Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
WAVERLEY or 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE
by SIR WALTER SCOTT BART.
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
WAVERLEY or 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE
NOTES
GLOSSARY
[Note:
Characters that were in italics in the printed text have been written in
capital letters in this Etext. Accents in quotations in French and other
accented languages have been omitted.
Footnotes in the printed text that were at the bottom of the page have
been placed in square brackets, as near as possible to the place where
they were originally referred to by a suffix.
Numbered notes at the end of the book are referred to by the insertion
of references to those notes in square brackets.]
Under which King, Bezonian? speak, or die! Henry IV, Part II.
INTRODUCTION - (1829)
The plan of this Edition leads me to insert in this place some account
of the incidents on which the Novel of WAVERLEY is founded. They have
been already given to the public, by my late lamented friend, William
Erskine, Esq. (afterwards Lord Kinneder), when reviewing the 'Tales of
My Landlord' for the QUARTERLY REVIEW, in 1817. The particulars were
derived by the Critic from the Author's information. Afterwards they
were published in the Preface to the CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE. They
are now inserted in their proper place.
The mutual protection afforded by Waverley and Talbot to each other,
upon which the whole plot depends, is founded upon one of those
anecdotes which soften the features even of civil war; and as it is
equally honourable to the memory of both parties, we have no hesitation
to give their names at length. When the Highlanders, on the morning of
the battle of Preston, 1745, made their memorable attack on Sir John
Cope's army, a battery of four field-pieces was stormed and carried by
the Camerons and the Stewarts of Appine. The late Alexander Stewart
of Invernahyle was one of the foremost in the charge, and observing an
officer of the King's forces, who, scorning to join the flight of all
around, remained with his sword in his hand, as if determined to the
very last to defend the post assigned to him, the Highland gentleman
commanded him to surrender, and received for reply a thrust, which
he caught in his target. The officer was now defenceless, and the
battle-axe of a gigantic Highlander (the miller of Invernahyle's mill)
was uplifted to dash his brains out, when Mr. Stewart with difficulty
prevailed on him to yield. He took charge of his enemy's property,
protected his person, and finally obtained him liberty on his parole.
The officer proved to be Colonel Whitefoord, an Ayrshire gentleman
of high character and influence, and warmly attached to the House
of Hanover; yet such was the confidence existing between these two
honourable men, though of different political principles, that while
the civil war was raging, and straggling officers from the Highland army
were executed without mercy, Invernahyle hesitated not to pay his
late captive a visit, as he returned to the Highlands to raise fresh
recruits, on which occasion he spent a day or two in Ayrshire among
Colonel Whitefoord's Whig friends, as pleasantly and as good-humouredly
as if all had been at peace around him.
After the battle of Culloden had ruined the hopes of Charles Edward, and
dispersed his proscribed adherents, it was Colonel Whitefoord's turn to
strain every nerve to obtain Mr. Stewart's pardon. He went to the Lord
Justice-Clerk, to the Lord-Advocate, and to all the officers of state,
and each application was answered by the production of a list, in which
Invernahyle (as the good old gentleman was wont to express it) appeared
'marked with the sign of the beast!' as a subject unfit for favour or
pardon.
At length Colonel Whitefoord applied to the Duke of Cumberland in
person. From him, also, he received a positive refusal. He then limited
his request, for the present, to a protection for Stewart's house, wife,
children, and property. This was also refused by the Duke; on which
Colonel Whitefoord, taking his commission from his bosom, laid it on the
table before his Royal Highness with much emotion, and asked permission
to retire from the service of a sovereign who did not know how to spare
a vanquished enemy. The Duke was struck, and even affected. He bade the
Colonel take up his commission, and granted the protection he required.
If was issued just in time to save the house, corn, and cattle at
Invernahyle, from the troops who were engaged in laying waste what it
was the fashion to call 'the country of the enemy.' A small encampment
of soldiers was formed on Invernahyle's property, which they spared
while plundering the country around, and searching in every direction
for the leaders of the insurrection, and for Stewart in particular. He
was much nearer them than they suspected; for, hidden in a cave (like
the Baron of Bradwardine), he lay for many days so near the English
sentinels, that he could hear their muster-roll called, His food was
brought to him by one of his daughters, a child of eight years old, whom
Mrs. Stewart was under the necessity of entrusting with this commission;
for her own motions, and those of all her elder inmates, were closely
watched. With ingenuity beyond her years, the child used to stray about
among the soldiers, who were rather kind to her, and thus seize the
moment when she was unobserved, and steal into the thicket, when she
deposited whatever small store of provisions she had in charge at some
marked spot, where her father might find it. Invernahyle supported life
for several weeks by means of these precarious supplies; and as he had
been wounded in the battle of Culloden, the hardships which he endured
were aggravated by great bodily pain. After the soldiers had removed
their quarters, he had another remarkable escape.
As he now ventured to his own house at night, and left it in the
morning, he was espied during the dawn by a party of the enemy, who
fired at and pursued him. The fugitive being fortunate enough to escape
their search, they returned to the house, and charged the family with
harbouring one of the proscribed traitors. An old woman had presence
of mind enough to maintain that the man they had seen was the shepherd.
'Why did he not stop when we called to him?' said the soldier. - 'He
is as deaf, poor man, as a peat-stack,' answered the ready-witted
domestic. - 'Let him be sent for, directly.' The real shepherd
accordingly was brought from the hill, and as there was time to tutor
him by the way, he was as deaf when he made his appearance, as was
necessary to sustain his character. Invernahyle was afterwards pardoned
under the Act of Indemnity.
The Author knew him well, and has often heard these circumstances
from his own mouth. He was a noble specimen of the old Highlander, far
descended, gallant, courteous, and brave, even to chivalry. He had been
OUT, I believe, in 1715 and 1745; was an active partaker in all the
stirring scenes which passed in the Highlands betwixt these memorable
eras; and, I have heard, was remarkable, among other exploits, for
having fought a duel with the broadsword with the celebrated Rob Roy
MacGregor, at the Clachan of Balquhidder.
Invernahyle chanced to be in Edinburgh when Paul Jones came into the
Frith of Forth, and though then an old man, I saw him in arms, and
heard him exult (to use his own words) in the prospect of 'drawing his
claymore once more before he died.' In fact, on that memorable occasion,
when the capital of Scotland was menaced by three trifling sloops or
brigs, scarce fit to have sacked a fishing village, he was the only
man who seemed to propose a plan of resistance. He offered to the
magistrates, if broadswords and dirks could be obtained, to find as many
Highlanders among the lower classes, as would cut off any boat's-crew
who might be sent into a town full of narrow and winding passages, in
which they were like to disperse in quest of plunder. I know not if
his plan was attended to; I rather think it seemed too hazardous to the
constituted authorities, who might not, even at that time, desire to
see arms in Highland hands. A steady and powerful west wind settled the
matter, by sweeping Paul Jones and his vessels out of the Frith.
If there is something degrading in this recollection, it is not
unpleasant to compare it with those of the last war, when Edinburgh,
besides regular forces and militia, furnished a volunteer brigade of
cavalry, infantry, and artillery, to the amount of six thousand men and
upwards, which was in readiness to meet and repel a force of a far more
formidable description than was commanded by the adventurous American.
Time and circumstances change the character of nations and the fate
of cities; and it is some pride to a Scotchman to reflect, that the
independent and manly character of a country willing to entrust its own
protection to the arms of its children, after having been obscured for
half a century, has, during the course of his own lifetime, recovered
its lustre.
Other illustrations of Waverley will be found in the Notes at the foot
of the pages to which they belong. [In this etext they are embedded in
the text in square brackets.] Those which appeared too long to be so
placed are given at the end of the volume.
WAVERLEY or 'TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid
deliberation, which matters of importance demand from the prudent. Even
its first, or general denomination, was the result of no common research
or selection, although, according to the example of my predecessors,
I had only to seize upon the most sounding and euphonic surname that
English history or topography affords, and elect it at once as the title
of my work, and the name of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers
have expected from the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt,
Mortimer, or Stanley, or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of
Belmour, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar
to those which have been so christened for half a century past? I
must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it in
unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have, therefore,
like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for my hero,
WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound little of good
or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be pleased to affix
to it. But my second or supplemental title was a matter of much more
difficult election, since that, short as it is, may be held as pledging
the author to some special mode of laying his scene, drawing his
characters, and managing his adventures. Had I, for example, announced
in my frontispiece, 'Waverley, a Tale of other Days,' must not every
novel reader have anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho,
of which the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either
lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose
trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to
guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl
have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could
it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to
introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity
of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the
heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and
horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title
borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as
not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and
mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their
properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines,
trap-doors, and dark-lanterns? Or if I had rather chosen to call my work
a 'Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a sufficient presage of a
heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft solace
of her solitary hours, which she fortunately finds always the means of
transporting from castle to cottage, although she herself be sometimes
obliged to jump out of a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is more than
once bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without any guide but
a blowzy peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can understand? Or again,
if my WAVERLEY had been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst thou
not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch of the
fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly veiled,
and if lusciously painted, so much the better? a heroine from Grosvenor
Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the Four-in-hand, with a
set of subordinate characters from the elegantes of Queen Anne Street
East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow Street Office? I could proceed in
proving the importance of a title-page, and displaying at the same time
my own intimate knowledge of the particular ingredients necessary to the
composition of romances and novels of various descriptions: but it
is enough, and I scorn to tyrannize longer over the impatience of my
reader, who is doubtless already anxious to know the choice made by an
author so profoundly versed in the different branches of his art.
By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before the present 1st
November, 1805, I would have my readers understand, that they will meet
in the following pages neither a romance of chivalry, nor a tale of
modern manners; that my hero will neither have iron on his shoulders,
as of yore, nor on the heels of his boots, as is the present fashion of
Bond Street; and that my damsels will neither be clothed 'in purple
and in pall,' like the Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the
primitive nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my
choice of an era the understanding critic may further presage, that the
object of my tale is more a description of men than manners. A tale of
manners, to be interesting, must either refer to antiquity so great as
to have become venerable, or it must bear a vivid reflection of those
scenes which are passing daily before our eyes, and are interesting
from their novelty. Thus the coat-of-mail of our ancestors, and
the triple-furred pelisse of our modern beaux, may, though for very
different reasons, be equally fit for the array of a fictitious
character; but who, meaning the costume of his hero to be impressive,
would willingly attire him in the court dress of George the Second's
reign, with its no collar, large sleeves, and low pocket-holes? The
same may be urged, with equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its
darkened and tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive
oaken table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and
peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in fictitious
description. Much may also be gained by a lively display of a modern
fete, such as we have daily recorded in that part of a newspaper
entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast these, or either of them,
with the splendid formality of an entertainment given Sixty Years since;
and thus it will be readily seen how much the painter of antique or
of fashionable manners gains over him who delineates those of the last
generation.
Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my subject,
I must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as much as possible,
by throwing the force of my narrative upon the characters and passions
of the actors; - those passions common to men in all stages of society,
and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under
the steel corselet of the fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the
eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present
day. [Alas! that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in 1805, or
thereabouts, is now as antiquated as the Author of Waverley has himself
become since that period! The reader of fashion will please to fill up
the costume with an embroidered waistcoat of purple velvet or silk,
and a coat of whatever colour he pleases.] Upon these passions it is
no doubt true that the state of manners and laws casts a necessary
colouring; but the bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain
the same, though the tincture may be not only different, but opposed in
strong contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was
coloured GULES; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary violence
against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings, which must
seek gratification through more indirect channels, and undermine the
obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said to be
tinctured SABLE. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both cases;
and the proud peer who can now only ruin his neighbour according to law,
by protracted suits, is the genuine descendant of the baron who wrapped
the castle of his competitor in flames, and knocked him on the head as
he endeavoured to escape from the conflagration. It is from the great
book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of
black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have venturously
essayed to read a chapter to the public. Some favourable opportunities
of contrast have been afforded me, by the state of society in the
northern part of the island at the period of my history, and may serve
at once to vary and to illustrate the moral lessons, which I would
willingly consider as the most important part of my plan; although I
am sensible how short these will fall of their aim, if I shall be found
unable to mix them with amusement, - a task not quite so easy in this
critical generation as it was 'Sixty Years since.'
CHAPTER II
WAVERLEY-HONOUR - -A RETROSPECT
It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the
following pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment
of dragoons in which he had lately obtained a commission. It was a
melancholy day at Waverley-Honour when the young officer parted with
Sir Everard, the affectionate old uncle to whose title and estate he was
presumptive heir.
A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet
from his younger brother, Richard Waverley, the father of our hero.
Sir Everard had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or
High-Church predilections and prejudices, which had distinguished the
house of Waverley since the Great Civil War. Richard, on the contrary,
who was ten years younger, beheld himself born to the fortune of a
second brother, and anticipated neither dignity nor entertainment in
sustaining the character of Will Wimble. He saw early, that, to succeed
in the race of life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight
as possible. Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence
of compound passions in the same features at the same moment: it would
be no less difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed motives which
unite to form the impulse of our actions. Richard Waverley read and
satisfied himself, from history and sound argument, that, in the words
of the old song,
Passive obedience was a jest,
And pshaw! was non-resistance;
yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove
hereditary prejudice, could Richard have anticipated that his elder
brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment, would
have remained a batchelor at seventy-two. The prospect of succession,
however remote, might in that case have led him to endure dragging
through the greater part of his life as 'Master Richard at the Hall,
the baronet's brother,' in the hope that ere its conclusion he should be
distinguished as Sir Richard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, successor to
a princely estate, and to extended political connexions as head of the
county interest in the shire where it lay. But this was a consummation
of things not to be expected at Richard's outset, when Sir Everard was
in the prime of life, and certain to be an acceptable suitor in almost
any family, whether wealth or beauty should be the object of his
pursuit, and when, indeed, his speedy marriage was a report which
regularly amused the neighbourhood once a year. His younger brother saw
no practicable road to independence save that of relying upon his own
exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to reason
and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in High
Church and in the house of Stewart. He therefore read his recantation
at the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig, and
friend of the Hanover succession.
The ministry of George the First's time were prudently anxious to
diminish the phalanx of opposition. The Tory nobility, depending for
their reflected lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for some
time been gradually reconciling themselves to the new dynasty. But the
wealthy country gentlemen of England, a rank which retained, with
much of ancient manners and primitive integrity, a great proportion of
obstinate and unyielding prejudice, stood aloof in haughty and sullen
opposition, and cast many a look of mingled regret and hope to Bois de
Duc, Avignon, and Italy. [Where the Chevalier Saint George, or, as he
was termed, the Old Pretender, held his exiled court, as his situation
compelled him to shift his place of residence.] The accession of the
near relation of one of those steady and inflexible opponents was
considered as a means of bringing over more converts, and therefore
Richard Waverley met with a share of ministerial favour more than
proportioned to his talents or his political importance. It was however,
discovered that he had respectable talents for public business, and the
first admittance to the minister's levee being negotiated, his success
became rapid. Sir Everard learned from the public NEWS-LETTER, - first,
that Richard Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough
of Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a
distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise bill in the support
of government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been
honoured with a seat at one of those boards, where the pleasure of
serving the country is combined with other important gratifications,
which, to render them the more acceptable, occur regularly once a
quarter.
Although these events followed each other so closely that the sagacity
of the editor of a modern newspaper would have presaged the last two
even while he announced the first, yet they came upon Sir Everard
gradually, and drop by drop, as it were, distilled through the cool and
procrastinating alembic of DYER'S WEEKLY LETTER. [Long the oracle of the
country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient NEWS-LETTER was
written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to
the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up
his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional
gratuity, in consideration of the extra expense attached to frequenting
such places of fashionable resort.] For it may be observed in passing,
that instead of those mail-coaches, by means of which every mechanic at
his sixpenny club may nightly learn from twenty contradictory channels
the yesterday's news of the capital, a weekly post brought, in those
days, to Waverley-Honour, a WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER, which, after it had
gratified Sir Everard's curiosity, his sister's, and that of his aged
butler, was regularly transferred from the Hall to the Rectory, from
the Rectory to Squire Stubbs' at the Grange, from the Squire to the
Baronet's steward at his neat white house on the heath, from the steward
to the bailiff, and from him through a huge circle of honest dames and
gaffers, by whose hard and horny hands it was generally worn to pieces
in about a month after its arrival.
This slow succession of intelligence was of some advantage to Richard
Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his enormities
reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no doubt that the
new commissioner would have had little reason to pique himself on the
success of his politics. The Baronet, although the mildest of human
beings, was not without sensitive points in his character; his brother's
conduct had wounded these deeply; the Waverley estate was fettered by
no entail (for it had never entered into the head of any of its former
possessors that one of their progeny could be guilty of the atrocities
laid by DYER'S LETTER to the door of Richard), and if it had, the
marriage of the proprietor might have been fatal to a collateral heir.
These various ideas floated through the brain of Sir Everard, without,
however, producing any determined conclusion.
He examined the tree of his genealogy, which, emblazoned with many
an emblematic mark of honour and heroic achievement, hung upon the
well-varnished wainscot of his hall. The nearest descendants of Sir
Hildebrand Waverley, failing those of his eldest son Wilfred, of whom
Sir Everard and his brother were the only representatives, were, as this
honoured register informed him (and, indeed, as he himself well knew),
the Waverleys of Highley Park, com. Hants; with whom the main branch, or
rather stock, of the house had renounced all connexion, since the great
lawsuit in 1670.
This degenerate scion had committed a further offence against the
head and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their
representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley
Park, whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide,
they had quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. These offences,
however, had vanished from Sir Everard's recollection in the heat of his
resentment; and had Lawyer Clippurse, for whom his groom was dispatched
express, arrived but an hour earlier, he might have had the benefit of
drawing a new settlement of the lordship and manor of Waverley-Honour,
with all its dependencies. But an hour of cool reflection is a great
matter, when employed in weighing the comparative evil of two measures,
to neither of which we are internally partial. Lawyer Clippurse found
his patron involved in a deep study, which he was too respectful to
disturb, otherwise than by producing his paper and leathern ink-case, as
prepared to minute his honour's commands. Even this slight manoeuvre
was embarrassing to Sir Everard, who felt it as a reproach to his
indecision. He looked at the attorney with some desire to issue his
fiat, when the sun, emerging from behind a cloud, poured at once its
chequered light through the stained window of the gloomy cabinet in
which they were seated. The Baronet's eye, as he raised it to the
splendour, fell right upon the central scutcheon, impressed with the
same device which his ancestor was said to have borne in the field of
Hastings; three ermines passant, argent, in a field azure, with its
appropriate motto, SANS LACHE. 'May our name rather perish,' exclaimed
Sir Everard, 'than that ancient and loyal symbol should be blended with
the dishonoured insignia of a traitorous Roundhead!'
All this was the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to
light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The
attorney was dismissed, with directions to hold himself in readiness on
the first summons.
The apparition of Lawyer Clippurse at the Hall occasioned much
speculation in that portion of the world to which Waverley-Honour formed
the centre: but the more judicious politicians of this microcosm augured
yet worse consequences to Richard Waverley from a movement which shortly
followed his apostasy. This was no less than an excursion of the Baronet
in his coach-and-six, with four attendants in rich liveries, to make a
visit of some duration to a noble peer on the confines of the shire, of
untainted descent, steady Tory principles, and the happy father of six
unmarried and accomplished daughters.
Sir Everard's reception in this family was, as it may be easily
conceived, sufficiently favourable; but of the six young ladies,
his taste unfortunately determined him in favour of Lady Emily, the
youngest, who received his attentions with an embarrassment which showed
at once that she durst not decline them, and that they afforded her
anything but pleasure.
Sir Everard could not but perceive something uncommon in the restrained
emotions which the young lady testified at the advances he hazarded;
but, assured by the prudent Countess that they were the natural effects
of a retired education, the sacrifice might have been completed, as
doubtless has happened in many similar instances, had it not been for
the courage of an elder sister, who revealed to the wealthy suitor that
Lady Emily's affections were fixed upon a young soldier of fortune,
a near relation of her own. Sir Everard manifested great emotion on
receiving this intelligence, which was confirmed to him, in a private
interview, by the young lady herself, although under the most dreadful
apprehensions of her father's indignation.
Honour and generosity were hereditary attributes of the house of
Waverley. With a grace and delicacy worthy the hero of a romance, Sir
Everard withdrew his claim to the hand of Lady Emily. He had even,
before leaving Blandeville Castle, the address to extort from her father
a consent to her union with the object of her choice. What arguments he
used on this point cannot exactly be known, for Sir Everard was never
supposed strong in the powers of persuasion; but the young officer,
immediately after this transaction, rose in the army with a rapidity far
surpassing the usual pace of unpatronized professional merit, although,
to outward appearance, that was all he had to depend upon.
The shock which Sir Everard encountered upon this occasion, although
diminished by the consciousness of having acted virtuously and
generously, had its effect upon his future life. His resolution of
marriage had been adopted in a fit of indignation; the labour of
courtship did not quite suit the dignified indolence of his habits; he
had but just escaped the risk of marrying a woman who could never love
him; and his pride could not be greatly flattered by the termination of
his amour, even if his heart had not suffered. The result of the whole
matter was his return to Waverley-Honour without any transfer of his
affections, notwithstanding the sighs and languishments of the fair
tell-tale, who had revealed, in mere sisterly affection, the secret
of Lady Emily's attachment, and in despite of the nods, winks, and
innuendoes of the officious lady mother, and the grave eulogiums which
the Earl pronounced successively on the prudence, and good sense, and
admirable dispositions, of his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth
daughters. The memory of his unsuccessful amour was with Sir Everard,
as with many more of his temper, at once shy, proud, sensitive, and
indolent, a beacon against exposing himself to similar mortification,
pain, and fruitless exertion for the time to come. He continued to
live at Waverley-Honour in the style of an old English gentleman, of an
ancient descent and opulent fortune. His sister, Miss Rachel Waverley,
presided at his table; and they became, by degrees, an old bachelor
and an ancient maiden lady, the gentlest and kindest of the votaries of
celibacy.
The vehemence of Sir Everard's resentment against his brother was but
short-lived; yet his dislike to the Whig and the placeman, though unable
to stimulate him to resume any active measures prejudicial to Richard's
interest in the succession to the family estate, continued to maintain
the coldness between them. Richard knew enough of the world, and of his
brother's temper, to believe that by any ill-considered or precipitate
advances on his part, he might turn passive dislike into a more active
principle. It was accident, therefore, which at length occasioned a
renewal of their intercourse. Richard had married a young woman of rank,
by whose family interest and private fortune he hoped to advance his
career. In her right, he became possessor of a manor of some value, at
the distance of a few miles from Waverley-Honour.
Little Edward, the hero of our tale, then in his fifth year, was their
only child. It chanced that the infant with his maid had strayed one
morning to a mile's distance from the avenue of Brere-wood Lodge, his
father's seat. Their attention was attracted by a carriage drawn by six
stately long-failed black horses, and with as much carving and gilding
as would have done honour to my lord mayor's. It was waiting for
the owner, who was at a little distance inspecting the progress of a
half-built farm-house. I know not whether the boy's nurse had been
a Welsh or a Scotch woman, or in what manner he associated a shield
emblazoned with three ermines with the idea of personal property, but
he no sooner beheld this family emblem, than he stoutly determined on
vindicating his right to the splendid vehicle on which it was displayed.
The Baronet arrived while the boy's maid was in vain endeavouring to
make him desist from his determination to appropriate the gilded coach
and six. The rencontre was at a happy moment for Edward, as his uncle
had been just eyeing wistfully, with something of a feeling like envy,
the chubby boys of the stout yeoman whose mansion was building by his
direction. In the round-faced rosy cherub before him, bearing his eye
and his name, and vindicating a hereditary title to his family affection
and patronage, by means of a tie which Sir Everard held as sacred as
either Garter or Blue Mantle, Providence seemed to have granted to him
the very object best calculated to fill up the void in his hopes and
affections. Sir Everard returned to Waverley Hall upon a led horse which
was kept in readiness for him, while the child and his attendant were
sent home in the carriage to Brere-wood Lodge, with such a message
as opened to Richard Waverley a door of reconciliation with his elder
brother.
Their intercourse, however, though thus renewed, continued to be rather
formal and civil, than partaking of brotherly cordiality; yet it was
sufficient to the wishes of both parties. Sir Everard obtained, in the
frequent society of his little nephew, something on which his hereditary
pride might found the anticipated pleasure of a continuation of his
lineage, and where his kind and gentle affections could at the same
time fully exercise themselves. For Richard Waverley, he beheld in the
growing attachment between the uncle and nephew the means of securing
his son's, if not his own, succession to the hereditary estate, which he
felt would be rather endangered than promoted by any attempt on his own
part towards a closer intimacy with a man of Sir Everard's habits and
opinions.
Thus, by a sort of tacit compromise, little Edward was permitted to pass
the greater part of the year at the Hall, and appeared to stand in
the same intimate relation to both families, although their mutual
intercourse was otherwise limited to formal messages, and more formal
visits. The education of the youth was regulated alternately by the
taste and opinions of his uncle and of his father. But more of this in a
subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION
The education of our hero, Edward Waverley, was of a nature somewhat
desultory. In infancy, his health suffered, or was supposed to suffer
(which is quite the same thing), by the air of London. As soon,
therefore, as official duties, attendance on Parliament, or the
prosecution of any of his plans of interest or ambition, called his
father to town, which was his usual residence for eight months in the
year, Edward was transferred to Waverley-Honour, and experienced a total
change of instructors and of lessons, as well as of residence.
This might have been remedied, had his father placed him under the
superintendence of a permanent tutor. But he considered that one of his
choosing would probably have been unacceptable at Waverley-Honour, and
that such a selection as Sir Everard might have made, were the matter
left to him, would have burdened him with a disagreeable inmate, if not
a political spy, in his family. He therefore prevailed upon his private
secretary, a young man of taste and accomplishments, to bestow an hour
or two on Edward's education while at Brere-wood Lodge, and left his
uncle answerable for his improvement in literature while an inmate at
the Hall.
This was in some degree respectably provided for. Sir Everard's
chaplain, an Oxonian, who had lost his fellowship for declining to
take the oaths at the accession of George I, was not only an excellent
classical scholar, but reasonably skilled in science, and master of most
modern languages. He was, however, old and indulgent, and the recurring
interregnum, during which Edward was entirely freed from his discipline,
occasioned such a relaxation of authority, that the youth was permitted,
in a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he pleased, and when he
pleased. This slackness of rule might have been ruinous to a boy of
slow understanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of
knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a
task-master; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth whose
animal spirits were more powerful than his imagination or his feelings,
and whom the irresistible influence of Alma would have engaged in field
sports from morning till night. But the character of Edward Waverley
was remote from either of these. His powers of apprehension were so
uncommonly quick, as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of
his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from
overrunning his game, that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight,
flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the instructor had to combat
another propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy and
vivacity of talent, - that indolence, namely, of disposition, which
can only be stirred by some strong motive of gratification, and which
renounces study as soon as curiosity is gratified, the pleasure of
conquering the first difficulties exhausted, and the novelty of pursuit
at an end. Edward would throw himself with spirit upon any classical
author of which his preceptor proposed the perusal, make himself master
of the style so far as to understand the story, and if that pleased or
interested him, he finished the volume. But it was in vain to attempt
fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philology, upon
the difference of idiom, the beauty of felicitous expression, or the
artificial combinations of syntax. 'I can read and understand a Latin
author,' said young Edward, with the self-confidence and rash reasoning
of fifteen, 'and Scaliger or Bentley could not do much more.' Alas!
while he was thus permitted to read only for the gratification of his
amusement, he foresaw not that he was losing for ever the opportunity of
acquiring habits of firm and assiduous application, of gaining the art
of controlling, directing, and concentrating the powers of his mind
for earnest investigation, - an art far more essential than even that