The reader is asked to remember that any comparison of Galt with Scott, or of Galt with Maria Edgeworth, was not initiated by the present writer, but by ‘Christopher North’.
Sir Walter Scott himself gave the best proof possible of appreciation by reading The Entail three times: and Byron had read it three times within a year of its appearance. To the Earl of Blessington he said that ‘the portraiture of Leddy Grippy was perhaps the most complete and original that had been added to the female gallery since the days of Shakespeare’.
Were this an essay on The Entail it would not suffice to quote the criticism of great writers upon the work: the essayist would need to justify his own admiration of it by quotation from the book itself. And this he has done at full length in (as Cousin Feenix said) another place. But in an Introduction there can be no occasion to detain the reader from making acquaintance on his own account with the Leddy and Watty, Claud, and the Milrookits. He will not, with the book in his hand, need to be told which scenes are inimitable. There are many which he will never be content to read but once: though I venture to think that he will not arrive at Lord Jeffrey’s conclusion that the drowning of George Walkinshaw is the most powerful single sketch in the work. Powerful all the same it is; and, since Lord Byron’s dictum concerning the Leddy has given the hint, we may be the more readily forgiven for thinking that there is, in that grim passage, something Shakespearian about the little cabin-boy.
JOHN AYSCOUGH.
THE ENTAIL
TO THE KING.
SIRE,
With the profoundest sense of your Majesty’s gracious condescension, the Author of this work has now the honour to lay it, by permission, at your Majesty’s feet.
It belongs to a series of sketches, in which he has attempted to describe characters and manners peculiar to the most ancient, and most loyal, portion of all your Majesty’s dominions;—it embraces a great part of the last century, the most prosperous period in the annals of Scotland, and singularly glorious to the administration of your Majesty’s Illustrious Family;—it has been written since the era of your Majesty’s joyous Visit to the venerable home of your Royal Ancestors;—and it is presented as a humble memorial of the feelings with which the Author, in common with all his countrymen, did homage to the King at Holyrood.
He has the happiness to be, SIRE, Your Majesty’s Most dutiful and most faithful Subject and Servant.
Edinburgh, 3d December 1822.
THE ENTAIL
CHAPTER I
Claud Walkinshaw was the sole surviving male heir of the Walkinshaws of Kittlestonheugh. His grandfather, the last Laird of the line, deluded by the golden visions that allured so many of the Scottish gentry to embark their fortunes in the Darien Expedition, sent his only son, the father of Claud, in one of the ships fitted out at Cartsdyke, and with him an adventure in which he had staked more than the whole value of his estate. But, as it is not our intention to fatigue the reader with any very circumstantial account of the state of the Laird’s family, we shall pass over, with all expedient brevity, the domestic history of Claud’s childhood. He was scarcely a year old when his father sailed, and his mother died of a broken heart, on hearing that her husband, with many of his companions, had perished of disease and famine among the swamps of the Mosquito shore. The Kittlestonheugh estate was soon after sold, and the Laird, with Claud, retired into Glasgow, where he rented the upper part of a back house, in Aird’s Close, in the Drygate. The only servant whom, in this altered state, he could afford to retain, or rather the only one that he could not get rid of, owing to her age and infirmities, was Maudge Dobbie, who, in her youth, was bairnswoman to his son. She had been upwards of forty years in the servitude of his house; and the situation she had filled to the father of Claud did not tend to diminish the kindliness with which she regarded the child, especially when, by the ruin of her master, there was none but herself to attend him.
The charms of Maudge had, even in her vernal years, been confined to her warm and affectionate feelings; and, at this period, she was twisted east and west, and hither and yont, and Time, in the shape of old age, hung so embracingly round her neck, that his weight had bent her into a hoop. Yet, thus deformed and aged, she was not without qualities that might have endeared her to a more generous boy. Her father had been schoolmaster in the village of Kittleston; and under his tuition, before she was sent, as the phrase then was, to seek her bread in the world, she had acquired a few of the elements of learning beyond those which, in that period, fell to the common lot of female domestics: and she was thus enabled, not only to teach the orphan reading and writing, but even to supply him with some knowledge of arithmetic, particularly addition and the multiplication table. She also possessed a rich stock of goblin lore and romantic stories, the recital of which had given the father of Claud the taste for adventure that induced him to embark in the ill-fated expedition. These, however, were not so congenial to the less sanguine temperament of the son, who early preferred the history of Whittington and his Cat to the achievements of Sir William Wallace; and ‘Tak your auld cloak about you,’ ever seemed to him a thousand times more sensible than ‘Chevy Chace.’ As for that doleful ditty, the ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ it was worse than the ‘Babes in the Wood’; and ‘Gil Morrice’ more wearisome than ‘Death and the Lady’.
The solitary old Laird had not been long settled in his sequestered and humble town-retreat, when a change became visible both in his appearance and manners. He had been formerly bustling, vigorous, hearty, and social; but from the first account of the death of his son, and the ruin of his fortune, he grew thoughtful and sedentary, and shunned the approach of strangers, and retired from the visits of his friends. Sometimes he sat for whole days, without speaking, and without even noticing the kitten-like gambols of his grandson; at others he would fondle over the child, and caress him with more than a grandfather’s affection; again, he would peevishly brush the boy away as he clasped his knees, and hurry out of the house with short and agitated steps. His respectable portliness disappeared; his clothes began to hang loosely upon him; his colour fled; his face withered; and his legs wasted into meagre shanks. Before the end of the first twelve months, he was either unwilling or unable to move unassisted from the old arm chair, in which he sat from morning to night, with his grey head drooping over his breast; and one evening, when Maudge went to assist him to undress, she found he had been for some time dead.
After the funeral, Maudge removed with the penniless orphan to a garret-room in the Saltmarket, where she endeavoured to earn for him and herself the humble aliment of meal and salt, by working stockings; her infirmities and figure having disqualified her from the more profitable industry of the spinning-wheel. In this condition she remained for some time, pinched with poverty, but still patient with her lot, and preserving, nevertheless, a neat and decent exterior.
It was only in the calm of the summer Sabbath evenings that she indulged in the luxury