Time trouble in The Heart of Midlothian

Arrangement in Yellow and Gray: Effie Deans, painting by James McNeill Whistler, painted c. 1876-c. 1878.

[Image source: Wikimedia .]

"such delicate points of chronology" (The Heart of Midlothian, Ch 23).

This post is about Scott's handling of narrative in The Heart of Midlothian (1818), with special regard to mundane things like times, dates and seasons. It's a sort of preliminary, I hope, to writing more comprehensively about this great but problematic novel. Behind the light entertainment is a deeper question about what kind of a novel it is (and isn't).

[The more comprehensive effort is here: 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2024/02/sir-walter-scott-heart-of-midlothian.html  .]

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When we get to the first chapter* of The Heart of Midlothian (quite a journey in itself), we're unexpectedly confronted with something that Scott usually shies away from specifying, not just a season but an actual date.

On the 7th day of September 1736,..  

But then we're immediately whirled away and it will be several more chapters before we find out what happened on that date. The reader of Scott is rarely in command of time.

Only in hindsight do we understand that Scott's unwonted precision is a matter of historical record: this was the date that Porteous was lynched, just before midnight. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porteous_Riots

The last-minute reprieve of Porteous had actually come five days earlier, on 2nd September. Scott telescopes the events so they all unfold in the course of a single day. But then he sort of has it both ways. In Ch 17 the magistrate admits that Butler having only arrived in Edinburgh on the 7th is evidence that he was not involved in planning the riot. That, of course, implies that the reprieve (the occasion for the riot) preceded the fateful 7th by several days, as was in fact the case. So obviously Scott is using double time here. 

And not just here, because the date soon lands him in trouble of another kind.

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After leading us from that original date (Sept 7th) through the next day, and then the morning of the next (i.e. Sept 9th), the continuous narrative comes to a sudden halt, with Madge seeming to fly off like a witch in Macbeth (Ch 17).

In the mean time, Bailie Middleburgh has stated his intention of walking out to the Deans home at St Leonard’s "one of these days",  in the hope of finding evidence that might help Effie's case. The text proceeds thus: 

Some weeks intervened before Mr. Middleburgh, agreeably to his benevolent resolution, found an opportunity of taking a walk towards St. Leonard’s, in order to discover whether it might be possible to obtain the evidence hinted at in the anonymous letter respecting Effie Deans.

(Ch 17)

I think anyone reading this would assume that Mr Middleburgh's visit (Ch 17-18) takes place in October, more or less. After that some more weeks pass, the trial being delayed in the vain hope that one of the sisters will provide information about Robertson. And then, the day before the trial, the two sisters are finally allowed to meet "for the first time for several months". We know they haven't met since some time before September 7th (say, mid August?+), so we might have a guess that the trial takes place around the end of November. But we'll be wrong....

[+ The sisters' last meeting terminated with Effie's arrest (Ch 9). According to George Staunton her arrest occurred at the same time Porteous was convicted (Ch 32). Historically, that was July 5th. But in Scott's account of the prior events leading up to the September riots he supplies no dates and the general impression is of compressing them, so I think mid-August is a reasonable estimate.]

No season is indicated during the extended scenes of the trial, and when the sentence is pronounced in Ch 23, Scott carefully blanks the date of Effie's planned execution (set for six weeks after the date of the trial, as we'll soon learn).

But when, the day after the trial, Jeanie arrives at "the mansion-house of Dumbiedikes", it is "a fine spring morning" (Ch 25). That's to say, the novel has somehow advanced by seven or even eight months from the date when it began. (Spring comes late to Scotland.)

A week or two later, at "Willingham" (based on Staunton in the Vale, Notts), Jeanie sees the "fruit-trees, so many of which were at this time in flourish, that the grove seemed enamelled with their crimson and white blossoms" (Ch 30)... That sounds like apple trees in mid-May.

May... There's no more traditional time, in northern European culture, for the setting of a romantic adventure.

And we can see now the problem that Scott gave himself by perforce naming the date of the Porteous riots as Sept 7th. The issue, in a word, is winter. In Scotland as in other northern lands there was a long period every year when the kind of adventures that Scott typically recounts were basically suspended, when the weather was severe, travelling was difficult and most people stayed near home.  [Towards the end of his career, The Fair Maid of Perth is an interesting exception, deliberately set in winter.]

It was a problem that never existed for Ann Radcliffe, setting her adventures in Mediterranean climes; there the stories could wind on and on, regardless of the season, just enlivened now and then by the occasional thunderstorm. The weather in Scott's novels, too, tends to be Radcliffian. Despite the Scottish settings, it's rare for him to mention rain or wind or snow. In fact he doesn't often mention the weather at all, but the implication is that nearly every day is fine.

[It's a great surprise, when we turn to Scott's journal, to find him both fascinated and strongly affected by the weather; and brilliant at capturing its mood in a line or two. It's a side of him that's totally absent from the novels.]

Anyway, Jeanie's barefoot journey from Edinburgh to London is only conceivable in the lighter and warmer part of the year. So Scott, without losing dramatic momentum, had somehow to contrive to "lose" the whole long winter. He does it partly by credible but not really sufficient delays in Ch 17-18, and partly by concealing the time of year throughout the long account of the trial (Ch 19-24).

It's fair to say that he succeeded pretty well; few readers have noticed or been troubled. 

[Having attained the 1737 season of fair weather, Scott unobtrusively stays there right through to Ch 45, where Jeanie's moonlight meeting with Effie has a "summer fragrance". (The sole intervening reference to the weather is Jeanie's remark, in regard to pasture, that it's been "drouthy", i.e. dry (Ch 41).)

In Ch 46 Jeanie marries Reuben and five years pass quickly before us, during which the couple have three children. The next bit of continuous narrative (Effie's letter, the Duke's visit) takes place in autumn: the Duke is going to have sport with the blackcock (Ch 46-47). Scott's interval of "five years" isn't random; he knew that the Duke of Argyle died in October 1743, i.e. the year after this visit; similarly, Jeanie's climactic meeting with Queen Caroline in Ch 36 shortly preceded the queen's painful death in 1738 (and Jeanie's exhortation seems to tune in to Caroline knowing that her days are numbered).

 Ch 48 then covers another time lapse, of nine or ten years, up to the death of David Deans and, not long afterwards, the scene where Jeanie supplies her husband with the thousand pounds she has accumulated in Effie's twice-yearly "enclosures" of fifty pound notes. No time of year is mentioned, but we can assume it's no more than three or four months before Reuben's departure for Edinburgh, which is at the end of February (Ch 49). (The interval of ten years isn't random, either; it means that when Effie shows up at Roseneath, her 14-year term of exile has expired.)]

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Another fact we cling to appears in Chapter 4, thanks to Mrs Saddletree:

“Was not this girl,” he said, “the daughter of David Deans, that had the parks at St. Leonard’s taken? and has she not a sister?”

“In troth has she,—puir Jeanie Deans, ten years aulder than hersell; she was here greeting a wee while syne about her tittie.

This ten-year age-gap between the sisters makes excellent sense throughout most of the narrative. When the novel begins Effie is 17 (Ch 19), so Jeanie is 27ish. (Jeanie and Reuben Butler, similar in age, have been secretly engaged for ten years.)

But in Chapter 8 we read this:

..... the Laird of Dumbiedikes, with his old laced hat and empty tobacco-pipe, came and enjoyed the beatific vision of Jeanie Deans day after day, week after week, year after year, without proposing to accomplish any of the prophecies of the stepmother.

This good lady began to grow doubly impatient on the subject, when, after having been some years married, she herself presented Douce Davie with another daughter, who was named Euphemia, by corruption, Effie. It was then that Rebecca began to turn impatient with the slow pace at which the Laird’s wooing proceeded, judiciously arguing, that, as Lady Dumbiedikes would have but little occasion for tocher, the principal part of her gudeman’s substance would naturally descend to the child by the second marriage. 

But Rebecca couldn't be impatient about the Laird declaring his intentions if Jeanie was only ten years old! The implication of this passage is that Jeanie had for some years been old enough to invite proposals of marriage, even prior to Effie's birth. It would make the age gap between the sisters more like 20 years.

And in fact that fits better with the family history recounted in this chapter. Jeanie's mother died an unspecified time after her birth, David was then a widower for ten years before remarrying, and Effie was born a few years later. Effie was the child of his old age. 

My general sense is that Scott is leaning over backwards to negate any suggestion of impropriety, of things happening too fast in the Deans household. But he has two beloved wives to dispose of, and he needs a very sufficient gap between David's two marriages (Jeanie's upbringing is all about her father and Reuben, no maternal or step-maternal input is wanted). The upshot is that, in Chapter 8, he goes way over his time-budget.

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At the other end of the novel (Ch 50), we read this, about Jeanie's two sons:

“He’ll be away down the Firth to Cowal,” said David; and Reuben, who had been out early that morning a-nutting, observed, “That he had seen a boat making for the Caird’s Cove;” a place well known to the boys, though their less adventurous father was ignorant of its existence.

But young Reuben is truly "gathering nuts in May", since in this same chapter Scott has described the oppressive heat (presaging a storm), "so unusual in Scotland in the end of May".

Why did Scott choose to have his storm occur at this rather unlikely time of year? Actually he's been unusually insistent on the May date ever since the end of Ch 48, having presumably decided that he could naturally bring Sir George Staunton together with the older Reuben at the General Assembly of the Kirk in Edinburgh, which is always held around May 21 and lasts for five days. It was an important event in Scotland's calendar, and not just for ministers (priests): Scott attended it himself, as representative elder of the burgh of Selkirk. Besides, this idea had the merit of finally giving us one more glimpse of Edinburgh and the various Dunediners we met in the novel's early chapters.

[In fact Scott has been preparing for this meeting since Ch 47, where we learn that Staunton is a great friend of the Lord High Commissioner of the Kirk.]

You'd think that he couldn't have suddenly forgotten that it was May, so I'm not sure what to make of "a-nutting ". Perhaps it's the kind of thing that happens when you write very fast and without much premeditation and, besides, are not in very good health. Or maybe, as I suspect, he actually wrote something different. Season aside, nutting doesn't seem a naturally early-morning activity. I wonder if Scott intended some other sort of activity, maybe related to fishing (a-netting?) or snaring or birds-nesting (a-nesting?) or something of that sort.

*

For the moon "rising broad in the north-west" at Muschat's Cairn (Ch 14),  see here:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2010/10/moonset-literary.html

*

Madge Wildfire runs away from Muschat's Cairn at the end of Ch 16, and Ratcliffe confirms her disappearance in Ch 17. Mr Sharpitlaw remarks that it will be simple enough to pick her up if they ever want to. Well, they must have wanted to pretty quickly, because the next morning we find Madge back in the Tollbooth prison, from which her mother contrives her release. No explanation is supplied. (Afterwards the pair disappear and Mr Sharpitlaw, contrary to his sanguine expectation, is unable to trace them.)

*

“For the sake of Heaven, that hears and sees us,” said Jeanie, “dinna speak in this desperate fashion! The gospel is sent to the chief of sinners — to the most miserable among the miserable.”

“Then should I have my own share therein,” said the stranger, “if you call it sinful to have been the destruction of the mother that bore me — of the friend that loved me — of the woman that trusted me — of the innocent child that was born to me. If to have done all this is to be a sinner, and survive it is to be miserable, then am I most guilty and most miserable indeed.”

(Ch 14)

But when Jeanie hears more of George Staunton's history (Chs 32-33), there is no suggestion that he was responsible for his mother's death (when he was ten), nor for any other kind of "destruction". Nor is there anything in that history about a "friend that loved me". On the other hand the history involves the ruin of Madge Wildfire, which is not distinctly referred to here.  

So there's a bit of a mismatch. Perhaps when Scott wrote Ch 14 he hadn't worked out the details of "Geordie Robertson's" story. Or perhaps he deliberately made it a bit different every time. Because the accounts in Ch 32 and 33 differ from each other, too.

When Jeanie mentioned the old woman [Meg Murdockson] having alluded to her foster-son —“It is too true,” he said; “and the source from which I derived food, when an infant, must have communicated to me the wretched — the fated — propensity to vices that were strangers in my own family. — But go on.” (Ch 32)

Thus George Staunton. And a page or two later he continues:

To make my tale short — this wretched hag — this Margaret Murdockson, was the wife of a favourite servant of my father — she had been my nurse — her husband was dead — she resided in a cottage near this place — she had a daughter who grew up, and was then a beautiful but very giddy girl ... (Ch 32)

But in the next chapter Jeanie hears a quite different account of George's childhood, from the "stout Lincolnshire peasant" with whom she travels to Stamford.

The father of George Staunton had been bred a soldier, and during service in the West Indies, had married the heiress of a wealthy planter. By this lady he had an only child, George Staunton, the unhappy young, man who has been so often mentioned in this narrative. He passed the first part of his early youth under the charge of a doting mother, and in the society of negro slaves, whose study it was to gratify his every caprice. His father was a man of worth and sense; but as he alone retained tolerable health among the officers of the regiment he belonged to, he was much engaged with his duty. Besides, Mrs. Staunton was beautiful and wilful, and enjoyed but delicate health; so that it was difficult for a man of affection, humanity, and a quiet disposition, to struggle with her on the point of her over-indulgence to an only child. (Ch 33)

According to this account young George did not come to England until he was ten.

Perhaps an ingenious person can reconcile these two stories, but to me they're starkly incompatible. Surely Meg (and Madge) were never in the West Indies. The two accounts stand next to each other, each complete in itself, and cannot be fused together. 

And of course they are wholly different as explanations for George's evil propensities. George himself outlines a folkloric situation: an innocent child from a virtuous family being possessed by a wicked witch. But the peasant's story attributes George's character very firmly to his own family: to the corrupting culture of the plantations, to his over-indulgent mother and to his remote and incompetent father. 

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When I began this post I expected to find that The Heart of Midlothian's inconsistencies arose from the way in which Scott worked: his professed inability to plan, his speed of composition, pressure and interference from his publishers, the chaotic turbulence of nearing the finish-line, and so on. (I've read that by the end Scott was writing all evening as well as all morning, so eager was he to complete it.)

I expected to say that as interpreters or critics our focus needs to be a wide one, responding to the overall effect not details; to a single creative upheaval, to something we value for its life and vigour rather than its polish. 

Maybe there's still some truth in all that, but I've come to think that for the most part the inconsistencies discussed above were not accidental but deliberately incurred. If Scott did not plan much beforehand, he was well able to keep control as he went along. He did not forget what he had previously written, but sometimes he chose to contradict it, and for reasons we can often guess at. There's a larger consistency in The Heart of Midlothian, but some of its depths are founded on multiple times and narratives.

(In the twentieth century, because of being singled out for rather grudging praise in F.R. Leavis' footnote, The Heart of Midlothian was apt to receive attention from literary critics who didn't seem to have read many other Scott novels and basically didn't like or understand what Scott does. But even if you do like Scott's other books, The Heart of Midlothian perhaps requires a different approach; it does stand out in various ways: e.g. his longest and most elaborate book, a unique focus on a very active heroine, uniquely a family saga, and so on. Scott confidently announced to the publishers, before he had written a word of it, that it was going to be his best book.)

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* There are various ways of numbering the chapters of The Heart of Midlothian. The chapter references given in this post assign Chapter 1 to when the story actually begins, and run sequentially through to Chapter 51. Some editions assign Chapter 1 to Peter Pattieson's Introduction and number the rest accordingly.  [The reason for this variation is probably the inconsistent chapter-numbering in 1818 Vol I, which left editors having to infer what was intended and make a choice about the best way to redress it.]

The original publication was in four volumes, three of which are on Google Books (actually they are the second edition of 1818, but I'm hoping that doesn't matter...). Volume I takes us through to Chapter 11, ending "The Laird saw nothing so important in this observation as to call for a rejoinder, and when they had exchanged a mute salutation, they parted in peace on their different errands". (It numbers Peter's Introduction as 1, but it also has two successive chapters numbered 3!). Each of the later volumes begins its chapter numbering anew: by the scheme adopted here Volume II began with Ch 12 ("Butler felt neither fatigue nor want of refreshment..."), Volume III with Ch 25 ("The mansion-house of Dumbiedikes..."), and Volume IV with Ch 37 ("The Duke of Argyle led the way in silence...").

There are also later two-volume arrangements (such as the one on Gutenberg, with Andrew Lang's introduction). Be warned, they don't all begin Volume 2 in the same place!

The 2006 Edinburgh edition makes its own contribution to this messy picture by splitting Ch 17 into two chapters (presumably what the editors thought Scott originally intended).

Sir Walter Scott's novels: A Brief Guide