The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations

Mary Brunton, Susan Ferrier and Christian Johnstone

A. Monnickendam

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781137276544
• eBook ISBN: 9781137276551
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Using a wealth of diverse source material this book comprises an innovative critical study which, for the first time, examines Scott through the filter of his female contemporaries. It not only provides thought-provoking ideas about their handling of, for example, the love-plot, but also produces a different, more sombre Scott.

1

Mary Brunton: From the Soul of the Baroque to Tron Church

‘It is virtue and goodness only, that make true beauty. Remember that, Pamela.’ (Richardson 1984: 52)

Literary persona

Mary Brunton (1778–1818), author of Self-Control (1811), Discipline (1814) and the posthumously published Emmeline and Other Pieces (1819), is a writer whose fiction is dominated by a deep religiosity. This is self-evident from the titles of her first two novels which seem more appropriate for sermons than fiction. The unfinished Emmeline deals with the disastrous consequences of a second marriage; its interest for contemporary readers lies in whether Brunton is able to make the text coherent and relatively homogeneous, in other words whether the development of the tale follows or veers away from the censorious pen of its narrator. Brunton’s intensely moral world-view might make her fiction out of place in a more secular literary tradition where love-plots and bible-thumping are not bedfellows. That in itself is a phenomenon which merits attention, but I believe that her writing not only examines the role of the heroine in Scottish fiction, but also reaches the conclusion that certain fictional subjects are simply too awkward to handle. Why these questions have received scarce attention is greatly the result of the literary persona her husband designed.

One of the pieces that accompanies the unfinished Emmeline is the memoir written by her husband, Alexander Brunton, which would later be included in the Standard Novels editions of Discipline (1832, 1842 and 1849). He rose to become Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Edinburgh, publishing a grammar of Persian for his students in 1822. The memoir, 116 pages in all, begins with a self-deprecatory admission that he is not up to the task, before giving a brief biographical sketch of his wife’s early years. Much of the memoir consists of her letters on a varied subject matter, before concluding with two religious texts. The first consists of four pages on her religious character: ‘her piety was not of an ostentatious or obtrusive kind’ (Brunton 1819: cxiii). Apart from the Bible, we are informed that her favourite reading comprised John Newton’s Messiah[: fifty expository discourses on the series of scriptural passages, which form the subject of the celebrated oratorio of Handel] (1786) and his Cardiphonia[: or, the Utterance of the Heart] (1781), Jeremy Taylor’s [The Rule and Exercises of] Holy Living (1650), presumably Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man (1659), and Richard Baxter’s The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (1650). The only item which is literary, in the more widely accepted term of the word, is Cowper’s poetry which is itself informed by deep religious angst. Conspicuous in its absence is any reference to the genre his wife is remembered for: fiction. Brunton does not himself write the final lines of the memoir; instead, insisting that he has written only a ‘feeble sketch’ (cxvii), he uses part of a sermon preached by Dr Inglis, ‘one whose good opinion was dear to her, for she loved and reverenced him’. The only connection, if it is one at all, with Brunton, is that it was ‘the first which was preached in the Tron Church after her interment’ (cxvii). It makes no specific reference at all to either her life or her work; it is a sermon on piety, which ends with a brief exhortation on how salvation should erase our fear of death. Then, Emmeline follows.

The volume concludes with extracts from her journal, stretching to 69 pages, which describes her travels in England and Scotland. This is followed by ‘Helps to Devotion Selected from the Holy Scriptures’, 22 pages in length. Addressing her dear young friends, she informs them that the author of these pious pieces is ‘a woman in the prime of life, as cheerful, as happy’ (179).¹ That said, the final pages are dedicated to six ‘Examples of Praise’. It is helpful to see this volume as consisting of a risqué story, Emmeline, sandwiched between a pious prologue and a pious epilogue. There can be no doubt that Brunton presents his wife as a deeply religious reader in order to present her as a deeply religious writer, as devoid of irony, humour or creativity as he himself shows himself to be.

That final comment is intentionally critical, but, in marked contrast, The Edinburgh Monthly Review, in a review of Emmeline and Other Pieces published in July in the year of her death, wrote of Alexander Brunton’s writing in the following eulogistic terms, ‘[i]n judgment, taste, and feeling, on the one hand, and elegant and faultless composition of the other, we question if it is surpassed by any biographical writing in the language’ (Rev. 1819: 73). This rhetorical question is followed by a disquisition on what and what should not be included in a biography:

We dreaded, we confess, before we opened the volume, the traces of overwhelmed feelings, unmeet for the public eye; we feared that there might be too much or too little on a theme with which few in the author’s situation might be trusted; but we were soon relieved, and readily formed the opinion, that proof of finer tact, or more skilful calculation of the foundations and the limits of others’ sympathies, has not been afforded by any writer who ever ventured to give his thoughts to the world in circumstances of equal trial and difficulty [...] It is eminently calculated to better the heart – to inspire a love for talent and worth, for true greatness and true humility. (74)

This is written exclusively in abstract terms, as, logically, it has to be. Unless we know part of or the full story of her life, we can never know what the public eye should discern. The strong emphasis on propriety, what is or is not ‘unmeet for the public eye’, might initially indicate the importance of gender. However, very similar concerns are evident in the initial reception of Lockhart’s biography of Scott (Hart 1971: 164–75) and may also account for his dislike of Hogg’s revelations, a subject which I discuss in Chapter 4. We shall soon see that one subject that was not dealt with in great depth was her ancestry, and one that received no mention at all was their marriage. It is impossible to know whether the anonymous reviewer knew anything about the latter, but it is more likely that he is simply uttering a generalization on what represents good taste, ‘finer tact’, and what represents greatness, ‘true humility’. At the same time, on closer inspection of this passage – and of the review as a whole – a strategy is divined which ensures that Alexander Brunton himself emerges as the hero of the narrative. Mary Brunton might have written good, instructive fiction, perky journal entries and absorbing guides to prayer, but they are not assigned terms like elegance, faultless and unsurpassed, as is the memoir. The Review, perhaps aware of this bizarre situation which it has created by praising Alexander Brunton up to the skies, tries to refute that suspicion by pointing out that the memoir is so perfect because it ‘places her in so prominent a point of view’ (Rev. 1819: 78). Initially, it seems odd that such a comment should be necessary in the first place, as memoirs focus on the virtues of the recently departed, especially so when one spouse is mourning the loss of the other.

In this particular instance that is doubtful, to say the least. It is clear that not only has Brunton himself gone through his own vale of sorrows after his wife’s tragic death in childbirth, but has successfully emerged to write a faultless memoir; in addition, he is given considerable credit for his wife’s talent. How much, depends on how we tease out and unravel comments like the following: ‘[a]fter her marriage, Mrs. Brunton’s whole leisure was devoted to the improvement of her mind; in which her husband had a much larger share than he himself can properly record’ (74). The reviewer claims to know more about the couple than the husband himself! We are told that she was particularly interested in languages and in the writers of the Scottish Enlightenment, which is possibly a gloss on Alexander Brunton’s own comment that ‘in the evening, I was in the habit of reading aloud to her, books chiefly of criticism and Belles Lettres’ (Brunton 1819: ix). Her literary taste was partly the result of this education; she did not turn to writing for some years after their marriage, or, in other words, for some years after this instruction had begun. The Edinburgh Monthly Review has one bone to pick with Brunton: his wife’s failure to master maths. Alexander Brunton is not very explicit about this (x), so the reviewer is somewhat justified to point out that this incapacity is an ‘anomaly’ (Rev. 1819: 75), adding that Brunton might have said more about the matter. Taking together these three points: the excellence of the memoir, his role as mentor, her inability to master maths, it is inevitable that one arrives at the conclusion that a clear gender and genre bias are at work. Brunton could not teach her maths as that is not the province of the female mind. Mary Brunton was certainly an admirable novelist, but, the review implies, the status of the female genre of fiction is way below that of Belles Lettres or maths.

The interpretative problem resides in determining to what extent the Mary Brunton we encounter wears this monothematic straitjacket that the memoir’s unbending religiosity has woven for her. Clearly, the answer must be in the negative, or else we might just as well pick up a prayer book as a volume of her fiction. Perhaps the critical neglect she has suffered since her death until very recently is an illustration that Alexander Brunton’s garment was certainly close-fitting. Yet, perhaps an interesting clue is provided by her remarks that she is in the prime of life, that she is happy. Here, the memoir implies that religiosity does not necessarily mean life has to be devoid of pleasure, though at many points it most certainly paints a very grey picture of a profoundly tedious life. In the ‘Extracts from Journal’ a far livelier figure emerges. For example, when just south of the border, she records that ‘the women are prettier, the accent is perceptibly English, and hats and shoes are universal’ (Brunton 1819: 103). At the other end of the country, on the Isle of Wight, we are likely to encounter ‘the most ignorant brutes that ever were made’ (136). Even from this brief extract, an inquiring, critical mind emerges; it is this spirit which informs the whole of the journal.

Scottish Presbyterianism is not naturally associated with the public performance of music or with religious art: Mary Brunton is keenly enthusiastic about both, as she records in her 1812 visit to London:

— called to take us to an oratorio at Covent-Garden. As we are nobody, he advised us to go to the pit, that we might have some chance of seeing and hearing. We were no sooner placed, than the adjoining seats were occupied by some very drunk sailors, and their own true loves, whose expressions of affection made it necessary to change our quarters. The music was far superior to any thing I had heard before. But in such a place, and in such a company, the praise of God seemed almost blasphemy. (106–7)

That such a respectable group actually goes to the pit is in itself a situation ripe for comedy; the presence of the sailors with, as she ironically describes them, ‘their own true loves’, confirms this. She is enthusiastic about the wonderful music while insisting that what makes the performance close to blasphemy is that the pit is just one stop above a brothel. We should not be too quick to see this as a condemnatory remark of a prude, as the following lines infer that it is more a case of blasphemy against great art and its location than blasphemy in a moral sense. Neither should we lose sight of how ‘blasphemy’ is tempered both by ‘seemed’ and ‘almost’.

Mary Brunton visits Burghley:

Cecil had as good a taste in houses as his mistress had in prime ministers. Admirable pictures! – A Magdalene, by Carlo Marrati; Domenchino’s mistress, by himself – loveliness personified! Above all, the Salvator Mundi! […] But the magical expression of the countenance! The inimitable execution of every part! Such benevolence – such sensibility – so divine – so touching – cannot be conceived without the soul of Carlo Dolce! How blest must the creatures have been whose fancy was peopled with such images! (105–6)

The admiration for this second painting extends for over a page. In her visit to Magdalene College, she again expresses her admiration for Carlo Dolce, as well as for Guido Reno’s Venus Attired by the Graces. Bearing in mind, first, the dates of three artists: Guido Reni (1575–1642), Carlo Dolci (1616–86) and Carlo Maratta (1625–1713), second, that the Baroque period is commonly dated as starting at the end of the sixteenth century and finishing at the beginning of the eighteenth, Brunton’s three painters occupy the length and breadth of that movement. Particularly significant is her description of Mary Magdalene’s ‘loveliness personified’ and the coupling of art and religion in describing ‘the soul of Carlo Dolce’. Brunton’s enthusiasm for Baroque masterpieces and their subject matter, especially the representation of Venus and Mary Magdalene, places her light years away from the much narrower views of life and morality expressed in the memoir. Indeed, Mary Brunton’s admiration for Baroque art extends into an interjection which praises the salutary effects exercised on Catholic worshippers, thereby predicting Johnstone’s creation of a similar situation for her character Flora in Clan-Albin (474–5). There can be no shadow of a doubt that Brunton enthusiastically admires the celebration of religion and beauty through their representation in public venues: the concert house, the picture gallery and chapel. Her enthusiasm for the public display therefore clashes with the widespread belief that Puritans and their descendants approved of art only within the sanctity of the home.

In this attempt to present a figure that differs from the dull figure of the memoir, two additional biographical pieces of information are required to complete the task: the first is her ancestry. The memoir states laconically that she ‘was the only daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour, a cadet of one of the most respectable families in the county of Orkney. Her mother was Frances Ligonier, only daughter of Colonel Ligonier of the 13th Dragoons’ (Brunton 1819: vi). The most salient point is that her family is a military one; presumably Alexander Brunton, consciously or unconsciously, equates respectability with the military, an equation that she dismantles with great gusto in Self-Control. It must strike any reader that Ligonier does not sound Scottish at all. Mary McKerrow’s Mary Brunton the Forgotten Scottish Novelist (2001) is an indispensable guide to unravelling a complex family history. What and when her husband learnt about her background is phrased in these terms: ‘[n]ot until many years later was Alexander Brunton to learn that his wife had a French grandfather who fought for the Hanoverians against the Jacobites, and an Orkney grandfather whose estates were wrenched from him because of Jacobite loyalties’ (McKerrow 2001: 69). Due to simplified cultural mythology, it is perhaps normal to conflate Jacobitism with France, but in this case, the Ligoniers came to Britain as Huguenot refugees. John Ligionier (1680–1770),² Mary Brunton’s great-uncle, was born in Castres (Tarn) and emigrated to Britain, having had an extremely successful military career in the Hanoverian army: he rose to the rank of Field-Marshal and in 1757 became Commander-in-Chief. This astonishing achievement indicates a lot about his own personal qualities and also something about social mobility in an institution that is generally seen as being somewhat resistant to outside influences. In short, McKerrow’s point is that biographical information about Mary Brunton often begins by stating that she was born in Burra, Orkney Islands, a fact which linked to her religious views produces a writer who was out of touch with the world, remote in distance and intellectual concerns from the metropolis and worldly affairs. These few biographical details offer a different picture: her family history highlights both the conflicts of a war-torn Europe radically divided along religious boundaries a century after the Thirty Years War, and strife-riven, eighteenth-century Scotland.

As McKerrow goes on to explain, Mary was educated in Edinburgh, adding that ‘[s]o autobiographical do some of the early pages in Discipline seem, that Mary may have made Ellen her mouthpiece when she left school at the end of seven years of “laborious and expensive trifling” with only one real accomplishment – music’ (2001: 53). Another thing that Alexander Brunton either did not know or purposefully ignored was that his mother-in-law, Frances, was illegitimate. Alexander and Mary’s marriage also has an interesting story to tell. Alexander tutored Mary’s brothers in preparation for their going to public school. McKerrow explains that Frances suspected that something was going on between the tutor and the boys’ sister; she was definitely not keen on having her daughter marry a man ‘with a ridiculously small stipend, and no social standing’ (56). One way of stopping this liaison, Frances thought, was to pack Mary off to London to stay with her godmother, Lady Wentworth, in order to be introduced to London society. This would initially seem an enticing proposition as glamorous, cosmopolitan, social connections would provide the opportunity of meeting suitors with large stipends and considerable social standing. Mary preferred Alexander.

The story of their marriage is akin to that favourite theme of romance: elopement. The situation was as follows: Frances had sent Mary to Gairsay, whose population in 1798 was 33; McKerrow likens her situation to Rapunzel’s (57). She goes on:

Somehow he [Alexander] managed to arrange for Mary to give him a pre-arranged signal from the island, and he then, as chivalrous as the proverbial knight in shining armour, would secretly row over in a small boat, probably from the mainland, and whisk her away. An operation, no less romantic for being undertaken in the sometimes fickle late autumn weather. But fortune favoured him and he rescued his girl. (58)

This reads like fantasy; it is open to debate whether, were we to turn their affair into a story or a film, we would be accused of stretching credibility beyond belief, for, out of this Mills and Boon setting, the two main characters go on to become the author and subject of the piously dull, passionless 1819 memoir.

By now, it should emerge that the biographical information authored by her husband gives a misleading picture of Mary Brunton. Much in the way that opponents of Presbyterianism would stereotype the object of their dislike along the lines that Knox equals Nox, Alexander Brunton has clipped his wife’s creativity by reducing her whole life and ideas to one concept: humble piety. Yet, it is easy to show that she has a much wider range of interests and ideas than her husband would make us believe, or possibly had himself. This is why I have stressed that in the 1819 volume itself, her ideas about art and music extend far beyond her husband’s limited horizons. Side by side with her favourite books, according to or selected by her husband, we must place her emotive enthusiasm for Baroque art, Mary Magdalene included. She shows herself to be a wry observer of humanity in the incident at Covent Garden, as well as even-handed in judgement: the north of England has something to show for itself while the Isle of Wight is best avoided. If we accepted Alexander Brunton’s memoir as the whole truth, Mary Brunton would be an uninteresting author of some uninteresting novels, but luckily, the memoir uncove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Mary Brunton: From the Soul of the Baroque to Tron Church
• 2 Susan Ferrier and the Lucre-banished Clans
• 3 Christian Isobel Johnstone: From Centrifugal to Centripetal
• 4 Question Time: The Debate on Fiction
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index