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Sir
Walter Scott
THE ABBOT (1820) Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. Reviewed for www.barnesandnoble.com Here is how your review will appear on the title page: REVIEWER:Patrick Killough (killswan@earthlink.net), pondering Walter Scott's religion, May 17, 2007. REVIEWER'S RATING of THE ABBOT: * * * * * (Five Stars) TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Mary Queen of Scots is Defeated and Flees to England In 1820 in very short order Sir Walter Scott followed up THE MONASTERY with THE ABBOT. Several fictitious and historical characters of the former reappear and are joined by related new faces. Scott was tempted to name the second novel MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, but then people would read it for the wrong reason: simply because of the fame and glamor of Mary Stuart. The Reformation took hold in Scotland decades later in Scotland than in England but had far more popular support. Indeed Scotland, unlike the England of 'Bluff King Hal'' went Protestant not because of but in the teeth of its ruler, the Queen. Young Mary, who had returned a widow from France to resume at age 18 her Scottish throne in 1561, was forced only six years later, in 1567, to abdicate at age 24 in favor of her infant son, proclaimed King James VI of Scotland. Some characters associated with the Queen's downfall are among the most despicable in Scottish history, including Lords Ruthven, Morton and Lindesay. All appear in THE ABBOT. Fictional characters, especially teen age page Roland Graeme, the Novel's hero, bumble unwittingly through life clueless that they will be sucked into the rescue of Mary Stuart from Lochleven Castle and her final ten days of freedom on Scottish soil. Queen Mary's forces soon lose a decisive battle against her half-brother, the Regent for the infant James VI. 'God and the Queen!' resounded from
the one party, 'God and the King!'
thundered from the other while, in the name of their sovereign,
fellow-subjects on both sides shed each other's blood, and, in the name
of their Creator, defaced his image (Ch. 37).
Before that battle of Langside, the fictional last Abbot of Melrose Abbey, had exhorted a distraught Queen Mary: "Bear
yet up, madam -- your foes are the foes of Holy Church, and God will
this day decide whether Scotland shall be Catholic or heretic" (Ch. 37).
And 'heretic' Scotland
definitively became. Scott always believed that the Reformation was intended by God. Roland Graeme, the teen-age hero, in the end became Protestant, despite powerful Catholic ties. Two years after Mary fled to England, Roland married her attendant, the noble Catherine Seyton. Meanwhile his own noble but long hidden ancestry had been attested, as well as the clandestine wedding of his parents. Catherine remained Catholic. But Scotland went almost solidly Calvinist. THE ABBOT is full of color and drama, of religious controversy, iconoclasm, mocking of Catholic rites, Protestant sobriety, Catholic fun, intrigue, amours and the sad, sad tale of Mary Queen of Scots. -OOO- ----Also recommended: --Walter Scott, THE MONASTERY. --Thomas Dudley Fosbrooke, BRITISH MONACHISM or MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MONKS AND NUNS OF ENGLAND. --Michael Schiefelbein, THE LURE OF BABYLON: SEVEN PROTESTANT NOVELISTS AND BRITAIN'S ROMAN CATHOLIC REVIVAL. -Robert Lee Wolff, GAINS AND LOSSES: NOVELS OF FAITH AND DOUBT IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND. -=-=-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. Reviewed for www.amazon.com Reviewer's Rating of Sir Walter Scott, THE ABBOT * * * * * (Five Stars) Title of this Review: Walter Scott's Second Novel of the Coming of the Protestant Reformation to Scotland In Renaissance Scotland, Reformation ideas went to work right away in 1517 through ideas of Martin Luther. The death of vigorously anti-heretical Stuart King James V in December 1542 accelerated the rise of the Protestant (by then increasingly, however, Calvinist rather than Lutheran) cause in Scotland. In 1820 two consciously linked novels by Sir Walter Scott were published: THE MONASTERY and THE ABBOT. Between them they covered a time from the first serious challenge by Protestant Reformers to the established Catholic Church of Scotland till the unquestioned political and popular triumph of the Presbyterians. The years covered are from 1547 to 1567. The unifying theme is the growing destruction and ultimate fall of the Benedictine Monastery of St Mary's in Melrose, near Abbotsford, the country estate Walter Scott built for himself and family. There are two particularly vivid passages in these two novels. The first is an image of thousands of reformers tormenting a dying whale (the Roman Catholic Church). "That ancient system ... [lay] floating
like some huge Leviathan, into which ten thousand reforming fishers
were darting their harpoons. The Roman Church of Scotland, in
particular, was at her last gasp, actually blowing blood and water, yet
still with unremitted, though animal exertions, maintaining the
conflict with the assailants, who on every side were plunging their
weapons into her bulky body ..." [THE MONASTERY, Ch. 31]
The second memorable passage occurs in THE ABBOT, Chapter 14, when local rowdies invade Melrose Abbey on the day its last Roman Catholic abbot is being installed. The Abbot of Unreason, whose semi-pagan role is hundreds of years old, leads in a throng of newly Presbyterian men, women and children to play unwelcome mind games with the new Abbot. They masquerade as a dragon, Saint George, a horse, a bear, a wolf and other wild animals, as Robin Hood, Little John and others. The legitimate abbot and the Abbot of Unreason hold a dispute in which the Catholic comes close to winning over the hearts of the masqueraders (onetime secular subjects of the abbey) and making them ashamed of their blasphemies. But then a half-mad Catholic prophetess, grandmother of Roland Graeme, the novel's hero, chastises the revelers. The Abbot of Unreason moves to duck her in a pond. Her grandson sticks the crowd's leader harmlessly with a dagger through his false, padded belly. The real abbot's Protestant brother, high in the counsels of the new rulers of Scotland, arrives and restores order. THE ABBOT then moves to successful efforts of Catholics to liberate the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots from captivity and her final ten days of freedom in Scotland before her forces are defeated by those of her half-brother, acting as Regent for Mary's infant son King James VI. Queen Mary then flees to her cousin Elizabeth I of England for sanctuary, not the wisest of moves. Elizabeth eventually had her beheaded. The real events behind these two linked novels occurred more than two centuries before Walter Scott's life. He was therefore forced, as in IVANHOE, ANNE OF GEIRSTEIN, THE TALISMAN and other novels and poems set in the distant past to rely for his facts entirely on written records and oral traditions. Scott's principal source on monks and nuns, now recently reprinted, was Thomas Dudley Fosbrooke, BRITISH MONACHISM or MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MONKS AND NUNS OF ENGLAND. This "antiquarian" approach forced on Scott contrasts with the more face-to-face factual basis of a good number of his historical novels beginning with WAVERLEY, when men were still living who had been participants in events, e.g. the 1745 rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie, and shared their recollections with young Scott. THE MONASTERY and THE ABBOT are magnificent fictional introductions to more detailed and factual histories of the coming of the Reformation to Scotland. Sir Walter Scott's characters show what it was like for people, both ordinary and noble, to be caught up in unending, bloody turmoil and their temptations, both theological and secular, to maintain or shift religious loyalties. Read these two novels in their correct sequence. -OOO- TAGS: mary queen of scots, melrose abbey, reformation in scotland, sir walter scott =-====-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= III. Reviewed for www.epinions.com Reviewer's rating of Sir Walter Scott, THE ABBOT: * * * * * (FIVE STARS) Title of This Review: "We ... strive with the stream when we might drift with the current!" by aohcapablanca, May 21 '07 If you have zero interest in either Scotland or how the Protestant Reformation came by fits and start to dominate both its religion and its politics, do not read Sir Walter Scott's novels of 1820: THE MONASTERY and its sequel THE ABBOT. Or if you like the subject but prefer your history straight, then read about the years 1547 - 1567 in Scott's excellent works of non-fiction, either the simpler TALES OF A GRANDFATHER written for a favorite grandson, or his more grown-up version in HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. The narrow focus of both novels is the rapid decline and fall, under Protestant hammer blows, of the Cistercian (Benedictine) Abbey of Saint Mary at Melrose in the southeastern Scottish lowlands. Nineteenth century Edinburgh lawyer Walter Scott built his dream house "Abbotsford" on the Tweed River two miles from Melrose and named his beloved country manor for that abbey. In the earlier novel, THE MONASTERY, Melrose Abbey in 1547 is a weakening but still respected feudal lord of farmers and retainers. By the early 1560s the abbey is under fierce attack from neighboring nobles who want its lands for themselves. And the abbey's tenants are turned against it through preaching of vigorous and not always temperate Calvinist preachers. Protestant and Catholic divines debate one another. Two had once been youthful friends at a foreign university. Through their debates about the role of the Bible, works versus faith in individual salvation and other topics, readers skim major points of theological contention. In the case of the intertwined families of Avenel and Glendenning we experience in individual consciences the tug of war of the falling and rising forms of Scottish Christianity. Lower motives are also at work, especially among the nobility, who wish to transfer ownership of abbey farmlands to themselves. Politics is there as well. Twenty-four year old Roman Catholic Mary Stuart, "Queen of Scots," is imprisoned on an island at Lochleven, 30 miles north of Edinburgh. Her illegitimate Protestant half-brother James Stuart is Regent for Mary's infant son, King James VI. Under pressure, Mary abdicates in favor of her son. But Catholics associated with the families of Avenel and Glendenning (the last abbot of Melrose Abbey is a Glendenning), led by other Catholic nobles, plan and carry out by stealth and cunning the rescue of Queen Mary. She enjoys a final ten days of freedom on Scottish soil before forces loyal to her are defeated by the Regent and Mary flees to England. She seeks refuge with her cousin Queen Elizabeth Tudor. Ultimately Mary Queen of Scots finds in England death by beheading at Elizabeth's commands. A constant theme in Walter Scott novels is that differences in social rank both matter but are at some basic level absurd. At the time of the Reformation in both England and Scotland, commoners with talents useful to the winning side rose high and even founded new dynasties. This is roughly true of fictional Halbert Glendenning, brother of the last Abbot. He turns Protestant, wins the hand of the noble lady of Avenel and is a steady favorite of James Stuart, the Regent. His childlessness opens the way for his wife's previously unrecognized nephew to found a dynasty. THE ABBOT is worth reading for its bustling street scenes of 16th Century Edinburgh, for a village revel on the shores of Lochleven, for probing of ancient religious beliefs and folk superstitions, for its loving women and tormented men, for swordplay, grand insults and swelling rhetoric. The young hero, Queen Mary's page Roland Graeme, is used to drifting through life. But on three occasions, with no preparation, he experiences more in a day or two than during the rest of his life. Great events are rolling and ordinary people have to scramble to keep afloat in their waves as well as they can. Queen Mary dominates the final third of the novel. Her beauty and charm appeal to all males, even her enemies. She can be gracious. But her tongue can also be sharp. Was a frivolous, laughter-loving lifestyle of horseback riding, falconry and dancing her undoing? Mary was only 18, the recently widowed Queen of France, when she actively mounted the Scottish throne. Dying, a radical Anabaptist believer in predestination, the Protestant steward of Queen Mary's prison, Lochleven Castle, wonders who had the right of things, himself or his young nobleman Catholic slayer: "Strange turns of fate ... I designed what
I could not do, and he has done what he did not perchance design. --
Wondrous, that our will should ever oppose itself to the strong and
uncontrollable tide of destiny -- that we should strive with the stream
when we might drift with the current! ... I am on a course which the
vessel can hold without a pilot. -- Farewell ..." (Chapter 33).
At times, scattering of Scots words force a reader of THE ABBOT to choose either to skip them, guess at their meaning or look up words like kittle (ticklish, sly), jouk (to incline, shift) or dibble (pointed instrument). Walter Scott's main historical source for lifestyles of monks and nuns was the unabashedly anti-Catholic BRITISH MONACHISM by Thomas Dudley Fosbrooke (reissued in 2006 by Aegypan Press). Despite his source, Walter Scott was superficially (if not better than that) fair to monks and nuns. He also betrayed more personal sympathy for fun-loving, mischievous, disguise-wearing Catholic characters than for their generally sourpuss Calvinist opponents. A mysterious earth spirit, the White Lady of the Avenel family, had played a very large role in THE MONASTERY. When that family seemed doomed, the Lady too was about to disappear forever with her humans. But the last sentence of THE ABBOT is all hers. For young Roland Graeme is really the given-up-for-lost son of the last male Avenel. His marriage to a Catholic lady in waiting to the exiled Queen Mary gives new dynastic hope to that ancient noble border family. "...and the White Lady, whose apparition
had been infrequent when the house of Avenel seemed verging to
extinction, was seen to sport by her haunted well, with a zone of gold
around her bosom as broad as the baldric of an Earl" (Ch. 38).
-OOO- Pros: Brings to life important Scottish and religious history. Shows a human Mary Queen of Scots. Cons: Doses of unfamiliar Scots language. Less deep wrestling with conscience than Graham Greene's novels, e.g., THE END OF THE AFFAIR, THE HEART OF THE MATTER, THE LABYRINTHINE WAYS. The Bottom Line: THE ABBOT is for all who want to understand Scotland, especially its Christianity past and present. And it illumines the soul of the beauteous, immortal Mary Queen of Scots. Recommended: Yes =-=-=-===-=-=-=--=-=---=-=-=-= Black Mountain, 05/21/2007 file: http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/sirws_abbot.html |