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Sir Walter Scott
THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR (1819) Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. For barnes and noble Reviewer's Rating of THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR * * * * * FIVE STARS Title of this review: This is the novel behind Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Walter Scott's THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR is based on a real, though variously reported incident in 17th Century Scottish history, the Dalrymple tragedy. In 1669 Janet Dalrymple, daughter of Viscount Stair, married David Dunbar. Earlier she had been secretly engaged to Lord Rutherford. Pressure from parents had forced her to back out of that commitment. On the wedding night the groom was found stabbed and the unwilling bride cowering insane in a bedroom fireplace. He recovered but would never discuss what had happened. Janet died within three weeks. This tale Walter Scott heard as a young boy from both a great aunt and his mother. The facts of the case tied the novelist's hands regarding the fate of Janet-derived Lucy Ashton: there could be no happy ending. In an 1828 essay the future Cardinal John Henry Newman said that, like HAMLET's Ophelia and like Romeo and Juliet, Lucy is "too good for the termination to which the plot leads. ... in these cases there is something inconsistent with correct beauty, and therefore unpoetical." In other words, God, the author of all beauty, could not have intended such an ending. This thought helps us understand the unrelenting religious dimension of THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR -- Lammermoor being an area of southeastern Scotland near "the German Sea." 17 year old Lucy Ashton, of a rigorously Presbyterian, politically Whig family, falls in love with young Edgar Ravenswood, last, impoverished but proud and vengeful representative of one of Scotland's oldest, noblest families. His father Alan has just died at novel's beginning, driven to a bitter death by the unabating and successful effort of Lucy's father, Sir William Ashton, to acquire almost all the Ravenswoods' estates, including its principal residence. Sir WIlliam is also a local magistrate and he upholds a petition by local Presbyterians to prevent an Episcopal priest's officiating at Cavalier Alan Ravenswood's funeral. Through a series of complex developments Edgar saves the life of Sir William and Lucy from an angry bull. The two young people fall in love and plight their troths. Sir WIlliam sees possible political advantage to a marriage but Lucy's arrogant, dominating, noble Douglas mother Lady Eleanor returns post-haste from London and circles near Queen Anne to break the engagement so that Lucy can marry a man of mother's choosing. A Presbyterian clergyman upholds the right of a father (obviously henpecked) to break a daughter's pledge to marry without his consent, citing NUMBERS XXX: 2-5. In a dramatic scene on the day Lucy reluctantly signs her marriage papers, Edgar Ravenswood breaks in and demands to know if she wants him to renounce his previous rights. She is silent but obeys her mother and father. Referring to the Ashtons' use of Scripture, Edgar erupts to Lucy: "And is this all? ... Are you willing to barter sworn faith, the exercise of free-will, and the feelings of mutual affection, to this wretched hypocritical sophistry?" (Vol. III. Ch. 33) Lucy weds her mother's choice and a few days later on their bridal night stabs him. Challenged to duels by both groom and Lucy's brother, Colonel Ashton, Edgar races from his family's last property, Wolfscrag Tower high above the sea, to meet Colonel Ashton. He ignores a dangerous sea driven by the east wind to narrow the always small space left below a cliff for safe passage and rides his horse into deep quicksand. Neither man nor horse is recovered. This is also a Gothic novel with omens piled upon omens, dire prophecies just daring free-will not to see them fulfilled, politics of Scotland just before its dissolution into the 1707 United Kingdom. And, of course, this novel produced the most famous of the 85 operas derived from Sir Walter Scott, Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. This is Walter Scott at his best. Not to be overlooked are amusing, eccentric lower-order Scots, including witch women, and their very different slants on the doings of the great ones of the land -OOO- Also Recommended: Gaetano Donizetti:LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Metropolitan Opera 11/13/1982-Deutschegrammophon DVD with Joan Sutherland. Adam Mickiewicz: PAN TADEUSZ. William Shakespeare:ROMEO AND JULIET, HAMLET. II. For AMAZON Reviewer's Rating of THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR: ***** FIVE STARS Title of this review: Read Scott. Then See Donizetti. Go From THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR to LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Librettists and composers were quick to note how readily the plots and vivid scenes of the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott lent themselves to reinterpretation as operas. Indeed since 1811 there have been at least 85 operas or musical dramas based on Scott. Only Shakespeare has inspired more. By far the best known and most frequently heard today is Gaetano Donizetti's 1835 LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Five other composers also turned Scott's 1819 THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR into song. January 25 and 26, 2007 Asheville Lyric Opera and The Opera Company of North Carolina will stage LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR (see http://ashevillelyric.org/). I am encouraging friends and students of my coming introductory course on Sir Walter Scott to be at Diana Wortham Theatre in the heart of Asheville for this production. But first they should read the novel. THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR is one of Walter Scott's five or six best romances, and by common accord his most tightly woven and scripted. It is based on real history, a tragedy whose otherwise depressingly sad ending Sir Walter felt obliged to respect. But that two innocent lovers, Edgar Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton, met such unmerited doom cried out to the young future Cardinal John Henry Newman almost as an affront to the justice of God. Newman felt the same way about Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet's Ophelia. The opera focuses on the love story and for dramatic purposes ignores, compresses or changes anything else in Scott's novel that gives political or historical background, context or motivation. The background is this in the earliest Scott editions (later shifted a few years ahead in time; my references below are to the first edition). Anne Stuart has been on the thrones of Scotland and England since 1702 and will soon, after 1707, be Queen of the brand new United Kingdom in which Scotland will cease to be an independent nation. Many Scots were scheming that on her anticipated death without children, her nephew James Francis Edward Stuart (The Old Pretender) would succeed to the throne. Scott's novel is set in Lammermoor, in the southeast of Scotland. Wolfscrag, a lonely tower above "the German Sea" is the last remaining property of the once powerful, ancient noble family of Ravenswood. Not many miles away is its old castle and intervening square miles of farms and woods now in the hands of an anti-Royalist upstart Sir William Ashton, a political trimmer and lawyer who has legally but unfairly dispossessed Sir Alan Ravenswood. A convinced Presbyterian, Sir William as local magistrate also approved efforts to break up the illegal Episcopalian burial service for the broken hearted Lord of Ravenswood. The son, Edgar Ravenswood, vows revenge but falls in love with Lucy Ashton, Sir William's daughter. Both Edgar and Sir William attempt a reconciliation. Lucy's mother Eleanor, a haughty Douglas, is off visiting London and friends of Queen Anne. In that permissive atmosphere Edgar and Lucy secretly promise each other by tokens and in writing to be true to each other and to marry when they can. Eleanor, catching wind of developments, rushes home and forces Lucy to marry an amiable rich heir of Eleanor's choosing. Odds being strong that many readers of this review have not yet read THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, I will speak no more of the small steps over the intervening year that lead almost inevitably to Lucy's stabbing her unwanted husband on their coerced wedding night and her collapse into madness -- all forcefully staged by Donizetti. Religion, politics and superstition also play huge roles in this novel (rigorously ignored in the opera). Not for nothing do some scholars call Sir Walter Scott father not just of the historical novel but of the political novel as well. And THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR shows how great men and women of Scotland heartlessly move Edgar Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton across a chessboard of high politics. As for religion, Lady Eleanor's trump card against her daughter's pledge to Edgar is a text from NUMBERS XXX: 2 -5 forbidding a daughter to honor a pledge unless her father consents (which the henpecked Sir William would like to do but dares not in opposition to his consort). This novel is intensely Scottish and Sir Walter says: "this would not be a Scottish story, unless it manifested a tinge of Scottish superstition" (Vol. II. Ch. 9). There are at least four witches actively in play, several legends and dire prophecies. There are signs and omens. And in the person of impoverished Edgar's steward, Caleb Balderstone, Scott has created one of his four or five greatest comic figures. Caleb lies, bluffs and pretends to the world that his young master is wealthy, powerful and revered. Caleb pretends, for instance, toward novel's end, that Wolfscrag is burning down, so that he can later explain the poverty-induced absence of portraits, furniture and tapestry. Rebuked by his usually indulgent master, Caleb retorts in broad lowland Scots: "Fie for shame, your honour! ... it fits an auld carle like me weel eneugh to tell lees for the credit of the family, but it wadna beseem the like o' your honour's sell" (Vol. II. Ch.12). Read the novel. Then listen to the Deutschegrammophon DVD of Joan Sutherland singing Lucia at the Met on November 13, 1982. Time permitting, come to Western North Carolina in January 2008 and watch it all come together live at Asheville Civic Opera. It does not get any better than this: Scott plus Donizetti. 08/21/2007 -OOO- =-=-=-==-==-=-=-= III. For epinions TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: "When the diamonds are gone, what signifies the casket?" Aug 22 '07 Reviewer's rating of THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR * * * * * FIVE STARS Pros A tragedy avoidable at every step. Humor, irony, Scottish scenery, history, politics and social castes. Cons Much broad lowland Scots language. Good notes needed: in the recommended Penguin Classics edition. The Bottom Line Read this book as perfect preparation for enjoying Donizetti's opera, LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR. Understand how true one on one love crumbles before pressures of politics, religion, culture and superstition. Full Review LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Gaetano Donizetti's 1835 masterpiece, is an operatic interpretation of Sir Walter Scott's novel of 1819, THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. The tightly wound opera focuses like a laser on one and only one aspect of the tragic novel: the love of Edgardo and Lucia. Nothing else matters: not history, not politics, not religion, not even Scotland. By contrast Walter Scott's parent romance has background, context and a much larger supporting cast. It also has character analysis, superstition, a dose of the Gothic, social analysis and humor -- especially the unforgettable steward Caleb Balderstone who cannot tell too many lies for the honor of his noble but impoverished master. Any book review is selective. For all other many and rich dimensions, please read the novel. To help you decide whether you even want to read THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, I mainly showcase some of the females who move through a remarkable tale based on a real life tragedy. Donizetti is right: this is the love story of young Edgar Ravenswood and teen-age Lucy Ashton. But how do they come to be the persons they are? What outside political, cultural, superstitious and family pressures make their love impossible and drive Lucy to attempt to murder her unwanted husband, Lord Bucklaw, and then plunge deeply into insanity and early death? Lucy's father, Sir William Ashton, is a thoroughly unattractive political climber, trimmer, opportunist, albeit staunchly reliable Presbyterian and Whig. Through legal skills he has ruined financially Edgar's father, Lord Alan Ravenswood. Almost all the acres and buildings of one of Scotland's oldest, most blue-blooded families are no longer Ravenswood's but Ashton's. Left to Lord Alan is only Wolfscrag a ruined tower high above "the German sea" in Southeastern Scotland's Lammermoor. There Sir Alan dies of a broken heart. His young son gives him the Episcopal burial service he requested. But Sir William allows Presbyterian protesters to try to break it up. This causes Edgar to vow vengeance. But during a chance encounter Edgar's sharpshooting brings down an enraged Highland bull that is charging Sir William and Lucy. This causes Sir William to wish to repay Edgar (there are also political considerations, as the star of the Marquis of A__ is rising and he is kinsman and patron of Edgar Ravenswood). Ashton therefore does nothing to nip in the bud the romance of Lucy and Edgar. Their possible marriage is opposed, once he learns of it, by the Marquis on political grounds: for Sir William's star is falling. No rising young kinsman of the Marquis should marry a loser's daughter. Meet also the hardest hearted believable mother in English literature: Lady Eleanor Ashton. The hell of it is that Lady Ashton may remind some of us of a self-righteous control freak we have met before. More on her anon. This should be enough plot for you to make the key market decision: whether to read the book. But there is more to THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR than plot. There are also atmospherics. As for the time, it is not many months before the 1707 creation of the United Kingdom, which destroys the international independence of Scotland. Enter the women.
Lucy Ashton is 17 when the story begins, and dies at 18 just a year later. She is shy, lives in her imagination and her romantic readings, though where she finds such books in her Presbyterian household is not explained. She loves her father and younger brother Henry who are almost the only people kind to her. Lucy's mother, Lady Eleanor, sees her as weak and malleable, does not think much of her abilities and lavishes all her love and career planning on older son Colonel Sholto Ashton. The young Master of Ravenswood, Edgar, the Lady despises as a Tory, an Episcopalian and a hotheaded, impoverished second-rater. Lady Eleanor is a Douglas, a leading member of Scotland's mightiest clan. As the Marquis reminds her, however, she is only from a cadet line of Douglases and the main line has often intermarried with the Ravenswoods, whose lineage strongly trumps hers, no matter how poor they now are. Nonetheless, Eleanor treats her husband as the commoner he is, while enjoying the more than ample wealth derived from his lawyering and politicking. She is physically absent from Lammermoor for the first 2/3 of the novel, initially in nearby Edinburgh, then in London visiting aristocratic friends close to Queen Anne. Even so, she casts a long shadow over the budding romance taking place back in Scotland under her roof. Knowing how her mother will react, Lucy insists that Edgar keep their engagement secret, although it is subscribed in writing and sealed by exchange of the traditional broken coin. The moment the Lady gets wind, however, that her daughter Lucy is spending too much unchaperoned time with Edgar Ravenswood, she tears home, at the end literally racing for her front gate against the mounted entourage of the Marquis who is about to have a political lunch with Sir WIlliam. Lady Ashton is the coldest, most amoral religiously self-righteous villainess I have read about anywhere. She destroys her daughter, makes her ill, drives her to insanity and attempted murder by forcing her to renounce Edgar and marry a politically correct choice of her own -- a rakish suddenly rich heir, the young Lord of Bucklaw, who is a sometime friend of Edgar Ravenswood. And never does Lady Eleanor shed one tear or utter one word of regret until death in high old age. There are at least four other arresting women in THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. All are or are thought to be witches. One is later burned at the stake for her role in ruining the health and causing the doom of Lucy Ashton. Most sympathetic of the four is Old Alice. Alice came decades earlier from England, thought to be of higher birth than her status as retired servant would suggest. She is the oldest surviving dependent of the Ravenswoods still living on the old domains. She raises bees and gathers herbs from her dilapidated cottage provided by the new laird, Sir William. She knows all the history, curses and omens associated with the Ravenswoods. Befriended by Lucy, old Alice nonetheless warns Edgar that if he courts Lucy, they will both die for it. At the hour of her death, Alice's wraith appears to Edgar at a ruined fountain where many horrible things have happened to the Ravenswoods down the centuries. Alice's corpse is then laid out by three old women of the neighborhood. All are regarded as witches at a time when witches were still being executed in Scotland. They are Ailsie Gourlay, Annie Winnie and an unnamed "paralytic hag" in her 80s. As they assemble to "streight" Alice's corpse, they make Edgar, who had discovered the body just after seeing the wraith, imagine "the meeting betwixt MacBeth and the witches on the blasted heath of Forres" (Vol. II, Ch. 9). After Lucy's parents had forbidden a match with the young Master of Ravenswood, he was sent abroad for a year on a secret mission for the now triumphant Marquis. Lucy's health steadily declines and her mother actually hires the witch Ailsie Gourlay as her companion and guard. Ailsie poisons Lucy's imagination with grisly stories, especially legends of the Ravenswoods. She induces Lucy to enquire superstitiously into her future. All this plunges the far from robust girl into profound melancholy. Her usually hen-pecked father perceives this cause and effect and rallies enough strength to eject Ailsie from the household, over his wife's objections. Soon after Ailsie's expulsion, Lucy tells her parents that she knows that they along with heaven and hell had set themselves against her union with Ravenswood. But she and he have a contract. If and only if Ravenswood were to consent to her breaking that contract, would she be ruled by mother and father and marry Frank Hayston of Bucklaw. She would not care one bit what happened to her body if she could not have her true love, asserting, "When the diamonds are gone, what signifies the casket?" (Vol. III, Ch. 4) Now that has an ominous ring! Four days before her scheduled wedding, the Master of Ravenswood appears at his former home, now the castle of the Ashtons, during the signing of nuptial documents. He demands to know if Lucy wants him to renounce their pledge. "It was my mother," she says (Vol. III, Ch. 6). On her wedding night, she stabs her husband, Bucklaw, and is found covered with blood, insane, cowering and gibbering in a bedroom fireplace. Her last words before lapsing into unconsciousness and sinking rapidly towards death: "So, you have ta'en up your bonnie bridegroom" (Vol. III, Ch. 7). The three village witches had made their second appearance together on the margins of the wedding feast of Lucy, where Ailsie forecast that Lucy would be the next to die. The three last appear for the less lavish ceremonies and food offerings mandatory at Lucy's burial in an unmarked grave, where they cackle their delight at how the mighty Ashtons have been brought low. -OOO- Recommended: Yes ===-=-=-=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/sirws_lammermoor.html |