Guy Mannering in Edinburgh: The Evidence of the Manuscript
By JANE MILLGATE Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 HE manuscript of Scott's second novel, Guy Mannering, in the Pierpont Morgan Library is quite close in substantive matters to Tthe first edition. It does, however, include a section, just over three of Scott's holograph pages in length, which was omitted from the text as published in 1815. The passage occurs in volume two, pages 116-19, of the manuscript, at a point corresponding to the break between the two para- graphs on page 329 of the second volume of the first edition, just after Mannering has been supplied by Pleydell with introductions to a number of prominent Edinburgh figures, 'some of the first literary characters of Scotland'.1 The names listed are those of David Hume, John Home, Dr. Ferguson, Dr. Black, Lord Kaimes, Mr. Hutton, John Clerk ofEldin, Adam Smith, and Dr. Robertson. The narrator goes on to express regret that 'it is not in our power to give the reader an account of the pleasure and information which he [Mannering] received, in admission to a circle never closed against strangers of sense and information, and which has perhaps at no period been equalled, considering the depth and variety of talent which it embraced and concentrated'.2 In the first edition this is immediately followed by an account of the venison dinner given by Mannering to Pleydell on the following Thursday. But in the manuscript the narrator supplies four fragmentary and unidentified character sketches supposedly derived from Mannering's letters to his friend Mervyn, and only then goes on to the venison dinner. The omitted section opens in the manuscript as a continuation of the paragraph ending in the first edition with 'embraced and concentrated', and reads as follows:3 It is true he kept a journal of these golden days but as it afterwards passd through the hands of Mr Dominie Sampson it is to be feard his indiscreet zeal mutilated Mannerings account of some of diese philosophers whose acute talents were more to be admired than their speculative opinions One or two scraps I have been able to extract from some mutilated letters to Mr Mervyn found in an old cabinet at Mervyn hall Langberthwaite but as the room looked out upon the lake they have sufFerd much from damp & what is very provoking I have not been able to assign to the fragments those names which are necessary to expound and to illustrate them. So that I hesitated for some time whether or not I should insert them in this
1 Guy Mannering; or the astrologer, Edinburgh 1815, ii. 328. 2 Guy Mannering, ii. 329. 3 This transcription follows exactly the text, spelling, and punctuation (including asterisks) of the original. I am grateful to the Director and Trustees of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, for permission to reproduce these pages from the manuscript. Plates omitted from The Library, September 1977: see page 221
PLATE I Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021
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Engraved plate for Sir Laimcelot Greaves, facing p. 449 of the British Magazine, vol. I Reproduced by courtesy of London University Library The Evidence of the Manuscript 239 place. At length upon the oeconomical consideration that they will go far to compleat this volume without giving me any other trouble but that of a copyist I will transfer two or three of these characters to this narrative.
Fragment first * * * You my dear Mervyn who are a worshiper of originality should come a
pilgrimage to Edinburgh on foot to see this remarkable man—that is you should Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 do so rather than not come at all. I found him with his family around him—a house full of boys & girls labouring at an abstracted proposition in mathematics as if he had been in the solitude of the most quiet & secluded cell in our old college. The table at which he sate was coverd with a miscellaneous collection of all sorts—pencils paints and crayons (he draws most beautifully) clay models half finishd or half broken, books letters instruments specimens of mineralogy of all sorts, vials with chemical liquors for experiments, plans of battles ancient and modern, models of new mechanical engines maps and calculations of levels sheets of music printed and written in short an emblematical chaos of literature and science. Over all this miscellany two or three kittens the genii loci apparently gambold not only without rebuke but apparently much to the amusement of the philosopher. His countenance is singularly expressive of sagacity and acuteness. Light eyes deep sunk under a projecting brow and shaded by thick eye lashes emit an uncommon light when he is engaged in discussion. Frank liberal & communicative his extensive information is at the service of every stranger who is introduced and it is so general and miscellaneous that every one must find a subject of entertainment and information. He does not embarass you with the manner I have sometimes remarked in men of genius who expect to be incensed with praise and yet affect to dispise or disavow the tribute when it is offerd. This gentleman seems frankly and with good faith to receive the homage frankly & willingly paid to him and takes without affectation or assumption the conscious feeling of superiority quaesitam meritis—Of his great discovery we have already had a happy illustration in the late naval success—another generation may carry it further—it has the great recommendation that it can serve no nation but our- selves unless British tars & British oaks lose their superiority—I am told there is littleness of mind shown by some naval officers who even go so as to deny ***** (hiatus) * Columbus & the egg—if known before why was it not carried into execution * * * Fragment Second * * * at supper time: for such is the hour when this close imitator of the ancients holds his symposion. A man of his eccentrick opinions in philosophy can scarcely be without peculiarities in private life and accordingly he may be truly stiled an original Our table was strewd with flowers & garlands were hung upon the necks of the bottles of claret which circulated freely to the memory of sages dead and living and to the prosperity of learning and literary institutions. Our enter- tainer was alternately eloquent and jocose but equally original in his mirth as in his philosophy. The Quixotry which has introduced him to prick forth in defence of the batterd standard of Aristotle when deserted by all the world besides is gilded over and renderd respectable by such high feelings of honour and worth that you cannot help respecting & loving the enthusiasm which abstractedly is sufficiently ludicrous. It seems to be the soul of a Knight errant which has by strange transmigration been put in possession of the pineal-gland of a scholiast. 240 Guy Mannering in Edinburgh To amuse me he enterd upon some of his favourite topics—the gradual degeneracy of the human race—the increase of luxury—the general introduction of wheel carriages—(he always rides on horseback you must know) and sundry other consolatory topics—He questiond me closely about sundry tribes in the east which I endeavourd to answer with great caution as I have no ambition to be quoted in a new edition of the Origin of* * *
Fragment Third Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 ** * and possesses in reality that stern and self-relying cast of philosophy which the other rather imitates than attains. A Roma[n] soul despising in the prosecution of his his [sic] literary carreer the imperfections of a feeble frame and the blandish- ments of indolence to which it so readily disposes us. He is generally known as the most chaste clear and luminous historian who has undertaken to guide us through the paths of antiquity but he has also evinced in the cause of his country powers of Satire worthy of Swift or Arbuthnot. He has adopted for the sake of health the severe diet of our Indian Bramins and it may be reasonably from his powers of perseverance and the progress he has already made towards recovery that his life may be long preserved to his country* - -
Fragment Fourth * * * Full of anecdote which his acquaintance with the great men who flourishd at the beginning of this reign has afforded him. He has also extensive information respecting the unfortunate war of 1745 and as might be expected from his genius he gives his stories with attention to the striking & picturesque points of the narrative. I saw him shed tears while he commemorated the gallantry high principle and personal worth of some of the unfortunate chiefs against whom he had himself borne arms. He is proud of his family for men of fortune & no fortune have alike family-pride in Scotland and the manner in which his namesake the philosopher spells his namejoind to his preference of port to claret are the only secular opinions on which they differ. I am told the philospher offerd (with philo- sophical indifference) to compound the first dispute by throwing dice which should in future correspond to the orthography of the other. But the poet rejected this proposal as altogether unequal since in the case of his winning his adversary only took his own proper name whereas if he the poet lost he would be compelld to assume that of another man. ***** why none of them are equal to his capital production. As far as I can judge from hastily glancing at the others he has in- judiciously so managed the plot in each of them as to remind us of his Chefd'oeuvre a sort of self-imitation which it is perhaps very difficult to avoid but which is to a certainty destructive of the authors purpose * * *.
There are several more of these fragments in my hands but to detail them here would keep us too long from the proper business of our history to which with the readers permission we now return. The first of these fragments is a portrait ofJoh n Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812), author of An essay on naval tactics (privately printed, 1782) and proponent of the tactic of dividing the line in sea-fights. By profession Clerk was a successful Edinburgh merchant, but in addition to his activities as a naval strategist he was also noted for his skill in drawing and etching. Scott knew the household intimately, since he had formed a lifelong friendship with The Evidence of the Manuscript 241 Clerk's son Will while attending lectures on Civil Law in Edinburgh in the late 1780s. According to Will Clerk, his father contributed certain features to the portrait of the antiquary Jonathan Oldbuck in the novel which followed Guy Mannering, and it was evidently an anecdote told by John Clerk himself which supplied Edie Ochiltree's famous opening in- terruption of Oldbuck in The Antiquary. John Clerk recounted how his grandfather, while displaying to an English visitor a supposed Roman camp on his estate, was challenged by a local herdsman with the words: 'Prae- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 torium here, Praetorium there, I made it wi' a flaughter spade'.4 The 'late naval success' mentioned by Mannering is Rodney's famous victory over the French off Dominica on 12 April 1782; Clerk himself believed Rodney's tactics derived from knowledge of the Essay on naval tactics, which had been widely circulated in manuscript before its first printing in 1782. This claim did not go undisputed, hence Mannering's reference to 'littleness of mind shown by some naval officers'. Whatever the priorities in Rodney's case there is no question that Nelson knew the Essay well and developed his own refinements on the tactics it advocated: Mannering is allowed a proleptic reference to Nelson's successes when he prophesies that 'another generation may carry it further'. Ten years after Guy Mannering, when discussing Nelson's victories in his Life of Napoleon, Scott paid formal tribute to John Clerk, 'the patriotic sage', supplying a long footnote which covers much the same ground as the passage he had omitted from the novel: The late John Clerk of Eldin; a name never to be mentioned by Britons without respect and veneration, since, until his systematic Essay upon Naval Tactics appeared, the breaking of the line (whatever professional jealousy may allege to the contrary) was never practised on decided and defined principle. His suavity, nay, simplicity of manner, equalled the originality of his genius. This trifling tribute is due from one, who, honoured with his regard from boyhood, has stood by his side, while he was detailing and illustrating the system which taught British seamen to understand and use their own force, at an age so early, that he can remember having been guilty of abstracting from the table some of the little cork models by which Mr Clerk exemplified his manoeuvres; unchecked but by his good-humoured raillery, when he missed a supposed line-of-battle ship, and complained that the demonstration was crippled by its absence.* Fragment Second presents James Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714-99), author of Of the origin and progress of language (6 vols, 1773-92). The first volume of this notoriously controversial work had already gone into a second edition in 1774, and Mannering shows an understandable wariness about being quoted in some later edition. Among the views which most startled Burnet's contemporaries were the assertion that men and orang- outangs belonged to the same species and his insistence that language was
« John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Edinburgh 1837, i- H9- s The life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a preliminary view of the French Revolution, Edinburgh 1827, v. 237. 242 Guy Mannering in Edinburgh social rather than natural in origin. The 'defence of the batterd standard of Aristotle' to which Mannering refers was made in another work which aroused considerable dispute, Antient metaphysics (6 vols, 1779-99). Dr. Johnson had no sympathy for what he considered Burnet's eccentric notions, as Boswell makes clear in his Life of Johnson and Journal of a tour to the Hebrides, but despite their disagreements Johnson visited Monboddo on his Scottish tour and was given a very hospitable reception which did not, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 however, soften his attitudes to his host's opinions: 'It is a pity to see Lord Monboddo publish such notions as he has done; a man of sense, and of so much elegant learning. There would be little in a fool doing it; we should only laugh; but when a wise man does it, we are sorry. Other people have strange notions; but they conceal them. If they have tails, they hide them; but Monboddo is as jealous of his tail as a squirrel'.6 Scott supplied some notes on Lord Monboddo for Croker's edition of Boswell: 'He was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, and the deterioration of civilized mankind; a great condemner of luxuries, insomuch that he never used a wheel-carriage.'7 In the magnum opus edition of Guy Mannering, published in 1829, Scott also took the opportunity of including a sketch of Monboddo as a footnote to Pleydell's statement of his preference for supper over other meals: 'I am of counsel with my old friend Burnet; I love the coena, the supper of the ancients.'8 At the end of the chapter appears the following note: The Burnet, whose taste for the evening meal of the ancients is quoted by Mr Pleydell, was the celebrated metaphysician and excellent man, Lord Monboddo, whose coenae will not be soon forgotten by those who have shared his classic hospitality. As a Scottish Judge, he took the designation of his family estate. His philosophy, as is well known, was of a fanciful and somewhat fantastic character; but his learning was deep, and he was possessed of a singular power of eloquence, which reminded the hearer of the os rotundum of the Grove or Academe. Enthusiastically partial to classical habits, his entertainments were always given in the evening, when there was a circulation of excellent Bourdeaux, in flasks garlanded with roses, which were also strewed on the table after the manner of Horace. The best society, whether in respect of rank or literary distinction, was always to be found in St John's Street, Canongate. The conversation of the ex- cellent old man, his high, gentleman-like, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his hospitality, must render these nodes coenaeque dear to all who, like the author, (though then young,) had the honour of sitting at his board.9 The original of Fragment Third is Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh and author of many works, including a History of the progress and termination of the Roman Republic (1782); the satirical powers to which Mannering refers were displayed in a 1761 pam- phlet on the refusal of the British parliament to sanction a Scottish militia. 6 James Boswell, The journal of a tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson LL.D., in Boswell's life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, v, Oxford 1950, in. 7 Boswell's life of Johnson, ii (1934), 74. 8 Waverley novels, Edinburgh 1829, iv, 256. 9 Waverley novels, iv. 267. The Evidence of the Manuscript 243 Like John Clerk of Eldin, Ferguson was the father of one of Scott's lifelong friends, and the young Scott was a frequent guest in his house. It was here that as a shy boy of fifteen Scott was a member of a literary gathering which included Burns, and was the only person present who could identify the author of some lines which had caught the poet's attention. He was rewarded, as he later recalled, with 'a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received and still recollect with very great pleasure'.10 In 1827 Scott included Ferguson in a portrait gallery of Edinburgh nota- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 bilities of his youth which formed part of an essay on John Home for the Quarterly Review. He supplied anecdotes of Ferguson's military zeal as a young chaplain with the Black Watch in France, and went on to depict, with loving detail, the older Ferguson as he had himself known him in the 1780s, about the time of Mannering's supposed visit to Edinburgh:
Professor Adam Fergusson's subsequent history is well known. He recovered from a decided shock of paralysis in the sixtieth year of his life; from which period he became a strict Pythagorean in his diet, eating nothing but vegetables, and drinking . only water or milk. He survived till the year 1816, when he died in full possession of his mental faculties, at the advanced age of ninety-three. . . . Long after his eightieth year he was one of the most striking old men whom it was possible to look at. His firm step and ruddy cheek contrasted agreeably and unexpectedly with his silver locks; and the dress which he usually wore, much resembling that of the Flemish peasant, gave an air of peculiarity to his whole figure. In his conversation, the mixture of original thinking with high moral feeling and extensive learning; his love of country; contempt of luxury; and, especially, the strong subjection of his passions and feelings to the dominion of his reason, made him, perhaps, the most striking example of the Stoic philosopher which could be seen in modern days. His house, while he continued to reside in Edinburgh, was a general point of re-union among his friends, particularly of a Sunday, where there generally met, at a hospitable dinner-party, the most distinguished literati of the old time who still remained, with such young persons as were thought worthy to approach their circle, and listen to their conversation. The place of his residence was an insulated house, at some distance from the town, which its visiters (notwithstanding its internal comforts) chose to call, for that reason, Kamtschatka.11
Fragment Fourth presents John Home (1722-1808), author of Douglas (1756), whom Scott first met when, as a five-year-old child, he spent a year in Bath in the hope that the waters might do something for his lameness. In the Ashesriel autobiographical fragment of 1808 Scott recalled Home's kindness to him at that period, and as a young man he was a frequent visitor to his house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. In the review of Mac- kenzie's edition of Home's Life and works which Scott wrote towards the end of his own life, he drew an affectionate portrait of the playwright's character and career which was much fuller than the sketch omitted from Guy Mannering more than ten years earlier. He described Home's military
10 Lockhart, i. 137. 11 The prose works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Edinburgh 1835, xix, 332-3. 244 Guy Mannering in Edinburgh exploits on the government side in the forty-five, his being forced to give up his charge as a Presbyterian clergyman because he was the author of plays, and his friendship with his kinsman, the philosopher David Hume. The comments on Scottish family pride and the anecdote about the disputed spelling of the family name appear in enriched form, together with critical comments on Home's writings in which Scott, echoing the view expressed in the 1815 sketch, observes of Alonzo that it 'was almost a transcript of the situation, incidents and plot of Douglas, and every author should especially Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 beware of repeating the theme which has formerly been successful'.12 When Scott first made this point his own creative energy was at its peak: Guy Mannering was quite distinct from Waverley and the secret career as a novelist was itself a total departure from his previous achievements as ballad collector, poet, and editor. But in 1827, when he was conscious of the element of repetition in the characterization and plotting of many of his novels and had been striving for a compensating variety in their settings and periods, the comment must have had an added personal urgency. If Scott, early and late, was very much aware of the dangers of repeating himself, he had also a strong instinct for not wasting anything he had once written. The sheer fact of the deletion from the Guy Mannering manuscript is therefore something of a curiosity. The fragmentary and unidentified portraits were presumably intended as something of a game between the Author of Waverley and his readers—an extension of the game-playing motif sustained throughout the Edinburgh episode. But the game must in the end have seemed at once inaccessible to the largely English audience and all too accessible to those few people in Scotland itself who would have appreciated the intimacy of the portraits and thus identified their author. Although the deletion cannot be said to have damaged the novel in any way, the passage concerned does offer minor illuminations of the published text. The expanded account of Mannering's Edinburgh visit seems, for example, to underline the intended balance between this urban episode and its pastoral counterpart, Harry Bertram's stay with Dandy Dinmont in Liddesdale—a connection signalled by Dandy's surprising reappearance on the streets of Edinburgh. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the contrastive and echoing relationships between the Man- nering and Bertram elements in the plot, but it is worth noting that in Scott's original version more varied examples of the intellectual delights of the city were included to set against the badger-baiting, fox-hunting, and salmon-fishing of Liddesdale, and that portraits of the Edinburgh illuminati were supplied to set against the sketches of their rural counter- parts Tarn o' Todshaw, Will o' the Flat, and Hobbie o' Sorbietrees. Omission of the portraits also involved the removal of an important clue to the precise period Scott had in mind for Mannering's visit to Edin- burgh and for the novel as a whole. It is clear from the published text that the main action of Guy Mannering takes place in a November and December near the end of the War of American Independence, but there are no firm grounds for establishing a preference between 1781 and 1782. References, The Evidence of the Manuscript 245 however, in the omitted section to works first published in 1782 and to Rodney's victory off Dominica in April 1782—an engagement in which Scott's sailor brother Robert took part1^—make it possible to settle with some confidence on the end of 1782. It is true that the placing of the events in relation to the externally dateable is probably the least significant element in the novel's handling of time: where Waverley was tied very closely to historical events Guy Mannering is controlled by the romance rhythm of the recurrences of time and place marking the crises of Harry Bertram's Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/library/article/s5-XXXII/3/238/959530 by guest on 27 September 2021 life. It is nevertheless pleasant to discover that for the one episode in which events move outwards towards the public world of fact and history Scott not only delighted to portray individual men and particular locales but seems also to have had a specific year in mind. Above all, perhaps, the portraits themselves are eloquent of Scott's attitudes to the great men who loomed so large in his early experience and imagination. Taken together with his later statements, they demonstrate the consistency of his admiration and affection for the members of that 'phalanx, whose reputation was neither confined to their narrow, poor, and rugged native country, nor to England and the British dominions, but known and respected wherever learning, philosophy, and science were honoured'.14 Toronto 12 Prose works, xix, 350. 13 In the Ashestiel fragment Scott records some verses which Robert composed on the eve of the battle (Lockhart, i. 11). In Sir Walter Scott: the great unknown, 1970, i. 55, Edgar Johnson conflates Rodney's victory of 1782 with the inconclusive engagement he had fought ofFMartinique in 1780. M Prose works, xix, 285.