Guy Mannering
1815
(Harry Bertram, ignorant that he is a dispossessed Scottish laird, returns home into the thick of greed, corruption, and conspiracy against him).
All text except quotations is copyright 2000 by David Lahti, and represents his views alone. Please comment on this page in my guestbook.
CONTENTS:
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After the rambling introduction, which I am beginning to see is a habit of Scott's...
PART I
ch.i-x: A young traveler Guy Mannering, who practices the art of astrology, stops at the home of a laird, Bertram of Ellangowan, whose wife is with child. Guy discerns that the youth will face three trials, in his 5th, 10th, and 15th years. He writes this on a paper and has the Bertrams promise not to open it until the 5th birthday of the child. As his boy Harry grows, laird Bertram is given a magisterial post, and uses it to rid the area of all rabble and gypsies and smugglers, although this hurts many good people and the culture of the place in the process. He even ousts his own friendly gypsy tenants including the Amazonian Meg Merrilies (upon which occasion she delivers an emotional speech, ch.viii). On his son's fifth birthday, before the augury is read, young Harry Bertram disappears while watching a rout of smugglers. The officer in charge is hurled to his death from a cliff. Both the smugglers and gypsies are suspected of the murder of the officer and the abduction of Harry.
ch.xi-xx: Seventeen years later, the astrologer Mannering returns to Scotland from the East Indies just too late to buy Ellangowan, which was auctioned since misfortune came to the Bertrams. The old laird dies parting with the place, which is sold to an avaricious lawyer Glossin. Mannering buys a nearby area, Woodbourne, to which he brings his raven-tressed daughter Julia. He is glad to bring her away from where she had lived formerly, for she was forming an attachment to an unknown man. Young Miss Lucy Bertram and her awkward learned servant Dominie Sampson also stay with Mannering, who continues to contemplate how he might acquire the estate that had so inspired him on his youthful visit long ago.
ch.xxi-xxxiii: Brown, Julia's lover (whom we discover by imperceptible degrees to be the abducted child Harry Bertram of Ellangowan himself!) travels to Scotland to find her (unknowing of his own claim), first meeting Meg Merrilies who seems to recognize him as familiar. He rescues a man Dinmont on the road, and stays with him awhile, then gets rescued himself by Meg from her own violent friends, although he loses his portmanteau. Meanwhile, Woodbourne is assaulted by smugglers, whom Mannering repels. Brown is unintentionally misled to think, as he sees Julia with Lucy Bertram and her lover Hazlewood on a lake, that Hazlewood is with Julia. He presents himself to the group and, mistaken for a ruffian, is threatened by Hazlewood. Hazlewood is shot accidentally in the ensuing scuffle by his own gun, and a warrant is issued for the unknown assailant Brown. The greedy upstart Glossin, eager to make allies, searches for him and discovers his name and whereabouts. Unforeseen, however, the same smuggler active seventeen years ago returns and is captured; and we discover the secret that Glossin and he had shared money for the abduction of young Bertram, to prevent any heir from intercepting Glossin's acquisition of Ellangowan. The old seaman tells Glossin that Bertram is alive and in the area, and Glossin helps the smuggler escape in gratitude. Chapter xxii also contains some picturesque description of Brown's journey northward; and a nice tribute to Rome and its achievements.
PART II
ch.i-xi: Glossin and the old smuggler Hatteraick plot the abduction of Brown (again). A Margaret Bertram dies, and to everyone's great surprise leaves her estate to Harry Bertram, long assumed dead, whom she claims is in the area (Meg Merrilies had suspected Brown's identity and had told her). After waiting awhile and sending to Dinmont and several English addresses for money and proof of his identity as a Captain, Brown/Bertram returns to Ellangowan, in a state of hazy deja-vu, but still ignorant of his claim to it. Glossin meets him, assiduously prevents him from seeing or knowing anything which might give his memory a jog, and ultimately has him arrested and brought to the pompous Sir Hazlewood, father of the man Bertram wounded. Being led astray by Glossin, and disbelieving Bertram's assertion of rank, Hazlewood sends Bertram to the precise jail where Glossin has arranged the smugglers to seek him. Bertram pays for a solitary room, and awaits justice to free him.
ch.xii-xviii: The simple farmer Dinmont, warned of the impending attack on Bertram, moves into his cell to help guard him. The smugglers, under Hatteraick's orders, lead Hazlewood to believe an attack on him would happen that night, so the guards would be removed from the prison to his house. Meg succeeds in righting this just in time, as well as sending a couple spies to release Bertram amid the blaze of the smugglers burning the prison and Custom House. She also convinces Mannering to send a chaise after him. The chaise brings Bertram and Dinmont speedily to Woodbourne, where Mannering waits with his lawyer Pleydell. Then, in a lightning-fast and heart-rending, tear-jerking chapter (xvii), Bertram sets foot in Woodbourne, to the astonishment of all-- either as the resurrected Brown (to Mannering), the man who shot Hazlewood (to Lucy Bertram), a returned lover (to Julia), or, most true and astonishing of all, as Harry Bertram (to Dominie Sampson, who weeps and cradles Bertram with extraordinary pathos). Bertram's story is told, he is triumphantly acquainted with his birthright, name and lineage, and is reconciled to Mannering, and implicitly to Julia. Then Bertram meets his sister Lucy.
ch.xix-xxv: While the others sort out the legalities of Bertram's inheritance, he and Dinmont travel with Meg Merrilies by her order, to the cave where Hatteraick and Glossin met to do their planning, and where the former now was hiding. Hazlewood follows them. The three jump Hatteraick at Meg's order, and bind him, but Meg is mortally wounded. Hazlewood sends for a large party, and there are many witnesses to Meg's dying words on behalf of Bertram (and a sad, macabre paragraph on her lost life is memorable, in ch.xx). The townspeople hail Bertram as Ellangowan. A pretrial hearing is held where Hatteraick begins to break, and Glossin tries to extricate himself from the whole affair. Both are imprisoned for the night. Glossin pays the jailer to be brought to Hatteraick's cell to plan what they will say. Hatteraick strangles him to death, confesses all in writing, and hangs himself. Bertram returns to Ellangowan, an expansion of the buildings is planned, and Lucy is to marry young Hazlewood and live adjacent to the estate.
This, Scott's second novel, is, like Waverley, simply an excellent story. It acquaints the reader with Scottish culture (there are enough interesting words, phrases and customs for any enthusiast) and creates colorful characters, while building a plot to a steep and engrossing climax ever so imperceptibly. So many threads, so well woven together...! For instance, the purse Meg gave Bertram to help him out after he was waylaid, and which had so much money in it, was the treasure of the gypsy tribe, and ensured that the gypsies would do Meg's bidding and help him-- but this was made known only in an aside by a gypsy's testimony.
Why, though, was it called Guy Mannering? Yes, it begins and ends with him, but the main plot has to do with Harry Bertram, and in most of the book Mannering is a distant figure. At the end we know Brown/Bertram much better than we know Guy. Imagine that Henry Fielding had named his work Squire Allworthy instead of Tom Jones, the dispossessed heir. I'd have entitled the book Ellangowan, and ended with a scene with Bertram, whom we all would have wanted to see one last time, rather than Mannering.
But this is a small point. Scott
is an engrossing writer, a constructor of intricate plots, and a master of
drama. The modern scores of novel-makers have had a wondrous and talented
grandfather indeed! It is strange that his works are not more widely read today
(with the possible exceptions of Rob Roy and Ivanhoe). Perhaps the
culture of landed gentry and noble heirs and gyspies and clans is too foreign
to today's audience? But this is no explanation, for other cultures such as
Victorian high society and medieval England are kept very much alive by
literature.
"'Truly,' said Sampson, 'I opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and umwhile master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory.'"
-Dominie Sampson, I.iii.
"'Abusus non tollit usum. The abuse of any thing doth not abrogate the lawful use thereof.'"
-Guy Mannering, I.iii.
"We are not made of wood and stone, and the things which connect themselves with our hearts and habits cannot, like bark or lichen, be rent away without our missing them."
-I.vi.
"'His success in life and war-- his habit of making every obstacle yield before the energy of his exertions, even where they seemed insurmountable-- all these have given a hasty and peremptory cast to his character which can neither endure contradiction, nor make allowance for deficiencies.'"
-Julia, on her father Guy Mannering, I.xvii.
"'...the gentleman has good taste for the female outside'"
-Julia, on a suitor, I.xvii.
"'...though Mr. Sampson has certainly not sacrificed to the graces, there are many things in this world more truly deserving of ridicule than either awkwardness of manners or simplicity of character.'"
-Guy to Julia, I.xx.
"That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid,
Those ample clasps of solid metal made,
The close-press'd leaves unoped for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-fill'd page,
On the broad back the stubborn ridges roll'd,
Where yet the title stands in tarnish'd gold."
-I.xx.
"He entered them in the catalogue in his best running hand, forming each letter with the accuracy of a lover writing a valentine, and placed each individually on the destined shelf with all the reverence which I have seen a lady pay to a jar of old china."
-of Dominie Sampson, I.xx.
"Let the reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the scene an open heath, having for the back-ground that huge chain of mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are pre-eminent; let him look along that blind road, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by the passengers' footsteps, that it can but be traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases to be distinguished while the foot is actually treading it-- along this faintly-traced path advances the object of our present narrative. His firm step, his erect and free carriage, have a military air, which corresponds well with his well-proportioned limbs, and stature of six feet high. His dress is so plain and simple that it indicates nothing as to rank-- it may be that of a gentleman who travels in this manner for his pleasure, or of an inferior person of whom it is the proper and usual garb. Nothing can be on a more reduced scale than his travelling equipment. A volume of Shakspeare in each pocket, a small bundle with a change of linen slung across his shoulders, an oaken cudgel in his hand, complete our pedestrian's accommodations, and in this equipage we present him to our readers."
-I.xxii.
"Dr. Johnson thought life had few things better than the excitation produced by being whirled rapidly along in a post-chaise; but he who has in youth experienced the confident and independent feeling of a stout pedestrian in an interesting country, and during fine weather, will hold the taste of the great moralist cheap in comparison."
-I.xxii.
"...if you give a man, or race of men, an ill name, they are very likely to do something that deserves hanging."
-I.xxiii.
"Be ware of the redding straik!"
-I.xxvii. ("The redding straik, namely, a blow received by a peacemaker who interferes betwixt two combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the most dangerous blow a man can receive." (note 24)).
"'These,' said Pleydell, 'are my tools of trade. A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.'"
-II.iv.
"'Dark shall be light,
And wrong done to right,
When Bertram's right and Bertram's might
Shall meet on Ellangowan's height.'"
-II.xvi.
"'True, Colonel; a lawyer's anxiety about the fate of the most interesting cause has seldom spoiled either his sleep or digestion.'"
-Pleydell to Mannering, II.xvi.
"'...crystal and hearts would lose all their merit in the world, if it were not for their fragility.'"
-Julia to Mannering, II.xvi.
...you are in the mood for a fun adventure drama of good and love winning over corruption and violence; or, you want a Romantic tale told in a Scottish setting.
If you like this, you'd also like...
(for the fan of the Scottish adventure writers:)
-Henry the Minstrel, The Wallace (1460).
-Sir Walter Scott, Waverley (1814).
-Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817).
-Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (1886).
(for disinherited heirs brought to their birthright:)
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It (1599).
-Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749).
-T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1958).
Find Guy Mannering at Amazon.com
Sorry, Amazon.com does not stock this novel! I suggest looking for it in used bookstores.
