Sir Walter Scott: Anne of Geierstein (1829)

Charles the Bold, c. 1460, painting by Rogier van der Weyden

 

[Image source: https://www.wikiart.org/en/rogier-van-der-weyden/portrait-of-charles-the-bold-1 . The painting is in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.]

 So my somewhat reluctant journey into Scott's last novels is under way. 

Anne of Geierstein, published after much labour and hesitation in 1829, is, um, OK. I have some doubt whether I'll ever read it again, but I'm wholly glad that I read it once. 

The first couple of chapters are, I think, the best in the book. Here a father and son are travelling through Switzerland, the weather gradually closes in, the younger ends up trapped on a crumbling precipice, until he's rescued by the sure-footed heroine of the title. Scott's evocation of Arthur's giddy terror is surprisingly powerful.  (This is also the scene in which the lammergeier appears.)  

Anne rescues Arthur (Anne of Geierstein, Ch. II)

[Image source: The Corson Collection at Edinburgh University Library . 1838 engraving by W.H. Capone from a painting by F. W. Topham.]

But thereafter, the intensity of narrative interest gradually subsides. A great deal of Scott's immense daily labours in his last years were historical rather than fictional: for example, the Life of Buonaparte and the Tales of a Grandfather. And as this novel proceeds, it pulls more and more towards pure history.

Evidently Scott enjoyed portraying irascible, wilful, impetuous monarchs. King Richard of England had appeared in two of his novels (Ivanhoe, The Talisman); Charles of Burgundy was a major figure in Quentin Durward and now steps forward again in Anne of Geierstein. 

The historical novel is always in dialogue with history. But Anne is so weighted towards history that it starts to import the sombre implications of historical chonicle. In particular, compared to those earlier novels, the line between good and bad conduct is now far less clear. This father and son (the Philipsons, pretending to be merchants but actually noblemen) are the novel's right-minded observers, but they're also driven by their own political agenda, the Lancastrian cause. At first they're drawn towards the Swiss side, but before the novel ends they're fighting against them. Their personal conduct remains above reproach, but in the tangled mess of this European power struggle, we become ever less confident that they're working for the right side, or even whether there is a right side. 

This feeling of moral relativism -- a strange one to readers of Scott's novels -- affects our view of other characters, too. At the start of the novel, there's apparently a clear binary distinction between a good brother (the Landamman Arnold Biederman) and a bad brother (Albert Biederman). But by the end of the book, young Arthur revises his view of Albert, seemingly for no other reason than that Albert's intervention has worked out for him personally.  On the other hand, the morally consistent if painfully arrogant Rudolph Donnerhugel is dispatched without concern: he stood in Arthur's way. It's convincing, but we've moved a long way from a warm bath of moral certainty. 

To this list we might add the deposed Queen Margaret. The Philipsons of course profoundly revere her; she herself lives by an austere and unsparing code; but she works towards an ill end, and we're glad she fails. No simple moral grading is available. (And of course, we can't altogether forget Shakespeare's Queen Margaret, though Scott takes care not to remind us.)

I'm sure this isn't unconnected: along with the chilly realpolitik there's a noticeable absence of comedy. I'm thinking of that gallery of chatty personages who supply so much joy and sanity and moral perspective in Scott's novels. The artillery officer Colvin (Ch XXVI) might have been one of them: like Dalgetty in A Legend of Montrose, perhaps. Instead he's only keen-sighted. And when we meet him again, in the bleakly impressive final chapter (XXXVI), it's as a man of violence who dies violently. The ghost of comedy appears e.g. in Annette and in Sigismund, the dimmest and most likeable of the Landamann's sons. But it's sadly frail. 

Lockhart wrote that Anne of Geierstein "may be almost called the last work of Scott's imaginative genius".  Whatever we make of that "almost", there's no doubt that in the midst of this tale of fifteenth-century European conflict, we spare an occasional troubled glance for the other story that's unfolding alongside it, the decline of its author's health and powers. 

The canvas of Anne is impressively broad: I doubt if any other of Scott's novels has such variety of scene. The novel incorporates e.g.the spectral Anne who passed the gate at Graffs-lust; the fanciful tale of the Baron of Arnhem's traffic with Persian necromancy and his mysterious wife; the absurdly villainous Governor Archibald cooking up plans with his more intelligent squire Kilian; the frank Swiss waiting-woman Annette Veilchen (owing more than a little to Ann Radcliffe's Annette in the Mysteries of Udolpho); the grim secret tribunals of the Vehme; the mysterious female in Strassbourg cathedral; good King René's Provence, with an account of the Troubadors;  the bleak monastery on the summit of Mont Saint-Victoire. Variety that perhaps strives to compensate for the absence of deep engagement with any of these individual ingredients.

As a kind of sequel to Quentin Durward, the novel was enthusiastically received in Europe. Scott reported, for example, that admirers had sent him no less than six medieval Swiss long-swords to add to his armory at Abbotsford (the huge two-handed sword that features in the duel of Ch VI). 

But at a closer level we begin to miss a different sort of amplitude: the overflowing of what had once seemed an inexhaustible spring of invention. I sorely miss Scott's own sense of amusement, his ready anecdotes and quotations, his capaciousness and his way of turning a topic around to show it from an unexpected angle.

It would be a shame to post about Anne of Geierstein without including a short extract, so here's one. We're in the camp of the Duke of Burgundy's forces, near Dijon.  "Philipson" ( actually the Earl of Oxford) is giving his son directions concerning a mission to Queen Margaret in Provence. 

"And now, Arthur," said his father, "we must part once more. I dare give thee, in this land of danger, no written communication to my mistress, Queen Margaret; but say to her, that I have found the Duke of Burgundy wedded to his own views of interest, but not averse to combine them with hers. Say, that I have little doubt that he will grant us the required aid, but not without the expected resignation in his favour by herself and King René. Say, I would never have recommended such a sacrifice for the precarious chance of overthrowing the House of York, but that I am satisfied that France and Burgundy are hanging like vultures over Provence, and that the one or other, or both princes, are ready, on her father's demise, to pounce on such possessions as they have reluctantly spared to him during his life. An accommodation with Burgundy may therefore, on the one hand, insure his active co-operation in the attempt on England; and, on the other, if our high-spirited princess complies not with the Duke's request, the justice of her cause will give no additional security to her hereditary claims on her father's dominions. Bid Queen Margaret, therefore, unless she should have changed her views, obtain King René's formal deed of cession, conveying his estates to the Duke of Burgundy, with her Majesty's consent. The necessary provisions to the King and to herself may be filled up at her Grace's pleasure, or they may be left blank. I can trust to the Duke's generosity to their being suitably arranged. All that I fear is, that Charles may embroil himself"——

    "In some silly exploit, necessary for his own honour and the safety of his dominions," answered a voice behind the lining of the tent; "and, by doing so, attend to his own affairs more than to ours? Ha, Sir Earl?"

    At the same time the curtain was drawn aside, and a person entered, in whom, though clothed with the jerkin and bonnet of a private soldier of the Walloon guard, Oxford instantly recognised the Duke of Burgundy's harsh features and fierce eyes, as they sparkled from under the fur and feather with which the cap was ornamented.

    Arthur, who knew not the Prince's person, started at the intrusion, and laid his hand on his dagger; but his father made a signal which stayed his hand, and he gazed with wonder on the solemn respect with which the Earl received the intrusive soldier. The first word informed him of the cause.

    "If this masking be done in proof of my faith, noble Duke, permit me to say it is superfluous."

    "Nay, Oxford," answered the Duke, "I was a courteous spy; for I ceased to play the eavesdropper, at the very moment when I had reason to expect you were about to say something to anger me."

    "As I am a true Knight, my Lord Duke, if you had remained behind the arras, you would only have heard the same truths which I am ready to tell in your Grace's presence, though it may have chanced they might have been more bluntly expressed."

    "Well, speak them then, in whatever phrase thou wilt—they lie in their throats that say Charles of Burgundy was ever offended by advice from a well-meaning friend."

    "I would then have said," replied the English Earl, "that all which Margaret of Anjou had to apprehend, was that the Duke of Burgundy, when buckling on his armour to win Provence for himself, and to afford to her his powerful assistance to assert her rights in England, was likely to be withdrawn from such high objects by an imprudently eager desire to avenge himself of imaginary affronts, offered to him, as he supposed, by certain confederacies of Alpine mountaineers, over whom it is impossible to gain any important advantage, or acquire reputation, while, on the contrary, there is a risk of losing both. These men dwell amongst rocks and deserts which are almost inaccessible, and subsist in a manner so rude, that the poorest of your subjects would starve if subjected to such diet. They are formed by nature to be the garrison of the mountain-fortresses in which she has placed them;—for Heaven's sake meddle not with them, but follow forth your own nobler and more important objects, without stirring a nest of hornets, which, once in motion, may sting you into madness."

    The Duke had promised patience, and endeavoured to keep his word; but the swoln muscles of his face, and his flashing eyes, showed how painful to him it was to suppress his resentment. 

    "You are misinformed, my lord," he said; "these men are not the inoffensive herdsmen and peasants you are pleased to suppose them.    . . ."

(from Ch. XXVI)

The elder Philipson and the surly innkeeper John Mengs (Anne of Geierstein, Ch. XIX)

[Image source: The Corson Collection at Edinburgh University Library . 1838 engraving by George Cruikshank.]

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King René in Anne of Geierstein was in his younger days the Reignier of 1 Henry VI (by Shakespeare and others).

Scott's portrayal of the art- and poetry-besotted court of King René turned out to be influential. 

It may have suggested the Dane Henrik Hertz' 1845 play Kong Renes Datter (not about Margaret but her elder sister Yolande), which was the source of Iolanta, Tchaikovsky's last opera.

Via Myles Birket Foster, it inspired Dante Gabriel Rossetti's oil-painting King René's Honeymoon (1867). Strictly Rossetti's painting was originally part of a project called King René's Honeymoon Cabinet: items René might be imagined to carry. Details are in the article below, which points out that though Scott is a source for the general idea of René's devotion to art (which dated from the time of his second marriage), Scott himself says nothing about a honeymoon or a cabinet. 

http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s175.raw.html

In fact, Scott's portrayal of the dottard René and his court is highly critical, but it opened a door to the Pre-Raphaelites' enthusiasm for the Provençal troubadors. 

*

At around the same date Anne of Geierstein may have had another and more dire influence. The Ku Klux Klan (formed 1865) may have based some of the details of their operation  on descriptions of the secret court of the Holy Vehme, ultimately from Goethe but most likely taken from this very novel. (For example the black cloaks and hoods; the white cloaks came later.) This at any rate was the theory put forward by James Taft Hadfield (PMLA, Vol 37 No 4 (Dec 1922), pp. 735-739):

https://www.jstor.org/stable/457170

Forty years later Thomas Dixon Jr, in The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), invented the detail of the Klan's burning crosses, apparently basing it on the Gaelic crann-tara, which he probably knew from Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake. Subsequently, the reviving Klan adopted Dixon's idea. 

 [For more on Scott and subsequent American history, see https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2021/03/scott-and-american-violence.html .]

Scott's novels: A brief guide