(Dandie Dinmont.)
Perhaps the Author of “Waverley” has nowhere so completely given the effect of reality to his portraiture as in the case of honest Dandie Dinmont, the renowned yeoman of Charlieshope. This personage seems to be quite familiar to his mind, present to his eye, domesticated in the chambers of his fancy. The minutest motions of the farmer’s body, and the most trivial workings of his mind, are alike bright in his eye; and so faithful a representation has been produced, that one might almost think the author had taken his sketch by some species of mental camera obscura, which brought the figure beneath his pencil in all its native colours and proportions.
It is impossible to point out any individual of real life as the original of this happy production. It appears to be entirely generic—that is to say, the whole class of Liddisdale farmers is here represented, and little more than a single thread is taken from any single person to form the web of the character. Three various persons have been popularly mentioned as furnishing the author with his most distinguished traits, each of whom have their followers and believers among the country people. It will perhaps be possible to prove that Dandie Dinmont is a sort of compound of all three, the ingredients being leavened and wrought up with the general characteristic qualities of the “Lads of Liddisdale.”
Mr. Archibald Park, late of Lewinshope, near Selkirk, brother of the celebrated Mungo Park, was the person always most strongly insisted on as being the original of Dandie. He was a man of prodigious strength, in stature upwards of six feet, and every member of his body was in perfect accordance with his great height. He completely realized the most extravagant ideas that the poets of his country formerly entertained of the stalwart borderers; and his achievements “by flood and field,” in the violent exercises and sports of his profession, came fully up to those of the most distinguished heroes of border song. He had all the careless humour and boisterous hospitality of the Liddisdale farmer. On the appearance of the novel, his neighbours at once put him down as the Dandie Dinmont of real life, and he was generally addressed by the name of his supposed archetype by his familiar associates, so long as he remained in that part of the country, which, however, was not long. His circumstances requiring him to relinquish his farm, he obtained, by the interest of some friends, the situation of collector of customs at Tobermory, to which place he removed in 1815. Soon after he had settled there, he was attacked by a paralytic affection, from which he never thoroughly recovered, and he died in 1821, aged about fifty years.
Mr. John Thorburn, of Juniper Bank, the person whom we consider to have stood in the next degree of relationship to Dinmont, was a humorous good-natured farmer, very fond of hunting and fishing, and a most agreeable companion over a bottle. He was truly an unsophisticated worthy man. Many amusing anecdotes are told of him in the south, and numerous scenes have been witnessed in his hospitable mansion, akin to that described in the novel as taking place upon the return of Dandie from “Stagshawbank fair.” The interior economy of Juniper Bank is said to have more nearly resembled Charlieshope than did that of Lewinshope, the residence of Mr. Park. Indeed the latter bore no similarity whatever to Charlieshope, excepting in the hospitality of the master and the Christian name of the mistress of the house. Mr. Park, like his fictitious counterpart, was one of the most generous and hearty landlords alive; and his wife, who was a woman of highly respectable connections, bore, like Mrs. Dinmont, the familiar abbreviated name of Ailie.
Thorburn, like Dandie, was once before the feifteen. The celebrated Mr. Jeffrey being retained in his cause, Thorburn went into Court to hear his pleading. He was delighted with the talents and oratory of his advocate; and, on coming out, observed to his friends, “Od, he’s an awfu’ body yon; he said things that I never could hae thought o’ mysel’.”
Mr. James Davidson, of Hindlee, another honest south-country farmer, was pointed out as the prototype of Dandie Dinmont. This gentleman used to breed numerous families of terriers, to which he gave the names of Pepper and Mustard, in all their varieties of Auld and Young, Big and Little; and it was this community of designation in the dogs of the two personages, rather than any particular similarity in the manners or characters of themselves, that gave credit to the conjecture of Mr. Davidson’s friends.[16]
It will appear, from these notices, that no individual has sat for the portrait of Dinmont, but that it has been painted from indiscriminate recollections of various border store-farmers. We cannot do better than conclude with the words of the author himself, when introducing this subject to the reader:—“The present store-farmers of the south of Scotland are a much more refined race than their fathers, and the manners I am now to describe have either altogether disappeared or are greatly modified. Without losing their rural simplicity of manners, they now cultivate arts unknown to the former generation, not only in the progressive improvement of their possessions, but in all the comforts of life. Their houses are more commodious, their habits of life better regulated, so as better to keep pace with those of the civilized world; and the best of luxuries, the luxury of knowledge, has gained much ground among the hills during the last thirty years. Deep drinking, formerly their greatest failing, is now fast losing ground; and while the frankness of their extensive hospitality continues the same, it is, generally speaking, refined in its character, and restrained in its excesses.”
(Dominie Sampson.)
There are few of our originals in whom we can exhibit such precise points of coincident resemblance between the real and fictitious character, as in him whom we now assign as the prototype of Dominie Sampson. The person of real existence also possesses the singular recommendation of presenting more dignified and admirable characteristics, in their plain unvarnished detail, than the ridiculous caricature produced in “Guy Mannering,” though it be drawn by an author whose elegant imagination has often exalted, but seldom debased, the materials to which he has condescended to be indebted.
Mr. James Sanson was the son of James Sanson, tacksman of Birkhillside Mill, situate in the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. After getting the rudiments of his education at a country-school, he went to the University of Edinburgh, and, at a subsequent period, completed his probationary studies at that of Glasgow. At these colleges he made great proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and became deeply immersed in the depths of philosophy and theology, of which, as with Dominie Sampson, the more abstruse and neglected branches were his favourite subjects of application. He was a close, incessant student; and, in the families where he afterwards resided as a tutor, all his leisure moments were devoted to the pursuits of literature. Even his hours of relaxation and walking were not exempted, in the exceeding earnestness of his solicitude. Then he was seldom seen without a book, upon which he would be so intent, that a friend might have passed, and even spoken to him, without Sanson’s being conscious of the circumstance. After going through his probationary trials before the presbytery, he became an acceptable, even an admired preacher, and was frequently employed in assisting the clergymen of the neighbourhood.
From the narrow circumstances of his father, he was obliged early in life to become a tutor. Into whose family he first entered is unknown. However, in this humble situation, owing probably to the parsimonious economy to which he had been accustomed in his father’s house, he in a short time saved the sum of twenty-five pounds—a little fortune in those days to a youth of Mr. Sanson’s habits.
With this money he determined upon a pedestrian excursion into England, for which he was excellently qualified, from his uncommon strength and undaunted resolution. After journeying over a great part of the sister kingdom, he came to Harwich, where a sight of the passage-boats to Holland, and the cheapness of the fare, induced him to take a trip to the continent. How he was supported during his peregrinations was never certainly discovered; but he actually travelled over the greater part of the Netherlands, besides a considerable portion of Germany, and spent only about the third part of his twenty-five pounds. He always kept a profound silence upon the subject himself; but it is conjectured, with great probability, that in the Low Countries he had recourse to convents, were the monks were ever ready to do acts of kindness to men of such learning as Sanson would appear to them to be. Perhaps he procured the means of subsistence by the expedients which the celebrated Goldsmith is said to have practised in his continental wanderings, and made the disputation of the morning supply the dinner of the day.
After his return from the continent, about 1784, he entered the family of the Rev. Laurence Johnson of Earlston, where he continued some time, partly employed in the education of his children, and giving occasional assistance in his public ministerial duty. From this situation he removed to the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, uncle of the celebrated Sir Walter, whose family then resided at Ellieston, in the county of Roxburgh. While superintending this gentleman’s children, he was appointed to a higher duty—the charge of Carlenridge Chapel, in the parish of Hawick, which he performed regularly every Sunday, at the same time that he attended the education of the family through the week. We may safely conjecture that it was at this particular period of his life he first was honoured with the title of Dominie Sanson.
He was next employed by the Earl of Hopetoun, as chaplain to that nobleman’s tenants at Leadhills, where, with an admirable but unfortunate tenaciousness of duty, he patiently continued to exercise his honourable calling, to the irreparable destruction of his own health. The atmosphere being tainted with the natural effluvia of the noxious mineral which was the staple production of the place, though incapable of influencing the health of those who had been accustomed to it from their infancy, had soon a fatal effect upon the life of poor Sanson. The first calamitous consequence that befel him was the loss of his teeth; next he became totally blind; and, last of all, to complete the sacrifice, the insalubrious air extinguished the principle of life. Thus did this worthy man, though conscious of the fate that awaited him, choose rather to encounter the last enemy of our nature, than relinquish what he considered a sacred duty. Strange that one, whose conduct through life was every way so worthy of the esteem and gratitude of mankind—whose death would not have disgraced the devotion of a primitive martyr—should by means of a few less dignified peculiarities, have eventually conferred the character of perfection on a work of humour, and, in a caricatured exhibition, supplied attractions, nearly unparalleled, to innumerable theatres!
Mr. James Sanson was of the greatest stature—near six feet high, and otherwise proportionately enormous. His person was coarse, his limbs large, and his manners awkward; so that, while people admired the simplicity and innocence of his character, they could not help smiling at the clumsiness of his motions and the rudeness of his address. His soul was pure and untainted—the seat of many manly and amiable virtues. He was ever faithful in his duty, both as a preacher and a tutor, warmly attached to the interests of the family in which he resided, and gentle in the instruction of his pupils. As a preacher, though his manner in his public exhibitions, no less than in private society, was not in his favour, he was well received by every class of hearers. His discourses were the well-digested productions of a laborious mind; and his sentiments seldom failed to be expressed with the utmost beauty and elegance of diction.
(Meg Merrilies.)
The original of this character has been already pointed out and described in various publications. A desire of presenting, in this work, as much original matter as possible, will induce us to be very brief in our notice of Jean Gordon.
It is impossible to specify the exact date of her nativity, though it probably was about the year 1670. She was born at Kirk-Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, the metropolis of the Scottish Gipsies, and was married to a Gipsy chief, named Patrick Faa, by whom she had ten or twelve children.
In the year 1714, one of Jean’s sons, named Alexander Faa, was murdered by another Gipsy, named Robert Johnston, who escaped the pursuit of justice for nearly ten years, but was then taken and indicted by his Majesty’s Advocate for the crime. He was sentenced to be executed, but escaped from prison. It was easier, however, to escape the grasp of justice than to elude the wide spread talons of Gipsy vengeance. Jean Gordon traced the murderer like a blood-hound, followed him to Holland, and from thence to Ireland, where she had him seized, and brought him back to Jedburgh. Here she obtained the full reward of her toils, by having the satisfaction of seeing him hanged on Gallowhill. Some time afterwards, Jean being at Sourhope, a sheep-farm on Bowmont-water, the goodman said to her, “Weel, Jean, ye hae got Rob Johnston hanged at last, and out o’ the way?” “Ay, gudeman,” replied Jean, lifting up her apron by the two corners, “and a’ that fu’ o’ gowd hasna done’t.” Jean Gordon’s “apron fu’ o’ gowd” may remind some of our readers of Meg Merrilies’ poke of jewels; and indeed the whole transaction forcibly recalls the stern picture of that intrepid heroine.
The circumstance in “Guy Mannering,” of Brown being indebted to Meg Merrilies for lodging and protection, when he lost his way near Derncleugh, finds a remarkably precise counterpart in an anecdote related of Jean Gordon:—A farmer with whom she had formerly been on good terms, though their acquaintance had been interrupted for several years, lost his way, and was benighted among the mountains of Cheviot. A light glimmering through the hole of a desolate barn, that had survived the farmhouse to which it once belonged, guided him to a place of shelter. He knocked at the door, and it was immediately opened by Jean Gordon. To meet with such a character in so solitary a place, and probably at no great distance from her clan, was a terrible surprise to the honest man, whose rent, to lose which would have been ruin to him, was about his person. Jean set up a shout of joyful recognition, forced the farmer to dismount, and, in the zeal of her kindness, hauled him into the barn. Great preparations were making for supper, which the gudeman of Lochside, to increase his anxiety, observed was calculated for at least a dozen of guests. Jean soon left him no doubt upon the subject, but inquired what money he had about him, and made earnest request to be made his purse-keeper for the night, as the “bairns” would soon be home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told his story, and surrendered his gold to Jean’s custody. She made him put a few shillings in his pocket, observing, it would excite suspicion, were he found travelling altogether penniless. This arrangement being made, the farmer lay down on a sort of shake-down, upon some straw, but, as will easily be believed, slept not. About midnight the gang returned with various articles of plunder, and talked over their exploits in language which made the farmer tremble. They were not long in discovering their guest, and demanded of Jean whom she had there? “E’en the winsome gudeman o’ Lochside, poor body,” replied Jean; “he’s been at Newcastle seeking for siller to pay his rent, honest man, but de’il-be-licket he’s been able to gather in, and sae he’s gaun e’en hame wi’ a toom purse and a sair heart.” “That may be, Jean,” said one of the banditti, “but we maun rip his pouches a bit, and see if it be true or no.” Jean set up her throat in exclamation against this breach of hospitality, but without producing any change in their determination. The farmer soon heard their stifled whispers and light steps by his bed-side, and understood they were rummaging his clothes. When they found the money which the providence of Jean Gordon had made him retain, they held a consultation if they should take it or no; but the smallness of the booty, and the vehemence of Jean’s remonstrances, determined them in the negative. They caroused and went to rest. So soon as day dawned, Jean roused her guest, produced his horse, which she had accommodated behind the hallan, and guided him for some miles till he was on the high-road to Lochside. She then restored his whole property, nor could his earnest entreaties prevail on her to accept so much as a single guinea.
It is related that all Jean’s sons were condemned to die at Jedburgh on the same day. It is said the jury were equally divided; but a friend to justice, who had slept during the discussion, waked suddenly, and gave his word for condemnation, in the emphatic words, “Hang them a’.” Jean was present, and only said, “The Lord help the innocent in a day like this!”
Her own death was accompanied with circumstances of brutal outrage, of which Jean was in many respects wholly undeserving. Jean had, among other merits or demerits, that of being a staunch Jacobite. She chanced to be at Carlisle upon a fair or market-day, soon after the year 1746, where she gave vent to her political partiality, to the great offence of the rabble of that city. Being zealous of their loyalty, when there was no danger, in proportion to the tameness with which they surrendered to the Highlanders in 1745, they inflicted upon poor Jean Gordon no slighter penalty than that of ducking her to death in the Eden. It was an operation of some time; for Jean Gordon was a stout woman, and, struggling hard with her murderers, often got her head above water, and while she had voice left, continued to exclaim, at such intervals, “Charlie yet! Charlie yet!”
Her propensities were exactly the same as those of the fictitious character of Meg Merrilies. She possessed the same virtue of fidelity, spoke the same language, and in appearance there was little difference; yet Madge Gordon, her grand-daughter, was said to have had the same resemblance. She was descended from the Faas by the mother’s side, and was married to a Young. She had a large aquiline nose; penetrating eyes, even in her old age; bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy bonnet of straw; a short cloak, of a peculiar fashion; and a long staff, nearly as tall as herself. When she spoke vehemently (for she had many complaints), she used to strike her staff upon the floor, and throw herself into an attitude which it was impossible to regard with indifference.
From these traits of the manners of Jean and Madge Gordon, it may be perceived that it would be difficult to determine which of the two Meg Merrilies was intended for; it may therefore, without injustice, be divided between both. So that if Jean was the prototype of her character, it is very probable that Madge must have sat to the anonymous author of “Guy Mannering” as the representative of her person.
To the author whose duty leads him so low in the scale of nature, that the manners and the miseries of a vicious and insubordinate race, prominent in hideous circumstances of unvarnished reality, are all he is permitted to record, it must ever be gratifying to find traits of such fine enthusiasm, such devoted fidelity, as the conduct of Jean Gordon exhibits in the foregoing incidents. They stand out with a delightful and luminous effect from the gloomy canvas of guilt, atoning for its errors and brightening its darkness. To trace further, as others have done, the disgusting peculiarities of a people so abandoned to all sense of moral propriety, would only serve to destroy the effect already created by the redeeming characters of Jean Gordon and her nobler sister, and more extensively to disgrace the general respectability of human nature.