The Author, in application of this story, has only to add that, though ignorant of the coincidence between the fictions of the tale and some real circumstances, he is contented to believe he must unconsciously have thought or dreamed of the last while engaged in the composition of Guy Mannering.
1 Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. I, p. 54
2 Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. I, p. 56.
Andrew Lang’s Introduction to Guy Mannering.
The second essay in fiction of an author who has triumphed in his first romance is a doubtful and perilous adventure. The writer is apt to become self-conscious, to remember the advice of his critics, — a fatal error, — and to tremble before the shadow of his own success. He knows that he will have many enemies, that hundreds of people will be ready to find fault and to vow that he is “written out.” Scott was not unacquainted with these apprehensions. After publishing “Marmion” he wrote thus to Lady Abercorn:—
“No one acquires a certain degree of popularity without exciting an equal degree of malevolence among those who, either from rivalsbip or from the mere wish to pull down what others have set up, are always ready to catch the first occasion to lower the favoured individual to what they call his ‘real standard.’ Of this I have enough of experience, and my political interferences, however useless to my friends, have not failed to make me more than the usual number of enemies. I am therefore bound, in justice to myself and to those whose good opinion has hitherto protected me, not to peril myself too frequently. The naturalists tell us that if you destroy the web which the spider has just made, the insect must spend many days in inactivity till he has assembled within his person the materials necessary to weave another. Now, after writing a work of imagination one feels in nearly the same exhausted state as the spider. I believe no man now alive writes more rapidly than I do (no great recommendation); but I never think of making verses till I have a sufficient stock of poetical ideas to supply them, — I would as soon join the Israelites in Egypt in their heavy task of making bricks without clay. Besides, I know, as a small farmer, that good husbandry consists in not taking the same crop too frequently from the same soil; and as turnips come after wheat, according to the best rules of agriculture, I take it that an edition of Swift will do well after such a scourging crop as ‘Marmion.’”
[March 13, 1808. Copied from the Collection of Lady Napier and Ettrick.]
These fears of the brave, then, were not unfamiliar to Scott; but he audaciously disregarded all of them in the composition of “Guy Mannering.” He had just spun his web, like the spider of his simile, he had just taken off his intellectual fields the “scourging crop” of “The Lord of the Isles,” he had just received the discouraging news of its comparative failure, when he “buckled to,” achieved “Guy Mannering “ in six weeks, and published it. Moliere tells us that he wrote “Les Facheux” in a fortnight; and a French critic adds that it reads indeed as if it had been written in, a fortnight. Perhaps a self-confident censor might venture a similar opinion about “Guy Mannering.” It assuredly shows traces of haste; the plot wanders at its own will; and we may believe that the Author often — did not see his own way out of the wood. But there is little harm in that. “If I do not know what is coming next,” a modern novelist has remarked, “how can the public know?” Curiosity, at least, is likely to be excited by this happy-go-lucky manner of Scott’s. “The worst of it is;” as he wrote to Lady Abercorn about his poems (June 9,1808), “that I am not very good or patient in slow and careful composition; and sometimes I remind myself of the drunken man, who could run long after he could not walk.” Scott could certainly run very well, though averse to a plodding motion.
[He was probably thinking of a famous Edinburgh character, “Singing Jamie Balfour.” Jamie was found very drunk and adhering to the pavement one night. He could not raise himself; but when helped to his feet, ran his preserver a race to the tavern, and won!]
The account of the year’s work which preceded “Guy Mannering” is given by Lockhart, and is astounding. In 1814 Scott had written, Lockhart believes, the greater part of the “Life of Swift,” most of “Waverley” and the “Lord of the Isles;” he had furnished essays to the 14 Encyclopaedia,” and had edited “The Memorie of the Somervilles.” The spider might well seem spun out, the tilth exhausted. But Scott had a fertility, a spontaneity, of fancy equalled only, if equalled at all, by Alexandre Dumas.
On November 7 of this laborious year, 1814, Scott was writing to Mr. Joseph Train, thanking him for a parcel of legendary lore, including the Galloway tale of the wandering astrologer and a budget of gypsy traditions. Falling in the rich soil of Scott’s imagination, the tale of the astrologer yielded a name and an opening to “Guy Mannering,” while the gypsy lore blossomed into the legend of Meg Merrilies. The seed of the novel was now sown. But between November 11 and December 25 Scott was writing the three last cantos of the “Lord of the Isles.” Yet before the “Lord of the Isles” was published (Jan. 18, 1815), two volumes of “Guy Mannering “ were in print (Letter to Morritt, Jan. 17, 1815.) The novel was issued on Feb. 14, 1815. Scott, as he says somewhere, was like the turnspit dog, into whose wheel a hot cinder is dropped to encourage his activity. Scott needed hot cinders in the shape of proof-sheets fresh from the press, and he worked most busily when the printer’s devil was waiting. In this case, not only the printer’s devil, but the wolf was at the door. The affairs of the Ballantynes clamoured for moneys In their necessity and his own, Scott wrote at the rate of a volume in ten days, and for some financial reason published “Guy Mannering” with Messrs. Longmans, not with Constable. Scott was at this moment facing creditors and difficulties as Napoleon faced the armies of the Allies, — present everywhere, everywhere daring and successful. True, his “Lord of the Isles” was a disappointment, as James Ballantyne informed him. “‘Well, James, so be it; but you know we must not droop, for we cannot afford to give over. Since one line has failed, we must just stick to something else.’ And so he dismissed me, and resumed his novel.”
In these circumstances, far from inspiring, was “Guy Mannering” written and hurried through the press. The story has its own history: one can watch the various reminiscences and experiences of life that crystallized together in Scott’s mind, and grouped themselves fantastically into his unpremeditated plot. Sir Walter gives, in the preface of 1829, the legend which he heard from John MacKinlay, his father’s Highland servant, and on which he meant to found a tale more in Hawthorn’s manner than in his own. That plan he changed in the course of printing,” leaving only just enough of astrology to annoy pedantic reviewers and foolish Puritans.’ Whence came the rest of the plot, — the tale of the long-lost heir, and so on? The true heir, “kept out of his own,” and returning in disguise, has been a favourite character ever since Homer sang of Odysseus, and probably long before that. But it is just possible that Scott had a certain modern instance in his mind. In turning over the old manuscript diary at Branxholme Park (mentioned in a note to “Waverley”), the Editor lighted on a singular tale, which, in the diarist’s opinion, might have suggested “Guy Mannering “ to Sir Walter. The resemblance between the story of Vanbeest Brown and the hero of the diarist was scanty; but in a long letter of Scott’s to Lady Abercorn (May 21, 1813), a the Editor finds Sir Walter telling his correspondent the very narrative recorded in the Branxholme Park diary. Singular things happen, Sir Walter says; and he goes on to describe a case just heard in the court where he is sitting as Clerk of Sessions. Briefly, the anecdote is this: A certain Mr. Carruthers of Dormont had reason to suspect his wife’s fidelity. While proceedings for a divorce were pending, Mrs. Carruthers bore a daughter, of whom her husband, of course, was legally the father. But he did not believe in the relationship, and sent the infant girl to be brought up, in ignorance of her origin and in seclusion, among the Cheviot Hills. Here she somehow learned the facts of her own story. She married a Mr. Routledge, the son of a yeoman, and “compounded” her rights (but not those of her issue) for a small sung of ready money, paid by old Dormont. She bears