Part 11

Train then described to Sir Walter the singular character of Old Mortality, and the result was that incomparable tale which took the English reading world by storm, and provoked in Scotland a curious fever of excitement, indignation, and applause. The most vigorous protest against its laxity came from Thomas MacCrie, one of the numerous biographers of John Knox, “who considered the representation of the Covenanters in the story of Old Mortality as so unfair as to demand, at his hands, a very serious rebuke.” This rebuke was administered at some length in a series of papers published in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor. Scott, the “Black Hussar of Literature,” replied with much zest and spirit in the Quarterly Review; cudgels were taken up on both sides, and the war went briskly on, until Jeffrey the Great in some measure silenced the controversy by giving it as his ultimatum that the treatment of an historical character in a work of pure fiction was a matter of very trifling significance. It is not without interest that we see the same querulous virtue that winced under Sir Walter’s frank enthusiasm for Claverhouse uttering its protest to-day against the more chilly and scrupulous vindications of Mr. Morris’s biography. “An apology for the crimes of a hired butcher,” one critic angrily calls the sober little volume, forgetting in his heat that the term “hired butcher,” though most scathing in sound, is equally applicable to any soldier, from the highest to the lowest, who is paid by his government to kill his fellow-men. War is a rough trade, and if we choose to call names, it is as easy any time to say “butcher” as “hero.” Stronger words have not been lacking to vilify Dundee, and many of these choice anathemas belong, one fears, to Luther’s catalogue of “downright, infamous, scandalous lies.” Their freshness, however, is as amazing as their ubiquity, and they confront us every now and then in the most forlorn nooks and crannies of literature. Not very long ago I was shut up for half an hour in a boarding-house parlor, in company with a solitary little book entitled Scheyichbi and the Strand, or Early Days along the Delaware. Its name proved to be the only really attractive thing about it, and I was speculating drearily as to whether Charles Lamb himself could have extracted any amusement from its pages, when suddenly my eye lighted on a sentence that read like an old familiar friend: “The cruelty, the brutality, the mad, exterminating barbarity of Claverhouse, and Lauderdale, and Jeffreys, the minions of episcopacy and the king.” There it stood, venerably correct in sentiment, with a strangely new location and surroundings. It is hard enough, surely, to see Claverhouse pilloried side by side with the brute Jeffreys; but to meet him on the banks of the Delaware is like encountering Ezzèlin Romano on Fifth Avenue, or Julian the Apostate upon Boston Common.

Much of this universal harmony of abuse may be fairly charged to Macaulay, for it is he who in a few strongly written passages has presented to the general reader that remarkable compendium of wickedness commonly known as Dundee. “Rapacious and profane, of violent temper and obdurate heart,” is the great historian’s description of a man who sought but modest wealth, who never swore, and whose imperturbable gentleness of manner was more appalling in its way than the fiercest transports of rage. Under Macaulay’s hands Claverhouse exhibits a degree of ubiquity and mutability that might well require some supernatural basis to sustain it. He supports as many characters as Saladin in the Talisman; appearing now as his brother David Graham, in order to witness the trial of the Wigtown martyrs, and now as his distant kinsman, Patrick Graham, when it becomes expedient to figure as a dramatic feature of Argyle’s execution. He changes at will into Sir Robert Grierson, and is thus made responsible for that highly curious game which Wodrow and Howie impute to Lag’s troopers, and which Macaulay describes with as much gravity as if it were the sacking and pillage of some doomed Roman town. It is hard to understand the precise degree of pleasure embodied in calling one’s self Apollyon and one’s neighbor Beelzebub; it is harder still to be properly impressed with the tremendous significance of the deed. I have known a bevy of school-girls, who, after an exhaustive course of Paradise Lost, were so deeply imbued with the sombre glories of the satanic court that they assumed the names of its inhabitants; and, for the remainder of that term, even the mysterious little notes that form so important an element of boarding-school life began--heedless of grammar--with “Chère Moloch,” and ended effusively with “Your ever-devoted Belial.” It is quite possible that these children thought and hoped they were doing something desperately wicked, only they lacked a historian to chronicle their guilt. It is equally certain that Lag’s drunken troopers, if they ever did divert themselves in the unbecoming manner ascribed to them, might have been more profitably, and, it would seem, more agreeably, employed. But, of one thing, at least, we may feel tolerably confident. The pastime would have found scant favor in the eyes of Claverhouse, who was a man of little imagination, of stern discipline, and of fastidiously decorous habits. Why, even Wandering Willie does him this much justice, when he describes him as alone amid the lost souls, isolated in his contemptuous pride from their feasts and dreadful merriment: “And there sat Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance.” If history be, as Napoleon asserts, nothing but fiction agreed upon, let us go straight to the fountain-head, and enjoy our draught of romance unspoiled by any dubious taint of veracity.

Mr. Walter Bagehot, that most keen and tolerant of critics, has pointed out to us with his customary acumen that Macaulay never appreciated in the highest degree either of the two great parties--the Puritans and the Cavaliers--who through so many stirring events embodied all the life and color of English history. In regard to the former, it may be safely said that whatever slights they have received at the hands of other historians have been amply atoned for by Carlyle. He has thrown the whole weight of his powerful personality into their scale, and has fairly frightened us into that earnestness of mind which is requisite for a due appreciation of their merits. His fine scorn for the pleasant vices which ensnare humanity extended itself occasionally to things which are pleasant without being vicious; and under his leadership we hardly venture to hint at a certain sneaking preference for the gayer side of life. When Hazlitt, with a shameless audacity rare among Englishmen, disencumbers himself lightly of his conscience, and apostrophizes the reign of Charles II. as that “happy, thoughtless age, when king and nobles led purely ornamental lives,” we feel our flesh chilled at such a candid avowal of volatility. Surely Hazlitt must have understood that it is precisely the fatal picturesqueness of that period to which we, as moralists, so strenuously object. The courts of the first two Hanoverians were but little better or purer, but they were at least uglier, and we can afford to look with some leniency upon their short-comings. His sacred majesty George II. was hardly, save in the charitable eyes of Bishop Porteus, a shining example of rectitude; but let us rejoice that it never lay in the power of any human being to hint that he was in the smallest degree ornamental.

The Puritan, then, has been wafted into universal esteem by the breath of his great eulogist; but the Cavalier still waits for his historian. Poets and painters and romancers have indeed loved to linger over this warm, impetuous life, so rich in vigor and beauty, so full to the brim of a hardy adventurous joy. Here, they seem to say, far more than in ancient Greece, may be realized the throbbing intensity of an unreflecting happiness. For the Greek drank deeply of the cup of knowledge, and its bitterness turned his laughter into tears; the Cavalier looked straight into the sunlight with clear, joyous eyes, and troubled himself not at all with the disheartening problems of humanity. How could a mind like Macaulay’s, logical, disciplined, and gravely intolerant, sympathize for a moment with this utterly irresponsible buoyancy! How was he, of all men, to understand this careless zest for the old feast of life, this unreasoning loyalty to an indifferent sovereign, this passionate devotion to a church and easy disregard of her precepts, this magnificent wanton courage, this gay prodigality of enjoyment! It was his loss, no less than ours, that, in turning over the pages of the past, he should miss half of their beauty and their pathos; for History, that calumniated muse, whose sworn votaries do her little honor, has illuminated every inch of her parchment with a strong, generous hand, and does not mean that we should contemptuously ignore the smallest fragment of her work. The superb charge of Rupert’s cavalry; that impetuous rush to battle, before which no mortal ranks might stand unbroken; the little group of heart-sick Cavaliers who turned at sunset from the lost field of Marston Moor, and beheld their queen’s white standard floating over the enemy’s ranks; the scaffolds of Montrose and King Charles; the more glorious death of Claverhouse, pressing the blood-stained grass, and listening for the last time to the far-off cries of victory; Sidney Godolphin flinging away his life, with all its abundant promise and whispered hopes of fame; beautiful Francis Villiers lying stabbed to the heart in Surbiton lane, with his fair boyish face turned to the reddening sky,--these and many other pictures History has painted for us on her scroll, bidding us forget for a moment our formidable theories and strenuous partisanship, and suffer our hearts to be simply and wholesomely stirred by the brave lives and braver deaths of our mistaken brother men.

“Every matter,” observes Epictetus, “has two handles by which it may be grasped;” and the Cavalier is no exception to the rule. We may, if we choose, regard him from a purely moral point of view, as a lamentably dissolute and profligate courtier; or from a purely picturesque point of view, as a gallant and loyal soldier; or we may, if we are wise, take him as he stands, making room for him cheerfully as a fellow-creature, and not vexing our souls too deeply over his brilliant divergence from our present standard. It is like a breath of fresh air blown from a roughening sea to feel, even at this distance of time, that strong young life beating joyously and eagerly against the barriers of the past; to see those curled and scented aristocrats who, like the “dandies of the Crimea,” could fight as well as dance, facing pleasure and death, the ball-room and the battle-field, with the same smiling front, the same unflagging enthusiasm. No wonder that Mr. Bagehot, analyzing with friendly sympathy the strength and weakness of the Cavalier, should find himself somewhat out of temper with an historian’s insensibility to virtues so primitive and recognizable in a not too merry world.

“The greatness of this character is not in Macaulay’s way, and its faults are. Its license affronts him, its riot alienates him. He is forever contrasting the dissoluteness of Prince Rupert’s horse with the restraint of Cromwell’s pikemen. A deep, enjoying nature finds in him no sympathy. He has no tears for that warm life, no tenderness for that extinct mirth. The ignorance of the Cavaliers, too, moves his wrath: ‘They were ignorant of what every schoolgirl knows.’ Their loyalty to their sovereign is the devotion of the Egyptians to the god Apis: ‘They selected a calf to adore.’ Their non-resistance offends the philosopher; their license is commented on in the tone of a precisian. Their indecorum does not suit the dignity of the narrator. Their rich, free nature is unappreciated; the tingling intensity of their joy is unnoticed. In a word, there is something of the schoolboy about the Cavalier; there is somewhat of a schoolmaster about the historian.”[14]

That the gay gentlemen who glittered in the courts of the Stuarts were enviably ignorant of much that, for some inscrutable reason, we feel ourselves obliged to know to-day may be safely granted, and scored at once to the account of their good fortune. It is probable that they had only the vaguest notions about Sesostris, and could not have defined an hypothesis of homophones with any reasonable degree of accuracy. But they were possessed, nevertheless, of a certain information of their own, not garnered from books, and not always attainable to their critics. They knew life in its varying phases, from the delicious trifling of a polished and witty society to the stern realities of the camp and battle-field. They knew the world, women, and song, three things as pleasant and as profitable in their way as Hebrew, Euclid, and political economy. They knew how to live gracefully, to fight stoutly, and to die honorably; and how to extract from the gray routine of existence a wonderfully distinct flavor of novelty and enjoyment. There were among them, as among the Puritans, true lovers, faithful husbands, and tender fathers; and the indiscriminate charge of dissoluteness on the one side, like the indiscriminate charge of hypocrisy on the other, is a cheap expression of our individual intolerance.

The history of the Cavalier closes with Killiecrankie. The waning prestige of a once powerful influence concentrated itself in Claverhouse, the latest and strongest figure on its canvas, the accepted type of its most brilliant and defiant qualities. Readers of old-fashioned novels may remember a lachrymose story, in two closely printed volumes, which enjoyed an amazing popularity some twenty years ago, and which was called The Last of the Cavaliers. It had for its hero a perfectly impossible combination of virtues, a cross between the Chevalier Bayard and the Admirable Crichton, labeled Dundee, and warranted proof against all the faults and foibles of humanity. This automaton, who moved in a rarefied atmosphere through the whole dreary tale, performing noble deeds and uttering virtuous sentiments with monotonous persistency, embodied, we may presume, the author’s conception of a character not generally credited with such superfluous excellence. It was a fine specimen of imaginative treatment, and not wholly unlike some very popular historic methods by which similar results are reached to-day. Quite recently, a despairing English critic, with an ungratified taste for realities, complained somewhat savagely that “a more intolerable embodiment of unrelieved excellence and monotonous success than the hero of the pious Gladstonian’s worship was never moulded out of plaster of Paris.” He was willing enough to yield his full share of admiration, but he wanted to see the real, human, interesting Gladstone back of all this conventional and disheartening mock-heroism; and, in the same spirit, we would like sometimes to see the real Claverhouse back of all the dramatic accessories in which he has been so liberally disguised.

But where, save perhaps in the ever-delightful pages of Old Mortality, shall we derive any moderate gratification from our search? Friends are apt to be as ill advised as foes, and Dundee’s eulogists, from Napier to Aytoun, have been distinguished rather for the excellence of their intentions than for any great felicity of execution. The “lion-hearted warrior,” for whom Aytoun flings wide the gates of Athol, might be Cœur-de-Lion himself, or Marshal Ney, or Stonewall Jackson, or any other brave fighter. There is no distinctive flavor of the Graeme in the somewhat long-winded hero, with his “falcon eye,” and his “war-horse black as night,” and his trite commonplaces about foreign gold and Highland honor. On the other hand, the verdict of the disaffected may be summed up in the extraordinary lines with which Macaulay closes his account of Killiecrankie, and of Dundee’s brief, glorious struggle for his king: “During the last three months of his life he had proved himself a great warrior and politician, and his name is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons who think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage and ability do not atone.” No excess of wickedness! One wonders what more could be said if we were discussing Tiberius or Caligula, or if colder words were ever used to chill a soldier’s fame. Mr. Mowbray Morris, the latest historian in the field, seems divided between a natural desire to sift the evidence for all this wickedness and a polite disinclination to say anything rude during the process, “a common impertinence of the day,” in which he declares he has no wish to join. This is exceedingly pleasant and courteous, though hardly of primary importance; for a biographer’s sole duty is, after all, to the subject of his biography, and not to Macaulay, who can hold his own easily enough without any assistance whatever. When Sir James Stephens published, some years ago, his very earnest and accurate vindication of Sir Elijah Impey from the charges so lavishly brought against him in that matchless essay on Warren Hastings, he expressed at the same time his serene conviction that the great world would go on reading the essay and believing the charges just the same,--a new rendering of “Magna est veritas et prævalebit,” which brings it very near to Hesiod’s primitive experience.

As for Mr. Morris’s book, it is a carefully dispassionate study of a wild and stormy time, with a gray shadow of Claverhouse flitting faintly through it. In his wholesome dislike for the easy confidence with which historians assume to know everything, its author has touched the opposite extreme, and manifests such conscientious indecision as to the correctness of every document he quotes, that our heads fairly swim with accumulated uncertainties. This method of narration has one distinct advantage,--it cannot lead us far into error; but neither can it carry us forward impetuously with the mighty rush of great events, and make us feel in our hearts the real and vital qualities of history. Mr. Morris proves very clearly and succinctly that Claverhouse has been, to use his temperate expression, “harshly judged,” and that much of the cruelty assigned to him may be easily and cheaply refuted. He does full justice to the scrupulous decorum of his hero’s private life, and to the wonderful skill with which, after James’s flight, he roused and held together the turbulent Highland clans, impressing even these rugged spirits with the charm and force of his vigorous personality. In the field Claverhouse lived like the meanest of his men; sharing their poor food and hard lodgings, marching by their side through the bitter winter weather, and astonishing these hardy mountaineers by a power of physical endurance fully equal to their own. The memory of his brilliant courage, of his gracious tact, even of his rare personal beauty, dwelt with them for generations, and found passionate expression in that cry wrung from the sore heart of the old chieftain at Culloden, “Oh, for one hour of Dundee!”

But in the earlier portions of Mr. Morris’s narrative, in the scenes at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, at Ayrshire and Clydesdale, we confess that we look in vain for the Claverhouse of our fancy. Can it be that this energetic, modest, and rather estimable young soldier, distinguished, apparently, for nothing save prompt and accurate obedience to his orders, is the man who, in a few short years, made himself so feared and hated that it became necessary to credit him with the direct patronage of Satan? One is tempted to quote Mr. Swinburne’s pregnant lines concerning another enigmatic character of Scottish history:--

“Some faults the gods will give to fetter Man’s highest intent, But surely you were something better Than innocent.”

Of the real Dundee we catch only flying glimpses here and there,--on his wedding night, for instance, when he is off and away after the now daring rebels, leaving his bride of an hour to weep his absence, and listen with what patience she might to her mother’s assiduous reproaches. “I shall be revenged some time or other of the unseasonable trouble these dogs give me,” grumbles the young husband with pardonable irritation. “They might have let Tuesday pass.” It is the real Dundee, likewise, who, in the gray of early morning, rides briskly out of Edinburgh in scant time to save his neck, scrambles up the castle rock for a last farewell to Gordon, and is off to the north to raise the standard of King James, “wherever the spirit of Montrose shall direct me.” In vain Hamilton and the convention send word imperatively, “Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed.” The wily bird declines the invitation, and has been censured with some asperity for his unpatriotic reluctance to comply. For one short week of rest he lingers at Dudhope, where his wife is awaiting her confinement, and then flies further northward to Glen Ogilvy, whither a regiment is quickly sent to apprehend him. There is a reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling on his head, but he who thinks to win it must move, like Hödr, with his feet shod in silence. By the time Livingstone and his dragoons reach Glamis, Dundee is far in the Highlands, and henceforth all the fast-darkening hopes of the loyalists are centred in him alone. For him remain thirteen months of incredible hardships and anxiety, a single stolen visit to his wife and infant son, heart-sick appeals to James for some recognition of the desperate efforts made in his behalf, a brilliant irregular campaign, a last decisive victory, and a soldier’s death. “It is the less matter for me, seeing the day goes well for my master,” he answers simply, when told of his mortal hurt; and in this unfaltering loyalty we read the life-long lesson of the Cavalier. If, as a recent poet tells us, the memory of Nero be not wholly vile, because one human being was found to weep for him, surely the memory of James Stuart may be forgiven much because of this faithful service. It is hard to understand it now.

“In God’s name, then, what plague befell us, To fight for such a thing?”

is our modern way of looking at the problem; but the mental processes of the Cavalier were less inquisitorial and analytic. “I am no politician, and I do not care about nice distinctions,” says Major Bellenden bluntly, when requested to consider the insurgents’ side of the case. “My sword is the king’s, and when he commands, I draw it in his service.”

As for that other and better known Claverhouse, the determined foe of the Covenant, the unrelenting and merciless punisher of a disobedient peasantry, he, too, is best taken as he stands; shorn, indeed, of Wodrow’s extravagant embellishments, but equally free from the delicate gloss of a too liberal absolution. He was a soldier acting under the stringent orders of an angry government, and he carried out the harsh measures entrusted to him with a stern and impartial severity. Those were turbulent times, and the wild western Whigs had given decisive proof on more than one occasion that they were ill disposed to figure as mere passive martyrs to their cause.

“For treason, d’ ye see, Was to them a dish of tea, And murder, bread and butter.”