The best account of Stevenson’s methods of imaginative work is in the following sentences from a letter of his own to Mr. W. Craibe Angus of Glasgow:— “I am still ‘a slow study,’ and sit for a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in — and there your stuff is — good or bad.” The several elements above noted having been left to work for many years in his mind, it was in the autumn of 1892 that he was moved to “take the lid off and look in,” — under the influence, it would seem, of a special and overmastering wave of that feeling for the romance of Scottish scenery and character which was at all times so strong in him, and which his exile did so much to intensify. I quote again from his letter to Mr. Barrie on November 1st in that year:— “It is a singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have finished David Balfour, I have another book on the stocks, The Young Chevalier, which is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third, which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centre-piece a figure that I think you will appreciate — that of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my grand premier — or since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead.” Writing to me at the same date he makes the same announcement more briefly, with a list of the characters and an indication of the scene and date of the story. To Mr. Baxter he writes a month later, “I have a novel on the stocks to be called The Justice-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch; the grand premier is taken from Braxfield (O, by the by, send me Cockburn’s Memorials), and some of the story is, well, queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The Justice-Clerk to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone, far my best character.” From the last extract it appears that he had already at this date drafted some of the earlier chapters of the book. He also about the same time composed the dedication to his wife, who found it pinned to her bed-curtains one morning on awaking. It was always his habit to keep several books in progress at the same time, turning from one to another as the fancy took him, and finding relief in the change of labour; and for many months after the date of this letter, first illness, — then a voyage to Auckland, — then work on the Ebb-Tide, on a new tale called St. Ives, which was begun during an attack of influenza, and on his projected book of family history, — prevented his making any continuous progress with Weir. In August 1893 he says he has been recasting the beginning. A year later, still only the first four or five chapters had been drafted. Then, in the last weeks of his life, he attacked the task again, in a sudden heat of inspiration, and worked at it ardently and without interruption until the end came. No wonder if during these weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the spirit difficult to sustain. “How can I keep this pitch?” he is reported to have said after finishing one of the chapters; and all the world knows how that frail organism in fact betrayed him in mid effort. The greatness of the loss to his country’s letters can for the first time be fully measured from the foregoing pages.
There remains one more point to be mentioned, as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge himself. That these are not a whit exaggerated, in comparison with what is recorded of his historic prototype, Lord Braxfield, is certain. The locus classicus in regard to this personage is in Lord Cockburn’s Memorials of his Time. “Strong built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Illiterate and without any taste for any refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest. Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness.” Readers, nevertheless, who are at all acquainted with the social history of Scotland will hardly have failed to make the observation that Braxfield’s is an extreme case of eighteenth-century manners, as he himself was an eighteenth-century personage (he died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year); and that for the date in which the story is cast (1814) such manners are somewhat of an anachronism. During the generation contemporary with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars — or to put it another way, the generation that elapsed between the days when Scott roamed the country as a High School and University student and those when he settled in the fulness of fame and prosperity at Abbotsford, — or again (the allusions will appeal to readers of the admirable Galt) during the interval between the first and the last provostry of Bailie Pawkie in the borough of Gudetown, or between the earlier and the final ministrations of Mr. Balwhidder in the parish of Dalmailing, — during this period a great softening had taken place in Scottish manners generally, and in those of the Bar and Bench not least. “Since the death of Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield,” says Lockhart, writing about 1817, “the whole exterior of judicial deportment has been quite altered.” A similar criticism may probably hold good on the picture of border life contained in the chapter concerning the Four Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap, namely, that it rather suggests the ways of an earlier generation; nor have I any clue to the reasons which led Stevenson to choose this particular date, in the year preceding Waterloo, for a story which, in regard to some of its features at least, might seem more naturally placed some twenty-five or thirty years before.
If the reader seeks, further, to know whether the scenery of Hermiston can be identified with any one special place familiar to the writer’s early experience, the answer, I think, must be in the negative. Rather it is distilled from a number of different haunts and associations among the moorlands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and in a letter to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as the scene of his tragedy. And Mrs. Stevenson (his mother) tells me that she thinks he was inspired by recollections of a visit paid in boyhood to an uncle living at a remote farmhouse in that district called Overshiels, in the parish of Stow. But though he may have thought of the Lammermuirs in the first instance, we have already found him drawing his description of the kirk and manse from another haunt of his youth, namely, Glencorse in the Pentlands; while passages in chapters v. and viii. point explicitly to a third district, that is, Upper Tweeddale, with the country stretching thence towards the wells of Clyde. With this country also holiday rides and excursions from Peebles had made him familiar as a boy: and this seems certainly the most natural scene of the story, if only from its proximity to the proper home of the Elliotts, which of course is in the heart of the Border, especially Teviotdale and Ettrick. Some of the geographical names mentioned are clearly not meant to furnish literal indications. The Spango, for instance, is a water running, I believe, not into the Tweed but into the Nith, and Crossmichael as the name of a town is borrowed from Galloway.
But it is with the general and essential that the artist deals, and questions of strict historical perspective or local definition are beside the mark in considering his work. Nor will any reader expect, or be grateful for, comment in this place on matters which are more properly to the point — on the seizing and penetrating power of the author’s ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing pages, the wide range of character and emotion over which he sweeps with so assured a hand, his vital poetry of vision and magic of presentment. Surely no son of Scotland has died leaving with his last breath a worthier tribute to the land he loved.
S. C.
GLOSSARY
Ae, one.
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br /> Antinomian, one of a sect which holds that under the gospel dispensation the moral law is not obligatory.
Auld Hornie, the Devil.
Ballant, ballad.
Bauchles, brogues, old shoes.
Bauld, bold.
Bees in their bonnet, eccentricities.
Birling, whirling.
Black-a-vised, dark-complexioned.
Bonnet-laird, small landed proprietor, yeoman.
Bool, ball.
Brae, rising ground.
Brig, bridge.
Buff, play buff on, to make a fool of, to deceive.
Burn, stream.
Butt end, end of a cottage.
Byre, cow-house.
Ca’, drive.
Caller, fresh.
Canna, cannot.
Canny, careful, shrewd.
Cantie, cheerful.
Carline, old woman.
Cauld, cold.
Chalmer, chamber.
Claes, clothes.
Clamjamfry, crowd.
Clavers, idle talk.
Cock-laird. See Bonnet-laird.
Collieshangie, turmoil.
Crack, to converse.
Cuist, cast.
Cuddy, donkey.
Cutty, jade, also used playfully = brat.
Daft, mad, frolicsome.
Dander, to saunter.
Danders, cinders.
Daurna, dare not.
Deave, to deafen.
Denty, dainty.
Dirdum, vigour.
Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking.
Doer, law agent.
Dour, hard.
Drumlie, dark.
Dunting, knocking.
Dwaibly, infirm, rickety.
Dule-tree, the tree of lamentation, the hanging-tree.
Earrand, errand.
Ettercap, vixen.
Fechting, fighting.
Feck, quantity, portion.
Feckless, feeble, powerless.
Fell, strong and fiery.
Fey, unlike yourself, strange, as if urged on by fate, or as persons are observed to be in the hour of approaching death or disaster.
Fit, foot.
Flit, to depart.
Flyped, turned up, turned in-side out.
Forbye, in addition to.
Forgather, to fall in with.
Fower, four.
Fushionless, pithless, weak.
Fyle, to soil, to defile.
Fylement, obloquy, defilement.
Gaed, Went.
Gang, to go.
Gey an’, very.
Gigot, leg of mutton.
Girzie, lit. diminutive of Grizel, here a playful nickname.
Glaur, mud.
Glint, glance, sparkle.
Gloaming, twilight.
Glower, to scowl.
Gobbets, small lumps.
Gowden, golden.
Gowsty, gusty.
Grat, wept.
Grieve, land-steward.
Guddle, to catch fish with the hands by groping under the stones or banks.
Gumption, common sense, judgment.
Guid, good.
Gurley, stormy, surly.
Gyte, beside itself.
Hae, have, take.
Haddit, held.
Hale, whole.
Heels-ower-hurdie, heels over head.
Hinney, honey.
Hirstle, to bustle.
Hizzie, wench.
Howe, hollow.
Howl, hovel.
Hunkered, crouched.
Hypothec, lit. in Scots law the furnishings of a house, and formerly the produce and stock of a farm hypothecated by law to the landlord as security for rent; colloquially “the whole structure,” “the whole concern.”
Idleset, idleness.
Infeftment, a term in Scots law originally synonymous with investiture.
Jaud, jade.
Jeely-piece, a slice of bread and jelly.
Jennipers, juniper.
Jo, sweetheart.
Justifeed, executed, made the victim of justice.
Jyle, jail
Kebbuck, cheese.
Ken, to know.
Kenspeckle, conspicuous.
Kilted, tucked up.
Kyte, belly.
Laigh, low.
Laird, landed proprietor.
Lane, alone.
Lave, rest, remainder.
Linking, tripping.
Lown, lonely, still.
Lynn, cataract.
Lyon King of Arms, the chief of the Court of Heraldry in Scotland.
Macers, offiers of the supreme court. [Cf. Guy Mannering, last chapter.]
Maun, must.
Menseful, of good manners.
Mirk, dark.
Misbegowk, deception, disappointment.
Mools, mould, earth.
Muckle, much, great, big.
My lane, by myself.
Nowt, black cattle.
Palmering, walking infirmly.
Panel, in Scots law, the accused person in a criminal action, the prisoner.
Peel, fortified watch-tower.
Plew-stilts, plough-handles.
Policy, ornamental grounds of a country mansion.
Puddock, frog.
Quean, wench.
Rair, to roar.
Riff-raff, rabble.
Risping, grating.
Rout, rowt, to roar, to rant.
Rowth, abundance.
Rudas, haggard old woman.
Runt, an old cow past breeding; opprobriously, an old woman.
Sab, sob.
Sanguishes, sandwiches.
Sasine, in Scots law, the act of giving legal possession of feudal property, or, colloquially, the deed by which that possession is proved.
Sclamber, to scramble.
Sculduddery, impropriety, grossness.
Session, the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland.
Shauchling, shuffling, slipshod.
Shoo, to chase gently.
Siller, money.
Sinsyne, since then.
Skailing, dispersing.
Skelp, slap.
Skirling, screaming.
Skriegh-o’day, daybreak.
Snash, abuse.
Sneisty, supercilious.
Sooth, to hum.
Sough, sound, murmur.
Spec, The Speculative Society, a debating Society connected with Edingburgh University.
Speir, to ask.
Speldering, sprawling.
Splairge, to splash.
Spunk, spirit, fire.
Steik, to shut.
Stockfish, hard, savourless.
Suger-bool, suger-plum.
Syne, since, then.
Tawpie, a slow foolish slut, also used playfully = monkey.
Telling you, a good thing for you.
Thir, these.
Thrawn, cross-grained.
Toon, town.
Two-names, local soubriquets in addition to patronymic.
Tyke, dog.
Unchancy, unlucky.
Unco, strange, extraordinary, very.
Upsitten, impertinent.
Vennel, alley, lane. The Vennel, a narrow lane in Edingburgh, running out of the Grassmarket.
Vivers, victuals.
Wae, sad, unhappy.
Waling, choosing.
Warrandise, warranty.
Waur, worse.
Weird, destiny.
Whammle, to upset.
Whaup, curlew.
Whiles, sometimes.
Windlestae, crested dog’s-tail, grass.
Wund, wind.
Yin, one.
ST. IVES
BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND
First published posthumously in volume form in 1897 in America, following a serialisation in Pall Mall Magazine in 1896-97, St. Ives is an adventure story relating the exploits of the French soldier Capitaine Jacques St. Ives after he is captured by the Briti
sh during the Napoleonic wars and held at Edinburgh castle – including his romance with the beautiful Flora Gilchrist.
Like Stevenson’s other posthumous novel Weir of Hermiston, St. Ives is unfinished. Unlike the other novel, however, only six chapters of this more traditional adventure story remained to be written after Stevenson’s death. In 1898, these were provided by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. A writer of romances heavily influenced by Stevenson, Quiller-Couch based his conclusion on an outline provided by Belle Osbourne. Although the last of Stevenson’s fiction to be published, it was not the last to be written, Stevenson having laid the tale aside to begin work on Weir of Hermiston, which he was still working on when he died.
Flora’s house in the story is Swanston Cottage in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh. This was a real-life property, which had belonged to Stevenson’s parents when the author was a young man.
Cover of the first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I — A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT
CHAPTER II — A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS
CHAPTER III — MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY, AND GOGUELAT GOES OUT
CHAPTER IV — ST. IVES GETS A BUNDLE OF BANK NOTES
CHAPTER V — ST. IVES IS SHOWN A HOUSE
CHAPTER VI — THE ESCAPE
CHAPTER VII — SWANSTON COTTAGE
CHAPTER VIII — THE HEN-HOUSE
CHAPTER IX — THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE
CHAPTER X — THE DROVERS
CHAPTER XI — THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
CHAPTER XII — I FOLLOW A COVERED CART NEARLY TO MY DESTINATION
CHAPTER XIII — I MEET TWO OF MY COUNTRYMEN
CHAPTER XIV — TRAVELS OF THE COVERED CART
CHAPTER XV — THE ADVENTURE OF THE ATTORNEY’S CLERK
CHAPTER XVI — THE HOME-COMING OF MR. ROWLEY’S VISCOUNT
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 234