on Samuel Rogers, here he will find them. Besides these lectures and the works already mentioned, Moir's literary undertakings include an edition of the works of Mrs Hemans, an Account of the Antiquities of the Parish of Inveresk, written for the Statistical Account of Scotland (1845), and a few occasional monographs.

On the 22nd of June of this year, in dismounting from his horse at the door of a patient's house, Moir sustained further injuries to his already partially disabled leg. Failing to rally from the effects of this accident, and hoping to derive benefit from rest and change, about a week later he set out upon a short excursion. Mrs Moir accompanied him, and they had reached Ayr, and had visited the cottage where Burns first saw the light, when the Doctor became seriously ill. Declining medical assistance, however, he struggled on to Dumfries, where he became so much worse as to be forced to take to his bed. It was soon evident that death was at hand. On hearing of his illness, several of his friends had hastened to his side, and surrounded by these and by members of his family, faithfully attended by his wife, and fortified by a firm religious faith, he passed away on the morning of Sunday, the 6th July. The inhabitants of the town in which he had laboured so indefatigably decreed him a public funeral, paying every mark of respect in their power to his memory, and shortly afterwards his statue, executed by a sculptor named Ritchie, who had been a pupil of Thorwaldsen, was erected in a commanding situation on the banks of the river Esk. Besides his professional labours, he had been a Member of the Council of his native town and of its Kirk Session, had attended the General Assembly as a Representative Elder, and had acted as Secretary to a local Reform Committee appointed on the eve of the passing of the great Bill. In fine, his life had been essentially that of the good citizen--an honourable part for which we have so high a respect that we should be glad to see it oftener adorned with literary distinction.

In person Moir was tall, well-formed and erect, of sanguine complexion and with hair tending to the 'sandy' hue, his keen sense of humour, during friendly intercourse, being particularly manifest in his countenance. In private life, he was amiable and exemplary, and much beloved by many friends, including several distinguished writers--'a man,' says the writer of his obituary in _Blackwood's Magazine_, 'who, we verily believe, never had an enemy, and never harboured an angry or vindictive thought against a human being.' Nor did this proceed from any lack of determination or force of character, of which he had plenty.

* * * * *

Did not one recognise the relation subsisting between humour and pathos, it would be a surprise to find the melancholy Moir--the mourner of a score of dirges--figuring as author of a succession of broadly and farcically comic episodes; for such, in the main, is the _Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith_. The book was conceived in avowed imitation of Galt; and, in general outline, the autobiographical tailor, with his unconscious self-revelation, is obviously suggested by the Provosts and Micah Balwhidders of that writer. For in literature Galt is as much the originator of the 'pawky' Scotsman of the commercial or professional class as was the creator of Dinmont and Headrigg of the Scotsman living on the soil and racy of it. But if Delta borrowed the first idea of the story from his friend, the means by which he develops it owe little or nothing to that source. There, indeed, the sprightly little volume reminds us of a very different class of literature. In their frank appeal to those who are easily amused (happily a numerous body), and in the pleasant clownishness of their fooling, a large proportion of the scenes recall forcibly the ancient folk-tales, 'drolls' and chap-books, or the more modern collections of local stories founded upon the same, and the peculiar style of humour associated with such time-honoured popular favourites as Lothian Tom and George Buchanan, the King's Jester. Incidents, for instance, like that of James Batter, the weaver, concealed in the closet during the visit of the Minister, and of his inopportune fall through the bottomless chair and imprisonment there, or of the big suit of clothes being sent home to the little man, and the little suit to the big man, belong to the primeval stock-in-trade of the rustic humourist; whilst as for the episode of Deacon Paunch and the cat--probably there are few parishes in the country boasting the possession of a phenomenally heavy man where some 'variant' of this story is not current at the present day. The epigram--if I may so call it--of the book is also conceived after the popular model; as, for instance, when the aggrieved collier-woman, taunting Cursecowl on the prominence of one of his features, declares that he has 'run fast when the noses were dealing'; when it is observed, in reference to the various grades of society and their interdependence, that 'we all hang at one another's tails like a rope of ingans'; or when the writer speaks of an 'evendown pour of rain, washing the very cats off the house-tops,' or remarks of hopes not quite likely to be fulfilled that 'many a rottener ship has come to land.' Some of these phrases may perhaps be proverbial, but at any rate into just such verbal moulds flows, or used to flow, the expression of the livelier fancy of the people. The Scotch, too, in which the book is written is singularly rich and racy.

It may possibly be asked whether stories such as those referred to above have much to gain from literary elaboration, brevity in this peculiar form of wit appearing perhaps even more than usually desirable. The answer is that the result has justified the experiment. For one thing, _Mansie Wauch_--which preceded the _Pickwick Papers_ by some years--is one of the earliest classic specimens of broad humour which is entirely free from coarseness; and, secondly, in this instance, most of the farcical episodes--such as the mock duel, the Volunteering scene, the scenes in the watch-house or with the dumb spaewife, and the playhouse scene, where Mansie so artlessly mistakes feigning for reality--are made in a way to serve the purpose of illustrating character. In the case last named--even allowing for the tailor's native simplicity, for the fact that this is his first play, and for the 'three jugs' of which he has partaken in the company of Glen, the farmer--a pretty strong call is made on humorous convention, or on the credulity of the reader. But, after all, in this style of writing, who would 'consider curiously'? No! give the humourist his head is the rule, concede him a trifle of exaggeration, and let him make you laugh if he can. This book was never meant for closets and the midnight oil, but to be read aloud over the fire on winter's eves in the family circle.

Of course strokes of humorous portraiture somewhat subtler than the above are by no means wanting, as is shown for instance, in the same scene, in the fuddled tailor's preoccupation with the clothes worn by the actors--the good coat 'with double gilt buttons and fashionable lapells,' or 'the very well-made pair of buckskins, a thought the worse of the wear, to be sure, but which if they had been cleaned, would have looked almost as good as new.' But throughout the book little Mansie is equally 'particular,' especially in regard to clothes,--he has the loquacity of one occupied in a sedentary manual toil, and the abounding detail in description of minute occurrences which characterises dwellers in small towns. The scene of the stampede from the barn, following his reply to the players, is quite in the best manner of the humourists and caricaturists of that day,--when uncouth persons tumbling one over the other in their haste, coat-tails torn off, bull-dogs fastening teeth in human calves, and wigs flying to the winds, seem to have constituted a never-failing resource for 'bringing down the house.' Pity that, like Mercutio, we are become grave men since then! However by far the best scene of this sort--a classic of its kind--is that which paints the inroad of the gigantic butcher, infuriated at the misfit of his new killing-coat, into the tailor's shop, and the subsequent tussle between him on the one hand and Tommy Bodkin, the three 'prentices, Mansie, and James Batter on the other. Everywhere George Cruikshank, the illustrator of the book, is neck and neck with the author, hitting off the very spirit of his fun, and indeed sometimes adding a point to it; but in his delineations of this scene and of that with the spaewife he surpasses himself.

Of course the book would not be Moir's if it entirely lacked poetic and pathetic relief, which is supplied in the contents of the papers found in the Welshman's coat-pocket; in the episode of Mungo Glen, the apprentice from the Lammermoors, who dies of home-sickness and of a country boy's hatred of the town, and in the story of the _Maid of Damascus_.

Of the character of Mansie--the keystone, so to speak, of the book--it cannot be said that it stands out with the firmness and clearness of Galt's best work in the kind, still less of one of Miss Ferrier's inimitable creations. Yet, if somewhat faintly limned, the little tailor--so eager, so busy, and so thrifty, such a queer mixture of guilelessness, shrewdness, and superstition, 'a douce elder of Maister Wiggie's kirk,' and abounding in Scriptural allusion accordingly, cautious, yet apt to be 'overtaken' as well as overreached, but with his heart exactly in the right place--is a figure who in the long run wins and holds a place in our sympathy. In the course of his professional avocations, Moir may have had occasion to observe that tailors generally are a nervous race of men, and from the commencement of the narrative we are shown that Mansie is full of groundless fears and anxieties--terrified to discharge his musket when on parade as a Volunteer, and frightened out of his wits in the Kirk Session house by night. And yet in the hour of need, when house and home are in danger on the night of the fire, we see him brave as a lion and brimful of resource--saving 'the precious life of a woman of eighty that had been four long years bed-ridden,' and by well-directed efforts with his bucket accomplishing more than the local fire-engine had done. Such a contrast as this--at once effective and true to human nature--or as that where Mansie, finding the escaped French prisoner concealed in his coal-hole, is divided between wrath against the enemy of his country and sympathy for a fellow-creature in distress, put the finishing touches to a genial figure, which in our Scottish national literature has a little niche of its own.

MISS FERRIER

Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, the great mistress of the novel of manners in Scotland, was born in Edinburgh on the 7th September 1782, and was the youngest of her parents' ten children. Her father, James Ferrier, was a younger son of John Ferrier, laird of Kirklands, in Renfrewshire, and her mother--whose maiden name was Helen Coutts--was the daughter of a farmer near Montrose. James Ferrier was by profession a Writer to the Signet, having been admitted a member of the Society in the year 1770. He had been trained to his vocation in the office of a distant relative, who had the management of the Argyll estates, and to this gentleman's business he ultimately succeeded. He was thus on terms of intimacy with the Duke of Argyll, through whose instrumentality he was appointed a Principal Clerk of Session. In this office he had Sir Walter Scott as a colleague, and he was also so fortunate as to enjoy the friendship of Henry Mackenzie, author of the admirable _Man of Feeling_, of Dr Blair, and last, not least, of Burns. Thus, from her earliest years onward, his young daughter must have been accustomed to see and to hear of the literary lights of the Scotland of that day.

After their marriage, Mr and Mrs Ferrier occupied a flat in Lady Stair's Close in the Old Town. Their large family was made up of six sons and four daughters. When Susan was fifteen she lost her mother, and soon afterwards she was taken by her father to visit at Inverary Castle, the seat of his patron the Duke. Here a new world was opened to the plainly brought up Edinburgh girl. Here for the first time she saw fashion and the 'high life,' and here--either on this or some subsequent occasion--she formed several acquaintances which were destined to influence her career. Under John, fifth Duke of Argyll, society at the Castle had at that period a somewhat literary and artistic tone. Among its visitors was the accomplished Lady Charlotte Campbell--afterwards Lady Charlotte Bury--a name which, if unknown to the present generation, was once of some repute in the world of letters. Lady Charlotte was the Duke's younger daughter, and had inherited much of the beauty of her mother, the celebrated Elizabeth Gunning. She was just seven years older than Susan Ferrier, was distinguished by a passion for the _belles-lettres_, and was accustomed to do the honours of Scotland to the literary celebrities of the time. During the year of Miss Ferrier's first visit to the Castle, she published anonymously a first literary venture, which bore the conventional title of 'Poems upon Several Occasions,' by 'A Lady.'

It may readily be guessed that this fascinating and high-born personage--distinguished as she was by the honours and the romance of authorship--produced her due impression on the imagination of the young visitor. Susan's literary instincts must certainly have been quickened by the intimacy--for a friendship which lasted till death sprung up between herself and Lady Charlotte. But, if she was a gainer in one direction from the acquaintance, I am inclined to believe that she was a loser in another. Years after, when she herself became an authoress, her earliest work was disfigured by direct and unsparing portraiture of living persons among her acquaintance. Now no doubt this kind of writing may be productive of extreme mirth to persons qualified to read between the lines, and it must be acknowledged that Miss Ferrier's talent has made the mirth outlast its immediate occasion. Still, judged as art, this kind of thing is neither great nor gracious, and to her credit be it said that the authoress of _Marriage_ lived to see that this was so, and to amend her style accordingly. It may be noted, however, that the works attributed to her friend Lady Charlotte include conspicuous instances of a similar error in taste. Amid the vicissitudes of many years, her ladyship lived to produce a number of works of fiction, of the contents of which such titles as _Flirtation_, _The Journal of the Heart_, _A Marriage in High Life_, may afford some indication. But the single work with which in the present day her name is associated--and if she never acknowledged the authorship, it must be remembered that she resisted all provocations to deny it--is the notorious Diary in which a lady-in-waiting of Caroline of Brunswick has chronicled the follies and indiscretions of that unhappy princess, and the unpleasantnesses of daily life in her Court. Bearing this in mind, one can scarcely regard the brilliant Lady Charlotte as the best of friends for a young woman, her inferior in years and station, though greatly her superior in talent.

Among other visitors met by Susan at Inverary, two may be particularised as having afterwards contributed by their oddities to enliven the pages of her first book. These were the eccentric Mrs Seymour Damer, the amateur sculptor and friend of Horace Walpole, and Lady Ferrers, widow of the peer who was hanged for the murder of his steward. With a Miss Clavering, a grand-daughter of the Duke, who was a child of eight at the time of her first visit to the Castle, she struck up an eager friendship. An animated correspondence was started between them, some of the letters in which have been preserved. These are for the most part undated, but have reference to a work of fiction which the young ladies proposed to undertake in partnership, and it is thus that the germ of _Marriage_ is first brought to light.

'I do not recollect,' says Miss Ferrier, writing in high spirits; 'I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable solitary highland dwelling among tall red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don't you think this would make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us try our hands on it.' And, later on, after submitting a portion of her work, she writes again:--'I am boiling to hear from you, but I've taken a remorse of conscience about Lady Maclaughlan and her friends: if I was ever to be detected, or even suspected, I would have nothing for it but to drown myself. I mean, therefore, to let her alone till I hear from you, as I think we might compound some other kind of character for her that might do as well and not be so dangerous. As to the misses, if ever it was to be published they must be altered or I must fly my native land.'

In this passage, even after allowing for girlish facetiousness of expression, Susan Ferrier appears in the character of an accomplished 'quiz,' sailing dangerously close to the wind. Of course her correspondent is delighted with the specimen of work submitted to her, and will not hear of anything being altered. What school-girl would? She essays to allay her friend's fear of discovery, and offers to take the responsibility of the personalities upon herself. In a subsequent letter, dated December 1810, she describes reading the manuscript to Lady Charlotte during a drive. Her ladyship laughed as she had never been seen to laugh before, and pronounced the fragment 'without the least exception the cleverest thing that ever was written'--a verdict which after more detailed examination she endorsed in writing, declaring it to be '_capital_, with a dash under it.' Not otherwise do the thoughtless and light-hearted egg each other on to mischief.

But Miss Ferrier was by this time eight-and-twenty years of age. Her native strong good sense asserted itself, and for a long time she resolutely declined to publish her work. (I ought ere this to have explained that the intended collaboration with Miss Clavering had fallen through, the sole passage contributed by the younger lady being the brief and not particularly interesting _History of Mrs Douglas_). In course of time, however, the merits of the book became known to persons having more authority to judge them than Lady Charlotte Bury or her niece. Mr Blackwood, the publisher, read the manuscript, and strongly urged the authoress to prepare it for publication; whilst no less a personage than Sir Walter Scott, in the conclusion to his _Tales of My Landlord_--then seemingly in proof--referred flatteringly to a 'very lively work entitled _Marriage_,' and singled out its author for mention among writers of fiction capable of gathering in the rich harvest afforded by Scottish character. At length, in 1818--after undergoing several changes in the interval--the book was given to the world. It was published anonymously, and the authoress, speaking at a later date, professes to have believed that her name 'never would be guessed at, or the work heard of beyond a very limited sphere.' But from such obscurity the gallery of portraits which it contained must alone have sufficed to save it. For, in addition to the two ladies already mentioned--whose oddities appear to have contributed jointly to the inimitable figure of Lady Maclaughlan--the three spinster aunts were drawn from certain Misses Edmonstone, whilst Mrs Fox represented Mary, Lady Clerk, a well-known Edinburgh character of the time. It must not, however, be supposed that the vogue of the book depended upon adventitious circumstances alone; for _Marriage_ soon became popular far beyond the limits of any local set. In London it was attributed to the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and it is even stated to have been very successful in a French translation.

Its success at home can surprise no one, for never before had the idiosyncrasies of Scottish society been so vigorously pourtrayed. As has already been seen, the means adopted for showing them off are ingeniously contrived. At the commencement of the story we are introduced to the beautiful but shallow and artificial Juliana, the Earl of Courtland's only daughter--a young lady who has been trained solely with a view to social success and the formation of a brilliant alliance, the more solid parts of education having in her case been systematically neglected. She is betrothed to the elderly Duke of L----, but at the last moment throws him over and elopes to Scotland. The companion of her flight is Douglas, a handsome young officer in the army, the child of Scotch parents, but brought up in England by a wealthy adoptive father. The honeymoon is scarce over when the young people find themselves, not only partially disabused of their illusions, but in actual pecuniary straits. Juliana's elopement has hopelessly alienated the Earl; whilst Douglas, absent from his regiment without leave, is superseded in the _Gazette_. In these circumstances the only course open to them is to take up their quarters with the bridegroom's father, at his castle of Glenfern in the Highlands. Their proposal to do so is most cordially received, and now the irony of circumstance begins to declare itself. Lady Juliana has repeatedly protested that with the man of her choice she could be happy in a desert. But then her idea of a desert, as she avows when 'tis too late, is a beautiful place full of roses and myrtles, which, though very retired, would not be absolutely out of the world; where one could occasionally see one's friends and give _dejeuners_ and _fetes champetres_. A very different kind of place is Glenfern Castle. After a long journey in a drizzling rain through dreary scenery, their destination is reached, and Juliana makes her _entree_, attended by her footman and lady's-maid, surrounded by her lap-dogs, squirrel, and mackaw, and encumbered by all the paraphernalia of an artificial elegance. Never was there a meeting between more opposed extremes.

'At the entrance of the strangers, a flock of females rushed forward
to meet them. Douglas good-humouredly submitted to be hugged by
three long-chinned spinsters whom he recognised as his aunts, and
warmly saluted five awkward purple girls he guessed to be his
sisters: while Lady Juliana stood the image of despair, and,
scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new
relations.'

The three elderly spinsters are the Laird's sisters--Miss Jacky, who is esteemed the most sensible woman as well as the greatest orator in the parish, Miss Grizzy the platitudinous, and Miss Nicky, who is not wanting in sense either; and these representatives of a bygone social order are the most celebrated characters in the book.

Appalled by the sight of the surroundings amid which her life is to be spent, and distressed by the insolence of a pampered lady's-maid who instantly throws up her place, Juliana presently succumbs to hysterics.

'Douglas now attempted to account for the behaviour of his noble
spouse by ascribing it to the fatigue she had lately undergone,
joined to distress of mind at her father's unrelenting severity
towards her.

'"O the amiable creature!" interrupted the unsuspecting spinsters,
almost stifling her with their caresses as they spoke. "Welcome, a
thousand times welcome, to Glenfern Castle!" said Miss Jacky.
"Nothing shall be wanting, dearest Lady Juliana, to compensate for a
parent's rigour, and make you happy and comfortable. Consider this
as your future home. My sisters and myself will be as mothers to
you: and see these charming young creatures," dragging forward two
tall frightened girls, with sandy hair and great purple arms; "thank
Providence for having blest you with such sisters!"

'"Don't speak too much, Jacky, to our dear niece at present," said
Miss Grizzy; "I think one of Lady Maclaughlan's composing draughts
would be the best thing for her--there can be no doubt about that."

'"Composing draughts at this time of day!" cried Miss Nicky; "I
should think a little good broth a much wiser thing. There are some
excellent family broth making below, and I'll desire Tibby to bring
a few."

'"Will you take a little soup, love?" asked Douglas. His lady
assented; and Miss Nicky vanished, but quickly re-entered, followed
by Tibby, carrying a huge bowl of coarse Scotch broth, swimming with
leeks, greens, and grease. Lady Juliana attempted to taste it, but
her delicate palate revolted at the homely fare; and she gave up
the attempt, in spite of Miss Nicky's earnest entreaties to take a
few more of these excellent family broth.

'"I should think," said Henry, as he vainly attempted to stir it
round, "that a little wine would be more to the purpose than this
stuff."

'The aunts looked at each other; and, withdrawing to a corner, a
whispering consultation took place, in which "Lady Maclaughlan's
opinion, birch, balm, currant, heating, cooling, running risks," &c.
&c. transpired. At length the question was carried; and some
tolerable sherry, and a piece of very substantial _short-bread_,
were produced.

'It was now voted by Miss Jacky, and carried _nem. con._, that her
ladyship ought to take a little repose till the hour of dinner.'

So bad begins, but worse remains behind; for these are but the occurrences of a few hours, whilst the visit is to be of long duration. However enough has been said to indicate the lines along which the story now develops. The feather-pate Juliana is not of those to whom Time brings wisdom, and a further acquaintance with her surroundings only serves to bring to light fresh disgusts. The gaunt apparitions of the first evening grow no less tiresome as she knows them better, no less hopelessly remote from every habit, tradition or association of her life. But her poison is the reader's meat. In the course of the next few pages we are introduced to Miss Grizzy's friend, Lady Maclaughlan, a distinguished amateur of medicine and an object of awed admiration to the sisters. As this lady steps upon the scene--fearfully and wonderfully attired, and bearing in her hand her gold-headed cane--with her deep-toned voice, her mercilessly blunt remarks, and her uncompromising 'humph!'--her ineffectually recalcitrant little husband borne behind her much as if he were a parcel--she is certainly one of the most memorable figures in all fiction. And among the most laughable scenes in all fiction must certainly be counted those in which in high dudgeon she cuts short her visit to Glenfern Castle, and--still better, and indeed unsurpassable--in which the ill-starred spinsters, mistaking the day, arrive to visit her when they are not expected.

Nor must it for a moment be supposed that such creations as this and the Aunts are mere masterpieces of the caricaturist. In Miss Ferrier's best characters it may almost be said to be a rule that caricature enters only into the details, and is never allowed to interfere with the main outline. An accusation far more justly to be brought against the authoress of this book is that of hard-heartedness, or a defect of sympathy and even of toleration for her own creations. Susan Ferrier was an uncompromisingly candid woman, as her interesting account of the visits paid by her to Sir Walter Scott are enough to show. That her heart was a kind one we know; but when she took pen in hand it was not her way to extenuate anything. Neither was she given to view persons or occurrences through any softening light of imagination or feeling. 'What a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!' wrote another Scottish author. But she, having devised a farcically cruel situation, squares her shoulders and regards its development with a ruthlessness more proper perhaps to science than to art. Not a touch of compunction has she for her heroine--who, intolerably selfish and heartless as she is, is yet but a child and the victim of the harshest circumstance; not a touch of pity for the pathos and repression of such lives as those of the Aunts. In a word, tolerance is not her strong point. And, admirable as it is, her art yet suffers by the limitation of her sympathies. For one pines for the hundred little humanising touches by virtue of which the same characters--living though they be--might have lived with a fuller and more gracious life. It is stated that Miss Ferrier's favourite author was La Bruyere, and in such studies as those of Lady Placid and Mrs Wiseacre he is obviously the model followed. And, though her best creations surpass those of her master as a living character will always surpass an abstract type, yet in this, her earliest effort, she still retains a good deal too much of the frigid intellectual method of the Frenchman.

What will, perhaps, more generally be considered a legitimate ground for the unpleasant task of fault-finding is, however, the extremely inartistic construction of the book. As we approach the middle, we are surprised to find the interest shifted to an almost entirely new set of characters, who belong to a new generation. Thus at a time when Lady Juliana cannot be much more than eighteen years of age, she ceases to be prominent in the story, and after the briefest interval we are called on to follow the fortunes of her twin daughters, who are now nearing that age. The bridegroom, Douglas, and two of the Aunts disappear altogether from the book; and this is the more to be regretted because there are few readers but will infinitely prefer the racy humours of the elder generation to the insipid long-drawn-out love-affairs of the contrasted sisters, even when these are more or less successfully enlivened by the sallies of the shrewd Lady Emily, by the caricature figure of Dr Redgill the _gourmand_, and by the absurdities of the literary _precieuses_ of Bath.

The success of _Marriage_, justified by its painting of Scottish manners and by the figures of Lady Maclaughlan and the spinster aunts, had the right effect upon the sterling Scottish character of the authoress. It led her to try how much better still she could do. Six years elapsed before the appearance of her next book, which was published in 1824--like its predecessor, anonymously. Indeed secrecy as to her literary undertakings appears to have been one of the novelist's strongest desires; and, writing much of _The Inheritance_ at Morningside House, near Edinburgh--where her father spent the summers--she complains of the smallness of the house as making concealment very difficult.

In the endeavour to improve upon her first achievement, Miss Ferrier was triumphantly successful. 'The new book,' wrote one of Mr Blackwood's correspondents at the time of its publication, 'is a hundred miles above _Marriage_.' Nor does this assertion overshoot the mark; for if the one is at most a bit of brilliant promise, the other is a superb performance. Foremost among its advantages must be counted, in place of the slip-slop of _Marriage_, an interesting and admirably-compacted plot, and a vigorous literary style--the latter marked indeed, yet not marred, by a mannerism of literary quotation. What was shapeless and redundant in _Marriage_ is here moulded and restrained by exigencies of the story, with the result that characters well-defined, and skilfully contrasted and relieved, confront the reader standing boldly and firmly on their feet.

Several features of _The Inheritance_ seem to have been suggested by the celebrated Douglas Cause. The Honourable Thomas St Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, has forfeited the countenance of his family by marrying out of his own rank in life. He settles with his wife in France, and here in the course of years a succession of deaths places him in the position of heir-presumptive to the earldom. He announces at head-quarters the important tidings that Mrs St Clair is expecting to be confined, and having done so, with the Earl's concurrence he and his wife prepare to return to Scotland. But the confinement takes place, prematurely, on the journey. A female child is born, after which event the projected return is indefinitely postponed. So much by way of proem. The opening of the story shows us Mrs St Clair, now a widow, and her daughter, Gertrude, a beautiful and blooming maiden, taking up their abode with the elderly and unmarried Lord Rossville, who recognises the young lady as heiress to his title and estates. Under his roof, attention is drawn to a likeness existing between Gertrude and the portrait of one Lizzie Lundie, a low-born beauty of a bygone day, who had sat as model for a painting in the Castle. This resemblance is noticed by more than one person, and on more than one occasion, and reference to it is generally accompanied by marks of agitation in Mrs St Clair. Meantime the youthful heiress has won the admiration of two young men, cousins of her own, who frequent the Castle--the handsome and elegant Colonel Delmour, a man of fashion and of the world, and the less showy but far deeper-natured Edward Lyndsay. A singular meeting now takes place between Mrs St Clair and a stranger named Lewiston, and soon afterwards it becomes apparent that the latter exercises a great, though unexplained, power over the lady. The stranger's identity is presently revealed as that of the husband--long supposed to be dead--of a nurse of Gertrude's, to whom she had been tenderly attached. At a nocturnal meeting with Lewiston, at which Mrs St Clair has by entreaty, and by throwing out vague threats, compelled her daughter to be present, Lyndsay arrives upon the scene in time to save Gertrude from molestation, and thus earns her gratitude. However Delmour now declares his passion, which Gertrude returns--with the result that an understanding is come to between them. But the Earl has other intentions regarding the disposal of the hand of his heir, which for family and political reasons he designs to confer upon the Colonel's elder brother, a colourless man-of-affairs. By asserting her independence in this matter, Gertrude provokes Lord Rossville's displeasure; but the unforeseen effect of his lordship's purblind and blundering intervention is merely to bring to light the fact that Lyndsay also is in love with his beautiful cousin. The Earl, who has power to dispose of his possessions as he pleases, is meditating to disinherit Gertrude on account of her disobedience, when his sudden death leaves her free to follow her own wishes. In the meantime, Delmour's conduct has supplied ground for doubting the purity of his motives; whilst Lyndsay, who has again come to her rescue in a trying interview with Lewiston, has shown himself throughout a staunch friend to her best interests. But Gertrude is now Countess of Rossville in her own right; her lover returns to her side, and she is herself too noble-minded to question his disinterestedness. Under his influence she launches out into a variety of extravagant schemes, and going to London, where she becomes the admired of all admirers, devotes herself wholly to the pleasures of society, which for a time have rather an injurious effect upon her character. Lyndsay makes an appeal to her better self, but amid the excitement of her surroundings his remonstrance passes unheeded. Jaded by the excesses of fashionable life, at the end of the season she returns to Rossville, where the intrusive Lewiston, who has been thought drowned, now again appears upon the scene, and provoked by her disdainful treatment divulges the secret that she is the daughter, not of Mrs St Clair, but of her nurse, and that consequently she has no title to her present position. Overwhelmed by this intelligence, which Mrs St Clair's confession confirms, Gertrude loses no time in informing her lover of the true state of matters, and in so doing reveals the miserable shallowness of his nature. Delmour's love for the beautiful and high-spirited girl is genuine; but nameless and without fortune as she now is, he hesitates to fulfil his engagement towards her. Her love for him has been of such a different nature that she is well-nigh broken-hearted by the discovery. But the faithful Lyndsay stands her friend in need, and the book closes with her reinstatement, long afterwards, as his wife, in the brilliant position which she has already wrongly, though innocently, occupied.