THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL
(1822)
by Sir Walter Scott Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com REVIEWER: T. Patrick Killough (patrick@thekilloughs.com), preparing to teach Sir Walter Scott, November 21, 2006, TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: The Curious Character of England's King James I REVIEWER'S RATING OF THE NOVEL: * * * * FOUR STARS A few days ago I watched 'Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower' on TV's HISTORY CHANNEL. Earlier I had finished a first reading of Sir Walter Scott's 1822 novel, THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. In both presentations what I most enjoyed was the portrayal of King James (the Sixth of Scotland, the First of England). That monarch was smart, a polymath, shy, with bad legs. He spoke broad lowland Scots and proved that rare Stuart, one who stayed on his throne and died in bed. It is in Chapter Five that we first see James Stuart in his palace at Whitehall through the eyes of his favorite goldsmith, merchant and financier George Heriot. The King was surrounded by disordered piles and books, an image of his Royal mind. Easily frightened and detesting arms, he wore a quilted, dagger-proof doublet. He was 'a lover of negotiations, in which he was always outwitted.' In the words of the onetime French ambassaor, the Duc de Sully, James was 'the wisest fool in Christendom.' Elsewhere we see King James I indulging in his love of nicknames, 'Steenie' for his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham,' Baby Charles' for the future King Charles I, 'Glenvarlochides' given to young Lord Nigel of Glenvarloch, nominal hero of the tale. For many readers it may be easier and more profitable to read THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL as history. The book teaches much of the art of clock making, barbershop babble, Scots dialect, the age's obsession with social rank, with dress, details of armor, beliefs and attitudes. There is mention of the Scottish custom of the penny-wedding. There are several deliciously odd characters. The tale ends with the King's knighting Richie Moniplies, Nigel's former servant, now husband of a rich merchant's daughter. James I's physical limitations are such that, aiming a light tap at a shoulder, he almost stuck his sword into Sir Richard's eye. Another ancient knight then guided the King's uncertain arm as his sword touched Richie's other shoulder. The novel ends with the King's invitation: 'And my lords and lieges, let us all to our dinner, for the cock-a-leekie is cooling.' (Ch 37) -OOO- Also recommended: Sir Walter Scott, THE LADY OF THE LAKE, WAVERLEY, ROB ROY. Jerome MITCHELL. THE WALTER SCOTT OPERAS, Moray McLAREN. SIR WALTER SCOTT: THE MAN AND PATRIOT. Black Mountain 12/06/2006 ==-=-=-= II. Reviewed for amazon.com Reviewer's rating of THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL: * * * * FOUR STARS Title of this review: 1620s London, when cash was short and misers held their sway, May 29, 2007 Sir Walter Scott's 1822 novel THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL is vaguely set in London around 1623, certainly some time after Shakespeare's death in 1616 and before James I passed on in 1625. Nigel Olifaunt, Lord Glenvarloch, the book's nominal hero, is an impoverished young Scottish nobleman visiting the Capital after two years study in Leyden. His goal is to recover money owed his recently deceased father by a miserly King James Stuart, Sixth of Scotland, First of England. With that money, he will pay off a mortgage on his ancestral castle. But the Prince of Wales and his older mentor the Duke of Buckingham want Nigel's estate for themselves. And they make Nigel's life ruinous and miserable, chapter after chapter. This complex story revolves around greed for land, jewelry, artworks and the wiles used to take them from their owners. The novel, Scott tells us, is a literary tribute to the memory of George Heriot, Scottish goldsmith and money-lender, who served King James first in Scotland and then in London. Dying without family, Heriot established a foundation for orphans in Edinburgh. Scott teased out early signs of his kindness to others in this novel. Other striking features of THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL include the young Lord Nigel's successful pursuit by the beauteous Margret Ramsay, perky commoner daughter of the king's clockmaker, descriptions of the Thames, London fogs, the theater, a gaming establishment and the loose morals and brilliant wit of the Royal Court. As in 1822 readers in 2007, however, will zero in on the quirks and dithering of the Royal James, "the wisest fool in Christendom." Scott portrays a "broad Lowlands" speaking monarch, who was timid, afraid of the sight of blood, increasingly in the hands of his cunning young heir, the future Charles I (nicknamed by his father "baby Charles") and the philandering George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, given the nickname "Steenie." Cardinal John Henry Newman, who thought highly of Scott the writer, quoted more than once a passage toward the end of the novel, when Prince Charles and Buckingham on behalf of the Privy Council take to task for seducing and lying to a noble woman of Genoa a 25 year old Scottish nobleman, Malcolm Dalgarno. King James laments to goldsmith George Heriot: "Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear
Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie
lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence!" (Ch. 32).
We read Sir Walter Scott for his 27 historical novels, a half dozen grand narrative poems and much else besides. But how does the ordinary reader select among very uneven editions of Scott's works? There are old sets of Waverley novels in small print inherited from a grandfather's library. Some are lavishly illustrated. Some have much needed glossaries of Walter Scott's Lowland Scots tongue. Others are typo-rich recent reproductions from on-line sources. A very few are contemporary critical editions with notes by experts in Edinburgh or Oxford. In old age a no longer anonymous Walter Scott issued a Magnum Opus edition of earlier works, adding fascinating notes and comments on the origins of the first editions. It is almost impossible for the average reader to find within the covers of any one issue of a Scott novel or poem everything he or she needs. Fortunately for us, Amazon.com offers many choices. How does this apply to readers deciding what edition to buy of THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL? Take myself. Eight months ago I first read Scott's THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. Mine was an undated Melrose Edition in smallish print from +/- 1890. I had to cut open the pages. I have now finished a second reading of NIGEL, in an undated but recent Aegypan Press paperback reprint (from Project Guggenheim, I think). Both editions have glossaries of the heady doses of Scots dialect scattered through the novel. The two glossaries are, however, slightly different in content and the later edition's list of Scots words is in BIG PRINT, hurrah! The Melrose edition has black and white illustrations but lacks important introductory essays by Scott provided by Aegypan. And neither is a modern critical edition. No one claims that THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL is one of Scott's ten greatest novels. But it stuck in the memory of Scott-admirer, the future Cardinal John Henry Newman in THE GRAMMAR OF ASSENT and elsewhere. No matter what edition you can lay your hands on, NIGEL is worth reading. It has little physical action but lays out a series of scenes in a pageant of what London was like when hordes of Scotsmen "came up to the Capital" from north of the River Tweed. James I was an uncharacteristically peaceable Stuart King, as he himself lovingly notes in the novel. Thus his assuming the crown of England when his cousin Elizabeth died in 1603 was a plus for England's peace abroad. -OOO- Your tags: walter sir scott, king james vi and i, george heriot, duke of buckingham =-==-=-=-=-=-= III. Reviewed for epinions.com Reviewer's rating of THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL: * * * * FOUR STARS Title of this review: "We are not worst at once, the course of evil begins so slowly." May 29 '07 Pros A naive young man comes of age through temptation and undeserved bad luck. Cons Much broad lowland Scots, Latin and Greek, none translated. Many scenes. Little action. The Bottom Line Breathe in 1620s London in the aftermath of the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot and death of Shakespeare. Meet in the flesh King James I, "the wisest fool in Christendom." The Nigel in Walter Scott's novel of 1822, THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL, is Nigel Olifaunt or young Lord Glenvarloch. He had rushed home to Scotland from two years studying in Holland only to find his father dead, ancestral wealth nearly gone and his castle mortgaged. Nigel, a wholesome, undaring but hot-headed Puritan in morals, accompanied by a very large serving man named Richie Moniplies, travels to bewitching 1620s London. He petitions King James I to repay a loan granted by Nigel's father at a time when the King had been hard pressed in Scotland. Alas, the King's favorite, George Duke of Buckingham and the King's son Prince Charles, covet Castle Glenvarloch for its hunting grounds. Playing on Nigel's weaknesses, the pair systematically but slyly turns the King and court against Nigel. But his cause is taken up by the King's goldsmith and chief moneylender, George Heriot, and by Heriot's god-daughter, a beautiful young commoner Margret Ramsay, whose absent-minded father makes clocks for the King and court. There is also a complicated, indeed fantastic, sub-plot involving Hermione a mysterious, immensely wealthy Genoese woman secretly related to Nigel through her Scottish mother. She had been tricked into a pretended marriage with young Malcolm Dalgarno, a rich Scottish favorite of Prince Charles and Buckingham. Dalgarno had been Buckingham's principal agent in tempting Malcolm into a life of cautious, ungentlemanly gambling which had turned the King against him. The Lady Hermione, too, will have justice from the King. There is a score or more of other colorful characters in NIGEL: a miser, a law student, more than one highwayman, courtiers, noble ladies of easy virtue, a pair of apprentice clock-makers, a wily scrivener in the employ of Dalgarno, Dalgarno's gypsy page Lutin -- and others. There is also a famous gambling den for the rich, with more card and dice games than you will ever remember. And I must not forget "Alsatia," the neighborhood around Whitefriars still enjoying immunity from most demands of the law. Nigel is forced to take refuge there for drawing his sword against Lord Dalgarno in the Park of Saint James. To enjoy more, and enjoy you will, open the pages of THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. It is a rollicking introduction to 1620s London when James I is securely on the throne -- that rare Stuart King, a man of peace. He is also cowardly, a physical wreck, easily swayed by favorites and full of his own learning and wisdom. He quizzes Nigel in Latin about the King's literary foes in the Netherlands. He drops Greek tags and Latin poets into almost every conversation. He prides himself on his mastery of Hebrew. Yet he never speaks any form of English other than "Broad Lowland" Scots. Keep your glossary handy! And, by the way, he loves to dine on cock-a-leekie. But sunny Walter Scott, unlike some modern or more cynical historical revisionists, also detects a less silly, less pitiable dimension to this only son of Mary Queen of Scots, a kinder, more playfully adult side to the King. Before our eyes, limping, scratching, squinting, fidgeting --for all that-- Royal James shows affection for, among others, a deaf, malicious social misfit like impoverished, crippled Sir Mungo Malagrowther. They had been schoolboys together in the stern Calvinistic classrooms of George Buchanan and Patrick Young. Neither teacher was permitted to lay a hand on a misbehaving or underperforming young King. But Young invoked ancient practice and whaled away at Mungo as James's "whipping boy." The King also liked young people and presided in high spirits at the wedding of Nigel and Margret. Indeed he spent weeks in genealogical and heraldic research to prove that Margret was of high enough noble ancestry to marry the young Lord worthily. The King fancied himself quite an investigator of facts and crimes, dating back at least to the 1605 Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes. Walter Scott brings to life in NIGEL a London stage still dominated by Ben Jonson and by Burbage's playing of King Richard III. We smell the fog and enter the unhealthy dwellings along the Thames. We linger in a high-class gambling den and restaurant and other long vanished places of renown. We see the early cunning and stubbornness of the future Charles I which was to lead to his beheading in 1649. We empathize with Englishmen resentful of the generally crude, impoverished Scottish hangers-on of England's first Scottish King. We taste the ample meals and vicariously down vast portions of various drinks. We are at table with pipe smokers who defy the King's thunderings against tobacco. And on and on. There are other, more modern takes, on the sexual and other proclivities of James I. But enjoy Walter Scott's more traditional, less harsh version for starters. In a preface to a late edition of NIGEL, Walter Scott says that good Romance is like the tension in a landscape where mountains meet the plain. In a romantic historical novel old barbarous ways crash against more modern, learned ways of life and the resulting turbulence gives a credible basis for introducing into the plot practices which under normal circumstances might seem implausible. But some of them really happened, Sir Walter assures us. In sum, THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL is the coming-of-age story of a young but old-fashioned, sheltered Puritan man who blundered into one temptation after another but luckily, barely and only with the help of loving friends fought his way clear. "We are not worst at once -- the course of
evil
Begins so slowly, and from such slight source, An infant's hand might stem its breach with clay, But let the stream get deeper, and philosophy -- Aye, and religion too -- shall strive in vain To turn the headlong torrent" (Ch. 35, Epigraph). Recommended: Yes -OOO- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Note in preparation for August 2007 talk in Pittsburgh on SIR WALTER SCOTT AND JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. Sheridan Gilley, NEWMAN AND HIS AGE, 1990, p. 323 f, cites NEWMAN's APOLOGIA rebutting the charge by Charles Kingsley that Newman justifies lying. Newman wrote: "So we have confessedly come round to this, preaching without practising; the common theme of satirists from Juvenal to Walter Scott! 'I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him,' says King James of the reprobate Dalgarno; 'O Geordie, jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.'" The full passage in context in Chapter 32 in THE PERILS OF NIGEL is given at http://www.online-literature.com/walter_scott/fortunes-of-nigel/32/ he
inquired "whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to do the Lady Hermione justice." "Troth, man, I have small doubt that he will," quoth the king; "I gave him the schedule of her worldly substance, which you delivered to us in the council, and we allowed him half-an-hour to chew the cud upon that. It is rare reading for bringing him to reason. I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him; and if he can resist doing what _they_ desire him--why, I wish he would teach _me_ the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence!" "I am afraid," said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, "I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Black Mountain, 05/29/2007 |