The Romany Rye

by George Borrow

  CHAPTER VII--SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

  Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make peoplePapists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power? Did he thinkthat Christianity was a gaudy mummery? He did not, he could not, for hehad read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talkingabout them. Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fitto govern a country like Britain? He knew that they were a vicious,worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as theyswayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governedin a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and anabhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man ingeneral. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate,careless king, nominally absolute; the heads of great houses paying courtto, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on theplunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (theliteral meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves tobe horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; sothat in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, nowonder he admired such a Church as that of Rome, and that which Laud setup; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancientworm-eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathieswere with the Stuarts and their dissipated, insolent party, and all hishatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in theirproceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above astate of vassalage that is wretchedness. Those who were born great,were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, howeverworthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always toremain so, however great their talents; though if that rule were carriedout, where would he have been himself?

  In the book which he called the 'History of Napoleon Bonaparte,' in whichhe plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe,whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in hisabhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itselfillustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of aMarseilleise pastry-cook. It is a pity that people who give themselveshoity-toity airs--and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted togiving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better thanthemselves with their birth {348} and their country--it is a great pitythat such people do not look at home--son of a pastry-cook, of aMarseilleise pastry-cook! Well, and what was Scott himself? Why, son ofa pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger. 'Oh, but Scott was descendedfrom the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore--' Descended fromold cow-stealers, was he? Well, had he had nothing to boast of beyondsuch a pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifoggerand been forgotten, and deservedly so; but he possessed talents, and byhis talents rose like Murat, and like him will be remembered for histalents alone, and deservedly so. 'Yes, but Murat was still the son of apastry-cook, and though he was certainly good at the sabre, and cut hisway to a throne, still--' Lord! what fools there are in the world; butas no one can be thought anything of in this world without a pedigree,the writer will now give a pedigree for Murat, of a very differentcharacter from the cow-stealing one of Scott, but such a one as theproudest he might not disdain to claim. Scott was descended from the oldcow-stealers of Buccleuch--was he? Good! and Murat was descended fromthe old Moors of Spain, from the Abencerages (sons of the saddle) ofGranada. The name Murat is Arabic, and is the same as Murad (Le Desire,or the wished-for one). Scott, in his genteel life of Bonaparte, saysthat 'when Murat was in Egypt the similarity between the name of thecelebrated Mameluke Mourad and that of Bonaparte's Meilleur Sabreur wasremarked, and became the subject of jest amongst the comrades of thegallant Frenchman.' But the writer of the novel of Bonaparte did notknow that the names were one and the same. Now, which was the bestpedigree, that of the son of the pastry-cook, or that of the son of thepettifogger? Which was the best blood? Let us observe the workings ofthe two bloods. He who had the blood of the 'sons of the saddle' in himbecame the wonderful cavalier of the most wonderful host that ever wentforth to conquest, won for himself a crown, and died the death of asoldier, leaving behind him a son, only inferior to himself in strength,in prowess, and in horsemanship. The descendant of the cow-stealerbecame a poet, a novel writer, the panegyrist of great folks and genteelpeople; became insolvent because, though an author, he deemed itungenteel to be mixed up with the business part of authorship; diedparalytic and broken-hearted because he could no longer giveentertainments to great folks; leaving behind him, amongst otherchildren, who were never heard of, a son, who, through his father'sinterest, had become lieutenant-colonel in a genteel cavalry regiment. Ason who was ashamed of his father because his father was an author--a sonwho--paugh!--why ask which was the best blood?

  So, owing to his rage for gentility, Scott must needs become theapologist of the Stuarts and their party; but God made this man paydearly for taking the part of the wicked against the good; for lauding upto the skies miscreants and robbers, and calumniating the noble spiritsof Britain, the salt of England, and his own country. As God had driventhe Stuarts from their throne, and their followers from their estates,making them vagabonds and beggars on the face of the earth, taking fromthem all they cared for, so did that same God, who knows perfectly wellhow and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that wretched crew ofall that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralyzedhim in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome tohimself--so much so that he once said, 'Where is the beggar who wouldchange place with me, notwithstanding all my fame?' Ah! God knowsperfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all hisliterary fame to the very last--his literary fame for which he carednothing; but what became of the sweetnesses of life, his fine house, hisgrand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his;he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeurit might still retain to soon became as desolate a looking house as anymisanthrope could wish to see. Where were the grand entertainments andthe grand company? There are no grand entertainments where there is nomoney; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments--and therelay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longerhis, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable.Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the'Minstrel' and 'Rob Roy'--telling him to think of his literary fame?Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility:

  'Retain my altar, I care nothing for it--but oh! touch not my _beard_.'

  PORNY'S _War of the Gods_.

  He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment ofGod on what remained of his race, and the house which he had built. Hewas not a Papist himself, nor did he wish anyone belonging to him to bePopish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can besaved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and wouldat all times, in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writingand discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance andvassalage prevailed so long as it flourished; but he certainly did notwish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he hadbuilt to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savouredof Popery. But Popery becomes fashionable through his novels andpoems--the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild,marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makesher a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband who buys the house, andthen the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain. Asuperstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old ScottishCovenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profitsresulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, andcalumniatory of Scotland's saints and martyrs, had risen from the grave,and banned Scott, his race, and his house, by reading a certain psalm.

  In saying what he has said about Scott the author has not been influe
ncedby any feeling of malice or ill-will, but simply by a regard for truth,and a desire to point out to his countrymen the harm which has resultedfrom the perusal of his works; he is not one of those who woulddepreciate the talents of Scott, he admires his talents, both as a prosewriter and a poet. As a poet especially he admires him, and believes himto have been by far the greatest, with perhaps the exception ofMickiewicz, who only wrote for unfortunate Poland, that Europe has givenbirth to during the last hundred years. As a prose writer he admires himless, it is true, but his admiration for him in that capacity is veryhigh, and he only laments that he prostituted his talents to the cause ofthe Stuarts and gentility. What book of fiction of the present centurycan you read twice, with the exception of 'Waverley' and 'Rob Roy?'There is 'Pelham,' it is true, which the writer of these lines has seen aJewess reading in the steppe of Debreczin, and which a young PrussianBaron, a great traveller, whom he met at Constantinople in '44, told himhe always carried in his valise. And in conclusion he will say, in orderto show the opinion which he entertains of the power of Scott as awriter, that he did for the spectre of the wretched Pretender what allthe kings of Europe could not do for his body--placed it on the throne ofthese realms, and for Popery what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain todo for three centuries--brought back its mummeries and nonsense into thetemples of the British Isles.

  Scott during his lifetime had a crowd of imitators, who, whether theywrote history so called, poetry so called, or novels--nobody would call abook a novel if he could call it anything else--wrote Charlie o'er thewater nonsense, and now that he has been dead a quarter of a century,there are others daily springing up who are striving to imitate Scott inhis Charlie o'er the water nonsense--for nonsense it is, even whenflowing from his pen. They, too, must write Jacobite histories, Jacobitesongs, and Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the scoundrelmenials in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and retailingtheir masters' conversation do they cut as Walter Scotts. In theirhistories, they too talk about the Prince and Glenfinnan, and thepibroch; and in their songs about 'Claverse' and 'Bonny Dundee.' Butthough they may be Scots, they are not Walter Scotts. But it is perhapschiefly in the novel that you see the veritable hog in armour; the timeof the novel is of course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, andconnected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and theauthor, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what _original_ views hetakes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he hasoccasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he bringshis hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before abarricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into itby no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to getinto the Tolbooth, _burning down_ the door.

  To express the more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'erthe water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, andthat word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared withwhich even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet one word toexpress what would be inexpressible by any word or combination of wordsin any language, or in any other jargon in the world; and very properly;for as the nonsense is properly Scotch, so should the word be Scotchwhich expresses it; that word is 'fushionless,' pronounced_fooshionless_; and when the writer has called the nonsensefooshionless--and he does call it fooshionless--he has nothing more tosay, but leaves the nonsense to its fate.