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Sir Walter Scott
GUY MANNERING, OR THE ASTROLOGER (1815) REVIEWS by Patrick Killough I. for http://www.barnesandnoble.com RATING OF THE NOVEL * * * * * (FIVE STARS) TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: AN OXFORD GRADUATE AND A WITCH CAST A NEW-BORN'S HOROSCOPE AND CO-CREATE A FUTURE Unlike WAVERLEY (1814), Sir Walter Scott's second novel, GUY MANNERING (1815), is not about people caught up in a turning point of real history. True, GUY MANNERING's actions can be dated (from late 1750s to early 1780s) and the tale is set mainly in England and Scotland with some intervening time in the Netherlands and India. But this is not a world historical epic, but a private, family inheritance story. The main plot involves Harry Bertram, kidnapped at age five from his baronial home in Scotland and spirited away to the Netherlands by smugglers after he witnesses their murder of a Crown excise officer. Harry is fostered by a kindly Dutchman, given the name Verbeest Brown, the same as that of one of Harry's principal abductors, and sent to India to work in the family's business. Soon Harry joins a British regiment of dragoons. He falls in love with his colonel's daughter, Julia Mannering. But another jealous, ambitious young officer convinces Colonel Guy Mannering that Brown is trying to seduce his wife, not woo his daughter. The two men quarrel and fight a duel in which Mannering wounds Brown and thinks that he has killed him. The party is immediately attacked, however, by Indian bandits and separated from the "corpse" of Brown. Brown/Bertram is taken prisoner and languishes in prison for months. Meanwhile Mannering's wife sickens and dies. Mannering resigns his commission and returns with his orphaned daughter to England for melancholy retirement. Brown survives and reunites with his regiment which is sent back to England. He resumes pursuit of Julia and stumbles toward his lost identity once Colonel Mannering settles in Scotland. The main subplot goes back 16 years earlier as the young Guy Mannering, fresh from Oxford University, takes a walking trip into North England and Southern Scotland. He finds refuge from a storm with a ruined but hospitable baron and rather sceptically casts a horoscope for the baron's son, born the night of his arrival. So does a gypsy woman, Meg Merilies. The trials of the newborn heir which the Englishman and the witch foresee come true and the story moves on apace. GUY MANNERING is a story on several levels and depths and abounds in memorable characters and scenes. There is the wealthy, life-loving farmer/rancher Dandie Dinmont and his pre-modern Scottish country life. There is also Golden Age Edinburgh in which Colonel Mannering is introduced to the likes of David Hume and Adam Smith. Lawyers and lawmen abound, good and less than good. This is a tale for leisurely sipping and frequent revisiting. -O-O-O- RELATED READING RECOMMENDED: --Jane Millgate, WALTER SCOTT: THE MAKING OF THE NOVELIST (1984, paper 1987). --Sir Walter Scott: REDGAUNTLET, THE MONASTERY, THE ABBOT, THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. =-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. Review for amazon.com Title of this review: "Prodigious, prodigious, pro-di-gi-ous," exclaimed Dominie Abel Sampson. Sir Walter Scott's second novel GUY MANNERING; OR, THE ASTROLOGER is built around three sets of incidents spread out between +/- 1760 and +/- 1782. --First incidents: around 1760 Guy Mannering, English, fresh out of Oxford University and on a walking and painting tour, finds shelter from the elements in a manor house called Ellangowan in Galloway in Southwestern Scotland. There he is hosted by its Laird, Godfrey Bertram, who is dining with his companion, the absent-minded, taciturn Presbyterian non-pulpited divine, Dominie Abel Sampson. The night of Mannering's arrival, Lady Bertram gives birth to her first child, a son, Henry, later usually styled Harry. As a joke, Guy Mannering draws on now passe astrological lore he had picked up from an early mentor. Mannering casts young Harry's horoscope. He had once before cast a horoscope: his girl friend's, and foreseen that that 18 year old would either die or be imprisoned at age 38. He now foresees a similar negative rhythm for the infant Harry: big trouble or great danger at ages 4, 10 and 20. Mannering's horoscope is wrapped up and hung around the infant's neck. It is still there to identify him 20 or 21 years later. On that birthing occasion we also meet a six-feet tall, broad Lowland Scots-speaking gypsy woman, Meg Merrilies. Meg is come to keep away evil spirits from the first-born son of a family that has allowed loyal Meg's tribe to squat on Bertram land for centuries. Her first words are a chant: "Canny moment, lucky fit;
Is the lady lighter yet? Be it lad, or be it lass, Sign wi' cross, and sain wi' mass." (Book I. Ch. 3) Meg foresees that young Harry will live a full 70 years but with three major breaks in his upward course, followed by three re-stitchings of his predestined path. We also overhear a meeting between the gypsy woman and a smuggling German sea captain, Dirk Hattaraick. --Second set of incidents: four years later, around 1764, the ambitious but impoverished Laird Bertram was appointed a justice of the peace. His devious estate manager and lawyer Gilbert Glossin was made a minor justice official. Good natured Bertram's new self-image required him to crack down uncharacteristically both on smugglers from the nearby Isle of Man and on the gypsies whose presence both his ancestors for centuries and he had tolerated. The Laird became great chums with revenue agent Frank Kennedy. Months later Kennedy snatched away from the boy's tutor, Dominie Sampson, four-year old Harry Bertram to let the youngster enjoy watching the arrest of Captain Hattaraick and his crew of smugglers run aground by a British warship. Witnesses who arrived later found evidence of a scuffle. Kennedy was dead, the boy Harry Bertram had disappeared. The County sheriff (not named) did a thorough investigation and ruled murder. Meg Merrilies was suspected and spent some time in prison before being released. The boy was never found. Shocked by the news, his mother gave birth prematurely to a girl (not named) and died. The murder remained unsolved 17 or more years later. And we have read through the tenth chapter of Volume One of this Three Volume novel. --Third set of incidents: 17 years later or so, toward the end of the American Revolution, say 1782, the story resumes. Guy Mannering had married his sweetheart and become Colonel of his regiment in India, winning military fame. His teenage daughter Julia Mannering was wooed in India by a young recruit from Holland named Vanbeest Brown. Guy Mannering erroneously suspected this subordinate of wooing his wife, not his daughter. They fight a duel in which Brown is wounded. But bandits fall upon them and the combatants are separated. Mrs Mannering dies. Colonel Mannering resigns his commission and returns to England, enriched by inheritances. But the injured Brown has survived and eventually returns with the regiment to England -- unknown to Guy Mannering. Taking leave, love-stricken Vanbeest Brown traces Julia Mannering to Scotland where her father is keen to purchase the old estate of Ellangowan. But immoral lawyer Gilbert Glossin has dispossessed his onetime patron, the old laird, of his ancestral holdings. Meg Merrilies and Captain Dirk Hattaraick reappear, the latter, it develops, long protected by Glossin. New characters also make their appearance, most notably, the amiable lowland farmer Dandie Dinmont (the terrier breed will be named for him after Scott's novel). Dinmont provides an even warmer reception to young Vanbeest Brown than the Laird had given Guy Mannering two decades earlier. An austere, wealthy aunt of Miss Lucy Bertram dies in Edinburgh, having been persuaded by none other than Meg Merrilies that somehow her nephew Harry Bertram has survived and will soon return to claim his ancestral home. Guy Mannering, Lucy's host after the sudden death of her father, volunteers to go to Edinburgh for the reading of Lucy's aunt's will. The current sheriff of the shire, Mac-Morlan, gives Colonel Mannering letters of introduction to his predecessor as county sheriff, now a prominent lawyer in Edinburgh. We finally learn that lawyer's name: Paulus Pleydell, Esquire. Pleydell in turn gives Mannering letters of introduction to David Hume and a few other luminaries of the Edinburgh enlightenment. Pleydell also agrees to represent Dandie Dinmont in a property suit. All of the major players are now linked, in place and the plot gathers speed. The greatest family of the shire, the Hazelwoods, also come into play. The wealthy Laird of Hazelwood begins to think highly of the crooked lawyer Glossin. The laird's son, Charles, falls in love with Miss Lucy Bertram. It slowly seems likely that Vanbeest Brown is Lucy's missing older brother Harry Bertram, though this is first surmised only by lawyer Glossin and Harry's loyal old protectress, the gypsy Meg Merrilies. In a scuffle Brown/Bertram accidentally wounds Lucy's admirer Charles Hazelwood. All players shortly come together in a fiery ending so complicated that I had best leave its fun and denouements entirely to you. Themes embedded in GUY MANNERING occur in other Walter Scott works as well: gypsies, inter-generational tensions, a missing heir, the role of cities and lawyers in accelerating the sunset of the "auld ways" of feudal Scotland, the virtual impossibility of a poor untitled man marrying a rich titled girl -- or vice versa. Once encountered, some of the characters can never be forgotten, notably Meg Merrilies, Dandie Dinmont and taciturn Dominie Sampson with his repeated exclamation of "pro-di-gi-ous!" And we see old superstitions still holding sway a hundred or so country miles west of contrasting Edinburgh, with its immortal 50 year ascendancy in art, learning and science comparable only to eras of Periclean Athens and Medici Florence. -OOO- TAGS: walter scott, scotland, meg merrilies, dandie dinmont, edinburgh enlightenment =-===-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- III. Reviewed for epinions.com III. For epinions.com Title of this review: Two Horoscopes: Are Both Right? Pros Superstition, gypsies, British India, the Scottish Enlightenment, lawyers burying Scotland's colorful history through legal trickery. Cons A sometimes obtuse hero, Colonel Guy Mannering. A few too many coincidences. Lowland Scots dialect. The Bottom Line Dip into the Scottish Enlightenment when David Hume, Adam Smith and other giants walked about "auld reekie," smoky Edinburgh, Athens of the North. See class differences make lovers stumble. Full Review One stormy night around 1760 a first child, Henry, is born to Godfrey Bertram, Laird of Ellangowan in Southwestern Scotland. In jest a visiting young Englishman, Guy Mannering, casts Henry's horoscope. So does Meg Merrilies, a six-foot tall Gypsy woman whose tribe has been permitted to camp on Bertram lands for 300 years. Both horoscopes foresee three crises in Harry's life. Less than five years later young Harry witnesses a crew of smugglers murder a revenue officer. The men want to kill the witness but bow to Meg Merrilies's pleas and let him live. The smugglers spirit Harry off to Holland, rename him Vanbeest Brown, and a childless merchant, relative of one of the crew, raises Harry in that country, coming to love him like a son. A Dutch firm sends Bertram/Brown off to its outlet in India. Vanbeest Brown quits the failing firm and joins as a cadet a British regiment in desperate need of European manpower. Guy Mannering is his Colonel, a renowned soldier. Brown admires Guy's daughter Julia and his suit is approved by Julia's mother. But Colonel Mannering misinterprets what Brown is up to, believes he is trying to seduce his wife. In a duel, Mannering thinks in error that he has killed Brown. Mannering's wife dies. The Colonel and daughter Julia return to England, then travel to Scotland where he tries to buy the estate Ellangowan where he had once cast a horoscope. Vanbeest Brown, by now a captain, recovers from his wound and, unbeknownst to Mannering, returns to England with his regiment. He then sets out to find Julia, which he does in Scotland. Living with the Mannerings is teen age Lucy Bertram, whose father the old Laird of Ellangowan had recently been driven to poverty and early death by his estate manager, financial advisor, the subtly crooked lawyer, Gilbert Glossin. While strolling with Lucy and Lucy's admirer, Charles Hazelwood, heir to the richest properties in the county, Julia Mannering is suddenly confronted by Vanbeest Brown. Hazelwood and Brown struggle and Hazelwood is accidentally wounded. Brown goes into hiding, pursued by lawyer Glossin, now a magistrate and in possession of the Ellangowan properties. Rounding out the cast of main characters are Harry's tutor, an eccentric, ungainly Presbyterian minister named Dominie Abel Sampson, a lowland Scottish farmer, Dandie Dinmont -- who befriends Captain Brown much as the Laird of Ellangowan had done with Guy Mannering two decades earlier -- and Paulus Pleydell, Esquire, the onetime Sheriff of the county, now a thriving lawyer in Scottish Enlightenment Edinburgh. Seventeen years earlier Pleydell had investigated the murder which young Harry Bertram had witnessed. As clues pile up that Harry lives and has returned to the land and county of his birth, Paulus Pleydell also returns to the scene of the old murder to solve the crime. Gypsy Meg links up with Dominie Sampson (who repeatedly pronounces her a witch in ecclesiastical Latin). All the elements and characters come together in a fiery denouement involving smugglers, the attempted recapture of Brown/Bertram, the uniting of young lovers, re-establishment of Harry Bertram's identity and the return of a lost heir. Throw gypsies, superstition and local color into the stew and you have a recognizable Walter Scott production. As a longtime student of philosophy and history, I am particularly pleased by lawyer Pleydell's thoughtfulness in putting Colonel Mannering in direct face-to-face contact in Edinburgh with David Hume and other giants of the Edinburgh Enlightenment. For deep background on fifty years of Scottish urban greatness on a par with Pericles's Athens and Florence of the Medici, read James Buchan's 2003 book, CROWDED WITH GENIUS: THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT: EDINBURGH'S MOMENT OF THE MIND. As ever, Walter Scott's poetry and fiction prove as great an introduction as you will find to real history. -OOO- Recommended: Yes 11/19/2007 ===-=-==-= 11/30/2006; 11/18/2007 |