CHAPTER VI
ON SCOTCH GENTILITY-NONSENSE--CHARLIE O'ER THE WATERISM
Of the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is foundedon the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott wasthe zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay torepresent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded,unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that everexisted upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunateenough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes,viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it hereuntil it made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.
The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a dirty,cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His son, CharlesI., was a tyrant, exceedingly cruel and revengeful, but weak anddastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be hanged in London, who was nothis subject, because he had heard that the unfortunate creature had oncebit his own glove at Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and hepermitted his own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies,though the only crime of Strafford was that he had barked furiously atthose enemies, and had worried two or three of them when Charles shouted,'Fetch 'em!' He was a bitter, but yet a despicable, enemy, and thecoldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to beable some time or other to hang his enemies, he was always ready to curryfavour with them, more especially if he could do so at the expense of hisfriends. He was the haughtiest yet meanest of mankind. He once caned ayoung nobleman for appearing before him in the drawing-room not dressedexactly according to the court etiquette; yet he condescended to flatterand compliment him who, from principle, was his bitterest enemy--namely,Harrison, when the Republican colonel was conducting him as a prisoner toLondon. His bad faith was notorious; it was from abhorrence of the firstpublic instance which he gave of his bad faith--his breaking his word tothe Infanta of Spain, that the poor Hiberno-Spainard bit his glove atCadiz; and it was his notorious bad faith which eventually cost him hishead; for the Republicans would gladly have spared him, provided theycould have put the slightest confidence in any promise, however solemn,which he might have made to them. Of them it would be difficult to saywhether they most hated or despised him. Religion he had none. One dayhe favoured Popery; the next, on hearing certain clamours of the people,he sent his wife's domestics back packing to France, because they werePapists. Papists, however, should make him a saint, for he was certainlythe cause of the taking of Rochelle.
His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the school ofadversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one--takecare of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which islikely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted upto as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especialcare not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed,till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing,and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, buttook care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds, preferring,to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the secret pensioner ofLouis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour andinterests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight in playingthe part of a tyrant himself; but he never checked tyranny in others,save in one instance. He permitted beastly butchers to commitunmentionable horrors on the feeble, unarmed, and disunited Covenantersof Scotland, but checked them when they would fain have endeavoured toplay the same game on the numerous, united, dogged, and warlikeIndependents of England. To show his filial piety, he bade the hangmandishonour the corpses of some of his father's judges, before whom, whenalive, he ran like a screaming hare; but permitted those who had losttheir all in supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want.He would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsomeembrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun, butwould refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist soldier.He was the personification of selfishness; and as he loved and cared forno one, so did no one love or care for him. So little had he gained therespect or affection of those who surrounded him, that after his body hadundergone an after-death examination, parts of it were thrown down thesinks of the palace, to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducksof Westminster.
His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, butsufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but, upon the whole, hewas a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly; had he not been acoward he would never have lost his throne. There were plenty of loversof tyranny in England who would have stood by him, provided he would havestood by them, and would, though not Papists, have encouraged him in hisattempt to bring back England beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps wouldeventually have become Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cryagainst him, and his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading thecountry, he forsook his friends--of whom he had a host, but for whom hecared little--left his throne, for which he cared a great deal, andPopery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, andescaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he repairedto Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army of Papistswhom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a most lamentablecondition at the time when, by showing a little courage, he might haveenabled them to conquer. This worthy, in his last will, bequeathed hisheart to England, his right arm to Scotland, and his bowels to Ireland.What the English and Scotch said to their respective bequests is notknown, but it is certain that an old Irish priest, supposed to have beena great-grand-uncle of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing ofthe bequest to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and, having beenbrought up at 'Paris and Salamanca,' expressed his indignation in thefollowing strain: 'Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del olorde tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!'
His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in England, wascarried in his infancy to France, where he was brought up in thestrictest principles of Popery, which principles, however, did notprevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent anyone?) a worthless andprofligate scoundrel. There are some doubts as to the reality of hisbeing a son of James, which doubts are probably unfounded, the grandproof of his legitimacy being the thorough baseness of his character. Itwas said of his father that he could speak well, and it may be said ofhim that he could write well--the only thing he could do which was worthdoing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write.He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to adegree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimitydiscouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in theyear 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted byMar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized withpanic, retreated to France, leaving his friends to shift for themselvesas they best could. He died a pensioner of the Pope.
The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in latter years hasbeen said and written, was a worthless, ignorant youth, and a profligateand illiterate old man. When young, the best that can be said of him isthat he had occasionally springs of courage, invariably at the wrong timeand place, which merely served to lead his friends into inextricabledifficulties. When old, he was loathsome and contemptible to both friendand foe. His wife loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; shedid not pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible--he had made itso vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the Filthy,but the coarsest grooms. Doctor King, the warmest and almost lastadherent of his family, said that there was not a vice or crime of whichhe was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned to harm him even when intheir power. In the year 1745 he came down from the Highlands ofScotland, which had long been a focus of rebellion. He was attended bycertain clans of the Highlands--desperadoes used to freebootery fromtheir infancy, an
d consequently to the use of arms, and possessed of acertain species of discipline. With these he defeated at Prestonpans abody of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants andartizans, levied about a month before, without discipline or confidencein each other, and who were miserably massacred by the Highland army. Hesubsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of regular soldiers, andpenetrated as far as Derby, from which place he retreated on learningthat regular forces, which had been hastily recalled from Flanders, werecoming against him, with the Duke of Cumberland at their head. He waspursued, and his rear-guard overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of theDuke at Clifton, from which place the rebels retreated in great confusionacross the Eden into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highlandreels and strathspeys on the bank of the river for joy at their escape,whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, wereperishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to followthem. They themselves passed over by eighties and by hundreds,arm-in-arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man, but they leftthe poor paramours to shift for themselves; nor did any of these cannypeople, after passing the stream, dash back to rescue a single femalelife--no, they were too well employed upon the bank in dancingstrathspeys to the tune of 'Charlie o'er the water.' It was, indeed,Charlie o'er the water, and canny Highlanders o'er the water, but wherewere the poor prostitutes meantime? _In the water_.
The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by theBattle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o'er thewater, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; therewere the clans cut to pieces--at least, those who could be brought to thecharge--and there fell Giles Mac Bean, or, as he was called in Gaelic,Giliosa Mac Beathan, a kind of giant, six feet four inches and a quarterhigh, 'than whom,' as his wife said in a coronach she made upon him, 'noman who stood at Cuiloitr was taller'--Giles Mac Bean, the Major of theclan Cattan, a great drinker, a great fisher, a great shooter, and thechampion of the Highland host.
The last of the Stuarts was a cardinal.
Such were the Stuarts, such their miserable history. They were dead andburied, in every sense of the word, until Scott resuscitatedthem--how?--by the power of fine writing, and by calling to his aid thatstrange divinity, gentility. He wrote splendid novels about the Stuarts,in which he represents them as unlike what they really were, as thegraceful and beautiful papillon is unlike the hideous and filthy worm.In a word, he made them genteel, and that was enough to give themparamount sway over the minds of the British people. The public becameStuart-mad, and everybody, especially the women, said: 'What a pity itwas that we hadn't a Stuart to govern.' All parties, Whig, Tory, orRadical, became Jacobite at heart, and admirers of absolute power. TheWhigs talked about the liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about therights of man still; but neither party cared a straw for what it talkedabout, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff theycould get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite asthe Jacobs themselves. As for the Tories, no great change in them wasnecessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial tothem. So the whole nation--that is, the reading part of the nation, withsome exceptions, for, thank God, there has always been some salt inEngland--went over the water to Charlie. But going over to Charlie wasnot enough; they must, or at least a considerable part of them, go overto Rome, too, or have a hankering to do so. As the Priest sarcasticallyobserves in the text, 'As all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folkswho, through Scott's novels, admire the Jacobs must be Papists too.' Anidea got about that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuartsmust be the climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient.Only let a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel inEngland, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott'swritings not only made the greater part of the nation Jacobite, butPopish.
Here some people will exclaim--whose opinions remain sound anduncontaminated--what you say is perhaps true with respect to the Jacobitenonsense at present so prevalent being derived from Scott's novels, butthe Popish nonsense, which people of the genteeler class are so fond of,is derived from Oxford. We sent our sons to Oxford nice honest lads,educated in the principles of the Church of England, and at the end ofthe first term they came home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, whichthey had learned from the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them;ay, not only Popery, but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with themfrom home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they hadbeen at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish andJacobite stuff: 'Complines and Claverse.' Now, what these honest folkssay is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the Popery which hasoverflowed the land during the last fourteen or fifteen years has comeimmediately from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism, Popish andJacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else, having been taught atOxford for about that number of years. But whence did the pedants getthe Popish nonsense with which they have corrupted youth? Why, from thesame quarter from which they got the Jacobite nonsense with which theyhave inoculated those lads who were not inoculated with itbefore--Scott's novels. Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery,had at one time been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been longconsigned to oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little aboutLaud as they did about the Pretender. Both were dead and buried there,as everywhere else, till Scott called them out of their graves, when thepedants of Oxford hailed both; ay, and the Pope, too, as soon as Scotthad made the old fellow fascinating, through particular novels, moreespecially the 'Monastery' and 'Abbot.' Then the quiet, respectable,honourable Church of England would no longer do for the pedants ofOxford; they must belong to a more genteel Church--they were ashamed atfirst to be downright Romans--so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking,but exceedingly genteel, non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; butthey soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gewgawish andidolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous forthem, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still callingthemselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of theChurch which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities ofcorrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principlesuncontaminated.
So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to acertain extent, right when they say that the tide of Popery, which hasflowed over the land, has come from Oxford. It did come immediately fromOxford, but how did it get to Oxford? Why, from Scott's novels. Oh!that sermon which was the first manifestation of Oxford feeling, preachedat Oxford some time in the year '38 by a divine of a weak and confusedintellect, in which Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism! The presentwriter remembers perfectly well, on reading some extracts from it at thetime in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming: 'Why, thesimpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels!'
Oh, Oxford pedants! Oxford pedants! ye whose politics and religion areboth derived from Scott's novels! what a pity it is that some lad ofhonest parents, whose mind ye are endeavouring to stultify with yournonsense about 'Complines and Claverse,' has not the spirit to start upand cry, 'Confound your gibberish! I'll have none of it. Hurrah for theChurch, and the principles of my _father_!'
The Romany Rye Page 58